Devil's Keep (14 page)

“She isn’t an applicant,” Ronnie said. “She came to Manila, Optimo brought her to Manila. Marivic Valencia is her name. Now she has disappeared, and I want to know where she is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Who is in charge here? I am sick of this goddamn bullshit! I want to speak to your goddamn boss.”

Heads were turning all around the office. For Filipinos, an angry voice in public was a major social taboo. Ronnie heard the words in his head as if someone else had spoken them.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That isn’t possible.”

“I want to speak to the fucking boss!
Now!
”

The young woman was stunned. Her mouth
moved as if to speak, but it only dropped open, without a sound, until she recovered enough to say: “One moment, sir.”

She scurried away, toward the back of the office, where she rapped at a door. A woman stepped out. Older, well dressed, with a stern face that grew harder as she listened to the young woman.
Matrona,
Ronnie thought. A fearsome
matrona
, as most
matronas
are. She shot him a sharp look, drilling him from across the room, and she crooked a finger—just once—commanding him.

He felt his anger draining away as he crossed the room. He couldn’t help it. Her eyes were locked on him as he approached, deflating him.

Before he could speak, she said, “What are you doing, disrupting my place of business? Your manners are terrible. Is this how you were raised?”

He found himself stammering: “Ma’am, it’s about my sister, ma’am. Marivic Valencia is her name. She came to Manila on a bus. We know that she arrived. But we have heard nothing more from her; it’s one week now. Oh, ma’am, my mother is so worried.”

“I recall the name,” she said. “Your mother or someone was in the Tacloban office, inquiring.”

“My mother, yes.”

“And she got an answer, did she not?”

“Yes, but, ma’am—”

“The answer is the same. You came all the way here from Leyte, disturbing my office, just to hear it again? Fine. I’ll say it one more time. The girl took the ticket and expense money, but she wasn’t on the bus when it arrived. I should be upset about that, because
she breached her contract; but as a gesture of maternal sympathy for your mother, I won’t pursue it.”

“Thank you, but—”

“And before you doubt that account, you should know that I am one hundred percent certain that your sister was not on the bus when it arrived at the terminal. Do you know how I can be so sure?
Because I was there!
Yes. I myself went to the terminal that night. Three o’clock in the morning. Just because I wanted to be certain that the girl saw a friendly face when she stepped off the bus.

“So to say that she was on the bus when it arrived in Manila is to say that I am a liar. I hope you’re not calling me a liar. Now go. You have your answer for a second time, the final time. I hope you won’t force me to have you thrown out. Your mother would be ashamed, I’m sure.”

She turned and started back through the door.

“I’m sorry to say it, ma’am, but I do know that my sister arrived in Manila. I have proof.”

She stopped, paused, turned slowly back to Ronnie.

She said, “Proof? How is this possible?”

“Because she told me,” he said. He dug out the cell phone from his pocket, paged down through the stored text messages, and found the last one from Marivic:

arrived

He raised the phone to show her, turning the screen outward, holding it out at the end of his outstretched arm. She took the phone from him to see it closer.

“That’s her phone number,” Ronnie said. “You see the date and the time.”

At first he didn’t notice her wrist, what she wore there. He was focused on her face, watching her expression as she squinted at the screen. But as she pushed the phone back at him, Ronnie caught the flash of gold at her wrist. It was a bracelet. Herringbone gold. A circle of diamonds. Red rubies that formed the letter “M.”

He roared with rage.

Five Russians, including Ilya Andropov, lived in the compound on Amorsolo Street. At the moment that Ronnie spotted his sister’s bracelet on the
matrona
’s wrist, one was sleeping in his quarters and the other four were in the big front room that served as the ops room and informal lounge. Andropov was at a table, discussing business with Totoy Ribera. Two others were playing cards through a curtain of cigarette smoke.

Anatoly Markov, the last of the group, was working his regular shift at the bank of video screens showing the feeds from sixteen surveillance cameras throughout the compound and the building next door. Markov was forty-eight years old, squat, and burly. He was sitting back in a swivel chair, feet propped up on the desk in front of him, when he spotted unusual movement on the camera that covered the offices above Impierno.

