The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook (37 page)

It took Boy Santos Jr four hours to get Joyce out of the holding cell at the Makati police station.

She was livid with the Manila police force and spat fire continuously as the paperwork for her release was completed. Santos tried unsuccessfully to hide his amusement at the girl’s fury.

Joyce knew that to some extent it was her own fault, since she had wanted to namedrop her senior police contact, but could not remember his name and title. And her failure made her even more angry.

The past few hours had been difficult. The driver of Jaime Mangila Jr had discovered her fast asleep behind the car and called security guards and the police. She had explained that she was investigating the tycoon on suspicion of murder. This had resulted in the local patrol officer deciding that she was most probably a backpacking substance abuser high on something. She kept hearing the word ‘shabu’, which confused her, since to her it meant ‘Japanese hotpot’.

‘You shabu?’ the officer had asked her in broken English.

‘Yes—and tempura,’ Joyce had hollered. ‘But what the hell does that have to do with anything? Could we talk about Japanese food later?’

Her explanations that she was on a law enforcement mission were ignored. ‘Daniel something!’ she’d said to the officer who dragged her away. ‘He’ll vouch for me. I’m on an investigation! He asked me to stay a few days. Just look in your staff list. There’s bound to be a Daniel something. He’s short and he likes really sappy music. If you won’t call him, call the
Philippine Daily Sun.
Ask for the editor.’

Joyce was even more furious when Santos revealed why it took so long to get her out of jail.

First, Ferdinand Cabigon had refused to okay the expense needed.

‘Rotter,’ the young woman said as she and Boy walked down the steps outside the police station.

‘Cabby said the monies that needed to be paid for you to be released had to come out of the two hundred thousand pesos promised to Wong.’

‘Meany. So we had to pay out of our own money?’

‘Well . . .’ Boy appeared reluctant to answer.

Joyce turned to face him. ‘So what happened?’

‘Well, I’m afraid your boss refused to agree to this.’

‘What?’

At first, anyway. It was only after that old lady—what’s her name?’

‘Madam Xu.’

After she told him that leaving you to languish indefinitely behind bars would mean he would get into trouble with
his
boss.’

‘Mr Pun.’

‘Yeah. Only when she took that line, did he finally agree to it.’

‘Bastard.
Bastard.
’

Joyce was further amazed to discover that the cash Santos had to pay was not a bail payment to the police, but a payment to the security company—a subsidiary of one of Jaime Mangila Jr’s firms—which had captured her.

‘It’s not exactly a bribe. It’s a goodwill payment to make them drop the charges,’ he said. ‘Sort of like an out-of-court settlement. Companies here have to make a lot of these informal payments.’

By the time they got back to the offices of the
Philippine
Daily Sun
, Joyce had descended into a state of sullen silence.

Santos led her into a large conference room. She slumped in a corner chair. She decided she would never speak to Wong again for the rest of her life.

The journalist informed her that the investigative reporting team had narrowed the list of likely candidates down to four possibles, in addition to Joyce’s nomination of Jaime Mangila Jr. Their names were Sudang Bueno Sr, Manuel Hernandez, Hamlet Humaynon and Jesus Maria Ramirez, and all were Manila business people.

Santos and McQuinnie were joined in the conference room by Wong and Madam Xu. Joyce looked daggers at her boss and beamed smiles at the fortune-teller. The main editorial conference of the day was about to take place.

At 6:30 pm exactly, twelve senior journalists marched into the room, including the news, features, business and sports editors and various layout and production staff. Baby Encarnacion-Salocan sat slightly away from the table to take notes.

Santos explained in a whisper to Wong that this was the daily meeting at which preliminary decisions were made as to which stories would appear on which pages.

Fashionably late, the brown-suited chief editor appeared, took his seat at the head of the table, and the discussion began.

Santos spoke first, explained that the investigation was proceeding slowly. He said he could come up with some angle that would justify one of the front-page slots for the next day’s paper, but he had no real breakthrough to report. ‘We’ll put in some sort of holding story. We’ve got a nice interview with one of Gloria’s old boyfriends, but that’s about it. She Knew Too Many Secrets: Glowgirl’s Lover. We’re going to need much more time for something meatier,’ he said.

