Sugarland

by Phillip Finch (more about this book and author)

Part 1: Chapters 1-5
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· 1 ·

     The first I saw Vangie was in a snapshot that her cousin held out for me. She sat on a low stone wall and smiled without showing teeth. Slim fingers pulled at the hem of her dress. Beside her a man perched on the wall with his arm around her shoulders, grinning loosely, his shirt unbuttoned halfway to the waist.

     She was about twenty-five, the man maybe thirty. Her eyes were dark and wary, and they seemed to belong to someone much older. Those eyes, I knew she had secrets and they were not small.

     “This is the last photograph of Lito, one week before he died,” said Preciosa Sanchez. The plush vowels, rounded consonants of a Filipino accent.

     “How do I know this is him?” I said.

     “This is my brother, this is Lito.”

     “You tell me so. ‘This is my brother, a week before he died.’ But I don't really know it. I don't know any of it for sure.”

     “I wouldn't lie to you. Why would I do that, show you a picture of somebody else and tell you it was my dear brother?”

     “You'd be surprised, what people will lie about.”

     “I'm swearing to you, I swear before God, this is my brother Lito.”
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     “This was taken in the Philippines?”

     “Yes. Our province. Negros Occidental.”

     She said it with Spanish pronunciation, made it sound elegant.

     “How long was he planning to stay?”

     “One month only.”

     “And he was there how long?”

     “Two weeks and two days.”

     “Then he was killed.”

     “Yes, he was killed. Of course he was killed. He was burned to death in a hut. Why are you asking questions? You have a death certificate.”

     “Fifty thousand dollars is still a lot of money,” I said.

     “The policy is for twenty-five thousand.”

     “Accidental death, double indemnity.”

     “Oh. Yes. But why are you asking questions?”

     “He takes out a term life policy for twenty-five thousand, a month and a half later you say he's died in a fire, you think nobody's going to ask questions? You must be dreaming.”

     “It was Lito's idea, the insurance.”

     “That's very possible.”

     “I was against it. I thought it was bad luck.”

     “Not so bad for you. Sole beneficiary, you stand to get fifty thousand. Unless the dead come back and want a piece of the action.”

     “Don't talk that way,” she said, and she crossed herself quickly. She had a pretty face gone fleshy.

     “I could use another photo,” I said. “Something that shows his face a little better.”

     She didn't move.

     “You don't have to give it to me,” I said. “But the sooner this gets wrapped up, sooner you get the money.”

     “I don't care about the money,” she said, but she got up and went to a writing desk, opened a drawer, and began thumbing through a stack of snapshots. I could see papers bound in bunches and crammed into shoe boxes.
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     Calls herself Precy, the apartment manager had told me. Works at Magnin's on Union Square, takes the bus to work. Divorced. Two kids, six and eight.

     “What's this place?” I said. In the snapshot: a long, low building with a facade of broken stucco.

     She looked over her shoulder and said, “That is a schoolhouse.”

     “Who's the woman with him?”

     “Our cousin in the barrio. Vangie.” Vahngie, was how she said it. “She works in Bacolod, she's a teacher. A beautiful girl, huh?”

     She turned back to the stack, riffled through for a few more seconds, and then gave a little yelp.

     “I know the one,” she said. “Wait a minute, huh?” She closed the drawer and went into a bedroom.

     I walked over and opened the desk. The first slim bunch was Magnin paycheck stubs for Preciosa S. Allen. The next, her utility bills and rent receipts. I slipped the rubber band off a shoe box. Inside were charge slips and billing statements, at least eight different accounts. A dunning notice from Bank of America, for Carlito Sanchez at a P.O. box in Oakland, forwarded to this address. An overdue notice, Wells Fargo MasterCard, for Carlos Santillo at the POB. From Bank of California, for Carmelo Sandia, the POB. From Hibernia Bank for Carlos. From Bank of America for Carmelo. From B of A, from Wells Fargo, from Bank of California, for Carlos.

     When she came in I had the desk closed. She looked at me standing in front of it.

     “Here,” she said, “you see.”

     It was an expired passport, Republika Pilipinas. The name said Carlito Cabahug Sanchez, with a birthdate in May 1959. The face belonged to the man on the stone wall.

     “You see,” she said again.

     She watched it into the pocket of my blazer.

     “Why do you want pictures?”
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     “If you have to find a man, it helps to know what he looks like.”

     “Lito is easy to find. He's in the grave. I have his death certificate. Didn't you see it?”

     “There was a copy in the file. Who's Carlos Santillo?”

     “I don't know,” she said quietly. She didn't seem startled to hear the name, just sad.

     “How about Carmelo Sandia?”

     “I don't know.” Even more quietly.

     “You have good-looking children.” A framed portrait stood on the desktop, two boys in parochial-school uniforms.

     “Thank you. American and Filipino, it's a good mix. Everybody says so.”

     “That's how you got over here, you married an American?”

     “I loved him,” she said, and I believed her.

     “You could lose your kids,” I said. “Insurance fraud is serious. You go to jail, you'll lose those kids. Even for fifty thousand, it wouldn't be worth it. But he won't let you keep the fifty anyway. Maybe he promised you twenty.” She looked down. “He promised you at least twenty, didn't he? Come on—he's not even giving you twenty thousand?”

     She was silent, staring at the carpet.

     “This wasn't your idea,” I said. “I can tell. You're no thief. You don't lie worth a damn.” She kept looking down. “He's using you. I think he's been using you for a long time. How long have you been taking heat for him, helping him out when he screws up? Since you were kids, I bet.”

     “Go away,” she said.

     “You're going to ruin your life for him.”

     “You think you know so much,” she said, “you don't know anything.”

     “I know he's alive, and I know you're going to jail if you don't change your mind.”
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     “It's too bad,” she said. “You don't look like a son of a bitch.”

     “I'm not,” I said. “But I hate to be lied to. Honest to God, I do.”

 

     I parked in the slot with J. HART stenciled on it and rode the elevator up to the thirtieth floor. At my desk I made a few calls, and after a few more came back, I was ready to bring the file across the room to the District Manager of Investigations.

     His name was Gilsa. He had hired me two months before. When I went in, the case was up on his screen and he was peering at it through rimless half-lenses. Pat Collins was there, too. Collins had been to the Philippines on cases like this.

     “Sanchez came over in 'eighty-one on a tourist visa,” I said, “married an American woman in her fifties, got his green card, left her three weeks later. The guy's been a hard-core pain in the ass from the start. He's nicked us at least twice before. For ten thousand under the name of Carlos Santillo, that was back in 'eighty-four, and for twenty last year, when he called himself Carmelo Sandia.”

     “Who were his beneficiaries, those two?”

     “They named Carlito Sanchez.”

     “I love it,” Collins said. “Eliminate the middleman.”

     “What kind of agent writes these policies?” Gilsa said. “A creep like this asks for coverage, the bells and red lights ought to go off.”

     “All three by direct mail,” I said. “He got the right credit cards, he showed up on mailing lists.”

     “Jesus in a jumpsuit. No wonder we take it up the butt.”

     “We aren't the only ones. He loaded up on bank cards in all three names and topped 'em out. Amex is real anxious to have a word with him, too.”

     “How anxious?” Gilsa said.
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     “About seventy-five hundred worth.”

     Collins clicked his tongue and Gilsa gave a little sneer that said, This is what happens in a world where life insurance is sold like tulip bulbs and any little brown man can finagle a Gold Card.

     “Did I mention the Turbo LeBaron?” I said. “They had a rebate offer, remember? Two thousand back on selected models. Lito selected one for himself a few months ago, he used a thousand for the down payment and put a thousand in the bank. Chrysler Credit never heard from him again. Probably sold it to a chop artist.”

     “Or put it on a boat for Manila,” Collins said. “It'd go for big money over there, and nobody asks for a title.”

     “They like Detroit iron?”

     “Eat it up like ice cream. That's one place where Made in the U.S.A. still carries weight.”

     “They'll learn,” I said.

     Gilsa had the paper file open now, studying the death certificate. Elaborate engraving, seal stamped on gold foil, it looked like a relic of a distant age. Behind him San Francisco Bay yawned from Sausalito to the Coliseum.

     “A fair piece of work,” he said, and he passed the certificate over to Collins, who gave it a long glance and said, “I've seen worse, I've seen better.”

     In the business it's called a Nigerian Death Kit, though that's not really fair. Lagos, Nigeria, is just one place in the world where you can buy good forged evidence of your own demise. Manila is another.

     This is the scam. You're a Third World immigrant to the U.S.; you take out a life policy with an American insurance company. Sometime later you go home for a visit, buy a Death Kit, and send it to your stateside beneficiary, who uses it as the basis for a claim. If you keep it small, and if you're patient enough to season the policy for a few years before you try it, probably nobody will notice. Even if a computer does kick out the case for investigation, you and the truth are ensconced in the heart
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of darkness, in a land where fax machines fear to tread; way, way, beyond the pale.

     “Could he be back here?” Gilsa said.

     “I doubt it. Last time he used his green card to enter the country was over a year ago.”

     “How do you know that?” Gilsa looked at me over his glasses.

     “They log it in, you know, every time a green-card holder comes through a port of entry. I got his number from one of the banks—he used it for I.D. when he opened his first checking account, back in 'eighty-three. INS ran the Soundex on it.”

     “That's pretty good, Jack,” Collins said. “You have friends at Immigration, do you a favor like that?”

     “It only takes one.”

     “So he's over there someplace,” Gilsa said.

     “Probably in his home province.”

     “Sitting in the sun, drinking piñas.”

     “Oh, the ladies over there,” Collins said, “if he has any jizz in him at all, he's not just sitting and drinking.”

     “Can we get to the sister?” Gilsa said.

     “I'd say she's a reluctant accomplice, but I don't think she'll roll over. Family loyalty.”

     “Spare me.”

     “I don't say we stop trying. But I doubt that she'll turn, that's my best guess.”

     “Tits like mangoes,” Collins said. “Like ripe mangoes, only not too ripe. If you're a honeydew man you're out of luck, but you can go crazy with the mangoes they got over there. All it takes is money. I don't mean a whole lot, either.”

     I heard him and thought of the young woman on the stone wall, how she had tugged at her skirt to keep her knees from showing.

