Authors: Phillip Finch
“Alex’s mother told me that he is a resourceful man,” she said. “Very determined.”
“Yes he is,” Favor said.
“I think you are also,” she said. “More than that. I sense that you’re a hard man. I think you could be dangerous. No offense, but this is the impression I get.”
“I’m a nice guy, I really am,” Favor said. ”But I have my moments.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “I need all the help I can get.”
Mendonza shot another photo, then lowered the camera.
“I’m done,” he said. “We should be leaving.”
“So soon?” said Lorna Valencia
“We have work to do,” Mendonza said.
She walked out with them to the taxi. Everybody else followed, dozens of them, an amazing procession out to the courtyard. It was empty when they got there. Favor, looking around, realized that the basketball players and the laughing children had gone to Lorna’s home and were in the crowd that had trooped out behind them.
The good-byes took at least ten minutes. The villagers swarmed around Mendonza and Favor. Some spoke; others only reached out to grasp their hands or simply to touch them.
“We’ll be back, we’ll return, yes we’ll try to come back with Marivic,” Mendonza murmured as they edged back to the car. Finally Mendonza got in behind the wheel and tugged Favor inside through the open passenger door. He started the car and drove down the path to the highway.
Favor looked back through the rear window. They were all waving good-bye as the car trundled down the broken pavement. The gray-haired old ones, the very youngest—all of them—stood waving and watching until the taxi turned onto the highway.
“You have to excuse them,” Mendonza said. “They don’t get a lot of excitement out here.”
“I didn’t mind,” Favor said. He could still feel their hands on him, the gentle but insistent way they reached out for him, wanting that moment of contact.
He sat back and looked out at the gulf and the
steep forested hillsides and at the road that ran between them. The sun was high and hot. He thought about sitting with Mendonza and Ari and Stickney in the gazebo beside Lake Tahoe. How he had talked about doing a little good deed, as though it were a trivial obligation before they got on with the important business of pleasure seeking.
It was just hours in the past, but that evening felt distant and unreal. Something had changed. He could feel it. Partly it was the dislocation of having traveled halfway around the world between sunset and sunrise, but there was more. That evening at the lake, he hadn’t yet met Lorna Valencia or seen her spotless floors in the little cottage at the edge of the jungle. He hadn’t looked at Marivic’s picture, carefully preserved under a coat of varnish. He hadn’t been to San Felipe.
He said, “How are you feeling, Al? Tired?”
“No,” Mendonza said. ”I’m feeling all right.”
“Good,” Favor said. “Then let’s get to work. I want to bring that girl home.”
Moments before he disappeared into the back of the taxi, the American named Raymond seemed to scan the faces of the crowd around him. He was looking for Lorna. He had something important to tell her. As soon as he found her, he leaned toward her and said quietly but firmly, “Don’t forget, like we talked about, call your son and have him contact me or Alex.”
“So that your friends in Manila can look after
him.”
“I also want him to stay clear of Optimo. Be sure you tell him that.”
“You believe there is danger?” she said.
She was watching his face when he answered. She noticed the slightest catch in his voice, an almost imperceptible hesitation before he spoke.
“There’s no reason for him to be involved. That’s why we’re here,” Favor said.
“I will tell him,” Lorna said, and Favor nodded as he ducked into the car.
Something about Favor unsettled her. Under any other circumstances, she would fear him.
Yet, as she watched the car drive away with him looking over his shoulder as he departed, she knew that he wished her well and that his advice was not to be disregarded.
She took out her phone and called her son.
When he left the last jeepney, Ronnie walked half a block up Amorsolo Street to the address where Optimo was supposed to be. He expected an office building. He found, instead, a gaudy nightclub, warehouse sized, with a three-story facade of dark reflective panels.
He looked up and down the block. Along one side of Amorsolo was a series of small shops and a travel agent and a Jollibee fast-food restaurant. On the other side of the street—the side where Optimo was supposed to be—there was only the nightclub and a residential compound behind a high wall, surely the home of a very rich family. A walkway ran between the side of the nightclub and the barrier wall of the residence.
