“Such a man might be hard to find.”
I put another twenty on the bar. “There is a saying in America: A good man is hard to find, but once found, he is priceless.”
The bill disappeared. “You are not in America, sir. Here, there is a price for everything. But you are obviously a generous person, and generosity is frequently repaid. Perhaps you will find what you seek in the morning. About ten o’clock, it is usually possible to find a taxi in front of the hotel.”
I thanked him and held up my cup. “Is it permitted to take the cup to my room?”
“Here in the P.I., what is not specifically permitted is forbidden.” He allowed himself a small smile. “But that is permitted. Enjoy your stay, sir.”
He and the waitress both watched as I walked out. April was awake when I got back to the room. She was sitting in one of the chairs with her arms crossed over her breasts. “Where have you been?” she exploded. “I’ve been up for an hour! I was worried sick!”
“I haven’t been gone an hour.”
“Don’t change the damned subject! Where have you been!”
“I went out for coffee.” I waved the cup at her as though it proved something.
“It doesn’t take an hour to get coffee!”
There was no point in repeating that I hadn’t been gone an hour. “I arranged for a driver for the morning.” I described my conversation with Pete, my impression of the political situation here. That mollified her a little, but she was still angry.
“You promised you wouldn’t go off on your own,” she told me. “You should have gotten me up. I could have helped.”
“How? He wouldn’t have opened up with you there. Some things have to be done alone,” I told her. “You’ll get your chance to help. Remember, I let you talk to the woman in El Paso first. Because it was better that way. When it is better for me to do the talking, I will. We can each do our part, but I’m going to be the one to decide!”
“We’ll see about that,” she said grimly. “Aren’t you going to drink your coffee?”
“I’m going back to bed.”
“Then give it to me.”
I handed her the cup and turned in, feeling persecuted. I lay awake until she calmed down and crawled in beside me. It took her long enough. After she turned off the light, she dug an elbow into my side and said, “Next time, wake me.” Then I could fall asleep. The punishment was over.
There was only one taxi on the street at ten the next morning. It was an old Chevy, heavily dented. The driver had about a thousand medallions, statues, religious pictures, even Barbie dolls glued to the dash. The upholstery was worn and torn. It might have been beige at one time. The most valuable part of the car was the stereo. That worked too well.
The driver hopped out when he saw us leave the hotel and look around. “You want a driver, sah? See all Manila? All Island? Maybe see mountains?”
He was in his late twenties or early thirties, with a thin face and bushy eyebrows. He combed his hair straight back, where it fell to the collar of the lacy white shirt favored by all the men on the street who weren’t obvious laborers. His smile was open and attentive, but he held himself as though he had spent many hours at attention, or on a parade field. April started to answer. I overrode her. “You bet, guy! You got a name?”
“You call me Pete, sah! Number one driver. I can take you anywhere you want, you understand?”
“That’s great, Pete! My girlfriend here wants to go shopping. You know a good store?”
That threw him. “Shopping?” He looked at her dubiously, as though not sure he had the right couple. “Shopping can do! What do you want to shop for, sah?”
“Pearls, Pete,” I told him. “The pearl of the Orient, right? Maybe a nice emerald ring for the little lady. And maybe some furniture too. You know about monkey wood?”
April was looking at me as though I’d gone crazy. Maybe I had. But I was spooked.
“Monkey wood? You mean Monkeypod? Like for bowls?”
“Sure! Bowls too. We want to shop for everything.”
“You don’t want to see mountains?”
“We’ve got mountains back home,” I told him. “Anyway, I hear the mountains are dangerous here. Snakes or something. You take us shopping, okay?”
“Shopping. Right on, sah.” He drove, shaking his head.
We spent the day going from place to place. April was impatient at first, but after an hour or two she got into the act, demanding to be taken to one store after another. I insisted on buying one particularly nice emerald dinner ring for her, mostly just to stay in character, and after that she caught the bug. By the time Pete dropped us back at the hotel late that afternoon, the backseat of the Chevy held a number of packages, mostly laces and silks.
Only after we had carried them up and dumped them on the bed did she question me. “What was wrong with him?”
“Maybe nothing. He looked wrong. I’m jumpy. We’ll wait and see. But if anything comes up, remember who you are. Holly Carter. I’m a dirty old man from Los Angeles with more money than sense, treating my girlfriend to a trip around the Orient. Right?”
She grinned. “Stick with the truth, huh?”
“Right.”
We cleaned up and went down for dinner about eight. There wasn’t a table immediately, so we went to the lounge for a drink. Pete Number One was behind the bar again, listening to a Filipino in dress slacks and another of those fancy shirts. He didn’t say anything when he saw us. I waved to him and smiled like I’d just found a long lost friend. “Hey, Pete,” I called, “thanks for the driver! He did a number one job!”
I sat April at one of the booths and ordered two San Miguels from the waitress. As soon as she left, the man who had been talking to Pete came over. He pulled out a chair and sat without asking.
“Mr. Stephenson?”
“You got that exactly right, friend!” I gave him a hearty handshake. “And who might you be?”
