by Don Prichard
She knocked on the frosted glass of the office door before opening it. Miss Lavender rose from her seat behind an impeccable desk and pulled forward a chair for Crystal to sit on. A tiny pucker dented the skin between Miss Lavender’s eyebrows. No perfectly round dimples bookended a smile. The sunshine in Crystal’s heart disappeared behind a black cloud.
“Crystal, we have a problem.” Miss Lavender’s mouth flatlined, and the pucker on her brow spread into furrows. “It’s your grades.”
Her grades? Crystal shrank into a pea-sized lump. On the two weekly math quizzes, she’d gotten every problem wrong. And the grammar definitions were like alien-talk from outer space. In French class, everyone already spoke it because they’d studied it last year.
“You missed sixth grade because you were a year on the island, is that right?”
Alarms clamored in Crystal’s ears. She could see where this was going. “But … I’m almost thirteen. I can’t go to sixth grade.” She covered her face with her hands. Why had her grandparents made her come here?
Somehow she must escape. Find her way to Jake in Indianapolis.
***
The prison transport vehicle halted on an area of flattened vegetation. Its destination had required an hour of bumping over a rutted track that tunneled into a landscape increasingly swampy and bleak. The remote location as good as declared Salonga Prison a terminus where living cadavers were dropped off to finish their journey to the grave. “Zombie Prison,” his jail mates in Manila had warned him. Dread twisted Jake’s insides. Enduring the crowded conditions and filth of the Manila City Jail for two weeks had been bad enough. But here? Here the question looked to be not if one survived, but for how long.
The driver twisted around to face Jake. “You want, I bring.” Smiley’s offer finished a list of prisoner-coveted items he’d been reciting, from meds to clothing to women. Through the mesh that separated him and Jake, he smiled with perfect teeth no doubt financed by his black-market services. “This bad place.”
No kidding. Jake stared out the vehicle’s tiny square of window at his new residence. The prison extended farther than Jake could see, surrounded by a twelve-foot-high chain link fence topped with layers of razor wire. Inside the vegetation-chopped perimeter, the gray concrete prison walls rose one story higher than the fence. Guards, rifles in hand, gazed down from above the barred front gate at Jake and Smiley.
“If it’s not legit, Smiley, I’m not participating.”
“Everyone pa-tis-pate. Is good bizness.”
“It’s bribery,” Jake snapped. He’d heard the practice had gotten worse with Marcos’ regime in power. It meant Jake—and anyone else with a moral code, or too poor to pa-tis-pate—would have to do without basic necessities, much less luxuries.
A guard from the front gate opened the passenger door, its rusted hinge squawking, and waved Jake out of the sweltering back seat. As soon as he stepped out, mosquitos settled onto his exposed skin. There was no swatting them off until his chains were removed.
In the front seat, Smiley shrugged at Jake, bared his pearlies in a wide grin, cranked the shift into first gear, and drove off. His good cheer said he’d be back and Jake would have another chance to place an order.
Three guards in mud-colored uniforms, shirts unbuttoned over sweaty chests, surrounded Jake on both sides and his back. They were a good half-foot shorter than Jake but claimed easy authority with rifles poked into his ribs. Shouting as if he were a reluctant carabao, they herded him through the front gate into a large courtyard and released him from his chains.
His heart sank. A carabao he might well be. One of hundreds standing, squatting, lying in a feedlot reeking of human excrement. Flies—big, black, and bold—flew among the human cattle with little resistance from their victims. None wore shirts, only filthy rags—if anything— as loincloths. A large, metal trash bin in the center of the courtyard held water with debris and dead bugs floating on its brown surface. Their drinking water? In the corners of the courtyard, four fifty-five gallon drums, cut in half, spilled over with excrement.
He turned to face the front gate. Was he just being dumped here? No instructions, no bunk assignment, no basic supplies?
From behind the locked bars of the gate, the three guards stared expectantly at Jake. When their heads moved in a synchronized swivel from right to left, Jake pivoted. His stomach, already queasy with the stink, tightened.