Ronnie walked two blocks in each direction along Amorsolo Street. He couldn’t find Optimo. He crossed to the other side of the street and again walked two blocks in each direction. No Optimo. His route brought him back to the double front door of the nightclub. The door was closed, locked. The neon sign was dormant, red and orange neon tubes against the shiny copper-toned panels of the facade. The tubes formed the outline of licking flames that surrounded the name of the club:
Impierno.
The locked front door was completely unpromising.
Optimo couldn’t be here. He wandered along the sidewalk on Amorsolo until he reached the corner of the building. He stopped and stood looking back at it, perplexed.
Nearby, an old woman was selling newspapers and magazines. She sat against the corner of the wall that surrounded the compound, her stock spread out on the sidewalk in front of her. Someone stopped, picked out a newspaper from a stack, handed her a fifty-peso bill. She made change from a cigar box and dropped it into the customer’s waiting hand. Her expression didn’t change. She looked as if she had been sitting there forever.
Ronnie walked over to her, stood over her. She ignored him. Someone picked up a paper and gave her a few coins; she tossed them into the cigar box.
Ronnie said, “Ma’am, excuse me, I’m trying to find Optimo.”
She stared out across the street, face blank.
Ronnie said: “Do you know Optimo?”
She lifted her right arm and made a go-away motion without looking up.
Then Ronnie realized that she was not brushing him off. She was pointing. Her bony fingers were gesturing down the walkway that ran between the residence and the Impierno building. For the first time, he noticed a door in the side of the building.
Ronnie went up the walkway, to the door. It was easy to miss, set flush into the side of the building. A discreet placard on the door read:
Impierno Talent Management
Optimo Employment Agency
He was standing at the door when his phone chirped. He checked the screen and saw his mother’s number. Reflexively his thumb went to the
TALK
button…
… and paused, hovering a fraction of an inch above the button.
He knew what waited for him on the other side of that button click. His mother would be angry. She would scold him for remaining in Manila. She would chew his ass good. And when the chewing ended, the pleading would begin. Begging him to return. Weeping at his absence.
God, the weeping was worst of all.
The phone continued to sound in his hand. Ronnie stared at it for a few more seconds, and then did something he had never done before—never expected to do.
He slid his thumb over the keypad and pressed the button that read
END
.
He felt guilty when he did it. He also felt guilty about the lie he would have to tell later:
Sorry, Mother, I didn’t hear it. Manila is so noisy
.
He promised himself that he would call her back right away, as soon as he had some answers from Optimo. This was why he had come, to confront them face-to-face. Now he was literally on the threshold, and he couldn’t let anyone stop him.
Not even his mother.
He put the phone in his pocket and opened the
door.
“Where did she get off the bus?” Mendonza asked Favor. They were in the car, headed away from San Felipe, north toward Tacloban. “Was she still on it when it got to Manila? Or did she take off somewhere between here and there?”
“She went to Manila. Why wouldn’t she?” Favor said. “She wanted the job. Nice money. She was excited.”
“Maybe she’s a spur-of-the-moment runaway. She’s on the bus, she decides she doesn’t want the job, but she’s too ashamed to go home.”
“I don’t think so,” Favor said. “I asked a lot of people this morning; I couldn’t find one who believed that she would run away and disappear for a week. Nobody. It was ‘Not Marivic, never in a million years.’ They might all be wrong, but I doubt it. I think she rode that bus all the way to Manila, just the way she was supposed to.”
“I agree,” Mendonza said. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”
“So, what happened in Manila after she sent that text to her brother? The agency claims she never got off the bus. Maybe they missed her. Or maybe whoever was supposed to meet her didn’t get there in time and doesn’t want to admit it. Either way, she ends up at the terminal with no place to go.”
“That’s very possible.”
“But then what?” Favor said. “She would let someone know, right? Stranded at the terminal, she
would call somebody.”
“Maybe her phone was busted. Or she lost it.”
“I’ll buy that. But I don’t buy that she would go four or five days without finding a way to let Mom know she’s okay.”
