The Feng Shui Detective Goes South (10 page)

‘I don’t think he knows any of those groups,’ said Joyce.

‘He’ll only know
really
old music.’

‘He doesn’t know any of that stuff? That’s amazing,’ said a creature, pity in its voice. ‘Run-DMC?’

One of the other young people had a stroke of inspiration.

‘A rap singer is like a poet.’

‘Yeah,’ said Joyce. ‘Like a poet.’

‘A poet,’ said Wong. ‘Like Po Chu-i?’

Joyce considered this for a moment. ‘Yeah,’ she decided at last. ‘Like Po Chu-i.’

There was another stunning blast of sound as the door opened and a young man entered. He failed to shut the door behind him, which meant that his opening remarks were missed by everyone in the room. One of the creatures kicked the door shut, and the young man spoke again.

‘Yo good peeps, is dis da guy?

‘Dis da guy who is apple of ya eye?’

Wong stared. The man, who appeared to have forgotten to put his shirt on, was slowly throbbing. He apparently suffered from an extraordinarily powerful case of delirium tremens or St Vitus’ Dance. His shoulders moved up and down continuously. His head rocked back and forth. His hips swiveled from side to side, providing some counterpoint to the way his upper body was moving. The chains and bits of leather that draped his upper body swung from left to right and back again. He spoke in a gentle rhythm, his words keeping pace with the slick, feline current that appeared to be surging through his body.

‘Is he sick?’ Wong asked Joyce.

‘As if,’ she whispered back, her eyes running over the young man’s brown, muscular chest.

She made the introductions. ‘CF, this is Jammo Ice J, rap singer. Jammo, this is CF Wong, feng shui master. Jammo’s solo now, but he used to be in the Gropies?’

Wong wondered whether he should offer to shake the entrant’s hand. But as he moved forward, the young man raised his hand up in a gesture that appeared to ask him to halt where he was.

‘Gimme five ‘If you’re alive,

‘Slip me some skin ‘If you’re not too dim.’

The feng shui master felt in his pocket for a five-dollar note.

Joyce realised what he was doing and grabbed his arm. ‘No,’ she hissed into his ear. ‘Not five dollars.’

There was a slight impasse. Neither knew what to do next. Then Jammo dropped his hand and shook Wong’s hand.

‘You like to do it the old-style way; ‘D at’s cool with me, if it makes your day.’

‘He’s so cool,’ the geomancer heard one of the creatures say, its voice touched with awe.

‘Totally,’ said another.

‘Totally cool,’ added a third.

‘
And
totally hot,’ agreed the fourth.

‘I am Wong. You are . . . ?’

This was the cue for Jammo to go into one of his set pieces. He spun around on one foot, clapped his hands and proclaimed:

‘Da name is Jammo, da temperature’s high.

‘Ain’t no one like me, for I am I.

‘I’m da main man, let no one disagree, ‘For only I have da real pedigree.

‘I was born on da street, I raise’ myself up, ‘Climbin’ da ladder to da very top.

‘For da top of the pile is where I belong ‘And getting up dair won’t take very long, ‘Cause I am da king and dair ain’t no other, ‘I won’t make room for any other mother. Unh-unh.’

He spun around again.

Joyce’s creatures shrieked and clapped. ‘Awesome,’ said one.

‘Totally,’ said the others.

Wong was frozen to the spot. He didn’t know what the young man was talking about. It had become clear that this visit had been a very bad idea. Nothing this young man could say could possibly impinge on any of his cases. He needed to escape, immediately.

Joyce, apparently noting Wong’s look of alarm, grabbed Jammo’s arm. ‘Iceman, I want you to be serious for a moment. You know what you told me last night about the fire in that building on Orchard Road? Could you tell CF about it too, please?’

The young man looked at her.

‘Jammo never say da same thing twice; ‘You may not like it, but it’s not very nice; ‘I am da future, I cannot go back, ‘I say what I say, and baby, dat’s dat.’

‘You don’t have to say it exactly like you said it last night. But just tell my boss the same story, please? Use any words you like.’

Jammo thought for a moment. ‘Okay,’ he said.

‘I was walkin’ down da road jes’ da other day, ‘When somethin’ kinda odd jes’ happen my way.