From dozens of shadowed archways inside the prison walls, men emerged. All were adequately clothed, bony but not gaunt. Obviously not part of the carabao lot. They separated into three distinct groups, invisible lines distancing them from each other. All looked to be Filipino. Age, physique, status of health appeared evenly distributed. Jake could find nothing to distinguish one group from another. But, clearly, they were factions. Warring factions.
The men weren’t merely curious. As the groups drew nearer, the carabao herd took notice, and those that could moved away from Jake. Along the tops of the walls, prison guards gathered and leaned closer from their perches.
The men encircled Jake. Breaths pulsed from open mouths. Body odor weighted with the heavy musk of adrenaline overrode the stench of feces and urine. Wary eyes knifed his.
Jake snapped to a combat readiness stance, legs apart, knees slightly bent, back straight, shoulders wide. He held his head high, chin up, and eyed the groups in a slow, rolling gaze. Either he stepped up to their unspoken challenge, or one of them would.
Three groups. Three warring factions. Challenging him to identify himself.
Who was he?
His mouth went dry … and he knew.
Chapter 25
Action was a relief. For the first time since Jake’s arrest in August, he was free to make his own decision. The outcome wasn’t as important as the bottom-line humanity to exert governance over his choices.
With an upward nod to signify he was taking the lead, he flared his nostrils and expanded his chest in a deep inhale that spoke of control. Of purpose. Of power. He was onstage, and drama was his communicator. What happened in the next few minutes would establish his persona in the prison. Without haste, he strolled in a direct path to the water bin. The group in his way parted like the Red Sea before Moses’s rod.
There was no cup at the bin. Without looking left or right, without a glance at his enemies’ proximity, Jake bent over the water and scooped a handful into his left palm, leaving his right hand free should he need it for defense. No sound came from the men, only the faint drip of water from his hand and the louder thud of his heartbeat. Pivoting, he stepped to the closest human carabao and dribbled water over the man’s chapped lips into his mouth. Again, without a glimpse to left or right, he repeated the act with two more individuals. Only then did he straighten and look around him.
Two of the groups had departed, dispersing into the shadowed archways. Several members of the remaining group approached the metal bin one at a time, dipped a hand into the water, and carried it to men languishing on the ground.
When they finished, the group retreated to a third set of arches. They gestured for Jake to follow.
***
The archways reached like arthritic fingers into the prison walls. A network of crooked halls formed a maze hidden in blackness that Jake maneuvered by the soft footfalls of his companions. Dorm rooms lit by daylight through barred windows drew off members of the group—evidently his group now—until a bony hand, small on the middle of Jake’s back, guided him into a large room squeezed full of metal bunks pushed against all four walls. A few items of clothing hanging from bedrails contributed reds, blues, yellows, and oranges to the dull gray of concrete walls and floor.
The hand parked him in the middle of the room. Except for Jake, everyone sat on a claimed bunk. He counted forty sets of almond-shaped eyes pinning him to his two-square-foot space of concrete like a new specimen in a bug collection. What was next? Some sort of test or initiation? The law laid down? Dominance established? He tensed.
As if on signal, the group turned to other business. Some curled into sleeping mode, some held up reading material to the light of the window, some chatted or crouched on the floor to play games with small rocks.
Not trusting the men’s disinterest, Jake surveyed the room. Several bunks on either side of the doorway, the most vulnerable location, were vacant. Apparently he could choose among them for his small corner of the world. He lowered himself onto one of the bottom bunks and selected where he preferred to bed—across the room, farthest from the door, and under the window, where he could read assuming he got the chance. The beds were made for short men. He’d have to push two bunks end to end to accommodate his height.
Other than the clothes he wore, he had no possessions. Nothing had been permitted to leave the Manila City Jail with him, and nothing had been handed out when he arrived at the Salonga Prison. Either the basics would eventually be issued, or he was on his own to secure them. Or, like the carabao herd, do without.
