by J. E. Park
Tala looked embarrassed. “You understan’ dat, right?”
I nodded and grinned. “A little.”
She shook her head. Now that she was closer to me, I could see that Tala was absolutely striking, even in poor light. Her skin was flawless, and other than red lipstick, she did not seem to wear, nor need, any other makeup at all. She had long, straight black hair pulled back into a bun, and in a city filled with beautiful girls, she was still a cut above the rest. I imagined that she was in very high demand wherever she worked, and I was ashamed for wondering to myself how many men she had been with that night.
“Now dat you scare me so bad,” Tala started, still breathing hard. “Can you gib me a cigarette?”
I passed her one of my Marlboros and lit it. After taking a couple of drags to calm herself down, Tala looked me over a bit and asked, “You no wit anybody?”
“Huh?”
“You no get girl yet?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m not with anybody.”
Tala laughed. “Why? You picky?”
I smiled nervously, trying to come up with an answer that would not offend her. “No, I’m just ugly and alcoholic.”
Tala laughed but knew firsthand that the economy of Olongapo was based upon getting unattractive drunkards laid. She was not buying my answer. “You married or just you no sleep wit bargirls?”
“No bargirls,” I told her.
“Too good por us?” she asked.
“No, I just don’t pay for sex,” I answered.
“You too cheap?” Tala’s eyes lit up like she was relishing a challenge.
“I don’t think so,” I told her. “Especially considering how much money I spend on liquor.”
Tala giggled. “Ip you spending lot of money on booze, sooner or later you gonna be buying a girl in Pilippines. We hard to resist when you sober. When you drunk, you have no chance.”
I laughed. “That’s why I got an apartment. I can party here without always being tempted by such pretty women.”
“Ah! Ah! Ahhhh!” Tala laughed back harder. “Ip you want dat, you should get a new apartment. Two op us live right next door to you.”
Great. I drew in a deep breath, “Then I guess I can only ask the two of you to have mercy on me.”
Tala shook her head. “We no take prisoners. It no good por a man to be wit’out a woman por long time. How you gonna take care op your needs?”
I held up my left hand.
Tala giggled again. “Dat no substitute por a real girl.”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “It’s never left me unsatisfied yet.”
Tala held her own hand out. “My name is Tala Bono, but I don’ know why Divina call me dat. Here in Olongapo, everyone call me Tina.”
I took her hand and shook it. “I’m Doyle.”
“Dat your last name?”
“No, my first. My last name is Murphy.”
“I never meet someone named Doyle bepore.”
“You know, I’ve only heard of one other person named Doyle myself. Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein. He was a guitarist in The Misfits. I don’t think he was born with that name, though.”
“Well, it very nice to meet you, Doyle,” Tala said. She then flicked her cigarette toward the street, “But I need to go to bed now. Bye-bye.”
“Magandang gabi,” I said, wishing Tala a good night as she walked away. She was short but flawlessly proportioned. She had a perfectly rounded backside, curves in all the right places, and ample breasts, something not particularly common in the Far East. I appreciated that there was a full moon that night to allow me to admire her in the dark.
I lit another cigarette and leaned my forearm against the steel security bars separating our courtyard from the street. Seeing Tala reminded me how much I missed my former fiancée. I wondered if Hannah was back home in Australia yet. Had I known that she was waiting for me somewhere, resisting a port town full of Tala Bonos would have been so much easier.
*****
The next morning back aboard the ship, I tried to seek out John Palazzo to apologize for the way I blew up at him the day before. Unfortunately, he had the first watch and was not present at morning roll call. After muster, I strung my hammock up in my radar dome. I then cranked up the air conditioning and passed out for a few hours to catch up on the sleep I had missed the night before. By the time I woke up, packed a bag, and headed back into town, Palazzo had already been relieved from his post. Feeling that I had graver sins to atone for, I promised myself to seek him out the next day. Then I left the ship.
