Efrem blinks. He looks from Yapha, to Charlie, to the short man. Are they having another joke on him? The short man laughs and rubs a hand against his stubbly chin, making a sound like sand underfoot.
“What,” he says, “you think they straight-up invented that shit? Mohammed … don’t tell me. I mean, movie people get paid to lie, but could some Manila hack have dreamed me up?” He steps back so he and Charlie are side by side. “I give you this, they found an actor who looked plenty like the real thing, but you really think this pretty boy earned the street name Snaggletooth?” The short man—Reynato—bares his twisted metallic smile. Beside him, Charlie grins, sheepishly, perfectly.
For a moment Efrem feels disoriented. To him—to most of the Boxer Boys—Charlie Fuentes and the supercop Reynato Ocampo were always the same person. And to see them now, standing side by side, gives him a feeling like seasickness. But the moment passes, and just like that Efrem’s lifelong esteem for Charlie Fuentes withers. Charlie is nothing to him. Charlie is worse than nothing. Charlie is a pretender—just one among a long line of false prophets. Nothing but a soft-ass Manileño who more than likely kisses boys. Reynato is the real thing.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I forgive you, Mohammed,” Reynato says. “Now let’s just forget those silly targets—that’s baby games. If you’re anywhere as special as you look, you should be able to hit something a little more challenging.” He gazes out at the clearing. Brig Yapha has a pair of field glasses strapped to his belt, and Reynato snatches them, saying “thanks darling” as he does so. He scans the rice paddies by the tree line where the tenant farmers are still working and the water buffalo is still munching reeds and the underfed puppy is still running about madly. “You see that carabao?” he says.
Efrem can see sweat beading the animal’s nose. He can count the flies perched on its horns and distinguish individual sun-bleached hairs on its flanks. “Yes,” he says.
“How far away would you say that carabao is?”
“Twenty-seven, twenty-eight hundred meters.”
“Ahh, I’ll find something else.”
“I can hit that, sir,” Efrem says. “No problem.”
Still staring through the glasses, Reynato smiles. “Well now, Mohammed, I’m not up on my caliber stats, but I think the maximum effective range for the BMG is just about two thousand.”
“I can do it,” Efrem says.
“Please …” Charlie stares at both of them, distressed. His cigar is almost burned down, and he hasn’t puffed it in a long while. “Could you at least wait until the crew splits? I mean, we just made such a big deal about how the kid had no bullets.”
“You mean you did.” Reynato lowers the glasses. “I’ll wait five. After that, I need to see some shooting.”
Charlie must know Reynato is for real, because he doesn’t waste any time. He rushes back down to the assembled soldiers and henpecks the camerapeople into joining the other reporters in the jeep. The vehicle isn’t halfway down the green before Reynato gives Efrem the order to fire. He hits the animal mid-rump, and it lurches forward like a wasp-stung child, thrashing through the mud. Then, with a sigh and a faint shudder, it sits down.
“What about a moving target?” Reynato asks, not missing a beat. “Can you hit a runner at that distance?”
Efrem shifts his weight. He doesn’t want to appear cocky, but he also doesn’t want to lie. “At any distance,” he says.
Reynato glances at Charlie and Brig Yapha. “Christ. I got the chills. I love a showoff. So …” turning back to Efrem, “I guess that dog would be no problem?”
Efrem sights his Tingin. The boy and his puppy have left the paddies and are running along the jungle’s edge, almost four kilometers away by now. For anyone else it’s a nightmare shot—the dog sprinting full tilt, stopping short, now a jump, now a double-back—but for Efrem it’s an easy one. He could have hit this at twelve, maybe thirteen. The trick is to ignore the dog. Don’t even look at her. Instead, find that perfect nest of air—the place where she isn’t yet but will be. She helps it all along by running, rushing to the time and place. Efrem sights a hollow between the calling child’s arms. One count, two counts, and he shoots. The puppy runs. She leaps, as though catching a ball. The round strikes her mid-trunk, and she all but evaporates, misting the boy and the trees around the boy. It seems to be some moments before he realizes what’s happened.
