Dangerous Legacy
Page 14
He abandoned the hypothesis when he felt the car slow down, and when it made a sharp turn he found they were riding on a different sort of surface. There were other turns, sharper than any since they had left Manila, and he wondered if they were in some town.
He leaned close to the window, listening now for city noises. He heard an automobile horn and then another. Occasionally there was some brief new brightness behind the scarf, as though some headlight had swept past. Then there were no more horns and the road was suddenly steep again, and rutty. The car labored until Charlie Love shifted into second, and the bouncing got worse so that Rankin leaned forward and steadied himself with the back of the front seat. There was perhaps five minutes of this and then the car stopped, rocking gently as the brakes were set.
A front window was lowered. Someone outside spoke in Tagalog and Charlie Love answered. There was another sound that came to Rankin above the throb of the motor, a clicking, metallic sound that was oddly familiar, like the slap of a strap buckle against a rifle or a sub-machine gun.
The car jerked ahead in low gear and stayed that way for two or three minutes; then it stopped and the motor was silent. Charlie Love got out and opened the door on Rankin’s side. He took Rankin’s arm.
“This is it,” he said and helped Rankin from the car.
They walked six steps over rough ground and stopped on a wooden platform while someone opened a door. They went inside and the door closed. Then the scarf was unfastened and Rankin found himself in a small, squarish hall with plain, stucco walls.
“Wait here with José, Mr. Rankin,” Charlie said, and stepped into another room. He came back in a minute and this time he left the door open and Rankin could see the low, softly lighted room beyond and the wood fire. “In here,” Charlie said.
There was a man in the room, standing back from the fire, watching Rankin enter. He was taller than Charlie Love and just as thin and straight. The face was longer, well-lined about the mouth and nose, not leathery but sun-darkened, and almost completely bald.
“Hello, son,” he said, his voice unusually deep. “Remember me? I’m John Kane.”
15
SOMEHOW as Spence Rankin stepped slowly forward to shake John Kane’s hand he felt no surprise but only curiosity and an odd sadness tempered with gratitude. For it seemed to him now that in his innermost consciousness he had expected to meet John Kane again. He did not know why. He did not know whether it was because of the hope Ulio had and the things he had said, or whether it was merely a hope of his own that this should happen because it was so right. He did know that during the last few minutes of the trip he had felt a mounting excitement that had no basis in fear and was fed by his imagination. Now, hearing John Kane’s voice, he understood about Charlie Love and knew his instincts had been right.
“I’m sorry we had to do it this way,” John Kane said.
Rankin looked at Charlie Love. Charlie was brushing imaginary dust from his hat, his gray hair looking yellower than ever in the firelight.
“You might have given me a hint, Charlie.”
“I told him he’d better not,” John Kane said. “That’s why you were blindfolded here and there. You don’t know where you are, do you?”
“Around Baguio, as a guess.”
“A good guess. But you don’t know where around Baguio. And when you get back to the city you’re not going to be able to tell where I am, are you? Not even if Sanchez—and I hear you’ve been crowding him some—should get rough with you.”
“It makes a lot of sense when you look at it that way,” Rankin said. “Okay.”
Kane kicked a chair around for Rankin and took one opposite the fireplace for himself. “Sit down, son. I’ve got a lot of talking to do and I want to get you back to town before dawn.”
He lit his pipe and Rankin studied him. The light was better now and he could see the eyes, the hollows in the cheeks, the slackness of the skin beneath the jaws. These things did not fit the John Kane he remembered. He would not have recognized him on the street, for the man he had known was sixty pounds heavier, ruddy-cheeked, with a hearty, driving vitality that impressed all who knew him. Yet for all the physical change, he sensed that the essential things like courage and character and determination were all there.
“Tell me about Ulio,” John Kane said. “Start at the beginning.”
Spence Rankin did the best he could, forgetting details here and there but relating the story as a whole, and when he finished Kane said:
“There’s no doubt that Sanchez killed him—or had him killed?”
“Not in my mind, not after what the fellow said when he grabbed me in the bedroom.”
“What chance have the police got of proving it?”
“Practically none,” Rankin said and then, remembering that the murder gun was missing, told what Marie Dizon was trying to do. “Do you know her?” he asked.
Kane nodded. “Maybe I’d better tell you about me and then we can figure out what’s the best thing to do. You know about Santo Tomas and me going to a hospital in town just before the First Cavalry came in?”
“Ulio thought you were killed there. So does Lynn.”
“Yes.” John Kane’s pipe was out but he did not notice this and puffed absently as he continued. “So did everyone else. I should have been killed, I suppose, but I wasn’t—quite. There were a lot of us there, women and children too, and some nurses and three or four priests. This was in late February and MacArthur had crossed the Pasig and the Japs knew they were licked and were pulling out, killing and burning as they went.”
He sighed and his voice grew remote, as though everything was still horribly clear in his mind.
