by Mark Dawson
“And then?”
“They had the whole district out searching for you. I told them I didn’t get a good look at the truck, but there were witnesses on the street who did. Where is it now?”
“We torched it.”
Milton noticed that she was looking at the door. An older woman who bore a striking resemblance to Josie was standing there. She was holding the hand of a young boy.
“Mama!” Josie called out, waving at her.
The old woman turned. The boy turned, too, and, on seeing Josie, he tugged his hand free and ran full pelt toward the table.
Josie hugged him, grimacing as he bumped up against her leg, and then delicately disentangled him.
The old woman reached the table and looked down at Josie’s stretched out leg and the walking stick. She put her hand to her face. Josie struggled to her feet and embraced her, then spoke earnestly to her again. Milton could tell that she was trying to reassure her. The boy saw the stick and Josie spoke calmly to him, too.
They finished their conversation. “They haven’t seen me since I was shot,” she explained. “I haven’t been home. And I thought it best not to tell them on the phone. They’d only worry.”
“Do they know who I am?”
“No.” She gestured to where Milton was sitting and spoke in Filipino again. Milton caught his name at the end of the sentence.
He turned to Josie’s mother. “Hello,” he said.
The woman regarded him with unmasked suspicion.
Josie spoke to her again. “Mama is very protective of me. She doesn’t mean to be rude.”
“It’s fine,” Milton said. “I’d be suspicious, too.” He turned to the boy. “And this is your son?”
The boy looked up at him shyly.
The boy looked at his mother and then at Milton. He showed the same suspicion as his grandmother.
“Angelo,” Josie chided, “say hello.”
“Hello.”
Milton had never been good with children. “Hello,” he said. “How are you?”
The boy shrugged.
“He’s shy,” Josie apologised. “But he speaks very good English.”
“Do you?” Milton asked.
“Mama says so,” Angelo said quietly. “Are you her friend?”
“I am,” Milton said.
“She’s been shot.”
He said it with wide eyes, as if the information, when shared with his friends at school, would mean an elevation in his status.
Milton smiled at him.
“Mama,” Josie said, before continuing in Filipino.
The older woman nodded and took the boy’s hand and led him away from the table.
“I asked her to give us a moment,” Josie explained.
Milton stood. “It’s okay. I’ll go. You should be with them. I don’t want to intrude.”
She ignored that. “You asked what I did last night. I didn’t get to finish. I went to see Dalisay in the hospital. He’s going to make it. Another centimetre either side and he’d be dead now, just like I could’ve been dead. We were both lucky. I spoke to him and he helped me make up my mind. So I went back to my desk, wrote up my resignation letter and mailed it. I’m done.”
Milton listened to her and, when she was finished, he reached out and laid his hand over hers.
“I don’t blame you. I would’ve done the same thing.”
She took her hand away. “Principles are great, but now I have to put food on the table. Got any ideas?”
“Maybe,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“There’s one more thing you can do for me first.”
She nodded that he should go on.
“They’ve identified Logan’s body,” he said. “They think it’s me.”
“And you want them to think that?”
“Yes. I left my prints on the gun I left there. They’ve matched it with the prints you took when you arrested me.”
“So you want me to say that I saw you being shot? An unidentified man shot you and Mendoza, and then the same guy shot me in the leg.”
“Could you do that?”
“Sure. What’s one more lie going to mean? I’m already up to my neck in them.”
“When I was in the car with Mendoza on the way to Tondo, I made him take the expressway. Do the cameras on the toll booths work?”
“Usually,” she said.
“If you check the video, you’ll be able to find his car. I made sure I was looking at the camera. We used the second lane from the right. You’ll be able to match it with my photos and prove I was in his car. I doubt you’ll need anything else.”
She nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.”
Milton took the leather satchel and gave it to her. “You asked if I could help. I can. Here.”
She unzipped the satchel, opened the mouth and looked inside. Milton could see the thick wedges of bank notes.
“What is this?”
“I thought you—”
“Where did you get it?”
“From Mendoza. I found it under the floor in his villa.”
She zipped the bag up again and put it on the table. “No.”
“You said it yourself—you’re going to need money.”
“Not if it’s dirty.”
“It’s just money. It doesn’t matter where it came from.”
“Of course it does.”
“Keep it. Donate it. Do whatever you want with it. It’s up to you.”
She stared at the bag for a moment. Milton could see that she was considering it. He could guess at her competing thoughts: she was weighing the integrity that was so obviously important to her against the exigencies of providing for her son without a regular wage.
“Thank you,” she said at last.
“It’s the least I could do.”
He offered her his hand and she took it.
“Be careful, John.”
“You too.”
He was about to leave when she put her hand to her forehead. “Wait,” she said. “I almost forgot. I brought you something, too.”
