by J. E. Park
What the Marine did next was entirely inexplicable. I could only imagine that the stories he heard about Olongapo Earp spooked him. Sensing what my master chief might do to him, he must have decided to hit Darrow before the master chief could hit him first. When Darrow got close enough, Mulvaney tried to take a swing at him.
He did not even come close to hitting his target, though. The Marine bunched his fist and cocked his arm back, but before he could fire, I hooked my own arm under his and stopped him from throwing the punch. Darrow then dealt out a brutal blow to the jaw that knocked Mulvaney back into me. That allowed me to get around his other arm and put him in a full nelson. Then Darrow shattered the Marine’s nose.
My master chief hit the man twice more in the face, splitting his lip wide open. He then nailed him in the gut with everything he had. Mulvaney retched, throwing up all over his feet. “Let him go now, Doyle.”
When I released Mulvaney, the Marine dropped to the ground into his own vomit. Right about then, a trio of local toughs who had stumbled upon the fight stepped up and started goading us. I had a feeling of déjà vu, as the situation I got us into in Pagsanjan threatened to replay itself in Barrio Barreto. It looked as if hoodlums all over the Philippines took their roles as shantytown peacekeepers very seriously. “You t’ink you tough guys? Two boys against one? Dat chickenshit! Who you t’ink you are?”
My master chief laughed. “Who do I think I am? Weren’t you listening? I’M OLONGAPO MOTHERFUCKIN’ EARP!!”
“Olongapo Earp? Dat bullshi…” Before the punk could finish his sentence, Darrow hit him so hard that a bloody wad of snot flew out of his nose. It passed through three feet of air before landing on one of his buddies’ faces. With the odds now three against two, I followed my master chief’s lead. I grabbed the closest guy to me and let him have it.
Darrow and I made short work of the first three hoods, but things got trickier when four of their buddies showed up. They started getting the upper hand quickly, and the two of us got into trouble. I was taking more punches than I was throwing. My master chief got kicked over a fifty-five-gallon drum being used as a garbage can and spun out all over the gravel. When he jumped back up, he brought the drum with him. Raising it over his head, he whipped it at a couple of the street punks that were stupid enough to bunch up together. He then grabbed the bar stool from off the Pagoda’s porch. Swinging it with one hand, he took out another one of the thugs and started laughing. He was having the time of his life.
I was not. Though I could hit my adversaries much harder than they could hit me, they were quicker. I was having a tough time getting my punches to connect. When one of them got close enough for me to grab, I wrapped my arm around his neck and attempted to choke him out. That blocked the front of me from his comrade. From that point on, I could only be hit in the back, where I was not particularly vulnerable. That was the position I was in when my ears detected a “click” that I had only heard before in movies. I looked up in time to see another tattooed hooligan coming right at me with a switchblade knife in his hand.
The only thing I could do when the guy wielding the blade lunged was to turn as fast as I could. That put the man I was choking between us. It worked once, but it looked like his second try was going to hit the mark. Fortunately, Darrow saw what was going on. Before the knife slid between my ribs, my master chief broke away from the men he was grappling with and grabbed the thug’s forearm. He then snapped the hooligan's wrist with a move he had learned while in the AFPD.
The gang banger howled in pain, screaming loud enough to grab his friends’ attention. At the same time, a Jeep sped up to us and flipped on its lights and sirens. That was the cue for the street punks to scatter. By instinct alone, I was taking off to join them. Before I took two steps, though, Darrow grabbed me by the collar and asked, “Where do you think you’re going? Stand fast and put your hands in the air.”
*****
Of course, Master Chief Darrow knew the two officers who rolled up on us. It turned out that I did too. They had been at the party I threw for Tejada and escorted the funeral procession for the lizard that drowned in our punch. The locals got away like they usually did, but another responding unit caught the Marine we beat up. They took him to jail while the master chief and I were given a ride back to Lorna’s place. When we got there, Sergeant Tejada was waiting for us.
“Waddapuck da matter wit you two?” TJ asked, shaking his head. “Are you pucking stupid?”
