Monkey on a Chain (19 page)

The bartender and I stared at each other for three hours before April showed up. She looked drawn and pale. She picked up my drink and downed it in one swallow, then sat opposite me.

“Her name is Josephine. Her family was Catholic and gave her a French name. After the war, the VC took her father away.” She spoke in a low monotone.

“He never came back,” she said. “They waited and he never came and finally her mother sold everything to get them on a boat. Three of them. Herself and Josephine and her little sister. They had to leave the baby.”

April’s voice emotionless. “They went south. They tried to get to Thailand, but some pirates got them. They killed her mother. They kept Josephine for a long time, maybe a year. They raped her and used her. She was a slave. Then they sold her. The men who run the bar bought her. She was just fourteen. She’s been there for two years. Two years.” She swallowed. “She doesn’t know what happened to her sister.”

I nodded and listened while she talked it out.

“She was a boat person, just like me,” she said. “Just like me.”

“No. You were lucky. She wasn’t.”

“That’s the only difference. I was lucky. She was a nice girl, a nice little girl.” Suddenly she was crying. “But I was lucky.”

I let her go for a while, then asked, “What did she say?”

“I just told you.”

“Not what I want to know.”

April grabbed my arm, high up, just under my armpit. She dug her nails into me as hard as she could. “You are a bastard, you know that?”

I nodded. I knew it.

She said, “We have to help her.”

“How?”

“Get her out of that place.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But I have to. You have to help me.”

“Let go of my arm.”

She’d forgotten she had it. When she let go, I rubbed it. She had more strength than I’d imagined. “Maybe we can try,” I told her. “But she isn’t the only one. You know that. There are lots of them.” I hesitated. “Did you ask her what she wants? If you helped her, what would she want?”

“No. I didn’t ask.”

I handed her my wallet. “Go ask,” I told her.

It took half an hour. When she came back down, she threw the wallet at me. “You’re a son of a bitch,” she said. “I really hate you.”

“Okay.”

“How did you know?”

“It’s just the world. Things can’t be undone.”

“I feel worse than before.”

“I know how you feel.”

We sat together in silence. The bartender came over a couple of times, but I gave him money and he went away. Eventually, April told me what she had learned.

The money man was a lawyer with an office in Manila. His name was Paul Roxas. I called the next morning and got an appointment for noon. We killed some time walking from one shop to another. Pete number two followed us, but after a couple of hours he started to wait outside when we entered a building. We had a hasty lunch in a restaurant on the ground floor of a downtown office building, then slipped upstairs. The lawyer’s office was on the fifth floor. When the receptionist showed us in, he stood and shook hands.

Roxas was a short man in his early thirties, just enough overweight to be called pudgy, not enough to be called fat. His slightly protruding eyes were very quick, darting from me to April with a cautious curiosity.

He led us to a group of chairs arranged around a low table in one corner of the office and offered tea or coffee. When we declined, he dismissed the girl and sat opposite us.

“I have very few American clients,” he began. “But my specialty is commercial law, and I’m always interested in new business. Perhaps you are looking for an investment in our country?”

“My problem is a little more delicate than that,” I told him. I pulled out my wallet and laid five hundred-dollar bills on the table between us.

He glanced at the money, then back at me. “You are perhaps being a little premature, Mr. Stephenson. Before I can agree to help you, I must know the nature of your delicate problem.”

“In America,” I said, “payment of a retainer will establish a lawyer-client relationship. This guarantees the confidentiality of anything we discuss. Is that true here?”

“Within limits, it is. Of course, here the government has ways of compelling evidence that are sometimes, shall we say, to one side of the law. So it would depend on what you wish to discuss.”

“Then I’d like you to consider this a retainer. I want to buy your discreet attention to my problem.”

“You are being very mysterious. But I suppose it will do no harm to listen. And I can guarantee that your words will stay here, in this office.”

“I don’t want them to stay here,” I told him. “I just want them to go in only one direction. Not to the police. To the mountains.”