‘I saw a man walkin’ out with a waving cat, ‘Came strollin’ out his shop, just like dat.

‘He put it in his car and he drove right off, ‘One hour later—’ Jammo paused, apparently unable to think of a rhyme for ‘off ’.

Then he snapped back into his speech:

‘One hour later, out ran all da toffs, ‘Coz da building, you see, it wuz on fire, ‘Da flames dey rose up higher and higher.

‘Was it because, I ask to myself,

‘Da guy remove da cat from the shelf?’

He stopped and made a slinky flourish with his hands. The creatures applauded. Joyce looked at Wong. Wong did not move his head, but his eyes slowly moved to the right until they connected with Joyce’s.

The young woman decided that she should interpret. ‘You see, CF, what he is saying is this. He saw a guy coming out of a building with a waving cat. On Orchard Road. That means one of those feng shui cats, you know, gold ceramic with one paw in the air? And then, one hour later, the building catches fire. Maybe there was a connection?’ She looked at him, her face open and hopeful.

Wong, to Joyce’s obvious relief, appeared to take the suggestion seriously. His head tipped to one side—but just for a few seconds. Then he turned to face her: ‘Joyce, I tell you. Probably half the shops in Singapore have feng shui cat.

New shops open, old shops close, every day. Every day, people bring feng shui cats into new shops or take them out of old shops. Every day there is a few fires somewhere in Singapore.

Is nothing odd. Only coincidence.’

‘Oh,’ she said, disappointed. Her eyes fell. Suddenly she looked embarrassed and he noticed her cheeks redden. ‘I’m sorry. Are they really that common? I just thought—sorry, I think I just wasted your time. Never mind. Whatever. It’s like nice to introduce you to my gang and like have a drink with you?’

‘Yeah,’ said the gang in unison.

Wong involuntarily glanced down at his drink—which remained untouched on the counter beside him.

Jammo Ice J was backing out.

‘Time for me to go, ‘It’s da end of da show,

‘So I’ll say bye, and see ya nex’ time, ‘You come back and enjoy my witty rhymes.’

There was another thundering blast of dance music as he opened the door and slipped out.

Wong watched him with all the fascination of a biologist looking at a newly discovered species.

Through the open door, he noticed that a young woman was staring at him, as if she had never seen anyone so strange or so old. She had streaked hair and a severely disapproving expression. She spun around and moved away. It made him feel uncomfortable. Truly, he was out of place in this bizarre, noisy world.

Joyce looked out of the doorway. ‘That girl was looking at you,’ she said to the geomancer. ‘I think you’ve pulled.’

‘Woowooo!’ shrieked one of the creatures. ‘Who would have thought that Mr Wong would be the first to pull tonight?’

‘Pull?’ asked Wong.

‘Clear the snoggin’ room,’ said another creature.

Wong pushed the door shut.

‘Don’t tease him,’ Joyce ordered. ‘It’s so mean.’

She turned to her boss. ‘I hope it’s been like interesting for you? Not many people your age, I mean like
grown-ups
, have hung out in Dan T’s Inferno with rap singers? And everyone wants to meet Jammo Ice J. If he becomes famous you can tell all your friends you met him? They’ll be ever so impressed, I promise.’

‘Hmm. I see what you mean,’ Wong said, his mind turning back to Jammo. ‘
Is
a poet. But not very much like Po Chu-i.’

He raced for the door.

Tuesday:
No such thing
as ghosts

The world was melting into sweat. There was salt in his eyes. His hair was wet. And now he had entered his office to find that even the walls of the office were perspiring. And something, somewhere, was ticking. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a drip of condensation running from the picture rail down the spongy wallpaper to the floor. It was
hot.

‘Stolen,’ explained Winnie Lim, without looking up from the gossip magazine she was reading.

The feng shui master, who was standing in the doorway, wondered for a moment what she was talking about—and then he glanced in the direction of the windows, where the air conditioner should have been. It was missing. Raw sunlight and furnace-like heat poured into the room through the missing pane where it had been. Not only had its absence turned his office into a sauna, but it had made the room unnaturally quiet without its brooding presence.

Joyce, who had entered the room a few steps behind her employer, wiped the sweat from her upper lip with her thumb and forefinger. ‘Geez,’ she said. ‘
Killer
heat. And what’s with the water running down the walls? Leak upstairs?’

