“She wasn’t my ya-ya. And I don’t know her name.”
He glanced at her, sidelong. “I thought you said you were close.”
“We were, but I was little.” Monique chewed her lip. “It was a long time ago. I hardly knew my parents’ first names. I called her Tiya.”
“Auntie? That’s sweet. I’m sure all is forgiven.”
“She has nothing to forgive me of.”
“Sure now,” Reynato said, and went quiet. Sweet as he was trying to be, she could tell something was grating on him. But she couldn’t be bothered to push it, and they finished the drive in silence. The trees ahead became backlit by shimmering port lights. Passing the remains of an MP checkpoint, they rounded a bend and got their first good look at the old base. In a way it wasn’t all that different; the runway down south, the beaches, the orderly rows of housing like suburban sprawl were all familiar. But Olongapo had surged—it glowed bright as any Manila neighborhood—and the low skyline was spiked irregularly with neon.
“I’m starving,” Reynato announced, slowing so abruptly that Monique’s seatbelt locked. “Sorry. Just remembered that there’s a place here I love.” He pulled off the main road, returning the horn-honks of the jeepney behind them, and stopped at a shabby food stand slouching between American franchise burger joints. Greasy smoke rose from a little tin kiosk, licking a plywood sign on the roof that read Junior’s Tapsihan. Reynato ordered for them both: cured beef tapa, garlic rice and eggs over-easy, with bottles of banana ketchup and coconut vinegar for the table. The smell of the food redoubled Monique’s nostalgia. Why on earth had she suffered through Amartina’s faux-American cooking for a whole year when she could have been eating this? Joseph and the kids would have learned to love it.
They sat at one of several rotting picnic tables and ate. The other patrons watched Monique like she was a curious object. A man with horribly scarred arms stared with particular intensity, but turned away whenever she glanced back. Reynato ignored them all, speaking with his mouth full, some yolk clotting the stubble on his upper lip. “You should know that it’s looking pretty good for this Bridgewater guy. It’s confirmed, without a doubt, that he’s alive. We’ve made contact with the kidnappers—”
Monique swallowed too fast and felt the brief vertigo of almost choking. “Can we talk about something else, please?”
“Hey, I know it’s not your favorite subject. But the news is good. One of my best people met them today—and if I trust a life in anybody’s hands, they’re his. Folks on TV say this kidnapping is going to be a long, drawn-out ordeal. But no. I promise you it ends in days, not weeks or months.”
“And how does it end?”
“Howard Bridgewater lives. Good guys go home happy. Bad guys don’t go home at all.”
“Good guys?” Monique grunted in a way that she hoped sounded good-natured. “You sound like my son.”
“Your son’s smarter than you give him credit for. And speaking of that—how’s Howard’s kid holding up?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to me much.”
Reynato paused, as though he was giving Howard’s kid serious thought. “He’s lucky to have you.”
“Lucky?” Monique put down her large, bent spoon. “How do you figure? I mean, what good am I, exactly? Acting chief of American Citizen Services,” she sounded it out with revulsion. “Bullshit. I’m a phony! I do nothing all day but answer telephones. I carry tiny pieces of useless information from one person to another, and nothing I do makes that kid’s life—or anybody’s life, for that matter—any easier. And the few meaningful things I know—that the kidnappers are talking to police, for example—I can’t share because I’m not supposed to know them. I’m just as useless as all the people sitting at home and watching this awfulness on the news. More so, in fact, because they can at least turn it off when they want to.”
Reynato put his hand on hers. He still had egg on his lip. “You are not a phony.”
She pulled away. Of course she was a phony—it was just another word for liar. And he knew that. Saccharin sweet wasn’t in his usual repertoire. Nor was the quiet, supportive, steady behavior he’d practiced all week. He hadn’t even pulled any cute shit at Benicio’s briefing—he pretended not to know Monique from Eve.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked. “I mean, why take me on a mini-break to Subic? Why feed me tapsilog? Why bring me ballroom dancing? Why help me confront the girl who sold my son drugs? What the hell are we even doing here?” She looked around at the outdoor seating and caught the man with scarred arms staring again.