“To the mountains…,” he murmured. His eyes bore into mine. “A very dangerous direction. Why have you come to me? What makes you think I would, or could, send a message in that direction?”

“My reasons are unimportant…” I began.

He interrupted me. “They are not unimportant to me!”

“Hear me out, Mr. Roxas. You have not been compromised in any way, and I will not ask you to compromise yourself. I don’t expect that you can help me directly. I hope that if you hear my story, I may be contacted by a man I have to speak with. If I am not, well, you have your retainer and I have your assurance that our conversation will not be repeated where it might be dangerous for me. And if I am contacted, if I speak successfully with this man, I am prepared to pay a far more substantial fee. Without, of course, drawing any connection between this consultation and any subsequent meeting.”

He spoke carefully. “Obviously, I cannot accept a fee for putting you in contact with anyone who might be engaged in an illegal activity, Mr. Stephenson, but there are many worthy causes here in the Philippines. Perhaps I might suggest one that deserves your support.”

“I would welcome the guidance of my attorney on such a matter, and of course I am eager to help the Philippine people in any way possible, once my simple needs are met.”

“Just how simple are your needs?”

“The conversation I’ve described would be worth five thousand dollars American, regardless of what I learned. If I spoke to the correct man.”

He nodded slowly. “A most valuable conversation,” he said. He picked up the money. “Very well, I can listen to your problem. Perhaps something will come of it. You understand, of course, that I cannot involve myself in any illegal activity, and that if you describe such an activity I must advise you to contact the police. Contacting them would be your responsibility.”

“Of course.”

“Then tell me about your problem.”

“It is a twenty-year-old problem. In July of 1970, some men made a delivery of certain goods to a small group on a beach on the northwest corner of this island. The leader of that group was a man named Freddy. That is the only name I have for him. The delivery was interrupted by other interested parties. There was a dispute. Several men lost their lives. The questions I must have answered arose out of that event. They do not relate to the present, at least in your country. The man I must speak to is Freddy. If he is no longer alive, a conversation with any of the others present might be helpful to me. But it would be significantly less valuable.”

Roxas seemed to stop breathing as I spoke. When I finished, he stared at me for a long time, then stood and walked to his desk. He wiped his face with his hands. “You are wrong about one thing, Mr. Stephenson. The event you describe had repercussions in my country. Repercussions that extend into the present.”

I waited for him to go on. Eventually he added, “Of course, this Freddy was probably associated with a group called the Huks. It is an outlawed organization, and so I can only advise you that your inquiries should be directed to the local police department. Perhaps they can help you. I cannot.”

I nodded and stood. “I understand,” I told him. “But there is one other matter to be considered.” I told him about our meeting with Colonel Yabut and Pete Number Two.

He listened gravely. “You say this Pete followed you here?”

“Only as far as the restaurant downstairs. He is probably waiting outside. We have been doing a lot of shopping. And of course we have much more to do.”

He nodded. “That is a good plan. There are many fine things to buy in our country, many beautiful things. You might consider a short trip to the town of Baguio. There are gold mines there. Much beautiful jewelry in the local shops. Much to see.” He forced a smile. “The Hotel Magsaysay is very convenient. Many tourists like yourselves stay there.”

“We will consider it,” I told him.

“Please do,” he said. He showed us to the door. “And do not forget. The matter you’ve described belongs to the police. Not to a simple lawyer such as myself.”

Pete Number Two looked relieved when he saw us leave the building. He followed us rather more closely for the rest of the afternoon. We didn’t talk about the meeting with Roxas until that night. Then April told me she thought he was a slimeball. A fat little pimp.

“Maybe,” I told her. “But sometimes it’s wrong just to look at what people do. Sometimes you have to look at the reasons for their actions.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at you. You’ve been sneaking into my bed ever since Phoenix. If I didn’t know better, I might think you had a thing for older men.”

“Is that what you think?”

