Moondogs (30 page)

But it hadn’t happened. It wouldn’t. His mother’s dreams were bullshit. She didn’t know what she was talking about. Benicio told Katrina good night. He told her to stop playing games with him. He told her that her friend was on the beach and needed to be helped to his room.

Chapter 17

Efrem Khalid Bakkar watches doctors hem and haw over the best way to save Racha Casuco’s life. He sits, transfixed, on an elevated observation deck. Racha lies beyond the aquarium-style glass, skimming the surface of dying, submerging—now for a minute, now for two—and surfacing. No one on Task Force Ka-Pow seems to be concerned. Lorenzo stalks the hospital in search of a cafeteria. Reynato is outdoors, fielding questions from concerned reporters. Shirtless Elvis sits in an adjacent folding chair, nose in a glossy American magazine, bare feet propped against the glass, ignoring the butchering and mending below.

A full hour gone by and the doctors are still unable to get the fishman’s blade out of Racha’s chest. They yank at the handle, working the steel about his insides, unable to loose it. They bring in specialists, and strong young interns, and a priest, who sits on a stool in the corner, horrified. “Does it usually last this long?” Efrem asks.

“Depends,” Elvis says, still examining the best and worst dressed of Santa Barbara. “Sometimes Racha gets off easy. Door slams on his finger, sprains his ankle—something like that. We once arrested a whole cell of New People’s Army in Quezon, and all Racha had to show for it was a splinter in his ass cheek. But sometimes it’s pretty bad. This one’s bad, but not the worst.” Elvis looks up from his magazine. “Last year I was picking shrapnel out of the poor kid’s ear. Good old Racha. Get him bloody, but you won’t get him down.”

Cheering erupts below. One of the interns has managed to work the blade out. Surgeons descend upon the open wound with needles and thread. To Efrem they look like the old men back home, squatting beneath gum trees, all mending different pieces of the same big net.

Elvis turns to pictures of frail women carrying dogs. “I’ll tell you something,” he says, “I wouldn’t ever trade what he does for what I do. Always getting hurt and never dying?
No thanks
. Not for me. I’d rather be a dog, full time. A mosquito, even.”

Efrem says nothing. He watches machines pump blood and air in and out of Racha. One of them begins a beeping protest and a jagged line goes flat. He’s dead again. Doctors quit sewing and defibrillate. The priest in the corner stands, ready to do his part. Still, Elvis seems unconcerned.

“You a religious man?” he asks, glancing down briefly at the robed father.

“My family was,” Efrem says. “They thought God gave me these.” He makes a backward peace sign and puts a finger under each magic eye.

Elvis leans back, propping his feet higher on the glass. “They sound like my family,” he says. “My dad and brothers all went to seminary in Vigan. Tried to send me also … a few times. They never did figure out how I kept getting away. I could do a great impression of our dog, Biag. Dad once went out looking for me with
me
leading the way, hot on my own scent. He stopped every few minutes to hold my paws and pray. He was crazy for that shit.”

Elvis pauses for a while, smiling. This is the most ever said in Efrem’s company. “Are you crazy for it?” he asks.

“I pray.”

“You think someone’s listening?”

“I wouldn’t if I didn’t.”

Below them Racha breathes again, and the agitated machines calm down. Nurses dismiss the priest while surgeons backtrack to tighten the wet seam holding Racha closed. The door to the observation deck opens and Reynato strides in, sucking his soggy cigar, fanning himself with his cap. Lorenzo enters a moment later, riding a decked-out dessert trolley like a go-cart. He parks beside Efrem and, to his surprise, offers him a slice of buko pie. Efrem accepts. It’s delicious.

