e  he's doing that, he hears the customs inspector working right next to
his  head, unzipping the tiny, empty  pocket on  the top  of the duffel bag.
There is a rustling noise. "What is this?" the inspector asks. "Sir? Sir?"
     "Yes,  what is  it?"  Randy  says,  straightening  up  and looking  the
inspector in the eye.
     Like a model in an infomercial, the inspector  holds  up a small Ziploc
bag  right  next  to  his head and points to it with the other hand.  A door
opens behind him and people come out. The Ziploc bag  has been partly filled
with sugar, or  something maybe confectioner's sugar and rolled into a cigar
shaped slug.
     "What is this, sir?" the inspector repeats.
     Randy shrugs. "How should I know? Where did it come from?"
     "It came  from  your bag,  sir," the inspector says, and  points to the
little pocket.
     "No, it didn't. That pocket was empty," Randy says.
     "Is this your  bag, sir?" the inspector says, reaching with one hand to
look at the paper claim check dangling  from  its  handle. Quite a crowd has
gathered  behind  him,  still  indistinct  to  Randy  who is  understandably
focusing on the inspector.
     "I should hope so I just opened the  locks," Randy  says. The inspector
turns around  and  gestures  to  the  people behind him, who en  masse  move
forward  into the  light.  They are wearing  uniforms and most  of  them are
carrying guns. Very soon, some of them are behind him. They are, as a matter
of fact, surrounding him. Randy looks towards Amy, but  sees only a pair  of
abandoned  shoes: she is sprinting barefoot toward a line of pay telephones.
He'll probably never see her in a dress again.
     He wonders  whether  it would be a bad idea, from  a narrowly  tactical
point of view, to ask for a lawyer this soon.


     <B>Chapter 83 THE BATTLE OF MANILA</B>


     Bobby Shaftoe is awakened by the smell of smoke. It is not the smoke of
cookies left  too long in the oven, piles of autumn leaves being  burned, or
Boy Scout campfires. It is a mixture of other kinds of  smoke with which  he
has become quite  familiar  in the last  couple of  years: tires,  fuel, and
buildings, for example.
     He props himself up on one  elbow and realizes  that he is lying in the
bottom of a long skinny boat. Just above his head, a dirty canvas sail luffs
in a treacherous and foul smelling breeze. It is the middle of the night.
     He turns his head to look upwind. His head doesn't like it. Fierce pain
is trying to batter down the doors of his mind. But the pain is  not getting
in. He senses the muffled booms of the  pain's hobnailed  boots against  his
front door, but that's about it.
     Ah! Someone has given  him morphine. Shaftoe grins appreciatively. Life
is good.
     The world  is dark a matte black hemisphere inverted over the  plane of
the lake. But there is a horizontal crack around the edge, off to the boat's
port  side, where  yellow light is leaking through. The  light  glimmers and
sparkles like stars viewed through the heat waves above the hood of  a black
automobile.
     He sits up, peers at it, gradually getting an idea of scale. The ragged
trail  of yellow light  extends from  the boat's eight  o'clock, all the way
around past the bow, to about one o'clock. Maybe it is some incredibly weird
sunrise phenomenon.
     "Myneela," says a voice behind him.
     "Huh?"
     "It is Manila," says another voice, closer to him, speaking the English
version of the name.
     "Why's it all lit up?"  Bobby  Shaftoe has not  seen  a city lit  up at
night since 1941, and has forgotten what it looks like.
     "The Japanese have put it to the torch."
     "The Pearl of the Orient!" someone says, farther back in  the boat, and
there is rueful laughter.
     Shaftoe's head is clearing now. He  rubs  his  eyes  and takes a better
look. A couple of  miles off to  port, a steel  drum full  of fuel takes off
into the sky like a rocket,  and disappears. He begins to  make out the bony
silhouettes of  palm trees along the  lake shore, standing out  against  the
flames.  The boat moves on across the warm water quietly, tiny waves chiming
against its hull. Shaftoe feels  as if he has  just  been born, a new person
coming into a new world.
     Anyone  else would  ask why they  are  traveling into the burning city,
instead  of running away from  it. But Shaftoe doesn't ask, any  more than a
newborn infant would ask questions. This is the world he has been born into,
and he looks at it wide eyed.
     The man who  has  been speaking to him is sitting on a  gunwale next to
Shaftoe, a  pale  face  hovering above a black garment, a white  rectangular
notch in  his collar.  The  light of the  burning city refracts  warmly in a
string of amber beads  from  which  depends,  a  heavy,  swinging  crucifix.
