Till The Old Men Die (The Jeri Howard Mystery Series Book 2)

by Janet Dawson

  Half an hour passed. After the elderly couple departed, they were replaced by a young woman pushing a stroller, a toddler in tow, then a businessman in a dark suit, carrying a briefcase. Finally there was a lull in business. Time to introduce myself. I got out of my car and fed more coins into the parking meter.

  A bell above the door tinkled as I walked into Mabuhay Travel. The Randalls were at their respective desks, both of them on the telephone. I didn’t see any other employees. Perlita was all smiles and business as she arranged for the customer on the other end of the wire to spend a fabulous week in Maui.

  Arthur held his telephone receiver in his right hand and a slim black cigar in his left, its pungent smoke permeating the room. He ignored me and kept talking to someone he referred to as “old buddy.” Though he had retired from the navy, Arthur still had the regulation haircut, a short-back-and-sides iron gray crew cut over his pugnacious slab of a face. His heavy-lidded eyes, a watery blue, glanced at me briefly, then dismissed me. He was more interested in reliving old times with Old Buddy.

  I sat down next to a low table spread with travel brochures, slick, colorful folders exhorting me to visit the exotic capitals of the Orient, seducing me with the charms of Manila, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Singapore. Finally Arthur made a date to go deep-sea fishing with Old Buddy and hung up the phone. He leaned back in his chair, grinning at me like a shark approaching lunch, and said, “What can we do for you, little lady?”

  I stood up and walked close to the desk, forcing him to look up at my five feet eight inches. “You have an employee named Dolores Cruz. She lives in a condominium owned by your brother Charles, and she drives his white Thunderbird.”

  Arthur’s iron gray eyebrows came together, and he frowned. “What about it?”

  “How long has Dolores Cruz been in the United States?” I asked conversationally. “And how did she get here?”

  “Damnation.” Arthur slammed one thick hand on his desk blotter. Perlita looked up, startled, then she smiled uncertainly and continued her end of the telephone conversation, booking the Hawaiian vacation. Arthur narrowed his eyes and looked a bit less confident than he had a moment ago. “Who are you? Why are you asking? Are you from Immigration?”

  The mention of Immigration had a definite effect on Perlita Randall. She paled and twitched, as though something were biting her on the ankle and she wanted to scratch, but not in public. She stared at me with anxious brown eyes over the phone receiver, then looked away.

  “What’s your connection with Dolores Cruz, other than the work relationship?” I asked Arthur.

  “Hell, the woman works for me, that’s all.”

  “Do all your employees get a new car to drive, and an expensive address? That’s quite a benefit package, Mr. Randall. I think Dolores Cruz must be a special case. Is she a relative of Mrs. Randall’s? Her sister, perhaps?”

  Judging from the way Perlita squirmed in her chair, I was close to the mark. So far Perlita hadn’t said a word. Her husband was doing all the talking, and I had the feeling that was the norm. Arthur looked nervous. I didn’t blame him, given the fines imposed for hiring illegal immigrants. “That’s none of your business,” he blustered. “Who the hell are you? Why are you asking all these questions?”

  I handed him one of my business cards. He tromboned his hand out and squinted at it, seeking a hidden meaning behind the black words engraved on white stock. He looked up at me skeptically, still convinced I was an agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “J. Howard Investigations? What are you, some kind of snooper?”

  “Private investigator is the usual term, Mr. Randall.”

  Perlita finally got off the phone. Now she sat very still in her chair, her hands folded on her desk, looking at me the way a cornered mouse looks at a cat.

  “Dolores Cruz is illegal, and you helped her get here. My guess is that she’s Perlita’s sister. Your brother Charles is either military or civil service and he’s out of the area for a while, so you gave Dolores a job, a place to live, and the keys to his car.” I was speculating, but the frightened look on Perlita Randall’s face told me I’d hit the mark. “You’re already in pretty deep. Deeper than you think. Dolores Cruz is involved in something I’m investigating. She’s in a lot of trouble, and so are you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Arthur said with bravado that didn’t extend to the look in his eyes.