I caught a trike to our apartment and, after dropping off my clothes, spent the next hour trying to get back out to Barrio Barretto via jeepney. Once there, I made my way up Long Beach Road until I found the bar I ran into Randy Green’s ex-wife in, The Blue House. It was still early when I arrived, so there were only a couple of girls there milling about with the bartender.
“Halo,” I said as I stepped up to the bar. “Kamusta ka?”
Asking everybody in Tagalog how they were doing worked wonders to warm up a crowd. English was a compulsory course of study in Philippine schools, so nearly everyone spoke it to some extent, especially around Olongapo. The place had been under American influence for so long that the streets all had English names. Still, the locals were more comfortable talking in Tagalog. They appreciated hearing foreigners trying to speak it.
We suffered through a couple of minutes of small talk until everyone realized that I had passed the boundaries of my limited vocabulary. Switching to English, Nino, the bartender, asked, “What can I get you, my friend?”
“I’m looking for a girl.”
“Of course, you are,” he said, motioning toward the two women seated to my left.
“No, no, not like that,” I corrected him. “I’m looking for a particular girl. Rafaela Green.”
“Who?”
“Rafaela Green. She works here.”
Nino shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t think so, friend. I do not know anyone named Rafaela here. Do you?” he asked the two girls. They both shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads.
I did not sense that they were jerking me around. The three of them seemed to legitimately not know who I was talking about. I tried to describe her. “She stands about yay tall,” I said, holding my hand up to my chest. “She has mocha skin, black hair, and brown eyes...” I tapered off, realizing that I was describing every woman in the entire country.
“He means Marta,” said a man as he stepped out of the doorway leading to the rooms in the back where the girls took their guests. He was the guy with the tattoos that pulled Rafaela off of me the night before. Holding out his paw, he introduced himself. “My name is Danilo.”
I shook his hand and told him my name in return. After a sigh, I said, “I should have known she would not be using her actual name at work.”
“Yes, dese women need a person dey can go back to being after dey leave this lipe. Da woman named Marta will stay here in Barrio Barretto. Rafaela can go back to be da girl dat does not know anyt’ing about dis place.” Danilo looked like the guy who ran the Blue House, but he was no pimp. He was the person the girls depended upon to keep them safe. The prison-needle quality of the ink on his arms suggested he had a past that qualified him to do that very well. Danilo was looking at me as if he were still trying to figure out if I was someone who needed hurting or not. “What you want with Marta?”
“I want to help her.”
“How you do dat?” he asked.
It was only then that I realized that I did not have any idea how to better Rafaela’s situation. I must have figured I would work one out after I learned what she needed. “Well, for starters, I was hoping to pay her bar fine so we could talk.”
Danilo shook his head as he walked up and took a seat next to me. “I no tink she wanna talk to you. What you do to her in California?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
The Blue House’s bouncer shrugged. “She say you a v
iolent man who no like her husband. She say you beat him very bad. So bad he never get better. You hurt him, frame him por a crime, and make it so he have to divorce her or go to prison por a very long time. She come back to Barrio Barretto because widout husband, she cannot appord to live in America. Dat her side op da story. What yours?”
“Did she tell you that her husband beat them? Did she tell you that her husband broke her son’s arm?”
The bruiser looked surprised. “Manny? He break Manny’s arm? No, she no say dat. But even ip dat true, dat no your business. Look at where she working now. Is she and Manny better? I no tink so.”
“Maybe she is. My father was a lot like Rafaela’s husband. The man made our lives a living hell. One day, he walked in drunk and, for some reason that I will never know, pulled out a shotgun and killed my entire family. Randy would have eventually done the same to Rafaela and her son. I’m sure of it.”
“So, you beat him to protect dem?”
I sensed that Danilo’s intentions were good. Still, I was not going to trust some former prison gangster with my deepest, darkest secrets. Sticking to the script in the NCIS report, I told him, “Randy thought we were going to beat him for what he did to Manny. To get the first punch in, he assaulted me. He got hurt while I was defending myself. It was all caught on the camera located over the ship’s well deck. That was why they never charged me, and that was why he was facing a five-year prison sentence.”
