Smaller and Smaller Circles (24 page)

39

Jerome drops by
the laboratory very early the next morning, before his drive to Bulacan. Saenz meets him outside.

“All set?”

“Pretty much. If I'm able to find and speak with the parents, I should be back this afternoon.”

“And your story?”

“I'm Alex's spiritual advisor, and I've been concerned because I haven't heard from him in a while.”

“That's a good one. You don't have to hide who you are, and you don't have to fabricate too much.”

Without another word, Jerome gets into his car. The window on his side is rolled down, and Saenz pats him on the shoulder, giving voice to the anxiety they're both feeling. “Get back as soon as you can.”

The laboratory is
quiet when Saenz returns. He is feeling a bit bleak at the moment; he spent three or four hours tossing and turning last night, unable to sleep. He eventually gave up, got out of bed and began going over his notes on the killings.

It is almost 9
a.m.,
and the sun is high in the sky outdoors. Saenz does not turn on the lights and draws the blinds. Now the lab and its adjoining rooms—the reception area, the office, the photo lab—are as cool and dark and quiet as he likes for thinking.

He settles into the swivel chair behind his desk, stretching out his long legs to put his feet up on the desk, and picks up the remote for the CD player. The faint strains of the
andante
from Bach's Partita in C Minor—
let's see, this is Sergey Schepkin on the piano here
—fill the room.

Saenz imagines the notes to be tiny birds, no bigger than the tip of his little finger, spreading their miniscule wings, gliding from this room to the others, flying up toward the high laboratory ceiling or seeking out the dim, quiet spaces.

Quiet spaces.

The thought comes to him, clear and whole.

He needs a quiet space.

He swings his legs from the desk, reaches for the phone, dials a number, and then waits.

“Hello, Alice. Gus Saenz here. Yes, thank you. Listen, Alice, I need to know something. You said the driver of the mobile clinic has complete access to it at any time. But could anyone else get the keys and take the vehicle out without anyone else finding out? Or is there a duplicate set of keys?”

He waits a few seconds for the answer, and when it comes, he takes a deep breath. “That's what I thought. Thanks a lot, Alice.” He hangs up and then dials another number.

“Director Valdes? Father Saenz here. Yes, thank you.”

On Saenz's desk, dwarfed by pen caddy, tape dispenser, and diskette storage box, is a plaster figurine of St. Ignatius of Loyola, no more than three inches tall. The saint is depicted wearing armor—a coat of mail and breastplate—and carrying a sword. Saenz has had it for so long that the faux gilding on the armor has almost completely faded. He's brought it with him every place he's ever worked, every country he's ever lived in for longer than a week. Absently, instinctively, he reaches out to touch it and then cradles it in the palm of his hand.

“I have a name for you.”

When the brief conversation is over, he replaces the receiver in its cradle, leans back in the seat, stretches out his very long legs and closes his eyes, St. Ignatius still nestled within his hand.

He wakes up
with a start and immediately senses that he is not alone in the darkened room.

“How long have you been sitting there?” he asks in Tagalog.

“Not long,” the woman says, hands clasped together. She has been watching him sleep, unsure if she should wake him; he looks awfully tired. She stands and approaches his desk hesitantly, then stops. “I didn't mean to disturb you.”

Saenz rubs his eyes, then shakes his head. “It's okay. Did Susan send you here?”

“Susan?”

“My secretary.”

“No, Father, I just asked around.”

He notices that he's still holding on to the figurine of St. Ignatius and sets it back in its old place beside the pen caddy. He stands up, bends his torso from side to side, easing out the kinks in his back from falling asleep in his chair. Then he walks slowly toward the door to turn on the lights. He blinks hard when they come on, and so does she.

Short and round-faced, she is dressed in black stirrup leggings and a blue printed shirt. Cheap, flat canvas kung-fu shoes, caked with mud. Dry, brown skin on feet and hands, years of ironing and washing and cooking.

Saenz doesn't know who she is, but he knows why she is here. Several such women—someone's wife or mother or sister—have come to see him in the past, in this same room, for more or less the same reasons.

Powerless and angry at this moment, he feels a strong urge to break something.

“Which one was he?”

“Vicente,” she answers quietly. “Enteng.”

He nods in understanding.