He settled against the coolness of the wall backing his temporary bed. Best to wait for the opportune time to claim the other bunk location. He didn’t want to bully the men. Best guess, considering these men’s passivity, his group was at the bottom of the feed chain, except for the carabao. His group banded together for protection, not for dominance.
Moments later, a siren surprised him out of a doze. A blink at the window revealed the gray of dusk between its flaking bars. He scrambled to his feet, more alarmed by his falling asleep than by the siren’s piercing wail. He stood, nerves taut.
His forty dorm mates assembled like automatons with depleted batteries and filed out the doorway without a single glance at him. Their lethargy spoke to conditioned habit. The siren was a signal, not an alert to danger.
He followed them. Other dorm rooms emptied shuffling men into the maze. His eyes adjusted to the gloom right before the archways unpacked the men into the courtyard. His group—perhaps two hundred in all—milled outside but didn’t advance farther.
No one spoke to him, hadn’t since he’d walked through the front gate. It was as if, bit by bit, the prison was already at work erasing his life. Fashioning him through isolation and loneliness into a somnolent zombie.
The faint aroma of rice wafted to his nostrils. Standard fare at the Manila City Jail, no matter what time of day—and evidently no matter what prison. Except here, the smell was mixed with the fetid odor of human waste and unwashed bodies. He clenched his fists to keep from gagging.
In the middle of the courtyard, two inmates manned a vat from which they plopped watery rice into inmates’ bowls. What must be the top tier of the three prison groups filed by in two lines, each member holding two bowls and receiving two servings per bowl. Near the head of the line, one member, taller than the others and surprisingly rotund, turned back, holding out his bowls for seconds. A rifle shot spattered the packed dirt at his feet. Jake peered at the top of the prison walls. Two guards with rifles were laughing. The prisoner turned away.
The second prison group merged into the line. Their number was significantly smaller than the first group’s, and each member had only one bowl into which one scoop of rice was served. Jake stiffened. The Manila City Jail had fostered a pecking order—what prison didn’t?—but not at the cost of food distribution. Would Jake’s group, which hadn’t lined up yet, receive even one full scoop?
Two members of the first group hung around, eying the bowls of the second group as they came off the line. Jake had no bowl; these two men had two. They frowned as Jake strolled over to them and held out his hand. “I’ll take those extra ones, thank you.”
It didn’t take a translator to interpret the words spat back at him. Jake shrugged, snatched a bowl with his left hand, and with his right hand caught the first man under the chin with the heel of his palm and powered a hard shove. The man staggered backwards and toppled like the Leaning Tower of Pisa hit by a meteor. The second man dropped his bowls and swung at Jake. Jake ducked, fisted a second meteor into his opponent’s stomach. The man doubled over, gasping for breath.
Jake picked up the extra bowls. “Thanks, guys.”
Keeping the deposed men in his peripheral vision, Jake sauntered to the rice vat. The two inmates dispensing the rice most likely were on the bottom tier of the first group and wouldn’t resist him. He thrust the two bowls at them and pointed at the carabao herd. “Feed them.”
The men stiffened, refused to move.
“Need help?” Jake grasped the closest inmate’s wrist and with his other hand rammed the man’s face into the vat, pulled him up by the hair, and flung him backwards off his feet. The second man brandished his ladle in a swift arc at Jake’s face. Jake grabbed his opponent’s fingers, twisted the ladle loose, and bopped the man on his head with it. The inmate yelped and wobbled two steps backward, hands clasped to the top of his head.
Two stories above them, the guards laughed. Jake smiled up at them, took a bow. He gulped a quick breath, grateful to have them entertained instead of interceding with rifle shots. Their ringside seats at the front gate when Jake arrived had no doubt proved a disappointment with no one fighting him. This little scrap would help make up for it.
Jake retrieved the first inmate’s ladle and thrust it at him. “Feed them,” he growled. “Both of you.”
Scowling, the men picked up the bowls, heaped them full of rice, and began distributing clumps into the hands of men lying on the ground or propped against walls.
