by Mack Maloney
What happened? Why the sudden curse? It dawned on Uni that he hadn’t prayed very much in all that time. Maybe this was a case of simple problem, simple solution. He went down on all fours, facing the direction that he hoped pointed toward Mecca, and started praying up a storm. Not asking for forgiveness or grace or luck, or damnation of his enemies. Just praying and praying and praying…
He did not move off the floor until exactly one hour had gone by. Again with shaking hands he put the second tape into the VCR and pushed the play button. He’d done just as he’d been instructed. What now would this one contain?
The tape opened with the same scene as the one he’d just watched. The five soldiers still out in the desert, still staring into the camera, sun rising behind them. But now they were all laughing.
Hunn stepped forward once again. He said into the camera: “Thanks, Cue Ball — now we are only two hours behind you. You stupid shit.”
* * *
The streets around Makak Beach were jammed with people, ankle-deep in dirty water, when Uni arrived.
It was now past noon. Neither the limo nor the limo driver was to be found when Uni left the hotel. He had the doorman hail him a three-wheel cab instead. It was a 30-minute trip to the poor part of Manila, but as they drew closer there was so much traffic and bustle, the cab could only get Uni within three blocks of the shore before he got stuck in the mud. He would have to walk from here.
Uni sloshed through the water, soaking his Guccis, and turned the corner to the main avenue to find the roadway was filled not just with citizens but with police also. Not Ramosa’s secret police, these were regular Manila street cops. Uni’s heart went to his throat. The center of all the police activity was the same place as his destination: the Buddha shop.
This was not good. Uni was tired, hungry, hungover, and scared. He also looked bad; he’d washed his suit in the bathtub again and noticed it was beginning to fray at the edges. But he was here for one reason only: he was following the plan. The weapons had to be moved out of Manila tonight. Uni was here to see if the Buddha man had shipped the 2,000 statues to the address Uni had given him. If so, Uni was to pay him.
The crowd around the old hut parted for Uni as he waded down the alley. Despite his state of disarray, he was still better-dressed than anyone else down here. Even the cops outside let him pass. He walked into the shop to find it crowded with more police, photographers, and TV media types — but curiously, no Buddhas. The shop was clean of them.
In the middle of the floor was the Buddha man himself — and now Uni knew the reason for all the commotion. The man was tied to a chair with tape and wire. His eyes were wide open. His nose was full of snot. He had two bullet holes in the middle of his forehead.
Uni took a step closer. Something was stuffed into the Buddha man’s mouth. It was an American flag….
Uni almost wet himself. The Crazy Americans… Their boasting on the tape was not a bluff. They were here, in Manila, already….
He tried to hold down his rising panic. What should he do? What excuse did he have for being here? A policeman noticed him and approached. He assumed Uni was a mobster and so was best treated well. He asked Uni, “Are you a customer?” Uni held up two fingers just an inch apart. A small one, he was trying to say.
The policeman remained as polite as possible.
“Check the office,” the cop told Uni. “There’s a cash register in there. If he owed you money, help yourself. He won’t be needing it anymore.”
Though Uni understood few of his words, he did as the cop suggested, stealing $200 American and also lifting a manifest receipt that showed the Buddhas indeed had been shipped to the right address.
Uni sloshed back out to the avenue, the crowd once again making way for him. He found the same taxi, still mired in the traffic jam and the mud. He flashed $50 in the driver’s face. The taxi was quickly extricated.
Uni then handed him a wet index card with an address on it.
The cabbie was somehow able to interpret the runny ink.
“Ghost Town?” he said. “That will be double the fare, sir.”
* * *
Much to Uni’s displeasure, they took the long way across town. Whether the cabdriver was trying to jack him for an even higher fare or became legitimately lost, a 20-minute ride took nearly an hour.