“He got into a bit of trouble the last two years. You know how boys can be. Fell in with the wrong crowd. Hardly said a word to me the last few months before—before
. . .
” She chokes up, falls quiet. Then, briskly, “I shouldn't have come. I'm sorry.”

Turning away now, in a hurry all of a sudden, words tumbling out of her mouth: “I know you must have a lot of things to do. You're famous. Sometimes I see you on the news when I watch TV at my neighbor Gloria's house. Usually we just watch telenovelas.”

She picks up her things from the floor; a black shoulder bag with the mock leather cracked and peeling in places, a brown canvas carryall with a bank's logo, dingy from years of use. A package rolled up in a red-and-white-striped plastic bag.

“I'll tell Gloria I met you. She won't believe it. She thinks you look like an
artista
.” Talking a mile a minute, then abruptly thrusting the package out toward him. “There. That's what I came here for. I cooked them only about an hour ago. I rode a jeep and the traffic was bad, but they're still warm.” Waving it almost in his face, though not meaning to be rude.

“I know what you did for my boy.” Her voice cracks, but she recovers fast. “Take it; it's good. I make it everyday, sold out by five o'clock. People who've had it say it's the best they've ever tasted. Go on, take it.”

The priest reaches out to take the package, which is warm in his hands. He opens it up. The smells of caramelized sugar and ripe, sweet jackfruit. When he looks at her again, her face is wet. He moves toward her, but too late. She is rushing to the door on her short legs, bags tucked under her arm, mud-caked soles slapping on the floor.

“Well, I'll let you get on with your work now,” she says, words flung quickly, carelessly over her shoulder. “It will be a busy day for me too. I made those, but I have to make another batch for selling when I get home.”

“Mrs. Bansuy,” is all he can say.

Halfway out the door now, talking, talking still. “I'm going now. You eat that while it's still warm, you hear? Best you'll ever taste. I have to go. It looks like it's going to rain, and I forgot my umbrella.” She leaves the door ajar.

Alone again in the room, Saenz sinks into his chair slowly. He bends his head and stares into his bag of
turon
for what seems to him like a very long time.

 

They're coming to get me. Coming on their big, quiet feet they're coming.

I want my mother. I want my father.

40

“I'm very sorry,
but I'm afraid I can't help you much. We haven't heard from Alex in over a year.” Flora Carlos is looking at a photograph of a thin, small, wide-eyed boy, hair neatly combed and parted in the middle. “You probably know more about what's going on in his life right now than we do.”

Jerome pinches his forearm to reassure himself he isn't dreaming. The boy in the photograph has the same thin, small-boned frame as the killer's victims.

“How old was Alex when that picture was taken?”

“Oh, about thirteen, fourteen. He was small for his age. We didn't have very much then. Not that we do now.”

Mrs. Carlos is a small woman, with thin wrists and arms and a neck lined with pale green veins; they web delicately from her jawline down to her protruding collarbones. She is seated on a discolored, threadbare sofa, wearing a lavender cotton housedress with purple flowers. The dress has been washed so many times that the flowers are only a shade or two darker than their background, mended so many times that the fabric is fraying beneath the stitches.

When Jerome introduced himself at the door, the first thing he noticed about Mrs. Carlos was how guarded she was. But as he speaks to her, he's struck by how talking about her son seems to be a strain on her; she halts every once in a while, as though afraid somebody else is listening.

“He didn't tell me very much about his childhood,” Jerome says. “Was he ever in trouble when he was a child? Any disciplinary problems in school?”

“No. He was a good boy, very smart.” She cranes her neck slightly and points to a series of frames on the wall behind her. “Look at those. Those are all his awards.”

Jerome stands and steps carefully over his backpack, which he set down on the floor earlier. The walls are a curious shade of yellow in this tiny, two-bedroom house; the windows are small squares cut high in the walls, close to the ceiling. Inside the house, it is hot and muggy; the air is still, lying thick and warm and sticky on his skin.

Thirst, heat, claustrophobia—Jerome is feeling all three in equal measure. He wipes his brow and moves toward the wall to get a closer look.

There are awards for good conduct, first or second honors, loyalty awards from the Payatas High School. It is the same school some of the victims had attended.

There are interschool Quiz Bee awards, “Best in English and Science” awards, certificates for annual scholarships from the city mayor's office all the way to second year high school.

