Moondogs

by Alexander Yates

  “I’ll be right there,” Efrem says. But what he wants to say is: What I did tonight does not feel like sticking up for the unstuckup for.

  “Hey. Hey.” Reynato sits beside him, taking his measure with a long, sympathetic stare. “I see the look behind that look. No need to fake happy, if it’s fake. But I’ll tell you what; I’m a little surprised at you, Mohammed. Not in a bad way. It’s just …” Reynato puts a hand on Efrem’s knee. “Given the time you spent killing rebels, given your tally … I guess I assumed this’d be business as usual for you. Hardly thought you could feel anything about it—figured if you let even a splinter of that in then you’d have hung yourself with your army belt years back. But you know, I’m kind of touched that I’m wrong. It’s good to know this isn’t easy for you. It shouldn’t be.”

  Reynato’s hand tightens, just slightly, on his knee. When it lifts Efrem sees a neat stack of thousand-peso notes. On top is the one with the pirate’s network written all over it in blood and ink. Efrem wonders: Will I be asked to execute these people, as well? He wonders: Will I do it, if I’m asked?

  “Get some rest,” Reynato says. He squeezes Efrem’s shoulder, and leaves. Efrem turns out the light and lays down on his bedroll. His room is fantastically large, but empty of furniture. With the bedroll unfurled in the middle of the floor, it feels just like camping. Just like when he was a boy.

  Chapter 18

  MEANWHILE, AT THE BLUE MOSQUE

  Ignacio sits in the ablution room, negotiating Howard Bridgewater’s sale to Joey, the Imam. He tries hard to keep his poker-face from crumbling into a big, stupid smile, but it isn’t easy. Not since Kelog’s heyday as a gamecock has his life ever vibrated with so much promise. The Imam goes into a huddle with the two young ballplayers and they whisper in a foreign language. Ignacio imagines they’re discussing pricing, timing and delivery. He leans back on the edge of the concrete tub, confidence cutting a quick track through his belly like alcohol.

  The Imam breaks the huddle and turns back to face him. “Please forgive me,” he says. “I just want to be sure I’m not misunderstanding you … so, you have, in your personal custody, a kidnapped American businessperson?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you want to sell this person to me?”

  “To you, or to someone else. I have other prospects,” Ignacio says. He runs his bare foot through the trough at the base of the concrete tub, so as to look relaxed. But he is not relaxed. No one has answered his coyly worded postings online, other than to ask if he’s for real or to call him an idiot. He has no other prospects.

  “Is the American nearby? Did you bring him with you?” one of the young ballplayers asks. The thinly veiled desperation in his voice is promising.

  “Never mind where he is now,” Ignacio says. “If we come to an arrangement then he’ll be here. As soon as tonight.”

  The Imam sits beside Ignacio, leaving a half-space between them. “And how do I know you didn’t just pickpocket a tourist? The license is even expired. You could have found it on the street.”

  Ignacio grins at this. He takes Howard’s ear out of his pocket and holds it out so the Imam and ballplayers can see. It’s become wrinkled, but hasn’t completely dried, and it smells. “You think I found this on the street?”

  “You’ve hurt him,” the Imam says, his voice getting crumbly.

  “Not hardly,” Ignacio says. “This is nothing compared to the shit you people will pull. I saw that video on the news—that unlucky motherfucker in Iraq. Sick stuff, if you ask me …” Ignacio pulls a pack of cigarettes from his slacks. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Yes, I do,” the Imam says.

  Ignacio lights up anyway, because it’s essential to never cede ground while negotiating.

  The Imam watches him smoke and does nothing. “He needs to be healthy,” he says, finally. “I need to know that he’s alive and in no medical danger.”

  Ignacio’s grin widens. He’s made ready for this question and is therefore happy it’s been asked. He takes out his cell phone, extends his arm, snaps a picture of his own smiling face and sends it to his wife. He hands the phone to the Imam, and in less than a minute a picture of Howard arrives in reply. His head is bandaged and the front page of the Philippine Star is pasted to his chest. Wednesday, May 12—today.

  “Is that the kind of proof you’re looking for?” Ignacio asks. It strikes him that he should do this for a living.

