Olongapo Earp (Tequila Vikings Book 2)

by J. E. Park

  “Hey! Muddapukka!” the kid called out once more. “You an’sa me?”

  Pointing at the man I put on the ground, I said, “That piece of shit was molesting a boy back there and…”

  “I don’t gib a puck! Dis no you bidness! You tink you go here and start trouble? We pix trouble here!” With bunched fists, the kid took a step toward me. To show him I was not backing down, I stepped toward him in return. Then his gang stepped up to back their leader, and I began to realize how screwed I was.

  There were six of them. Two were holding knives, handles in hands, the blades resting up against their wrists to make them inconspicuous. To my back, there was a crowd in which I had not made any friends. I also suspected that they were none too pleased with me interfering with the local racket. It was looking like I was going to get messed up.

  Then I heard a commotion rise from behind the crowd to my rear. “Hey! Hey! Get out of the way! Now!” That was followed up with a bunch of orders shouted in Tagalog that I did not understand. I did not dare turn to look at them. Taking my eyes off of those boys would have been begging one of them to poke holes in my gut. Besides, I recognized the voices anyway.

  The gangsters before me may not have known Sergeant Tejada, but they knew what the authoritative voice of a policeman sounded like. They made their weapons disappear with a sleight of hand that would have impressed Houdini himself.

  Before long, I had both Darrow and Tejada by my side, panting and cursing, contemplating cutting back on cigarettes even more than I was. Directing his attention to the gang’s apparent leader, TJ pointed his finger at the young man. “You gotta problem here?”

  The punk answered the sergeant in angry Tagalog. TJ’s tone of voice was even angrier. Within moments, both of them were shouting at each other. All I could make out was that the gangsters were not thrilled about having a poutie running amok in their neighborhood. They liked me assaulting the tourists (or rather, their customers) even less.

  The longer their arguing went on, the more frustrated I sensed Tejada was getting. He was losing patience with the lack of respect the kid had for his authority. When the hoodlum crossed one point of etiquette too many, TJ hauled off and smacked him across the chops.

  All conversation around us went quiet. Foolish expressions crept across the gangsters' faces, suggesting that they were wondering whether they could rush Tejada before he could draw his weapon. One of them seemed to like his odds and made a sudden move in that direction. Master Chief Darrow shut that down with a haymaker planted in the thug’s temple. That dropped him writhing into the dirt right next to the missionary. At that, I saw the punks getting ready to charge as Tejada drew his weapon. Darrow took a single step back to pull himself from TJ’s line of fire, and I froze, unsure of what to do next.

  Once the crowd saw a firearm introduced to the fray, it split and scattered. The three of us and the half dozen gang members stood fast. I looked at the leader’s face and sensed that this was not going to end well. He was not intimidated by the gun pointed at his face and he sneered at Sergeant Tejada. It was as if he was daring him to pull the trigger. When it looked as if TJ was on the verge of doing exactly that, a gravelly voice behind us called out to him in Tagalog. If I understood correctly, it said, “Tito, what are you doing?”

  The gang leader immediately relaxed in deference to the approaching senior, who strolled into the no man’s land between us. After stopping in front of Sergeant Tejada’s pistol, he faced the young men and told them all to go home.

  This did not sit well with Tejada. “I give the orders around here, old man,” he snarled.

  “Do you?” the elder asked in flawless English, turning around to face TJ. His eyes stared down the barrel of the sergeant’s weapon for a moment before glancing back up to meet Tejada’s gaze. “Or are you letting yourself be bossed around by Olongapo Earp, here? Officer, I suggest you let these boys go one way, and you go the other. Get this thing over with before someone gets hurt.”

  The elderly man looked like he belonged in the Pagsanjan slum that surrounded us. He was unkempt and dirty, had a mouthful of rotting teeth and a nose that had been broken more than once. On the other hand, he spoke English without any trace of an accent and carried himself with a fearless sense of importance that was out of place among such disenfranchised people.