     “You know this place, Pat, the province, what's-it-called?” Gilsa said.

     Collins looked at the certificate.
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     “Negros Occidental,” he said. He didn't say it the way Precy had. “It's an island, Negros, the island has two or three provinces.”

     “In the central part of the archipelago, about the size of Connecticut, population three million,” I said. I had looked it up. “Two provinces, Occidental and Oriental.”

     “Right,” Collins said. “They grow sugar, they have guerrillas in the hills, they have sugar planters with big haciendas, their own private armies, fucking warlords.”

     “Ever been there?” Gilsa said to him.

     “The provincial capital, Bacolod, I may have changed planes there once. I'll be honest with you, over there, I spent most of my time in Manila. It's the only place in the whole country where anything works, and that's only part of the time.”

     “Sanchez grew up in a barrio,” I said. To search for someone, start with family and friends. “Same as the place of death.”

     “A barrio,” Collins said, “you're probably talking about a few dozen huts sitting at the edge of the jungle. Some dump where the bus goes once a month if the road isn't washed out.”

     “Wonderful,” Gilsa said.

     The insurer has the burden of proof: this is your ultimate advantage. Most states allow a period of investigation, time for the company to bluster at the beneficiary, but in the end we have prove that you're not dead, and as long as you stay home, we have to prove it on your territory.

     “Do we have anybody over there?” I said.

     “We have a local on retainer,” Gilsa said.

     “He works cheap,” Collins said, “and you get exactly what you pay for.”

     Gilsa looked at Collins and said, “I can't be sure, I ought to clear it, but I'd pack my bags if I were you.”

     Collins held up cupped hands and said, “Mangoes!”
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     “You can probably use this,” I said. I put the passport in front of him.

     He took it and opened it and said, “Jack, very nice. Very nice indeed. You're a splendid addition to the firm.”

     “Something else you ought to know. An item on the bank cards, about a week before he left, sixteen hundred dollars at a gun shop in Reno. I asked myself, what can you buy at a gun shop in Reno that you can't get here?”

     After a second Gilsa said: “Assault rifles. We've got a law, Nevada doesn't.”

     “It came to mind.”

     “That would make sense,” Collins said. “Any gun worth a damn is illegal in the Philippines, and everybody wants one. You can triple your money if it's the right stuff, Ingrams, Sterlings, Uzis. Hide 'em in the Chrysler, the panels. Yeah, get a couple of those goodies into the country, you could do all right.”

     “I just thought you ought to know,” I said. “If he's into that kind of hardware.”

     “ 'Predate it,” he said. “I'll manage.”

     It was a Friday afternoon, about quarter to four. Gilsa looked at his watch and said that he'd buy us a beer.

     “A winner,” Collins said, and he left to clear his desk. Gilsa asked me to stay a minute.

     “You did a nice job,” he said when we were alone. “I mean it. A real first-class effort.”

     “Things fell into place. It happens, sometimes.”

     “I want you to push her.” Precy. “If she drops the claim, we can save the trip. Otherwise, Collins has to go. It gets expensive.”

     “I'll try her tomorrow.”

     “Collins,” he said, “Collins has the experience. He's been there before. That's why he's going.”

     “I know that.”

     “I don't want you upset if he takes the case.”

     “I'm not going to get too attached,” I said, “one day on a case.”
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     “Well, it was one first-class day.”

     We went down together, the three of us, to a bar that hunched in the shadows of glass-and-steel towers. Inside it was dim and almost empty. Gilsa bought a round, then I did, and the place began to fill up around us. When we got into our third schooners, Gilsa and Collins started talking about Death Kits, and Gilsa said the best he'd seen was for a Botswanan who was supposed to have died in an explosion at a fireworks factory. The beneficiary, his American fiancée, submitted evidence that included a death certificate, coroner's report and police report, eyewitness affidavits, newspaper clippings, an obituary, billings from the mortuary and the cemetery, and photos of the remains, which supposedly had been recovered from the embers.

     “They may have been,” Gilsa said, “but they didn't belong to the insured.”

     “You found him,” I said.

     “We didn't have to. See, it was a real explosion, and those were real newspaper clips, and one of 'em mentioned that it was an illegal factory, unlicensed. That was all we needed to disallow the claim.”

     “Just that?”

     “ ‘… if death occurs while navigating an aerial craft, or while engaged in any illegal or illicit activity, or as a result of war or an act of war,’ ” Collins said. “It's in the standard accident policy, you can look it up.”

     “But he got away,” I said.

     “Not for long,” Gilsa said. “A few months later, the fiancée runs into him at a gas-and-go in Compton. He hasn't bothered to tell her he's back. He also hasn't bothered to tell her he's gotten married. She calls us. ‘I have reason to believe that Kwangi is not actually deceased, and I wish to inquire as to whether you gentlemen desire any assistance in putting his ass in jail.’ ”

     We laughed hard, we swapped a few more war stories, and we left together, feeling high and strong and smart. I
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was finishing two months with the company, but I had eighteen years on the SFPD before that. Collins had been with the company for twenty-three years, adjustment and investigation. Gilsa was pulling a twenty-year detectives' pension from the City of Los Angeles and had twenty more with the company. I remember the way we walked out onto the street that evening, secure in all we had seen and learned; believing that there was no lie we had not heard, no hunger or malice or misery or outrage we had not witnessed; slyly swaggering; certain that we were beyond surprise.

     I had a date at seven, enough time to buy a bottle of wine and drive up Russian Hill. Carole was her name. She did in-house training for a brokerage company. First time I met her, two months before, she had told me that she was on final approach for a vice-presidency. She had already bought a condo flat with a view of Coit Tower.

     She poured my wine and took dinner out of deli boxes; dilled chicken, arugala salad, couscous. Spritzy jazz on the stereo. In the living room, on a second bottle of wine, she hooked one leg of her suede slacks over the arm of a chrome rocker, took the knot out of her hair and let it fall down the back of the chair.

     “God what a week,” she said, and she told Coit Tower all about it.

     When she was finished, she slid the last of the wine down her throat. She got up.

     “Give me about ten,” she said. Minutes, she meant.

     She went to the bedroom. I waited. The walls and ceilings were stark white, the floors ersatz oak parquet. The furnishings ran in the vein of Italian leather, dhurry rugs, butcher-block tables. I think two or three songs came and went on the stereo; that kind of music, it's hard to tell. I stood, started down the hall, went back and turned off the amp and took the wineglasses to the sink.
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     When I came into the bedroom she was at the bureau, her back turned to me, in high heels and a bustier. She was bent forward, as if studying the dust on the top of the dresser.

     I walked up behind her and reached around to touch her stomach.

     “Warm hands, cold heart,” she said without moving.

     I looked over her shoulder. She had opened her makeup case, she had removed the mirror and was raking out four lines of the white stuff on it.

     “Now just hold on a second,” she said. “Let's get a little zip-a-dee-doo-dah in us first.”

     She put her face down to the mirror, and one of the lines disappeared. She stepped aside to let me take the next.

     “Yours,” she said.

     This was something new for us.

     “Don't you know?” I said. “This is passé. Really. I think I read it in Newsweek. Nobody does it anymore.”

     “The truly fine things in life never go out of style,” she said.

     She waited.

     “Oh come on,” she said. “Don't tell me I've been balling Cotton Mather all this time.”

     She waited.

     “You've never done this,” she said. “Have you? I don't believe it. Forty-one years old, you're a virgin.”

     “I used to put people in jail for this.”

     “Shame on you.”

     She waited.

     “Sweetie,” she said, “you're not a cop anymore. You can relax.”

     I didn't have anything else to say, and I didn't know what else to do. I bent and took the line.

* * *
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     The fog was in, heavy, when I got home. I had half a duplex in the far western reaches of the city, a block from the ocean, where the fog is almost always heavy. It chokes the morning light and leaves a film of salt scum on windowpanes. The neighborhood is subdued, as a neighborhood will be when the sky hangs so low you can touch it. Cars mutter along the street, kids shuttle glumly in and out of school buses, the wind hisses as it shoves sand under the front door. I had lived in the duplex for more than ten years, since my divorce; why so long, I can't say, except that I rented it on a rare sunny afternoon and never hated it enough to leave.

     I opened the door and threw on all the lights. Flipped through my mail and found nothing addressed by human hand. Pawed through drawers and closets until I came up with a pasteboard box, some bubble padding, a roll of sealing tape.

     At lunch hour that day I'd bought an ornament, dried flowers within stained glass and crystal. It had seemed a proper gift for a twenty-year-old woman. I had a card, too, a cartoon cat. To a purrfect daughter.

     I sat and opened it in front of me.

     Dearest Markie, I wrote in the card, and stopped. It sounded childish. Martha was her name. I didn't know what she used these days.

     Happy Birthday. How I wish I could be with you.

     But you'll have to take my word for it, I thought.

     You are forever in my heart—you know that.

     Or do you?

     Your loving father.

     I closed the card and held the ornament up to the light. It was pretty and pointless, a shot-in-the-dark gift. I thought of her and saw a girl ten years old, baby-plump, credulous. That daughter, I knew how to please. It came to me that she was preserved in my mind probably far better than in her own; my memory of her had little
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competition, for I could count the days we had spent together since I left her mother.

     Little Markie, I thought, and found myself saying it out loud. It chilled me some, to hear my own voice that way, almost as if a stranger had spoken into my ear.

     The killer hours between midnight and dawn.

     I put the ornament aside; no reason to remind her how little we knew each other. I wrote a check for two hundred fifty, slipped it into the card, sealed it, put a stamp on the envelope, addressed it. Her mother's home, Boston.

     Her birthday was Wednesday. The card would be on time if it went in the morning. I took it outside and waded slowly through the fog, and put it in the mailbox on the corner.

     When I got back I bolted the door and turned out the lights behind me on the way to the bedroom. The last one was the lamp at my bed. I left it on as I slid between the sheets. I had hung my blazer on a chair beside the night-stand; now I reached into a pocket and found the snapshot and held it.

     I looked at it a long time, taking in details.

     The school looked hot and weary. A palm tree's ragged shadow slashed through the words PAARALANG ELEMENTARIA, several letters of which were missing but still visible in outline. A cracked sidewalk at the foot of the wall. A dusty playground behind it.

