by Don Prichard
We. Eve laughed. ’Lijah’s excitement almost exceeded hers. After her generous tip this morning, he’d given her his name and said he’d come running whenever she called, day or night. “Not yet, ’Lijah. Not till they come out with everyone cuffed.”
It was hard to sit. To wait. To inhale the stale scent of passengers-past that radiated from the cab’s back seat. She cracked her window open. “Have you ever been in a raid, ’Lijah? I want to know what it’s like.”
’Lijah inhaled a noisy snuff. “Once maybe.” He peeked at her, took in her grin. “Maybe more ’n once. Cops, they come bustin’ in, send your heart through the roof with their yellin’ and pistol-wavin’. ‘Don’t nobody move,’ they yell. ‘Hands behind your heads.’ And all you wanna do is run.”
“Did you?” Her stomach lurched to her throat. Would Danny Romero have an escape route handy?
“They got ya cuffed before your feet can move. Got ya inside the police van and hauled off to jail, and all ya can think about is you hope your mama don’t find out.”
They both laughed.
“Here ya go—they got ’em outside, stuffin’ ’em in the vans.”
“Go!”
’Lijah stomped on the accelerator, cab tires squealed, and Eve’s head hurtled toward the windshield. She barely caught herself in time. “Whoa, ’Lijah! Slow and steady or we’ll end up cuffed in the paddy wagon too.”
Too late. Every face was turned toward them. Two policemen approached the cab at a run, pistols in hand, arms locked in a straight aim at her and ’Lijah.
“Oh Lawrd help us!” ’Lijah moaned.
“Get out of the cab, hands up,” the policemen roared.
Eve slowly opened her door. “Don’t run, ’Lijah. I’ve got your back. We’ll be fine.” She stepped onto the roadway and up onto the sidewalk. Before she could open her mouth, a policeman had her hands cuffed behind her back and was marching her toward the arc of police vehicles now barring the street.
“I’m Judge Eriksson,” she barked at her captor. “Take me to Attorney Bradley Henshaw, right now.”
A tall figure broke away from the crowd of blue uniforms and strode toward her. “What the—” He halted and glared at Eve. “I told you to stay away!”
“I did. The raid is over.” She gave him a sweet look instead of the defiant one she wanted to fling at him. “C’mon, Brad, don’t cut me out now.”
“Let her loose”—Brad snagged Eve’s arm in a steel-tight grip—“and hold the cabbie.”
’Lijah moaned.
Eve eyed the group of young girls being escorted to a police van. Sixteen of them. All Asian. A half-cry, half-whimper escaped her throat. “Sampaguitas!”
“Not all of them are. I’m sorry, Eve.” Brad’s hold on her arm softened.
She looked closer. The tallest girl, clad more provocatively than the others—probably the “hostess” of the girls—turned her face toward Eve. Raised her eyebrows in apparent recognition. Smiled. No … sniggered.
Eve’s breath stopped, caught in a bear trap.
Natasa.
“I … that’s not …” No. It must be Sissy, Natasa’s cousin … or whatever she was. This girl looked like Natasa, but older, much older. Wicked … not sweet and innocent.
Her knees went weak, and Brad’s grip tightened to support her. “Natasa. I’m afraid so, Eve. And not twelve years old, by any means.” His voice went gruff, the way it did when he had something to say he didn’t like. “It gets worse, Eve.”
“You didn’t get Romero?” Shock burst like a spark inches from a pool of gasoline in her chest. She inhaled heavily to extinguish it.
“We got Danny Romero. Red-handed.”
“Then what—?” Her gaze traveled in sluggish confusion along Brad’s raised arm to his pointed finger to its target.
Rock.
A policeman was pushing Rock’s head low enough to miss hitting it in his climb into a police car’s back seat.
The car door slammed. Her heart echoed it in a jump-start to her brain.
Rock?
He had been in the nightclub? He visited prostitutes? She blinked at the fog creeping into her gray cells.
Her eyes leaped back to Natasa, Or selling their services?
She gasped, grabbed at Brad’s arms. Horror churned her stomach. Sucked the marrow from her bones.