The journalist explained that it would take another two or three days research to produce features on the short-listed suspects which would be interesting enough to print—yet not actually defamatory. And even then, there was no guarantee that they would uncover evidence to identify any particular one of them as Gloria’s likely murderer.

That was when Madame Xu spoke up.

‘We do not need two or three days,’ she said. ‘Why, we barely need two or three minutes.’

‘What do you mean?’ Santos asked.

‘You have done the lion’s share of the work. Now I will do the final part—the thing that only I can do. I will use my psychic powers to find out which of your five candidates did the murder. It will save you a great deal of time. Give me the list.’

Santos looked askance at Cabigon. ‘Is this a good idea?’

The chief editor shrugged his shoulders. ‘Psychic powers,’ he said. ‘Never tried it. Could be a good angle.’

‘Sidebar maybe,’ said Santos. ‘Or a filler we could use at the weekend.’

Cabigon played with his moustache. ‘I don’t know if we can use psychic identification as providing enough proof to even hint at someone being a suspect in print. It’s a bit, you know, unorthodox. Unless we do it as a funny.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Madame Xu, who was irritated that her generous offer to solve the mystery had not been greeted by the ecstatic cries of gratitude she felt it deserved. ‘Surely psychic proof is the one type of proof that cannot be argued against? If I have identified him as the villain, then there are no other options. He must be sent to jail forthwith.’

Editor and staff swapped glances that said:
She really is
crazy.

‘He has to go to trial, first,’ Santos explained gently.

‘No,
I
would have to go to trial for libel first,’ the chief editor interrupted. ‘If I printed that some businessman was a murderer because a psychic said so. No. With all due respect, Madame Xu, we need the sort of evidence that can stand up in court. The fact that you think someone did it—with all due respect—is simply not proof.’

The fortune-teller thought about this. ‘If you say so.’

There was silence for half a minute. It was broken by Santos. ‘So we’ll go with Gloria’s boyfriend for tomorrow’s lead and start more detailed investigations into these five, I guess?’

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ said the Chinese fortuneteller. ‘Don’t you want to know who did it?’

Santos looked to Cabigon and then back at Madam Xu. ‘The editor has just said your prediction wouldn’t be enough proo —’

‘Yes, he said that, but wouldn’t you like to know anyway? Just for fun. It would make your investigations much easier and much quicker too, if you already know who did it. Then you could just investigate
him
only. Save loads of time all round.’

Santos looked at Cabigon. Their eyes continued their earlier discussion:
We could humour the old girl.

‘Okay,’ said the chief editor.

The reporter said: ‘We need to be quick. I have a phone interview to do.’

Cabigon looked at his watch. ‘And I have a meeting to go to.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Madam Xu. ‘No need to be impatient. It’s worth taking a little time over this to get it right.’

She sat down and placed her crystal ball down on the table. Then she put on a pair of reading glasses through which to stare at it. She picked up her little canister of
chim
and started shaking it. ‘I’m combining methods to go as fast as I can,’ she told the onlookers, as one sliver of engraved bamboo popped out.

She ran her hand over the list of five names. ‘Hmm, interesting,’ she mumbled.

She went back to her crystal ball and gazed deep into it again. ‘This is called scrying,’ she explained. Then she closed her eyes, put her hands on her tilted-back head, and took a series of deep breaths. Once again she opened her eyes and ran her hands over the list of five names.

‘Got it,’ she said. ‘Got it.’

Santos’s gathering boredom lifted. ‘So which do you reckon it is?’

‘It isn’t
any
of these,’ Madam Xu said. ‘This is a list of innocent people. Well, probably innocent is not the right word for a group of business tycoons, but they are certainly innocent of the crime of which we are accusing them.’

‘That’s not very helpful,’ said Ferdinand Cabigon, suddenly annoyed. He looked at his reporters. ‘Well I still think it was somebody on that list, whatever your spirits say.’

‘Oh it wasn’t just the spirits that told me that the murderer was not someone on that list. They merely confirmed what I learned from another source. My source was flesh and blood. It was, in fact, Mr Wong here.’

