Easier said than done. Jojo never used his gun. Come to that, he’d never used any gun. Age twelve, circumcision had come and gone, and age sixteen, he—and every other boy he’d grown up with—had lost his virginity to one of the three barrio whores. If only firing your first bullet were as straightforward as losing your virginity. Pay fifty pesos to a sharp-tongued but basically kind lady who showed you how to load a clip and squeeze on a trigger, and who didn’t laugh when you got it wrong.
And now too much time had passed for him to joke with his colleagues about his inexperience with weapons, or even to mention it. Although in the back of his mind, he had a feeling that Teroy knew. Teroy had given him the automatic that was now strapped to the side of his chest, and when Jojo had outstretched his palm to accept it, his hand had dropped under the sudden weight and the pistol had nearly fallen to the floor. He hadn’t expected the weight. Stupid, not to expect the weight of a big lump of metal, but there it was.
Four years ago. Four years since he had changed from being the son of an employee to an employee in his own right, and four years of worrying that one day his inexperience was going to be revealed. The real fear was that it would be at a moment when he needed to defend someone else’s life. That seemed worse than if he were defending his own. A couple of nights he’d been unable to sleep, imagining the way he’d pull on the trigger only to hear a hollow click from a hollow chamber. Teroy collapsing beside him as he fumbled with a safety catch.
On one of those sleepless nights, his wife had come into their mouseless kitchen to find him sitting at the table, surrounded by bullets. He’d taken them out of the magazine so he could learn how to load and reload but then had been unable to put them back in. His fingers had been trembling, and he was afraid that if he shook the bullets too hard they’d explode. So the two of them had stayed up together, fretting over the stiff spring of the magazine, loading and reloading until they were sure they’d got it right.
Well, Jojo reflected, now he was about to find out if they’d got it right. He reached for the holster under his jacket, tore away the Velcro, and pulled out the pistol. It was as cold as a can of Coke, chilled by the air-con in the car.
Things to think about: safety catch, recoil, two-handed grip, aiming, squeeze don’t pull.
What a loud noise. Jojo might not have fired a gun before, but he’d often heard them, and they’d always sounded like popping. No louder than a firework, but oddly neater, more compact. But this—this was unbelievable. Ringing ears, blurred vision, dizziness, shock…
The cat was still alive.
Had he missed? It was certainly possible, given that his eyes had been closed for a good second or two before he fired. Should have been on the list of things to remember: Keep your eyes open. Idiot! And he couldn’t shoot again, because people in the car would want to know why he couldn’t kill a half-dead cat with a gun that could shoot through walls.
But maybe he had hit it. Maybe it was mortally wounded—just a question of waiting a few moments more. The problem was, with the red from the Mercedes’ taillights and the already matted fur, it was impossible to tell if there was a mortal wound or not. Jojo squatted down to see better.
With an epileptic spasm, the cat leapt up off the tarmac and onto his chest, where it clung with its claws and teeth. “Oh,” said Jojo, and lost his balance. He fell backward and sat heavily on the road. The cat remained, clinging. Instinctively, Jojo lifted his arms to make a cradle, holding the animal firmly enough to contain its wriggling. It died in less than a minute.
Bubot and Don Pepe were engrossed in shop talk when Jojo got back into the car, so they didn’t notice the rips or the blood on his shirt. Teroy did notice, but, being a good compadre, he didn’t draw attention to it. “Paré, spare shirt in my bag,” he whispered once Jojo had the engine running. “In the trunk. You can change when we go in for the meeting.”
“Thanks, paré,” Jojo whispered back.
Teroy smiled. Then, at a normal volume, he said, “Let me have your gun. You can’t reload it while you drive.”
Grateful, embarrassed, Jojo handed it over.
5.
“Incredible,” muttered Don Pepe, looking through the car windows, shaking his head at the crumbling streets that led to Hotel Patay. “Completely incredible. Teroy, what were you thinking of?”
“Mr. Alain, sir. He once stayed here, so I thought…”
“Mr. who?”
