Moondogs (14 page)

“Sure does. Call it Glock.”

Brig Yapha and Charlie laugh some more, and Efrem looks away, feeling foolish.

AROUND MIDDAY THEY STOP
at a cleared hill overlooking a banana grove. Succulent leaves and trunks extend below like chop on a small
green sea. A stream runs some hundred meters north, and on its bank sits a large but only partially constructed house. Smoke rises from a tin chimney on the east wing, and Efrem sees food being prepared through an open kitchen window. The brigadier general and Charlie dismount, looking old as they rub their backs and knees. Reynato leaps out, opens the door for Efrem and helps him down, as though he needs help down. “You hungry?” he asks, not pausing for an answer. “I’m starving! Down we go.”

The four descend the shallow, sunny crest, following a narrow path into a forest of banana trees laden with harvest-ready fruit. Charlie plucks one from a low-hanging bushel and eats loudly. It seems that Efrem’s unexpected presence and the magically outsized murder he’s just witnessed have left the actor-turned-politician a little off-balance, but nonetheless he tries to play the happy, confident host. The Fuentes family has owned this land since Spanish times, he says. They maintain the road and lease out water rights from their stream. His cousin started to build this house under pretense of supervising the harvest, but he almost never comes down and when he does it’s to hunt hornbills and macaques with shotguns or to impress his eco-cred on touristic white girlfriends.

The house looms large as they emerge from the trees. Smoke coils in still air above the chimney, hardly rising. They hear water rush over stones out back, the musical sound of pots and voices from the kitchen. The building isn’t near finished; unused hardwood beams protrude from half-frames, looking like ship-ribs from some wreck dashed into the jungle by a tidal wave. Those parts that are complete are the sole survivors of calamity—not first progress. Charlie tosses his peel into a waste bin by the front door, sinking a swish. “Here we are,” he says. “You’re welcome … all of you.”

Efrem steps toward the house but stops in his tracks. Something is wrong. He turns and sees them. Three men hide among the overgrown banana, staring at him. Reynato must know they’re there as well, because he smiles and presses a finger to his lips. He shapes his hand into a pistol and points it at the trees. Pulling his thumb back like a steel hammer, he fires and mimes recoil. “Ka-Pow,” he whispers.

A maid with straight hair and a light blue uniform comes to the door. She’s seventeen maybe, no older. Charlie asks if lunch is ready and she nods, stepping aside and inviting them in with skinny arm and open palm. Charlie and Brig Yapha enter, brushing her as they pass. Reynato lingers on the lawn with Efrem, looking amused. The spies in the trees don’t know they’ve been discovered. One sits among rotting leaves, cradling a bushel of green bananas in his arms. He slices the fruits lengthwise with a kitchen knife and eats them, peels and all. Another, barefoot and nude save for a pair of tattered basketball shorts, stands slim against a trunk. The third, looking gnarled and old, squats behind a log. Life in the jungle, life in the army, have made Efrem suspicious of those who would watch him. He raises his custom Tingin.

“Easy, Mohammed,” Reynato says, putting his hand over the muzzle. “They won’t give you any trouble. At least not the shooting kind of trouble.” He turns back to the trees and yells, his voice rebounding and doubling against the shallow hill. “Fuckers! Lunch!”

Echo and return. Silence. Heavy leaves rustle and three men step out onto the grass before them. “Isn’t that nice?” Reynato says.

The man in the middle still cradles his bushel of fruit. Knife dangling at his side, he speaks with a full mouth: “What’s that?”

“His name is Efrem,” Reynato says. The man cocks his head, evidently favoring a good ear. Reynato repeats himself. “He’s my new friend. Maybe yours too, Lorenzo.”

“Yeah? I got too many already.” The man, Lorenzo, pauses to chew. “Is he what I think he is?”

Reynato does not answer, but he smiles.

“I figured. He looks weird like that. So, what’s he do?”

“He kills people.”

Lorenzo swallows and smiles right back, his teeth pulpy. “We all do that.”

“Well, he does it better,” Reynato says. He turns to Efrem. “Treat these boys with care, Mohammed. They may someday be like family. This idiot ruining his appetite is Lorenzo Sayoc. The handsome one,” he points at the man with gnarled and twisted skin, “is Racha Casuco.
And finally we have sweet, simple Elvis Buwan. They leave a little to be desired, as family goes. But I promise you’ve got more in common with them than any fucking soldier boy. They’re all bruhos, like you. And like me.”

He claps once and rubs his hands together. “Let’s eat.”

