Devil's Keep (16 page)

But this was bustling Manila. Nobody noticed; nobody cared. They hustled the kid across the walkway and through the opening in the wall, Totoy shut the gate behind them, and it was done.

Favor told Mendonza that he wanted to wait for the last plane of the day from Tacloban to Manila. It left at 7:35 p.m., which gave them a few hours to watch the building across the street from the pension house. The path from the moment of Marivic’s disappearance, traced backward in time, lay through the building. Therefore it was worthy of observation.

Patient and unobtrusive observation was a callback to their Bravo years. To go convincingly undercover, you learned to quietly absorb a place and a situation. Watch and listen … just be there.

While Mendonza left to buy the plane tickets, Favor stationed himself in a chair at the window with Mendonza’s camera and a telephoto lens. He watched young men and women entering the building, then coming out about an hour later with the gauze patch under a piece of tape. About four an hour, he guessed.

He had a good view down into the two first-floor windows. One showed a partial view down into the clinic’s waiting room. It showed a chair that was sometimes occupied, sometimes not. The other gave him an angle down into a room that Favor thought might be a storage area.

Through the powerful lens, Favor saw boxes of bandages and tape and latex gloves and tongue depressors. On a white counter along one side of the room, Favor could make out a rack with small vials, clear glass or plastic, sealed with a stopper. About
every quarter of an hour, a middle-aged Filipino man in a lab coat—the doctor, Favor guessed—would enter the room and stand at the counter to fill one of the vials with dark liquid from a syringe. Favor knew this must be the blood draw from an examination, taken from another applicant. The doctor would seal the vial, write out a label, wrap the label around the vial, and place it in a small refrigerator under the counter. A couple of minutes later, one more young man or woman would leave the building: exam completed, application submitted.

This routine continued throughout the day, unvarying, into the afternoon. Mendonza returned after a while with a roasted chicken and rice and some San Miguel beer and soft drinks. Favor kept watching the building while he ate. When Mendonza stretched out on the bed to nap, Favor stayed by the window, sipping from a bottle of beer, patiently watching.

In the late afternoon, the light softened and shadows lengthened. The people of Tacloban began heading home. Traffic picked up in the street below, mostly jeepneys and three-wheel motorcycles with rudimentary covered passenger seats. In Tacloban, they were sometimes called trikes, sometimes sidecars.

At 5:55, the nurse from the clinic left the building and flagged down an empty trike. She folded herself into the passenger compartment and the trike buzzed off, skittering through traffic like a rasping water bug.

At 6:05, Lisabet Bambanao walked out of the front door and out to the sidewalk. She waved at a
jeepney; it pulled across traffic to stop in front of her, and she climbed into the back.

A few minutes later, Mendonza woke and looked out the window. He checked his watch. The airport was about four miles away, ten or fifteen minutes. He told Favor that they ought to leave by quarter to seven, give themselves plenty of time to make the 7:35 flight.

“Sure,” Favor said. He was watching the second window across the street, the storage room. The doctor was at the white counter, but he wasn’t doing the usual routine of filling a vial this time. Instead he was reaching into the refrigerator and taking out a rack with a couple dozen filled vials, blood specimens.

He took a box from under the counter. The box was plain, cream-colored, no printing. He placed the rack with the filled vials into the box.

“You hear from Lorna’s boy, Ronnie?” Mendonza asked.

“No,” Favor said. “I thought he must’ve called you while you were out.” Favor was still watching through the telephoto lens on the camera, which was zoomed in all the way to get a good look at the box and the vials. The box seemed to have thick walls, maybe Styrofoam, some kind of padding.

“No, he didn’t call me,” Mendonza said.

The doctor reached into the refrigerator for another rack of vials—sealed specimens—and placed it into the box. He took a plastic bag from the freezer compartment—ice cubes, Favor saw—and placed the bag on top of the vials, and closed the box.

“He should’ve called by now,” Mendonza said.

“Call Lorna and see what’s up,” Favor said.

The doctor had a roll of red packing tape. He was laying a wide strip of it across the top seam of the box. Sealing the package.

“Damn, he’s leaving with it,” Favor said.

