She grabbed his shoulders and heaved him upward.
They had stopped in front of Ngee Ann City, a shopping mall on Orchard Road. It had dark brown walls. There was a wide expense of gray pavement in front of it, a small fountain, and several palm trees. Joyce wound the window down so they could hear the fountain.
“Yes, that’s it. Go inside and find him. Can I go home now?” Keung closed his eyes and lowered his head back into Joyce’s lap.
Wong told the driver to move ahead slightly, where some construction was underway. The line of trees and stone buttresses preventing drivers from parking on the pavement was interrupted by a pile of pipes. The car edged onto the pavement just behind a road work sign.
The geomancer scanned the scene. “Wait here,” he told the others. “I go see.”
It didn’t take long to find the right place. Two police officers were hurrying into the building. Recognizing one of them, Wong followed.
The case was open-and-shut, said Detective Inspector Jonathan Shek, who was given to using ancient clichés from crime movies. As they moved up the escalator, the officer explained that it was a special day for the victims: “Today is Lap-ki and Hester Wu’s annual dinner. I think we all knew it was only a matter of time before that little tradition turned dark.”
Wong nodded.
The Wus were a “colorful” couple often described as “known to the police.” Lap-ki Wu had moved to Singapore from Southern China forty years ago as an industrious young man. There, he met a pretty actress called Hester Lum. They had married and enjoyed an astonishing run of luck on the shadier side of the business world. They moved five times in their first two years, upgrading each time. By their second decade together, he was an influential property developer, his land bank boasting holdings in several prime areas.
But their relationship had been increasingly fiery, and they eventually learned to hate each other. Divorce was the obvious option — until they got the idea, probably planted by one of Wong’s colleagues in the feng shui industry, that doing so would ruin their luck. The pair was led to believe that their legendary good fortune would instantly vanish. So they separated, but did not divorce — and agreed to meet once a year for a token dinner, which they had been advised was the least they could do to keep the luck alive.
As the years had gone by, each became convinced that if they died, the other would have somehow “won.” So they started to fear poisoning. Thus, they agreed to take turns organizing the food at the annual dinner, and an independent consultant provided a taster: this year, it was the young gourmand Alberto Siu Keung, who had actually taken a course in this unusual skill.
As the two men marched toward the restaurant, Shek said: “I’ve had a full report from my men at the scene. Alberto Siu Keung tasted all the food, pronounced it clean, and watched it be taken into the room where Mr. and Mrs. Wu were having their annual dinner. The couple ate it, and seemed to be getting along reasonably well — in that they were stabbing their steaks, not each other. But after about ten or twelve minutes of eating, or so Alberto says, something went wrong. Lap-ki Wu started groaning and rubbing his stomach. Then whatever it was hit Hester Wu, and she started moaning too. The husband fell forward into his meal, spilling the drinks and smashing a glass. Mrs. Wu dropped her cutlery and her glass and slumped off the chair onto the floor. My man arrived just before the ambulance. He thought one or both of them had already stopped breathing. Extremely powerful poison.”
Wong put his hand on the police officer’s upper arm. “Wait. So each one expects the other to be the killer. But both get killed at once?”
“Yes. And the obvious candidate is the food taster, who we understand has been in and out of trouble all his life.”
“Except he didn’t do it.”
“How could you know that?”
“He’s my client’s son. And besides, if he’s like his father, he’s too stupid.”
Shek turned and gave Wong a wry smile. “Perhaps he rose to the occasion.”
The geomancer’s mobile phone rang.
“Wong? Where are you? Have you left the hotel?” It was the voice of Lim Cheong Li at the race’s gala lunch. He sounded irate.
“No, I’m here,” Wong lied. “Er, in the bathroom.”
The businessman spoke in a screech: “I need you back in the ballroom immediately. Your monk friend has messed the whole thing up.”
Wong’s heart sank. “Sin Sar? What he say?”
“He was supposed to open the event by clanging his holy bell, right?”
“Yes. He forgot the bell?”
“No, he didn’t forget the bell. He had the blasted bell. But he forgot that he was supposed to keep his mouth shut and jangle the thing. Instead, he made a little speechette and then jangled the bell.”
“Oh. He said something bad?”
“Yes. He said something very bad indeed.”
Wong sighed. “He’s a monk. You have to expect people like that to talk all sorts of rubbish.”
Lim said: “Sin Sar told us the race should be spiritual. It should be a race of the heart. It should be a competition about who can crave less than his neighbor.” The man spoke in a whiny, mocking tone. “It should be a race about giving money and glory away to others, not grabbing money and glory for yourself. He said it was wrong to worship money.”
“Clearly rubbish, but no harm done,” Wong offered.
“Well get this. He said that many scriptures, including the Buddhist and the Christian ones, dictate that the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. So he declared that good fortune would only continue to prevail if the title and the money and the trophy went to whoever came in LAST, instead of whoever came in first.”
There was silence. “Er, interesting,” said Wong, wondering how he could put a positive light on this. “Makes your race very unique and unusual and historical. You are very lucky.”
“Lucky?” said Lim, sounding close to apoplexy. “It’s a disaster. The last person wins the money and the glory. The idiot monk has turned it into a slow race, like those bicycle races where you have to go as slowly as you can. The winner is whoever is last, and the loser is whoever is first. Do you understand what this means, Wong?”
“I think so. Maybe small small problem.”
“It means that Emerson Brahms and Andreletti Nelson are going to drive as slowly as they can. That’s the only way they can get the title and the money. They might not finish until next Tuesday. They might never finish. It means there is going to be no race. It means there will be nothing for the millions of TV cameras and viewers and sponsors to look at. It means the whole event will be a multimillion-dollar disaster.”
“Ah. I see. Can’t you just ignore what Sin Sar said?”
“He said it in front of the whole crowd and the TV cameras and everything. It was so unexpected that everybody laughed and cheered, not realizing what it really meant. Even the drivers were amused at first. It was only when he sat down that we realized the race would be destroyed.”
“Too bad.”
“Yes, it is too bad. Especially for you, since YOU are going to pay for it.”
“Huh?”
“You brought the blasted abbot into this process. If the whole thing goes belly-up, you’re paying for it.”
“Oh. Maybe I talk to Sin Sar,” the feng shui master offered.
“You’d better. They’re serving the last few courses of the Chinese banquet now. That means you have about ten or fifteen minutes.”