Hillerman, Tony (12 page)

Wrong again.

“I’ll pay him when he gets me home. We can settle up later,” Moon said, and watched her disappear into the crummy little place, leaving him with just the rain and the thought that his brother may have dealt with heroin.

SAIGON
, South Vietnam, April 18 (UPI)- North Vietnamese troops began a furious tank, artillery and infantry attack today on Ham Tan, the capital of Binh Tuy Province and a 30-mile step closer to Saigon.

MOON HAD RISEN EARLY, HAD breakfast, called the Associated Press Bureau, got the day manager, identified himself and explained that he needed to know how to go about learning if a U.S. citizen named George Rice was held in Bilibad Prison and, if so, how to go about arranging an interview. The day manager had once covered Denver city hail for the
Rocky Mountain News
. He’d see what he could find out, but it would involve dealing with both the U.S. Embassy and the Philippine penal bureaucracy, so delay was unavoidable. He took Moon’s telephone number and said he’d try to get back to him by noon, but that might be optimistic.

With that step over, Moon took a taxi out to Caloocan City to check on the property Ricky had leased. Maybe someone would be there who knew something—such as where to find Brock. It was a long shot but better than waiting in his hotel room for the AP to call.

“Caloocan City?” the cabbie said. “That’s a long ways outside. For that we don’t use the meter. I just use this special rate card. So you get a bargain.”

Moon had been warned about exactly this by the Maynila’s concierge. “Make sure they turn on the meter. Those special rate cards are stuff they make up themselves to get more money out of tourists.”

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” Moon said. “Give me the rate card price now and turn on the meter. And when we get there, we’ll compare them.”

The cabbie gave Moon a huge gap-toothed grin. “My name is Tino,” he said, “and I think you’ve been to Manila before.”

They drove north through the teeming traffic on Roxas Boulevard, which for no reason apparent to Moon suddenly became Bonifacio Drive. They crossed the muddy Pasig River, left modern Manila and its middle-class housing district behind, and were surrounded by slums and the distinctive aroma of burning garbage.

“Smoky Mountain,” Tino said. “Lots of poor people live here.” He waved at the clusters of shacks they were passing and went on with the same tone of civic pride he’d been using to describe the glass and steel edifices along United National Avenue. “They build houses on the city dump. No rent to pay that way. And they collect stuff out of the trash and fix it up and sell it.”

The city dump also provided the homes. They

were patched together with sheet metal, odds and ends of wood, insulation board, bamboo. The architect of the hut they were passing now had used old carpeting to fill in a gap in the siding.

Caloocan City met expectations for a city no better than Smoky Mountain did for a mountain. They passed clusters of small fields being plowed this spring morning by men driving water buffaloes, followed by clusters of two-story business buildings, followed by great fields of sugarcane. The address they were seeking was surrounded by just such a field.

Castenada had written, Caloocan
City, Marmoi Road, Number 700; took for billboard Great Luck Development Corp. Look for warehouse of Seven Seas Worldwide Container, Inc.

Great Luck had surrounded two or three acres of its property with a fence, to keep out the cane, and built two concrete-block structures. Judging from the signs, the smaller one housed the offices of both Great Luck and Seven Seas. The larger one looked new: an office wing attached to a triple-sized hangar. And above the high hangar doors was painted:

M. R. A
IR
, L
TD
.
H
ELICOPTER
R
EPAIR
, L
EASING AND
T
RANSPORT

Moon stared at the sign. Not Ricky Mathias Air but Moon and Ricky Air. Ricky had meant it. That was hard to digest.

Tino looked around.

“This is it, no?”

“Yes,” Moon said. “Wait for me.”

The office door was locked, but through its window he could see that the room was furnished with two desks, a table, filing cabinets—the usual office furniture. The ashtray on the desk had two cigar butts in it. He pounded on the door. Waited. Pounded again. Then he walked across the gravel to the Great Luck Development Corp., encouraged by the whine of a band saw and hammering. The sign on the door said 700 marmoi road, and it opened just as he tapped on it.

A small, plump, and very pregnant woman looked up at him. “Good morning,” she said. “You must be Mr. Bascom, and you are a little bit too early.”

“My name is Malcolm Mathias,” Moon said. “I’m looking for Mr. Brock. I think he works next door at the helicopter company.”