LUNCH AT THE UNFINISHED FUENTES
house is a big affair. Efrem walks through the kitchen into an open dining area where the maid sets food out on a long table made of varnished Philippine mahogany and flanked by benches of the same wood. Brig Yapha and Charlie, already seated, seem to have been in the middle of a hushed conversation, but they clam up as everybody enters. Charlie, a little startled by the appearance of Reynato’s bruhos, signals to the maid to grab some extra plates. She adds them to the tabletop already covered with ceramic platters and stewpots, all set under the crossing breezes of electric fans to keep away flies. A big bowl of shredded purple banana flower fried with bits of pork fat, a crispy duck baked to near-blackness and served on layers of foil, beef-shank bulalo with chopped ampalaya and carrots sitting in a vat of oily broth, a whole braised grouper covered in diced garlic. There’s rice of course, heaped and steaming in a plastic tub beside a bowl of sliced calamansi, soy sauce and a bottle of peppered coconut vinegar. Under the table is a cooler of beer, and a pilsner is set behind every plate, shortnecks and caps glistening with icy sweat.

At the sight of mismatched china and clean silverware, Efrem hesitates. He’s used to field-issue crockery, eating on the ground by the mess trailer. He’d rather go hungry than take a seat not meant for him. Lorenzo pushes past, discarding his bananas to get a spot near the bulalo. Racha sits as well, eyeing the maid’s threadbare dress. Elvis and Reynato join them. Efrem hovers.

Lorenzo breaks his staring contest with the food to glance at Efrem. “Ain’t he even housetrained?”

“Never mind him.” Reynato gestures to an open spot with his spoon. “Sit.” Efrem leans his Tingin carefully against the wall and sits. Brig Yapha and Charlie bow their heads in prayer, but everyone else
reaches out hungrily for scoops of rice and duck. Reynato gets the bony grouper head. Lorenzo comes away with the best piece of beef shank and goes right for the marrow. Charlie lets them fill their plates with his food before serving himself. He eats like a bird, chattering about the upcoming election—just twenty days away now—more than he chews. He’s nervous about how he did today, and not shy about showing it, which lowers him even further in Efrem’s esteem. His campaign manager’s in the hospital, will be for a while yet, and this is his first trip solo. No talking points. No prepared remarks. Everything on-the-fly. He really hopes he didn’t screw up.

“Fuck your nerves,” Yapha says. “You’re a natural. Did you even
see
the kids today. Swooning like girls at a concert.”

They keep at it, and the pace of their talk makes Efrem’s eyes unfocus. The discussion is difficult to follow. What they’re saying, even who’s saying what—it all pushes past faster than he can unjumble it. Yapha bemoans that he’s not yet a full general and Charlie says forget it, quit, run with me. Don’t laugh! Better than a soldier’s pay, am I right? Second District, Davao del Sur, is coming open. Castillo’s got nut cancer and his son’s in New York learning how to be a better fag. You’ll be a shoo-in, come up to Manila and give me some help against those fucking cha-cha crybabies. Brig Yapha shyly sucks shank. They’ll never elect a Pangasinense down here, let alone a Yapha. Don’t be so sure. They know you well enough and they won’t care. What you need to do is start a fight. Get your name in the papers followed by a list of dead Abu Sayyaf terrorists. Who doesn’t like a hero? I don’t, Reynato says, picking his braces with a grouper bone. Don’t you even! I’m not even going to start with you. Charlie grins a soft, cowardly grin. You and your tired excuses. You squanderer of big-ass chances. National hero, tough on crime, connections at the top and at the bottom. The
very
bottom … and the very top. No telling how far a
shred
of ambition could take you. Mayor of Manila? Or elected to the Senate, with me, assuming I get there? Goddamnit, Renny, the way your rep cleans up at the box office … you’d be a fucking force at the ballot box. I mean, running on your name, how could you lose? Reynato belches and sort
of karate-chops the air. No doubt, he says. But haven’t you beat me to it? Seems to me that you’re already running on my name. And I guess there’s only room for one Reynato Ocampo, real or fake, in voters’ heads. But more power to you. Power, and luck.

Reynato reaches across the table and uses the edge of his spoon to cleave off a brittle duck leg. He pauses to chew, crunching charred fat and bone.