The doctors complete their final stitch and a happy commotion grows in the theater below. Everybody shakes hands, posing beside Racha’s bloodied form as a nurse takes pictures with her telephone. The head surgeon looks up at the observation window and flashes a big bloody thumbs-up. Stripping off his gloves and mask, he joins them in the cool air behind the glass. He tries and fails to look somber, pacing and twitching like a meth-addled junkie. “I once had a patient,” he says, “stabbed deep through the chest. He lived only because of the slimmest
—the stupidest
—luck. The knife navigated the maze of his guts perfectly, damaging nothing. Let me be clear,” he says, “your friend is
not
this patient. It’s no less crazy, but your friend is the opposite. The blade has done minor damage to virtually every organ in Racha’s body. Pierced skin, cracked ribs, hewn heart valve, nicked lungs, skewered liver, grazed stomach lining, whittled esophagus and—at the point where it came to a denting stop—a fractured upper vertebrae. It took an effort from every department in this hospital, but we’re confident he’ll survive. He has a long and extremely painful recovery ahead.”

“I’m sure you’re right about the painful part,” Reynato says. He approaches the viewing glass and knocks hard. “Racha! Quick-quick this time. That cocksucker Fuentes needs my ass in Manila by Friday. I already got flights, and so help me, if I get charged a rebooking fee on account of you being a sulky baby I’ll take the difference out of your paycheck!”

Racha is unresponsive below. Reynato looks at where the viewing glass meets the wall to gauge its thickness. He turns back to the head
surgeon. “Can he hear me down there?” he asks. “I think I’d better go to him.”

The surgeon takes Reynato by the wrist. “Sir! Mr. Ocampo … I don’t think you understand. He’ll need months of bed rest. He’ll need supervised rehabilitation. Traveling this week isn’t just unhealthy, it’s impossible. And besides, you can’t go down there. There’s no smoking in the operating rooms.”

Reynato plucks the cigar from his teeth and taps it with his pinky, as though ashing. “You see smoke?” he asks. He frees himself politely from the surgeon’s grip and leads Ka-Pow below to collect their friend.

HE’S RIGHT, OF COURSE
. Racha recovers in three days, but in that time he travels through more pain than Efrem thinks it possible to emerge whole from. Wide awake the whole time, he shivers and calls for blankets even with the air-conditioning off, mosquitoes buzzing joyfully though open windows. He picks his stitches, sweats blood, bleeds sweat, and loses his screaming voice before running out of things to scream about. Efrem and Elvis tend to him as best they can, which mostly means hitting rewind, play, and sometimes slow-motion on pornos in the VCR. “You see what I mean?” Elvis asks, patting Racha’s hacking torso. “This boy came up short in the bruho department. This isn’t the kind of power you wear a costume for.”

By Friday Racha looks about as healed as he’s ever going to get, and that afternoon Task Force Ka-Pow boards a flight bound for the capital. They land shortly before dark, Manila stretching all around like a high, dry reef. Immediately upon deplaning Reynato is swallowed by a modest bevy of reporters and Ocampo enthusiasts, but once they discover that Charlie Fuentes isn’t with him their excitement flags, and they disperse. Apparently the real Ocampo interests them far less than the false one. Efrem, for his life, can’t imagine why. Neither, it seems, can Reynato, who looks hurt as the cameramen pack their gear and grumble about an evening wasted.

Though Efrem doesn’t remember anyone having suitcases when they left Davao, they each grab one from the baggage carousel before
squeezing into a taxicab—Reynato up front and the four bruhos crammed impossibly into the back. Thankfully the ride to Reynato’s home is brief. He lives in Magallanes Village, a gated community nestled grimly between EDSA and the South Superhighway. As they pass through the guarded checkpoint Reynato explains that this neighborhood isn’t so swanky as Dasmariñas, where Charlie Fuentes lives, but to Efrem it looks swanky as hell. He’s dumbstruck by Reynato’s house—three stories of plaster, wood and limestone tile, all walled in by a concrete bulwark topped with mortar and shards of Tanduay bottles. Beyond the wrought-iron gate is a front yard overgrown with lush calamansi trees, bisected by winding flagstones that lead to great double-doors affixed with an antique Intramuros knocker. Out back there’s a veritable papaya grove, a lawn cut neat as a putting green and a small swimming pool.

“That’s movie cash for you,” Lorenzo says, amused at Efrem’s evident shock. “He still won’t give us a taste of those royalty checks.”