Then, when they were finally two blocks from Ghost Town they ran into…another traffic jam. Uni couldn’t believe it. Once again, cars and people were blocking the main road. The place of cemeteries was now a frenzy of activity. The cabbie leaned on the horn and the motor-trike eventually made its way through. But Uni’s stomach did another flip. Up the hill of gravestones and wooden crosses he could see the woodworker’s shop was surrounded by police cars.
As before, anyone who looked into the cab pegged Uni as a Mafioso and gladly gave way. He wished he had a card telling the driver to turn around, but it was already too late for that. They’d climbed to the top of the hill by now, and even the police were waving him through. No wonder this Armani guy was so popular, Uni thought.
He was all but royally escorted into the workshop. Like the Buddha store, it was overflowing with police and reporters. Inside the small office, the same place where Uni had sat not very long before, the woodworker could be seen, like the Buddha man, eyes open, fluids falling from mouth and nose, two large holes in his skull — and an American flag stuck in his mouth. The police here looked as baffled as the ones down on Makak Beach. But Uni knew who had done this.
He looked around the rest of the workshop. He saw lots of wood waste on the floor, discarded pieces that looked like mirror images of some very big caskets. This was as close as Uni could get to confirmation that the three big crates he’d ordered had been built and delivered.
The police treated him as deferentially as they had done on the beach. From their point of view, he might be a gangster who had ordered this hit, therefore had to be handled with kid gloves. However, Uni knew it was time to slip away. But where was he going to go? The Crazy Americans were so obviously close to his trail, they’d knocked off the only two people in Manila that he’d done business with, somehow knowing that they were scum of the earth, too.
So he couldn’t go back to the Xagat. The Crazy Americans were probably hiding under his bed, with their hand axes, just waiting for him to return. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, not surprised to find it was a policeman. But this was not just any policeman. It was the same policeman he’d just spoken to back at the Buddha factory.
He was looking at Uni very queerly. “Good sir,” he said in broken English. “What are you doing here?”
Uni was so frightened, he was at loss for a good reply.
“You were down on the beach,” the policeman went on, his eyes suddenly showing doubt of Uni’s legitimacy as a mobster. “And you are now at this location. Do you know anything about these strange murders?”
Again, Uni was tongue-tied, for more than one reason. Other policemen began to close in on him. Camera lights suddenly blinded him. A microphone was pushed in his face. Outside, a siren screamed. Directly above, the sound of thunder.
His skull felt like it was going to explode.
So Uni did the only thing he could think to do.
He ran….
* * *
It was pouring outside.
In just a minute’s time, the fields of the dead around the woodshop had turned to mud.
Uni was in full panic. He knocked over a squad of police going out the door, slipping near the deceased man’s Jaguar, unintentionally sliding across the hood of the taxi, then finding himself riding a torrent of mud and dirty water down the hill into one of Ghost Town’s largest cemeteries. He began falling, slipping, sliding out of control, colliding with brittle gravestones and old wooden crosses. He could hear people screaming, ordering him to stop. He heard sizzling noises, a series of pops — even through the sheets of rain, the police were shooting at him! He smashed into the side of an earthen tomb
, tumbling right over it and losing both his Guccis in the process.
He slid across one road and through the gates of yet another graveyard. He saw nothing but wooden crosses everywhere — a nightmare for a Muslim if there ever was one. He continued his flight, trying to dodge as many graves as he could but crashing into many as well.
It seemed to take forever, but he finally slid to the bottom of the hill, landing in a clump in a drainage culvert. He hit his head on impact and for a few moments was only aware of the dirty water running over him. Somehow he lifted himself up, expecting to see an army of police charging down the hill after him. But all he saw was the gravestones and crucifixes.
No one was chasing him. Perhaps no one had been at all. He lay back down in the stream and let the water flow over him again.
Even if this kills me, he thought, at least here I’ll get some sleep.
Chapter 17
Night fell.
The rain stopped.
Manila’s nightlife began heating up. Downtown certainly, but most especially in the War Zone. The neighborhood of iniquity was crowded early, strange for a weeknight. But there was a buzz all over the city, like something big was about to happen. Those who knew how to recognize such things could smell it in the air.
