Ghosts of Manila (22 page)

‘That either,’ said a voice from the crowd. ‘Thanks to St Michael.’ There was laughter. ‘Joke only.’

‘What? What?’ demanded Eddie, deftly intercepting a glass of gin and draining it at a gulp. This, together with Judge’s rolled eyes and raised eyebrows, drew more laughs since the drink had been intended for the new arrival.

‘San Miguel, Eddie,’ explained the cop with a kindly pat on his host’s shoulder. The patron saint of family planning.’ This provoked further amusement, as did the dumb show with which he managed to accept a fresh glass which Judge had passed behind Eddie’s back.

But Eddie had embarked on another reminiscence, one which required an actor’s concentration. ‘“Just drive,” they said, “that’s all you have to do. Drive to the guy’s house and you go free. We’ll take it from there.”
Rrrrmm,
rrrrmm!’
He stamped his right foot repeatedly on the ground as on an accelerator pedal.
‘Rrrrmm!
Nothing. Bugger all.’ He stretched both arms out, gripped an imaginary steering wheel and gave several thrusts with his pelvis as if to urge a recalcitrant vehicle into motion. He glanced over the jeep’s side at the unmoving ground and shook his head in bafflement.
‘Rrrrmm?’
The crowd, most of whom had seen the dramatic re-telling of Eddie’s miraculous deliverance from jail many times before, were perfectly content to see it again. This was vintage Eddie, pissed by ten-thirty in the morning, the darling of the ghostbusters, the man who’d just put San Clemente on the national map. This was Eddie’s day.

‘
“Tanga!”
says he, all charm.
“Ay,
mali!
You’ve got to put it in gear if you want to go anywhere, you idiot. Get on with it! Stop acting the
clown or we’ll throw away your key.”
Rrrrmm!
I’m trying, I tell him. What gear? Gear? “This stick thing,” he says, jiggling the shift. Well, of course I know what a gearshift is, it’s just that I’ve never learned to use one. I can get a noise out of a mouth organ, too, but I don’t know how to play it. Still, I’ve seen old Gringo drive his taxi zillions of times so I stick my left foot on the clutch’ (Eddie stamped the ground with his foot) ‘and move the stick a bit’ (he let go the wheel with his right hand and made stirring motions in the air with his fist) and up comes my foot and
Pak!!
’
He jerked his head violently forward, at the same time bringing up the flat of one upright hand to smack his face from brow to chin, simulating sudden impact. The crowd roared. It was done with such ebullient realism they could practically see blood oozing from beneath the palm still cupped over his nose and mouth as he turned his head to look apprehensively over his shoulder at someone in the back seat. ‘Sorry about that, mate. Foot slipped. I know it’s your jeep but you shouldn’t have parked it so close to the wall. What? No, er, just… Just let me take you up on one small point there about my mother, could I? She’s not actually a whore, you know. She runs a biscuit shop in Buenavista, Marinduque. Arrowroot biscuits, mainly. They’re quite del –. Yes, all right! I’ll shut up! Just stop hitting my head, please,’ and Eddie hunched it down into his shoulders, crouching to protect himself from his assailant. His audience howled. Gradually he let his shoulders relax and peeped fearfully back again. ‘Well, it’s your fault,’ he said in a reasonable, somewhat aggrieved tone. ‘I never said I could drive, did I? In fact, I distinctly said I couldn’t.’ He gingerly uncupped his hand and searched it anxiously for blood, dabbing tenderly at his lip. ‘Was this jeep very, uh,
new
or anything?
Ow!
Aruy!
Aruy!!
’
as fresh blows rained from behind and he fell to his knees in the dust. Several of the children nearby were practically hysterical by now and plenty of adults were wiping tears of mirth which this cathartic recital had provoked.

Eddie never quite took a performer’s bow, however. Just as he was getting to his feet his rubbery face suddenly became taut and distracted as if he were listening to an urgent voice. Then he slumped forward with his head beneath the table and was violently sick. In the general lifting of feet which followed Bats introduced Vic to Inspector Dingca.

‘There’s a strange thing,’ Rio said. ‘I was thinking about you only the other day. You’re the only newspaperman I’ve ever wanted to meet.’

‘I’m flattered.’

‘You should be. Most of your colleagues write such crap, especially about the police.’

‘Do you live here?’

‘In this area? God forbid. My home’s in San Pedro, Laguna,’ said Dingca proudly. ‘No, this place is part of the precinct. I was sent up in case all the publicity led to outbreaks of public disorder.’ He nodded towards the convulsed and moaning Eddie. ‘That’s about it, I reckon.’