     Vangie. Her dress was a blue print, no style or vintage that I could name. Plain, loose, unrevealing. Even if she hadn't pulled it, the hem would have covered her knees. Her calves were lean and long. Her shoes were low pumps, and they were clean. There was grace in the set of her head, in the cant of her shoulders and legs, but she was not at ease.

     Her smile was unconvincing. She didn't like the camera. Or maybe it was the company. Lito's shirt clung, his black slacks were tight almost to obscenity. Gold
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glinted around his neck. He grinned with glee. Her own smile was somber.

     She wore no jewelry. Thin makeup, or none at all. Long lashes, elevated cheeks, a delicate chin. The kind of face that must inspire those Mexican songs about love and passion and blood. A beautiful girl, huh? But those eyes, disturbing, disturbed, as if some dark memory had roosted within her at the instant of the shutter's click.

· 2 ·

Precy Sanchez closed the door when she saw it was me. She wouldn't open it again. When she heard my voice on the phone, she hung up and didn't answer it anymore.

     Collins was supposed to leave on Wednesday. Early Monday morning I parked across the street from her apartment, but she must have gone out the back when she left for work. The switchboard at Magnin's put me through—she worked in accounting, they said—but when I spoke to her, the line went dead, and when I tried again they wouldn't connect me.

     At four-thirty I went down to Union Square, stood outside Magnin's and watched the front door. The sidewalk got busy. I lost sight of the door more than once, and when I spotted her she was already standing in line at a bus stop.

     The bus chuffed in as I worked my way across the grain of the crowd.

     “Precy,” I said. I touched her elbow.

     “Go away,” she said. She yanked her arm free and turned away from me.

     “We are going all the way on this one,” I said to the back of her head. “No free pass this time. We're going to pull him down, and when he falls, you fall too.”
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     “Leave me alone.”

     “I didn't have to tell you this, but I think you're a nice lady, and I'd hate to see you suffer for something that isn't your idea.”

     Everybody but Precy was watching me. She stepped onto the bus, clutching her purse to her stomach, eyes straight ahead.

     “Will you listen to me?” I said.

     She took another step up and dropped some coins into the fare box.

     “You're throwing your life away. Your children—you have no right.”

     She gave me one glance, harder and colder than any of the stares I was getting. Then she moved along, and some others pushed past me, and all I could see of her was straight black hair far down the aisle.

     “How does it feel to get shot?” the psychotherapist said.

     The question didn't irk me so much as the way he tossed it out, his carefully casual tone. As if he had earned the right to banter about my hurt.

     His name was Ted. His wardrobe seemed to consist of wool flannel shirts and corduroys. On him, they were an affectation.

     “I don't know to answer that,” I said. “I mean, it would vary with the circumstances. An air-gun pellet in the glutes, a head shot with a deer rifle, there's a big difference. The only thing I can tell you is how I felt when I got shot.”

     “All right then,” he said with a silly smirk. “Why don't we go with that?”

     Only Gilsa and my lawyer knew how I was spending Tuesdays and Thursdays at eleven A.M.; I'd had to tell Gilsa, to get the time. My lawyer said I was entitled to disability, given the way I left the force, and he had sent me to the psychotherapist in the same spirit that he'd have
17
sent me to a sympathetic orthopod if we were trying to establish whiplash.

     He's on our side, my lawyer would remind me.

     “You want to know. Okay. You hear guys say they got shot, all they felt was a little sting, then a couple of minutes later they looked down and saw blood. That didn't happen to me. I knew exactly what was happening. There were two bastards standing in a hallway, no more than ten feet in front of me. I saw one of them bring the gun up, but I couldn't move fast enough.

     “I got this taste, awful, metallic. If you can imagine a mouthful of aluminum foil. I stood there, and I was watching. I was watching the gun and I was watching myself too, like I was curious to see what I would do. What I did was, I turned to the wall, like I'd give the bullet room to get by. All this happened a lot faster than I can tell it. I could see the pistol real well. I knew it was about a .38 caliber, and I remember wondering if he loaded .38 Specials or .357 magnum. It could have been either one.”

     “You noticed the caliber?”

     “Absolutely. If somebody points a gun at you, that's the most important thing in the world right then, what he's got in his hand, what's under the hammer. This was a Colt Python, nickle-plated, four-inch barrel. You spend enough time around guns, you notice these things. The Python is chambered for the .357 magnum but it'll handle .38 Specials, too. So I saw it and I wondered, is it the magnum or the .38 Special?”

     “Does it matter?”

     “Yeah. Oh yeah, it matters. And after it hit me, I knew it couldn't be the .38. Only the magnum would hit that hard.”

     “Like what?”

     “Like somebody smashed me in the ribs with a baseball bat. It knocked me down, I couldn't get up, I couldn't do anything. I heard the other one say, ‘Oh shit man, oh shit,’ and I thought it was pretty funny, because that's exactly
18
what I was thinking. ‘Oh shit, it was the magnum, oh shit.’ “

     “You weren't wearing a bulletproof vest?”

     “Soft body armor—I was. And it had insert panels to handle the magnums, but only on the front and back. When I turned, the bullet caught me in the side, where there's a couple of inches between panels. I knew, the way I hurt, the burning, it must have gone right through the fabric.

     “The one with the gun came over to me. I thought he might shoot me again. I couldn't move, I couldn't do a thing, I couldn't even breathe. Getting hit that way, it knocks your air out. So I was laying there, and he was standing over me, and I was wondering if he'd shoot me again. The floor smelled like the men's room in a bus station. I remember thinking that if he pulled that trigger, nobody was going to care. I mean really, nobody. That was the worst moment of my life, laying there in this cruddy hallway, trying to breathe the pisshole air, waiting for the next shot, knowing I was just alone, alone, alone.”

     “But he didn't kill you.”

     “He took my service revolver, and they both ran. I got my breath back, partway, but it still wasn't right. My chest hurt, it really hurt. I put my hand down there and I could feel the blood. I didn't want to look.

     “Some people came out and said they'd called an ambulance. I thought it wouldn't be too long, I could hold on. Somebody put a pillow under my head. My chest burned like hell. I could hear the siren way off. More people came out. The way they were standing around me, staring down at me, one woman was crying, it was like I was in a coffin already. I didn't like that.”

     “You were still conscious.”

     “Uh-huh. I kept telling myself, ‘You can't die as long as you stay awake.’ But I was getting real weak. I felt my shirt, it was like somebody'd splashed me with a bucket. I wondered how much could be left inside. The siren
19

sounded farther away. The people seemed small, and sort of vignetted, like I was looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope. I told myself, ‘You lazy bastard, you're just letting it happen.’ But there was nothing I could do. I thought, what a lousy way to go, in a hallway that smells like piss, with these assholes geeking me. Then it all fuzzed out.”

     “You believed you were dying.”

     “Oh, I knew. I knew. At that moment. I knew I was a dead man.”

     Gilsa brought me in after I got back from lunch. Precy had named a lawyer to represent her in all matters concerning the claim. She declined to meet investigators. She demanded full and immediate payment of benefits.

     “We can't talk to her,” Gilsa said. “But we can still keep track of her.”

     I went out. Down the hall, by the reception desk, I noticed Collins waiting at the elevator. He looked and saw me. He leered and made a motion with both hands, like turning shower knobs.

     He mouthed the word: “Mangoes.”

     “You were good at your job,” the psychotherapist said.

     “I thought so. I was.”

     “You made detective after eight years.”

     “Seven and a cup of coffee.”

     “You liked the job. It gave you satisfaction.”

     “It wasn't just any job. I felt like I was making a little bit of difference.”

     “You were in the prime of your career. You had the knowledge and experience of a veteran, while still retaining a young man's energy. That's a magic time.”

     “It is pretty good when that happens,” I said.

     “And then you were shot.”
20

     “Life's a bitch.”

     “Is it a joke to you?” he said.

     “That's right. It's a damn joke. Sure. Better than sitting around, wishing you could get back something that you'll never have again. I was doing all right, I got shot—it happens. I quit the job. It happens. I got myself another job. It happens. If you're waiting for me to feel sorry for myself, I've got news for you, you better find another dog to hunt with. Because I won't do it. I refuse.”

     I squared my shoulders and sat back in the chair.

     “Anyway,” I said, “I don't feel like I've stopped being a cop. Not in the important way.”

     “What is that?” he said.

     “Who you are. Your outlook on life. Cops are highly moral people. Go ahead and smile, I don't mind, that's the usual reaction. But it's true. Cops have a highly developed sense of right and wrong. Almost like a priest. For priests and cops it's written down. The priest has Canon Law, the cop has criminal code. It's in the books. Cops do not go for any of this situational ethics bullshit. For a cop it's right or wrong.”

     “You feel this way about yourself?”

     “Yes I do,” I said. “I'm not saying all cops. I'm not saying you put on a badge, you immediately turn into something else. But real cops. Yes.”

     “You still feel you're a real cop?”

     “Why not? This job, it's the same story. Some asshole does something wrong, he tries to hide it. You work and work to get at it because you know it's there somewhere, the truth. If he was smart, or lucky, you dig like hell and you don't get anywhere, and that's when it gets bad. You feel like he's laughing at you, the son of a bitch. It eats at you.”

     “You take this personally.” He seemed amused.

     I said, “Shit, is there any other way?”

* * *
21

     The manager of Precy's apartment just shook his head.

     “There's nobody to keep an eye on. She left last night.”

     “Left,” I said, “like gone for the night.”

     “Moved away. Somebody drove up with a U-Haul, seemed about twenty Filipinos jumped out, they carried everything into the truck. And I mean fast. They were finished inside of an hour.”

     “You sure they weren't burglars?”

     “She knocked on the door, gave me the key.”

     “Her security deposit—don't tell me you cut her a check right there.”

     “No. The management company has to do that. She gave me an address to send it.”

     He read the address from a folded slip of paper that he took out of his shirt. It was her lawyer's office.

     “But I don't think she's there,” he said. “You want to find her, you better be ready to swim or fly. Because you aren't driving and you sure as hell ain't walking.”

     “Where?”

