Moondogs (43 page)

It’s not quite an explosion, but the boat lights up without an argument. Howard’s bound wrists make dogpaddling impossible, so he turns on his back and kicks away, like he used to do after surfacing from a dive with Benny, his BCD inflated, his son waving at the hired Costa Rican boatmen and the boatmen waving back cordially. Backpedaling like this, he can see the burning boat. Kelog screams and flames lick up Ignacio and Littleboy’s legs, but they seem hesitant to get into the water. Finally they hold hands and jump, kicking wildly to grab hold of the bamboo outriggers. Kelog stays onboard, flapping madly about the hull. His feathers catch, and sizzle, and his owners splash water up at him, trying to douse him. It’s no use. Finally he takes off, wings smoking as Ignacio and Littleboy beg him to get into the water. The flames on him grow and trail behind like luxurious feathers. Kelog is a bright lick of green and yellow, flying straight up. By the time the flames burn out there’s nothing left of him to fall.

The saltwater has loosened Howard’s binding by now, and he’s able to get his wrists free. He turns to the island and swims. All his injuries—his bandaged ear, his sliced forearms, his stabbed shoulder—sting in the water, but it has a wonderful, invigorating, antiseptic feel. The island looms large ahead. A rocky beach with palms. The broken hulls of concrete buildings peeking out from a mosaic of lush vegetation. Green cannons pointing straight up at the sky. Jagged coral cuts into Howard’s palm and that, too, is a wonderful feeling. His bare feet find rocks, and hedges, and soon he’s wading.

And there are people on the beach. Five men stand in a row at the point where the jungle meets the sand. They wear badges around their necks that shine brightly in the morning sunlight. The police have come. Never mind that they’re fuckups. Never mind that they’re late. They’re here, and Howard is happy.

Chapter 27

Efrem Khalid Bakkar hopes the fire kills them so he won’t have to. He stands with Ka-Pow on the rocky Corregidor beach, watching Ignacio’s little bangka burn. It bobs in the chop, flames licking out the rudder shaft, glowing from stem to stern. The kidnappers jump overboard and retreat to the outriggers, trying to douse their boat with backward bailing. A single fireball shoots skyward and fizzles. Efrem watches Howard Bridgewater backpedal away from the smoldering bangka. Ignacio makes to follow, but turns back after a few strokes, coughing out seawater and smoke. Reynato points from their boat to his throat, finger a blade. It wouldn’t have been different if they’d landed and submitted placidly to handcuffs. Efrem levels his custom Tingin. With two shots he snaps the blackening outrigger struts. Hugging bamboo, the kidnappers float safely away. Efrem mimics Reynato’s pantomime, fingerslicing his own throat. From this distance, with this fog, Ignacio and Littleboy look as dead as he says they are.

Ka-Pow recovers Howard, dazed and sputtering, from the shallows. Reynato doesn’t look all that thrilled, but says they’ll get some food at the Corregidor Island Hotel to celebrate anyway—his treat. He plucks sawtooth blades of cogon grass and has them draw to see who’ll hang back on the beach with Howard until the Coast Guard comes to pick him up. On the first draw Efrem comes up short and Reynato has them do it over because Efrem is the hero of the day. On the second draw it’s Lorenzo, who throws up such a weepy stink at being excluded that Elvis volunteers just to shut him up.

Despite heavy fog and rough sea, Ignacio actually managed to get his bangka pointed in the right direction. They sank just off the northwest coast of topside Corregidor, and from there it’s an easy two-kilometer walk to the tourist hotel at the south dock. Reynato, Racha, Efrem and Lorenzo stroll at an easy pace, emerging from the dense jungle onto a little paved road that meanders from one cluster
of war ruins to another. Reynato passes cigars and matches all around, keeping his unlit as always. His mood lightens and soon everybody, including Efrem, is smiling. A trolley approaches with the first morning tourists and Reynato makes a big show of jumping out from behind a crumbling wall and shooting at them with a phantom rifle. Children on the trolley return fire from the barrels of pointed index fingers and squeal with delight when Reynato clutches where his heart would be and falls backward into high grass. He waits for the trolley to disappear before standing and brushing himself off. “Where were you guys? You just let that happen.”

To Lorenzo’s delight, brunch at the hotel is served buffet style on an outdoor veranda overlooking the bay and the city beyond. They pile plates high and take a table in the corner. Reynato toasts them with a mimosa flute. “You’re good at what you do because you do good things,” he says. “Here’s to all those people worse than us.” They clink rims and begin eating. As Efrem chews he watches a television mounted above the buffet. A young newswoman in too much pink talks about the kidnapping as though the kidnapping is still a thing to be talked about. He checks Racha’s wrist-fused-watch and sees that it’s been over an hour since they left the beach.