“We got jumped,” Darrow told his friend. “There was nothing we could do.”
“Jump my ass. You puck up dat Marine boy pretty good.”
“Do you know who he is?” I asked.
“Yeah, I know who he is. I don’t care ‘bout dat—puck dat guy. Did you have to announce to da whole Barrio Barretto dat you Olongapo Earp, dough?”
“Oh my god,” Darrow gasped, sounding genuinely surprised. “Did I say that out loud?”
I nodded my head. “Yeah, you couldn’t have been less discreet about it if you’d had a fucking bullhorn.”
Tejada dropped his face into the palm of his hand. “Bradley, what I gonna do wit you? You not a cop here anymore, so dese guys know you not carrying a gun now. I told you when you get here, you need to lay low! You gonna get yourselp killed!”
“You’re right, TJ,” the master chief said with an adequate amount of contrition. “It won’t happen again. That’s it, I’m staying close to home.”
“Close to home? Bradley, you just told all dose gang boys dat Olongapo Earp is back here in Subic Bay! Dey now know dat you here wit da ship and not wit da AFPD! You got more people who no like you here den anywhere else in dis whole country!”
Shaking his head one more time, the sergeant let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Jesus Christ, Bradley! Is dis da way you make it so you go back to Pagsanjan?!? You plan to make Olongapo more dangerous to you dan Favila's people?!? Puck! Go to Pagsanjan den! Go puck wit Paulino!”
I nodded at Darrow, expressing my willingness to go with him if he needed me to. TJ dashed that plan out of hand. “You no go to Pagsanjan, dough, Doyle! You stay da puck here! I bet you started dis shit, didn't you?”
Though Darrow did most of the damage, it was I who had started everything. Flashing TJ a sheepish grin, I shrugged my shoulders.
“Oops.”
*****
CHAPTER 20
S ince we were dropped off after curfew, I stayed that night at Lorna’s place, sleeping on the couch. When I woke up the following day, I was relieved to see that neither the master chief nor I had any cuts or bruises on us that could not be covered up with a long-sleeved shirt. We did not want anything alerting Krause of the fight we had gotten into the night before. We made it through roll call, and after getting dismissed, Darrow split for Pagsanjan. I went home.
I did not go to my apartment first, though. I went to Mari’s and knocked on the door. Mahal answered, looking tired and unhappy. “Mari no here, Doyle. She at school.”
“I’m not here for Mari. Is Tala home?”
Mahal nodded and let me in, waving her hand toward the direction to Tala’s bedroom. Her door was already open, and I could see her moving about inside, packing. “Hello, Tala,” I said, trying not to startle her.
When Tala looked up at me, I could see that she had been crying. She wiped her eyes and said, “Halo, Doyle. Mari at school.”
“I know. I didn’t come here to see her. I came to see you. We went to the Pagoda last night looking for you. You quit?”
Tala nodded. “I quit.”
“Why?”
Tala looked at me like I was a complete moron because, well, I was. “Why you t’ink? When I go to work, I pretend it not me dere doing dose t’ings. It Tina doing dat stupp.” Tala stifled a sob. “I can’t do it anymore, Doyle! I hope Mari porgive me, but I can’t! It killing me!”
As Tala broke down, I stepped into the room and wrapped my arms around her, trying to calm her down. “Shhhhh. Tala, breaking out of that life is nothing
that needs forgiveness. She’s going to love you no matter what.”
As she bawled into my chest, Tala cried, “I keep t’inking dat one day, someone gonna rescue me prom all dis. I see girls meeting men and getting taken away somewhere else where dey can start a new lipe. Dey leave dis all behind, but no one coming por me and Mari, Doyle! Nobody! And now da base is closing and I can’t even do dis job anymore. Whether I want or not, I have no way to feed Mari when you ship leave da Philippines. I porced to pind a new way to live, so I need to just do it. I gotta get me and Mari out op dis place!”
“Where are the two of you going to go?”
“I don’t know. I t’ink we go to Manila. Maybe I can work as da maid or be a waitress or somet’ing. Anyt’ing but a whore.”