The Impatient Parrot was busy early, too. The bar out front was three deep at the rail. The poon-tang rooms upstairs had a three-hour wait. The mud fights out back were already playing to overflowing crowds.
The brothel’s owner, the man named Marcos, had woken at his usual time: 4:00 P.M. He’d finished dinner by five and was walking the floor by six. He spoke quietly with a handful of underworld associates, discussing various deals that would be going down in and around his establishment this night. Business done, he was about to enjoy his first drink of the evening when he was informed that he had a long-distance phone call, which he took in his private office.
It was Palm Tree.
The conversation was stern and one-sided. Marcos did all the listening. The Stingers were being assembled, packed, and moved tonight, Palm Tree told him. But a crucial component was suddenly missing: Kazeel’s shuka hadn’t been seen since that morning. Moving the missiles was one thing; activating the sharfa was another. That could not be done without the dim-witted Uni, as only he held the last secret of the dearly departed Kazeel. The plan all along was to move Uni around like a chess piece, attracting attention in his mobster suit, so anyone on their trail would sniff him out first — and buy them the time they needed. But completely losing track of the shuka was never in the cards, and now his disappearance had the entire operation in jeopardy.
Like Ramosa, Marcos was being handsomely paid by Palm Tree’s government, he was reminded. If this mission was not completed, then not only would the whole affair be an expensive, embarrassing failure, but anyone connected with it would have to be eliminated, Marcos and Ramosa included. If things did not change for the better quickly, they would both find themselves on a hit list to be carried out by the well-known and ruthless intelligence service of Palm Tree’s home government.
Marcos was highly troubled hearing all this. He knew Palm Tree did not issue threats lightly. But as they were conversing, Marcos was scanning his crowded establishment on a bank of video monitoring screens next to his desk. And like a gift from God he saw someone sitting deep in the shadows of the mud fight room. Bald, with many cuts and abrasions on his head and neck, trying to stay in the background, but watching the mud fight with a certain amount of glee. It was Uni, the shuka.
And he appeared to be very drunk.
* * *
The change came for Uni after he woke up in the ditch.
Bleeding, battered, chilled again to the bone, he’d looked up the hill, back toward Ghost Town. The last rays of the sunset were creating weird patterns of shadows and light in the graveyards, especially streaming through the crucifixes. The silhouette of a huge cross fell upon him as he raised himself from the stream. It would have been too poetic for this to be a conversion, but the vision, plus his nap, definitely gave him a different perspective on things.
He no longer wanted anything to do with Stingers, or Ramosa, or yachts or minibars. He wanted to remove himself from history, from any involvement in the Second Time of Falling Sparrows, from the ways of Allah. He wanted himself rid of Kazeel’s ghost. In fact, Uni was interested in doing just one thing: resuming his search for the Impatient Parrot.
And this time he found it, just after the evening’s shower drenched him again, washing his clothes in the process. Clearheaded or with a clear conscience, he found the War Zone, turned this corner, then that corner, and boom! there it was, that psychedelic neon sign that to Uni meant “the place where girls fought in the mud.” Why here? Because it was here that he’d last felt really safe — before the Crazy Americans broke in and started all this new trouble.
Getting into the brothel wet was no problem. Everyone was wet in Manila tonight. He’d made his way through the crowd, using money stolen from the Buddha man to buy a glass not of champagne but of whiskey — the taste he’d acquired in the limo the night before. He found a seat in the rear of the back room and settled down to forget everything else.
He watched many mud fights, staring over the smaller people in front, laughing as they leered, drinking whiskey like it was milk. He could live here, he decided. Just drink whiskey, sit in the back, and watch girls wrestle in the mud.
That was his Paradise. He would have to eat, though, eventually — that might be a problem. Did this place even serve food? he wondered.
