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  With the teasing that began between his men, the tension and discomfort eased. Manalo returned Malaya to the folds of his mind and heart. He’d bring her back out when he couldn’t sleep tonight.

  He thought tomorrow he’d take the men to McDonald’s, even if it was redolent of the disease of American capitalism. A Big Mac, fries with banana ketchup, and a bottomless iced tea or Coca-Cola. Perhaps coming to Manila was exactly what they needed before they faced what might be quite an assignment at Hacienda Esperanza.

  Showers, food, and beer changed their dispositions considerably. Frank and Paco kept hinting about seeing Die Hard 2 with Bruce Willis—after their assignment was completed, of course.

  “Our destination is on the other side of Quiapo. I don’t know why we are going.” The shoddy data frustrated Manalo; he’d insist on better communication when he met his contact.

  “I know it’s an American movie, but it’s Bruce Willis,” Paco continued as they walked down the flights of stairs. He admired Bruce Willis as though the man were a true Filipino warrior, not just an American actor.

  They’d first seen Die Hard on a small color TV and VCR in a shanty in a village in the provinces where they’d stayed two weeks of a rainy season. The men played the tape until it broke, and still quoted their favorite lines.

  “Paco, give it a rest. We don’t even know if there’s a theater nearby,” Timeteo said as they stepped into the courtyard.

  “Two blocks away. I spotted it already,” Paco said with a wide smile.

  “I say, let’s get this business over, and then I’m skipping Bruce Willis for the ago-go bars,” Frank said.

  They stepped out to the street below and, as if to punctuate his words, flashing lights and enticing images greeted them.

  Frank grinned. “Look, it’s a sign!”

  Manalo shook his head as they walked onward. “Let’s just get through this meeting first.”

  “THIS BUS HAS NO AIRCONDITIONING. DO YOU HAVE A HANDKER-chief?” Raul asked as he sat down stiffly beside Julia.

  Her luggage was piled high in the seat behind them, and she realized his shamed embarrassment that she was on a rundown bus and not in the hacienda car.

  “A handkerchief?” she asked, shifting to the right of a sharp tear in the seat.

  “Here.” He pulled a white square of cloth from his pocket and pantomimed patting his forehead with the fabric before giving it to her. He took out a flowered handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed his own neck and face.

  “Thank you. You said it’s five hours to the hacienda?” Sweat ran down the curve of her back and between her breasts, and she wondered if a bus this decrepit-looking could actually make such a journey. She noticed two red chickens in a pen several seats ahead.

  “Unless traffic is lessened, but probably five, yes.”

  The bus rumbled to life, emitting a huge puff of black smoke. Passengers continued to glance back at her. A couple of children even sat turned with their hands on the back of the cracked vinyl seat three rows up, watching Julia’s every move. She hadn’t anticipated that her skin would be such an anomaly in the Philippines. Celebrity or circus freak—she wasn’t sure which they saw her as.

  The bus took off with a start, lunging into traffic and making Julia wonder if their pilot was a former taxi driver who didn’t realize he was now driving a bus.

  Julia had the sense that she was truly on her way now. Part of her wanted to put out her hands and say, Slow down, let me take this in, let me adjust to one thing and then the next.

  In the past two years, she’d lost the man who had been her entire life, left her company job for freelance work that she cared little to build, and faced her grandfather’s diagnosis. Time had passed in a kind of dull resonance until the final months of being with Grandpa Morrison. Now she faced instant change—seeing Nathan again, flying to Manila, heading toward the plantation—it felt fast, too fast.

  The highway passed towering malls and cinemas and colossal billboards displaying brands like Calvin Klein and Guess jeans. It crossed a sludgy brown river filled with garbage and lined with shanty houses stacked and staggered upon each other. Julia saw a television flashing through an open doorway and half-clothed children playing outside on the sidewalk with a scrawny dog. Poverty existed just blocks from tall professional buildings with restaurants and clubs. They drove along shops like strip malls without side-walks, crowded with every class level of Filipino walking and shopping together. In a strange way, the juxtapositions mirrored herself—the woman she was, the girl she’d been, and the fight between them to be something new and more and better.