“Mr. Sean’s predecessor, sir,” Bubot chipped in. “He was the first mate of the Karaboujan, until…”
“Oh, Mr. Alan. An, Teroy, not ain…Poor Mr. Alan. He must have been very sad about the loss of his captain. Off Mindanao, wasn’t it?”
“Palawan, sir.”
“Tch, tch. Thais, I daresay.”
Bubot cleared his throat. “No, sir. Not Thais.”
“Cambodians?”
“No.”
“Not us, surely?”
“Actually, sir, I believe it was.”
“Us? But I’d done business with him for years. Surely the Karaboujan has safe passage. Why on earth haven’t you told me this before?”
“Sir, the Karaboujan was boarded on your orders.”
“It was?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Eeeh.”
“You may remember, sir, the Karaboujan’s captain had been difficult with his payments for nearly nine months. We—you—felt he was getting too arrogant.”
“Ah…Ah well, it’s a bloody business, no question. Has to be.”
“You might say, sir, nature of the beast,” said Bubot, ambitiously, in faltering English that made Jojo wince.
But if the mestizo noticed the sip-sip, he didn’t show it. “Yes,” he said absently. “It is indeed.” Then he gave a couple long sucks on his toothpick. “So, eh, out of interest, what was the Karaboujan’s cargo?”
“Sugar, sir,” Bubot replied.
“Sugar? Was it really? And did we get a good price?”
“Very good, sir.”
Don Pepe smiled. “Yes, of course we did. No Pepe would stand for anything less. Who took it? Seb?”
“Dante.”
“Dante. So there you are. A lesson for us all. Never lose your contacts and never forget where you come from.”
“An excellent lesson, sir.”
“Almost makes me miss the sugar trade.”
“No one traded like the Pepes, sir.”
This time, Don Pepe did notice the sip-sip. “Por favor, Bubot,” he said languidly. “Shut up.”
“Shut up,” Bubot echoed, absorbing the insult with an ease that came from long practice. “At once, sir.”
Jojo leaned on the hood of the Mercedes, arms folded across his chest to hide the cat’s blood, and shivered. He’d seen the hotel once before, that morning when he’d delivered the boss’s note to the bruiser at reception. In daylight the building looked bad, a concrete corpse, but now it was something else. The single light on the second floor had reanimated it. Made it vaguely alive, or undead. Even if he hadn’t had to change his shirt, he wouldn’t have wanted to take a step inside.
But even as the thought crossed his mind, Jojo heard Don Pepe say, “All of us, I think, for this meeting.”
“Sir, don’t you think I should stay with the car? This neighborhood…”
“No. The purpose of this meeting is to put our business with Mr. Sean on a formal basis. And the talk of the Karaboujan’s late captain has reminded me. I want to make a strong impression on Mr. Sean, to make the impression last. For the sake of the Karaboujan’s new captain, if nothing else.”
Then, to Jojo’s amazement, Don Pepe laughed. Or as close to a laugh as he ever managed. “So, you see, I am expecting that the blood on your shirt will work to our advantage.”
Jojo let his arms drop to his sides.
“Aaah, heh, it will give the Englishman something to think about.”
“Yes, sir.”
Don Pepe gave another rasping chuckle and began walking toward the h
otel entrance.
But Jojo paused before following. Just as the mestizo had turned his back, Jojo thought he’d seen something appear at the single lit window. Two hands, fast-moving shadows, that looked as if they were pulling at the bars. And then they had disappeared, too quickly for him to be sure if he had imagined them or not.
“Jojo!” Teroy hissed, holding open Patay’s frosted-glass door. Bubot and Don Pepe were already in the building. “Come on! Let’s go!”
The Squall
1.
The bathroom mirror was gone, replaced by a buckled square of hardboard. And there were now hundreds of little Seans gazing up at him from around his feet and pooled in the drain of the sink. “Jesus,” Sean said, inhaling tightly. He checked his knuckles and felt his forehead. There was no cut—a lucky break.
A lucky break from a broken mirror. Seven years bad luck, with a lucky break.
That couldn’t be right. He felt his forehead again, not for wetness this time, just massaging his temples.