Shaftoe lies back  down in the  hull of the  boat and stares up at  him  for
awhile.
     "They gave me morphine."
     "I gave you morphine. You were difficult to control."
     "I apologize, sir,"  Shaftoe says with profound sincerity. He remembers
those China Marines who went Asiatic on the trip down from Shanghai, and how
they disgraced themselves.
     "We could not tolerate noise. The Nipponese would have found us."
     "I understand."
     "Seeing Glory was a very bad shock for you."
     "Level with me,  padre," says  Bobby Shaftoe. "My boy. My  son. Is he a
leper too?"
     The black eyes close, and the pale face moves  back and forth  in a no.
"Glory contracted the disease  not long after the child was born, working in
a camp in the mountains. The camp was not a very clean place."
     Shaftoe snorts. "No shit, Sherlock!"
     There is a long, uncomfortable  silence. Then  the  padre says, "I have
already taken confessions from the  other  men.  Would you like  me to  take
yours now?"
     "Is that what Catholics do when they're about to die?"
     "They do  it  all  the  time.  But  yes, it  is  advisable  to  confess
immediately before death. It  helps what is the expression grease the skids.
In the afterlife."
     "Padre, it looks to me like we're only an hour or two away from hitting
the beach. If I start confessing my sins to you right now, I might get up to
stealing cookies from the cookie jar when I was eight years old."
     The padre laughs. Someone hands Shaftoe  a cigarette,  already  lit. He
takes a big suck on it.
     "We wouldn't have time to get into any of  the good stuff, like nailing
Glory and  killing a whole  lot of Nips and Krauts." Shaftoe thinks about it
for a minute,  enjoying the cigarette.  "But if  this is  one of those deals
where we are all going to die  and it sure looks like  one of those deals to
me there is one thing I gotta do. Is this boat going back to Calamba?"
     "We hope that the owner  can take  some women and children  back across
the lake."
     "Anyone got a pencil and paper?"
     Someone passes up a pencil  stub,  but there  is no  paper to be found.
Shaftoe searches his pockets and finds nothing but a skein of I SHALL RETURN
condoms.  He opens one of  them,  peeling  the halves  of the  wrapper apart
carefully, and tosses  the rubber into the lake. Then he spreads the wrapper
out on the top of an ordnance crate and begins to write: "I, Robert Shaftoe,
being of  sound  mind  and body,  hereby  leave  all  of my  worldly  goods,
including  my  military  death  benefits,  to my  natural born son,  Douglas
MacArthur Shaftoe."
     He looks  up into the burning city. He considers adding something like,
"if  he's still alive," but  nobody likes a  whiner.  So he just  signs  the
fucking  thing.  The padre  adds his signature as witness.  Just to add some
extra credibility,  Shaftoe pulls off his dog tags and wraps the will around
them, then  wraps  the dog tags' chain around the whole thing. He  passes it
down to the  stern of the boat, where the boatman pockets it  and cheerfully
agrees to do the right thing with it when he gets back to Calamba.
     The boat isn't wide, but  it's  very long  and has a dozen Huks crammed
onto it. All of them are armed to the teeth with ordnance that has obviously
come  off  an  American submarine recently. The  weight of  men and weaponry
keeps  the boat so low in the water that waves  occasionally splash over the
gunwales. Shaftoe  paws through crates in the dark.  He can't see  for shit,
but his  hands identify, the components  of a  few Thompson submachine  guns
down in there.
     "Parts  for  weapons,"  one  of the Huks explains  to him, "don't  lose
those!"
     "Parts, nothing!" Shaftoe says, a few busy seconds later. He produces a
fully assembled trench broom from the crate. The red coals of half a dozen I
SHALL  RETURN  cigarettes leap upwards  into  the Huks'  mouths as they free
their hands for a light round of applause. Someone passes  him a  pie shaped
magazine, heavy with .45  caliber  cartridges. <I>"Y'know,</I>  they invented  this
kind ammo just to knock down crazy Filipino bastards," Shaftoe announces.
     "We know," one of the Huks says.
     "It's overkill for Nips," Shaftoe continues, jacking the tommy  gun and
the magazine together.  The Huks all laugh nastily. One of them is moving up
from the stern, making  the whole boat rock from side to side.  He is a very
young, slight fellow. He holds out his hand to Bobby Shaftoe. "Uncle Robert,
do you remember me?"