  “Yes,” the Imam says, looking down at the photo. “Just one more thing, before we can talk about money. We need to know that you are not a policeman. They’ve tried to entrap us before.”

  “Hey, that’s fair,” Ignacio says, his palms flat in concession. “That’s a reasonable, smart request. Search away.”

  The two young men approach Ignacio and stand on either side of him. Everyone in the ablution room exchanges a glance and shares an awkward pause. This is something they’ve all seen on TV, but have never done before, and they’re seized suddenly by stage fright. The young men reach down and tentatively pull his shirt up. They grope along his pant legs, down his thighs and calves. His shoes are still sitting by the entrance to the prayer room, but they inspect his bare feet anyway, because the feet are supposed to be inspected. Then they roughly grip his forearms and pin them to his sides.

  “Easy, there,” Ignacio says.

  The Imam stands and removes his wire-frame glasses. He places them in his shirt pocket. He looks Ignacio in the face, sadly. The energy in the room has changed. “You are a bad person,” he says. He sounds so let down. “You are a terrible person.”

  After saying this soft, damning thing, Joey, the prissy Manileño Imam, uses Ignacio’s phone to call the local barangay sentinels. “I need you here now,” he says. “I need the police, also.”

  Ignacio’s worst nightmares are realized. It’s a Moro double-cross! In a full-on panic, he bucks against the young men, tipping back into the concrete water tub with a splash, his cigarette fizzling. He kicks his bare feet at the Imam, shouting like a broken bellows, calling for his brother and his rooster to come and save him.

  “He’s a crazy person,” the Imam says to the sentinels on the phone. “Come as fast as you can, please.”

  “No!” Ignacio yells. “No. Not Iggy. I won’t go down that way!”

  The young men let out odd, embarrassed chuckles and Ignacio, wet and slippery as he is, frees himself from their grasp. He almost makes it to the closed door when the Imam decks him with an elbow to the nose, breaking it. The young men dive down on him, bracing their knees on his lean torso. Ignacio calls again for Littleboy and Kelog, scenes from his certain capture fogging his eyes like cataracts. He sees himself beaten and carted away by sentinels, driven to a grassy field where the CIA wait like old trees. He sees himself traded in exchange for some coño visa violators. He sees blond Americans with nice smiles torturing him on the ride back to whatever boat they came from, hanging him out the open helicopter and telling the pilot to fly low so the palms will whip his face. He sees himself sleeping in a basin, brought to the edge of drowning so many times that he’s started to believe he died the session prior. He sees himself really dying. And he can’t believe it.

  Then the door crashes open, spilling light into the ablution room and over the wrestling bodies. Ignacio looks up at a silhouette in the light. The Imam turns back and squints at the brightness, first white, then green. He doesn’t know what hits him. In an instant he’s on the floor, his arms over his face as he tries to protect himself from pecking, scratching, wing-beating Kelog.

  Littleboy is next inside, filling up so much of the doorframe that the ablution room goes dark again. Two long steps bring him to Ignacio’s side and he grabs each of the young men by their throats and hurls them into the tiled walls. Littleboy helps Ignacio up and points out, politely, that everything is going wrong.

  Barefoot and soaking, Ignacio runs through the courtyard, out the mosque entrance and back down the Cavite alleyways. Littleboy foll
ows, and then Kelog, flapping his wings madly. They regroup a few blocks away and do a fast-walk to the car, trying their best to look like normal people. The normal people they pass are unconvinced and stare at them.

  Once in the car, Ignacio takes his shirt off and bunches it up under his bleeding nose. He calls his wife on Littleboy’s phone.

  “You need another picture?” she asks. “I’m about to give him his lunch.”

  “Throw the phone away,” Ignacio says.

  “What are you talking about? It’s brand new.”

  “Throw it away. The police are going to get the other one, and it has your number in it.”

  “The who has what? Are you eating something? I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  Ignacio pulls the bunched shirt off of his busted nose and half-clotted blood tumbles down his lip. “Keep the damn phone then,” he yells. “Just open it up and cut the Sim card in half. If anyone knocks, pretend you’re not there. And gag Howard.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” she says. “It’s hard enough for me to do these things, but when you call him that—”

  “You’re killing me,” Ignacio says. “You’re ruining my life.”