“Another deception,” Brad growled. “He’s not Rock Giannopoulus. He’s Ric Romero, Danny Romero’s youngest son.”
Everything inside Eve went cold. Shut down. Hardened to stone.
From far, far away, she heard a voice of steel say, “Get me to the cab. I’m going home.”
***
The next morning, Eve rose from a sleepless night and telephoned Brad. “I want those flowers that were delivered to the nightclub.” When they arrived at her house, she stuffed an armload into the back seat of her car and mashed the rest into the trashcan. She told Crystal she’d be back in an hour and drove to the cemetery where sixteen-year-old Marikit Santos Torres was buried.
She hauled the flowers to Marikit’s grave and dumped them in front of the gravestone. “I made you a promise …” The words struggled from her mouth.
She sank to her knees. The ground was cold on her legs. Hard as stone. One by one, she broke the stem of each flower and piled the debris like a funeral pyre onto the grave. The harsh treatment of hauling and dumping the Sampaguitas had loosed their blossoms. Her throat caught as the oval petals, white as snow in sunlight, settled like a satin blanket across the gravesite.
The memory of young Marikit came to her, as fresh as if she’d visited her in the hospital last night. A white sheet had covered the slender teen up to her chest, revealing a spectrum of black and blue bruises across her arms, bare shoulders, and face. Her left eye was swollen shut. Blood caked her lips, both ears, and a swath of cuts across her cheeks.
Marikit. Danny Romero had gotten to the girl and ended her life before Eve could get her to a safe house. But now he’d pay for it. Pay for all the young lives he’d ruined. Tears blurred Eve’s eyes, washing away the memory. The tightness gripping her throat loosened.
“These flowers are laid to rest with you, Mari. I’ll bring different flowers next time. The Sampaguitas are done. It’s over. The girls have been rescued, and Danny Romero arrested.”
She stood, fighting the tears that made her voice crack. “You were brave, Mari. You risked your life to save little Tala, to get her back home.” She clenched her eyes shut and inhaled deeply, as she had four years ago, fighting the horror of Tala, only eight years old, trapped in trafficking by Danny Romero. Mari’s rescue failed, and Mari had paid the price of her life.
“Tala was there with the girls, twelve years old now. She doesn’t talk.” Eve stopped, her lungs clamped shut. The tears she’d been damming flooded her face until finally she could breathe again. “But maybe,” she whispered, “maybe it’s not too late and she can be helped.
“I’ll tell her about you, Marikit. And I’ll tell her … I’ll tell her justice has been done.”
Chapter 59
January 1985
Jake slammed his fist onto Mendoza’s desk. “This has got to stop! I tell you, Emilio is behind this sabotage.”
Seated behind his desk, the warden glared at the spot of mahogany Jake had dared to violate.
Jake took a step back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.” He inhaled twice to lower the flames fanning his anger. Offending the warden was not going to win the man away from Emilio and his bribes. “There must be something we can do to stop this destruction.” We—as if he and the warden were on the same page.
“Soon, Emilio will be gone.”
“Gone?” Jake lowered himself into the spindly cane chair facing the warden’s desk. Gone where? To trial? To death row?
“He has served his time. Papers have come through.”
“Served his—” Rage blasted Jake out of his chair. It fell backwards onto the floor with a loud clatter. The prison guard i
n the corner jerked his rifle to his shoulder. “Served his time?” Jake slapped his palms onto the edge of the desk and leaned in. “You mean paid a bribe!”
The warden shot to his feet. “Sit down! How dare you talk to me so.” Lips and eye tightened as he watched Jake place the cane chair back onto its legs and plop down. “Guard, remove him.”
Jake snarled at the rifle barrel poked into his ribs. He wasn’t chained. It took every bit of grit he could muster to not smack the rifle away and slam the guard to the floor. This time he didn’t apologize. Didn’t kowtow. He hated all this groveling before the warden to win his cooperation for something the warden should be doing in the first place.
And releasing Emilio from prison? Jake strode through the prison offices, banging the doors behind him so hard they sounded like rifle shots. The guard ran to keep up with him. At the prison gate, Jake flung the gate wide after the guard unlocked it, making the little man chase after it, cussing.
