Olongapo Earp (Tequila Vikings Book 2)

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Olongapo Earp (Tequila Vikings Book 2) Page 22

by J. E. Park


  It was time to calm Kent down before somebody walked in on us. I gently slapped him on the cheek, mafiosi style. “Okay, Steve, relax. I believe you.”

  Kent exhaled a long breath, signaling his relief. “Thanks, Doyle. Please, I would never…”

  “You hear about what I did to Randy Green, Steve?”

  My new guy swallowed hard. “Yeah, I heard a few things.”

  “I want you to keep that in mind as I tell you that I don’t want you talking about this conversation we had with anyone. You got that?”

  “Yeah, Doyle, I got it,”

  “Good. And if Palazzo suggests going to Pagsanjan for some younger entertainment, I want you to go along with it. As long as you tell me first, I’ll make sure you come out of everything alright. Now, I don’t want you suggesting the two of you go out there thinking you’ll score brownie points with me. That ain’t the way this shit works. I’m not looking to frame him. Palazzo’s a pervert; that’s no secret. I just want to make sure I don’t have a fucking pederast in my shop, Steve. If he never brings it up, that’s great. If he does, though, I’m going to see to it that he suffers. Any questions?”

  “Can I still get my Tequila Viking ink?” Kent asked.

  “Yeah, Speedy,” I assured him. “You’re demented enough to wear it.” I then told him that he could go.

  “Hey, Steve, one more thing,” I said to him as I picked up the IC phone to call Master Chief Darrow. “What day was it that you saw Krause out in Pagsanjan?”

  *****

  I had had an exhausting duty day and a late watch. When we were relieved Thursday morning, I strolled down to the berthing area and collapsed into my rack. When I woke up, it was already after lunch.

  With the ship’s galley closed, I left and made myself a meal from the street vendors lined up across the Shit River bridge. Then, instead of taking a trike back to my place, I walked there just to take in the sights. I met a very cute young lady selling newspapers about a third of the way home. We talked for a little while and, encouraged by her effort in improving my Tagalog, I asked if she would let me buy her dinner later. She laughed and then suggested that the girls working Magsaysay Drive would be better able to serve my needs.

  The girl who sold me a soft drink a few blocks from my house told me the same thing. So did another young woman who walked past me on the sidewalk when I tried to strike up a conversation. It was not my day.

  I got to my apartment before two in the afternoon. Tala walked out of our broken security gate as I was stepping up. “Hi,” I said to her as she turned her head my way. She was in her work dress, the Chinese-styled red one with the slit up the side of her leg. She had pulled her hair up into a bun and applied her makeup expertly. She looked like a supermodel. I had no doubt the night would be profitable for her. “Are you okay?” I asked her as we passed each other.

  “Yes, I pine,” Tala said. “Same as I always am.” She was not smiling, not even in her usual fake way.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  Tala looked impatiently at the ground. “What you want me to say to you? Yes, Doyle. Everyt’ing good por me. Lipe never be better. Da puture is bright, and dere is not’ing but milk and honey por me and Mari por da rest op our lives. Dat make you peel better?”

  I did not know how to respond. I just stood there looking dumb until Tala's trike pulled up in front of us and the driver asked her to step inside. “You hab what you want to know now? I need to go to work, Doyle.”

  Unless you can tell me something to convince me to stay home. Please, Doyle. I don’t want to do this. Please don’t let me do this. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.

  It was in her eyes. She was pleading for me to help her, to save her and her daughter. I wanted to reach out to her, to take her hand and do something for them, but what was I going to do? Make my life even more of a wreck for a prostitute that I had not even known for two weeks? Their lot in life was not fair, but it was also not fair that I seemed to be their last chance to escape it at the moment. They were not my responsibility.

  So, I did nothing. I stood there mute as Tala stepped into the bike’s sidecar and drove away to let herself be used over and over again. It broke my heart and turned my stomach, but there was nothing I could do about it. When she was finally out of sight, I turned to take the last few steps to my place, only to be stopped by Mari blocking my path. “Halo, Doyle.”