She reached down awkwardly and collected the bag from the floor. She put it on the table and pushed it over to Milton. He opened it and reached inside. It contained the things that she had taken from him when he had been arrested.
He took out his copy of the Big Book and flipped through the pages.
“I went and got it from evidence,” she said. “I thought you’d want it.”
“I do. Thank you.”
He saw the flashes of yellow where he had highlighted the passages that meant the most to him. They reminded him that he needed to get to a meeting.
“Where are you going to go?” she asked.
“Haven’t decided yet. I need some time to think.”
“I’ll see you around then, Milton.”
“Good luck.”
The old woman and the boy were waiting in the road outside the café. Milton paused and knelt down before the boy. “Your mother is very brave,” he said. “Look after her.”
Milton didn’t know whether Angelo would understand him, but the boy stood a bit straighter and gave a solemn little nod. “I will,” he said.
Milton smiled at him and shook his little hand.
He stood, said goodbye to Josie’s mother, and made his way back to his car.
90
MILTON DROVE for four hours. The city of Lucena was a hundred and twenty miles southeast of Manila, and he followed the main north–south route to Calamba and then turned to the east. He passed the wide inland waterway of Laguna de Bay and then the holy mountain of Mount Banahaw. He stopped to refuel and looked out at the volcano, its huge bulk wreathed with clouds and dominating the landscape for miles around.
His thoughts ran away with him again. He had spent the drive thinking about Josie and Angelo, and that, in turn, had prompted him to think about Jessica and her son. The suggestion that he might have been a father had stirred
up a maelstrom of feelings that he hadn’t even started to unpack; in truth, he didn’t know where to start. That vague possibility, raised by a woman that he hadn’t seen for ten years, had caused him to leave his cloistered life and fly halfway around the world. It had defused his natural caution and had very nearly led to his death. His impulsive reaction was out of character and it raised questions and possibilities that he had never considered before.
He had never thought himself capable of paternal feelings. Children made him feel awkward. He didn’t know what to say to them. He didn’t know how to deal with them. More than all of that, he didn’t think he deserved the happiness that children might bring. He had shunned conventional relationships for the same reason. He had always believed he had too much to atone for to allow himself the luxury of happiness.
What had changed?
He didn’t know.
He didn’t really know why he was driving south, either, only that it was something that he felt he had to do.
Milton went inside the gas station to pay and bought a bundle of twelve cigarillos, unfiltered cigarettes that were wrapped in colourful printed paper. He went outside and lit up. The stick was longer than the brands that he bought at home, and the tobacco had a sweet kick during the drag. They were probably unhealthy, but Milton didn’t care. He needed a vice, and this was better than the alternative. They were more intense, too, than the cigarettes that he usually smoked, and that was something he could use to take his mind off his confusion and what he was intending to do.
He got back into the car, wound down the windows, and set off to the east once more.
THE ADDRESS that Ziggy had found was on Evangelista Street.
It ran through a low-rent commercial district, and, as Milton cruised along it, he passed a pharmacy, a car wash and a women’s fashion shop. The satnav bleeped that he had reached his destination; he pulled over into a space at the side of the road, checked the address once again, and got out.
He walked back along the street until he got to Papay, a fast-food bakery that was advertised by a cartoon character designed to look like Popeye in a chef’s hat. There was a faded hoarding above the shop, and suspended from two chains attached to a rickety L-shaped pole was a sign that creaked as it oscillated back and forth in the light breeze that blew in off the sea. The café was housed on the ground floor of a two-storey building. The paint was peeling away, the windows were barred, and washing had been hung out to dry on the first-floor balcony.
Milton approached. Access to the interior of the bakery was blocked by a metal cage, with transactions carried out through an open slot. Milton idled there, pretending to look at the simple menu that had been painted onto a wooden board and propped against the wall. The café specialised in pandesal, sweetened dough that was rolled into long loaves that were then rolled in fine bread crumbs. The bakery also sold hot coffee, and Milton watched through the bars as an old woman ripped off a hunk of a loaf, dipped it in her mug and then ate it.
There was a woman being served ahead of him, and he watched as she chatted with the man serving her. She put a dozen of the loaves into a white plastic carrier bag, gave the man a handful of pesos, and went on her way.
Milton stepped forward.
“Hello,” he said. “Do you speak English?”
The man shrugged, his top lip curling a little. “What do you want?”
“I was looking for Jessica.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend.”
“She dead,” the man said.
“What?”
“Last week.”
Milton feigned shock. “How?”
“Manila,” the man said, as if the suggestion that someone should go to the capital was the height of foolishness. “Someone kill her.”
“That’s awful. I’m sorry.”
The man shrugged. “Not so unusual there. Should have stayed here.”
“Are you family?”
He shook his head. “I just work here.” He pointed behind Milton at a woman who was waiting to be served. “What you want?”
“Did Jessica have any family?”
“Her father. He owns the bakery.”