     “I'm not saying for sure. But she was standing in the living room, writing out this address. The kids are with her and the older boy has got a pout on something fierce. I asked him why he was so upset, he said, ‘Mama told me, they don't have MTV in the province.’ “

     “You haven't been as forthcoming as I would've liked,” said Ted the psychotherapist. His voice dropped. “I know what you need. I know why you're here.” He sounded wheedling and conspiratorial. “I want to help. But you must help me, too.”

     “It's hard to be enthusiastic about proving how screwed-up I am.”

     “Hardly. You have had a trauma. I'm trying to substantiate it.”

     “Any way you want to put it.”
22

     “After you recovered—I should say, after the wound healed—you returned to work. For how long?”

     “About six weeks.”

     “Did it go well?”

     “If it'd gone well I wouldn't be sitting here, would I?”

     “Clearly there were residual effects from the shooting.”

     “I am not afraid,” I said.

     “No one has used that word.”

     “The word has been used, believe me.”

     “You left the force after eighteen years, only two years short of your pension. You took a job that is very similar to the one you left, but without the element of physical hazard. You don't carry a gun, and you aren't likely to be shot at.”

     “Once is enough. Do you have a problem with that?”

     “I'd say you have nothing to prove.”

     “Exactly right. I don't want to end up looking like some damn punchboard.”

     “That sounds reasonable to me.”

     “I am not afraid. That is not the reason I don't want to be a cop anymore.”

     “I accept that.”

     “You say you do. But you don't. Not really.”

     A ponderous silence.

     “I've been going over my notes,” he said, as if to change the subject. “One thing struck me. The shooting. You didn't mention drawing your gun.”

     “I didn't draw it.”

     “You didn't have time?”

     “Get real. If I had time to turn and face the wall—remember?—I had time to draw my gun.”

     “Why didn't you?”

     “I don't know,” I said. My voice was flat. I was trying hard to keep it that way. “Not a night goes by, I don't ask myself that question.”

     “And what do you think is the answer?”

     “I couldn't say. I had my gun out of the holster plenty
23

of times in eighteen years. But never in a situation where I knew I'd have to use it. Then the one time it happened, I didn't do it. I didn't even try. It wouldn't be so bad if I knew why. If I had something to fight. But I have no answer. I have no idea how I'd act if the situation ever came up again.”

     The silence again. His corduroys made riffling noises as he crossed and uncrossed his legs.

     I said, “That's why I don't want to be a cop anymore.”

     I spent a day and a half doing a background check on a new executive hire. When I closed the folio, I still had a couple of hours left in the afternoon. I called the gun shop in Reno. I was wondering what Lito Sanchez had bought with the credit card.

     The store manager said he was too busy for me, so I phoned the bank that had issued the card, told them I was tracking one of their skips, and gave them a few minutes to nudge the shop. I was about to try the manager again when he called me. Whatever you need, he said.

     He put me through to a clerk, who explained that the store used a computerized point-of-sale register system for inventory and accounting; the charge slip number would be keyed to a sales record that was stored somewhere on a data cartridge. It took the clerk some minutes to find the cart, maybe twenty seconds more to query the data base. I heard a keyboard clicking.

     “All right,” he said. “We're looking at two Detonics Combat Master Mark Fours, new in box, list price seven hundred fifty-five, we gave him a ten percent discount. That's a honey of a pistol, you know it? Beveled magazine well, polished feed ramp, and the Mark Four has the adjustable rear sights. It's a real sweetheart.”

     “A .45 auto?”

     “You got it. I'm also showing a thousand rounds of .45 ammunition and six spare clips.”
24

     A semiautomatic pistol, available over the counter in California. I wondered why he had bought them in Reno.

     “You want the other one?” he said.

     “What do you mean?”

     “It shows a second page. Separate transaction, same customer.”

     “Please.”

     The keys clicked a few more times. The next noise in the receiver was a soft grunt.

     “Well,” he said. “Are you ready for sixty units of Zavastas?”

     “You lost me,” I said.

     “Yugoslavian AK-47's. AKM's, if you want to get technical. The Yugos make terrific AK's.”

     “I thought we stopped importing military rifles,” I said.

     “It's a little complicated.”

     “These are semiautomatic rifles,” I said.

     “These are automatic weapons. That's what the code says.”

     “We stopped importing those in ‘eighty-six. And if he's buying automatic, there must've been a background check, a waiting period. He'd have had to pay two hundred bucks each, the transfer fee.”

     “It's a little complicated.”

     I said, “What does a Yugoslavian AK run?”

     “We got six fifty apiece for these.”

     “Almost forty thousand dollars.”

     “Thirty-nine thousand. Ninety cases of ball ammunition, caliber seven-six-two by thirty-nine. That's Chinese manufacture, packed in stripper clips, retails at a hundred and five a thousand, a great deal, we've been moving every bit of that we can get in. And three hundred spare magazines.”

     “That has to run it up near fifty-five thousand.”

     “You're close.”

     “I know he didn't put that on plastic.”

     “Cash. That's what it says.”
25

     “Come on. A guy walking around with fifty-five thousand dollars in cash?”

     “This is Reno. It happens.”

     “And I guess he just threw sixty assault rifles and a few tons of bullets into the back of his station wagon.”

     “The ammunition, we got shipping instructions, our warehouse to some place in Oakland.” He gave me the address. The waterfront: docks. “The rifles, I told you, it's a little more complicated. The rifles were in the limbo side of a bonded warehouse in Long Beach. They never went through customs. They were never actually in the country. If you want to get technical.”

     “You just happen to have sixty AK's sitting on a dock.”

     “We do a lot of import wholesaling, direct sales to police departments, SWAT teams. He was just lucky that these hadn't passed customs. Otherwise the red tape would be a bitch.”

     “They went out of the country? You're sure?”

     “No background check, no transfer tax, that's all he could do, ship 'em back out. But, see, that's where it worked out so good. If those guns had actually gotten into the country, he'd have had a hard time getting 'em out again. Export licenses, all the paperwork. But since they never cleared customs, all he had to do was put 'em on a boat.”

     “Convenient.”

     “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

     “Does it say where they went?”

     “Can't help you there. We don't keep track of other people's toys.”

     Gilsa was gone, but his secretary had a number for Collins in Bacolod. She placed the call for me. I went into Gilsa's office, picked up his phone, heard the snap of distant connections introduce a low hum and rattling ring.

     “Green Fields Hotel,” said a woman's voice, faint.

     “I want Pat Collins,” I said loudly. I had to say it again, louder.
26

     “Mr. Collins, American,” she said.

     “That's right.”

     “Mr. Collins is not in, sir.”

     “He left already?”

     “Oh, sir, Mr. Collins is not in during all of last night.”

     “What time is it there?”

     “Here it is seven o'clock in the morning, sir.”

     I left a message for him to call me, gave my home number, shouting it over the hum.

     Then I drove home. The fog was a solid bank pushing across the water, maybe a mile out. It hit as the sun fell. I lit a Presto log in the fireplace and waited for Collins to call, but he never did. More than once I thought of him halfway across the world, in a green hot place.

     Gilsa's call woke me sometime that night.

     “Sorry. I had to do it,” he said. He didn't sound sleepy, but there was something in his voice. “Take a few seconds. Get yourself collected.”

     “I'm collected.”

     “Can you leave for the Philippines in about twelve hours?” he said. “I realize it's short notice. If you have obligations, just tell me. I'll understand.”

     “No. No obligations. But I don't have a passport.”

     “We can handle that.”

     I sat up and let it percolate for a couple of seconds.

     “What about Collins?” I said.

     He said, “Collins is dead.”
27

· 3 ·

Before lunch he had a passport for me with a commercial visa for the Philippines. My flight left at three, and we chased the sun through the longest evening of my life. Sixteen hours later we were in Manila. It was night, ten P.M., mist on the Plexiglas. A stewardess came to my seat as the engines spun down. She told me I was being met at the gate.

     The concourse was empty except for an American about my age. He was sallow, paunchy, unkempt. His polo shirt was rumpled, and several limp curls stuck wetly to his forehead. Later I would recognize the type, wilted denizens of bar and brothel. Someone would explain: Why bother looking sharp when any slob with dollars can satisfy any taste at any time—where's the incentive?

     “I think you're looking for me,” I said.

     He shook my hand. Hugh Dalzell, he said, from the embassy. My mind was loggy, and I had to think about it before I realized that he meant ours.

     “We've been in contact with your people,” he said. “Just want to make sure you're well looked after. The thing's a damn shame.”

     “Any news?”

     Killed in Bacolod, Gilsa had told me, shot through the head. It was all he knew.

     “Why don't we wait? Somebody from the police'll be at the hotel tonight. We only know what they tell us. They'll bring us both up to speed.”

     We walked down the concourse. Instantly I began to sweat. They should turn on the air-conditioning, I said, and Dalzell said, It is on, just wait.

     There were long lines at Immigration, but he went to an
28
office along the side and came out with a Filipino whose white uniform shirt had captain's insignia and the emblem of the customs police. The captain took my passport to one of the stations, stamped it without looking, brought it back and gave it to me, and asked if I had baggage. I told him, only what I was carrying—a bag and a briefcase—and he led us briskly out of Immigration, around a row of customs inspectors, into the foyer.

     “Thank you, Manny,” Dalzell said, and the captain waved us off like a mother sending her kids to school.

     “I'm impressed,” I said as we started to the front doors.

     “That's easy. Spread around a little baksheesh, it does wonders. Twenty pesos is the minimum rate for somebody in uniform. A traffic cop gets twenty when he catches you running a stop sign. It goes up from there.”

     “Twenty pesos, he doesn't write you a ticket?”

     “That's right.”

     “That's only a dollar.”

     “A little less. A buck still goes a long way here, if you know what to do with it.”

     We opened the doors and stepped outside, into a wall of heat and people. The air was heavy with a smell of ripe garbage and smog and fried fish. The people were cab drivers and hotel touts, vendors of cigarettes and jasmine garlands; motley hustlers, boys and men hardly larger than boys, scrambling and shouting, elbowing one another to carry my luggage, promising the cheapest fare, the cleanest room, the most beautiful women.