“Dat what happen?”
I nodded. “That’s what happened.” Technically, it was the truth. I just left out the part admitting that, yes, we were planning on putting Randy Green in a world of hurt for what he had done to that little boy.
Danilo nodded a few times, taking in what I told him. “It sound like you do right t’ing. Marta no gonna see it dat way, dough. My advice to you to stay away prom her.”
I hung my head. “There’s got to be something I can do. Something that…”
“What you gonna do? You gonna marry dat girl and take her away prom here? You gonna take care op her and her son in America?”
The two working girls looked over at me in anticipation of my answer. I felt like they had put me on the spot. “I, uh, I don’t…”
“Op course you not,” Danilo said. “I work in place like dis por pive years. You no kind op guy who marry bargirl. You no ugly enough, and you sound like smart guy. You gonna do somet’ing wit you lipe. You have no problem getting a good girl. You no need whore por wipe.”
I looked at the girls apologetically, but they seemed unfazed by the bouncer calling them whores. “Dey okay, man. Dey know what dey are,” Danilo said. “You a good guy. I know you want to help — dere not’ing you can do, dough. Look, you need to leave Marta alone. She blame you por all dis. You never change her mind. Nino!”
The bartender bounced over to answer the call. “Yes, boss!”
“Get dis man a pitcher op Bullfrog. On da house. Make it a good one.”
Nino grinned and nodded. “Yes, sir!”
I watched Nino pour a shot of damn near every bottle of booze behind the bar into a blender. He then topped it off with ice cubes, some sort of fruit juice, and what looked like citrus soda. He then blended it up, transferred it to a pitcher, and dropped it in front of me along with a glass. It looked lethal, and I expected it to taste like lemon-flavored battery acid. I was shocked by how smooth it went down, though. It was tart and sweet, with hardly any taste of alcohol to it at all. Cold and refreshing, it was the perfect drink to counter the Philippine heat.
“How you like it?” Danilo asked after I took my first drink.
“I freakin’ love it!” I told him before taking another large gulp.
The Blue House’s resident bruiser laughed. “Good. You need to be very carepul wid dis stupp, dough. Ip you no carepul, it knock you out quicker dan Mike Tyson.”
I nodded, but unable to resist the flavor, I took another sip while Danilo turned the subject back to Rafaela. “Porget about Marta, man. Having you here no gonna make her peel better. It only make t’ings worse por both op you. She do what she hap to do to survive. You no gonna improve her lipe and da harder you try to help her, da more you gonna realize dere not’hing you can do. She have a hard lipe. It no your pault she here no more dan it your pault dat dese other girls work here too. Let it go.”
There was little chance that anyone would mistake Danilo as an intellectual. He did not look like a man who had much use for books. Nor did he seem like someone who often sat in meditation pondering the mysteries of the metaphysical. He was no idiot, though. His austere upbringing, his childhood spent running shantytown alleyways, and the hard time he served that earned him the ink on his arms gave him an insight into the human condition that would rival that of any anthropology doctor churned out of Dartmouth. Danilo knew the plight of Olongapo’s poor far better than I ever could. It would be folly to ignore his advice.
Still, it was not easy to give up on Rafaela and Manny. I had to think about it for a while. I eventually concluded that Danilo was right, though. Anything less than marrying Rafaela and whisking her away from Barrio Barretto would be little more than an empty gesture. She would still be stuck in the Philippines, renting her body out to anyone wanting to use her. I finished my pitcher of Bullfrog, nodded my head, and told Danilo, “Okay. I’ll leave her alone.”
I remember Danilo patting me on the shoulder. “Dat’s da best decision, my priend. It da only decision. Nino! Get dis man another pitcher of Bullfrog!”
That was about when things started getting a little fuzzy.