“No. I think you have lost too much in your life. You lost your mother when she was killed. Then you lost your aunt when she put you on the boat. You lost your country at the same time. Then you lost a father when Toker was killed. You lost him again when you found out he had never bothered to adopt you. I think you’re trying to find someone you won’t lose.”

We were sitting at a table in our room, having some coffee before turning in for the night. The window was open and the warm tropical air wafted through it. April played with the emerald ring I had bought her in Manila as she listened to me. “Let me guess,” she said. “You were a psych major. Right?”

“Wrong.” I smiled. “Actually, I studied mathematics.”

“Have I ever told you that you’re full of shit?”

“Once or twice.”

“Some things bear repeating.”

“You tell me, then. Why are you doing it?”

She hesitated. “Why do you have to ask? All this analysis, it’s just crap, Rainbow. I want you. You want me. Why do you have to look deeper? Under the surface? That stuff doesn’t matter. It isn’t real!”

“It matters, April,” I said. “It’s the only thing that’s real. What do you want, some guy who can’t see past your skin? A man who wants you for your slanted eyes? Because you’ve got a nice body? Or because he knew your mother?” I shook my head. “You only look at the surface, that’s all you’ll get. Surface. If that changes, you lose everything. And the surface always changes. Always.”

“But your way, you turn this thing I feel into some kind of a test,” she said. “It’s like an audition. I’m telling myself sure, he wants me. But am I really good enough for him? What about my motives? Are they pure enough? That’s where the crap begins.”

“You’re asking the wrong questions.” I was getting impatient. “You should be asking if we’re right for each other. What are you offering? A couple of nights in the sack? I chase away the boogeyman who killed Daddy and get to fuck you, kind of like a reward? Is that what you want? Or do you want to be around for a while? A place in my life, is that what you want? If so, we’ve got to know there is a place for you. Shit, you haven’t even asked yourself what I really am. Me! An old soldier still stuck back in the boonies, still fighting some goddamned war everybody else wrote off as a loss about the time you were born!” I had her full attention. I nodded toward the bed. “If all you want is someone to stuff your twat for a week or so, strip down and we can get right to it. If you want more, you have to put something on the table besides your ass. You understand?”

She had nothing to say to that, but later, when the lights were off and we were lying side by side, she said, “You’re still wrong, you know. It’s all the thinking about it. Sometimes you have to take care of the needs first and let the analysis sort itself out later. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to find someone to love and taking a chance. You have to take the chance.”

“I know it, April,” I said. I found her hand and held it in the dark. “But there are chances and there are chances. Look at what you stand to lose as well as what you stand to gain. And you have to know how much damage you can do, how much you can hurt the other person.” We fell asleep holding hands and in the morning Pete Number Two followed us to Baguio.

Roxas was right. There were some pieces worth looking at in Baguio. We spent the next day visiting small shops and sightseeing. No one made contact, but I had the uneasy feeling there were more eyes than Pete’s following us. We ate and retired early.

The following day, I bought April a small gold monkey on a chain. She didn’t like it as much as I did, but she liked the idea that I had found it and bought it for her. She liked that enough to wear it to bed. She pressed the monkey into my chest and asked me if I really thought she was trying to find something she couldn’t lose, if I thought that was the only reason she slept with me.

“You tell me,” I said.

“Suppose you’re right. Do I have a chance?”

“No. You lose everything. We all do. Your only chance is to find something that lasts for a while. And I’m too old to last as long as you’d need me.”

“You don’t know how long I might need you,” she said. “You don’t even know why I need you.”

“Then tell me.”

“You’re the mathematician. Figure it out for yourself,” she challenged me.

I held her close and thought about it without getting anywhere. Her breasts, her belly pressed against me, her breath warm on my neck, the way she wrapped her legs about mine, all were too distracting.

“Tell me what you need,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Every night, we lie together like this.” She ground her pelvis against mine. “You’re so hard, like a rock. It must be driving you crazy. But every night you hold me and you don’t do anything about it. You just hold me. There must be a reason. What is it? You don’t think I’m a virgin, do you?”