He stopped in the middle of the courtyard, every muscle taut, fingers flexing in and out of fist mode. As for Emilio … he’d rather kill him than see him go free.
***
Jake let Puno persuade him to wait the two days until Detective Lee made his weekly visit. “No bribe is big enough to set free a murderer,” Puno insisted. “Lee has access to records. Get facts, then act.”
Lee arrived a day early with a contingent of technicians to work on the new prison. The warden, as usual, toured the construction site with Jake and Lee. Not once did the unmasked eye look Jake’s way, nor did the tight lips address him.
“A bit of tension between you and Mendoza?” Lee asked, once he and Jake were alone in Lee’s car.
Jake cranked his neck to release the tension that had ridden his shoulders like a cowboy with spurs during the inspection. “Emilio,” he grunted.
“Now what?”
“Mendoza said he’s served his time and is getting out soon.”
“And you aren’t saying good riddance?”
Jake stared at him for a minute. “You don’t know, do you?” How could that knowledge have slipped by the detective? “Emilio is the captain of the Gateway, the cruise ship that disappeared after he murdered all the passengers except Eve, Betty, Crystal, and me.”
Lee’s head jerked backward. “I didn’t know.” His eyes darted from side to side, as if scanning his memory. “I remember about the hunt, but there was nothing in the newspapers and nothing said in the police department about the captain being caught.” His eyes latched onto Jake’s. “I would have heard.”
“Then he’s in prison for some other reason.” The tightness in Jake’s stomach flipped into a chest-radiating glow. It soared to his throat, the tips of his ears, the top of his head. “Emilio has never been arrested for the Gateway murders. We can get him!” He grabbed the detective’s shoulders as if to hug him. Lee leaned away, and Jake laughed and slapped him on the back. “How soon can you find out what he’s here for?”
Lee shoved a bundle of letters at Jake. “Get out of my car, and I’m on my way.”
“Get right back to me. I can’t wait a week.”
“You bet. A soon as I find out what crime he’s here for—and I’ve stopped his release.”
Jake didn’t hug the guard who escorted him back to the gate, nor the two guards holding open the iron bars. But when he got to Puno, he locked the little man into a bear hug, lifted him off the floor, and danced around his dorm room, laughing and laughing.
***
Dear Jake, Crystal wrote. She went on for pages about returning to school after Christmas vacation, and the usual who-said-what among her classmates and youth group friends. Jake jumped ahead to the end of her letter, where she always talked about Eve.
Eve’s still grumpy about Danny Romero getting out on bail. She says last year a good law was passed that wouldn’t let him get bail if he was a danger to the community, but the judge said he wasn’t and let him go until trial. Oh, I said judge, but it was a magistrate. I’m learning all about the differences now that Eve’s one. She said Romero is going to postpone the trial for as long as he can. But she’s also happy because, whenever it happens, the evidence against him will put him away for good.
Jake smiled all the way through his letter back to Crystal, telling her about Captain Emilio. He left room to add onto it when Detective Lee returned with further news. He also dared to ask a question Eve probably wouldn’t want brought up: Have you ever told Eve about Captain Emilio and what happened with all the passengers? He knew Eve read his letters. Maybe his question would prompt her to ask Crystal about the event. Even better would be if it prompted Eve’s own memory of what had happened.
Dana’s envelope contained two letters. He opened both before reading them. One was from a young man whose name had been mentioned more and more often in Dana’s letters. Bentley Hampton. Jake read it first.
Colonel Chalmers, Sir:
We met four years ago at West Point soon after you returned from being shipwrecked. I am in love with your daughter and want to ask you for her hand in marriage. We would like to marry soon after we graduate in June.
I will leave it to Dana to present my character to you to avoid presumption on my part.
Respectfully, Cadet Bentley Hampton
Jake bowed his head. He’d missed out on Dana’s years at the Point. He had left her there as an eighteen-year-old girl, and now she was a woman of twenty-two. Soon to be a second lieutenant in the United States Army. Soon to be a wife. In those four years, he’d gotten to see her three times. Once after he returned from a year of shipwreck on a Philippine island, and twice at Christmas break while he was in a Philippine prison.