The glass crunched under his shoes as he took a step backward. “Think,” he whispered. “Get a grip.”
Get a grip? He’d lost his face. There was no grip to get.
So instead, he got his gun. And the spare magazine he’d put aside earlier, and the loose shells from his bag.
2.
One of the men had blood all over his shirt. The same man whose hand, five times as big as his head through the peephole’s fish-eye lens, reached out and knocked on the door. It was Joe, Sean noticed with numb dismay. Of all people, Joe, the driver.
The first time Alan had taken Sean to meet the mestizo was at a seafood restaurant on the waterfront, within walking distance of both the U.S. Embassy and the Manila Hotel. The day had not started well. Alan was in a lousy mood because the captain had asked him to hold out for free safe passage on the next trip. A month earlier, the Karaboujan had lost money on a shipment of Malaysian latex. The cargo had been corrupted by the heat in the holds, and an insurance screwup had left the Karaboujan accountable.
Sean, on the other hand, had his own worries. He’d heard plenty about Don Pepe. Plenty about the half-breed whose racket covered all shipping through Filipino waters. He knew his bedtime prayers, his ageless age, his toothpick, and his power. But Alan, in a shitty mood, needed to take it out on someone, so he took it out by making Sean feel even worse.
“See that old man?” Alan had said as they walked across the docks.
“Old man?”
“Over there.”
Sean turned, saw crates but nobody near them.
“You missed him.”
“Oh…Who was he?”
“Crazy man, worked cranes, been around the bay since I can recall. You want to know what he once did?”
“Sure,” Sean said and looked around again. Squinting, he thought he could make out a figure in the shadows between the corrugated metal containers, but it was early evening and the light was bad enough to play tricks.
“He chopped off the harbormaster’s hands with a machete.”
“Yeah?”
“Killed the guy in the process.”
“Jesus,” said Sean. “Why did he do it?”
So Alan told him. A listless day on the seafront, a crazy docker, an overconfident harbormaster, a tyrant mestizo, and sticky fingerprints on a new suit.
At the restaurant, waiting for Don Pepe, Sean alternated between wiping his palms on his trousers and patting his breast pocket to feel the small square of his lucky charm.
“Quit wiping your fucking palms,” Alan had said, but Sean had ignored him. On the off chance that Don Pepe expected a handshake, he was going to be shaking the driest, unstickiest hand in Manila.
Don Pepe had not expected a handshake. When he and his entourage finally arrived, the mestizo didn’t even glance in Sean’s direction. Instead, he swept through the waiters that had appeared out of nowhere, and indicated a couple of tables. In the time it took him to leisurely cross the restaurant floor, the tables were inspected, wiped, and set.
Alan, Don Pepe, Bubot, and Teroy all sat together. Joe and Sean, not so important, sat separately. Their job was to hang in the background while their respective bosses cut their deals. Neither man talked much. There was an awkwardness, partly at being strangers, partly at their shared status as small fry. They also were listening in on the next table’s conversation, Alan pressing his point, and Don Pepe not giving an inch.
“Bery dippicult, bery unportunate. But it is not my problem.”
“All we’re asking for is a single free passage. One free passage and we’ll have covered the latex fuck-up. We can get business back to normal.”
“Eeh, business. You hab said the word that is on my, ano, mind. Nothing in this is ob a personal nature, Alan. It is business lang.”
“Then in business terms. The Karaboujan comes through here, what, six or seven times a year? If you don’t give us passage, we’re looking at bankruptcy. That means you’re missing out on…”
“Do you know how many ship come through the Pilipino waters? What dipperence is one ship?”
“Exactly. So why not give us passage?”
“Heh, if you want to take your chances on the open seas…”
“We’ve cooperated for years, Don Pepe.”
“Yes, for years. So I think you know the way I work.”
Alan opened his mouth to say something, but changed his mind. He hadn’t expected to talk the mestizo around.
“What can I say, Alan? This is life. Mahirap buhay.”
“Yeah,” said Alan tiredly. “Talaga.”