“They killed most of us too when they got to us. They put us all in one big room. I don’t know if they intended to slaughter us in the beginning or not. But they started dragging the women away and someone protested and was shot and then the kids got scared and a couple started to run and they were shot and when their mothers or fathers tried to help—well, in three minutes the Japs had gone berserk. No one was trying to fight them, understand, just trying to crawl somewhere out of the way.”
He said, “I don’t remember much about it. I saw them bayonet a priest who was trying to help me—I was down then from a bullet in the thigh—and it was so frightful with all that noise and screaming that I’m not too clear on the rest of it, and anyway it doesn’t matter. I saw a little yellow maniac lunge at me and felt the bayonet high in the chest and I thought, ‘This is the end of John Kane,’ and that’s all I know.”
He stopped and the room was quiet. He discovered his pipe was out and leaned back, holding it in both hands. A log cracked in the fireplace and a tracery of sparks erupted to die out upon the hearth.
“I found out later,” John Kane said, “that I was bayoneted twice in the chest and the half-dozen survivors testified to this at the trial of Yamashita. I was left for dead, of course, and the Japs mined the building and when the Americans uncovered things they weren’t sure who had died there.” He grunted softly. “Apparently I didn’t. Somehow I regained consciousness and got out before the building was destroyed. I remember very little of that. I do remember the pain and how hard it was to walk. I couldn’t have known where I was going and of course I didn’t know where the lines were, if you could call them lines.”
He paused and said, “But somehow my subconscious must have guided me in this direction. Maybe it was because I knew this territory and had some friends among the Igorots. I do know that I was picked up unconscious many miles north of Manila; I know this because I keep remembering waking up in a field hospital just long enough to realize I was alive.”
“You were out of your head, John,” Charlie Love said.
“That seems to be the only explanation,” Kane said. “I had no identification on me and couldn’t tell who I was. Maybe I got a knock on the head; I don’t know. But somehow I must have wandered away from that field hospital in my delirium and headed north again until I was
picked up by these natives.
“They didn’t know who I was either but it was June then, and I’d been hurt in February, which gives you an idea of the state I was in. Wounds healed. On my feet but out of my mind. It was September before I knew who I was and I haven’t the faintest idea of what snapped me out of it. I was living with an Igorot family I’d never seen before, working in the hills with them, browner than a Filipino.”
He rose and put his pipe on the mantel. He spoke briefly in Tagalog to José, who left the room. “I came here to rest and I got word to Charlie Love and some others, and that’s when I found out about Pascual Sanchez and the mine.”
José came back with a bottle and glasses and a pitcher of water. “Pour yourself one,” Kane said. “It’s local stuff but it’ll warm you some and you won’t go blind.”
Rankin poured some into his glass and tasted it. “It’s like they sell in Manila,” he said.
“Same thing.” Kane tossed off an inch of the whisky and sat down. “Cane base. Sixty proof.”
Charlie and José fixed themselves a drink and remained in the background. Rankin offered cigarettes around but had no takers so he sat down. When he had a light he said:
“Did you know Ulio was alive?”
John Kane considered this. He rubbed his palm over his shiny skull and pinched his nose.
“No,” he said. “I felt he was but that was a hunch or a wild hope or whatever you want to call it. I felt he was because I needed his help. I’m the one that should be dead,” he said, his voice heavy. “Instead of that it’s Ulio.”
“You knew about Lynn though.”
“Yes,” Kane said slowly, as though reluctant to voice the things in his mind. “I knew about Lynn. Soon after I got my memory back I found out she was still staying with Sanchez, but by that time I also knew what he was doing with the mine and I had sense enough to wait. It hasn’t been easy, hiding out here while I got my strength back and tried to figure out some plan that would work. I could understand how she could be grateful to him and think he had come honorably by the mine, and because she felt that way I didn’t dare tell her I was here for fear she’d tip him off—not meaning any harm of course—and it seemed best not to let her know at all until I could go to her openly.”
The fire cracked and blazed briefly and Rankin. said, “You did make a deal though, with Sanchez? To get her out of Santo Tomas?”
John Kane said yes. Earlier, when the guerrillas needed supplies so badly, he had sold the automobile agency as Ulio had already explained, and he knew that Sanchez had delivered the money.
“Under his own name, I later discovered,” Kane said. “That was a point in his favor when they talked about trying him for collaboration.”
He went on, explaining how bad things were in Santo Tomas the last six months. He said he had tropical ulcers brought on by malnutrition; he said Lynn lost so much weight that he got frightened and knew he had to get her out if he possibly could.
“So I thought of Sanchez,” he said. “Before the war he wasn’t anybody and two years later he had plenty. I knew he was working with the Japs and buying things from the Filipinos and selling to other Filipinos for three or four times the price. But he knew his way around and so I told him what I wanted and he said he’d think it over and what would I pay?”
He stared into the flames a moment and said, “He wanted the mine and I wouldn’t give it to him. I figured the apartments I owned would be flat before it was over and I’d have to wait for reparations. I didn’t even know if the coconut oil plant was still standing, but I knew no matter what the Japs did to the mine I could still reopen it and get a new start.”
“What did you give him?” Rankin asked.