*****
I woke up on the couch in my apartment late that night. I was foggy, still insanely drunk, and had a headache so intense that I thought my eyeballs were getting pushed out of my head. Master Chief Darrow and a Filipino man in military fatigues were standing over me. Darrow was shaking his head. “You know, Doyle, you are the luckiest son-of-a-bitch I have ever met.”
Feeling like there was a bayonet piercing my skull right between my eyes, I slowly sat up and said, “I don’t feel very lucky. What happened?”
Darrow gestured to the Filipino. “Doyle, this is Sergeant Tejada of the Philippine National Police. I told you about him. He and I go way back.”
The sergeant held out his hand, and I slowly shook it. “You can call me TJ, Doyle.”
“Glad to meet you,” I groaned, feeling like I wanted to get sick.
“So,” my master chief continued. “I’m in Barrio Barretto riding shotgun on patrol with TJ here when this girl runs up to us and flags us down. She says there’s some suspicious characters carrying away a drunk American further down the beach. TJ guns the Jeep, and we roll up on a half dozen Filipino gang bangers dragging your drunk ass across Long Beach Drive.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Really,” TJ answered. “You know what dey trying to do wit you?”
I shook my head, careful not to leak any loose brain matter out of my nostrils. “I was just out having a couple of drinks, and…Jesus Christ, does my fucking head hurt.”
“Doyle, it wasn’t even five o’clock when we found you. How much did you have to drink?”
Shrugging, I answered, “I don’t know, a couple of drinks. No, wait, a couple of pitchers.”
“Of beer?” Darrow looked surprised. He knew I could handle my alcohol better than that.
“No, some frozen stuff,” I answered, still not quite lucid enough to remember the name.
Darrow and TJ looked at each other and laughed. “Bullfrog?”
I pointed my finger at them. “That’s it.”
“Doyle,” the master chief started. “You have to be careful with some of this stuff here. You probably don’t realize it because you can’t taste the alcohol, but you might have drunk a dozen shots in just a couple of hours. That shit will mess you up.”
“Yeah, and dose boys we saw wit you? Deys really bad guys. I don’t know what dey gonna do wit you, but I know it no gonna be good. Deys dangerous people. You very lu
cky we get you before dey take you away.”
“Did you catch any of them?”
“No,” TJ told me. “Not yet. I don’t know who dey are, but I know what gang work dat part op Barretto. We gonna get dem sooner or later and figure out what dey want wit you. Maybe dey rob you, wait por you to wake up and force you to get money prom ATM. Or maybe dey give you to NPA as hostage.”
“NPA?”
“New People’s Army,” Darrow reminded me. “The communist guerillas that operate in the countryside around here.”
“Seriously? They kidnap Americans?”
My master chief shook his head. “Not usually. Oddly enough, they tend to leave us Yankees alone. In fact, they went to such lengths to avoid conflict with us that when I was in the AFPD, we joked that NPA stood for Nicest People Around. Still, every once in a while, some radical group will splinter off and make us a target. Hell, they just assassinated a US Army Colonel here a few years ago, a Special Forces badass that founded the SERE school.” SERE stood for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape.
“You very lucky,” Sergeant Tejada told me once again. “You a very easy target when you alone out here. Do not go out and get dat drunk by yourselp, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. That was when the bile in my stomach lurched up my throat, forcing me to rush to vomit in the sink. After that, I did TJ one better by promising him that I would never allow myself to get that drunk ever again. Period.
It was a promise I could not keep, mainly because it would be weeks before I would remember even making it. In fact, it would be quite some time before my first conversation with Sergeant Tejada started coming back to me at all.
*****
CHAPTER 13
T he next morning was murder. I spent most of the night vomiting and woke up dehydrated and exhausted. If not for Dixie and Bard, I never would have made it back to the ship on time. I barely got through roll call, earning myself some serious stink-eye from Krause. He had to have known how wasted I still was. I had not consumed an alcoholic beverage in over seventeen hours. Still, had Krause marched me to the master-at-arms and demanded I take a breathalyzer test, I was sure I would have failed it. I never felt so hungover in all my life.