Mendonza had his phone in hand when Favor turned from the window.

Favor said, “Al, hang loose, I have to follow this package.”

Favor hurried from the room. He ran down the hall, bounded down the stairs, hurried through the lobby.

Favor stepped out, then withdrew back inside. He didn’t want the doctor to notice him. Favor waited until the doctor had turned up the street, a few steps along the sidewalk, the package under his arm. Then Favor started out the door and up the street, tracking the doctor on the opposite sidewalk with the streaming lanes of traffic between them.

It was a brief pursuit. After half a block, the doctor stopped at a Kia sedan parked at the curb. Favor ducked into the entrance of a bakeshop and watched. The doctor pulled keys from his pocket, opened the passenger-side door, placed the package in the foot well of the passenger seat, shut the door.

He walked around to the other side, opened the door, got behind the wheel.

The headlights came on; the backup lamps glowed.

Favor stepped out from the doorway. The car
backed up a few feet as the driver turned the wheel, ready to pull out. Favor looked out into oncoming traffic and tried to spot an empty taxi headed his way.

The doctor found an opening and swung out into traffic. Favor watched the Kia blend into traffic as it accelerated away, down the street.

As Favor watched the Kia disappear, a trike whipped into a sudden 180-degree turn, cutting through traffic, stopping inches from Favor. The driver was a small man in shorts and T-shirt. He stood up on the foot pegs, looking at Favor over the passenger awning, and said, “Hey, Joe. Need a ride?”

The Kia was out of sight now, gone.

“Hey, Joe” was an archaic phrase. In World War II it was Filipinos’ universal greeting to American GIs, and then for a few decades it was applied to all foreigners. But it was now long out of use, an old man’s phrase. When Favor looked closer in the dim evening light, he saw that the driver really was an old man. Thin gray hair, a near-toothless grin.

“How about it, Joe. You need trike?”

Not anymore,
Favor was about to answer. Then he realized what he had just seen, the amazing move, the agile way the driver had cut across traffic. Favor knew he could use this guy.

“Not tonight,” Favor said. “Tomorrow. You know Tacloban?”

“Tacloban is my home, Joe. All my life.”

“What is your name?” Favor asked.

“I am Romeo Mandaligan.”

“My name is Ray,” Favor said. “I’m in the Mirador, over there. You come around in the afternoon, I’ll tell you what I need.”

“Sure, whatever you say, Joe.”

Favor dug in his pocket, came up with some bills: Philippine currency, a five-hundred-peso note at the top. He stripped it off and walked around the front of the trike and gave it to the driver. The typical trike fare in a provincial city was ten or twenty pesos, and Romeo Mandaligan accepted the five hundred with something like reverence.

He said, ”For what?”

“So you know I’m serious,” Favor said. “Come around tomorrow, I have a one-thousand-peso job for you.”

Romeo Mandaligan slid the bill carefully into the front pocket of his shirt.

He said, “Ray, you can count on me.”

Mendonza was on the phone with Lorna Valencia when Favor returned to the room.

Mendonza said, “Ray’s here now, let me talk to him. Send me that text. Don’t you worry, I’m sure he’s all right.”

He clicked off and said to Favor: “Lorna tried all day to get Ronnie, phone calls and texts, no luck. But about an hour ago she gets a text from him—” Mendonza’s phone cut him off. He looked down and found a text, and showed it to Favor.

No problem Optimo

coming home soon

bttry low see you later luv u

“She says it doesn’t sound like him,” Mendonza said. “I don’t know what that means, but she has a bad feeling.” He checked the time and said, ”We have a little time; we can grab a bite on the way to the airport.”

“I’m not leaving,” Favor said. “I want to be here this time tomorrow.”

“All right,” Mendonza said. “There’s a nice resort hotel on the north side of town. We’ll get a couple of rooms there, come back here tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’d rather stay where I am.”

“Here?” Mendonza said.

“Right now that building across the street is the most interesting place in Tacloban. By far. But you go ahead. I’ll catch you in the morning.”

“No way, cowboy,” Mendonza said. “You’re staying, I’m staying.”