It was the hag, Magdalena. She was on her back, arms and legs thrashing. A man had pinned her down and appeared to be choking the life out of her.

“Boss, trouble next door,” Markov said. Andropov stood up and came over, with Ribera following.

“Totoy, handle this,” Andropov said.

Ribera was already headed for the door. He knew this was his job. The division of labor in this deal was clear-cut. The operation belonged to the Russians; they called the shots but remained inside the compound as much as possible. Any tasks outside the walls were performed by locals: Totoy and Magda and the crew of Filipinos who worked beneath them, doing jobs that were never explained. Totoy alone was granted access to the residence, but he got only glimpses of what happened in there. He knew even less about what happened to the drugged young men and women he and Magda took out of the bus terminals. He didn’t even bother to think about it. The money was good—in fact, it was spectacular by his standards—and he had long lost any inhibitions about playing his part in the eternal process by which the strong culled the weak from the herd of humanity.

He went out a side door to a steel gate in the high white wall. A Filipino guard sat on a stool beside the gate, a shotgun propped on his knees. When he got closer, Totoy saw that the guard was nodding off. Totoy pulled out the pin that fastened the gate latch. He slapped the guard in his face, a hard smack that woke him right away, and said, “Close it behind me, and get your head out your ass.”

Totoy went out the gate, across the walkway to the side door of the Impierno building. He climbed
the steps two at a time, pushed open the glass front door. He found the office workers shrieking as they stood in a frantic circle near a half-open door at the back of the room. Totoy shoved his way through and found Magdalena still on her back, still thrashing, face going purple, as a provincial farmer type, practically a boy, held her neck in his hands.

The country boy was in Magda’s face, snarling.

“You’re a lying whore!” he shouted.

One hundred percent correct,
Totoy thought. He drew back his right leg and unleashed a kick to the boy’s ribs. The force of it knocked him off Magda and sent him thumping hard against the doorframe.

Magda gasped, the boy groaned. Totoy bent close to Magda’s mouth, to make sure she was actually breathing. When he heard the hissing intake of breath, he turned to the boy, picked him up by the T-shirt, and dragged him through the half-open door and into the hallway beyond.

It was a short hall with the entrances to two private offices. One was his; the other was Magda’s. Totoy dragged the boy into his own dark office, dropped him onto a chair.

“Stay,” he said, but the boy lunged at him as soon as Totoy stepped back, so he punched the kid hard, doubling him up.

“Stay,”
Totoy said again, and went out to where Magda was now sitting up. He helped her to her feet, started to lead her to the back. She stopped and made a motion toward the floor behind her. Totoy spotted the cell phone and reached down, scooped it up. To the
young women who were watching all this, he said, “It’s all over now, girls. Back to work.”

He closed the door behind them and said to Magda, “What did you do to piss him off?”

She cleared her throat and found that she could speak.

“He’s the brother of the Valencia girl. From last week. He says he’s sure that she arrived in Manila. She sent a text.”

She gestured to the phone. Totoy read the message, saw the date and time.

“That’s it? That’s why he went off?”

She raised her arm to show the bracelet.

“Christ,” he said. He thought about it for a few moments, the implications. Greedy little thief, the trouble she had caused. But he decided that it wasn’t so bad if it was handled right.

“I’ll take care of this,” he said. “You get things back to normal out there. Tell them the kid’s a nutcase. They’ll believe it.”

Totoy returned to his office. The boy was doubled over on the chair, clutching his sides, quietly retching. Totoy put the cell phone on his desk. He pushed the boy up, straightening his back against the chair.

The boy continued to retch.

“It’ll stop in a minute,” Totoy said. “That’s what happens if you’re not expecting a gut punch. You don’t fight much, I can tell.”

The retching did stop. The first words out of the boy were: “As soon as I get out of here, I’m going straight to the police.”

“You don’t have to wait,” Totoy said. “You want to make a complaint, we can get started anytime.”