     Being  called  Uncle  Robert  is hardly  the  weirdest  thing  that has
happened to Shaftoe in the last few years, so he lets  it slide. He peers at
the  boy's face, which is dimly illuminated by  the  combustion  of  Manila.
"You're one of the Altamira boys," he guesses.
     The boy salutes him crisply, and grins.
     Then,  Shaftoe   remembers.   Three  years  ago,  the  Altamira  family
apartment, carrying  the freshly impregnated Glory up the stairs as air raid
sirens wailed all around the city. An  apartment filled  with  Altamiras.  A
squad of boys  with wooden  swords and rifles, staring at  Bobby  Shaftoe in
awe. Shaftoe throwing them a salute, then running out of the place.
     "All of us fought the Nips," the boy  says. Then his face falls, and he
crosses himself. "Two are dead."
     "Some of you were pretty damn young."
     "The youngest ones are still in Manila,"  the boy says.  He and Shaftoe
silently  stare across  the water into the flames, which have  merged into a
wall now.
     "In the apartment? In Malate?"
     "I think so. My name is Fidel."
     "Is my son in the same place?"
     "I think so. Maybe not."
     "We'll go find those kids, Fidel."


     <B>***</B>


     Half the population of Manila  seems  to be standing  along the water's
edge, or in the water, waiting  for a boat like theirs to show up. MacArthur
is coming down from the north, and the Nipponese Air Force troops are coming
up from the south,  so the isthmus  between Manila Bay  and Laguna de Bay is
corked at  both  ends by great military  forces waging  total  war. A ragged
Dunkirk style evacuation is in progress along the lake side of  the isthmus,
but the number of boats  is not adequate.  Some of the refugees are behaving
like civilized human beings, but others are wading and  swimming out towards
them trying to  get  first dibs. A wet hand reaches up out of  the water and
grabs  the boat's gunwale  until  Shaftoe crushes it with  the  butt  of his
trench broom. The swimmer falls away, clutching his hand and  screaming, and
Shaftoe tells him he's ugly.
     There is  about half an hour's more ugliness  as the boat cruises  back
and forth just out of swimming range  and the  padre handpicks an assortment
of women carrying  small children. They are pulled up into  the  boat one by
one, and  the Huks climb off the boat one by one, and when it's all finished
the boat turns around and glides off into the darkness. Shaftoe and the Huks
wade ashore, carrying crates of  ammunition  between  them.  By this  point,
Shaftoe has grenades dangling off his body all over the place, like teats on
a pregnant sow, and most of the Huks  are walking all slow and stiff legged,
trying not to collapse under the weight of the bandoliers in which they have
practically mummified themselves. They stagger into the city, bucking a tide
of smoky refugees.
     This low land along the shore of the  lake is not the city proper it is
a suburb  of humble buildings made in the traditional style, of woven rattan
screens with thatched  roofs. They  burn  effortlessly,  throwing up the red
sheets  of flame  that they watched from the boat.  Inland, and  a few miles
north, is the  city proper,  with many masonry buildings. The Nipponese have
put it to  the torch also, but it burns sporadically, as isolated towers  of
flame and smoke.
     Shaftoe and his band  had been expecting to hit the beach  like Marines
and get mowed  down at the water's edge. Instead, they march for a good mile
and a half inland before they actually lay eyes on the enemy.
     Shaftoe's  actually glad  to see some real  Nips; he  has been  getting
nervous,  because  the  lack  of  opposition  has  made  the  Huks giddy and
overconfident.  Then half a dozen Nip Air Force troops spill  out of a store
which they have evidently been looting they are all carrying  liquor bottles
and  stop on the sidewalk  to  set  fire  to  the place,  fashioning Molotov
cocktails from  stolen bottles of  firewater. Shaftoe pulls  the  pin  on  a
grenade and underhands it down the sidewalk, watches it skitter for a while,
and  then  ducks into  a  doorway. When he  hears  the  explosion, and  sees
shrapnel crack the windshield of a car parked along the street, he jumps out
onto  the sidewalk,  ready to  open up with  the  tommy gun.  But  it's  not
necessary; all of the Nips are down, thrashing weakly in the gutter. Shaftoe
and the other  Huks  all take cover and  wait  for more  Nipponese troops to
arrive, and help their injured comrades, but it doesn't happen.