It was as if the devil himself had heard Uni, for at that moment he saw two more girls making their way across the back room. One of them was holding a huge frying pan with something smoking and crackling inside.
The girls stepped over and around the businessmen who were close to the mud pit, eyeing Uni while trying to keep the huge pan level. He was hungry — back when things were normal he used to eat as many as six meals a day. The girls indicated that they were indeed heading his way — they were moving in a dreamlike fashion, almost as if they were in slow motion. Maybe as a newcomer he was entitled to a free dinner here? Uni didn’t know, but the combination of the whiskey and his long ordeal in the past 24 hours had his stomach aching for food.
The two girls finally reached him. They were even prettier than the two rolling around in the mud — and that was a milestone for Uni, brought on, he was sure, by the alcohol, because he’d never graded women before in his life, simply because they’d never interested him. But these two girls were raven-haired beauties, wearing short white dresses and smiles a mile wide, almost like angels. And the frying pan was not only hot; it was absolutely sizzling. He sat up straight, hoping this might be lamb curry and cabbage, his favorite dish. The two girls never stopped smiling.
Uni drunkenly pointed to himself with both thumbs, as if to ask: “For me?”
Both girls nodded. “It sure is,” one replied. “Big-time, Joe.”
With that, she lifted the large red-hot skillet and with a form rivaling a MLB player gave it a mighty swing and hit Uni square in the face.
* * *
Airplanes…
Buzzing around inside Uni’s head, like a swarm of bees. They were so noisy. And painful. And they were stinging him all over….
He woke with a scream only he could hear. His mouth was full of mucus; blood was dripping from his ears. He tried to open his eyes, but the lids would barely move. Everything from his toes to his collarbone felt broken. But most especially, his head was immersed in pain. His face, shattered….
He was lying nose-down on a very oily floor. Through those bleary eyes he could see tiny pools of blood, his blood, mixing with a rainbow of gasoline and hydraulic fluid. His ears never stopping buzzing — but these weren’t bees in his head. These were the sounds of real airplanes, taking off nearby.
Where am I? he thought. Certainly not the back room of the Impatient Parrot. There was no mud.
No…it was…Manila A
irport. The two words just popped into his head. The noise. The smell. He recognized them.
He managed to open his eyes just a little more. His vision was still blurry — but considering all the whiskey he’d consumed, and the mighty whack to his head from the frying pan, he was lucky he could see at all.
He was in an aircraft hangar, big, old, and dreary. Four ceiling-mounted halogen lamps provided the only illumination. Two huge letters that meant nothing to Uni adorned one wall: UN. The place reeked of cigarette smoke and spilled coffee.
Twenty feet from where he lay Uni saw three packing crates. He knew right away they were the work of the graveyard carpenter. They looked like three monstrous caskets. The stack of Stinger missile tubes was just behind the crates; the launchers were piled next to them. Two huge cardboard boxes containing the red and yellow Buddhas were close by, too, along with an enormous plastic bag filled with foam packing peanuts, four big rolls of bubble wrap, and a spool of duct tape the size of a truck tire.
He heard footsteps now. Two boots appeared next to his bloody nose. Uni moved his head a little and saw Marcos, the brothel owner, standing over him.
He’d been waiting for Uni to wake up. Now Marcos snapped his fingers and two armed Filipino men arrived. They were wearing blue jumpsuits with those two letters—UN—on the sleeves. They were among the thirteen gunmen in the hangar dressed this way. These two roughly lifted Uni to his feet, dragged him across the floor, and threw him against the far wall, hurling an overflowing trash barrel at him for good measure.
Facedown again, Uni found himself lying in a pile of smelly rags and discarded Styrofoam coffee cups. He managed to lift his fingers to his face and wipe the crap from his eyes. The next thing he saw was the razor blade.
Marcos was leaning over him, holding an old-fashioned straight razor just an inch from his throat.
“Why did you think you could run away from us, my friend?” he asked the shuka cruelly. “I thought we were all in this together?”