Reynato shifted his weight and smiled cagily. “You fascinate me.”
“What about me?”
“Your bruha powers, that’s what.”
“Be serious. Don’t lie to me.”
“Honest and serious are different. Which do you want?”
“Honest, then. Give me honest.”
“Fine. It’s your bruha powers.” He dropped the evasive smile for a stone cold poker face and stared at her. “I’ve never met a bruha before, and believe me, I’ve been looking. I think this could be the start of something special.”
Monique avoided his eyes and sighed like she was put out. “You’re exhausting.” She took another bite of tapsilog but the tangy, greasy beef was cold and had lost its charm. Reynato cleaned his plate, and hers, and said nothing more.
THEY GOT BACK ON THE ROAD, but instead of heading into the heart of the base they turned south, winding up the hills in the direction of Monique’s childhood home on Cubi Point. They drove just a few minutes and stopped at a cluster of low concrete bungalows that looked like opaque little greenhouses. It was the old bachelor officers quarters, subdivided and converted into a sort of interstate-style motel. An old administration building served as a front desk and lobby, and it looked out onto the officers’ pool that was dry and filled with brittle dead palm. “It’s no Shangri-La,” Reynato said. “But I thought we’d get some proper sleep, and maybe tomorrow we’ll see if we can find that house of yours. Does that sound all right?”
“It sounds great,” she said, too tired to go on questioning his motives. Reynato got out and trotted across the gravel lot to check them in. Monique got out as well, leaned against the Honda and gazed out over Subic Bay. From this distance the beaches looked like slivers of granite between the black water and the incandescent buildings. Cars pulsed between the shipping warehouses, now converted to nightclubs or shopping arcades or some such. Clouds rolled thick, blotting out most of the stars and Pinatubo, which didn’t bother her one bit.
Monique heard gravel crunching and turned, thinking Reynato had returned from the makeshift lobby. He had, but he wasn’t alone. The man with the horribly scarred arms who’d sat across from them at Junior’s Tapsihan stood beside him. Actually, slightly behind him. So close that they were touching. It took Monique a moment to process what she was seeing. Reynato’s right arm was pinned behind his back. The scarred man held a stubby little penknife to his throat. He must have followed them. He must have caught Reynato as he exited the lobby.
“It’s all right,” Reynato cooed. “Don’t panic.”
Monique was panicking.
“I think he just wants the car,” Reynato said, sounding less than calm himself. The man with the scarred arms nodded, exposing his face under his ball-cap as he did so. It wasn’t just his arms—his whole face looked like hamburger. Monique edged back to the Honda, pulled the keys out of the ignition and threw them at Reynato’s feet. The scarred man snorted and kicked them away.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked in Tagalog. “What do you want?”
The scarred man didn’t answer. His penknife sank a quarter of an inch into Reynato’s neck. Blood bubbled about the blade, trickling down his throat and disappearing below the fabric of his polo shirt. Monique remembered the nightmares she’d been having. Shawn and Joseph and Leila tied to palm trees in the jungle. Bandits hacking them to death with bolo knives, holding their h
eads in the air and posing for a digital camera. Her chest began to shake with sobs—she couldn’t help it. She felt pressure squeeze her lungs. Reynato’s eyes widened. “You’re almost there,” he whispered. “Do it. You can do it. Do it.”
“Wait,” she managed. “I’ve got something …” She edged back to the Honda and retrieved her purse from the backseat. She unzipped it and inched toward Reynato and the scarred man.
“Do it,” Reynato said. “Fucking do it. Bring the world down on him.”
Monique held out the open purse and the scarred man peered inside, a little hesitantly. She pulled out some bright cash and dropped it on the gravel between them. The scarred man looked down, and when he looked back up she had her pepper spray in hand. There was no way to get just him. She pressed the plunger home and doused them both in poison mist. They howled, Reynato dropping to the ground and the scarred man staggering backward. Monique gave him a running kick to the crotch, and when he fell she sprayed him again, almost emptying the can into his eyes and mouth. She took the penknife from his limp fingers and stabbed the puny, one-inch blade into his arm. She saw Shawn and Joseph, bloodied, in her head. Her rage was uncontainable.