     The Huks  are elated. Shaftoe stands in the  street  brooding while the
padre administers  last rites to  the  dead  and dying Nipponese. Obviously,
discipline has completely broken  down. The Nips know they are trapped. They
know  MacArthur is about to run  right over them, like  a lawn mower plowing
through an  anthill. They have  become a  mob. For Shaftoe, it's going to be
easier  to fight  mobs of drunken,  deranged looters, but there's no telling
what they might be doing to civilians farther north.
     "We're wasting  our fucking time," Shaftoe says,  "let's  get to Malate
and avoid further engagements."
     "You are not in command of this group," says one of the others. "I am."
     "Who's that?" Shaftoe asks,  squinting against the light of the burning
liquor store.
     It turns out to be a Fil American  lieutenant, who was sitting way back
in the boat, and who has been  of no use at all to this point. Shaftoe knows
in his bones that this  guy is  not going  to  be  a good combat  leader. He
inhales deeply, trying to heave a sigh, then gags on smoke instead.
     "Sir, yes sir!" he says, and salutes.
     "I am Lieutenant Morales, and  if you have any more suggestions,  bring
them to me, or keep them to yourself."
     "Sir,  yes  sir!"  Shaftoe  says. He  doesn't  bother  to  memorize the
lieutenant's name.
     They  work their way north through narrow, clogged streets for a couple
of hours. The sun comes  up.  A small airplane flies over the  city, drawing
ragged fire from exhausted, drunken Nipponese troops.
     "It is a P 51 Mustang!" Lieutenant Morales exclaims.
     "It's  a fucking  Piper Cub,  goddamn it!"  Shaftoe  says. He  has been
holding  his  tongue  to this  point, but  he can't  help it  now. "It's  an
artillery spotter plane."
     "Then why is it flying over Manila?" Lieutenant Morales asks smugly. He
enjoys  this  rhetorical  triumph for about  thirty seconds. Then  the first
artillery rounds begin  to bore  in from the north and blast the shit out of
various buildings.
     They get into their first serious  firefight about half an hour  later,
against a platoon of Nipponese Air Force troops  holed up in a stone bank at
the vee formed by a couple of intersecting avenues. Lieutenant Morales comes
up with an extremely complicated plan that involves breaking  up  into three
smaller  groups. Morales takes three men  forward into the cover of a  large
fountain that sits  in the middle of the square. There, they are immediately
trapped by heavy fire from the Nipponese. They squat  and  huddle behind the
shelter  of  the fountain for about  a quarter of an hour, at which point an
artillery shell glides in from the north, a black pellet easing downwards in
a flawless parabolic trajectory, and scores a direct hit on the fountain. It
turns out to be a high explosive shell, which does not blow up until it hits
something the fountain, in this case. The padre gives Lieutenant Morales and
his men last rites  from a safe distance  of a hundred yards or so, which is
as good  a place  as any,  since  there is nothing left  of  their  physical
bodies.
     Bobby Shaftoe  is  voted new squad leader by acclamation. He leads them
around the square, giving the whole  intersection a wide berth. Way up north
somewhere, one of The General's batteries is  doggedly trying to  zero in on
that fucking bank, blowing up half  the neighborhood in the process. A Piper
Cub banks overhead doing  lazy figure eights,  offering suggestions over the
radio: "Almost there  a little to the  left no,  too far now bring  it in  a
little bit."
     It takes Shaftoe's  group a  whole day to make  another mile's progress
towards  Malate. They could get there in no time  by simply running  up  the
middle  of  major streets, but the artillery  fire  is coming in heavier and
heavier  as they head  north. Worse,  much of  it  consists of antipersonnel
rounds with radar proximity  fuses that blow up while  they're still several
yards above the ground, the better to spray shrapnel all over the place. The
air bursts look like the splayed foliage of burned coconut palms.
     Shaftoe sees no  point in  getting them all  killed. So they take it  a
block at a time, sprinting  one by one from doorway to doorway, and scouting
the  buildings with great care in case there are any  Nips lying in  wait to
shoot at them from the windows. When that happens, they have to hunker down,
scout the  place  out,  count windows  and  doors,  make  guesses about  the
building's  floor  plan,  send  men  out to check  various  lines of  sight.
Usually, it is not really difficult to root the Nips out of these buildings,
but it is time consuming.