Not sadness, not regret, but a sweet joy permeated his soul. How good of God to have placed her in the safekeeping of West Point, of her brother in the same place and time-frame, and now of Bentley. Jake’s journey over those four years had been a turbulent one. He was grateful it was he who had borne a burden, and not her.
He turned to her letter and chuckled through her lengthy lionization of Bentley Hampton. If the man was half the knight in shining white armor she said he was, why, he was certainly worthy of his daughter’s hand in marriage. But Jake already knew that. Had read his character four years ago when they first met. Had heard of his Christian testimony through Brett’s letters.
The big surprise in the letter came at the end.
Dad, I know you’ve been sad to miss out on so much of Brett’s and my life these past four years. I don’t want you to miss out on my wedding. I’m coming there to the Philippines. I’m proud of you for building the new prison. I want to see it. I want to be married in it.
Jake almost dropped the letter. Every molecule of oxygen in his lungs leaped out his mouth and nose, maybe his ears too. What? His brain numbed over.
He blinked until a reverse exhale finally ballooned body and mind into sensibility.
Almost into sensibility.
Because, deep down, he wanted to do it. He wanted the new prison to host his daughter’s wedding.
Chapter 60
February
“Papa?”
Danny Romero stiffened. Clutched the phone to his ear.
Only one of his sons ever called him that name. His office disappeared in a shroud of silence. His body functions ceased. Nothing there but ear-crushing numbness. Then his heart began to beat. Louder and louder, as if hammering on the underside of a coffin lid. His breath chuffed through nostrils strained to capture oxygen. A tremor stirred in his chest. Shot to his brain. Spattered into shudders that shook his whole body.
“’Milio?”
It couldn’t be.
“Yes, Papa, it’s me.”
A wail sprang from his lungs. Wild. Primeval. A beast awakened from a long sleep. Sobs choked his throat in guttural rasps. “Emilio”—his lips shaped the words in awkward spurts—“is it … really you?”
“Yes, Papa. I’m sorry. I’ve been in hiding from my brothers. They killed my wife and son, and�
�”
“No, ’Milio, not your son. He is here, safe with me. Come home. I thought you were dead.” His lungs threatened more sobs.
“I can’t, Papa. I’m in prison. I need help. I don’t have much time to talk.”
Romero gripped the phone, grateful the line was no longer bugged, and listened to Emilio’s hurried account of serving time in the Philippines for a bar fight and resisting arrest.
“Last month, my sentence was up. I was coming home to see you, Papa, but now they’ve arrested me for”—his son hesitated—“for murdering the Gateway passengers.”
The Gateway? Romero’s heart lurched. He had dismissed the disappearance of the cruise ship back when he thought it and Emilio had been lost at sea. “What murders?” he growled.
“I gotta go, Papa. I staged the shipwreck so my brothers would think I drowned. Please, I need money to hire a lawyer for the trial.” Another hesitation, as if to give Romero a few seconds to process the information. Or the lack of it.
“And I need you to hire an assassin for me, send him to the prison. Salonga Prison, north of Manila. The swine broke my shoulder so I can’t fight. It’s a matter of vengeance. But I don’t want him killed; I want him maimed for life.”
“Who?”
“Jake Chalmers.”
“I know that name.” A click on the other end, followed by a dial tone, gave Romero plenty of time to remember. Yes, Jake Chalmers—the man whose answering machine Romero had used to retaliate against District Attorney Bradley Henshaw for his wiretap.
Chalmers had hurt his boy. Romero breathed in fire. His bones shook in the inferno of his wrath. Oh yeah, he knew just who to hire. If it cost every penny he had, it would be worth it.
***
Jake stood by Lee’s side, observing the new prisoner as the guards unchained the man. Short, dark, of indeterminate ethnicity. Which of the three prison groups would claim him? “I may need to intervene for this one,” he muttered to Lee. “Doesn’t look Muslim, and Emilio’s group will pare him to nothing in minutes.”