The scarred man ran for it and Monique chased after, punching him in the back of the head, tripping him up at the heels. Blind, he crashed into a parked car and then toppled into the empty officers’ swimming pool. He scrambled out at the far end, disappearing into a bamboo thicket, howling as he went.
Monique rushed to the old administration building and told them to call the police. Then she helped Reynato into their room, locking the door, deadbolt and chain. He went into the tiny bathroom to wash out his eyes while she sat on the edge of the bed and tried to calm herself. For the longest time she was sure he was weeping. But when she went into the bathroom she realized he was laughing. Uncontrollably.
Chapter 25
THE ONE WITH THE SUN ON HER
After chasing Solita out and getting her barred from the hotel, Benicio spent some time tidying up his father’s ransacked suite. He began by collecting the papers she’d scattered across the floor and arranging them in vaguely relevant stacks on the table in the study. There were invoices, travel itineraries and printed e-mails—some achingly polite, others laced with profanity. There were also a few coffee-stained designers’ sketches for a some-day dive resort that Howard must have been planning to build down south. In one of the sketches the resort was called Benny’s. In another, Paradise Rock. He rolled the sketches together and placed them on the table as well.
The bedroom was a disaster, so he hit that next. He got the blazers and suit-jackets off the bed, turned their pockets back in and left them swaying quietly on wooden hangers in the closet. He picked socks up off the floor and folded them in pairs, turning one inside the other the way his mother used to. One of the socks had something hard inside the toe—a tightly folded wad of pesos that Solita must have missed. Benicio opened a dresser drawer to replace the socks, but after hovering over it for a full minute he found himself taking things out instead of putting them back in. He went through all the rolls of long black business socks that Solita hadn’t got to. Most were empty but many contained dollars, euros, and brightly colored pesos; bank-fresh and of high denominations. Benicio pulled the whole drawer out and emptied it onto the bed. He did this with all the dresser drawers, as well as his father’s nightstand and the storage cubbies in the closet. He went into the bathroom, where the sight of his father’s dive gear hanging from a sturdy towel rack momentarily startled him. It reflected darkly in the medicine cabinet door like the ghost of a frogman. He opened the cabinet, scooped the contents into a billowing undershirt, and added that to the mess atop the bed.
His fingers shook a little as he set about unfolding, unwrapping and unscrewing Howard’s things. He anticipated—even hungered for—a discovery that would shock him. Maybe a coke-dusted pocket mirror, a threatening letter from a missing person, some precious stones in a nondescript satchel or a ball gag. But all he found was money and a few nude photographs of Solita. He folded one of the photos three times over and placed it between Bobby’s and Monique’s business cards in his wallet. Then he laid out the cash in neat piles of like currencies. He counted it, and after converting those he was familiar with got a sum that was a little over $500,000. Christ. They were well off, he knew that, but half a million dollars? With no more security than a rubber band and a not-so-creative hiding place? Benicio counted a second time to make sure and then a third time to make sure of that. He did it a fourth time, and then a fifth.
HE AND ALICE spent the next two days at the embassy. On Thursday the Marine on duty granted them visitor’s badges, and they passed hours in a tiny media center in the annex. They were idle, mostly. Alice read yellowing stacks of back-issue Inquirers and Bulletins—her notes beside her always—while Benicio pretended to do research about the Abu Sayyaf online. But he was really just thinking about Solita. Solita and June. Solita and June, and all that cash he’d found in his father’s suite. The hours passed very slowly.
On Friday they met his father’s business partner for lunch at a carpeted Chinese restaurant across the boulevard. No one ate much. Hon was already there when they arrived, and he shot up from his table. His face shone with the memory of blubbering, and when they hugged—Benicio tried for the handshake but Hon was intent on the hug—Benicio felt the unpleasant slickness of cooled tears on his cheek. Hon hugged Alice as well, and Benicio was reminded of Howard when they’d picked him up at O’Hare, before the funeral. Howard had hugged her just like that. He hadn’t known who Alice was, but he knew she was with Benicio, and it was a sad time, so she got a hug, too.