Here was Alex, overwhelmed by a
barong Tagalog
at least two sizes too big for him, shaking the mayor's hand. Alex in his white school uniform speaking in front of a live television audience; on the wall behind him, the words
national quiz bee finals
spelled out in large styrofoam letters covered in gold foil. Alex with a broad smile on his face, waving his grade six diploma in the air.

An exceptional young boy.

Jerome wonders if he was ever athletic; the absence of PE or athletic awards, or any picture of Alex in high school citizens' army training, puzzles him.

He remembers his own CAT experiences. At fifteen or sixteen, most kids want nothing more than to be popular, to belong. And CAT is one of several ways a teenager can gain recognition in his or her peer group. Most teenagers he knows—students of his or the sons or daughters of friends—have a treasured bunch of CAT pictures; they may have hated the course, but they love the trappings: the uniforms, the polished shoes, the gleaming belt buckles and shiny swords, the heavy Garands, the black berets, the symbols of rank and the authority over others.

“Did Alex like PE? Sports?”

From the corner of his eye, he sees Mrs. Carlos turn slowly to look at him. Something in her posture changes, an almost undetectable stiffness creeping up from the tiny waist to the back and shoulders, to the neck and arms and the hands that hold her son's photograph.

“No.” Jerome thinks her voice sounds odd, far away and alert at the same time.

“How about CAT?”

“He was a medic.”

A medic.
Jerome himself had been a medic in high school; because of his limp, he had been advised by doctors against engaging in too-strenuous physical activity.

A medic. The dead end of CAT.
They wouldn't have let you march for fear of heat exhaustion. They wouldn't have given you
shiny spangles on your uniform; they wouldn't have drilled you
for Parade and Review. The most they would have let you do was to hand out water and ammonia-laced cotton balls
.

No wonder you don't have CAT pictures.

When he turns to her, she is looking at him with her head tilted to one side, as though she is seeing him for the first time. There is something in her eyes, a watchfulness that makes him uncomfortable, and he turns back to the frames on the wall
. Okay, where was I?

Scholarships from the city mayor all the way to—all the way to his second year of high school? What happened in the last two years?

“Was he a scholar all throughout high school?”

Mrs. Carlos looks absently down at the framed photograph, then turns it over and over in her hands, the way a child does when trying to figure out how a new toy works.

“If you truly knew my son, wouldn't you already know most of these things?” she asks quietly. “Why are you really asking me all these questions? Is he in some kind of trouble in Manila?”

Jerome hesitates a moment. “That's what I'm trying to find out, ma'am. He's been coming to see me regularly for the past year or so, but the last few months he seemed under a great deal of stress. And then, he simply stopped coming. I tried to contact him, but he never responded.”

She lays the photograph on her lap and then looks at Jerome squarely.

“You're very concerned about Alex, even for a
. . .
spiritual adviser. I don't know anyone who would leave Manila and come here just to check on him.” She's challenging him now. “If I picked up the phone and called my son right at this moment, would he want to speak with you? Would he even know you?”

“Mrs. Carlos, you just told me you hadn't heard from Alex in more than a year,” he says, challenging her as well. “I'm guessing that doesn't mean simply that he hasn't called you; it also means you've not been able to reach him. Or at least that he hasn't been answering your calls or letters.”

Her shoulders slump at this. “Who are you, then? Are you a doctor? Or a policeman? Has something happened to him—is that why you're here?”

Jerome uses the most sympathetic tone he can muster. “As we speak, Mrs. Carlos, the NBI are seeking your son's help in investigating a series of murders of young boys in Quezon City. All of the victims”—he indicates the photograph in her hands—“looked like Alex in that picture. Same build, almost the same age.”

“What are you saying, then?” She shifts her position, stares at Jerome. Seconds tick by. A fly, round and fat, its thorax gleaming green in the light, lands on Jerome's hand and crawls slowly, jerkily up his wrist. “They think he killed them,” she says finally. “
You
think he killed them.”

The fly darts away when she rises to her feet and sets Alex's photograph down on the coffee table. “You must be thirsty. I'll get you some water.” She disappears into the small kitchen. Jerome can hear the creak of a freezer door, the clink of ice against glass, the sound of water from a tap.