  I turned and fixed Perlita with a stare. “What about you, Mrs. Randall?” Perlita stammered something I couldn’t quite hear as Arthur pushed back his chair and stood, his bulk towering over me.

  “I don’t know what you’re up to, coming in here, making accusations. I’m up to here with these shenanigans. Get out of here. You’re bothering my wife and you’re bothering me.”

  “It was my intention to bother you,” I told him. “Just remember, you might be better off talking to me than to INS. If you change your mind, call me.”

  Twelve

  AFTER LEAVING MABUHAY TRAVEL I DROVE WEST to Serramonte Boulevard. My earlier search through the Bay Area criss-cross directories had revealed that the phone number Edward Villegas had given Alex matched an address on Serramonte, a restaurant called the Manila Galleon. I’d called the number several times over the past few days, getting no answer, even during the hours a restaurant would be open. Villegas’s number didn’t match the one listed for the restaurant itself. It must be a private line. lucked between a drugstore and a discount shoe outlet, the Manila Galleon featured Filipino and American food, and it seemed to have a brisk lunchtime trade.

  I spent the next couple of hours plowing through business records, first at the San Mateo County Courthouse, then at its San Francisco counterpart. According to the files on business names, the Manila Galleon was owned by Kaibigan Inc., with an address on Townsend Street in San Francisco. I filled several pages in my notebook as I wrote down the names of various businesses, large and small, owned by Kaibigan Inc. in San Francisco and San Mateo counties. I’d have to wait until I got back to Oakland to see if Kaibigan Inc.’s reach extended to the East Bay. As I researched the company, I encountered three names, all of them familiar. The first was Hector Guzman, the local real estate tycoon and Marcos sympathizer. Both Pete Pascal and Alex had brought up his name. The second name was Salvador Agoncillo, at a Balboa Street address in San Francisco’s Richmond district. Nina’s brother, I thought. At the fiesta last Saturday Nina told Alex’s aunts that she was living with her brother Sal until her wedding to Kaibigan Inc.’s third partner, Enrique Navarro.

  The Navarro import business was located at the same Townsend Street address as Kaibigan Inc. I headed for San Francisco’s warehouse district south of Market Street. Pacific Rim Imports was midway between Second and Third, not far from the Southern Pacific depot, a two-story redbrick building located in the shadow of the Bay Bridge. I didn’t see the black Jaguar Rick Navarro had been driving last week, but a boxy silver Mercedes was parked in front of the building. I pulled into a slot next to it.

  A small closed door to my left looked like an afterthought next to the oversize door in front of me. On wheels, the door had been rolled to the right, opening onto a high-ceilinged warehouse with a central aisle. I stepped past a cable dangling from a steel beam in the ceiling and looked around. On either side of me I saw sturdy wooden shelves about twenty feet high, counting eight sets of shelves on either side. The shelves were about six feet wide, with an equal amount of space between them, crowded with merchandise, the higher shelves accessible by movable metal staircases or forklifts that maneuvered on the concrete floor of the warehouse. I started up the center aisle. It was about thirty feet on either side of the aisle to the warehouse’s outer walls, banked with rattan bookcases, chairs, and other furniture. At the rear of the building I spotted a narrow staircase with a wooden handrail, just to the left of the center aisle and, above it, a second-story glass window looking out at the main floor. In one of the side aisles I encountered two men in coverall
s unloading big, brightly painted ceramic elephants from a crate stamped BANGKOK. I asked where I could find Rick Navarro, and they pointed to the glass window above our heads.

  The stairs rose above a corridor leading to a communal bathroom, a rear exit, and a door with a huge padlock, presumably the resting place of more valuable merchandise. I climbed to a small landing outside Rick Navarro’s office. The door was open.

  Rick stood near the long window, his shirtsleeves rolled up, contemplating a carved board resting on a big easel. The polished dark wood, about three feet by six feet, was covered with relief figures of men and women in a tropical setting, a turtle crawling out of the stylized surf.

  “What is it?” I asked as he touched the carved rim of the board. He looked up and saw me in the open doorway, but he didn’t look surprised to see this particular visitor.