  “What an awful thing to say.”

  Ignacio is quiet for a while. “You’re right,” he says. “I’m sorry. I love you. We won’t be home for a few hours. I want to take the long way back, in case we’re followed.”

  “Who would be following you?” she asks.

  Ignacio hangs up. He looks out the window. Littleboy speeds to overtake a truck on the highway, signaling as he does so. Ignacio puts a hand on him and a hand on Kelog. “I love you, also,” he says.

  Chapter 19

  ARRIVAL

  That night Benicio had the dream again. His father was on Corregidor Island, in a snowbound jungle. Fat flakes tumbled down through shivering vines, drifting about palm trunks rooted in the loamy soil. His father looked up at the sky and flakes settled on his face. He was not alone. A dark shape emerged from the trees and stood a few paces away. It was a dog, big as a small pony, dusted with snow.

  The dog eyed Howard with ears back and tail swishing. It pawed the turf and whined. Howard began to walk away, but the dog followed, matching him step for step. Howard broke into a sprint, bounding into the brush, but the dog kept up at an easy canter. And in the dream, Benicio was Howard. He was fat, and almost blind, and bleeding heavily from his chest. He was terrified. And he was dying.

  BENICIO WOKE WITH A START. It took him a few moments to remember where he was. The Philippines. A beach south of the city. A hard, uncomfortable cot, in a rented bungalow. He lay there for a moment, blinking at the ceiling. It was still dark outside, and geckos chattered in the trees above. An odd bird called from very close by. No, not a bird. A telephone.

  Benicio got up and rushed out to the deck. His pants were slung over the sanded driftwood railing, still wet to the thighs from when he’d waded out to Katrina. He frisked the limp pockets for his phone, found it and flipped it open. “Hello,” he said. “Dad. Can you hear me?”

  “Benicio?” It wasn’t his father. It was Alice. “Hello?”

  “Alice. Hi.” He sat down on the deck and scooted backward to rest his spine against the wall. “Sorry, I was sleeping.” He pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment to check the time. “Is everything all right?”

  “Of course. Everything’s fine,” she said. She was quiet for a while, and Benicio wondered if maybe she’d done the time zone math wrong. But no, of course she hadn’t done it wrong.

  “Why are you calling so late?” he asked.

  “Oh,” she paused. “I didn’t think I’d get you.”

  “You didn’t want to get me?” He gently banged the back of his sweaty head on the wall. He’d called, sent e-mails and texts, and this was the first he’d heard from her since arriving.

  “No, I mean, I thought I’d just leave a voicemail. I wanted to give you and your dad some space. This trip is about you guys, after all.”

  “I don’t think I want space,” he said.

  “Well, babe, I think you need it.” She paused again and Benicio heard a clicking sound in the background. The turn signal on her truck. She was driving somewhere. “Anyway, I can’t talk,” she said. “The roaming charges are probably costing both of us a fortune. I just wanted to check-in.”

  “My dad’s not here,” Benicio said.

  Alice was quiet for a moment. “What?”

  “My father. He wasn’t at the airport. And he’s not at the hotel.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. It means that I’m here, and he’s somewhere else.”

  “Are you worried?” she asked. Even over the poor connection, she must have heard his voice break. “Honey,” she said, “don’t be. Have you spoken to any—”

  “I’m not,” he cut in. His eyes had watered and he pinched them closed. He was embarrassed. “I’m with his friends now. They say he pulls this shit all the time. So no, I’m not worried. I’m angry.”

  “Well,” she said, “try not to be angry, either.”

  “I’ll try,” he said. “I’m trying.”

  HE SLEPT FOR ANOTHER few hours after they hung up. Then, when the sun rose, he dressed in his still-wet clothes and shared a tense, silent breakfast with Katrina. Bobby was nowhere to be seen, at first. Then he appeared at the far end of the tide-stretched beach, presumably returning from an early-morning walk. Or maybe he’d been up all night, walking. Even as a distant silhouette his limp was pronounced. Benicio and Katrina watched from the restaurant as he approached, so slowly.