“And children?”
The man frowned his annoyance at the continued questions. “She got a boy. You want any bread, mister?”
“Yes,” Milton said. There was a tray of prepared snacks just inside the bars. Milton pointed to one. “What’s that?”
“Peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You want?”
“Please.”
The man picked up the sandwich with his fingers and folded it inside a piece of grease paper. He handed the parcel through the bars. “Seven pesos.”
The menu said that the sandwiches should have cost three pesos. The man was taking advantage of what he must have concluded was a naïve foreigner, but Milton didn’t mind. He gave him a ten-peso coin and held up his hand to say that he didn’t expect the change.
Milton stepped aside. The woman behind him came forward, regarding him with a distasteful expression and then saying something in Filipino that drew a derisive chuckle from the server.
Milton took his sandwich and crossed the road. He got back into the car and settled in to wait.
TWO HOURS had passed when Milton saw a boy on a bicycle pull up outside the bakery. He put the half-finished sandwich on the passenger seat and looked out at him: he was young, perhaps ten years old, and slender. He was wearing a gold and black New Orleans Saints cap beneath which Milton could see an unruly mop of black hair.
Milton put his hand on the handle of the door, and then paused.
He realised he still had no idea what he had come here to do.
The boy took a key from his pocket and unlocked a door to the side of the metal cage. He opened it and wheeled his bicycle inside.
Milton stayed where he was.
The boy emerged again, closed and locked the door, and crossed the road to the car wash on the other side.
Milton clenched his fists in frustration.
He grabbed the plastic bag from the passenger seat, opened the door and got out.
“Hello.”
The boy looked at him anxiously. “Who are you?” he replied in excellent English.
“My name is John. I was a friend of your mother. What’s your name?”
“Danilo.”
The boy had dark skin and dark hair and his eyes were dark and soulful, just like his mother’s had been. He wasn’t the same as the boy whose pictures Milton had seen. That boy had borne a resemblance to him, but Danilo could never have been mistaken for his kin. There was no similarity at all.
“I just wanted…” Milton was floundering. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about what happened to her.”
The boy looked at him in confusion.
Milton heard an angry shout from the bakery. He turned to see that the cage door had been opened and a man was coming out. It wasn’t the server to whom he had spoken before, but an older man with white streaks in his hair and a grizzled grey beard.
He called out in Filipino.
Milton waited for him to make his way across.
“I’m a friend of Jessica,” he said.
“I never seen you before.”
“It was a long time ago.”
The old man took the boy by the elbow and impelled him back to the building.
“She’s dead,” he said gruffly once the boy was inside and out of earshot.
“I know,” he said. “Are you her father?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m sorry. I have something for you. For the boy, really.”
He handed the man the plastic bag. He opened it and looked inside.
“What is this?”
The man reached in and took out one of the bundles of banknotes. Milton had split Mendoza’s money: half for Josie and half for Jessica’s son.
“What is this?”
“It’s yours,” Milton insisted.
“Where you g
et it?”
“I hope it helps.”
Milton didn’t wait for the man’s response. He got back into the car and looked out of the windshield as the man stared dumbly from the bundle of notes to the car and then back again.
He started the engine and drove off, leaving the bakery behind him.
He tried to work out how he was feeling.
Was it relief?
Disappointment?
He sat quietly and realised that he knew what it was.
It was that same sense of loneliness that he had come to consider as his closest friend. It had been his companion for all the months he had been travelling, all the thousands of miles that he had covered. It had been there as he had tried to make a modest life for himself in London. It was always there, an ache in his gut that he could always find whenever he closed his eyes and searched for it.
He had kept a tiny fraction of the money for himself. It was in the glovebox. There was enough for a ticket on the long-distance ferry from Manila to Ho Chi Minh City and then enough to keep him going for a month or two after that.
He hadn’t been to Southeast Asia for years. He thought he might start in Vietnam, then head into Thailand, Myanmar and India. He liked the idea of Nepal. He hadn’t seen Everest before. Maybe he’d go to Base Camp. That would be something to aim for.
It would be just him and the road. That was fine. He enjoyed his own company. He welcomed solitude. He decided to cherish it for a little while.
He turned north, back to the city and to whatever might come next.
The Alamo
Part I
Sunday
1
Tramon Howard looked around in disgust. There were a dozen men and women in a room that was big enough for half that many, and they lounged around in a squalor that he found difficult to stomach. There were piles of soiled clothes that had been removed and dumped in the corner next to soiled diapers from the unfortunate babies who were brought here by mothers focused on getting their next hit rather than on the well-being of their children. There were dirty mattresses with addicts sprawled across them, none of them moving even as cockroaches scuttled over them in search of the uneaten food that had been left where it fell. T-Bird bottles full of piss stood along the wall; some of them had toppled over to spill their contents across the naked floorboards.