  “A storyboard, from Palau in the western Caroline Islands. It’s a legend about turtles and fertility.” He smiled and walked toward me, holding out his hand. “Miss Howard, a pleasure to see you again. Are you interested in the art of the Pacific Islands?”

  “I don’t know much about it.”

  “This is a small sample,” Rick Navarro said. A sweep of his left hand drew my attention to the walls of his office. “I have some wonderful pieces.”

  A smaller storyboard hung on the back wall of the office, to my left, opposite the window. Next to it I saw a pair of closed sliding doors. In the space above the doors, carved wooden masks alternated with fans intricately woven of rattan and colored fibers, some decorated with shells. To my right, next to the door, stood a white and gold ceramic elephant about three feet high, more elaborately painted than the ones I’d seen downstairs. On its flattened back it held an areca palm in a sturdy clay pot, its fronds fanning out over my head from a sturdy stem, evidently getting enough sun from the skylight in the middle of the ceiling. Beyond it the wall held a series of gold-painted wooden carvings. Opposite me, hanging on the wall between his desk and the sliding doors, I saw a glass case containing a small red and yellow feather cape of the type worn by Hawaiian royalty. I had seen a larger version at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. I walked over to inspect the feather cape, then I turned to check out Rick’s desk.

  It stood almost in the middle of the room, facing the door. Behind the desk, within easy reach on a credenza against the wall, stood an array of the high-tech equipment required of any modern businessman — sleek computer, oversized monitor, laser printer, compact copier, and fax machine. The monitor screen was blank. I surveyed the desk surface, seeing only a pale blue file folder, unlabeled, and a round rattan mat next to the phone. A collection of shells and coral rested on the desk’s right corner. The left corner held a five by seven photograph in a gold frame, showing Nina Agoncillo with her long dark hair piled atop her head, a smile curving her lips.

  “Please, have a seat. “Rick gestured toward a chair at the front of his desk. “May I offer you some coffee?” I declined and took the seat he’d indicated. He opened the sliding doors on the back wall, revealing three black filing cabinets with locks, a good-size safe, and a small sink-and-counter arrangement built over a mini-refrigerator. A coffee maker stood on the counter. He poured coffee into a gold-rimmed china cup with a matching saucer, then carried it to his desk, setting it on the rattan mat as he settled into his brown leather chair. He smiled at me across his desk. “Is there a reason you came to see me?”

  “Kaibigan Inc.,” I said. “You’re one of the principals.”

  “Yes, I am.” He frowned in mock seriousness. “Don’t tell me Kaibigan has come up in one of your cases.”

  I shrugged. “Possibly. I encountered the name Kaibigan Inc., then I discovered your name in connection with Kaibigan. I assume Salvador Agoncillo is Nina’s brother. What about Hector Guzman?”

  “Hector is an old friend of my father’s. Just as Salvador is a new friend. Kaibigan is Tagalog for ‘friend.’”

  I digested this for a moment. “Kaibigan owns a restaurant in Daly City called the Manila Galleon. It’s on Serramonte Boulevard.”

  He looked blank. “Is it? I can’t recall visiting that one. Kaibigan owns several restaurants here in the Bay Area.”

  “What is your role in Kaibigan?”

  “We’re investors, businessmen. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Or all you’re willing to tell me.”

  He brought his hands up in a dismissive gesture, softened by his smile. “Miss Howard, surely you understand that a businessman doesn’t reveal information about his business, just as a private investigator doesn’t reveal information about her clients. What is your interest, Miss Howard?”

  I avoided his question and asked one of my own. “Do you know a man named Edward Villegas?” Did I see a flicker of recognition in his eyes? Or was it a trick of the light? Maybe I’d imagined it, so brief I couldn’t be certain.

  He shook his head. “Villegas? No, I’m afraid not. It’s a fairly common name, though.”

  “What about Dolores Cruz?”