  “He knew them,” she said. Her voice had a faraway quality that sounded put-on. “He knew the people who did that to him.”

  Benicio turned to her. “What?”

  “The people who hurt him,” she said.

  So. It was an attack. Bobby had been attacked. Benicio was startled—taken aback by the depth to which this news shook him.

  “They used to work together,” she said. “They all used to work for the senator.”

  “You mean, Charlie—”

  “No.” She glanced at him sidelong. She would have looked annoyed but for her eyes, which had gone wet and shifty. “Bobby left the senator to work on Charlie’s campaign. And they, those fucking meatheads … they grabbed him. They grabbed him right off the street. Took him to an empty house and beat on him for hours. Bobby had his dogs with him—he’d been walking his dogs. They killed the dogs. They almost killed him.”

  She stopped and brought her napkin up to one of her eyes. Her napkin had ketchup on it. Silence settled over them. Benicio wondered what he should say. Or was it better to say nothing? There was nothing he could say, after all, that would make the story she’d just told suck less. And besides, he hardly knew Bobby. And this information about his injuries was unsolicited. Benicio even felt cornered by it, as though his previous assumption—that Bobby’s injuries were the result of some frivolity of character—indicated a smallness on his part. A meagerness of spirit. And who knows. Maybe it did.

  Bobby arrived some long minutes later, and Katrina greeted him with her usual airy vigor. Together they checked out of the hotel and headed up the long wooded stairway, back to his Expedition. The shirtless boys followed, carting dive gear on their backs, eagerly accepting stacks of coins when they reached the top and pantomiming oral sex—their tongues pressed to the insides of their cheeks, their fingers clasped around invisible pricks—when Bobby turned his back on them. “Bakla!” They shouted in unison as the Expedition drove off. Benicio made the not-too-wild guess that bakla meant faggot. But Bobby seemed nonplussed by it. He rolled down all the windows and put the radio on high.

  BACK IN MANILA they exchanged cheery, forced goodbyes. Benicio returned to the cool air of the Shangri-La lobby with his dive bag hoisted on his shoulder. He stopped in at the reception before going upstairs, just on the off chance that his father might have left a message while he was gon
e. “No messages,” the concierge said as she typed away at her little computer, “but someone has been waiting to see you all morning. If you just have a seat in the lounge,” she pointed toward a grove of plush green armchairs at the far end of the lobby, “I’ll contact them right away.”

  Benicio rushed to the lounge and dumped himself into a chair. “Hello first,” he said, coaching himself. “Hello first. Hello first. Not: Nice of you to show up. Not: Where the fuck’ve you been? Not: They don’t have phones in Singapore? Just hello. Hello, Dad. It’s good to see you, you careless, fat, lying … Hello Dad. Just hello.”

  “Hi, Benny.” The voice that came from behind him was not his father’s voice.

  He stood up and turned to face Solita. “Don’t call me that,” he said.

  She didn’t look anything like she did in the green dress—or in his father’s shower. Her hair was up in a messy bun and she wore a pink T-shirt so tight that the stitching on her padded bra showed through in relief. Behind her stood a young boy, maybe about nine years old, clinging to the frayed hem of her miniskirt. “This is June,” she said, grabbing the boy by the scruff of his neck and pushing him toward Benicio. “June, say hello to Kuya Benny.”

  The boy kept his eyes on the deep carpet as he shuffled toward Benicio. He took hold of Benicio’s hand and without saying a word pressed his warm, slightly greasy forehead to the back of it. “Howard’s,” Solita said, gesturing to the boy with her lips and chin. “He’s your brother.”

  Benicio snapped his hand away and the startled boy ran back behind Solita. “He isn’t,” he said.

  “He is. He looks as much like Howard as you do. I think he looks more like Howard than you do.”

  Benicio’s fingers trembled and he balled them into loose fists to keep it from showing. “You want money,” he said. “You want cash, from me.”

  “No.” Solita furrowed her brow and took a step toward him. The boy stayed where he was, one outstretched arm still clinging to the threads of her skirt. “Yes. But that does not make June less your brother.”