  She was so lost in thought that she jumped when Raul asked, “Would you like a Coke, miss?”

  The bus wasn’t fully stopped when vendors came aboard.

  “A Coke would be nice, thank you.”

  Raul waved a woman over, bought two Cokes, and popped the top off hers.

  The cool liquid tasted much sweeter than at home, but it was a welcome relief down her dry throat. Julia’s skin already felt sticky and ready for a shower.

  Other vendors boarded the bus, offering chewing gum, drinks, paper-wrapped candies, boiled bananas, and other foods she didn’t recognize.

  As they drove from the city into the province lands, Raul leaned back slightly and slept with his hat perched over his eyes. The city and industrial areas turned to rice fields and rolling countryside pocked with gangly palms of various types and sizes.

  An older jeepney of unpainted wood and metal stayed in line with the bus for a time, but instead of passengers peering out the windows, it was filled with large pink pigs. A few had fallen asleep, and their forked feet stuck out the back.

  They passed a gated housing development with homes she might see in the Bay Area bluffs, and then a village with houses the size of large sheds where laundry dried on lines and men chatted outside on wooden chairs or worked on wood projects in dirt yards. At times, tinroofed stands lined the narrow streets with overflowing shelves of fruit and flowers.

  The bus stopped at intervals, taking on and letting off passengers as well as more vendors who came up and down the aisles offering homemade baked goods, foods, snack items, and even hot corn on the cob.

  Julia tried to take in every detail of the tropical scene, the brown faces and the vibrant greens and multicolored signs and vehicles. She wanted something of this place to embed itself within her, just as a portion of her blood was born of this land.

  Brightly colored signs and banners attracted her attention to some kind of a demonstration as they passed through another village. People were cheering and a man stood on a bench shouting to the crowd. A tank was tipped sideways, off to the side of the road. This complex nation would take more than a day to adapt to, she realized; she actually knew nothing of what she was getting into.

  Raul woke and patted his forehead and neck again.

  “Mr. Santos wrote that my grandfather’s remains will arrive in five days’ time.”

  Raul nodded. “Mr. Santos will come to the hacienda to discuss all matters. There was much paperwork, and Markus used his contacts for approval. It is not customary for an American to be buried here. We are honored by it. And there are other legal matters to discuss.”

  Julia nodded. The lawyers were taking care of it. With their help, she’d decide what to do about the future of the land her grandfather loved.

  After a while, her bloodshot eyes stung with weariness and travel. The sound of the chickens and rumble of the bus were no longer foreign sounds, but grew soothing as the hours passed. With a dab to her forehead with her handkerchief, she leaned her head against the glass as the flash of green landscape eased her eyes toward rest. Oddly, it was California that was beginning to feel like a dream.

  FOUR

  Quiapo was the home of religious fanatics, the poverty-stricken, and mobsters, with the wealthy and tourists mingling within as they searched for some of the best bargains in the city.

  Manalo’s men separated at a s
treet corner. Manalo hung back at a newsstand while the others went ahead at differing paces and directions. Best to arrive separately and inconspicuously.

  They came to the open square surrounding Quiapo Church. The revered “Black Nazarene” waited behind lock and key for his bi-annual parade to greet the thousands upon thousands of hands seeking healing and blessings with a touch on the dark wood sculpture.

  Two small barefooted girls ran toward Manalo with crucifix necklaces and rosaries outstretched in their hands. Their faces and dresses were smudged and black eyes pleaded more than words. He bent at the knees to feign interest in their wares and received a shy smile from the younger, who hid behind her sister’s faded skirt. As he made the exchange of coins to rosaries, he heard the footsteps for a dozen more children come quickly to surround him.