     “Watch your wallet,” Dalzell said, “don't let go of your stuff,” and we had nearly pushed through before I noticed a rectangle of cardboard hoisted above the crowd on a pair of matchstick wrists, MISTER HART U.S.A., it said. I went over to it.

     He stood on the fringes as he held the sign, patient, but with a drooping mouth beneath a pencil-line moustache: a Filipino in his sixties, scrawny, in a straw fedora and an old sharkskin suit that had wet crescents under the arms.
29
He didn't notice me. I had approached from his side, and he was turned toward the door, with a thicket of bodies in front of him. He stood once on his toes, trying to see above the crowd, and when he settled back on his heels a moment later, the ends of his mouth dropped deeper.

     “Are you looking for Jack Hart?” I said.

     “Yes! Absolutely!” he said, turning. “That is you?”

     “That's me.”

     “I am Bembo Rojas,” he said, sounding proud about it. I took his hand when he offered it. I could feel the bones under his skin. “Bembo Rojas. I am your resident operative in the Philippines.”

     “Right,” I said. Works cheap, and you get what you pay for.

     “I telephoned our office in San Francisco. They informed me that you were in route. How was your flight?”

     “I'm here.”

     “Yes. Excellent. I must talk to you. The death of our colleague—we must talk. You have reservations at the Silahis, I believe. My car is nearby, a short distance only.”

     “I have a ride,” I said, and he looked at Dalzell beside me.

     “Ah. Then if you could spare me a few minutes tonight at your hotel.”

     “The police,” Dalzell said to me.

     “When is that?”

     “Appointments don't mean much here, but I'd say not too late. It's embarrassing, an American businessman getting murdered, and they're working overtime to salvage a little face. I'd take advantage while you can. Ningas cogon.”

     “Ah. You speak our language,” Bembo said. The lift had gone out of his voice.

     “What's that?” I asked Dalzell. “What you said?”

     “Ningas cogon,” Bembo said. “A brushfire in the cogon grass.”

     “That's right,” Dalzell said. “Hot as hell for about a
30
minute and a half, then it burns itself out. It's the national attitude. Big ideas, zero follow-through. That's why I say, get 'em while they're hot.”

     “A few minutes tonight,” Bembo said, directly to me. So skinny, the sharkskin hung on him. The collar of his shirt was frayed. “A few minutes only, boss.”

     “It's all right with me,” I said. “Come by the hotel.”

     “Very good,” he said. “Excellent. And by the way, the long distance to San Francisco—I was forced to bill it to my personal telephone. An individual there refused to accept the charges.”

     “We'll talk about it.”

     “Actually, it is the telephone of my cousin. I sometimes use his. The toll was five hundred twenty-two pesos.”

     “We'll figure it out later,” I said.

     “Thank you. Excellent. Absolutely.”

     We left him where he stood. Dalzell's car was parked along the taxi ramp, a blue Dodge with diplomatic plates. He turned on the air-conditioning and turned into traffic that flowed sluggishly for a few blocks and clotted in a flaking district of shops and beer gardens and massage parlors. Pedestrians clogged the sidewalks and wended through traffic.

     It might almost have been America. Newark, maybe. Parts of Cleveland, or Detroit, or Brooklyn: most big cities have thronged backwaters where money never seems to stretch for potholes and faded paint. A 7-Eleven on the corner, Stevie Wonder on a boom box, Coca-Cola signs above a café, a Marlboro placard on the side of a bus. One quick hit, I could believe I was home.

     But only one, and only if it was very quick. The street-lights were sparse and too dim. Buildings leaned a few degrees out of plumb. There were few cars, many of those dented and scraped; traffic was mostly taxis, buses, motor tricycles, and dozens of a creation that Dalzell called a jeepney: like a stretch Jeep with a pair of facing bench seats in the back, most of the bodies bright unpainted steel,
31

each decorated with combinations of pennants and reflectors, chrome ponies and gamecocks, and klaxon horns. They had names—

CHICKS BUSTER
VIRGIN BIRTH
BLUE THUNDER
TOTO BOGART FIVE SISTERS TWO BROTHERS

     —on signboards above the front seat.

     I didn't see one that wasn't completely crowded. Seven, eight heads, sometimes more, rose above any single seat. On the sidewalk, shoulders butted shoulders, arms brushed arms. That was the biggest difference, the physical closeness of the people. In the States we'll veer aside on the street, shrink in an elevator, anything for a buffer. But here individual space was reduced to the body's displacement, or less, and nobody seemed to mind.

     We stuttered through the congestion for a few minutes and then swung out onto a wide boulevard, jumping to freeway speed. On our left, across a concrete divider, I could see wide water. Manila Bay, Dalzell said; I thought of my sixth-grade history book, a tintype of Admiral Dewey. Ahead of us a taxi bounced as a wheel slammed into a crater in the asphalt. Dalzell whipped over to the next lane, but there was a minor canyon in that one, too. We hit hard, and the Dodge slewed for a moment before it straightened itself out.

     Ahead a light turned yellow. An unmuffled bellowing gathered up behind us and a Chevy Impala, a '62 or '63 with crumpled fenders, came rapping past on the right. The driver leaned forward, peering over the front panel, clenching the wheel and sawing it back and forth in wide arcs that didn't seem to affect the car. It boomed ahead us, wallowing, pitched across lanes and flew through the changing yellow, and was gone.
32

     “If a traffic cop costs twenty pesos,” I said to Dalzell when we were stopped, “how expensive is a captain of the customs police?”

     I thought Sanchez must know somebody like that if he was smuggling rifles off a ship.

     “Manny? Manny and I have an ongoing relationship. That gets a little more complicated, when you have favors going both ways.”

     “But everybody's got a price.”

     “With no exceptions.” He sounded enthusiastic. “Filipinos are great at establishing the exact value of goods and services. They do it every day of their lives.”

     “What would it cost to bring in some guns?”

     “Guns are touchy,” he said. “Like what? What are we talking about, a couple of pistols? Some freelancers do that—Filipinos, I mean. You can just about cover your air fare to the States with a nice pistol. The customs inspector finds that, though, it's worth a hundred to him.”

     “A hundred pesos.”

     “Dollars. I told you, guns are touchy.”

     “Say about sixty assault rifles.”

     “No way,” he said. He gave me a sidelong glance. “You trying to bring in some guns?”

     “It was hypothetical.”

     He watched the light.

     “That's some hypothesis.” I didn't say anything, and he said, “So why do you ask?”

     “Collins was over here trying to locate an individual. I don't know how much you were told.”

     “I knew that.”

     “I had an idea the individual might have brought in some guns.”

     The light changed, and we lurched out into the intersection.

     “Assault rifles,” he said. “And this guy is what, your average Filipino cheat-and-chisel artist?”

     “Looks like it.”
33

     “You realize, you're talking crates of guns. Cases of ammunition. Have to bring that, too, 'cause ammo's just as hard to get. Crates and cases of stuff so hot, the money involved—forget money, it would transcend money—no way. And what would he do with it anyhow? Enough to equip two platoons of infantry. No way.”

     He looked over at me.

     “No way,” he said.

     The Silahis was in a strip of high-rise hotels strung bayside, facing the water, just below downtown. They are slick, bright places, set in the belly of Manila like faceted quartz in dirty fieldstone. An attendant was at the curb. His white glove was on my door before the Dodge had stopped.

     When we were out of the car, Dalzell pulled a wad of peso bills from his pocket, notes of red and blue, green and brown. He passed the attendant a blue one—blue, I would learn, is the color of twos—and flicked a finger at a Jeep in dark drab, parked in front of the Dodge.

     “Whose is that?” he asked.

     “Sir, that belongs to a colonel of the Philippines Constabulary, and a captain, I believe.”

     “That has to be them,” Dalzell said to me. We climbed the steps. “The P.C. is the national police, but they're military—lots of juice. Hot to trot, what'd I tell you, they wheel out a P.C. colonel and a captain. You must be Queen for a Day. Now, I know you're feeling wiped. But you should talk to them before you check in. You cannot let these honchos sit around waiting for you. It isn't done.”

     The lobby was brass and marble and polished wood. To one side was a coffee shop, slightly elevated on a low balcony. The two officers were at a table by the rail, wearing khaki, sprawled in their chairs, holding cigarettes and tipping squat brown bottles of San Miguel beer; they were watching women walk by in the lobby, smirking, and we
34
were at the table before they noticed us. Then they rose, not too quickly or too steadily.

     Dela Cruz was the colonel's name. The captain was Agoncillo. Dela Cruz was spare and dark, and nearly six feet tall. Agoncillo was round-bellied, light-skinned, and short. But to me they were of a piece, the heedless way they sat and stood and spoke.

     “A terrible tragedy,” said Dela Cruz, and while he took my hand, he reached to pat me on the shoulder. It felt like a practiced move. We all sat. The captain raised a hand and snapped his fingers to bring a waitress.

     How was your flight? Dela Cruz asked, and Agoncillo wanted to know if I had been to the Philippines before, and what were my impressions?

     Everyone seems friendly, I said, and Dela Cruz said, Filipinos are world-famous for their hospitality.

     “You visit these small towns in the provinces, you don't have to worry about your next meal,” Dalzell said. “You'll have people come up asking you to dinner. They'll kill their last chicken so you have something decent to eat.”

     “That's true,” the colonel said.

     “Beautiful people, the people of the provinces,” said Agoncillo.

     A waitress took away the bottles and emptied the ashtray, brought a new round and clean glasses, a bowl of roasted peanuts and another of what looked like hot pork rinds.

     “Delicious,” Agoncillo said when he grabbed a handful of the rinds. “You should try it.”

     I felt tired, suddenly, ready to fade out any time. I watched Dela Cruz pick a speck of food from his front teeth, and in a corner of my mind tried to calculate the hours since I had slept.

     “Maybe you could tell me what you know about the murder,” I said.

     “By the way,” Agoncillo said. “My condolences.”
35

     “We weren't close. I just want to know what happened to him.”

     “His body was discovered yesterday morning,” Dela Cruz said. “He had been dead several hours. We can't be exact.” He flicked the speck off his finger. “One shot with a .45 automatic. The shell casing was recovered.”

     “Can I see the report?”

     “Our information is secondhand from Bacolod,” Agoncillo said. “This is only preliminary.”