     They  hole up in a  half burned apartment  building  around sunset, and
take turns getting a couple of  hours' sleep. Then they push on through  the
night, when the artillery fire is less intense. Bobby Shaftoe gets the whole
remaining squad, nine men including the padre, into Malate at about  four in
the morning. By the time dawn breaks, they have reached the street where the
Altamiras  live,  or  lived.  They  arrive  just in  time to see the  entire
apartment block being systematically blasted into rubble by round after high
explosive round.
     No one  runs out of it; no cries or screams can be heard in between the
explosions. The place is empty.
     They break  down the  barricaded door of a  drugstore across the street
and have  a chat  with the  sole living occupants: a seventy five  year  old
woman and a six  year old boy. The Nipponese came through the neighborhood a
couple of days ago, she says, heading north, in the direction of Intramuros.
They herded the  women and children out of the buildings and marched them in
one direction. They pulled  out all of the men,  and the boys over a certain
age, and marched them off in another. She and her grandson escaped by hiding
in a cupboard.
     Shaftoe  and his squad  emerge  from  the  drugstore  onto the  street,
leaving  the  padre  behind to grease  some heavenly  skids. Fifteen seconds
later,  two of them are  killed by shrapnel from an antipersonnel round that
detonates above the  street nearby. The  remainder of the squad backs  right
into a group of marauding Nipponese stragglers coming around the corner, and
a completely  insane close quarters firefight  ensues. They  have  the  Nips
heavily outgunned, but  half of Shaftoe's men are too stunned to fight. They
are  accustomed to the jungle. Some  of  them  have  never been  to the city
before, even in peacetime, and they just stand there  gaping.  Shaftoe ducks
into a doorway and  begins  to  make a fantastic  amount  of noise  with his
trench broom. The Nips  start  throwing  grenades around  like firecrackers,
doing as  much  damage  to  themselves as  to the Huks.  The  engagement  is
ridiculously  confused, and doesn't really end until another artillery round
comes in,  kills  several  of the Nips, and leaves the rest so  stunned that
Shaftoe is able to  walk out in  the open and  dispatch them with shots from
his Colt.
     They drag two of their wounded into the drugstore and leave them there.
One  other  man  is  dead.  They  are  down to  five  fighting men  and  one
increasingly busy padre. Their firefight has brought down another barrage of
antipersonnel artillery, and so the best they can do for the rest of the day
is find a basement to hide in, and try to get some sleep.
     Shaftoe sleeps hardly at all, and so when night falls he takes a couple
of benzedrine  tablets,  shoots  a bit of morphine to take the edge off, and
leads his squad out into the streets. The next neighborhood to  the north is
called Ermita. It has a lot of hotels. After Ermita is Rizal Park. The walls
of Intramuros  rise up from Rizal Park's northern edge. After  Intramuros is
the  Pasig  River, and MacArthur's  on  the  far side  of the Pasig.  So  if
Shaftoe's son and the rest of the Altamiras are still alive, they have to be
somewhere in  the couple of miles between here and Fort Santiago on the near
bank of the Pasig.
     Shortly after they cross  into the neighborhood of  Ermita, they happen
upon a stream of blood trickling out of a doorway, across the sidewalk, into
the gutter.  They kick down  the door  of the building and discover that its
ground  floor  is  filled with the corpses of Filipino  men several dozen in
all. All  of them have been bayoneted. One  is still alive. Shaftoe and  the
Huks carry him out onto the sidewalk and begin looking for some place to put
him  while the padre circulates through  the building, touching each  corpse
briefly and muttering something in Latin. When he comes out, he is bloody up
to the knees.
     "Any women? Children?" Shaftoe asks him. The padre shakes his head no.
     They are only a few blocks from  the Philippine  General  Hospital,  so
they carry the wounded man in that direction. Coming around the  corner they
see that the hospital's buildings have been half  destroyed  by  MacArthur's
artillery, and the grounds are covered with human beings laid out on sheets.
Then they realize that the men circulating around the area, carrying rifles,
are Nipponese  troops. A couple of  shots are fired in their direction. They
have to  duck into  an  alley and set the  wounded man  down. A few  moments
later, a trio of Nipponese soldiers appears in hot pursuit.  Shaftoe has had
enough time to think this one through, so he lets them get a good  few paces
into the alley. Then he and the Huks kill them silently, with blades. By the
time reinforcements have  been sent  out  after them,  Shaftoe and his group
have disappeared into the  alleyways  of  Ermita,  which in  many places are
running red with the blood of slaughtered Filipino men, and boys.


