# # # # # # # #
Wizard arrived at the cathedral early Friday morning. Mathias was waiting for him outside the church. Winnie had been GPS tracking Mathias, so she was there too, but invisibly. When Mathias unlocked the door to the music room and motioned Wizard to follow him in, Winnie materialized behind Wizard and walked in behind him. Both were startled to see her but Mathias reacted first. "Winnie. What are you doing here? Get out!"
"Kashmira is really messed up, Mathias. A churchman has sexually assaulted her. Her father is a beast – he plans to give her to another crime family in exchange for a criminal partnership. She has no idea what sex is, but believes that she has lost her virginity when she hasn't. Every girl in the school hates her. The servants don't talk to. She's all alone and she cries a lot when she's in her bedroom. She has never had a mother and doesn't understand a thing about her body. She needs a girl friend. I'm volunteering."
All of that was in one-pent up breath. Winnie paused to re-load.
"I knew most of that already, Winnie. The directors have approved my operation. Melissa will help me. Mom and Momaka will help her with the sex things and friendship problems. Wizard is here to set up a music business partnership. I don't need you."
"I can be her friend."
"You can't speak Spanish. When and where would you be a friend?"
"But..."
"Winnie, you came here to match-make. That could mess everything up. You should go home."
"But... Yes, I did come because I heard about a possible girl friend, but she's really messed up, Mathias. Plus as soon as you try to remove her from her father's home, he'll kill people. I can help her. I can help you with the operation. Give me a chance. Let me stay for one planning meeting. Only one. If I can't show you that I can help with the operation, I'll leave."
"No matchmaking in the meantime?"
"I'm not interested in seeing you and Kashmira together." Winnie stopped short from exclaiming that their two personalities were so drastically different that any potential relationship the two of them might enjoy had as much chance of surviving as an ice cube (Mathias) could survive a fall into an active volcano (Kashmira). Revealing that thought however would be interpreted as prying into his life. Fine. He wanted her out; she'd stay out. But he'd be sorry.
Mathias looked dubious. "No spying on us when we're together or you leave immediately."
"When the two of you are together I won't be anywhere near you. You can check on my location with the GPS tracker. And I promise not to use my drones to spy on the two of you either."
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Chapter 20
It was Saturday, July 20 and Bean had reached her limit on how long she could study and not see the light of day, feel a light breeze on her cheek, or smell an aroma that didn't originate from a pair of volleyball shoes. She went for a walk and ended up in a bar a few blocks away from campus. On Friday, the basketball girls had been talking in the showers about this bar: how the Mexican food was great and how some of them would be going there Saturday night. They had invited Bean to meet them at the bar.
Yes, that's right. Bean was now taking quick showers with the other girls. Emphasis on quick. She had found the nerve to do this so that she wouldn't be standing in a hot shower looking up at large soap bubbles that looked and talked like a parent. Bean told the team that she would meet them at the bar and left the steamy room. She didn't hear the girls change the plan to have curry Saturday night instead and she was dressed and gone by the time they had all come out of the showers. Nobody thought to let her know that they had changed their plans.
So here she was sitting all by herself at a table that could fit ten and wondering if she had misheard the time or the place. She hadn't. Military people are trained to remember such precise details. It wouldn't be particularly smart to plan an attack on an enemy fortification at the end of an artillery barrage to find out that you were wrong about when your own shells were supposed to end.
Sitting by yourself at a big table in a crowded bar can be somewhat humiliating. That lone occupant will feel herself the target of many caustic comments.
No wonder she's all by herself. She looks like a man.
Who taught her how to put on make-up?
That's a totally inappropriate top for a girl with her figure. What was she thinking?
Now those comments weren't what the onlookers were thinking. Their thoughts went along the lines of: Why doesn't she leave so that we can have her table? But in Bean's mind, everybody in the bar was looking at her appearance and belittling her. A waiter came by and gently asked if she would like to have a table for herself seeing as how it didn't appear that her guests would be coming. Bean accepted the offer and stayed in the bar when it would have been better for her if she had endured what she perceived would be the walk of shame to the door.
Bean had to deal with two male charmers before her meal arrived. The first was a middle-aged predator who suggested that he join her at his table so that they both wouldn't have to eat alone. After he crashed and burned, a younger version came by her table with two drinks in his hand and an offer to give her one until her boy friend arrived. "Some men aren't too considerate about arriving on time. I myself always..." She turned him down.
He returned a second time with a tray of four different drinks. "Perhaps I didn't guess your favorite drink before. One of these may be more to your liking."
"Stay away from my table. I am not going to have sex with you." Bean couldn't have made it any clearer.
When her food arrived, Bean thought that she was done with the predators. But she didn't realize that young women eating alone attract the attentions of the crassest of philandering womanizers. She was alone, so therefore she had been stood up. She'd be upset at her boyfriend and would be willing to punish him by having sex with any man who cared about her feelings. Well, with any man who pretended to care about her feelings. But that wasn't the focus of her third intruder. He was different in many respects. For one, he only wanted to argue with her. He was different in another way too.
