Smaller and Smaller Circles (14 page)

22

Saenz is in
the middle of a working lunch in his office at the Anthropology Department when Jerome calls.

“Lunch?” Jerome asks.

“Can't,” Saenz says, his mouth full.

“But you're eating already,” Jerome protests.

“Susan gave me a peanut butter sandwich.”

“You hate peanut butter.”

“You're not helping, you know.” He takes another bite then keeps talking. “Anyway, can't stop for a proper lunch. Rushing a paper.”

“Which one is this?”

“School of Science and Engineering.”

“You mean the science and spirituality thing? That's tomorrow morning, isn't it?”

Saenz groans. “I'm supposed to talk for ten minutes.”

“Well, how far along are you?”

“I've written about a minute and a half.”

Jerome shakes his head. “You definitely don't have time for lunch.”

“What, you're giving up that easily? I'm open to persuasion.”

“You're less than twenty-four hours away from a ten-minute presentation, and you've only got a minute and a half down. Only thing I'm persuading you to do is to keep working.”

Saenz sighs in mock despair. “Some friend you are. Where are you off to? Katipunan?”

“I'm not telling you, because as soon as I say where, you'll be bolting out of your office. Stay put and work on your paper. I'll bring you a doggie bag from wherever I have lunch.”

“It had better not be a peanut butter sandwich,” Saenz says glumly. Just then, there's a knock on his door. “I've got to go. Someone at the door. I'm serious—no peanut butter or I won't speak to you for a week.” He hangs up, then calls out: “Come in!”

The door swings open, and Rommel Salustiano's massive body appears on the other side. He is wearing baggy khaki trousers and a polo shirt that used to be black but has now faded to grey. There are sweat stains on his armpits, collar and chest. He looks dully at Saenz with his tiny, black eyes, his mouth hanging open. Even from this distance, Saenz can see the saliva glistening on his lower lip.

“Mr. Salustiano?” Saenz asks, trying not to sound too surprised.

Rommel spends about half a minute breathing noisily before shuffling through the open door. “Hi, Father.” He stops just inside the threshold and doesn't close the door behind him.

“Hello.” Saenz rises to his feet slowly, feeling a vague sense of unease. “What brings you here?”

He points with a large finger to a chair in front of Saenz's desk. “Can I sit?”

“Yes, certainly. Come.”

The chair is a spindly thing with a wooden back and seat and thin iron legs. It creaks when Rommel sinks into it. This close, Saenz can smell the musty scent of clothing carelessly washed and dried, mixed with the heavily pungent tang of persistent body odor.

“What can I do for you?”

Instead of answering, Rommel reaches out for a plastic canister that holds Saenz's pens and pencils, reading aloud what's printed on the outside: “La Salle-Ateneo Golf Classic.” He stares at the letters for some time, still breathing heavily, then puts the canister back on the desk. “You play golf?”

“No, I just like freebies.” Saenz waits for Rommel to react, but the man just stares blankly at the mess on his desk. “Rommel, is there anything I can do for you?”

Rommel looks at him, and then the tiny eyes narrow. “You didn't come about the gift-giving program.”

Saenz straightens up in his chair, the unease much deeper now. “Excuse me?”

“The other day. When you came by asking about Carding.” He leans back in the chair, and it groans under his weight. “I hadn't seen the news yet when you and the other priest were at the house. I only saw it that same night.”

Saenz laces his fingers together on top of the desk. “What news?”

Rommel giggles, a small, high-pitched sound. “Oh, you know what I mean.” He half rises from his chair and leans forward, his chest pressing against the edge of Saenz's desk. “You're famous, you know. I didn't recognize you at first. But as soon as I did, I put two and two together.” He smiles, his eyes narrowing further even as his entire demeanor grows more animated, more enthusiastic. “I'm sharp that way,” he says slyly. “My mother doesn't think so, but I am.”

Saenz remains still in his chair, alert to possible danger. Rommel's physique may not fit their profile of the Payatas killer, but Saenz knows only too well that a profile is little more than a series of probabilities, and therefore no profile is completely accurate. “Why exactly did you come here, Rommel?”