He went around to his desk, opened the top drawer, took out a slim black ID wallet. He opened it to reveal the engraved seal of the Philippine National Police.

Name: RIBERA, Placido Antonio

Rank: Captain

“But maybe first we should discuss your assault on a fine lady three times your age, in front of a dozen witnesses, including myself.”

“My sister is gone, and the old bitch knows what happened to her.”

“A fine way to talk about the woman I love. I’ve been courting her for years, since her husband died.”

“She’s wearing my sister’s bracelet. Diamonds and rubies and the letter ‘M’ for ‘Marivic.’”

“The letter ‘M’ for ‘Magdalena.’ I should know, because I bought it for her.”

“The text,” he said. He pointed to his phone on the desk.

“That? She says that she arrived, the lady says she never saw her. But there’s no contradiction. How many passengers on a Philtranco bus? Eighty? One hundred? They missed each other in the crowd, that’s all.”

Totoy picked up the phone. It was an older model, but he knew the commands.

“Besides…” he said. He deleted the message, holding
the phone so the boy could see the word disappear. “Do you understand?” he said. “You’re pushing against the tide. Keep pushing and you’ll drown. Or you can go home and wait for your sister to return. Maybe she does, maybe not. Life goes on. You think you feel bad now, but believe me, it can get much worse.”

Totoy watched the boy, looking to see how he would react.
Could go either way,
he thought.

The phone sounded in his hand.

A text.

Stay away from Optimo.

There is danger.

Totoy showed it to the boy.

“My mother,” the boy said.

“Why would she think there’s danger at Optimo?”

“She just doesn’t want me getting into trouble.”

Again the phone sounded. Another text. This time Totoy didn’t show it to the boy.

Call me now.

Help is on the way.

“All right, I understand,” the boy said. “I’ll go home and take care of my mom.”

He started to get up. Totoy pushed him back down into the chair.

“Maybe not,” Totoy said.

Favor and Mendonza stood at a street corner in
Tacloban, in front of the building where the local Optimo branch had its address. It was a modest commercial neighborhood at the edge of downtown. Favor could see a car repair shop, a small clothing store, a pension house, an outdoor food stall where customers carried their food away in plastic bags.

Nothing fancy. Not even close.

“A small office, a woman alone,” Mendonza said, repeating Lorna Valencia’s description of the office. “We need to impress her, but it would be easy to overdo it.”

“Firm but not hostile,” Favor said. “Not
overtly
hostile.”

“I think you ought to talk to her,” Mendonza said. “She might react to me like I’m a homeboy, just because I’ve got that look. But you’re straight-up
americano
, and that’ll impress her for sure.”

“If you say so,” Favor said.

They went into the building, up the creaking stairs with the flaking paint on the walls. Halfway up, they met a man coming down: midthirties, a local. Favor stood aside to let him pass and noticed a gauze pad on the inside of his left forearm, held in place by a piece of surgical tape. The man nodded a greeting and kept going; Favor and Mendonza climbed the second flight and stepped into the office.

Four in the room, Favor noted. Three in chairs, the clerk behind her desk. All four looked up and stared as Favor and Mendonza entered. Favor stood silently in front of the desk, staring down at the woman, while Mendonza went to the three in the chairs and asked them to wait outside.

“We’d like a few moments of your time,” Favor said to the woman. “It’s important, and we need your full attention.”

The three scurried out. Mendonza closed the door behind them, then stood beside Favor with his arms folded.

“What is your name?” Favor said.

“I don’t believe that I have any business with you,” she answered.

Mendonza spoke in Tagalog. He said, “Pay attention to him, auntie. You don’t want to play games with this one.”

She looked from Mendonza to Favor.

“I am Lisabet Bambanao,” she said. “And you?”

“We are friends of the Valencia family,” Favor said. “Marivic Valencia was in this office recently.”

“I know nothing about it,” the woman said.

“You don’t know Marivic Valencia? You gave her a bus ticket to Manila and some expense money. That was just a few days ago.”

“Of course I remember that, but I don’t know what happened to her.”

“What can you tell me about her?”