  As in most Asian societies, the elderly in the Philippines enjoy a certain amount of reverence. I suspected that that was the only thing keeping Tejada from knocking the man’s teeth out. Even the younger hoodlums would never dare imply that TJ was Master Chief Darrow’s lapdog. “Who da puck you tink you are?” the sergeant asked.

  “I’m the punong barangay.” The old man looked at me, guessing that I had no idea what a punong barangay was. He was right. “I’m the neighborhood leader here—the kapitan. My name is Paulino Favila. Do you remember me, Earp?”

  It took a moment, but my master chief nodded. The expression on his face suggested that this was not a happy reunion. “I remember the name,” my master chief said. “You look a lot different now than the last time we met.”

  Favila shrugged. “I got a little older. And I haven’t recently been beaten half to death by a mob of liquored up Blue Shirts acting on your behalf.” Blue Shirts were the armed guards that watched over the businesses in the Philippines. Darrow once told me they had much of the same power and privileges as police officers. He also said that they brought a certain mercenary flavor to the local law enforcement community. They were more reminiscent of the Pinkerton detectives of the Old West than they were of the mall cops of American suburbia.

  “The Blue Shirts beat you half to death?” Darrow snickered. “I should have paid them half their fuckin’ wages then.”

  Tejada lowered his weapon. Despite the unpleasant history Darrow and Favila shared, TJ was not going to gun down a barangay kapitan. Not in broad daylight on a crowded shantytown street, anyway. There were too many witnesses. “Who da puck dis guy, Brad?”

  “Paulino is a little bit of everything,” my master chief answered. “He’s a pimp, a pusher, a thief, a murderer. And now he’s a kapitan. How did you get this gig, Paulino? You tell everybody around here about how much of a war hero you were? How you practically kicked the Japs off of Luzon single-handedly before you got sent to the camps?”

  Paulino raised his arms. “The Philippine people remember our sacrifices. They appreciate what we did. They showed their appreciation by asking me to continue to serve them as barangay kapitan. They asked me to use my wisdom and experience to keep the peace around here. That is what I’m trying to do, Olongapo Earp. Keep the peace. If I let these young men kill a policeman right here in our neighborhood, well, the cops'll storm this place. They'll burn it right to the ground. That’s why I’m letting you walk out of here. For my people. Make no mistake, if I caught you in here by yourself, well, I’d be settling a debt that I've been dreaming about repaying for many years now. Many years.”

  Favila directed a steely gaze at Master Chief Darrow and then another at Sergeant Tejada. When neither of them challenged him, the kapitan turned back to his boys and told them to go home once again. Tejada was about to counter the old man’s orders, but Darrow stopped him. “Let them go, TJ. Let’s cut our losses.”

  “What?”

  Darrow nodded sympathetically. “Let them go and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  I pointed down at Michael, who was just now starting to come to, squirming in the dirt. “What about him?”

  “Leave him,” Favila told me. “You’re lucky I don’t have my boys do to you what you did to this guy. He’s a man of God.”

  “Man of God?” I scoffed. “He’s a fucking perv…”

  “You're a fucking imbecile,” the kapitan interrupted, his ire now focused at me. “That man is one of the few sources of comfort the kids around here have. I know what goes on in my barangay, young man. I know there's much evil that happens here, and I know who carries it out. This man is no evil-doer.”

/>   I took a step toward Favila, sticking my finger in his face. “Yeah? You know what happens here? Then why don't you fucking stop it?!?”

  Darrow grabbed me by the neck, swung me around, and sent me stumbling in the direction we needed to start walking to get out of the slums. “Get going, Doyle! Now!”

  “But…”

  “But nothing! Go!” For the first time since I had met him, Darrow appeared as if he did not have control of the situation. More disconcerting was the fact that he was unable to hide it. He looked scared. I saw it, Tejada saw it, and no doubt, the gangsters saw it too. He kept pushing me forward, walking at a gait that was practically a jog. Calling back to Favila, Darrow said, “We’ll see you later.”

  The old man laughed. “You’d better hope not, Olongapo Earp.”