“Mr. Brock?” she said, frowning. “Oh, yes. But I haven’t seen him for days.” She searched her memory. “Not for maybe two weeks.”

“Do you know where I could find him?”

“Is nobody over there?” she asked, indicating M. R, Air with a glance. “I think Mr. Delos would know.”

“No one was there.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, and laughed. “I forgot what day it is. Mr. Delos would be fighting his cock. He will be at the stadium.”

The stadium was a mile or so beyond the cane fields, beside a creek that irrigated a narrow row of rice paddies. It was round, designed by someone with access to a large number of heavy timbers and a supply of corrugated sheet metal roofing. The timbers were erected exactly far enough apart to be spanned by the roofing material, which was nailed to it to form the walls. The roof was a steep thatched cone, and the single entrance was guarded by two small booths made of lumber. At one, admission tickets were on sale at ten pisos each. Over the other a sign declared pollos fritos, and from it rose a thin haze of smoke and the delicious smell of frying chicken.

“Tell you what we’ll do,” Moon said when the cabbie parked in a lot occupied by scores of bicycles and a couple of dozen cars and trucks. “I’ll buy you a ticket and you help me find Mr. Delos in the crowd.”

“Ten pisos,” Tino said, voice scornful. “And you get a discount because a lot of the fights are already over.”

“How do you know?” Moon said. “It’s still early.”

“Lots of losers,” Tino said, pointing to the pollos fritos sign.

Moon paid full fare for both tickets—about ninety cents American—and they found a place on the top row, seven levels up, where the siding had been removed to let hot air and tobacco smoke escape. The stadium was about two-thirds full with a couple of hundred spectators: all males, all ages, almost all clad in the Filipino summer garb of short-sleeved shirts, cotton pants, and straw hats. The exceptions were those who held the seats around the ring. Most of them wore jackets, and most of them had custody of roosters.

The ring itself was a platform raised about three feet above the earthen floor and surrounded by sheets of transparent plastic. In it five men stood. In the center a skinny little man wearing a black suit, white shirt, and necktie was talking into a microphone. To his right and left stood two-man teams, which Moon identified as bird holder and assistant. The man with the mike spoke in what Moon guessed must be Tagalog and then repeated at least some of it in heavily accented English. The audience listened in rapt silence.

“He’s telling about the cocks,” Tino murmured. “The oone with the red feathers around his neck—” Just then the master of ceremonies stopped talking.

He lowered the mike and the arena exploded into bedlam. All around them, all around the stadium, men were leaping to their feet, shouting, flashing hand signals, acknowledging hand signals. Tino was saying something in Moon’s ear.

“What?” Moon shouted.

“I say if you wanna bet, bet on the one with the red feathers around his neck. Number nineteen. The maestro said he’s won three fights.”

“I’ll just watch,” Moon said. “Do any of those guys holding roosters look like Delos? She said he was short and fat and wore a long mustache.”

“Two fat ones,” Tino said, pointing.

Moon had noticed that. But both were sitting with their backs to him.

In the ring, the maestro raised the microphone. The clamor of betting stopped almost instantly. The rooster bearers advanced. The roosters pecked at each other while the maestro watched. Unsatisfied, he signaled the rooster bearers forward again. This time the cocks pecked with more satisfying ferocity. The maestro sent the rooster bearers back to their corners. They crouched, holding the roosters on the floor. One of the roosters waiting his turn outside the ring crowed lustily. The maestro’s hand dropped and the combat began in a wild flurry of feathers of spurs. Red Feathers went for the head. His black opponent backed away, then counterattacked, encouraged by shouts and imprecations from the audience. There was another wild flurry, another, and another, and suddenly it seemed to be over. Red Feathers was down, wings extended, neck held out. Black Feathers took two wobbly steps and stopped.

“Looks like you picked the wrong rooster,” Moon said.

“I think maybe a draw,” Tino said.

The handlers picked up their roosters. The maestro called them together. They held out the birds, head to head. Red Feathers was obviously out of it. Another morsel for the pollos fritos stand. But the black bird had no fight left. Instead of pecking, he pulled his head back. Maestro ordered a retrial. Again, Black Feathers wanted no more combat. His backers in the audience groaned. Maestro made a washing gesture with his hands while the bird holders departed. He said something unintelligible into the mike and signaled the next fight.