“Tala, Tala, don’t say that. You did what you had to do to take care of Mari. If you think of yourself as a whore, that’s all you’ll ever be. You’re a good woman. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Tala stopped crying and pushed herself away from me, her emotions turning from despair to anger. “Dey don’t have to tell me dey t’ink I am a whore! I know what people t’ink op me by da way dey treat me! By da way you treat me! You very nice to me, Doyle, but I see da way you look at me! I know you want me, but you no gonna ever try to be wit me because you t’ink I dirty and no worthy op you.”
“You’re wrong…”
“I not!” Tala yelled. “I try to kiss you, and you jump back like I have disease! You no t’ink I good enough por you and you know what, Doyle? You right! I dirt! I piece op garbage! I never gonna get clean, Doyle! I never gonna get dis scum opp op me!”
I reached out and grabbed Tala hard by the shoulders. “Tala! I couldn’t kiss you because I don’t want to abandon you when we leave! Look, I’ll admit it. I have feelings for you, but I’ve only known you for a couple of weeks. I don’t know if I can do this. Yes, you’re a bar girl and, Tala, I don’t have time to figure out which kind of bar girl you are. Are you someone who actually has feelings for me, or are you someone who only sees me as a way to get into the United States? I can’t figure that out in two weeks!”
Tala sniffled and squinted her eyes at me. “Dat da excuse you usin’ to make yourselp stay away prom me? You no want to admit it, but you no get over what I do por a living!”
I groaned and sat myself down on Tala’s bed. “If I’m going to be completely honest, yeah, I don’t know if I can or not. There was a guy in my division, Randy Green. He came over here and married a girl from Olongapo that was working the bars. Tala, she was a sweetheart and from what I know, devoted to her husband and son. Her husband could not get over her past, though. It drove him crazy, and he began imagining that she was cheating on him. She stuck with the guy, even after he started beating her. Even after he broke her son’s arm to get her to unlock the door she was hiding behind.”
“Dis guy a priend op yours?”
I shook my head. “No. I beat him so badly after he hurt his stepson that he almost died. I came very close to going to prison over it. Look, Green was a piece of shit. I could not imagine what could drive men like him and my father to do what they did to their wives and children. After I met you, though, I put some thought into it. I realized that neither of those men were well to begin with. Both of them were already messed up in the head; they only needed something to pull the trigger to set them off.
“Tala, because of what my father put me through, among other things, I’ve got issues myself. I like to think that I could never hurt a woman or a child, but I get these rages, too. I get rages like the one that I went into when I almost killed Randy. I never know what I'm going to do when I fly into one of those things.”
I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts, wondering if I could smoke in Tala’s bedroom. I decided against it. “I’ll never know what it was that set my father off. That guy was always mean as far back as I can remember. Randy, though, was driven off the deep end by the knowledge that Rafaela was way out of his league. Deep down, he probably believed it was just a matter of time before she realized that she could do better and left. In his twisted mind, I think he resented her because of something he thought she would someday do to him. He needed to hurt her before she hurt him.”
“You t’ink you a brain doctor por crazy people or somet’ing?”
I laughed. “No, but as much as I hated my old man and Randy Green for what they did, I’m coming to understand how they came to do it. Both of those guys had rage issues. They could get themselves so worked up that they couldn’t help themselves. When they snapped, they did heinous things that they never imagined themselves capable of.”
“How you know dat?” Tala asked.
“Because I’ve been there. I’ve done it too. When I crippled Randy, I was in one of those states. I didn’t realize what I was doing. Hell, I don't even remember most of it. I couldn't imagine ever hurting a woman, a child, or someone that I cared about. Still, if there was anything that someone could do to trigger that kind of outburst, it would be destroying a family that I’ve finally built.”
Crossing her arms, Tala asked, “Have you ever hit your girlpriend, Doyle?”