“That’s impossible,” Brig Yapha says, taking the field glasses back from Reynato and gazing down at the distant, bloodsoaked child. Charlie looks as well, though not for long.
“It’s cold, and it’s twisted,” Reynato says. “But clearly, it’s been done, so it isn’t impossible.” He takes the cigar out of his pocket, plants it between his teeth but does not light it. “You don’t even know, do you, Tony? What you’ve got on your hands here isn’t just skill. This boy’s a bruho.”
Everybody is silent. Finally Charlie says: “You mean … like the others you got? One of them?”
“No doubt,” Reynato says. “Talent just oozes out of him. Caught my eye all the way from the jeep. It’s kind of sad, when you think about it. You’ve been sitting on this resource for years, Tony.”
“He never told me he could do that,” Brig Yapha says, still not back to breathing normal.
“No surprise,” Renato says. “In my experience, few bruhos go around advertising.” He turns back to Efrem and the proud smile on his face enters the running for the highest point in the young soldier’s life. “So, Mohammed, are you exaggerating when you say any distance, all icy like that?”
Efrem shakes his head.
“Well then, humor us just one more time. I got word last night that the barangay sentinels in Davao City picked up a suspect in the Silivan rape case. Any chance you could hit him?”
“If you know his name,” Efrem says. “And where he is.”
Reynato hesitates, only briefly, and then leans in close, lips brushing Efrem’s ear. He tells him the rapist’s name and gives him directions to a jailhouse on the outskirts of the city, the way you’d give a friend directions to a restaurant you like. “So, Mohammed, just how magical are you?”
The men on Efrem’s island agreed that he’d been sent by God—sent for a reason. The Holy Man, someone who knew a lot about God, said it first. Efrem would take the world apart, so they could build it better. The gift was nothing to be afraid of. The angel of death was still an angel.
Efrem’s eyes widen as he raises his Tingin rifle over the puppy’s distant corpse, over the dripping trees, taking a straight aim at the sun. His pupils dilate. Out past iris, past white, they spill like oil to the rim of his open lids. Through shimmering black eyes he sees holes in the clouds, birds weaving through them, seeds of a storm still two days off. He sees sunlight bending over endless banana and palm. He rides the bend like a swell of seawater. Shirtless men move like ants through fruit plantations. An old woman does laundry outside while a young one wrings a hen’s neck. Policemen direct traffic at the outskirts of the city, their orange batons pointing the way. The roof of the jailhouse is missing tiles. The windows all face west. A big man sticks his bruised face against the bars. He smokes a cigarette and looks out at a pair of barn swallows flitting to and from a mud nest in the eaves above his cell. For a moment he and Efrem almost make eye contact.
Efrem squeezes off a single round. He watches the bullet as it speeds up and over the trees, down onto the plantation roads, between the legs of traffic police. Reynato reaches into his pocket and takes out a bright pink telephone. He flips it open, dials and speaks impatiently with the answerer. “I don’t care how recently. Check him again. Right now, and take the phone with you. Doing what? Who gave him cigarettes?” Reynato holds the phone to his chest. “The prisoner is fine. He’s smoking at the window.”
“Give it a minute,” Efrem says.
Reynato gives it two. He puts the phone on loudspeaker and holds it out for everyone to hear. There’s a whole lot of n
othing, and then finally a faint whine, followed by wet coughing, followed by one person screaming, followed by two people screaming, followed by between four and six people screaming. Frightened obscenities and orders to take cover. The guard informs them that the jailhouse is under attack. Someone’s shot the prisoner’s face off. The guard has found a place to hide under a desk. Could they please send help very, very quickly? Reynato hangs up on him. He bends over at the middle and braces his little hands on his knees. It seems that even he wasn’t expecting this.
“You can do that whenever you want?”
“Every time I’ve tried,” Efrem says. “Sometimes I have trouble finding the right person, but with a name and a place it’s easy.”
“Shit. Shit.” Reynato looks sick, and giddy. “You should … you need to come with us. We need to talk.” He straightens up shakily and takes Efrem’s arm. “Tony, is it cool if your boy tags along for the afternoon?”
“Hey, whatever … it’s your call, Renny.” Yapha sounds woozy, like he just woke.
