Ghosts of Manila

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  ‘“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 sai
d 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.’

  When they went back down to the barrio they found no John Prideaux. No Eddie Tugos, either, come to that. His inert form had since been removed by his wife, they were told, and now lay in unconscious disgrace somewhere under the very roof his vampire had chosen as its perch. Bats had taken his place as Master of Ceremonies and Keeper of the Story, though his own version was somewhat different from Eddie’s. Eddie remembered a moonlike face with fangs, whereas Bats was obsessed by a flying half-woman. A learned discussion had just broken out concerning vampires, manananggal, aswang and various other horrors. Someone with a heavy Visayan accent said everybody was wrong, they were called wakwak, but whatever you called them the only way to deal finally with them was to stop the flying upper half of the body joining up with its lower half before dawn. Do that and it was dead for several reasons, one being that without a stomach it couldn’t digest the meal of liver and entrails it had just sucked out.

  ‘Number one job,’ said this man, looking around at the crowd of drinkers and listeners, ‘number one job is to find who this person is that Eddie and Bats saw. Then when her body separates at night we can take action.’ Everyone looked expectantly at Bats.

  ‘Hell, fellas,’ said Bats from behind his shades, ‘it was night, okay? You can’t recognise a person’s face at night all the way up on the roof there.’

  ‘But you must have formed an impression?’ coaxed the expert.

  Bats, who had considerably embroidered his own blurred recollections of the episode some nights ago, realised that his credibility hung on naming a name, any name. He chose the barrio’s current demon, the one who’d cut off their water. ‘I won’t swear to it, mind,’ he said.

  ‘But? Yes?’

  ‘But it did faintly remind me of that woman up there,’ he nodded towards the graveyard. ‘The one who had her goons chase me and Eddie that time. She sucked dry our water and she’s now after our blood, that’s my guess.’

  ‘Mrs Tan.’

  ‘Which makes sense,’ as Vic observed to Rio, standing a little apart. ‘It couldn’t still be poor old Brenda Miriam, ex-Presidentiable with the happy turn of phrase. “Fungus-face” – remember that? Anyway, her airspace was different. She used to fly out of Tondo.’

  ‘There you are. It seems we’re all after the same devil, each of us for our own reasons. I expect it’ll turn out to be a complete illusion,’ Rio added wisely, as a man who has seen ten thousand leads drain away into sand and a career’s-worth of suspects evaporate. ‘You think you’re wasting your time here, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t you? If it’s just vampires you’re talking about?’

  ‘Oh, probably,’ said Rio, to whom wasted time was part of the job. ‘But there’ll be something underneath it somewhere. There always is. I thought I got a whiff of it in Eddie’s house earlier. I was talking to his wife – I’ve known her a couple of years now. She’s a complete contrast. Hard worker, tough, no messing about. I thought she was uneasy today, as if she was hiding something, you know? Ah, is this your Englishman coming? So look, Vic, let’s stay in touch. I’m glad we met. I can tell the wife I spent the morning with
a famous journalist. She’s also a fan of yours.’

  Prideaux was hurrying because he had become lost and then finally delayed. He had formed the impression that San Clemente was small and compact, a thinnish triangle skewed into barely an acre or so. But as he’d hurried after Fr. Herrera’s stocky figure the barrio swallowed him up so that it appeared to go on without limit in every direction he took. He felt oversized, too, squeezing through the passageways and ducking low under protruding beams and sheets of tethered plastic. The cries were soon taken up: Kano! Kano! The American who wasn’t one, who couldn’t be bothered to stop and explain yet again. ‘Hey, Joe!’ The GI who wasn’t one, either. With great effort he caught up with the priest’s scurrying form, at the moment of placing a hand on his shoulder realising it was the wrong colour T-shirt. ‘Hello, my friend,’ said a total stranger affably. ‘Where you go?’

  But Prideaux never answered. He had caught sight of another figure at the end of the alley into which he had blundered. At this point the beaten earth lane was quite straight and led gently uphill between cupboard-sized stores with their wooden shutters propped up like box lids parallel to the ground. Built to allow a shorter population to pass comfortably beneath, they came at his eye level so that he was forced to duck and crane to see clearly. The figure was standing only twenty yards away, looking back at him. Suddenly a line of sight opened up between them and their eyes met. Prideaux immediately registered dread racing into him. The Rotting Man. The disgust he felt was explicable enough. Even at this distance he could see the misshapen head, the features encrusted with lumps and tumours. At first he thought the man’s scalp had sprouted leaf-like tags of discoloured skin, then saw he was wearing a camouflage net designed to fit over a military helmet. From beneath this olive mop of plastic tatters, a madman’s laurel crown, the creature held his gaze for a long moment. The dread intensified until the man turned abruptly away, making as he did so a strange gesture at once imperious and forlorn, flinging up a stump of right hand so the fascinated watcher caught the twinkle of open sores in the brilliant light.