I shook my head. Just having someone ask me a question like that made me sick to my stomach. “No. Never. And if I ever do, I hope someone puts me down like a rabid dog. I'd deserve it. But Tala, my old man messed me up bad. I get these breakdowns that, while they suck, only really affect me. If I’m confronted with an extreme event though, it’s something else entirely. I lash out. Once my rage is triggered, I don’t even know what I’m doing.
“Tala, when you went to kiss me the other night and I pulled away, it was not because I worried about what you could do to me. It was because I was worried about what I could do to Mari and you.”
Tala stood there staring at me, trying to decide how sincere I was being. “You go to da Pagoda last night? What you going to do dere?”
For some reason, her question embarrassed me. I felt my face getting red. My voice was barely audible when I said, “I wanted to pull you out of there and ask you if you would stay with me instead.”
Again, Tala stood there staring at me. Forever. “You t’ink you a danger to me, Doyle? In you heart?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, but I don’t know. I don’t think my father married my mother thinking that one day he would kill her. I don’t think Randy Green dreamed of torturing Rafaela and her son when he asked her to marry him. I’m terrified that I may have more in common with those two pricks than I realize, though.”
Shaking her head, Tala took a step back from me and pushed her door closed. “I no t’ink a man dat spend so much time and help Mari like you do could ever hurt a woman, Doyle.”
Tala then removed her shirt and joined me on the bed. Taking my face in her hands, she pulled me in, kissing me gently on the lips. “I take my chances.”
*****
CHAPTER 21
T he first thing that piqued Sergeant Tejada’s suspicions about Rickie Ibay was that the man did not recognize him. Everyone who spent time in the bars along Magsaysay Drive or in Barrio Barretto knew Rico Tejada. The American sailors knew him, the working girls knew him, and so did their pimps and pushers. Rickie Ibay did not, though, and that raised a flag. It told TJ that the gaunt, sickly little man with the twitchy gait of a shabu addict was an outsider. He did not belong there.
Tejada was off duty and in street clothes, but that should not have mattered. Danny Paduano, one of Barrio Barretto’s notorious enforcers, recognized the policeman right away. He stepped out of the Scooby Booze bar before Ibay and almost ran right into the officer as TJ was trying to buy his newspaper. Showing Tejada the proper amount of deference, the hooligan nodded his head and wished the sergeant a good morning as he passed.
Rickie Ibay did not, though. He stepped out of Scooby Booze and looked Tejada right in the eye without any flash of recognition at all. He then turned his back on the policeman, walking up the street with his face pointed at the signs a
bove. He appeared to be looking for someplace in particular. Tejada flipped the newsgirl a couple of peso coins for his paper and then began tailing Rickie to see what he was up to.
Olongapo may have virtually industrialized prostitution, but Magsaysay was something of a safe zone when it came to street crime. The city’s livelihood was dependent upon sailors spending money there. All it took was one mugging, one injured American, for the base to put the town off-limits. It had happened before, and the pain it caused was immediate and unrelenting. With only a couple more weeks of American cash flow left, Tejada could not afford for there to be an incident now. The longer TJ followed Ibay, the more he felt that the man was about to create one.
Shabu addicts do not move in straight lines. They tend to wander aimlessly, but with mania and speed. The only time tweakers look like they knew where they are going was when they are on their way to get a fix. Or when trying to earn the cash they needed to score it. As shabu was not sold on the street along Magsaysay, Tejada doubted that Ibay was in town to buy dope. He was there to score cash. With the way he looked at the signs above the businesses he passed, TJ guessed that Rickie knew where to find some.
Suspecting a robbery, Tejada pulled his pistol from the small of his back and deftly put it in his pocket. He could pull it out quicker from there. He then picked up his pace to close the gap between them.
Rickie Ibay stopped when he got to the Dirty Crow. He looked up at the sign twice, making sure that he was at the right place. The low life then stepped into the doorway to study the people inside. Tejada saw the expression on Ibay’s face change as he appeared to have found what he was looking for.
As the addict pulled something out of his pocket and stepped inside the bar, Tejada cursed. He drew his weapon, disengaged the safety, and took off after his quarry at a dead sprint.
*****