     Two days and they had no report. I looked at Dalzell to see how he took this. He was watching the women in the lobby. There was almost a stream of them, young Filipinas going to the elevators with men, Americans and Japanese mostly, going up with men and coming down alone, walking quickly across the marble and out into the night.

     “The report is due in Manila tomorrow morning,” said Dela Cruz.

     “Where was he found?”

     “I understand it was a squatters' area on the fringe of the city,” said Dela Cruz.

     “Is that a bad neighborhood?”

     “All squatter areas are bad,” said Agoncillo.

     “What about witnesses?”

     “There are none, we understand,” said Dela Cruz. “Since he was not found until several hours after he was killed, we can assume there are no witnesses to the actual crime.”

     “You mean nobody has rushed out and said they saw it.”

     “That is correct.” Stiffly.

     “It doesn't mean witnesses don't exist. They just haven't been found.”

     “True.”

     “What's a squatters' area—some kind of slum?”

     “It is a place where people have erected unauthorized dwellings,” Agoncillo said. “They pay no rent and their homes are ramshackle.”
36

     “Crowded, then,” I said. They didn't disagree. “A .45 goes off near a crowded area, plenty of people must have heard it. You should be able to fix time of death, at least. But you'd have to canvass the area. People living in a squatters' camp—that kind of individual—they probably wouldn't jump to help the police, would they?”

     The two officers didn't answer, and Dalzell, who now was paying attention, said quickly, “We'll have a lot more to go on when the report gets here.”

     “We are making every effort,” Dela Cruz said. “Political cases have our highest priority.”

     “You think this is political?”

     “Almost certainly.”

     This wasn't what I had expected to hear. All through the long flight I had been nursing the idea that the killer was Lito Sanchez: Lito who for years had lived outside the law, who lied and defrauded and trafficked in weapons, who would lose fifty thousand and see his sister jailed if Collins got too close.

     “Political,” I said, “I don't see how.”

     “Look at the circumstances,” Agoncillo said.

     “He's walking in a bad neighborhood late at night, somebody blows him away, that's political?”

     “Over here it is,” Dalzell said.

     “Communists,” the two officers said.

     “Communists,” said Dela Cruz again. “The NPA. New People's Army. They have guerrillas in the countryside, but they also have armed cadres in the cities. Assassination units, Sparrows. You know, because they're like birds.” His right hand made darting movements in the air. “They fly, whoop, they hit, whoop, they are gone. Many of their hits they do from a motor sidecar. Their weapon is frequently a .45 auto.”

     “Unfortunately this exact crime is very common in our country,” Agoncillo said. “Wherever the communists are established.”

     “Are they established in Negros?”
37

     “Unfortunately yes.”

     “And they'd kill an insurance investigator?”

     “An American,” said Dela Cruz.

     “The NPA hate Americans, of course,” said Agoncillo.

     He made this sound like fundamental truth, so complete that it left nothing else to say. Dalzell and the two officers began to play who-do-you-know in the military, ours and theirs.

     After a while Dela Cruz and Agoncillo got up to leave. When do you expect the report, I wanted to know, and they said tomorrow morning. What time tomorrow morning? Perhaps nine, perhaps ten—but not to worry, they would send a copy to the hotel and another to the embassy.

     “Rest, relax, enjoy our city,” Dela Cruz said. He patted me on the shoulder again when he said goodbye.

     “A word of advice,” Dalzell said to me when they were on their way out. “A fella will get a lot farther in this country if he doesn't get pushy. Especially with P.C. officers. Directness is definitely not a virtue here.”

     “He's been dead two days, nobody knows anything.”

     “You're in a tropical climate now.”

     “Do you believe the communists killed him?”

     “The Sparrows are homicidal little fuckers. Whacked-out kids, glue-sniffers—it isn't hard to imagine.”

     “He was an insurance investigator.”

     “They wouldn't care what he was.”

     “I still don't see a motive.”

     “Listen, the communists'd love to drag us into a dirty little war here,” he said with sudden force. “Turn us into the bad guys, get every peasant in the boondocks whittling punji sticks—oh, believe me, they'd love it. That's the day we lose this country.” He was loud enough, people were beginning to notice. He reined himself in. “See, when we put troops in somebody's backyard, even when we're trying to do him a favor, we can kiss his heart and mind
38
goodbye. It only took us about fifteen years to learn that one, but we've finally got it down.”

     He sat back and hitched his pants.

     “We're in the neighborhood, y'know,” he said. He jerked his thumb toward the front door. “The Nam is only about six hundred miles on the other side of the South China Sea. Philippine Airlines flies once a week to Ho Chi Minh City.”

     “But why kill an insurance investigator?”

     “An American. Provocation. It makes sense.”

     “I guess that was Collins's bad luck. To be the one they start with.”

     “You sure it hasn't happened before?” He sounded confidential. “People get shot here all the time. Even Americans. No passport can stop a bullet. But how it's perceived—it's all in the spin, my friend.”

     I felt tired, and a long way from where I had last slept. Cigarette smoke was more bitter here. Assassins rode motor tricycles. Money came in crayon colors, the Spanish fleet lay rotting across the road, and the place they used to call Saigon was an hour's jet ride distant.

     I reached for the check, but Dalzell got it first.

     “We'll let everybody's favorite uncle handle this one,” he said. “I'll call you tomorrow.”

     “Not too early. The way I feel, I may sleep past lunch.”

     “You think so. Most of the time, though, first night in from the States, a fella will wake up around three in the morning like he's been zinged with a cattle prod. And that's it—rest of the night, his eyes are wired open.”

     “I'll take a hot bath. It usually helps.”

     “Personally, I recommend some deep muscle therapy with one or two of the local practitioners.”

     He was watching the women again.

     “Till you know your way around, your best bet is the clubs up in Ermita, Del Pilar Street. You walk in, have a look, tell the mama-san which one you want, pay her bar fine, that's it. Half an hour, you're back here with Suzie
39
Wong and she's all yours till breakfast. Beats the hell out of trying to find a Nembutal at this hour.”

     He offered me a ride up Del Pilar, but I told him I needed a shower and a shave.

     “Okay. Ermita. Any taxi driver knows it. Hell, it's like a shuttle service, back and forth. Ten pesos—don't let 'em charge you more. And watch out for the Aussie joints. They can get rowdy.”

     Up in my room I pulled the drapes open on the boulevard and the black void of the bay. I unpacked, holding off sleep, drew a bath, stretched out in the hot water and dozed at once. I might have laid there for hours if I hadn't heard the rap at the door. I cinched a towel around my waist, opened the door with the chain on and looked down on a straw fedora.

     “Bembo Rojas,” he said.

     I opened the door.

     “Oh!” he said when he saw the towel, the wet footprints on the carpet. “I have disturbed you.”

     “It's all right. Come in. But I can't talk for long. I'm very tired.”

     He stepped inside just far enough for me to close the door.

     “Of course you are fatigued,” he said. “The great trip from the States. How often I have dreamed of making that same journey myself. In the other direction, of course.”

     “You should. You'd have a good time over there.”

     “Perhaps some day,” he said.

     “The telephone,” I said. I got my wallet. “What, five hundred something. Five twenty-two. Am I right? That'd be about twenty-six dollars, why don't we make it thirty and call it even?”

     He was slow to go for the money. Finally he reached, took it and put it away.

     “I don't have pesos yet. I'm sorry. Dollars, is that all right?”
40

     “Dollars are excellent,” he said. “Thank you. My cousin is not a wealthy man.”

     “I really do have to get some sleep.”

     “I believe I can be of some value to you here,” he said. “I have a background in investigation.”

     “I don't expect to be in Manila long. I may be going to Bacolod.”

     His face got grave.

     “You know Negros is an unsettled place,” he said. “I can be of much assistance. I am a native son of Negros Occidental. Ilonggo is my native tongue. That is the local dialect of the province. English may be sufficient in Bacolod, but in the hinterlands few people are fluent in anything but the dialect.”

     “Were you in Bacolod with Collins?”

     “He wished to use me in Manila only.”

     “Doing what?”

     His face set hard for a moment and he said, “I helped him with some personal arrangements. But I can do much more.”

     “I'll think about it,” I said.

     “If you are going to be in Bacolod for any length of time, you should have help.”

     “I'll think about it.”

     I reached around him and opened the door.

     “Please do. Let me give you a number.” He took out a business card, and with a ballpoint pen crossed through a telephone number on the front and wrote another on the back. He gave it to me.

     “One of my enterprises,” he said. “No longer extant. This number is my cousin's. I can usually be reached there. Are you planning to leave soon?”

     “I don't know. A couple of days, if I go.”

     “You must call me before you do.” He was backing slowly out the door.

     “That's a promise.”
41

     “As I told Mr. Collins, the situation in Negros can be precarious for a stranger.”

     Thank you, I said, and when I saw that he was past the jamb, I closed the door in his face. It was rude but I was tired, and much taken with the idea of being tired. I slipped the chain on, flipped the card toward the bed, and went to the tub, opened the drain.

     And then I heard what he had said. Precarious for a stranger. As I told Mr. Collins.

     The elevator doors were sucking closed when I stepped out into the hall. I went back to the room, searched on the bed, found the card on the floor.

ROJAS TOURS
PERSONAL GUIDE SERVICE
TO THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

“YOUR SATISFACTION IS OUR GOAL”
“YOUR SMILE IS OUR SATISFACTION”

VIRGILIO “BEMBO” ROJAS, PROP.

     I stuck a corner of it under the telephone and turned out the lights. I tried to sleep, and maybe I did in brief fragile passages, but mostly I looked at the darkness above the bed and listened to the voices of men and women passing in the hall.

     Sometime in the night I got up and went to the window. The boulevard still had traffic. Directly below was a street corner and a traffic light. I watched it go green on the boulevard, red on the intersecting street. A taxi bucked to a stop at the light and at that moment several figures came out from along the sidewalk.

     They went up to the taxi, moving with great effort. One was hunchbacked, two walked as if they were very old; another had an arm and a stump on one side, a leg and no
42
stump at all on the other, and stood with a crutch. They were begging. I saw the taxi driver make small brushing movements out the window, as if shooing flies.