  “Halo, Mari,” I said, forcing myself to smile.

  “Can we play a game today?”

  “Hmm,” I answered as I thought for a moment. “How about we do something different and try the beach instead?”

  *****

  CHAPTER 19

  D arrow was not pleased. He threw the pictures on the table and downed half a glass of straight vodka. “Look, anywhere in the world we go, no one ever has any trouble picking American servicemen out of a crowd. We all have the same haircuts. We have tattoos, sideburns, and mustaches. We all walk with the same swagger.”

  “Yeah. And all you guys dress like dorks,” Sergeant Tejada said while looking directly at me.

  “What?” I asked TJ while glancing over myself. I had on my usual liberty attire. I was wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt worn over a Billabong tee, cargo shorts, and deck shoes sans socks. “I spent years perfecting this look.”

  If Master Chief Darrow heard our exchange, he ignored it. “The perverts in these pictures aren’t even military! Most of them are too fuckin’ old! Hey! Look at this guy!” Darrow pointed at a picture of a man whose hair fell past his shoulders. “Who the fuck is this hippy? Huh? In what Navy does this guy serve? Greenpeace’s?”

  I picked up the picture and gave it a closer look. “Could be. He looks like he’d fit in as a deck ape on the Rainbow Warrior.”

  “And these people,” Darrow said as he grabbed another handful of photos. “These guys aren’t even American, I bet! Those punks work the crowds in that area. They know the difference between an American and a goddamn Swede! I’m telling you, TJ, Favila’s fucking with us!”

  Letting out a long, tired sigh, I took a drink out of my beer. “Master Chief, don’t you think it’s a good thing that these guys aren’t catching any of our people back in that shithole? It could mean the guys we serve with aren’t fucking creeps.”

  Darrow slammed his palm on the table hard enough to make Lorna jump all the way over on the living room couch. “There’s almost a thousand men on the Belleau Wood, Doyle. You can’t get a thousand people from anywhere and not have at least five or ten of them not be worth a shit. You, of all people, should know that. I’ve never had a ship this size pull into this place and not caught a couple of assholes out in Pagsanjan. They’re out there, Doyle. That fucker Favila’s playing us.”

  Turning to Tejada, I asked, “That what you think, TJ?”

  The policeman thought for a moment and then nodded his head. “Yeah, I tink so. Favila is protecting his bidness. He giving us pictures of people he know we can’t touch and no taking picture op anyone he even tink may be in da Navy. Dat way we no bodder any op his customer.”

  I sighed. “So, what can we do about it?”

  Tejada stood up from Lorna’s table and adjusted his gun belt. “Tomorrow, I go back dere wit some op my boys and we gonna show dose guys dat dey not poolin’ us. Make sure dat Paulino know dat da next time we come, we comin’ por him ip he no come tru por us.”

  “That’s not good enough,” Darrow said. “I gotta go out there and see for myself. Krause was there four days ago. It's possible that we've already missed our opportunity with that son-of-a-bitch. I don’t want to miss it on anyone else.”

  TJ shook his head. “You no goin’ out dere, Brad. Dere people out dat way gonna cut you t’roat.”

  “I’ll go with him,” I said to Tejada. “I’ll watch his back.”

  Darrow and TJ both protested that at the same time. “You can’t fuckin’ control yourself,” my master chief told me. “I’m going in low key, watching the bus stop,
seeing if I can find anyone heading in that direction.”

  Tejada again told Darrow to stay away from Pagsanjan, sparking an argument between the two men. Tired of the noise, Lorna turned off the television and went to bed. I stood up from the table, got myself another beer, then went outside to smoke in the street. I was on my second cigarette when Tejada stormed out of the door. “Good night, Sergeant,” I said to him as he passed.

  “Puck both you maddapukkas!”

  Darrow came out a couple of minutes later. “C’mon, Doyle,” he said. “Let’s go get fucked up.”