“My name is Yabut. Colonel Yabut.” His black eyes stared into mine. He spoke without smiling. “You gave my driver quite a runaround today.”
“Your driver? You mean that nice fella was working for you? You own a taxi company or something? You’ve got some damned nice employees. That Pete was real patient with us, and he knows some of the best shops in town.”
“I do not own a taxi company, Mr. Stephenson. You should think of me as a policeman.”
“What? We just went shopping, you know. Did we break any laws?”
“You asked about the Huks and the NPA last night. These people are very dangerous. They are killers, Mr. Stephenson. Bank robbers. Gangsters. They run whorehouses and extortion rackets. They take the money of your soldiers and airmen and use it against our government. And you talked about contacting them. Naturally, we are very interested.”
“Last night? I was just talking about finding Freddy, for God’s sake! I don’t even know if that was his right name. I just met him the once, when I was stationed out at Clark. But he did me a big favor and I wanted to look him up.”
“You want to find a man named Freddy,” he repeated. “Tell me about him. Also about this favor he did you.”
“Like I said, I don’t even know if that was his name. He was a rice farmer. He must be almost seventy years old now. Anyway, I’d taken a jeep out for a ride. Wasn’t supposed to, of course, but I had some time off and I figured, what the hell, I’d never see the Philippines again, so I went for a joy ride out toward the mountains where they grow the rice, and the damned jeep broke down. Well, I was stuck! I didn’t know crap about fixing cars, and if I didn’t get that jeep back to base that night, I was up for a court-martial. You see my problem? And then Freddy came walking down the road with his daughter, and he offered to fix the damned thing for me. So you can see why I remember him. He saved my tail that day.”
“You want to look up a man who fixed a jeep for you twenty years ago? That hardly seems likely, Mr. Stephenson.”
“Well, there was a little more to it
than that,” I told him. I acted embarrassed and glanced at April. “This all happened way before you were born, honey. You got to remember that.”
I turned back to Yabut and leaned forward, speaking earnestly. “You see, Colonel, while Freddy was working on the jeep, there was nothing for me and the girl to do, and it was hot on the road, so we went off to a little stream for a drink. And one thing led to another, and…well, anyway, I guess we had a little affair. And I felt bad about that ever since, after the way Freddy helped me and all. So that’s the real reason I wanted to look him up. Because I felt bad about what I did back then.”
He looked at me in silence. Finally he said, “You are playing me for a fool. A man doesn’t come halfway around the world to see a woman he made love to twenty years ago.”
“Well, I didn’t,” I said. “We were here anyway, and I got to remembering, and I snuck down and kind of sounded out the situation. That’s all.”
“You were going to see her!” April accused me. “You were going to see another woman. On our trip! You promised me you’d stop the women if I came with you, and already you’re at it again! On our first night!”
It was hard to keep my admiration from showing when I looked at her. “Darn it, Holly, I never went to see anyone! It was just the remembering, that’s all.” I put my hand over hers and tried to look soulful. “You know I love you, honey. Them other women were just mistakes, that’s all.”
Yabut decided to interrupt us. “Let me see your passports,” he demanded.
We handed them over and he studied them carefully. When he passed them back, he asked, “Do you work for the American government in any way, Mr. Stephenson?”
I saw where he was going and decided to muddy the waters a little bit.
“I have worked for them in the past.”
“But not now?”
“I’m a taxpayer, colonel. I work for them the first five months of the year. After that I get to work for myself.”
“You’re being deliberately vague,” he said. “You might be interested in knowing that I have been in contact with a man from your embassy about you. A man in a position to know the American interests here. He has assured me that you are not acting for your government. That you are on your own. You do not have their protection. And that means you are vulnerable. You should be very careful what you do here.”
“The American government has interests, and then it has interests. Don’t trust what you hear from a clerk.”
“The man I spoke to is hardly a clerk. I have dealt with him for many, many years,” he paused and watched me thoughtfully. “But I am all too aware that your government sometimes plays more than one game at a time.”
I smiled at him innocently. “Well, all that’s neither here nor there. I’m just on vacation with my…my girlfriend. And I sure don’t need any more trouble than you’ve already got me into.”
“Pig!” April said.
“Then stay out of the mountains, Mr. Stephenson.” Yabut stood up. “We will be keeping an eye on you. For your own protection, of course.”
April watched him leave, then turned to me. “A farmer’s daughter?” She laughed. “Your jeep broke down on the road, and this farmer came along and offered to fix it if you’d just take his daughter into the bushes for a drink of water?”
“Can it,” I told her. “The bar has ears. Let’s go eat.”
Yabut’s appearance had cast a pall over the evening, at least for me. It had also given me some things to think about. The NPA and maybe some of the old Huks were still active in the mountains, of course. But they were going to be harder to find with official attention directed my way. And then there was the mysterious man from the embassy Yabut had contacted. Our passports would stand a superficial scrutiny, but I didn’t want them looked at too carefully. If anything had been set in motion by Yabut’s questions, our time was limited. We had to get back to the states and lose these identities quickly. On the other hand, I’d left Yabut with some doubt about my true status, and possibly some suspicion of the man from the embassy. And he had given me an idea for making contact, if I could get April to go along with it.
