Moondogs (49 page)

“Which brings me to the problem,” the funeral director said, even more nervous now. “Your father’s body is still at Makati Medical. The court has filed an injunction barring my people from proceeding with the cremation until a paternity suit is resolved. There’s an outstanding petition to collect samples—”

“You know who’s doing it,” Bobby said.

The muscles in Benicio’s face loosened. He walked to the kitchenette and poured bottled water into a tumbler. He emptied it in small sips. When he returned to the study he found that his legs wouldn’t bend to sit. “Do I have any options?”

“That depends,” Bobby said. “Do you have any idea if Howard is the father?”

“I don’t think so. I mean, she’s a liar—I’ve caught her at it more than once. But I’m not sure. He could be.”

“Well then, not many,” Hon said. “The judge has scheduled an emergency session to hear the petition, but that won’t happen until five days after the funeral. If you knew the suit was bogus you could grant the samples whenever … but if you don’t know, you shouldn’t chance it.”

“You could contact her lawyer,” Bobby said, “and offer them something. They don’t know how much money Howard has. They may settle and drop it. Or—”

“Or it could be gas on the fire,” Hon interrupted. “They’ll see an offer as a sign of weakness, because that’s what it is. They’ll turn it down, and in the end you’ll have a lawsuit. And you’ll lose it. Howie was rich, and foreign, and so are you. You’ve already lost that lawsuit.”

“That’s not completely foregone,” Bobby said.

“The hell it isn’t,” Hon said. “Benny, I’m telling you, if you do anything that opens the door to the courthouse then you’ll make that bitch rich. Don’t look at me that way, Bobby, you know she’ll steal everything Howie ever had.”

Benicio placed his hands flat on the table. “Well, what won’t open the door to the courthouse?”

Hon paused. “A talk with the judge. I can arrange it by tomorrow morning.”

“Define talk.”

“You want me to spell it out?”

“Yes. Spell it out.”

“Ten thousand bucks. That’ll lift the injunction and buy a clerical error. They’ll misplace her petition and won’t find it until after Howie’s been sent to the crematorium in Sukot and scattered off of Mainit Point, just like he wanted. I’ll put the bills in a cookie tin and have it dropped off at the judge’s home in Ayala Alabang. He’s a friend of mine.”

The young funeral director squirmed in his chair. This clearly wasn’t a discussion he’d signed up for. Bobby looked uncomfortable as well. But Benicio wasn’t about to let this happen. He wasn’t about to
lose his father to this stranger. “We’ll give the judge twenty thousand,” he said.

HOWARD’S FUNERAL
, held as planned on the first of June, was well attended. Guests carpooled in sport utility vehicles and parked along the mud road, as far away as the Balayan Bay Dive Club. The land was rough, overgrown with ant-swarming bramble and deep-rooted bamboo, but hired men from the nearby village had used machetes to cut a narrow lane through the undergrowth. It led like a hallway down to a clearing by the water where Crespo Funeral Services arranged folding chairs and vases of cut flowers among the wild ones. Camera crews arrived and were turned away, instead setting up their tripods on a hill down-shore of the property, getting filthy as they tried to run extension cords through the brush. Charlie Fuentes came with his own little entourage, followed closely by the American chargé d’affaires. Monique introduced Benicio to her bloodshot husband and Hon hugged him and Alice tight, the chill of their first conversation by now completely forgotten. Bobby and Reynato arrived just before the service started and each sat alone in the back. For a moment Benicio didn’t recognize either of them—Bobby because his bandages had just been removed, and Reynato because he’d grown a scraggly beard and walked slowly with sunken shoulders.

“Who’s that?” Alice asked, following Benicio’s gaze. “He looks familiar.”

“You met him on your first day here. He’s the policeman who almost saved Dad.”

“Not him, the other guy.” She stared at Bobby with an odd intensity.

“A friend of my father’s. I spent some time with him, before I knew what happened. You haven’t met him.”

“Is his name Robert something?”

“Yeah. Bobby. How do you know?”

Alice looked away from Bobby, as though the sight of him was a little unpleasant. “He was in some of the newspapers I read at the embassy,” she said. That was all she said. The specially hired secular officiant took the podium, and they sat.

THE SERVICE WAS SHORT
. When it was over Benicio collected his father’s urn and walked down to the beach. He pulled off his suit jacket and laid it out on the wet, rocky sand. He sat on it and made room for Alice who squeezed in alongside. It only took about thirty seconds for him to feel cold water soaking though to his butt and thighs. A small crowd followed and waited in silence to watch him scatter the ashes. The minutes became a half hour and they trickled away. Soon the only one left was Reynato, who’d begun to sob while glancing at the overcast sky above them.

Benicio opened the urn and put his hand inside. Howard was soft and coarse at the same time, like the downy flakes that drifted after the eruption. He pressed his fingers in, knuckle-deep. It was more than he’d done with his mother. He’d never even cracked the lid of her casket. For all he knew it was empty or filled with salt. His mother, who just six months ago had been alive and dreaming up the useless future. He’d had two living parents then. Five years ago he’d spoken to both, often and with love. He’d had mild acne and a never-ending boner for the woman who taught him diving. Benicio tried to add up how much had changed since then, but he couldn’t do it. It was like trying to add apples and Monday.