  I shook my head. “I’m going to take a pass. Me and Mari went to the beach today and I’m all wiped out. Besides, I’m already pretty fucked up.”

  Master Chief glowered at me. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean? You’ve been mopin’ around all night. What’s bothering you?”

  I shrugged. “I’m fine. Look, I just don’t want…”

  “It’s that little girl’s mother, isn’t it? Tala?”

  My face told Darrow everything he needed to know. “Jesus Christ, Doyle!” my master chief exclaimed. “What’s your goddamn problem here? If you like her, go for it!”

  “I don’t pay for sex, Master Chief.”

  “Then don’t! For Christ’s sake, I saw her giving you those googly eyes the whole time we were at the party, Doyle! Ask her to hang back with you the rest of the time we’re here. I bet she’d leap at the chance to stay with you for a while. When we leave, give her some cash to help them out. Not as payment for her services, but because you want to.”

  “Master Chief, I don’t want to get attached to her.”

  Darrow smacked the side of my head. “Dipshit, you already are. You’re spending time with that little girl like she’s your own kid. That’s not a bad thing, man. Hell, it’s the reason we like you so goddamn much. You care about shit like this.”

  “But Master Chief, if I cross that line, if I let Tala and Mari all the way in, how the hell do I leave them when we’re done here? We're gone in a couple of weeks!”

  Darrow took his index finger and jabbed it hard into my chest. “That’s the easy part because you don’t have any say in the matter. When the Belleau Wood pulls away from that pier, your ass is on it no matter what you want to do. You know that. Hell, Doyle, she knows that.”

  “But…”

  My master chief reached out and put his hand around my neck. “Look, we’ve only got a little more time left here. You can spend it tearing yourself apart the rest of the time we’re in Olongapo. Or, you can just give in and see to it that you, Tala, and that little girl have the time of your lives while we’re in port. Can you imagine how happy Mari would be to have both you and her mother spending time with her from now until we leave?”

  I turned around and leaned up against the wall as I finished off my beer. Master Chief Darrow was an insanely persuasive human being. Especially when I was drunk. “Fuck it. Fine. Let’s go to Barrio Barretto.”

  *****

  Before setting out for the Pagoda Bar, Master Chief Darrow had the trike we hired take us in the opposite direction. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To see a manananggut.”

  “A what?”

  “A manananggut.”

  That word was not in my vocabulary. “What the hell is a manananggut?”

  “You’ll see. You’re going to love this.”

  I discovered that a manananggut was a type of Filipino moonshiner. Master Chief Darrow’s guy was in his fifties. He lived closer to the coast in a bamboo shack tucked in amongst a small forest of coconut trees. His name was Datu, and every day he climbed atop the palms, which was an impressive feat for a man his age. Three stories above the ground, he cut the fruit stalks with a curved knife, collecting the sap in a bamboo container overnight. By the time morning came around, the palm juice had already fermented to the same level as a strong beer. It was then sold to the locals as something called tuba.

  “How do you like it?” Darrow asked me as I took my first pull from a plastic gallon jug. We bought it for less than the cost of a single beer in town.

  “It’s sweet,” I answered, handing the jug back to my master chief. “And fizzy. It’s good, though. How come I never heard of this stuff before?”

  “You don’t see it much around here. It’s more common on Cebu. Still, they can’t serve it in bars or restaurants, so that’s why foreigners never hear about it.”

  “Really? Why can’t they serve it? It doesn’t seem all that strong. It's illegal?”

  Darrow shook his head. “No, it’s not against the law; they just can’t make it stay tuba. After a few days, it turns into something called suka bisaya, a type of vinegar. What we’re drinking now is the fresh stuff.”