  This time he shook his head more firmly, with more emphasis. “Again, a common name. But I don’t know her. Who are these people? Why are you asking about them?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I changed the subject. “Your father is a very powerful man. He seems to have a finger in every slice of the economic pie, in the Philippines and elsewhere. He’s doing a lot of business in the United States.”

  Navarro’s face tensed at the mention of his father. “Yes, we are. We’re always looking for investment opportunities. This is the era of the Pacific rim, Miss Howard. Hence the name of our business.”

  “I understand he’s planning to run for president of the Philippines. There are a lot of people queued up for a crack at that job. Do you think he has a chance to win?”

  “Of course he does.” His words were hard and challenging, at odds with his bright smile. “We’re ready for some sensible, businesslike government, something that has been sadly lacking in the Philippines. My father has been outside the political sphere, it’s true, but that means he can offer some new ideas. That gives him an edge, as far as I’m concerned. People like Laurel and Enrile are holdovers from the past.”

  “Like Hector Guzman,” I added, interrupting his spiel.

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Your other partner, Hector Guzman. Another holdover, and one of your father’s biggest financial supporters. I hear Guzman’s tight with the pro-Marcos camp. As an outside observer, it seems to me the Filipino-American community spends a lot of time arguing about what goes on back in the Philippines. If someone drops a rock in Manila, you can feel the ripples all the way to California.”

  “That’s all in the past,” he said, dismissing with a wave the ongoing political turmoil in his native land. “You’ve been talking politics with Alex Tongco. He has a more negative outlook than some of us. How did you meet Alex, by the way?”

  I could sidestep questions as well as he could. “We ran into one another. He invited me to the fiesta. Did you know Alex’s uncle, Lito Manibusan?”

  “No, but Nina has spoken of him. He taught history at Hayward. A colleague of your father’s?”

  “How did you know my father teaches at Cal State?”

  “Felice mentioned it after our initial meeting last week.”

  “Dr. Manibusan and my father were friends. He was from Pampanga Province, same as your father. Were you born there?”

  “Yes, on the plantation near San Fernando.”

  “The one operated by your brother Jun.”

  He nodded. “You seem to know a good deal about my family, Miss Howard.” That was because the late Dr. Manibusan had such a large file on Maximiliano Navarro. Again I wondered if the late professor had more than a scholar’s interest in Maximiliano Navarro’s political ambitions and economic clout.

  I was ready to ask Rick Navarro more questions, but I was forestalled by the arrival of Nina Agoncillo and another woman. They appeared at the door
of Rick’s office, dressed in low-heeled shoes and summery pastel dresses, weighted with shopping bags from Neiman-Marcus, I. Magnin, and Nordstrom, which they dropped to the floor just inside the office. They’d been chatting in English, and it was the first time I’d seen Nina look animated.

  Rick’s face changed when he saw Nina, the affable yet careful businessman replaced by genuine pleasure as he looked at her. He rose, swiftly crossed the room, and took her hand. “Nina, you remember Miss Howard from the fiesta.” Nina’s smile cooled a bit as she nodded. “And this,” Rick continued, turning to the other woman, “is my stepmother, Antonia Navarro.”

  Mrs. Maxirniliano Navarro was about fifty, a sleekly attractive woman with black hair in a chignon and lots of makeup. Not quite an Imelda clone, but she looked as though she’d be at home at a campaign rally or a society reception. She had lots of rings on her hands, diamonds and rubies that pressed against my flesh as she greeted me with a polite handshake. “Isn’t Max here?” she asked Rick.

  “He’s not back from lunch yet, but he should be here soon.”

  “I knew we should have gone back to the house.” Antonia Navarro sighed as she surveyed the shopping bags with a bemused smile. “We’re exhausted. And we sent the cab away.”

  “I’ll take you home,” Rick said. “Miss Howard was just leaving.”

  Ms. Howard was being rushed out the door, whether she liked it or not. Rick Navarro went to the sliding doors and pushed them to the other side, retrieving his jacket from a hanger. He rolled down his sleeves, fastened the cuffs, and put on the jacket, smiling at me. “It was nice seeing you again,” he told me. I was quite sure he didn’t mean it.