“They don’t know yet,” he says, gesturing at the screen with buttered toast.

Reynato, munching bacon, glances up. The news lady cuts to stock shots—clips of a press conference given by Howard’s son mixed with older footage of an Abu Sayyaf terrorist with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher hoisted over his shoulder. The newswoman narrates the montage, outlining perilous possibilities. “Maybe Elvis has no signal on the beach,” Efrem says. He takes out his own cell phone and sees he has full bars. “I’ll make sure they get the message.”

Reynato takes Efrem’s phone and pockets it. He dabs the corners of his mouth with a cloth napkin. “Easy does it, Mohammed. You’ll get credit soon enough.” They regard one another, the hurt and confusion on Efrem’s face a little diffuse because he’s been feeling it so often lately. Credit is
not
what he was after. Reynato, knowing this, blinks
first. He crosses to the television and flips the channel to live cockfighting championships. Racha and Lorenzo, oblivious to the tension, get seconds and thirds at the buffet. They eat with noisy gusto long after Efrem has slid his half-full plate across the table. Lorenzo produces a flask of lambanog from his plastic poncho and fortifies their mimosas. He interlocks elbows with Racha and they sip daintily, braying and spilling. Celebration is a matter of course for Lorenzo at mealtimes, but Racha isn’t known to act the fool with him. Reynato eyes him suspiciously. “And what are
you
so happy about?” he asks.

Racha holds both hands in the air, displaying cracked palms and grizzled knuckles, as though that’s an answer. He stands and takes his shirt off, turning proudly while people at nearby tables gasp at his sagging adhesions, his missing nipples. He grins and says: “Not a scratch!”

Reynato crosses his arms over his chest. “You must have missed it.”

“Nope,” Racha says. “I checked two times.” He runs his fingers up and down the waxy discolored horror of his torso. “Nothing!”

Concern creases Reynato’s forehead. He orders everyone into the toilet where they strip Racha naked and search him for a new wound. As easy as Howard’s rescue had been, it was still a mission. Ka-Pow’s rules dictate that Racha should have been hurt. That’s how his particular bruho magic works—soaking up the evil that finds its way into every mission and keeping it off everybody else. If Racha’s come through unscathed it means there’s still some evil floating around out there, looking for a place to settle. Reynato questions him while Efrem and Lorenzo probe his unfortunate topography. “You sure you didn’t slip on a rock? Step on an urchin? Stub your toe? How’s your ankle? How’s your instep? Is that blood in your nose? Those look like new shoes, any blisters? Any rashes? Bite your tongue? The path was thorny, any scrapes? Does anything itch?”

But nothing itches. They don’t even find a mosquito bite. “Maybe it was that thing last night?” Racha asks. “Maybe the pepper spray counts?”

You know that’s not how it works, Reynato snaps. He seems discouraged—even angry. They give up searching and he leads them
all back to the table. He says that everyone gets lucky sometimes. Then he takes Glock out of his belt and checks it twice to make sure it’s loaded and the safety is off. He shifts in his chair and eyes the exits. He can’t finish eating.

Racha, pitying his boss’s distress, forks himself in the knee.

REYNATO IS ON EDGE
the rest of the morning, and though he doesn’t show it, Efrem is too. He gazes out over the bay as they leave the restaurant. Private yachts sway in the wakes of trawlers, but the Coast Guard boats at Sangley Point are still. Back in Manila the police station is quiet. He glances topside and sees Elvis leading Howard into an ancient bunker for shelter from the sun. Howard, filthy as when they plucked him from the shallows, follows in a daze.

Rather than returning topside, Reynato insists they board one of many brightly painted tour trolleys to waste the whole day trundling about ruined barracks and mortar emplacements. They pose listlessly for pictures by a beachside MacArthur statue. They crowd into the Malinta tunnel for historical lectures by animatronic soldiers. They haggle gift shop cashiers to tears. They visit a kitschy outdoor chess set with pieces big as children. Lorenzo challenges Efrem to a game, and cheats, and wins. The tour ends. The sun reddens and dies in the South China Sea. The Coast Guard never comes and Efrem doesn’t get his phone back. He peeks at Howard and sees him running from the bunker, chased by Elvis as a horse, pinned by Elvis as a python, carried back into hiding by Elvis as a colony of tremendous ants. They’re not saving him
from
anything. They’re saving him
for
something. Killing time.