Rommel snickers. “The police and the NBI say Carding killed those kids.” When Saenz doesn't say anything, he snickers again and then bestows a bright smile upon the priest. “But you don't think so, do you?”

The unease in the pit of Saenz's stomach has turned into fear. If Rommel were to try to harm him, he could probably fight him off, but Rommel has youth and bulk and unpredictability on his side. “Rommel, I've really got nothing to do with—”

“Because he's not smart. Right? You don't think he's smart enough to have done all that.” Without warning, he reaches out and touches Saenz's computer monitor, turning the screen a few degrees toward him. But Saenz quickly stands and moves the monitor back to its original position.

“Look, I'm really busy right now,” he begins, but Rommel cuts him off again.

“Who do you think did it? I mean, you must have some idea. They say you're one of the best; that's why the police keep calling on you.”

At that moment, Saenz sees Jerome framed in the open doorway. “I thought I'd go for pasta—Oh.” He stops short at the sight of Rommel.

“Jerome,” Saenz says, and there is more than a slight note of relief in his tone. “You remember Mrs. Salustiano's son.”

Jerome looks at Saenz, then back at Rommel. “Yes, I remember. What's up?”

When Saenz looks at Rommel again, he is back to staring blankly at the things on the desk. “Hi, Father.” He stands and lumbers toward the door, briefly giving Jerome an unpleasant whiff of his body. “Gotta run. Maybe I'll see you both at the church sometime.” And he's gone, his broad shadow gliding along the walls of the corridor.

Jerome turns to Saenz, confused. “What was that all about?”

“I have no clue,” Saenz says, frowning. “But it's certainly the most surreal visit I've had in this office in a long time.”

Jerome steps back out into the corridor briefly, checking to see if Rommel has indeed left. Then he reenters the office and closes the door, locking it. “Did he threaten you?”

“Not really. But he was behaving quite oddly.” Saenz sits down.
Rommel's visit has left him more than a bit shaken. Jerome scans the desk, finds a glass of water beside a small dish holding
a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich and hands Saenz the glass. The older priest takes a few sips and sets it back down on the desk.

“You think he might know something about the killings?” Jerome asks.

“Even if I did, we don't have anything on him but the fact that he's involved in the meal deliveries. And with the NBI satisfied that they have the right man—”

“Not the entire NBI. Just Arcinas and his allies.”

Saenz nods. “Right. Still, I don't think we'll be able to do much at the moment but keep Rommel in mind for future questioning.”

23

Dodong has had
a tooth out earlier today, and now the empty space in his gum is throbbing.

Maybe I should get some ice
, he thinks; at one peso per plastic bag, it is Payatas's pain reliever of choice. The boy fishes in his pockets for some loose change and counts out his money as he walks down the empty street, to the only
sari-sari
store he knows will still be open at this time of the night.

He is small for fourteen, but his legs are starting to gain some muscle. They carry him quickly now over the dust and the pebbles and the puddles of oily water to Aling Pepang's.

He stops suddenly and turns around. “Sssst,” he hisses, “who's there?” No answer but the barking of the neighborhood's mangy strays. The shanties, with their rusty corrugated-metal roofs and their walls of cheap plyboard and scrap wood, are some twenty meters away. The narrow, unpaved path that passes for a street is deserted. The ooze and stench of the landfill seeps through the ground, weaves through the air, a constant phantom presence.

Dodong stands completely still for a moment, listening, waiting. There's been talk of boys disappearing, hushed whispers about someone, man or monster, who steals them away from the streets and the storefronts and the safety of their homes and discards what is left of them in the dump.

Dodong doesn't want to believe any of it, the idle talk of the old ladies with their mouths full of pins, of the young women sitting on the steps of their houses picking lice out of each other's hair, of the men steeped in their gin and spouting nonsense.

Now, thinking about the talk and the friends who have gone missing and the dark empty street before him, something—some cold foreboding—sweeps over the crests and ridges of his brain, and he shivers.

He keeps walking, but as he walks, he again notices the dull pain of something no longer there in his mouth, and the tip of his tongue flicking again and again, curious and unaccustomed, to that pulpy emptiness.