Our internal clocks were set to some time zone in the middle of the ocean. We turned in soon after dinner. By nine in the morning, I had rented a jeepney and checked us out of the hotel. I didn’t say goodbye to Pete.
We drove around Manila for a while, taking in some of the sights and doing a bit of shopping for the sake of the eye Yabut had promised to keep on us, and then drove to Angeles City, out near Clark Air Base. By early evening, we were checked into a hotel called the Presidente. We spent another few hours driving around, familiarizing ourselves with the area. The hotel was within walking distance of the strip.
I recognized it immediately. The buildings were two or three stories, hotels and apartments above, bars, massage parlors and strip joints on the ground level. A lot of traffic on the street: young Americans wearing short hair and civilian clothes. The bars had names like the Green Light, the Yellow Pearl, Half Moon House. Their neon signs featured girls dancing in bikinis. Glass-covered pictures framed the doorways. I didn’t have to look at the pictures to know what they advertised.
April looked at me curiously when I took a second tour through the area, then watched the girls standing in the doorways. They were inevitably young, pretty, and very friendly. Their clothing tended to be party dresses and high heels.
“Nice neighborhood,” she said dryly.
“Just looking.”
“Do you have a reason?”
“Yes.” I drove us back to the hotel and found the restaurant. After dinner, we went to our room. I told April that I was going out and that I’d be late. She followed me to the door, as I had expected. I turned on her. “Look, you can’t come tonight.”
“Where are you going?”
“When Yabut was talking to us yesterday, he said the Huks run the whorehouses in town. I’m going to look them over. You’d be out of place.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I shook my head. “Why would a man take a girl along to a whorehouse?” I asked her.
“Maybe I’m kinky?” She said. “Do you think I’m crazy? I’m not going to let you out alone in a place like that. You might be tempted to do more than ask questions.”
“I wouldn’t be half so tempted if you’d wear a nightgown like a decent woman.”
“Who said I was a decent woman? Besides, I want to see.”
“See what, for Christ’s sake?”
“See that you don’t get in any trouble, for one thing.”
“I won’t get in any trouble.”
“You might not call it trouble.” She put her back to the door and glared at me. “If you go, I go.”
I tried one last tack. “With you along, I’m going to have more trouble explaining what I’m doing there. You won’t be helping. You’ll be making it harder.”
“You never had a hard time explaining anything in your life,” she said. “If anyone asks, tell them you’re looking for a farmer’s daughter. And as for the other, I’m used to making things harder for you. I’m going.”
There was no way out. “Okay,” I said. “But keep your mouth shut.”
“Great!” She was delighted. “I’ll be ready in a minute.” She spent half an hour on her face and applied way too much makeup. I finally had to remind her that she was supposed to be a shopper, not merchandise.
My intention was to spend the evening drinking and looking over the action. I wanted to get an idea how much money was flowing through the shops, and maybe a hint of which ones were run by the Huks. The owners of record would be middlemen, of course, but it might be possible, with enough pressure, to learn what I needed to know. How to contact Freddy, if he was still alive.
Our first stop was a place called the Bird of Paradise. It turned out to be a straightforward strip joint. April watched the girls on stage grind their way down to tassels and G-string, then toss those into the audience and parade back and forth.
She seemed more interested in the audience than in the girls. Of course, they had nothing she needed to pay to see. I watched the action at the bar and promoted a conversation with the girl behind it that went nowhere.
She was interested in selling me drinks, of course, but became very stupid when I asked who the owner was. A few minutes later, an older woman came up to me, told me she was the manager, and asked if she could help me. I told her I was an American journalist and I wanted to do a feature on the local night life. She didn’t buy it for a minute, but I got the feeling that she owned the place. I took April out of there as soon as the next girl finished her set.
The second place was called Seven Delights. It was a big step down from the Bird. The girls danced there too, but without a stage. They danced on a table in the center of the room, and they started where the others had ended. Naked. Not nude. Nude is too classy a word. These girls were bare-ass naked.
I tried a different approach. Instead of talking to the employees, I bought a drink for a sergeant named Jim, who looked like he had spent more than one tour in the Orient and was too old for his rank. He was a leathery, brown-haired man about my age. He let me buy the drink, but his mind and his eyes were on April.
“Who’s the lady with you?” he asked.
“The lady with me.” I emphasized me. April was listening and pretending to ignore us. I felt her foot on my leg under the table.
“So what’s the score?” he asked.
“Looking around. Checking things out.”
“Looking for anything in particular?”
“A little information, maybe.”
He looked wary. “What about?”
“Not you. Not the base. The action.” I nodded vaguely toward the bar, the girls. “You been around? You know what’s what?”
“Got a crib in the neighborhood. Yeah, I know what’s happening. What you wanna know?”
“The ownership around here. I’ve got a little free capital, and I was thinking maybe I could pick up a piece of the action.”
“Buy in, you mean?”
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