Efrem doesn’t speak as they walk back to the topside beach. The moon, low on the horizon, throws long shadows against the ruins. He lags some paces behind the others, and then stops walking altogether. Reynato turns and regards the distance between them without closing it. “Is there a problem?” he asks.

“You’re going to kill him,” Efrem says. “You’re killing Howard Bridgewater.”

Reynato cocks his head and grunts. Duckfooted, he walks over and takes Efrem’s cheeks in his small palms. “Mohammed,” he says. “My friend. What have I done to give you this bad impression of me? You ever see me do a thing like that?” He leans in close. Efrem sees moonlight in his braces. “If I remember right, your tally puts us all to shame.”

Efrem steps back. “Don’t lie to me.”

Reynato steps with him, keeping hold of his cheeks like a bridle. “I lie plenty,” he says, “but never to you. I’ll admit to some dramatizing, but among you bruhos I’m honest to a fault and I’d appreciate you not saying otherwise.” He pauses, looking pained, like a father taken out of his son’s confidence. “And I’ll be honest now, even though a part of me would rather lie. The smarter part of me, I’m guessing. Especially because we both know I could get away with it. But, what the hell?” He smiles. “I’ll keep the streak alive.”

Reynato releases Efrem’s face and gives it two soft pats. His frayed cigar is bending at the middle and he pockets it carefully. “Sure,” he says. “Yes. I am.
We
are. There it is. We’re killing him. We’re killing Howard. Mr. Bridgewater is fucking doomed.” Reynato stares at him, deadpan.

Efrem can’t speak for a time. Even after he feels capable of making words, he’s unsure which ones to pick. “How is that … it isn’t …” He gawks lamely. “This is
not
sticking up for the unstuckup for.”

Lorenzo and Racha howl at this. Reynato hops three steps back, dancing from foot to foot like a child with an answer. “
Right there!
That’s it. That’s the problem with you, Mohammed.” He points, as though the problem is floating in the air—a ghost between them. “With you, and with the whole damn country, as far as I’m concerned. You’ve seen too many of those moronic movies. You want to talk about the un-fucking-stuckup for? How about
yourself
? How about the people on that island you come from, strangled and half-starved by rich incompetents? Politicians like Charlie Fuentes, who now gets his at-bat, his turn to see how much shit he can break or steal before the voters get wise and replace him with some song-starlet or beauty queen.”

“This isn’t about my people,” Efrem says, wary that Reynato is trying
to confuse him. “And it’s not about how jealous you are of Charlie Fuentes.” Yes, he’s noticed—he’s not as simple as everybody thinks. “It’s about Howard Bridgewater.”

Reynato’s arms fall to his sides. He becomes less manic, less excited, giving off an air of limp danger. “Howard Bridgewater? The wealthy hotel manager with a suck-my-dick investment visa? The man with a whole embassy full of people out to save his ass? The man who reporters talk about like he’s already died and been sainted, the man whose rescue is the highest priority of a national police force up to its nostrils in some of the worst smelling shit this side of Baghdad?
That guy?
No, sir. People have been sticking up for Howard for his whole goddamn life.”

Reynato gets in Efrem’s face again, and now all the playfulness is gone. “I’ll forgive you the snotty reaction,” he says, his voice leaden with menace. “I know that when I just say it flat like that—
We’re killing Howard!
—it sounds pretty rotten. Especially given what I’ve asked of you in the last few weeks …” he pauses long enough for Efrem to remember the shabu dealers in Davao, the executed warehouse men, and all those people he struck down anonymously from the high-rise rooftop, surer now than ever before that he’s going to hell. “But what you don’t appreciate, Mohammed, is that I operate in contexts. I’m not always the freewheeling bruho you know from Task Force Ka-Pow. Nine times out of ten—fuck, more than that—more like ninety-five times out of one hundred, I do things
right
, rigid and upstanding. I’m talking about boring stakeouts. By-the-book arrests reported to superiors in triplicate. Painstaking evidence preservation, even when I know it’ll be misplaced and mishandled. I spend whole fucking days deskbound, jumping through silly hoops, explaining to the preteen from tech support why I need write permissions on my C drive, moving my shit from office to office in search of walls without dryrot and ceilings that won’t drip on me. Be thankful, Mohammed, that I save you bunch for what you do well. Which brings me to another, say, four cases out of a hundred. When I use rulebenders like yourselves, my own little ends and means committee, to do right things the wrong way. Like with your
friends on the list, and Lorenzo’s pirate mishap. Maybe we get a little rough, maybe some bills go missing, but it’s a net plus. And besides, it doesn’t happen every day.”