“No,” Mendonza said.
“Unless something kept her from calling. She had an accident. Or she gets snatched by some random creep.”
“She was carrying a residence certificate and birth certificate for her passport. If there was an accident, her mother would’ve been notified,” Mendonza said. “The random predator, I don’t think so. Manila’s a rough town in a lot of ways, and there’s sure plenty of chances for a young woman to get into trouble. But the psycho killer, the Ted Bundy kind that picks a stranger out of a crowd and snuffs her out, that’s something you just don’t see in this country.”
“So we’re saying that she did ride the bus all the way to Manila.”
“Correct.”
“But she didn’t get lost or stranded at the terminal, because by now she would’ve checked in at home.”
“Correct.”
“But you see where this leaves us,” Favor said. “If she took the bus all the way to Manila, and didn’t get stranded…”
“Then somebody from the agency met her after all.”
“Exactly.”
“And now they deny it?” Mendonza said. “And
they won’t let her call home?”
“I know it seems unlikely,” Favor said. “But that’s where you end up, if you think it all the way through.”
Mendonza looked up the highway, considering this. They were passing a village tucked in between the highway and shoreline. It seemed to be about the size of San Felipe, with the same mix of huts and tiny thatched cottages and makeshift shanties.
Mendonza said, “Something’s been bugging me about the whole setup. Marivic getting that job offer. It seems like such a long shot.”
Favor shifted in his seat, looking at Mendonza, catching the tone of worry in his voice.
“You see this place?” Mendonza said. He was motioning out toward the seafront village. “How many like it did we pass on the way down?”
“At least ten,” Favor said.
“Uh-huh. That’s on one stretch of road. Now think of all the other villages just like this on all the other roads. And in every one, I guarantee, you’ll find girls just like Marivic, stuck in a dead end, praying for a job abroad.”
Directly ahead, a jeepney pulled out onto the highway from the village. Mendonza smoothly flicked the car into the oncoming lane to avoid it, then back into the northbound lane when he was clear. The jeepney was fully loaded, and nearly two dozen pairs of eyes turned to watch as the car swept past.
Mendonza continued as if nothing had happened. He said, “Half this country wants to work abroad, just
because the money’s that much better. You’ve got MDs leaving to become nurses in the States. Masters in electrical engineering are begging for the chance to install light fixtures in Saudi Arabia.
“But here Marivic puts in a job app—no experience, not even a high school diploma—and two days later she gets a call: ‘Come to Manila, you’re going abroad to work.’ Why her? What made her special? What did Optimo see in her? That’s what I want to know.”
Ronnie opened the door in the side wall of the building that housed the Impierno nightclub. He stepped across the threshold, expecting to see, maybe, a dance floor and a stage, tables and chairs, a bar.
Instead, he found himself at the bottom of a stairwell, looking up at a long flight of stairs. He began to climb the steps. He was alone, his footfalls echoing off the narrow walls. For a moment Ronnie felt like an interloper going someplace he had not been invited and where he wouldn’t be welcome. But he told himself that he didn’t need an invitation to be here. Marivic’s disappearance was his permission.
At the top of the stairs was a landing and a door at the far end, dark glass in a metal frame, solid and heavy when he pushed it open. He stepped into an office. It was a large open space with ten or so cubicles and at least as many young women, some at their work spaces, others at file cabinets and a printer and photocopier.
Ronnie guessed that all this sat above the nightclub,
an extra floor that you would never imagine as you looked at it from the street.
“Can I help you?”
He turned to face a woman who stood at the nearest cubicle, looking at him.
“Yes. I want to talk to somebody about my sister.”
“Your sister works in this office?”
“No. She came to Manila for a job. Optimo brought her here. But now they say she wasn’t on the bus. That’s a lie.”
“Oh, she’s a job applicant. You should contact the local office, in that case. We’re the business office; we don’t deal directly with applicants.”
Her tone was dismissive. Ronnie didn’t like that. And, like everyone else in Manila, she seemed to be staring at his clothes, her eyes measuring him as she spoke. He was getting tired of it.