Jake kept the other ladle and waved the line forward. The first group had consumed half the rice in the vat. After a few minutes, he assigned an inmate from his group to dole out equitable portions of what was left.
The men whose bowls he had confiscated slunk away. Jake’s nerves prickled on high alert. Pecking-order protocol called for the two men to return with reinforcements. But no one showed up. Apparently battle plans weren’t on the dessert menu for tonight.
By the time he returned to his dorm room, the sun was down. The passageways glowed with electric lights, enabling Jake to study his route. No doubt there was a pattern to the maze that repeated itself throughout the ground floor of the prison. Learn this portion, and he’d have the prison’s lower level memorized. The knowledge might save his neck someday.
On entering the room, he halted as the chatter inside ceased. Forty pairs of eyes fixed on him. Suddenly, the sober faces broke into smiles. The men stood and applauded.
An unexpected sob jerked Jake’s chest. Nobody had acknowledged his existence since leaving the United States. There’d been no court appearance at the Manila City Jail. No sentence passed. No Neal Oakleigh or Filipino associate to represent Jake. Not even Betty or his kids had contacted him.
His throat swelled with the emotion he’d pushed back for fifteen days. He pressed his lips together and bowed in acknowledgement of the inmates’ gratitude. His country had deserted him; his loved ones appeared banned from his presence. And now here were forty criminals expressing delight in his advent.
Tonight he was their hero. But tomorrow? How loyal were they if the prisoners in the first group served retaliation for breakfast?
Chapter 26
Riccardo “Ric” Romero figured his father’s assignment an easy one: become friends with federal prosecutor Evedene Eriksson, push it into a romance if possible. He inhaled the scent of her perfume lingering in the Beachwood Apartments elevator, closed his eyes, and indulged in the heady tingling the fragrance teased in his senses. No question about attempting the romance part. But first he had to meet her on a basis acceptable to her.
So far, moving into an apartment on her floor had yielded no rewarding encounters. Eve was too suspicious to be neighborly. No borrowing a cup of sugar to start their acquaintance, that was for sure. He jabbed the button for the lobby and exited to follow her. He’d trailed her for weeks to pinpoint how they could meet without raising questions, and he’d found nothing.
Grocery store, dry cleaners, Ace’s Gym, favorite coffee shop … he’d ruled them all
out. Too much coincidence on top of living on the same floor. There must be some interest she was excited about. Something he could use on her as a blindfold to enter her life. Something pure and virtuous and lily-white.
He sniggered. Pure and virtuous and lily-white didn’t exactly describe Ric’s life. His father’s mole at the D.A. office would have to help him.
***
Between the discomfort of his short bunk and what lay ahead come sunrise, Jake slept poorly. The siren startled him awake. Other men jumped from their bunks as well, eyes wide, blinking fast. Across the room, the barred window evidenced a dawn not quite awake itself.
An inmate in blue-checkered shorts padded over to Jake. “Siren not good.”
Warmth pricked Jake’s heart. So he was worthy of being spoken to now. Most Filipinos could speak a smattering of English, but until now no one had attempted a conversation. “What’s wrong?”
“Too early. Trouble.” More inmates gathered around, nodded, murmured.
A man with a thinning goatee grown to his midsection stepped into the room. Snow-white hair defying gravity floated about his head before coming to rest on his shoulders. The inmates hushed. “The guards have been bribed,” he said. His English was accented but bore the marks of an educated man. “We are being called to a confrontation.”
The group’s leader. Jake’s heartbeat accelerated. “I’m the one they want. For retaliation against what I did last night. Only I need to go.”
“Why did you act as you did, Jake Chalmers?”
Jake wasn’t surprised the old man knew his name. He was sure, too, the leader knew why he’d given water and rice to the helpless. Jake had been waiting for the question since joining the group. The old man was asking for an affirmation—for Jake to verbalize the identity he’d dramatized on entering the prison.
“Matthew 25:40,” he said. A verse he had memorized twenty years ago to live by.