All eyes turned to the
feng shui
master.

The old geomancer looked surprised to be receiving such attention. ‘True that it is not one of the people on the list who did it.’

‘So who did it?’ Cabigon asked impatiently.

And more importantly, have you got some evidence, some proof?’ Santos said, exasperation in his voice. ‘We have a newspaper to fill.’

Wong leaned back in his chair. ‘The murderer of Ms Gloria Del Rosario was very clever,’ he said. ‘Clever in two-three ways. First, he knows that people will think that someone she insulted killed her. She is a reporter. So killer reinforces this idea by leaving a message that she should have printed correction. So everyone think she wrote something wrong about a man and refuse to print correction.’

Wong intertwined his fingers in front of him. ‘So first thing we realise is that murderer probably is someone she did
not
write about. He is someone whose name is absent from her column. Murderer wants to send us in wrong direction.’

Joyce forgot that she had pledged never to speak to her boss again: ‘So the note about the correction was a red herring?’

‘Red earring?’

‘Herring.’

‘Don’t understand.’

‘It’s a type of fish. Comes from Norway or something.’

The geomancer nodded. ‘Thanks. But I think no fish involved.’

He pointed to the piles of newspapers on the conference room sideboard. ‘I check through all the gossip columns in all the newspapers. Nearly all have same names at same parties. Same politicians, same business people, same celebrities. I make list of all names which appear in three main newspapers over past six months.’

He pulled out a sheet of paper and pointed to some tiny, tight blotches. ‘This is my list.’

‘It’s very short,’ said the sports editor, a short fat man sitting next to Wong.

‘Yes. It shows seven people who were mentioned at least six times in other gossip columns but
not even one time
in Gloria Del Rosario’s column.’

Santos started to look interested.

‘I ask intern to do research on these six,’ the
feng shui
master continued. ‘Find out which companies they involve in, who is shareholders? We find that five out of six are connected some way with man called Billy Valesco Ong. They are on boards together. They are listed in consortiums together. In photographs file, they are at cocktails together.’

There was silence in the room. Nobody dared to move a muscle. Wong had spoken the name of the publisher of the newspaper, a scary individual who once sacked a senior staff member for misspelling the name of the Ong family dog.

‘So now we decide what is the real story,’ the
feng shui
master continued. ‘Fact is, Mr Ong does not like his friends to be embarrass in the newspaper. He has certain loyalty to them. But he has no direct contact with editorial staff. So he ask someone else to make sure these peoples’ names do not appear in gossip column in negative way. He ask person who stands between board of directors and reporters. This man is chief editor.’

Every eye turned towards Ferdinand Cabigon.

‘This is ridiculous,’ said the editor. ‘There’s no censorship in this newspaper. No more than in any other newspaper, anyway. I have complete freedom from the proprietor and make my own decisions. He has never interfered, not once.’

Wong continued. ‘So editor had series of little interviews with chief gossip columnist of the paper. He tells her if she wants to keep her comfortable little job and big pay packet, she better be very careful to not mention name of any of proprietor’s friends. Gloria she say, okay. But she feel very bad. Other reporter in other newspaper write about them. But not her.’

‘This is probably true,’ the sports editor said. ‘Her column did seem to get very tame in recent months.’

‘Shh,’ Santos scolded him, his eyes fixed on Wong.

After some time, Gloria worry this will be noticed. She decide she will not censor herself any more. She tell editor she will no longer keep proprietor’s friends out of column.’

‘This is crazy,’ Cabigon objected, becoming red in the face. ‘All make-believe from beginning to end. I think you better leave now, Mr Wong.’

The
feng shui
master held up his hands. ‘Not finish. Ms Del Rosario and editor have big fight on Friday. Editor sacks her. She tells him she is more happy to leave job than to stay in job and censor herself. She say she will write her last column that night.’

The editor had begun to sweat profusely.

‘Before her column go to sub-editor and layout desk, editor reads it,’ Wong continued. ‘He sees it is confession. Confession that she censored herself. Because editor ask her to. Her column destroys her reputation. But also it destroys
his
reputation. On Friday evening —’