  “Palimos po. Pangkain lang,” said the children, asking for a few coins to buy some food.

  Yes, it had been a long while since he’d been in Manila; he’d forgotten the ramifications of charity. This was the world of democracy, he thought, as he tossed a handful into the air and left behind soft-cheeked children to scramble like dogs for the scraps. A Communist state would eliminate such oppression. It had worked in other countries for a time—and how desperately his people needed some leveling force among the classes.

  He decided to take a longer route to the Korean restaurant that was their destination, and turned down an alley. It amazed him still how Manila could have such streets of poverty just blocks from cinemas and shopping malls.

  Outside a run-down ago-go bar, women, used up from a depraved life, stood and waited for business. They smiled and called to him as he went by.

  “Two hundred pesos,” an older woman said as she stepped in front of him. The makeup on her face did nothing to hide the hardness of her years.

  “You sell your dignity for so little a price?” he said, smelling the stale cigarettes on her breath. “I’m sure men get what they pay for.”

  She might have struck him, but her frame was light from malnutrition, and he pushed her back, moving around her and some emaciated dogs that rummaged through garbage on the street.

  Across the way two young boys played naked in a puddle of water. They were near his twin daughters’ age. He wished to scoop them up from the squalor. Water on a street such as this could be infested with germs.

  He shouldn’t have come this way. Once such sights might have incited him to the cause, the belief in a better world. Why couldn’t the people see that this was the result of “freedom”? No one cared for the poorest children or that the innocents paid the highest price so the wealthy could live in luxury.

  Yet they were losing the battle. Nothing had changed for all the sacrifice of years. For his brother’s life. For his separation from Malaya and the children. For a thousand days of being alone. Worse, now the party had decided to collaborate with less than idealistic people. They called them “friends of the Communist brotherhood.” Friends simply meaning the country’s criminal elements. Was the enemy of your enemy really your friend?

  Manalo had always despised working with these people, who were polar opposites of what their own purpose fought for. While the New People’s Army fought for justice and equality for the masses, these men were motivated by nothing other than their own greed. But working with them had been beneficial, Manalo had to admit.

  For a moment, he couldn’t breathe—the air was thick with vehicle exhaust and thousands of carbon dioxide exhalations. His lungs burned, and he longed for the crisp air of the jungle.

  After walking a few more streets, all crowded and bustling with people, Manalo began to feel confident that they weren’t being followed. No one knew they’d come to the city. He again stopped at a newsstand, this one at a street corner, and perused the papers above a tray of X-rated videos. Timeteo walked by without a glance or comment, sauntering down the alley to knock on a back door. By the time Manalo had paid for a newspaper, Timeteo had disappeared inside.

  Manalo entered the Korean restaurant by the front door and found a small table in a corner. The menu perused, a San Mig ordered, he asked the young waitress, “Where is the CR?”

  He left the newspaper and a few coins for the beer that had not yet arrived and pushed out his chair as if he’d be back soon. Then he headed through the kitchen toward the comfort room. Two young men glanced up from their work over steaming pots and a sizzling grill, while a girl chopping vegetables never looked his way. He moved beyond the bathroom to a door with bold words in Korean that he understood without translation to mean keep out. In the corner of a storage area, a large man whittled on a stick and didn’t meet his eye.

  Manalo hesitated, put a hand to the door, and turned the knob. As the door opened, he knew instinctively he was entering an environment different from what the information relayed to him during transport had led him to expect. It was the vibrations he felt as the door opened, like a putrid smell coming from a crypt. His men marveled at Manalo’s foresight into a situation, not realizing it had been perfected by the need for survival—a defensive mechanism from early childhood. He could pick up his father’s joy or rage before he walked into the shack they called a home. His brother never did learn this art, and unless Manalo could warn him, Ricky often became a victim.