     <B>Chapter 84 CAPTIVITY</B>


     "Someone is trying  to send you a  message,"  Attorney Alejandro  says,
scant minutes into his first interview with his new client.
     Randy's  ready  for it. "Why  does everyone  here have these incredibly
cumbersome ways of sending me messages? Don't you people have e mail?"
     The Philippines are one of those countries  where "Attorney" is used as
a title,  like "Doctor."  Attorney Alejandro  has a backswept grey pompadour
that  gets a  little curly down around the  nape  of his neck  which,  as he
probably well  knows, makes  him look distinguished in a  nineteenth century
statesman kind of  way. He  smokes  a lot, which  bothers Randy hardly a bit
since he has  been in places, for a couple of days,  where everyone  smokes.
You don't  even need to bother  with cigarettes and matches  in a jail. Just
breathe,  and you get  the equivalent of  one or two  packs  a day  worth of
slightly pre owned tar and nicotine.
     Attorney Alejandro decides to act as if  Randy has never made this last
comment.  He attends to  a bit of  business with his cigarette. If he  wants
that cigarette up  and  burning  between  his lips,  he can make  it  happen
without even moving his hands; suddenly it's  just there, as  if he had been
hiding it, already lit, inside his mouth.  But if  he  needs  to introduce a
caesura into  the conversation, he can turn  the selection, preparation, and
ignition of  a cigarette  into  something  that in terms of solemn ritual is
just this side of the <I>cha no yu.</I> It must knock  'em dead in the court  room.
Randy's feeling better already.
     "What do you suppose  the  message is? That they are capable of killing
me if they want to? Because I already know that. I mean, shit! How much does
it cost to have a man killed in Manila?"
     Attorney Alejandro frowns  fiercely. He  has  taken  this  question the
wrong way: as  a suggestion that he is the kind of guy who would know such a
thing.  Of  course,  given that  he was  personally  recommended  by Douglas
MacArthur Shaftoe, he probably is just precisely that kind of guy, but it is
probably  rude to  aver this. "Your  imagination is running wild,"  he says.
"You  have  blown  the  death  penalty  aspect  of  this thing  all  out  of
proportion."  As  Attorney  Alejandro  probably expected,  this  display  of
blitheness renders  Randy speechless long enough for him to execute  another
bit  of patter with a cigarette and a stainless steel lighter encrusted with
military  regalia.  Attorney  Alejandro has mentioned, twice, that he  was a
colonel in  the  Army and lived for  years in the States. "We reinstated the
death  penalty in  '95 after a hiatus of ten years  approximately." The word
approximately crackles and explodes from his mouth like a spark from a Tesla
coil. Filipinos enunciate better than Americans and they know it.
     Randy and  Alejandro are meeting in  a high, narrow room  somewhere  in
between the jail and the courtroom in Makati. A prison guard loitered in the
room  with them for  a few minutes, hunched over  with sheepishness, leaving
only when  Attorney Alejandro  went over and  spoke  to him in low, fatherly
tones and pressed something into his hand. There is an open window,  and the
sound of  honking horns comes through it  from the street two stories below.
Randy's half expecting Doug Shaftoe and his comrades to rappel down from the
roof and  enter suddenly in glittering and screaming cloaks of broken window
glass  and extract  Randy while  Attorney Alejandro heaves his  bulk against
this half ton nara table and uses it to block the door shut.
     Coming up with fantasies like  this  one helps to  break the tedium  of
being  in jail, and probably does a  lot to explain Randy's jailmates' taste
in videos,  which  they  cannot  actually  watch but which they  talk  about
incessantly  in  a  mixture  of English  and  Tagalog  that  he  now  almost
understands. The videos, or rather the  lack of them, has given rise to some
kind of  retrograde  media evolution phenomenon: an oral storytelling rooted
in videos that these guys once saw. A particularly affecting description of,
for example, Stallone in <I>Rambo III</I> cauterizing his abdominal bullet wound by
igniting  a torn open  rifle cartridge and shooting gunpowder flames through
it will  plunge all  of  the men into several moments of reverent awe. It is
about  the only quiet time Randy  gets  now, and  he  has consequently begun
cooking  up  a  new  plan:  he will  exploit  his  Californian provenance by
asserting  that  he  has  seen  martial arts films  that  have not  yet been
bootlegged to  the streets of Manila, and narrate them in terms  so eloquent
that the entire jailhouse will for a few minutes  become a place of monastic
contemplation, like the idealized  Third  World prison  that Randy wishes he
were in. Randy read <I>Papillon</I> cover to cover a couple  of times when he was a
kid and  has always  imagined Third World  prisons  as places of supreme and
noble  isolation: steep  tropical  sunlight setting  the humid and smoky air
aglow as  it  slants  in over iron  bars  close set  in thick masonry walls.