     A second taxi pulled up, and the one on the crutch lurched over to it. I saw that his crutch was the carved fork of a sapling. He propped himself against it at the open rear window, leaned nearly inside. Then drew back, extended his hand off the crutch and accepted a couple of coins.

     He touched his hand to his forehead. The light changed. The taxis bellowed blue smoke. The beggars scurried, ragged wraiths moving in streetlamp penumbra, fleeing back into the shadows. They went out of sight, under the cover of some shrubs that grew high and weedy behind the sidewalk. The bushes hid them, but I knew they were there, dark within the darkness, and it filled me with a dread I could not name.

· 4 ·

I have never had a lot of friends. I have never been close to many people.

     Not that I'm unfriendly, or especially difficult. My problem is putting forth. I am reluctant to infringe—I would not presume to breach boundaries.

     My father, who was the only adult I knew well until I had nearly become one, was not nearly so punctilious. His name was Earl. He traded oil field hardware in Kern County, California, and played steel guitar in a country-and-western band that sometimes shared a bill with Buck Owens in Bakersfield. He bought a new Cadillac convertible every September, he wore old pawn turquoise, and he smoked Camels down to the shortest butts I ever saw.

     And he had friends, friends close and distant, constant and occasional. He reaped affection. I knew his secret;
43
could have done it myself, but it seemed so simple, I disdained it.

     Weekends and summer days I would ride with him on business jaunts, father and son together, widower and only child of a woman who had died when I was two. He was supposed to be buying and selling, but it seemed to me that mostly he talked, aimlessly and too much, not only with equipment wholesalers and rig foremen, but with truck stop waitresses, highway patrolmen, newsboys, roustabouts—he knew hundreds of people. He talked hard, listened hard, too; swapping jokes and ironies and pieces of lives while I shredded toothpicks or scuffed my toe in the dirt.

     I could see that he was trying to be liked, pushing to be liked, putting out the way he did. That bothered me. I doubted the value of any affection so transparently acquired, ignoring the fact that he tried just as hard with me and that I loved him wholly. When he rubbed my head I could have kissed those brown-stained fingers.

     For his funeral they filled three-quarters of the pews of the biggest Catholic church in Bakersfield, and there was plenty of crying, not just women. It was an eternal lesson in the value of effort in friendship. By then, though, I was confirmed in my reserve. I would not presume.

     And yet I am not at all put off by those who do; without them I'd be barren. I am happy to be violated. I am charmed, I am touched, by those who try and absorb rebuff and keep trying.

     This may explain the flush that I felt, my first morning in Manila, when I saw Bembo Rojas sitting in the lobby. He was reading a newspaper, calm as an old dog curled up on the front porch. His suit was the sharkskin again. The cuffs of his trousers were hiked up a few inches, and I could see his stringy legs above black socks. If not for his fresh shirt, he might have been there all night.

     I had been up with dawn, wondering what was a decent hour to telephone a Filipino home. I had tried his number;
44
a woman told me he was gone. I could hear children playing, a baby's cry, traffic noise, the crowing of a rooster.

     I left my name and waited, ate breakfast in my room, watched a morning news broadcast. Two teenage assassins had ambushed an army major and his driver in Manila. A spokesman for the president's office downplayed rumors of a military coup, but acknowledged that loyal military units had taken up positions guarding the palace. Flooding from a recent typhoon had uncovered a mass grave believed to contain bodies of missing left-wing activists. The army reported skirmishes—the news anchor called them “encounters”—with communist rebels in the provinces of Cagayan de Oro, Nueva Ecija, Samar, Leyte; and Negros Occidental.

     Outside, jeepneys wriggled along the boulevard like spawning salmon packed in a stream.

     Around mid-morning a clerk at the front desk rang to tell me that an envelope had been delivered. I dressed and went downstairs. That's when I saw him, sitting in a corner.

     He looked up as I approached.

     “Mr. Rojas,” I said.

     “Ah no, Bembo,” as he stood.

     “I've been trying to get in touch with you.”

     “I am here,” he said. His face showed sly delight. “You wish to speak with me?”

     “I think I need you.”

     “I am at your service, of course.”

     My right hand kept wanting to do something, so I put it out. It seemed a feeble gesture when I did it. But he grasped it anyway, and pumped it.

     We went up together after I got the report. It was in a brown envelope, and it came with a cover note on letterhead that said P.C. Headquarters, Camp Crame, Manila. The colonel exclaimed his pleasure at meeting me, hoped
45
to see me again before I returned home, and invited me to call him if I had any questions.

     Clipped to it were two pages of onionskin paper, carbon-copy flimsies. One was the police report, the other from the medical examiner. I gave that one to Bembo and took the other. It had been single-spaced on a manual typewriter, and I had to look close to make out some of it.

     Anonymous telephone call at approximately six A.M., 12 Mar. … elements of Bacolod Police, Precinct Six … edge of a gully beside the Granada Road, near the five-kilometer marker … body of white male, identified from passport … shot in face at close range …

     “This man is not the coroner of Bacolod,” Bembo said. He seemed indignant. “This is a military document.”

     “The P.C. is handling it.”

     “They are responsible for crimes of national significance.”

     “That's what this is—that's what they said last night.”

     The little moustache wrinkled, but he said nothing.

     I went back to my page. Single shell casing, caliber .45 ACP, recently fired, discovered within three meters of body … notification made to Philippines Constabulary, as evidence suggested involvement of communist armed city partisans … extensive interviews of nearby habitations disclosed several local residents awakened by gunshot. Residents Arnulfo Militante, Modesto Echevarria, and Pert Eval placed time of gunshot at approximately two-thirty A.M.

     “This is pretty good,” I said. “Last night I gave them a hard time because they didn't have anybody who heard the shot. This morning they've got three. Looks like they talked to half the neighborhood overnight.”

     “Nothing happens that fast.”

     “What are you telling me, they made it up?”

     “Why not? Who's going to correct them?”

     When we were both finished, we exchanged sheets.
46
Caucasian male, said the medical report, approximately forty-five years of age. Height 1.92 meters, weight 93 kilograms.

     A big guy, about six feet three, 200 pounds.

     Entry at lower right maxilla, wound approximately one centimeter diameter … exit upper right parietal, approximately six centimeters … angle approximately fifty degrees …

     The slug went in his cheek and came out the top of his head. A little guy pointing a pistol in a big guy's face.

     Bembo put the paper down.

     “The communists are supposed to have killed him?” he said. Now definitely indignant.

     “Sparrows.”

     “Yes. In Bacolod there are many. But why would they do such a thing?”

     “Because he's an American.”

     “Trash,” he said. “Americans are killed occasionally, those connected with the embassy or the military bases. A casual visitor, never. Besides, the Sparrows' targets have to be approved by a committee. Adding a name to the list can take weeks. Collins was in Bacolod four days.”

     “Don't ask me,” I said.

     “Trash.”

     “You know a lot about this.”

     “Everyone knows these things, anyone who cares to know. It is our life.”

     Find out what happened, Gilsa had told me. He had been offended, Collins leaving on company business and coming back in a coffin. If it's Sanchez, he'd said, find Sanchez. If it's a thief, all right, it's a thief. But find out what happened. So at least I can tell his wife.

     “I have to go to Negros,” I said.

     “Are you certain?”

     “I need answers. I've got to know who killed him. I don't even know what he was doing there, two-thirty in
47
the morning, or whenever it was. Do you know that place?”

     “Five kilometers east from the center of town, the Granada Road, there are several squatters' areas in that vicinity.”

     “That's what the colonel said, a squatters' area. Can a man go there to get laid?”

     His look was level.

     “Yes of course,” he said. “Squatters are very poor.”

     “Would an American go there to get laid in the middle of the night?”

     “Never.”

     “So why was he there? I mean, it's a hell of a good question, but I'll never find out in Manila.” I think I was trying to convince myself. “I have to go there, I have to ask some questions. Will you help me?”

     He nodded without a word.

     “You know Bacolod well?”

     “Negros is my place. My family has been in Bacolod for four generations.”

     “How do we get there?”

     “Philippine Airlines has several nights a day. They are often heavily booked. When do you want to go?”

     “As soon as we can get seats.”

     He gave a dry little snicker.

     “With sufficient capital one can get a seat at any time.”

     “Let's say tomorrow afternoon.”

     “Very well.” He went to the telephone beside the bed. “I know a travel agent. A nephew, to be frank. He can purchase our tickets and add our names to the reservation list. Then, tomorrow, we should arrive early. A small consideration for the individual at the check-in counter …”

     “The company can handle it.”

     “Excellent.”

     He dialed the number with deliberate, precise movements. That was how he moved, how he talked, careful
48
and quiet economy. He said a few words to the other end that I didn't understand—Filipino, I guessed—then tipped his head to me and said, “A few moments.”

     “That's all right.”

     “We will make your reservations at the Green Fields hotel.”

     “Whatever you think.”

     “Nothing else is suitable.”

     Back to the phone. Some more words, slightly less calm. Back to me.

     “Unavoidable delays.”

     He pursed his mouth and held the receiver to his ear. Some moments passed. He took out a cigarette but didn't light it, only tapped one end and then another on the bedside table.

     “I've been meaning to ask you,” I said—trying to ease him with conversation—“how hard is it to bring guns through customs?”

     “Very difficult,” he said. “Guns are the raw material of revolution, and the communists have many more volunteers than they have arms. Therefore guns are highly restricted. But it can be done.”

     “Even rifles?”

     “Rifles are the most difficult. But it still can be done. You see, guns and money and influence are all the same. If one has guns, he has influence. If he has influence, he can always get money. Or money and influence, you see, can be converted to guns. They are all forms of power, yes?”

     Back to the phone. A couple of sharp bursts, then to me with an expression of chagrin.

     “My apologies,” he said.

     “You worry too much.”

     “Family.”

     “Then if somebody had connections and money, he could bring in rifles.”
49

     “Large amounts of money and very very good connections.”

     “I was told it couldn't be done.”

     “That is trash. No offense.”

     “A week before he left the States, Lito Sanchez bought sixty assault rifles and had them shipped to a warehouse near the docks. Ammunition, too.”

     He had been about to speak into the receiver. But he looked at me and put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “He transferred them here?”

     “I don't know where else.”