Benicio pulled a handful of ash from the urn and looked at it. Seeing the ash, Reynato sobbed louder. It made gray little lines where it stuck in rivulets to the webbing between his fingers. He poured it back into the urn, careful not to let a single grain stray. He dusted his hands off over the open urn and sealed it shut. He stood. Alice looked at him.

“Aren’t you going to?”

“No, I’m not.” He reached down to help her up. “I’m bringing him home with me.” He left his soaking suit jacket on the beach. He held Alice by the arm and walked quickly, nodding to Reynato as they left. He didn’t slow until they were back on the road, off his father’s land.

ALICE LEFT THE NEXT EVENING
. He’d wanted to ride with her to the airport but she preferred a shorter goodbye in the lobby. Benicio couldn’t say when he’d be coming home—didn’t know if he’d make the
July network upgrade or the beginning of the school year at all. Hon thought it best he stay in the country while they figured out the estate and applied for a special investment visa. Alice thought that was best as well. She played it very cool as they waited for her ride to the airport, but once she was buckled into the backseat her resolve broke and she cried a little, and they kissed through the open window.

After seeing her off Benicio returned to his room and found that she’d left something on the bed. It was an old
Inquirer
from earlier that spring with a sticker in the upper-right corner indicating that Alice had taken it from the media center in the embassy. On the front page she’d written a note that read:
He seems like he made it through all right
. Under her handwriting was a headshot of Bobby Dancer. The story was highlighted.

Benicio stopped reading and dropped the newspaper back on the bed. The story wasn’t new to him, of course, but the details were. And God, the details were awful. He’d had enough of awful details. He wasn’t going to think about it.

He looked at the paper again just once before throwing it out, and then it was just at the file photo of Bobby’s face before the attack. The photo was black and white and very grainy, but still, it looked remarkably different from the Bobby who’d been at the funeral. It wasn’t that there were horrible scars—he’d actually healed beautifully. It was more the fact that the good side looked different once it had been seen next to the broken side. Handsome as Bobby still was, the symmetry that existed in this photo was gone, and it wouldn’t be coming back. Even the part that hadn’t changed had changed.

Chapter 33

On the morning after the eruption Monique dusted off Reynato’s sooty Honda and drove back to Manila. News of the eruption
—her eruption—
was all over the morning radio shows. It wasn’t so bad, thank God. No deaths or injuries; only minor property damage. A tremor had run like
a shock down the archipelago’s spine, causing Mount Pinatubo, Taal and Mount Apo to expel plumes of ash. Southwesterly winds carried most of the debris into the South China Sea, but areas downwind of the three peaks saw a few inches, including Subic, Manila and Manila Bay and most of Basilan. It wasn’t until she got back onto the expressway that they even mentioned Howard’s rescue on Corregidor Island. Very few had survived the firefight. Reynato Ocampo, inspiration for the Ocampo Justice films, was in the hospital, but his injuries were not life-threatening. How could they be, after all? He was Reynato Ocampo. The announcer actually said this.

Monique tried to visit him as soon as she returned to the city—because she was concerned, but also because the news hadn’t dampened her resolve to break things off with him. The guard at the door turned her away. Her protests of being with the embassy, of being a close personal friend, of having a message for Reynato were all met with the same mute headshake. Finally, after allowing a handful of reporters into the room without similar scrutiny, the guard admitted that he’d been instructed to keep her, specifically, away. He had a picture of her in his wallet—a picture Reynato had taken—with a note on the back that said she wasn’t to enter.

Furious, Monique waited for the shift change and snuck past when the new guy was in the bathroom. She understood right away why Reynato had wanted her out. He shared the double hospital suite with a second patient. It was the scarred man. The one with the face like hamburger; the one who had attacked them at Subic Bay; the one she’d pepper-sprayed in the eyeballs and chased into the bamboo thicket. His bed was surrounded by bouquets of artificial flowers, just like Reynato’s. The chart tied to the bedrail identified him as
Lt. Racha Casuco
.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to see you.” She turned to face Reynato, who was trying to sit up. “But I was afraid that this would be awkward.”

She walked toward him, slowly.

“Aaaaand … it is. Shocker.”

Still he was being cute? After what they’d both been through? She reached out quick and slapped him across the face. The sharp sound echoed in the tile room.

Reynato ran a finger under his lip and examined it for blood. There wasn’t any. “I deserve that.”

“I don’t need you to tell me.” She looked back at Racha, immobile and flower-decked. “You arranged for him to attack us?”

Reynato shifted in bed. It looked like shifting hurt him. “Me. He just attacked me. And he wouldn’t have hurt either of us. I was just hoping … I wanted to make some magic happen. I wanted you to see what you really are. I thought that if he attacked me, then maybe that’d be the kick in the pants you needed. Maybe you’d use your bruha—”

“Don’t call me that,” she hissed. “I don’t need you to show me who I am. I know who I am.” Saying this aloud, it felt like she really believed it for the first time in a long time.