Hon led them back to his table, where he’d been drinking ice water from a beer mug and eating a bowl of maraschino cherries. They sat. Hon stared at Benicio for a long while. “You’re different,” he finally said. “In the last picture I saw, you looked very different. You looked so much younger.” He ate a cherry. It seemed he was going to start crying again. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he said, quavering. “I know I’m not, but I feel responsible.”
“You shouldn’t feel responsible,” Alice said. She briefly touched his arm.
“I know. I’m not. But still. I should have said something. I should have checked in with other people when Howie was a no-show. I just figured he was with Charlie. I guess he figured that Howie was with me. And it’s just like Howie, you know? When he wants something … he wants it. He needs a break—he goes. He takes it. He ignores your calls. How could I have known what happened?”
“You couldn’t,” Benicio said.
“I couldn’t,” Hon said. He smiled sadly, as though happy they three agreed on this. He ate another cherry. “I saw you today, late morning,” he said. “If your dad could see it, he’d be really proud.”
“Thanks,” Benicio said, but he was pretty sure his father wouldn’t be proud. That morning he’d given a brief statement; hemmed-in under a scrim of cameras and boom microphones, just a rickety composite podium between him and the pressing press. Monique had been confident it would get carried wide but even she seemed surprised as they watched Benicio on CNN International not ten minutes later on a television in her office. The shot changed to stock footage of a jungle clearing where Abu Sayyaf terrorists rested rifle butts on their hips and pumped rocket-propelled grenade launchers above their heads like little barbells, the audio from Benicio’s statement still running as their mouths moved soundlessly. Then the picture of his father filled the screen—the one recovered from the kidnappers’ cell phone. It was the first time Benicio had seen it, and it was terrible. The shot switched back to him as he concluded the statement and took questions. He looked much more composed on TV than he remembered feeling. Too composed, he thought.
Benicio got up from his chair across from Hon and moved to sit in the one beside him. “I have something I need to ask you,” he said. The gesture, and the question, seemed to put Hon on guard. He straightened and rubbed his cheeks w
ith his shirtsleeve. He reached for another cherry and, finding that they were all gone, just left his fingers in the syrup at the bottom of the bowl.
“You found out about her,” Hon said. “I already know. Bobby told me how you cornered him last weekend. He shouldn’t have said anything. She’s none of his business.”
Alice perked up and shifted in her chair. Benicio hoped she’d excuse herself, but she didn’t. “That’s not what I want to talk about,” he said.
“Good,” Hon said, “because she’s none of my business, either.”
“I know she’s not. She’s nobody’s business but Howard’s.”
Hon nodded. His eyes had dried, but his cheeks were still wet, and fluorescent light shimmered off of them. “Well, what else can I tell you?” he asked.
Benicio leaned forward. “I want to know where Howard stands—money-wise. Why is there cash hidden all over his suite?”
Hon went from looking sad to just plain uncomfortable. He pulled his fingers from the cherry bowl and wiped them clean on a cocktail napkin. “Is this really the best time to be thinking bad thoughts about Howie?”
“I’m not thinking bad thoughts. But I want to know why he has eight thousand euros in his tissue box.”
Again, Alice straightened. Her leg touched Benicio’s under the table, but if it was a signal, he ignored it.
“You think Howie’s not straight with you?” Hon asked.
“I know he’s not straight with me. I’d like you to be.” Benicio tried to scooch his chair a little closer to Hon, but because of the deep carpet all he did was rock forward and back. “Was my father … is he into something illegal?”
“Illegal?” Hon grimaced and snorted. “You need laws for illegal. That’s cash-on-hand.” He said it as a single word. “That’s workable business work.”
“It’s a lot of cash on hand.”
“We have a lot of business.”
“How much? How much money has he hidden away?”
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