“That’s because I don’t get any,” Reynato says from up front, still sore about the reporters’ cold shoulders back on the tarmac. “I just know how to invest … and dabble.” He winks bitterly into the rearview, opens the door and retrieves one of the suitcases from the trunk. Efrem opens his own door, set to get out as well. Reynato gives him a brief, quiet look; embarrassed for his sake. “I don’t think so, Mohammed. I love you, and all. But mi casa,
mi casa
.”

He turns his back on the cab, fiddling with keys, working them into a series of iron locks. Lorenzo chuckles, not unkindly, as Efrem shuts his door. The taxi departs the gated village, continuing down EDSA, into the heat-pumped heart of downtown Makati.

THEY NEXT STOP
among the dingily landscaped roots of an apartment high-rise. Lorenzo, Racha and Elvis pile out. Efrem remains in the taxi. Lorenzo raps on the glass and stares him in the face. “Come on, kid. We’ve had our differences, you and I, but I wouldn’t do you like that. Follow me.”

With that he breezily leads the others into the lobby, leaving Efrem
to pay the fare. By the time he catches up they’re already in the elevator, Elvis transformed into a svelte black cat, staring intensely at the lighted buttons like they’re tiny yellow birds. To Efrem’s continued amazement, the elevator stops at the penthouse, where the bruhos wander out into a tremendous flat, floored in marble of alternating white and black. He’s never been inside—
never even seen
—a place like this. It’s even more incredible to him than Reynato’s massive house. As a bona-fide national hero, Reynato deserves to live like that. But they, surely, do not.

Racha, still weak from his ordeal, heads straight to bed and Elvis races down the hall, leaping up on the windowsill to gaze lustily at the lighted streets below. Lorenzo lingers with Efrem on the landing, regarding him bemusedly. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “You’re thinking: No way these boys can afford this on police salaries. And there isn’t anybody making movies about
them
. So they’ve got to have something on the side—some source of dirty money.” Efrem nods, because yes, that’s exactly what he’s thinking. “Well, you’re righter than you know.” Wincing a bit, Lorenzo reaches into his ear and produces a filthy twenty-five sentimo coin—earwax coating the entire thing, some blood speckling the words
Bangko
and
Sentral
. “Took years,” he says. “It’s when I got impatient and upgraded to those fat five peso coins that my eardrum burst. But it was and continues to be worth it.” He steps across the massive entryway, arms outstretched as though to hug his own home.

“So … I’m staying here?” Efrem can’t quite wrap his mind around it.

Lorenzo doesn’t turn around, but Efrem sees his reflection grin in the window. “You’ve got somewhere else to go?”

“No,” he says, “I don’t.”

“Well then. You’re welcome.” Lorenzo crosses to the glass, gazing out at Makati. He strokes Elvis’s neck lightly and Elvis, like a perfect alley cat, affects an unconvincing indifference. “Best make yourself at home, because Renny won’t have much use for us until after this election. That slick fucker Fuentes means to squeeze him dry. He’ll have him running all over the city, cashing in favors, rallying support, smiling
like he means it. Because as of now, you’re still on layaway. Renny’s gotta
pay
for your ass.”

Efrem joins Lorenzo at the window, gazing out at the night-drenched avenues and towers. Commuter helicopters drift and trawl through the smog, and the traffic below sparkles like phosphorescent plankton. His deep shame at being a source of aggravation for his lifelong hero is counterbalanced by the exhilarating thought that Reynato deems him
worth it
. Lorenzo glances at him sidelong and misreads his expression as one of continued awe at the opulent bruho apartment.

“Who’s your daddy?” he says.

“I don’t know,” Efrem responds, flatly, and without guile.

Lorenzo blinks at him for a moment. Then he laughs so hard that his forehead strikes the window and scares Elvis off the sill. The glass vibrates with the strike, and for a moment it looks as though the city itself is shaking.

AND SO, FOR TEN-ODD DAYS
Ka-Pow lays dormant while their leader shills for the windbag would-be senator. Reynato doesn’t show until the evening after the election, and he looks supremely put out, grumbling: “So help me, Mohammed, you better be worth this silly shit.” He says it’s time they got back to their true calling. He says the country needs Ka-Pow tonight. He says they’ll be hunting pirates.