She emerges from the kitchen carrying a glass of iced water with wet hands. She offers it to him. When he accepts, she absentmindedly wipes her hands on her housedress, the imprint of her palms and fingers clearly visible on the material, and returns to her place on the sofa.

She waits for Jerome to take a sip of water before she speaks again. “I don't suppose you
. . .
well, of course not; you're a priest. You
are
a priest, aren't you? That's what you said, anyway. You probably don't know what it's like to have a child.”

Jerome doesn't say anything; if she's in the mood to talk, he knows better than to interrupt her.

“Alex was such a good boy. So good, I couldn't believe how lucky we were. And such a beautiful child, with those big eyes, that fine nose. Never gave us trouble a single day in his life. Oh, he'd cry a little when we couldn't afford to buy him those plastic toys he'd see in the market. Or sometimes he'd run so fast and fall and scrape his knees, and he'd come home to us bawling. But otherwise
. . .
”

She reaches for her son's photograph again and gazes down at it sorrowfully. “You're given a good child, and you try to raise him well, even though you have next to nothing. And then sometimes
. . .
something happens. And he isn't your child anymore.”

Jerome waits for her to say more, but she slips into silence now, lost in her thoughts. “I don't understand, Mrs. Carlos,” he says gently. “Help me to understand.”

The front door opens, and a man walks in. He's a small man in his late fifties or early sixties, with thinning hair. He is slightly stooped and bowlegged, and Jerome wonders if he has ever worked at a job that required him to lift heavy weights. The man is not surprised to see Jerome—his car is parked out on the street, after all—but his expression is questioning.

“This is a friend of Alex's,” Mrs. Carlos tells him.

Jerome stands, holds out his hand. “Mr. Carlos?” he asks.

The man looks at the offered hand and does not take it. “A friend?” he asks. Not unpleasant but not friendly either. “What do you want? Alex isn't here.” His gaze shifts warily from Jerome to his wife and back again.

“He was asking if we'd seen Alex lately.”

“Why?” He asks it of both Jerome and Mrs. Carlos.

“He says the NBI are looking for him.”

“What for?” The man eyes Jerome up and down. “You don't look like you're from the NBI. Or the police.”

“I'm not—”

“He's a priest,” Mrs. Carlos says. “He was asking whether or not Alex liked PE. Weren't you, Father
. . .
? I forget your name.”

“Lucero. Jerome Lucero.”

Mrs. Carlos nods. “Father Lucero here was asking if Alex liked PE.”

At this, Mr. Carlos's face darkens in anger. “Get out. Get out of here, and don't you dare come back.”

Jerome is bewildered. “I'm sorry, Mr. Carlos. I'm just trying to help.
Please, just give me a moment, and listen to what I have to say.”

He doesn't listen, only glares at Jerome. “How dare you come to our home, sticking your nose into things that don't concern you? I don't care if you're a priest. You're not welcome here. Get out!”

“You should just tell him.” Mrs. Carlos is strangely calm. She's not looking at either of them. Her attention is fixed on the young boy in the photograph.

Mr. Carlos moves toward his wife and tries to take the picture away from her, but she clings tightly to it. “Stop it,” she pleads. “Stop it. You know why they're looking for him. We both know.”

“Be quiet, Flora. You're talking nonsense. Here, give that to me.” He succeeds in yanking the frame from her grasp, then spins around to face Jerome. “Out. Now. And stay away!”

Jerome looks helplessly at Mrs. Carlos but realizes he doesn't have a choice. He excuses himself and heads out the door.

The heat hits him like a blast from a furnace, but he's glad to finally be breathing fresh air. Flecks of ground glass in the concrete shimmer in the noonday sun as he makes his way to the car. His shadow on the ground is distinct, its edges sharply defined. When he touches the handle of the car door, it's burning hot, so he reaches for the towel he keeps in his backpack. That is when he realizes that it's still inside the house.

When he turns back to get it, he bumps into Mrs. Carlos and sees her clutching it.

She thrusts it almost violently into his hands. It's an angry gesture, but her face tells a different story.

“San Francisco de Asis,” she whispers. “Wait for me. Please. I won't be long.”

Jerome notices that Mr. Carlos is standing in the doorway of the house, waiting for his wife, his brown, lined face stern.

Jerome nods. “Thank you,” he says.

He can feel their eyes on him as he gets into his car and drives away.