  *****

  Once we were out of Favila’s sight, Darrow broke into a trot. Tejada and I followed suit. From above us, the shantytown’s residents saw us beating a hasty retreat and started taunting us from the rooftops. When they started throwing things, we sprinted. For the last block before we broke out of the shantytown, it felt like we were running for our lives. It was a half-mile before we slowed down again, coming to a halt before a local sari-sari store. While gasping for air, Darrow smiled wide and ordered us a round of San Miguel beers. He then toasted, “To yet another successful mission!” His demeanor had changed entirely.

  “Successpul?” Tejada gasped, still trying to catch his breath. “How da puck you call dat a success?”

  “I got that son-of-a-bitch right where I want him!”

  “What are you talking about?” I thought Darrow had lost his mind.

  “Fucking war hero,” my master chief laughed. “I remember that prick. His gang supplied dope to sailors who sold it on base during the ‘70s. One of the Americans working with them shorted them some cash, so they kidnapped this guy’s kids until he could cough up the dough. The sailor came to us to get his children back. Now, Favila wasn’t directly involved with the kidnapping, but he knew who was. That's why I hired some Blue Shirts to bring him in. We worked Paulino over until he gave them up and got the kids back. Then we sent their father to the stockade for a few years.”

  Darrow took a long drink of his beer and smiled like he was recalling a favorite memory. “I had them let Favila go. I thought I could cultivate him into an informant but he disappeared as soon as he was released. To be honest, I thought his own guys snuffed him out for ratting on the kidnappers. To appease my curiosity, though, I dug into him. I found out that though he was born here on Luzon, he was raised in Seattle when his parents moved there in the ‘20s.”

  “So, he wasn’t even here when the Japanese invaded?” I asked.

  Darrow shook his head. “No, he was here in the Philippines during the war. During the Great Depression, his old man turned to burglary to feed his family and got himself arrested. Since none of them were citizens, they all ended up getting deported back here to PI. No one knows what Favila did during the Japanese invasion, but during the occupation, he collaborated with the Japs. He offered to pose as a camp laborer to spy on the American prisoners since he spoke fluent English. He wasn’t a war hero. He was a fucking traitor.”

  Tejada’s jaw dropped open. “And now he da pucking punong barangay! And da crime boss? Ip dey pind out ‘bout dat shit wid da Japanese, dey gonna pucking kill him! Dey gonna pucking kill him slow!”

  “Yeah, well, we need to get him someplace where we can safely make him aware of what we know. We gotta keep up the facade that he has the upper hand on us, too. If his boys suspect we’re pulling his strings, they'll turn on the guy. Despite that little cock-of-the-walk act he pulled on us back there, the man's a fucking weasel. I’m sure he’ll do anything to make sure that little secret of his stays secret. He’ll be able to give us the picture of any military man that steps foot in that place better than the guy we already got. We’ve got this in the bag. You think we can get to him tomorrow?”

  “Puck, Brad. I got men who can get to dis guy tonight!” TJ assured us.

  “Great! The file on him is in one of those boxes I gave your old boss, Chico Acosta, back in 1977 or ’78. It’ll be in archive because when I turned it over, we thought this prick was dead.”

  Tejada nodded. “Okay. I have da guys at da station go get ‘em and drive dem over here right away.” TJ stood up and slammed the rest of his beer. “I gonna go pind a telepone. I be back.”

  After Tejada left, a thought occurred to me. I turned to Darrow and asked, “Master Chief, do you really think this guy is so desperate to keep his secret that he’d work for you?”

  Darrow pulled out his pack of cigarettes and lit one. “Absolutely. The stuff the Japanese did here was unspeakable, Doyle. Brutal. Horrific. To this day, you still get the occasional story of someone settling some wartime grudge around these parts. It doesn’t matter that this shit happened fifty years ago. To many of these folks, it was just like yesterday. If Favila is outed as a collaborator, these people will eat that fucker alive. That’s no joke.”

  “So, you think he’d do anything he could to keep it quiet?”

  “Yeah. It’d not only ruin his life; it’d end it. It'll undo his legacy, too. People would do what they could to erase all memory of him, to make it seem like he never even existed.”