The edges of the mestizo’s lips curled upward. “Talaga? Your Pilipino is improbing.”
“Improbing?”
“Getting, ano, better all the time. Ebery time we meet, better still.”
“Oh.”
“And, eh, what about your priend here? He can speak Tagalog?”
“Sean?”
“Yes,” said Don Pepe, turning in his seat, turning the shoulders of Teroy and Bubot with him as if the men were connected by a thread. “Mr. Sean. Can you speak Tagalog?”
Sean stiffened. He had almost relaxed listening to the argument, and the sudden shift of attention had caught him by surprise.
“Eeh, can you eben speak English?”
“Yes, I can speak English,” Sean quickly replied. “But not Filipino.”
“Not Pilipino.”
“Hindi pa, po.”
Don Pepe’s eyes lit up. “Hindi pa? Hindi pa? How can you say hindi pa? I say, can you speak Tagalog, and you say no…in Tagalog! So you can speak, di ba?”
“Conté lang, po.”
“Aah! Only little, hah? Still, anyway, it’s good you try.”
“Salamat, po.”
“Mmm. Bery good that you try,” the mestizo said again and sucked pensively; then he turned back to Alan. “Okay, I hab changed my mind. I want Mr. Sean to continue learning Pilipino, so the Karaboujan will not be bankrupted. But, ano, this time only.”
Alan’s face screwed up in suspicion. “You’re giving us passage?”
“Yes.”
“Free passage?”
“Yes.”
“Safe passage?”
“Ob course.”
“Fuck me,” said Alan, his features softening, shaking his head. “San Miguels all around.”
Beer arrived for everyone except Teroy—who politely declined the bottle that Alan slid across the table—and the ice was broken. Soon the other table was chatting, a surreal and good-natured conversation about the federalization of Europe. Sean couldn’t believe his ears. It was the very last thing he’d imagined he might hear at the meeting.
And with the other table chatting, it didn’t seem right that Sean and Joe should continue sitting in silence. So Sean thought he ought to break some ice of his own and introduced himself.
If in doubt, not least in the company of South China Sea pirates, err on the side of formality. “I didn’t ask your name,” he said. “I’m Sean, by
the way.”
Joe nodded. “Mr. Sean, I am Joe.”
“Joe.”
“Yes.”
“Well, hi Joe.”
“Yes, hi.”
They exchanged smiles. Then Joe said, “Mang Don Pepe was bery happy with you, speaking our Pilipino language.”
“Seemed so.”
“But you know, Mr. Sean, it was not the Pilipino language only. Really, it is because you already know to say po. Por mang Don Pepe, that is good. But it is good por me too.” Joe put his hand on his chest. “As a Pilipino, por me it is good you use po.”
“Thanks. Uh, it was Alan. Alan taught me.”
“Yes, but…” Joe’s voice lowered. “Alan does not use po. You can excuse me, but I do not think Mr. Alan is bery polite.”
“Sure, I can excuse you,” said Sean readily. “No problem.”
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
“Yes.”
“So…want another drink?”
“No thank you. One only, it’s enough. I am dribing. Driber ob mang Don Pepe.”
“Then have something else.”
“Sopt drink?”
“Sopt as you like. How about a Coke?”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” Sean beamed. “I’ll get one in. My shout.”
3.
“I wish you weren’t the killer, Joe.”
Sweat oiled the area where Sean’s forehead pressed against the door, making him slide against the wood. He had to make small readjustments to keep his eye level with the peephole’s tiny curve of glass. Sweat was also collecting in his hairline, running either side of his ears, tickling his neck. Dealing with the itch was not a problem; a noiseless swipe would not have alerted the Filipinos to his close and watchful proximity. But he chose to let it stay, taking it as an opportunity to stay loosely in contact with his senses.
Strange, though. To think that even at a time like this, your skin could still get tickled. The mind intent and serious, and the body frigging around, letting you down. Like running from something bad, only to discover that your legs still ache and start to seize up, and you still get short of breath. Discovering that trouble doesn’t provide miracle lungs, the way you wish it would.