  A slight hesitation with the door half-opened overwhelmed him. With fixed jaw, Manalo brought his hand to his waist where his .38 had become like another purposeful limb. He strode in with confidence and assessed that it was not danger that brewed in that dark back room, but fear.

  In one dark corner he saw a bound figure, its hands and feet tied behind the back—clearly dead. The mouth was probably taped closed to keep screams from reaching the diners enjoying their Korean barbecue, but Manalo couldn’t be sure without showing that he’d noticed the body. The face was turned toward the dark corner anyway.

  “What went wrong?” he asked.

  A tall figure moved from the circle of men who’d been conversing in muffled tones when Manalo entered. To his right, Timeteo, Paco, and Frank leaned against the opposite wall with the look of hardened killers ready to do his bidding.

  The tall guy was obviously the leader, though he crooked his neck down as though ashamed of his height. Manalo didn’t understand that. If he had height, he’d stretch up even taller, chin up, so that others would marvel at the view he must have of the world.

  Tall Man cleared his throat. “We encountered a little problem. May bata kami, youthful and foolish. He’s new and too zealous to impress, especially when he heard our red friends were coming. You know the type. He got a little too excited in getting information. That’s him over there.”

  Manalo took a few steps around a chair turned on its side, stepped over the blood streak that extended from the chair to the body, and motioned the kid toward him. He positioned him-self so the young man had to stand in the dead man’s blood. Ah, no pompous gaze now, he thought. The boy’s face was as white as a white man now, and Manalo thought how he and his men would laugh about it after this was over. But for now, none of it was humorous.

  “What do you have for me?” Manalo demanded.

  “Wala, nothing really.”

  Manalo turned back to the tall man in charge of this band of wannabe rebels. “Is it recorded?” He had already noted the tape recorder on a table beneath the dangling lightbulb.

  “Yes,” Tall Man said. “But we learned nothing of value.”

  “And what is the chance we are compromised being here?”

  “None.”

  “None?” He stared hard at the man. “It is ignorance to believe there is a moment of time without danger. So what is the chance we are compromised?”

  “Extremely low.”

  “That is acceptable then. But you have nothing for me?” Manalo moved his eyes between the two of them.

  “A lesson will be thought of,” the tall man said, glancing at the boy.

  “Yes. Indeed it will.” Manalo felt their shudder and that of his comrades b
ehind them. “You have placed my men in grave danger. There is a nationwide government manhunt on each of us. Out-standing warrants and rewards that have kept us from Manila for three years. And yet here we are, put into this position, because of what?”

  No one answered.

  “Because one of the friends of the brotherhood had important information for us. We were already en route to a mission when we were diverted to Manila to recover this important information. So. All of this, and you have nothing from this interrogation except a corpse that must be disposed of.”

  The boy paled further than seemed possible as the gravity of his deeds set in. The leader nodded.

  Addressing the tall man, Manalo said, “You will send the body to his family. Make it appear that this provincial boy just got mugged in the tough streets of Manila. Our brotherhood cannot be linked to this in any way. If your group is implicated, you cannot involve us.”

  He paced a few steps in thought, moving toward the body. “On the second day of the wake, send an abuloy to the family—six months wages from the Red Bolos with our condolences and the promise to bring the killers to justice.”

  The leader gave a short nod. The tension settled now, the young man stepped back and made an inconspicuous attempt to wipe the blood from the soles of his shoes.

  “Let us listen to the tape.”

  The quick glance between them did not go unnoticed by Manalo as the three of them went to the table. His intention was to shame this young man from ever displaying such a rash burst of pride again. Only a few bloodthirsty men were needed for their group, to do the jobs that Manalo didn’t want to infect others with. But it was his own stomach that churned in displeasure as the tape played, at the sounds of the young man shouting threats and torturing the prisoner.

  “I’m only a driver,” the dead man said repeatedly, and nothing more.

  When the tape ended, Manalo felt his head spin with weariness, though he clenched his jaw and kept his eyes steady and hard.