CF Wong was still looking at Winnie. ‘
Laang-hay-gei hai
bindo?

’ She merely shrugged her shoulders without looking up, and turned the page of her magazine.

He repeated his question in English with a sterner tone of voice: ‘Air conditioner: where is it?’

‘How do I know-lah?’ Winnie said, irritated. ‘Stolen.’

‘When?’

She shrugged her shoulders again and looked at him crossly. ‘I come in, not here. This morning. Half hour ago, about.’

‘You call management? Police?’

‘Too busy-lah! So much work, see?’ She swept her hand over her desk to encompass the morning’s mail—four unexciting envelopes and a small package, all of which appeared to have been issued by machine.

‘Water on walls is humidity,’ Wong explained to Joyce. ‘Big problem in Singapore.’

‘Why doesn’t the electricity short out?’ Joyce asked, flipping on the light switch. There was a short, sharp fizzing noise as the overhead bulb flashed once and then went out.

‘Because we do not turn the light on,’ he said, his eyes closed. Why did the gods hate him so?

‘Oops. Sorry.’ The young woman, forgetting to flick the switch down again, walked over to the window to look for clues. Sticking her head out through the rusty hole in the window where the air conditioner had been, she looked down and gave a snort. ‘Hah! It’s not been stolen. It’s fallen out. It’s down there. Isn’t that our air conditioner? Look.’

‘Aiyeeaah! Very bad, very bad,’ said a worried Wong, moving swiftly to her side at the window to have a look. He abruptly took her shoulders and pushed her to one side before putting his own head through the hole. He winced in real pain as he looked down. ‘Eeee,’ he squealed between almost-closed teeth. There was a distorted cube of metal on the concrete floor outside.

Pieces of twisted metal dangled out like ruptured organs. There was a blood-like puddle of dark liquid beneath the main casing.

He breathed out noisily. ‘Aiyeeaah. Very bad.’

‘It’s not so bad. It never worked particularly well. And so noisy. It’ll be good to have a new one.’

‘No! Very bad that it falls down. Very illegal in Singapore for air conditioner to fall down. Big trouble. Jail, maybe.’ He turned his eyes to look at Winnie. ‘For relevant office manager.’

Winnie ignored the implicit threat and pretended to busy herself with the envelopes on her desk. ‘Aiyeeaah,’ she said, staring at the letter she had just opened. ‘Someone write you letter in computer language. Cannot read-lah.’

‘Give to Joyce. She can read,’ said Wong, wiping the humidity from his desk with a tissue from Winnie’s box.

‘Sure,’ said Joyce. ‘Hand it over. But first I have to ask you a question. What does
aiyeeaah
mean?’

Winnie tilted her head to one side, thinking. There was silence for thirteen seconds. ‘Cannot translate. No word in English. Only in Chinese and Indian.’

‘So what is
aiyeeaah
in Indian?’

‘
Aiyoh,
’ said the Singaporean.

‘But what does it actually mean?’

‘
Aiyoh
means
aiyeeaah. Aiyeeaah
means
aiyoh.

’ ‘Thanks.’

Winnie flung the letter in Joyce’s direction with the grace of a toddler doing ballet. It landed on a cabinet on the wrong side of the room, where it balanced for a moment, before falling neatly into a wastepaper basket.

‘I think leave it,’ said Wong. ‘Probably it belong there.’

Joyce got out of her creaking seat and retrieved the letter.

‘Might be something important. You never know.’

She looked at the single sheet of paper for a few seconds. ‘Nope. Gibberish.’

‘Not computer language?’ asked Wong.

‘Not any language. Computer garble. Or secret code perhaps,’ she added with a laugh.

She dropped the letter back into the bin, then threw herself ungracefully into her chair, where she sprawled back and fanned herself with an eighteenth century Chinese molding she had picked from a shelf behind Wong. ‘Can you
believe
this heat?’ she said.

The geomancer opened his writing book but didn’t feel creative in this furnace. The lack of white noise from the air conditioner meant that the roar of traffic outside seemed extraordinarily loud. And Joyce, no doubt, would turn on her headphone thing which made irritating
tsik-tsika-tsik-tsika-tsik
drumming noises. How could one even think in such conditions?