Mendonza did persuade Favor to go out for a meal, a seafood restaurant a couple of blocks away. Afterward, Favor went back to the room while Mendonza stopped at an Internet café to send the photo of Marivic and Ronnie to Arielle in Manila.

Then he returned to the room.

Mendonza wondered what the sleeping arrangements would be: just one small bed. He thought they might need a second room. But when Mendonza returned to the room, Favor was back in the armchair, and he stayed there while they talked for a couple of hours, with Mendonza perched at the side of the bed.
Then they both got sleepy.

Favor just stretched out his legs and lounged back in the chair, and that was the last sight Mendonza saw before he nodded off: Favor still in the ratty armchair, still facing out the window toward the building across the street.

The drugs wore off sometime around nightfall. When Ronnie came around, Markov and Totoy Ribera were comparing methods for squeezing information out of reluctant prisoners.

It was a professional discussion that drew on long years of experience, going back to when they were both young men. Markov’s initiation had come as a junior KGB officer in the waning years of the Soviet Union. Totoy Ribera had trained by questioning suspected Reds during the latter years of the Ferdinand Marcos era.

Ilya Andropov was standing nearby, listening, and was the first to notice that Ronnie was conscious again.

Ronnie was on the floor, hog-tied.

Andropov stood over him and bent down low, getting in Ronnie’s face.

He said, “Okay. Now listen. This is very important. The big Fil-Am and the American. Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why do they care about your sister?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why are they bothering my office in Tacloban?”

“I don’t know.”

Andropov reached back and brought out a hand
towel, terry cloth. He quickly wound the towel, ropelike, and tried to gag Ronnie with it. Ronnie fought it, keeping his teeth clenched, but Markov came over and pinched his nostrils shut, and this forced Ronnie to open his mouth.

Then Andropov pushed the towel into Ronnie’s mouth, and tied it tight behind his neck.

Markov said, “How long do we go?”

“Until I believe him,” Andropov said.

This is it?” Stickney said.

“This is the address,” said Elvis Vega.

They were stopped in the street in front of Impierno, Stickney in the front seat of a Nissan sedan, one of the rides that Edwin Santos had arranged. The driver was Elvis Vega. He was about forty. When they chatted earlier he had told Stickney that he was a lifelong
manileño
, had been driving in the city for twenty years.

The car was spotless, and Elvis had carved through morning traffic with professional ease. Stickney decided that the guy knew what he was doing. Yet, here they were in front of a place called Impierno.

“This is a nightclub,” Stickney said.

“Correct. Impierno is well known for its bold shows.” Stickney recognized the phrase from his last time in Manila. “Bold” meant “nude.”

While they were speaking, a parking space opened up in front of Impierno, and Elvis slipped the sedan in against the curb. He said, “Come. We will investigate.”

They got out and stood on the sidewalk. Stickney tried the front door of Impierno: locked. He walked with Elvis toward the middle of the block, across the
walkway between the nightclub and the high concrete wall next door, to where the old woman was sitting among stacks of newspapers and magazines.

“I will ask,” Elvis said, and he bent and spoke a few words to the woman.

She rolled her eyes and spoke a couple of words that Stickney didn’t recognize.

She lifted her arm and motioned into the walkway, an impatient swipe of her hand.

“Back here?” Stickney said. Now he saw the door at the side of the building.

“I think so.”

Elvis walked with him until Stickney read the sign on the door.

“This is it,” Stickney said. “I probably won’t be long.”

“No matter. I will be waiting.”

Elvis was turning away when Stickney said, “The old woman? That look she gave you? What was that all about?”

“She was being rude.”

“What did she say?”

“It was Tagalog,” Elvis said. “
Isa pa.
It means ‘One more.’ But she was being sarcastic. Like ‘Great, another one.’ I think she’s sick of being asked.”

Andropov called to tell Magda that a stranger, a foreigner, was on his way up the stairs.

They must have been watching close, she thought, to pick him up so quickly on the monitors. The Russians seemed to be spooked about this Marivic matter. Totoy
had told her so over dinner the evening before. He said that they didn’t understand the fuss. Why would a couple of Americans—scary ones—take an interest in an insignificant province girl?