Sweaty,  shirtless steppenwolves prowling back  and  forth  in their  cells,
brooding  about where it all went wrong. Prison journals furtively scribbled
on cigarette papers.
     Instead, the jail  where they've  been  keeping Randy  is just a really
crowded urban  society  where  some of  the people  cannot  actually  leave.
Everyone there is extremely  young except for  Randy and  an  ever  rotating
population  of  drunks.  It  makes him feel old. If  he sees one more  video
addled  boy  strutting  around in  a bootleg  "Hard Rock Cafe" t  shirt  and
fronting hand gestures from  American gangsta rappers, he  may actually have
to become a murderer.
     Attorney Alejandro says, rhetorically, "Why 'Death to Drug Smugglers'?"
Randy hasn't asked why, but Attorney Alejandro wants to share something with
him about why. "The Americans were very angry that some people in this  part
of the world persisted in selling  them  the drugs  that they want  so  very
badly."
     "Sorry. What can I say? We suck. I know we suck."
     "And so as a gesture of  friendship between our peoples, we  instituted
the  death penalty.  The  law  specified  two,  and  only  two,  methods  of
execution," Attorney Alejandro continues, "the gas chamber and the  electric
chair. As  you  can see, we took our lead in  this as in many other  things,
some wise  and some foolish from the Americans. Now, at the time, we did not
have a gas chamber anywhere in the Philippines. A study was made. Plans were
drawn up. Do you have any idea what is involved in constructing a proper gas
chamber?" Attorney  Alejandro  now goes off on  a fairly lengthy  riff,  but
Randy finds it hard to  concentrate until something  in Attorney Alejandro's
tone tells him that a coda is approaching. ". . . prison  service said, 'How
can you expect us to construct this space age facility when we have not even
the funds to  purchase rat poison  for  the  overcrowded prisons  we already
have?' As  you can see they  were just  whining for more funding.  You see?"
Attorney  Alejandro raises  his  eyebrows  significantly  and  sucks  in his
cheeks, as he reduces a good two  or three centimeters of a Marlboro to ash.
That  he feels it necessary  to explain  the underlying  motivations  of the
prison service  so  baldly  seems  to  imply that his  estimate  of  Randy's
intelligence is none too favorable, which given the way  he was  arrested at
the airport might be fair enough. "So this left only the electric chair. But
do you know what happened to the electric chair?"
     "I can't imagine," Randy says.
     "It  burned. Faulty wiring. So we had  no way to kill people." All of a
sudden Attorney Alejandro, who has betrayed no amusement thus far, remembers
to laugh. It is perfunctory, and  by the time Randy has bestirred himself to
show a  little polite  amusement,  it's over and  Alejandro's  back to being
serious. "But Filipinos are highly adaptable."
     "Once  again,"  Attorney  Alejandro  says,  "we looked to  America. Our
friend, our patron, our big  brother.  You are familiar  with the expression
<I>Ninong?</I> Of course you are, I forget you have spent a whole lotta time here."
Randy   is   always   impressed   by   the  mixture  of  love,  hate,  hope,
disappointment, admiration,  and  derision  that Filipinos  express  towards
America. Having actually been a part of the United States at one point, they
can take  digs at  it  in a way  that's usually reserved  for lifelong  U.S.
citizens. The failure of the United States to protect them from Nippon after
Pearl Harbor is still the most important thing that  ever  happened to them.
Probably just slightly more important than MacArthur's return to the country
a few years later. If that doesn't inculcate a love hate relationship...
     "The Americans," Attorney Alejandro continues, "were also reeling under
the  expense  of  executing  people  and having  embarrassments  with  their
electric chairs. Maybe they should have jobbed it out."
     "Pardon  me?" Randy says. He  gets the idea  that Attorney Alejandro is
just checking to see if he's awake.
     "Jobbed it out.  To the Nipponese. Gone to Sony or Panasonic or  one of
those guys and said (now  reverting to a perfect American  yokel accent), We
just  love  the VCRs that y'all've  been sellin' us why  don't  you make  an
electric chair that actually works?' Which  the Nips  would have done  it is
the kind of thing they would excel at and then after they sold Americans all
of the electric  chairs  they needed, we  could have purchased some  factory
seconds  at cut rate."  Whenever  Filipinos  slag  America in earshot  of an
American,  they  usually  try  to  follow  it  up  with  some   really  vile
observations about the Nipponese, just to put everything in perspective.