"I didn't rape you, you know. You killed me for something that I didn't do."
Bean paused her fork full of rice in mid lift. She looked down at her half-full glass of beer and saw the face of the street boy whose friends had held her while he undressed.
"If you had had sex with me willingly, you never would have run into that police captain. Your life would have been different. What happened to you was all your fault."
"That's stupid," Bean replied in a hoarse whisper.
Not the cleverest of replies, but how quick would you be to answer an accusation from a talking head floating in a beer glass? Bean rallied quickly. "You were going to rape me. I'm allowed to defend myself."
"I wasn't going to rape you. It was hot outside. My shorts were clammy. I was just airing everything out. You killed me for something that I didn't do."
"Your friends were holding me so that..."
"So that you wouldn't fall down and hurt yourself. Some girls – when they see what I have in all of its glory, – well they tend to hyperventilate."
Bean snorted.
"I'm in Heaven now, you know."
"Yeah, right. You had raped before. You're not in Heaven."
"Yes I had raped before, and perhaps I wasn't due to come here, but you changed everything. Where I am, I can have sex with any girl I want, whenever I want, and whether she wants to let me or not."
"Heaven wouldn't be like that."
"My Heaven is. When you killed me, you took me before I could be judged. I was the victim of a crazy girl. That wasn't fair, so my sins were pardoned. I was allowed to transfer my sins to you. You'll be judged for all of the girls I raped in addition to all of the men you killed. I'll be in Heaven. You'll be a murdering rapist sentenced to Hell!"
"You're not in Heaven," Bean argued. "You're in Delusion Land." She gulped down the remaining beer in her glass and that took care of this particular talking h
ead. She stood up to leave but almost collided with her second charmer who was back with an after dinner treat. A tray with four cups of different ice cream. That's what emotionally distraught girls eat when they've been stood up. Every man knew that.
The tray and the ice cream desserts hit the ground. So did the charmer after Bean put her left foot behind his right foot and swept it into the air. She put a knee into the man's chest and grabbed his throat with two hands. "I told you before. STAY AWAY FROM MY TABLE!"
The room had suddenly become very quiet. Bean looked up to see everybody in the bar looking at her. She threw money on the table, pushed her way through an emergency exit, and accelerated into the darkness.
The charmer managed to climb to his feet – no harm done other than a bruised throat. "Must have been the wrong time of the month," he explained to the crowd encircling him.
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Chapter 21
In the week of July 21, Wizard found a Manila lawyer who was sufficiently non-frightened of El Patrón to sneak into the Maasin City cathedral and meet with Kashmira and Wizard in the music room. The purpose of the meeting was for Kashmira to authorize a certain family to obtain the rights to all of her music. That family – its identity to be left hidden behind numerous shell companies – would market and sell her music for a reasonable profit. The bulk of that profit would go to Kashmira's new bank account in Manila. The presence of that account, and its ownership, would be hidden from public view.
"We'll also need you to help us with some land acquisitions, construction permits, and other local legal matters," Wizard advised the Manila lawyer.
"Secretly?"
"These acquisitions can be rumoured. The owners of the land and buildings have to remain anonymous until we choose to reveal them. We will have our own lawyer working at this end and he will give you instructions."
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Early that same week, three anonymous figures met El Pervertido as he was coming out the church late at night. A male visitor and a female visitor were dressed in black with black motorcycle helmets hiding their faces. The third visitor was a Japanese woman who made no attempt to hide her appearance. The big-chested male introduced himself by stuffing a scarf into his El Pervertido's mouth, picking him up by his collar and belt, and carrying the paterfamilias' struggling body over his head back into the church. Muscle Man tried to cram the paterfamilias through his office door sideways. He didn't fit even though Muscle Man gave it a thumping good try. Turning him lengthwise worked much better. At least from El Pervertido's perspective.
First on the agenda was a spot of viewing pleasure – a tape of a certain incident inside the confessional. Always the gentleman, Muscle Man turned his back to the screen at this point. During this time, El Pervertido was given the pleasure of experiencing a different kind of laying on of hands ceremony from the shorter of the two black clad figures. She had a deft grip that caused the prisoner to try desperately to wriggle free. That desire to escape from what was a hair-raising experience was intensified even more when Muscle Man started laying out some tools and supplies. He started by showing El Pervertido a set of long bladed metal cutters and ample gauze to keep blood loss to a minimum. Massage Lady tied El Pervertido's hands to the arms of the office chair so that his fingers drooped over the end of the armrests. She continued to hold his hands and reassure him that his pleasurable experience was not likely to be interrupted.
The fitting climax to El Pervertido's evening came when a third black clad figure came into the study wearing a blood-spattered butcher's apron. She was quite tiny but had no problem carrying in her own equipment which consisted of a portable stove with two elements, a frying pan, and some cooking oil. The Japanese lady explained what the small figure would be doing once the oil was hot enough to sizzle. She also explained how Paterfamilias would be expected to chew with his mouth closed except when he wanted to spit out his finger bones.