‘Which station?’

‘Fourteen.’

Vic’s expression didn’t change but he at once registered that he was dealing with a colleague, possibly a friend, of Sgt. Cruz. ‘You’re not one of those lingering Lieutenants, are you?’

Rio jerked his head. ‘Never was. Not at heart, anyway. Not even in the old PC days. No, I guess I’m just one of life’s Inspectors, Mr Agusan. A dyed-in-the-wool civilian, that’s me. Listen, are you in a real hurry?’

Vic looked at Eddie and his audience, many of whom were showing signs of wanting to sit at the table and get down to some serious drinking now that their star turn had set such a memorable example. Then he raised his eyes to the roof of Eddie’s house. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I don’t see any supernatural action here, do you?’

‘Then would you mind a short stroll? There’s something I’d like to discuss.’

‘With a crime reporter? Is this work?’

‘It could be.’

‘I’ve got a foreigner with me, an Englishman. I’ll just leave word that we’ll be back.’

Dingca led the way up through the hole in the wall and into the cemetery. He could still see the patch where the illegal standpipe had been plumbed into the Tan mausoleum’s water supply. It hadn’t been replaced but he saw some more iron fencing had been stolen and there were fresh graffiti painted on the walls. ‘Help enrich your local police,’ said one. ‘Kidnap a Chinese.’ Together they strolled along the perimeter road, in and out of the cool puddles of shade cast by the great trees. From here they could overlook most of San Clemente, its tangled crests of canted tin falling away towards the more regular urban skyline filling the mile and a half between them and the
invisible sea. The cries of unschooled children drifted up from its enclave.

‘I read your pieces in the
Chronicle
about the Queen of
shabu,
’
said Dingca. ‘You sounded pretty sick when they sprang her.’

‘More sick than angry, I guess. It was inevitable. People like that don’t stay behind bars for a night, let alone for a fifteen-to-twenty stretch. You know it’s going to happen but it still gets to you each time. Well, a bit of indignation’s probably good for a journalist. Sharpens up the prose.’

‘You do a nice job, Mr Agusan. It makes your readers indignant, too. It’s right that folks should be indignant. It’s the worst thing there is, indifference.’

‘It’s often not indifference so much as resignation.’

Dingca was staring out to where an LRT train winked and swayed along its raised track, vanishing behind trees and buildings with its segments reappearing in gaps like a maggot threading the city’s heart. ‘I hate what they’ve done. This used to be the best police force in Asia. And now look at it.
Pulitika,’
he said in disgust. Turning abruptly towards Vic he added with a mixture of belligerence and anxiety, ‘You’re not quoting me on that.’

‘Don’t worry. On the other hand it’s nice to know. Now that’s out of the way, what did you bring me up here to talk about? Not vampires, surely?’

‘The Queen of
shabu.
’

‘Well I’m damned. I thought she was just a conversational gambit. What’s your interest in the case?’

So Rio Dingca explained how Lettie Tan’s club had been in his precinct before he was transferred north of the river two years ago in the PNP reshuffle. He told him about his asset in ‘The Topless Pit’, now dead, without mentioning Babs by name. He recounted the infant-napping attempt in Harrison Plaza by a woman who had lived right here in San Clemente (pointing a finger downhill) and who his instinct told him was connected in some way. ‘I want that Tan bitch,’ he concluded. ‘It’s personal,’ because brooding had made of her an epitome, a figure who stood for all that was wrong and thumbed its nose at justice. ‘I don’t mean I want
my
hands on her, necessarily,’ he stared at his own as if they were interesting but unfamiliar tools designed for a job that had yet to be invented. ‘I just want to see her go
down. Down and down and
down.
That’s her,’ he added, indicating a direction with a pursing of his mouth and a lift of his chin.

Their stroll had brought them around to face the brilliant white Moorish confection with its icing-sugar turrets, licorice-stick portcullis and wedding cake lettering over the doors.

‘That’s
her? said Vic in amazement.
That
Tan? That’s the Queen of
shabu
?’

‘Not her in person, unfortunately. Not yet. But it will be. That’s the family mausoleum. Cost a bit, wouldn’t you say? To add another irony, I had to come and inspect it a few months back because the Clementeños were nicking her water. It’s a pity I’m just a cop. I can’t go beavering away on someone else’s patch or muscle in on any story that happens to interest me. I can only deal with the cases they dump in my lap down at the
presinto.
But you’re a journalist, Mr Agusan. You can go where you want, a man with your reputation. You may not always get what you want but at least you can follow your nose. Am I right?’