Reynato pulls Efrem to the lead jeep and stows him in the back like luggage. Brig Yapha and Charlie Fuentes follow. From the backseat, Reynato salutes the troops. “Wave goodbye,” he says. “If you ever see those boys again, it won’t be soon.”
Efrem glances back at them. Skinny looks utterly confused, but he’s got his arm up in a wave, his opposite hand supporting his elbow to keep it airborne. They hadn’t been close. Efrem keeps his arms at his sides. The driver releases the emergency brake. The engine shouts, and they’re rolling. Down the marching green, past the tenant farmers and their wounded carabao, out into the trees still wet with dog’s blood, away from the Boxer Boys.
Chapter 5
THREE STRAYS
Howard leaves the club an hour after it closes, and when he gets out to the lot all the waiting taxicabs have left. That’s all right. It’s a fine, unusually quiet night, and he’d like to walk some of this drunk off anyway. He crosses Roxas to the promenade and heads south, hardly stumbling. The bay crumbles gently on the seawall to his right. It isn’t long before he hears a sound in the darkness; something like a cough behind him. He hears it again—a sick sound, followed by footsteps and heavy breathing. He turns and sees three stray dogs, slouched and stinking. They’ve been skulking around the club for a month now. He’s complained to the owner, but has she done anything? No, she has not.
“Get!” Howard says, but the dogs don’t get. One of them approaches with a floppy, careless step. It looks at him and lets out another cough that skids into a faint, trembling growl. With some difficulty, Howard gets down on one knee and pantomimes picking up a stone. His chauffeur at the hotel taught him how to do this—our strays know what it means to have rocks thrown at them, he explained. The strays pace and whine, but they don’t scatter. Howard holds up his cupped, empty fist. He makes a throwing motion and the dogs flinch, but regroup. They glare, awash in bluish moonlight. “Go home!” he says. The words ring lame in the empty night.
The closest dog, its patchy hair yellow as hay, takes another step. Howard drops the fake stone act and starts searching for a real one. Hesitant to take his eyes off the dog, he quickly scans the chipped, honeycombed promenade. Nothing but paper and gum. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his ratty old wallet, swollen with receipts. He chucks it at the dog, striking it on the nose. The animal yelps in surprise and all three scamper darkly back across Roxas, making an off-duty taxi brake hard. Howard chuckles, bracing his hands on the sidewalk as he recovers his wallet and tries to stand back up. It takes some time. He’s a large man.
Howard keeps walking. The promenade is silent and empty, as it never is in the daytime, and that puts him in a sentimental state of mind. He thinks about the busy day that brought him here. Meetings from midmorning until evening and food at every meeting. At breakfast he discussed slab marble with lesbians from Bangkok. Then to the Mandarin for good sushi and a bad argument. Dinner in the car on the way to the airport to pick up some prospective investors fresh in from Sydney and full of energy. He got them drunk on Red Horse and took them to the club, where they had a fabulous half hour before vomiting and retreating to private rooms upstairs—lightweights all.
Howard looks up as he walks, feeling disconnected from his feet falling invisibly below him in that pleasant, drunk way. The smog is low tonight, and the moon is full and weird looking. He stops and rubs his eyes. Is it just his drying contact lenses? He looks again and sees that, no, it isn’t—the moon has a ring around it. An unbroken halo of hazy light, about two thumb-to-forefinger lengths from the center as measured by his outstretched arm. The far ends of the ring are marked by a faint pair of flares, looking like lesser siblings to the nearly full moon. Howard knows what they are. He’s always had a memory for scientific miscellany—especially something as beautiful as this. They’re called moondogs, caused by ice or some such in the upper atmosphere, and God, aren’t they something? The sight delights him. He wants to tell somebody about it. He wants to tell his son, Benny, about it. He’s so, so glad that they’re speaking again.
Howard opens his phone and scrolls through work contacts—a country in parentheses beside each name—to Benny’s number. He pauses before pressing call to check his watch and do the math. Early Saturday morning here, late Friday afternoon afternoon in Virginia. Classes should be out at the school where Benny works. This thought makes Howard happy enough to notice his happiness and be doubly pleased.