     “After a while, huh?” he said into the phone, and then covered the mouthpiece again.

     “Do you know the vessel?” he said.

     “I'm not a hundred percent sure. There was nothing direct from California to Manila around that time. But if he was sending it out as soon as he could—I assume he would—there was a ship to Yokohama a couple of days later. Then it would have gone here on a feeder line.”

     “When does that arrive?”

     “About three weeks ago.”

     His mouth formed a small thoughtful O.

     “I don't believe we should travel by air,” he said.

     “Whatever you say.”

     “There is an inter-island ferry twice a week, Manila to Bacolod. It leaves again on Wednesday. The passage is twenty-four hours. It will not be so unpleasant if we book a first-class cabin. As for lodging, my sister and her husband have a spare room. Their home is unpretentious, but clean.”

     “It's up to you,” I said. “Why?”

     “If you arrive by air, if you stay at the Green Fields, they will know immediately that you are in Bacolod.”

     “Who do you mean?”

     “The friends of Lito Sanchez.” The question seemed to surprise him. That I would have to ask.

     “Who are they?”
50

     “Of course I do not know,” he said. “But they must be very powerful, and the longer we can keep them from knowing we are there, even for a day or two, the safer we will be.”

· 5 ·

An undertaker in Bacolod prepared the body. It arrived in Manila that afternoon and went out a few hours later. I never would have known if I hadn't called Dalzell, to tell him I wanted to look through Collins's effects.

     He asked, why would you want to do that?

     I said, because I sure would like to figure out what he was doing there in the middle of the night.

     That's when he told me that the body was coming in and his stuff ought to be with it. He said he'd go through and pull out anything that looked as if it could be business-related. It would be late, though. Why didn't I meet him tomorrow for breakfast?

     He gave me the name of a restaurant on Padre Faura Street. Or I took it for a restaurant; it turned out to be a go-go palace off Del Pilar, with a facade of gold-tinted plastic. Next door was a medical clinic: Dr. Lorenzo Suarez, Specialist in Diagnosis and Treatment of Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

     I walked out of the steamy morning, opening the door and pushing aside a black curtain. Inside it was dark and cool and still, no music, no dancers. At the back, beyond many tables where the chairs pointed their legs to the ceiling, was a horseshoe bar with a lit TV on the wall. That's where I found Dalzell and ten or twelve other Americans, perched on stools, watching basketball.

     First round of the NBA playoffs, he said. From Oakland, on the Armed Forces Network. We ordered food
51
from the bartender, and Dalzell reached under the stool for a portfolio tied with a string.

     “This is it,” he said. “Not much. If it tells you anything, you're a better man than I am.”

     It felt empty. I stuck it under the stool and watched the game. A shot from outside the arena showed the Bay Bridge, an orange sun low behind it. I thought of places that I knew well, thousands of miles distant, where the sun was now setting on yesterday.

     “Are you going down there?” he said.

     “Negros.”

     “Negros. You planning to go down there?” He kept watching the game.

     “I don't want to.”

     “But you are. What, chasing some con artist.”

     “He was worth looking for in the first place.”

     “I'm not telling you you can't do it. It's a free country.” He gave a grin that made him look like a perverse little boy. “Well, maybe not free. But extremely cheap.” The grin gradually faded. “No, really, it is a free country, and even if it wasn't I couldn't tell you what to do. It's not our country. But, see, that's the point all the way. It is not our country. We are guests here. You can't forget it.”

     “I realize that.”

     “My interest is in keeping Americans out of harm's way and making sure that friends stay friends.”

     “There must be other Americans in Negros,” I said.

     “Damn few. And most of them know how to take care of themselves.”

     “I don't want to go.”

     “You will, though, I can tell. I don't know what to say, except don't do anything dumb, stay off the streets at night, and watch your back.”

     “Collins got shot from the front,” I said.

     “Yes, shit, see what I mean?”

     We watched the game for a while, and ate. Night came on in California. The bridge lit up. I left with Dalzell. It
52

was jarring, out into sunlight and damp heat and stink, jeepneys rattling past on Faura, turbid water standing in the gutters.

     We shared a cab as far as the embassy. That was just four blocks. It sat bayside at the head of the boulevard's curve, behind concrete barriers and a fence of high black shafts. Filipinos stood in a line that wobbled out of the front entrance and far down the sidewalk.

     “Visa applicants,” Dalzell said when I asked. “That's just tourist. We reject four out of five—we know they'll try to stay if we let 'em in. Next door, that's the immigrant section. Most of those get the visa, but they've got to be petitioned from the States first, and then the waiting list is in years, unless it's for a spouse.”

     The taxi pulled to the sidewalk.

     “They're trying like hell to get away from where you're going, so they can get to the place you just left,” he said. “I want you to think about that.”

     He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and gave it to me.

     “A Filipino,” he said, “owns some land down there. You get in trouble, he's the guy to help you out. So happens he likes Americans. Oh, and you want to stay at the Green Fields. It's the only place fit for human habitation, and I mean just barely.”

     He got out but leaned back into the cab. His hand went to my elbow.

     “You spend time over here, you hear English spoken, you see Colgate in the drugstore and Stallone in the theaters, you can start to think this is just like home. But it isn't, this place is not like home, no way shape or form, and thinking otherwise can be the worst mistake a fella ever made.”

     The portfolio contained Sanchez's old passport, a printout from the case file in San Francisco, and expense receipts
53
from Manila and Bacolod. One was handwritten, three thousand pesos for a car and driver, three days. I couldn't read the straggly signature, but Bembo said the receipt was probably from one of the drivers-for-hire who congregate around the Green Fields. Bembo promised to find him. If he had driven Collins for three days, he knew things we needed to find out.

     We were several hours out of Manila, in our first-class cabin on Princess of Negros. The cabin was a steel cubicle with two iron cots and a small metal table, all bolted to the deck plate and coated with thick gray enamel. It looked like a cell in a county jail.

     Bembo's forefinger moved the pieces of paper around on the table, the way old men's fingers push checkers or dominoes. He turned one of them over, a bar tab from the Green Fields. “Geraldo Martinez” was written there, nothing else. I had missed it.

     He picked up the passport, fixed on the photo for a few moments, then put it down. He went to the printout, ran his eyes up and down it, said “Ah, very nice,” and began to copy it into a small notebook.

     “Do you know the barrio?” I said. Sanchez's birthplace.

     “Barrio Lanao, Hermosa town,” he said. “I don't know that barrio, but Hermosa is in the interior. That is a critical area.” Before I could ask, he said, “A critical area is a region where the military and the NPA are contesting for control. A nervous place.”

     “A war zone,” I said.

     “Yes, but it is an odd kind of war. Most of the encounters are not very large. More on the order of ambushes and skirmishes. Sometimes a skirmish develops into a running battle. But that does not happen every day.”

     He looked to see how I took this.

     “Sanchez must have family there,” he said.

     That reminded me. I got the photograph from my bag. Lito and Vangie, the school.
54

     “Do you recognize this place?” I said. “It's supposed to be in Bacolod.”

     “I am not sure. My sister will know. Is it important?”

     “That's his cousin. She teaches there.”

     “A beautiful girl.”

     “We want to talk to relations, there's a place to start.”

     “That's a real probinciana.” He held the photo almost at arm's length. “They aren't like modern girls, you know, their attitudes. That's a real Filipina treasure. Do you want me to interview her?”

     “I can handle it,” I said. “Soon as we figure out where the school is.”

     “Ah.”

     “She ought to speak English, a schoolteacher.”

     “Yes, her English should be good.”

     “I have to do something,” I said. “You're going to find the driver, right, I'm not just sitting in the house all day.”

     She could almost have been his daughter, the fond little smile on him.

     “The province-reared girl is very hard to get,” he said. “She is malambing, that's tender-hearted, she is mabait, that's patient and kind, but she is also mataray, that's strict, and pakipot, that's hard to get.”

     “I don't want to jump her bones, I just want to talk to her.”

     “A genuine probinciana, she may not even let you do that.” He didn't seem to be joking.

     “I'll figure something out.”

     “This kind of girl is not like other women. To pursue a girl like this requires much patience and hard work.”

     “For crying out loud,” I said. I felt myself get hot, and didn't know why. His certainty, I guess, so sure of her and me and of what would happen between us. “I'm just going to talk to her. I don't want to spend the rest of my life with her.”

     He held the photo out to me between two fingers, and his voice was mild but serious.
55

     “Of course you do,” he said. “Every man wants a woman like this, whether he knows it or not.”

     At sundown a ship's officer said a rosary over the P.A. system. I stood beside Bembo at the rail outside our cabin, watching the sky purple overhead and the water go black.

     The engines thrummed under our feet. Bembo had called it a ferry, but it was a ship, and not a small one. In the morning we had watched the passengers push up the two gangways and disappear below. I had guessed two thousand, Bembo said closer to three, and I believed him after I went down there in the afternoon, to get sandwiches at the canteen. Through an open hatchway I glimpsed a huge cavern full of triple-high bunks, each occupied, lit by pale green fluorescent.

     The prayers were tinny on the loudspeaker. I held the rail as a long strip of an island slid along to the east. The island seemed a very lonely place, no other land in sight, and I wondered if it had a population, a name. I was suddenly conscious of places and their names. Until two weeks before I had never known of Bacolod or Negros.

     That morning Bembo had brought me a color brochure from the Ministry of Tourism. It showed green panorama, wide cane fields that lapped into the horizon. A red steam locomotive hauled a shaggy load of cane stalks. Two lovely women beamed on a city street.

     Negros Occidental, it said, Bounteous Sugarland of the Philippines.

     Bacolod, it said, City of Smiles.

     I turned to say something to Bembo and found his lips moving with a Hail Mary.

 

     From page three of the next day's Bacolod Daily Star:
56

         

BODY FOUND

Passersby discovered a headless corpse at the edge of a cane field early yesterday morning in Sitio Cagbungalon, Bago. The unclothed naked body was that of a man believed to be about thirty-five years old. He had been dead for several days already. The victim's hands were tied behind his back, and bore multiple stab wounds, characteristic of so-called “salvage” murders by anticommunist factions. The remains are available for inspection and identification at Guzman Funeraria in Bacolod.
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