  “You think that he’d kill to keep it secret?”

  “Fuck yeah,” Darrow said without hesitation. “He most certainly would.”

  “You think that maybe he'd try to kill you?”

  “Kill me himself? Naw. He doesn't have the balls.” Darrow paused, losing himself in thought for a little while. “But there are plenty of others around here who do, though. Now that you mention it, I would bet that he’s wasting no time getting the word out to the bastards that I’m back in town again.”

  After a nervous pull out of his beer bottle and a quick peek at the people milling about around us, Darrow let out a sigh. Looking at me a little more uneasily, he then told me, “Keep your eyes peeled, Doyle.”

  *****

  CHAPTER 16

  M aster Chief Darrow and I were pretty happy with ourselves after we left Pagsanjan. With Favila's boys looking for military men sneaking into their neighborhood, we were confident that we would catch Krause. At least we would if Darrow’s suspicions about the man were correct. The only open-end we had was Michael. After I told Tejada everything I knew about the guy, he was confident he could close that loop as well.

  It was a long bus ride back to Olongapo. Darrow killed time by telling me all about the things he and Tejada had done together back when he was on the AFPD. The two of them were brutes and had taken a lot of very nasty people out of circulation. They also saw to it that many innocent victims got the justice they would never have received from the country’s notoriously corrupt court system. Darrow was proud of what they had accomplished, and the more I heard, the prouder I was of what my master chief had done, too.

  We arrived back in town at about twenty-two hundred, then drank until just after midnight. It was about then that Tejada tracked us down and let us know that Favila folded as Darrow guessed he would. Turning to me, though, TJ got very cross. He did some investigating into Michael out in Pagsanjan. The man was apparently a saint. I did not catch him red-handed molesting a boy in Pagsanjan. The sergeant told me I caught him trying to save one.

  “Then why did he run?” I asked, trying to justify what I did.

  “Because he see da look on you pace and know you gonna puckin’ kill him!” The sergeant shook his head. “You no mo’ goin’ to Pagsanjan, Doyle. You done! Brad, you no go back to dat place either. You know where da Monkey Hut is?”

  “The Monkey Hut?” Darrow repeated. “Near the river? That place is still around?”

  Tejada nodded his head. “Yeah, it still dere. Favila gonna get word to me ip he get pictures of military guys in da barrio. When he do, you gonna meet one op his people at da Monkey Hut. I have a local PNP guy in plain clothes dere watching to make su
re you okay. You go straight dere and come straight back. Okay? Everyone know now dat Olongapo Earp back in town.” TJ slapped me in the back of the head. “Danks to dis maddapukka.”

  The sergeant was furious with me. Granted, I had scored a coup by attracting the attention of Paulino Favila. I had also robbed some very vulnerable Pagsanjan kids of one of the few resources they had to get out of the sex trade, though. TJ had to tell Michael that he was under investigation for child abuse. He ordered the ministry to keep him confined in their Manila compound until the PNP cleared him, and Tejada was fit to be tied about that.

  “Man, is there a way I can make this up to TJ?” I asked Darrow as we left the bar to make our way home.

  My master chief shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll blow over. If you want to do something for the guy though, do that barbecue I told you about. Grill up some ribs for the man.”

  Darrow and I parted ways after a half dozen blocks. While I walked back home, I thought about what I would need to make up some American-style barbecue sauce. I wondered if I could find it in the Philippines. I needed ketchup, steak sauce, honey, apple juice, and…

  “Halo, Doyle!”

  Mari scared me out of my skin when I walked through the broken gate to our apartment building. “Jesus! Mari!” I gasped. I then stole a quick look at my watch and, in my best Tagalog, exclaimed, “It’s almost one in the morning! What are you still doing up?”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “I want to show you my teeth! They’re all good now! I wanted to thank you!” Mari ran up and threw her arms around my waist, hugging me tightly.

  “Mari, you need to show me during the day!” Remembering Tala pleading with me to keep my distance from her daughter, I peeled the little girl’s arms from around me. I tried to lead her back to her place. “You should be in bed now!”