“Jewelry I had, things I’d bought for Ulio’s mother and some that I’d bought for my second wife that she didn’t have with her when she was killed in that auto accident. There were a string of good pearls and a couple of rings and a bracelet with twenty-five or thirty diamonds, half carat to a carat. You see, I figured I’d run out of money—I took some cash into Santo Tomas with me—and I knew I could get rid of those diamonds one at a time and they didn’t take up much space.”
He chuckled dryly. “The Japs never did find those pieces. I guess altogether they were worth thirty or forty thousand but with prices like they were when Sanchez and I made the deal they were worth ten times that much and he knew it. I told him if he got Lynn out safely and promised to keep her safe until the city was free I’d give him everything. I did—that story of his getting and giving more money to the guerrillas was his own idea—and he kept his word about keeping her safe, maybe because he liked her.”
“Or maybe,” Rankin said, “because he heard rumors you were alive and thought that by keeping her where he could watch her she might eventually lead him to you. He heard of your death last February,” he said, the picture unfolding in his mind, “and there was nothing to stop him from having the mine because he thought Ulio was dead too. He had your signature on the auto agency deal, and copied it off or traced it on a deed that gave him title to the mine. Then he heard rumors about you and he discovered Ulio was alive and in San Francisco. He made up his mind to kill Ulio as soon as he came back, and with you alive that title he had wasn’t worth a damn.”
He went on to explain what he had done that morning with Ed Kelly and his camera, his blue eyes somber and his face intent. The background was clear for the first time and he knew there was nothing left to tell except a few details. When he thought of one, he said:
“When did you know about Ulio?”
“The morning after he was killed. I found out about you and remembered your name but it was something I had to be sure of. I told Charlie to see if he could get a job with you.”
“To watch me?”
“That and to see how you stood.” He glanced at Charlie Love. “Charlie told me what you said to him that first morning you went to see Sanchez, about how you had to take Ulio’s place now.”
“So,” Rankin said, turning to Charlie. “That’s where you went that afternoon you said you drove to San Fernando. You came here.”
Charlie nodded and Kane said, “I told him to take enough time to be sure and then bring you up here.”
“And after what happened this morning,” Charlie Love said, “I was sure’s I ever would be.”
John Kane poured another drink and cuddled the glass in his hands. “Maybe you’re wondering why I haven’t gone into town and done some fighting for myself,” he said. “And that would be a hard thing to understand in the States but it’s not so hard to believe when you know how things are here. Nearly every man has a gun, especially in rural areas, and most of them have learned the technique of killing. There are thousands of irregular guerrillas prowling the country; there’s an outfit called the Kubalahaps. Ever hear of them?”
Rankin shook his head and Kane said, “We call ’em Huks but it comes from a contraction of Hukbo Bayan Sa Lahap Sa Hapon, which, translated literally, means ‘Army of the People for Fighting Japan.’ They fought the Japs all right, but they’ve done a lot of roaming and raiding—big estates mostly—and raising hell in general. It’s just one of seven similar outfits scattered around, and I’ve heard that Sanchez has a finger in at least one of those organizations. It doesn’t matter in our case except to show that he can get all the killers he wants, and even though I go into town with a few like Charlie and José the chances are I wouldn’t live twenty-four hours.”
He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “But nobody would bother me unless Sanchez gave the order. With him out of the way we’ve got nothing to worry about and I’ve been waiting, letting him get the mine in shape, hoping that something would catch up with him so he’d get tossed in jail for a couple of days. That would be long enough to prove my title and then it wouldn’t do him any good to bother me. Now maybe I’ve waited long enough. Somehow with you around I feel better. You don’t think there’s a chance of the police grabbing him for Ulio’s murder?”
“I know of him,” Kane said. “Ulio knew him. All right,” he said and gulped his drink. He stood up and warmed his back and then he took a ring from his little finger and handed it to Rankin, who saw that it was fashioned of platinum, with a ruby center and on the sides a pattern of engraving both odd and distinctive.
“Take it,” Kane said. “I wouldn’t wear it, because a lot of people might recognize it and get you in trouble. I don’t think I’d show it to Lynn yet because it’s hard to tell what she might do, feeling the way she does about Sanchez. But there are a couple of men I do want you to show it to.”
He gave Rankin the names and told him where the men could be found. “You don’t know where I am but you know I’m alive. One of them is a lawyer and the other is a colonel in the reserve. Tell them I’ll be in town before the week is out and I may need their help.”
He put his hands on Rankin’s shoulders as Rankin stood up. “You’re going back the same way you came,” he said. “You still don’t know where I am.” He hesitated, his sigh coming from deep down. “Take care, son,” he said. “I should be going in with you and doing my own scrapping. I used to. Now I just don’t seem to have the drive any more. I guess John Kane is getting old.”
Rankin didn’t know what to say. He tried to think of some word of cheer and assurance, for that is how he felt, but there was some congestion inside that blocked both thoughts and words. What he finally said was, “Let me know,” and then he turned to where Charlie Love held the scarf for his eyes.