A few moments later, Aling Pepang's store is in plain sight. But it is closed; none of the men had money for the usual beer revels tonight.

The fear sweeps over him again like wings, coming quickly, gliding away, swooping back down.

He turns back hurriedly and stuffs his coins down the right pocket of his shorts. But there is a hole at the bottom of the pocket, and the coins slide out. He stoops with a muttered curse to pick them up one by one from the dirt and the pebbles.

He looks up too late. He sees the rock, descending as if from the night sky, but not the hand that holds it.

Waking up breathless
and in terror as if from a bad dream.

He does not know where he is. His left eye feels very strange, the lid thick and heavy, even though his right eye seems to be open.

He tries to touch it but he cannot move his hands.

Something in his mouth. He whimpers. A rag of some kind, smelling foully of gasoline and old blood.

Where is he? Lying on his back on the floor of a dark room?

He tries to calm down, tries to orient himself with his surroundings, with his own body, which feels curiously heavy and unresponsive. Yellow light, then blackness. Yellow light, then blackness. The pain in his left eye, intensifying as he becomes more aware.

Yellow light, then blackness.

Is the room moving?

He tries to sit up, but the pain in his left eye, in the whole left side of his head, is unbearable. He starts to panic. No, no, no.

Yellow light, then blackness.

Then blackness.

 

 

Okay, it's okay, sssshhhhh. Yes, I know it's dark. Isn't it better? It's always better when it's dark because nobody can see you, nobody can watch you. No, don't cry. It's your fault. See, all I wanted was to be left alone, but you kept looking at me, following me with your eyes, watching me.

 

See, I wouldn't have to do this if you had just ignored me.

 

You were there too, anyway. So what made you different? What made you better than me? What gave you the right to look at me and talk about me and laugh at me?

 

Anyway, it's too late now. Ssshh, this won't hurt. Well, maybe a little, but not for long.

24

Joanna gets the
call at three thirty in the morning. Her contact at the Quezon City Police Department was about to come off his shift when the discovery was radioed in.

A few minutes later she is on the line with Leo, who has been roused from sleep by his young wife. Whispered instructions, where to meet, what equipment to bring. Then Joanna replaces the receiver in its cradle.

The man lying beside her stirs, then turns to her in the semidarkness.

“Again?” he asks sleepily. She kisses him on the forehead, strokes the soft, light-brown hair cut close to the scalp and caresses the broad barrel chest by way of an apology.

In his line of work, nobody ever calls in the dead of night. Still he forgives her for her sudden departures.

His large, powerful body is always invincibly warm in this freezing room; he likes to turn up the air conditioning and have her burrow into his warmth. For a few moments she considers staying here, her cheek against his chest, letting his heartbeat lull her back into warm, safe sleep. Then, very reluctantly, she sits up.

She watches the outline of his body under the covers, and out of habit she reaches out and runs the soft, fleshy pad of her right thumb across the long, brown lashes of his left eye. The eye shuts tighter as the other one opens. Green flecked with gold, catching what little light there is in the room.

“Give me one good reason.”

She cannot think of anything to say.

“Thought not.”

The huge hands with their thick fingers come up behind her head and pull it against his chest. She breathes him in, the smell of soap and warm skin and cigarette smoke. She loves the smell of him, even if she is allergic to secondhand smoke. He cannot, will not stop smoking, and she has to take antihistamines before she sees him. Small sacrifices, like not being able to go out with him in broad daylight, the slight twinge of envy she feels seeing lovers walk through malls and parks with their arms locked around each other. His daylight hours do not belong to her, and neither do these nights; she steals them like a common thief from a wife and children whose faces and names she does not want to know.

Someday soon these sacrifices will not seem so small, and these nights will not be enough. She cannot bear the thought of that day coming, and yet somehow she cannot wait for it to come.

His arms tighten around her so quickly and so intensely that she has to suppress a gasp. Then he relaxes his hold and pats her bare bottom.
All right
, he is saying.
Get going if you must.

She lingers a few seconds more, then unwillingly leaves the bed, heads for the bathroom and steps into the shower. She stands under the hot spray for a long time, wondering how she came to be here, why all her choices have led to this exact circumstance, leaving the married man in her bed in the middle of the night to rush to where a child lies dead.