Both fat men climbed into the ring, one with a handlebar mustache and holding a mostly white rooster. Mr. Delos, surely, since the other one was clean-shaven. The ritual was repeated, the birds pecked at each other, the uproar of betting resumed, and the fight began. This one lasted a little longer and ended with the white rooster prone and breathing its last.

Tino grinned at Moon. “Pretty good, huh?” he said. “I don’t think you have anything in America like this.”

“Just hockey,” Moon said. “I guess that’s as close as we get.”

This time when the concluding test was applied, the winning bird had retained enough martial spirit to deliver a couple of farewell pecks. The maestro pointed to it and said the proper words into the mike, and bedlam again ensued. This time the yelling and pointing was accompanied by the passing of money up and down the rows and across the seats—the white cock’s backers paying their gambling debts to the winners. The honor system in practice, Moon thought, which was something else now missing from American athletics. But he didn’t have time to watch. Mr. Delos was carrying his deceased bird out of the stadium.

Moon caught Delos at the pollos fritos stand, in a glum conversation with the cook. But any grief Mr. Delos might have been feeling for his bird vanished when Moon introduced himself. The round brown face of Mr. Delos went aglow with delight as he pumped Moon’s hand.

“At last. At last,” he said. “Your brother told us he hoped you would be coming, and Mr. Brock said he expected you. I am so happy to meet you.”

“Mr. Brock. Is he here?”

“He has gone back to Manila,” Mr. Delos said. “There was a business arrangement to complete with Thousand Islands Airways. Ricky had made a proposal—” Mr. Delos remembered that delight was not appropriate. His expression changed. “We are so sorry about Ricky. What a terrible loss for you and for your mother. Please accept my condolences.”

“Thank you,” Moon said. “Where can I reach Mr. Brock in Manila?”

Finding that address required going back to the office. Delos checked in his Rolodex file. He extracted a card with the same address Castenada had provided. That and the telephone number with it had been scratched out and replaced only by a different telephone number. Mr. Delos was apologetic.

“His apartment, they tore it down so he moved, but it’s just until he can find a new place so he didn’t put down where he is now. Just the phone number.”

Moon called it, and while he listened to it ring Mr. Delos talked about business. Ricky had persuaded Thousand Islands it should expand its copter fleet by tapping into the huge surplus that the end of the fighting in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia would make available. M. R. Air would do the brokering and the conversion from gunships to transports, would handle maintenance, and would even subcontract some island-hopping jobs.

“We have more than a thousand islands in the Philippines,” Mr. Delos said. “Too rough for airstrips, just perfect for landing pads. And then we think maybe we can get maintenance work for the Manila police. The U.S. government gave them a dozen copters but I think only about two now are safe to fly. And then—”

The telephone was not going to be answered. Moon hung up and listened with pseudo-attention until Mr. Delos completed his account of business prospects. He asked Mr. Delos to have Mr. Brock call him at the Maynila if he checked in, shook hands, and left.

In the parking lot, Tino was squatting beside the left rear wheel of his little Toyota taxi, examining a very low tire.

Moon looked at his watch. It was already well past the noon hour when AP hoped to call him.

“A nail or something out at the stadium, I guess,” Tino said, sounding disconsolate.

“I’ll help you change it,” Moon said.

“Okay,” Tino said. “But the spare’s flat too.”

WASHINGTON
, April 18, (AP)—The Senate Foreign Relations Committee today approved a $200 million appropriation for humanitarian aid for South Vietnam, but a $722 million request for military aid remained stalled in Congress.

IN THE SHOP OF THE HOTEL Maynila, Moon bought copies of the two English-language Manila evening papers with the least flamboyant typography. He sat in the lobby reading, watching the dinner-hour traffic pass in tuxes, cocktail gowns, and the formal wear of various desert sheikdoms. If getting Tino’s multiple flats fixed hadn’t made them so late he would have been tempted to ask Mrs. van Winjgaarden to join him for dinner. Not that he would have done it. Partly because he couldn’t dress for anything more chic than a greasy spoon coffee shop but mostly because she would have pressed him to help her, probably in some fairly subtle way. Besides, she was several degrees out of his class and wouldn’t be dining with him unless she wanted something. Even so, eating alone in a dining room surrounded by couples and foursomes had been a dreary affair. Equally dreary was the prospect that now confronted him: spending the evening watching the rain splash against the windows of his room.