At that point, the intruders had to call an intermission in their dramatic presentation. They had to do this because El Pervertido had lost all conscious interest in their performances. When he came to, they started the second act. The Japanese crime boss offered a way for El Pervertido to escape his fate. He accepted the offer immediately and offered up a torrent of apologies in Spanish to the figure that he had assumed was Kashmira. That figure gave no indication that she believed or even understood a single word.
Later that evening, the diminutive star in the second act moved her possessions into the little room at the top of the church tower. Mathias allowed her to do that because she had been the one to suggest that the possible sudden loss of El Pervertido's dexterity could turn him into an inside man. More aptly described as an inside pervert. His hands would remain intact so long as he knuckled under and obeyed the Japanese lady.
# # # # # # # #
Several days after the presentation from the How Many Fingers Am I Holding in Front of You theatre group, a solar paneled delivery van crept slowly down the alley behind El Patrón's house. Except for the front windshield, all of the windows of the van were tinted so that nobody could see what was being delivered or picked up. The guard at the backyard's stone fence opened the gate and the van crept through the narrow opening. A hand emerged from the driver's side of the van, flashed a sequence of fingers, and the door to the garage rattled open. Soon the garage door rattled shut again.
The garage's interior was sufficiently wide for the van to be parked comfortably. Comfortably for El Patrón meant that the garage had ample room for armed guards to surround the vehicle. Two sets of arms emerged from open windows and the set of fingers on the driver's side made more gestures. A figure dressed in a black cassock and white clerical collar was allowed to exit the vehicle on the passenger's side at which point he was thoroughly searched and everything he carried with him was left in the van – including his bible. El Pervertido was escorted, empty handed into El Patrón's residence. Paterfamilias was relieved that he was empty handed. At least he had hands.
Paterfamilias was here on a mission that carried with it grave danger. Grave – as in where he would be if he failed. He was here to lie to Kashmira's father.
# # # # # # # #
Let's shift our collective eyes now to El Patrón's study. This room was situated on the ground floor of the mansion, but well away from any windows or exterior walls for security reasons. The study was dominated by dark wood furniture and black leather covered sofas. Overhead lights gave Diego ample light when he was working. But today, since he was entertaining, all the den's lights were muted except for one lamp whose bulb was focused on the hard backed chair situated in front of the desk. The shade on that lamp was funnel shaped so that whoever might be sitting in – literally – the hot seat would be semi-blinded. El Patrón himself remained in semi darkness behind the desk except when he greeted the guest.
Diego was performing that greeting now by offering a cigar to the guest perched on the uncomfortable chair.
"No gracias, Patrón." El Pervertido didn't want to be holding anything that resembled a detached finger.
"I'll smoke it then. Hold this cigar for me will you?"
Diego handed his cigar to Paterfamilias, returned to his desk and found the shiny tool that he liked to use in these situations. It was oversized for the function it would perform that morning – namely cutting off the tip of the cigar. This tool was so big that it could cut the tip off something much firmer and more challenging than a mere cigar. Hmmm. How best to describe what it could cut off? I believe the word finger would adequately describe what this particular tool could handle.
El Patrón returned to the chair where Paterfamilias was still holding the cigar. He slowly fit the cutter over the head of the cigar and looked into the eyes of his guest. At that point, he had to take the cigar out of El Pervertido's grasp because his hands were shaking so violently that there'd be no tip cutting that morning. El Pervertido believed that it was this very cutt
er that El Patrón used when he was displeased with a guest. He was right about that.
Diego performed this little ritual whenever he wanted to intimidate weaklings and ensure that they'd stay loyal. The ceremony usually worked. It did again this morning. El Pervertido's allegiance would shift away from the Japanese crime lady and back to El Patrón. But more about that later.
# # # # # # # #
"You asked for this meeting," Diego opened the formalities. This was not the first time that Paterfamilias had met with Kashmira's father in his home. A meeting inside the cathedral was impossibly public, so a produce delivery van came by the cathedral once a month to facilitate a private visit when Kashmira was in school. During these meetings, El Pervertido would report the details of Kashmira's confessions. In return, he would receive a donation to his favorite charity. That favorite charity was indeed a real charity. Paterfamilias might be a pervert, but he tried to relieve his perversion-induced guilt by performing his church duties to the best of his abilities when a female figure was not present to tempt him. To date, he had only molested a dozen or so young girls in his ten years in this particular church. They had been carefully chosen of course. Since he had wanted to molest lots more, but had resisted the temptation, he figured his heavenly entrance exam rating was still on the plus side. Putting El Patrón's charitable donation into a real charity should help compensate for those particular little lapses inside the confessional. He had succumbed to other lapses too, but those victims had forgiven El Pervertido for his transgressions.
"Your daughter wants to buy the music table that she uses to tape her songs. I don't know what to tell her. The table belongs to the church but you bought it for her."
"How would she buy it?"
"She didn't say. I assumed she'd pay the church from her allowance."
"Why does she want to buy it?"