‘A couple of days ago I’d have said you were. But today I’ve been told to follow an editor’s nose because he sniffed vampires in the wind. He’s worried about the circulation figures.’

‘Yeah, well, we’re none of us shitproof. What I mean is, forget the
shabu
for a bit. You’re not going to get anywhere, I can tell you that for nothing. Not with the protection she’s got. Makati judges? They’re just fixers. They sort out the paperwork. No, you’re up against someone with an office in Camp Crame or Camp Aguinaldo with his own cannons and flagpole outside. Someone who can come and go at Malacañang whenever he feels like it. The sort of guy who reads himself to sleep with the security files of senators and provincial governors, like we’re told J. Edgar Hoover did. Forget all that. Lettie Tan’s armour-plated on the drugs score, at least for now. But you know people like her as well as I do.
Chekwa
big wheels,’ said Dingca, looking around at the Chinese cemetery and lowering his voice for the racial epithet, ‘they can’t just stick to one thing. Never happen. It’s drilled into them: Diversify. Then if the big crash comes they’ve got something to fall back on. Legit, stuff. Medical equipment. Pharmaceuticals. Machine tools. Paint. Dry cleaning. Real estate. For instance, when I was still at Station Five we did a quick run-down of her interests when the club’s licence came up for renewal. Just for our
own interest, I mean. We did the same with several club owners. The renewal was a rubber stamp job, of course.
Pangkape
,’ he rubbed his fingertips together. ‘Coffee money. No problem. We didn’t uncover anything sensational but we did find out that along with everything else she owns a furniture company with several tourist outlets downtown. Do you know about that one?’

‘New to me. You’re ahead of me here.’

‘She may not still have it, of course. For all we knew it was completely legit. It was handicrafts stuff, rattan and cane. I remember the company was called “Chip ’n’ Dale”. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You’re a journalist, you know all these things as well as I do. I just, well, I guess I really wanted to hear you weren’t giving up on her.’

Vic Agusan was staring at the mausoleum. The broad brass straps on the doors gleamed like terminals designed to handle prodigious voltages as if it were a substation on an exclusive national grid. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do know all that. I wasn’t going to drop her, of course, but I admit I was going to put old Lettie on the back burner for a while.’ He was warming to this cop. His first impression hadn’t been wrong. One of the good ones of the old school. Probably as straight as was reasonable without actually starving, but you wouldn’t want to commit yourself finally without first having a quick gander at this house of his out in San Pedro, at how his wife dressed and the company his kids kept. Maybe there was a deal in the offing if it could be handled just right. No crime reporter could have too many reliable police contacts. Inspector Dingca was definitely not a Sgt. Cruz, of that he was certain, but neither would he be a rat. Yet what Dingca must know about his colleague’s salvage activities could doubtless fill his
Chronicle
column for weeks. ‘Do you have any leads?’ he asked. ‘What area were you thinking of?’

‘No leads,’ the policeman said. ‘But if I had your time and facilities there’d be two things I’d have a go at. One you mentioned in your article: these foreign concessions she holds. Famous names, any of them?’

‘Household. Japanese engines, South Korean cars, Taiwanese electronics.’

‘You don’t get those for coffee money, right?’ said Rio. ‘That takes clout. You’ve got to have something to offer these foreign giants, something they can’t get for themselves without the inside help of a national with the right connections.’

‘Land, for instance.’

‘Exactly. Real estate on which to build their showrooms and service centres and factories. I’ve no knowledge one way or the other, but I’ll bet you. This cop’s nose says she’s into real estate somewhere along the line, and that might be another way to nail her. People like her are arrogant. Land deals haven’t got the same dramatic impact that drugs have, and they certainly don’t earn you a mandatory prison term, so she won’t go to such lengths to cover her tracks. The deals will be shitty enough, though. Officials fixed, secret re-zonings, ministries duped, peasants tricked and destitute. There’s a way for a man of your writing skill to make that sound quite as bad as drugs. Am I right?’ And if there was conviction in his voice it was because Rio was indeed convinced. He had tapped into the vehemence which sprang from all his anxiety about retirement, about maybe finding Sita and himself obliged to live out their declining years marooned on an island in the middle of an industrial park. If his hunch proved correct he’d be only too glad to have given a man like Vic Agusan a little shove along the right road. At the same time it would be an opportunity to find out about possible dirty land deals in San Pedro. ‘You could start with Laguna,’ he said disingenuously. ‘That’s rated a prime development area these days.’