  Having loaded ourselves up with palm wine, we got back into the trike. On our way to Barrio Barretto, we guzzled tuba as if we expected it to go bad before we passed Magsaysay. Neither Darrow nor I were sober when we left Lorna’s place, but by the time we got to the Pagoda Bar, the two of us were smashed. As I fell out of the trike’s sidecar, I forgot where we were going or what I was going to do there. My master chief had to point me toward the door of the Pagoda and remind me of my mission.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked Darrow. “Go in there and kidnap her? Throw her over my shoulder and walk out? I mean, I’m sure Tala would love to see me walk in drunk and make a scene where she works. Chicks dig that kind of thing, right?”

  Darrow put his hand on my shoulder, more to steady himself than to make a point. “Just talk to her. Let her know that you don’t know how things will work out, but you want to give this thing with her a try. If she says yes, walk out of that place with Tala on your arm. If she asks you to pay her bar fine, run out of there without her.”

  “Okay,” I said, turning around and stumbling into the Pagoda. Before I took two steps, though, I asked myself, What the hell do I think I’m doing?

  From a physical standpoint, I wanted Tala even more than I wanted Yukiko. Could I get past her line of work, though? I understood that she was only doing it to provide for her daughter, but she was still a prostitute. Was I capable of putting that aside? As I walked through the door, even in my alcoholic fog, I suddenly decided that I was not.

  Before I could leave, though, I took a good look around the bar. It was getting late, and business was dying down. There were a half dozen girls working the floor and about eight customers. I caught sight of the bubbly young girl who first approached me the last time I was there. She was tucked away in a back corner, getting mauled by some greasy old loser. He was sucking on her neck while she stared off into space. She looked impatient for the geezer to pay her bar fine and get everything over with. It was obvious that she wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  I tried to wrap my head around what it must have been like for these women to rent their bodies out to men that they would not have dared touch otherwise. Day in, day out, over and over and over again. I could not think of a more dehumanizing existence.

  Cursing to myself, I started walking to the bar. I still had no desire to get myself mixed up with a bar girl, but Tala was Mari’s mother. I could not stand the thought of her having to go through what she did to take care of her daughter. I needed to get her out of that place.

  As I approached the bar, the tender looked at me and smiled seductively. “Hi, Joe! Can I help you?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “Can I talk to Tala?”

  “Who?”

  Bar names, dammit! Bar names. “Tina. The short girl.”

  “Tina? No, I so sorry. She no here.”

  I cursed again. “Do you know where she is?” I doubted the barmaid knew. Someone probably paid her “long-time” fee.

  “No, I no know. She no work here no more.”

  That gave me pause. I saw her dressed for the Pagoda just hours before. “Are you sure?”

  The barmaid nodded. “Ye
ah, she quit today. She come into work and say she no do dis anymore. She say she goin’ home.”

  *****

  “Hey! Hey, you! Squid!” I was through the Pagoda’s door when I heard someone calling to me, but since I was already outside, I kept going. Before I got down the front steps, though, the door burst open, and whoever it was shouted, “Hey! I’m talking to you, goddammit!”

  I intended to ignore him, but the voice sounded familiar. It was the Marine I had met the last time I was at the Pagoda. Too drunk for his name to roll off my tongue, I had to mine it out of my memory. When it came to me, I pointed my finger at him, “Mulvaney, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” the Marine said as he stepped into my personal space. “I heard you and a couple of your buddies fucked up a friend of mine.”

  I grinned. “That’s right. We messed him up pretty bad. I guess your boy ain’t shit unless he’s beating up little girls.”

  “Is there a problem here?” Master Chief Darrow asked, stepping up to us.

  “There’s no problem here, old man,” the leatherneck growled. “Mind your own fuckin’ business.”

  “Murphy, who the hell is this?”

  “A big fan of yours, Master Chief. He was talking about you the whole way back to Olongapo. This is Terry Mulvaney, the cocksucker that followed me home and told Tala’s ex where to find her.”

  “A big fan of who?” Mulvaney asked, a little bit perplexed. Looking at Darrow, he then asked, “Who the fuck are you?”

  I could not help but laugh. “That’s Olongapo Earp, dick spit.”

 

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