EFREM IS HUNGRY BUT EATS LITTLE
. Queasily he turns down blood-dripping shank and pork-spoiled banana flower. He lets Lorenzo have his unopened beer and scans the table for a water jug. He swallows what he can, pushes his plate away and watches the three bruhos. Lorenzo eats with abandon, emptying his plate as fast as he fills it. He’s dressed oddly. On his head is a wide-brimmed straw hat; the kind mothers make for daughters old enough to bend daylight on the rice paddies. Around his shoulders is a plastic rain poncho, clasped below his chin with a copper button. Open and flowing, it dances in the fan draft like a transparent cape.

Elvis is coated in thin filth, his hair a net for twigs and rainwater. He drinks more than he eats, looking just as vacant at the table as he did among the trees. It’s not just an expression—his face is smooth, empty, featureless. Efrem can’t place his age. He could be a tired thirty or a tight-skinned sixty.

But Racha, the man with the gnarled hide, is the most interesting. Efrem realizes that Racha’s whole body is covered in scars. He’s given and received pain enough times to know what mutilation looks like, the different marks left by different attacks. Just by looking at Racha’s exposed forearms, neck and face, he can tell that he’s been shot, stabbed, burned, bitten, whipped, strangled, stung by jellyfish, beaten with a manual can-opener and possibly scalped. Among those dark inches he can’t find a scrap of healthy skin—Racha is all made of scar tissue. And what’s more amazing than the scars is the fact that he survived long enough to collect them all.

Lunch concludes with plates of leche flan and small cups of civet
coffee. Reynato sighs contentedly and leans back against the wall, looking across the table at Brig Yapha, and at Charlie. “Well,” he says, “that was a treat. I hate to sour the afterglow by talking business.”

Yapha puts on a quizzical expression. “You have business? What business do you have?”

“Cute.” Reynato places his cigar back in the corner of his mouth. Still he does not light it. “What do you want for him?”

Brig Yapha and Charlie Fuentes exchange looks. “Well,” Charlie says, all soft and friendly, “Tony and I were talking about that a little, before lunch. And you know, it’s a hard, a tough loss for the Division, right? Because Efrem
is
his best, and—”

“Motherfucker, you didn’t even know
what he was
till I told you.”

“True enough,” Brig Yapha says. “But the boy’s still mine. He gets no transfer, no discharge without my say-so.”

“Not that we’d keep him from you,” Charlie rushes to add. “But, it’s just, there’s a whole lot of ways you could be helpful in the coming weeks. I mean, today was
great
—don’t get me wrong … but, you know, it would also be cool if you stood out front a bit more. Gave a few nice words to the reporters. Amoroso’s hammering my ass on law-and-order. Maybe you could say a little something at Director Babayon’s next press conference. Maybe you could get some of the officers to come out for me. I mean, they worship the ground you walk on, Renny.”

“Ah-ha.” Reynato sits forward and places his elbows on the table. He puts his chin in his hands like a girl looking at her date, but his expression is sour. “So, let me get this straight—for years you make yourself famous, and rich, pretending to be me. Then you turn that fame and money into a run for the Senate. You put my name on your campaign posters, fucking act like me while you’re on stage. And now I’m supposed to go out and stump with you?”

“Hey …” Charlie sounds, and looks, genuinely hurt. “That’s not fair. You’ve seen some scratch from those movies, too. I didn’t write your contract. Hell, if you’d have shown it to me back then,
I’d
have told you to get a lawyer.”

“And you?” Reynato turns on Brig Yapha. “What’s in this for the not-quite general?”

“Don’t get short, Renny,” Yapha says. “What you saw back there wasn’t just political stagecraft. My men are hurting—for ammunition, rations, body armor and some damn downtime. I need all the friends in Manila I can get, and Charlie promises to be one. Besides,” he glances now at the bruhos from the trees, “it’s more than a fair trade. Efrem would be the perfect addition to your wily crew.”

The table goes quiet for a long while. Reynato stirs his coffee, spoon hammering the insides of the cup. Elvis, Lorenzo, and Racha all lean forward like birds over a kill. Finally Efrem breaks the silence with his first utterance since entering Fuentes’s house. “Sorry, but what’s happening? Where am I going?”

Everybody laughs. “Shit,” Reynato says, downing the last of his coffee. “Sorry about that, Mohammed. Don’t mean to treat you like a barter chip—I won’t even take you if you don’t want to come. You see, the boys and I, we run this little task force.”

“Overmodest,” Charlie protests, clearly thrilled by the diffused tension. “There’s nothing little about it, Efrem. We’re talking
presidential directive
. We’re talking a four-time cover story in the
Bulletin
. Reynato here runs the finest police crew in—”