The phone rings for some time, and the connection is lousy. He thinks he hears Benny pick up, but realizes after saying hello that it’s just voicemail. He wonders if he needs to leave a message; something to justify the unexpected call. But no. They’re talking again. They’re now people who call each other. He doesn’t have to justify anything.
Howard’s knees begin to hurt under the strain of walking. He hasn’t always been overweight, and the fat sits poorly on him. More apple than pear-shaped—his abdomen and gut bulge while his neck and legs are still a trim impersonation of good health. He used to tell his wife that he’d rather be big all over than look made-from-pieces like this. She said it was proof he wasn’t meant to be a fatty. He’d lost friendships over less, but coming from her, even over a chilly phone line, it sounded light and forgiving. He’s tried to call her, once or twice, since her funeral. Or at least come home late and caught himself calculating the time in Chicago to see if it would be okay to call. The lapses always please him. It’s nice to imagine that she’s only far away.
HIS HEAD A LITTLE CLEARER NOW, he decides to go only as far as Gil Puyat and then flag the next empty taxi that passes. He reaches the end of the promenade—the bay beyond this point reclaimed by artificial land with artificial buildings on it—and crosses Roxas again. About halfway across the wide boulevard he realizes that the three stray dogs have been matching his pace on the opposite side, and he turns back. The dogs come upon an upturned trashcan and circle it like a kill, nipping at one another’s hindquarters. From the pried-open lid and strewn debris, Howard can tell that squatters have already been through it. There won’t be any food. The strays realize this after some searching and then just stare dumbly at the can. They bark at it, and at each other. Their bodies tighten and expand—each animal pulsing.
He has no desire to get near them when they’re worked up, and decides to wait for a taxi on this side. He sits on the crumbling curb. It’s a whole process—lowering himself down. A stoplight above the dogs flashes red at irregular intervals. Power lines spanning the intersection buzz in the wet, sooty air. A jeepney—one of the stretch passenger jeeps decked out with flags and streamers and shining like pounded foil—speeds by with the crack of fuel cut with kerosene. It slows, but Howard waves it on. He sees a white taxi and tries to flag it but the driver ignores him, swerving slightly before making a hard left at the intersection. Howard waits.
The sound of his phone ringing makes him jump and he shifts his weight to get at his belt loop. He’s disappointed to see that it’s just Hon.
“Hallo Howie!” Hon yells. “Getting off the horn with Jack, you got a sec for me?”
“It’s late,” Howard says, not liking the way his voice carries over the empty promenade. “Can this wait?”
“Yup,” Hon says, sounding very cheerful. “But you’re not asleep. I got a couple questions for you in your e-mail. You get them?”
“No.” Howard speaks in a near whisper. “Haven’t had a chance to read them, yet.”
“Oh Howie … am I a cock blocker? Listen, just take a sec, there’s plenty of you to go around. I got them all listed out for you, just put something together and send to me so I can have Jack stop calling. Don’t CC him, though. He’s a schmuck. I haven’t been able to shit in peace since he got my digits!”
“It’ll have to wait. I’m not at the hotel.”
“Howard Bridgewater, you are a very wild man, and I admire you.”
Another white taxi rolls past. It looks like it could even be the same one. Howard flags it and it slows but doesn’t stop. He says “motherfucker” and then he says “not you” to Hon. “Fucking taxis in this city.”
“Taxis? Where’s your boy?”
“Sent him home. It’s late.”
“You do know it’s his J-O-B, job, don’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Howard looks down Roxas, toward Gil Puyat and sees the white taxi stopped at the curb some hundred yards down. After idling a few seconds it reverses toward him, slowly. He pushes himself up and waves at it. “Hey, I’ve got to go. I should be back at the hotel in twenty or thirty.”
“Don’t rush on my account, baby.”
Howard hangs up. The taxi inches backward, reverse lights red as embers. It takes awhile and he begins walking to meet it halfway. He jumps right in so the driver won’t have a chance to turn him down on account of the destination being too far, or off his route, or some other bullshit. The cab smells of orange peels and the seats are coated in plastic. “Makati Avenue, corner of Ayala,” Howard announces.
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