She closes her eyes and musters all her will not to think this particular thought anymore.

Still a bit groggy after her shower, she returns to the bedroom. She gropes in the dark for her jeans, pulls them on, snaps on her bra. Throws on a shirt and finds her shoes.

“It'll be wet and miserable out there, buddy,” he mumbles reproachfully.

Sometimes he talks to her like she is a man. It does not matter. He does not touch her like she is one.

“I know,” she answers so quietly he cannot have heard.

She closes the bedroom door behind her. Her wallet and keys are on the side table in the hall, and she sweeps them up with one hand. She yanks her raincoat off the hook on the front door and leaves the apartment.

The police have
already arrived by the time she and Leo get there. A small crowd of about fifteen, twenty people from the neighborhood has formed not far from the line of police cars. After a few questions, Joanna learns that the body has not been recovered yet, that the crime scene has not even been cordoned off. The policemen themselves are in a tight huddle around their vehicles, drinking coffee, talking to the trash picker who found the body. Clearly, they are waiting for something—crime scene personnel, most likely
.

She turns to Leo. “You think we can get up there?”

“Dangerous in the dark,” Leo answers, but he's already hoisting his heavy camera up onto his shoulder.

“We might not get another chance.”

“Then let's do it.”

They quickly discover how difficult it is to get up the mound of trash. Every foothold is precarious, every step a struggle for balance atop the shifting garbage and sliding mud. And yet they're only at the fringes of the landfill. At the very center, the mass will, in theory, be even more unstable: loose garbage on the surface, layers and layers of compacted, rotting garbage in the middle and, at the bottom, a pool of filthy leachate. Now Joanna understands why the most effective trash pickers are children and small teenagers: the lightness of their bodies allows them to tread nimbly over this treacherous landscape.

After what feels like hours, she is standing bareheaded in the drizzle, looking down at what is left of a young boy of about twelve or thirteen years old after two or three nights out in the dump.

Leo is stepping carefully around the body according to her instructions. Nothing must be disturbed. The porta-light shines dull yellow on the ruin of the boy.

The rats have gotten to the body.

There is neither face nor heart, the latter removed through a gaping hole in the chest. She bends forward to examine the body more closely, hands thrust deep in the pockets of her jeans, taking care not to pitch forward.

Same technique, same timing.

So many wounds, but so little blood. Was he killed here, in the dump? Was he hunted, running in the dark, through the garbage?

The moment of falling.
She remembers a Jacopo Pontormo drawing in black chalk, the strokes so faint that the figure is hardly visible. What was it called?
Il giocatore che inciampa
, “Player Tripping Up”: the terrible dismay in the wide eyes, in the open mouth. The helplessness in the outstretched arm.
Is that how you looked when he finally caught up with you?
she asks the dead boy, then straightens up.

Suddenly it seems very cold.

A large black rat is caught in the beam of the porta-light. Leo says, “Shoo!”

The rat stands on its hind legs and raises itself up higher, sniffing the air. Studying the light with bright, black, curious eyes, unafraid.

Suddenly, a voice booms out at them. “Hey, you're not supposed to be here.” It's a burly plainclothes policeman, panting from the exertion of getting up the mound. He lumbers toward her, grabs her by the arm.

The rat scurries off, squealing, squealing.

Joanna yanks her arm away, and the policeman grabs it again. Leo keeps the camera rolling.

“Stop it,” she snarls. “Stop touching me.”

The cop glowers at her in return. “You're not supposed to be here,” he repeats, louder this time, as though he thinks she is either deaf or stupid, or both.

“I got you the first time,” she mutters, then turns to Leo. “It's okay. Let's get out of here.”

They start down the muddy slope strewn with garbage, and Leo keeps the porta-light turned on so they can pick their way through the darkness. She struggles to maintain her balance, her natural revulsion for dirt forcing her to concentrate intensely on her path.

When she gets to the pavement, near the line of police cars, she picks up her pace.

“Ah, Ben,” she says aloud once the police are out of earshot. “You've really stepped in it now.”