     "Where are we going with this?" Randy says.
     "Please forgive my digression. The Americans had gone over to executing
prisoners by lethal injection. And  so we have once again decided to  take a
cue from them. Why didn't  we just hang people? We have plenty of  rope this
is where rope comes from, you know "
     "Yes."
     " or shoot them? We have plenty of guns. But no, the congress wanted to
be modern like Uncle Sam, and so lethal injection it was. But then we sent a
delegation to see  how the Americans lethally injected people,  and you know
what they reported when they came back?"
     "It takes all kinds of special equipment."
     "It takes all kinds of special equipment, and a special room. This room
has not yet been constructed. So, you know how many people we have on  death
row now?"
     "I can't imagine."
     "More than two hundred and fifty. Even if the room were built tomorrow,
most  of them could not be executed, because it is illegal  to carry out the
execution until one year has passed since the final appeal."
     "Well, wait a minute! If you've lost your final appeal, then why wait a
whole year?"
     Attorney Alejandro shrugs.
     "In  America,  they usually do the final appeal while  the  prisoner is
lying strapped to the table with the needle in his arm."
     "Maybe they wait in case there is a miracle  during that year. We are a
very  religious  people  even  some of  the  death  row  prisoners  are very
religious. But they are now begging to be  executed.  They  cannot stand the
wait  any  longer!"  Attorney Alejandro laughs and  slaps  the table.  "Now,
Randy, all of these  two hundred and fifty people are poor. All of them." He
stops significantly.
     "I hear you,"  Randy says. "Did you know that my net worth is less than
zero, by the way?"
     "Yes, but you are rich in  friends and connections." Attorney Alejandro
starts frisking himself. A picture of a fresh pack of Marlboros appears over
his head in a  little thought balloon. "I recently received a telephone call
from a friend of yours in Seattle."
     "Chester?"
     "Yes, he's the one. He has money."
     "You could say that."
     "Chester is seeking ways to put his financial resources to work on your
behalf.  He  feels frustrated  and  unsure  of  himself  because  while  his
resources are quite significant, he does not know  the fine points of how to
wield them in the context of the Philippine judicial system."
     "That's  him  all over. Is there any chance that you might be  able  to
give him some pointers?"
     "I'll talk to him."
     "Let  me  ask  you this,"  Randy  says. "I  understand  that  financial
resources, wielded properly,  could  free me. But what if  some  rich person
wanted to use his money to send me to death row?"
     This  one stops Attorney Alejandro dead  for a minute. "There are  more
efficient ways for a wealthy person to kill someone. For the reasons  I have
described, a would  be assassin would first  look  somewhere  outside of the
Philippine capital punishment  apparatus. That is why, in my opinion as your
lawyer, what is really going on here is that "
     "Someone is trying to send me a message."
     "Exactly. You see, now you are beginning to understand."
     "Well, I'm wondering  if  you could give me  a ballpark estimate of how
long I'm going to be locked up. I mean, do you want me to plead to  a lesser
charge and then serve a few years?"
     Attorney Alejandro looks pained and scoffs. He doesn't deign to answer.
"I didn't think so,"  says Randy. "But at what point in these proceedings do
you imagine I could get out? I mean, they refused to release me on bail."
     "Of course! You are charged with a capital crime! Even though every one
knows it is a joke, proper respect must be shown."
     "They  pulled the  planted drugs  out  of my bag  there are  a  million
witnesses. It was a drug, right?"
     "Malaysian heroin. Very pure," Attorney Alejandro says admiringly.
     "So there are all of these people who can testify that a sack of heroin
was found in my luggage. That would seem to complicate the job of getting me
out of jail."
     "We can probably  get it dismissed before an actual trial  is launched,
by  pointing out flaws in the evidence," Attorney Alejandro  says. Something
in his tone of voice, and the way he's staring out the window, suggests this
is the first time he's actually thought about how he's going to specifically
attack this problem.  "Perhaps a baggage handler at  NAIA will step  forward
and testify that he saw a shadowy figure planting the drugs in your bag."
     "A shadowy figure?"
     "Yesss," says Attorney Alejandro irritably, anticipating sarcasm.
     "Are there a lot of those hanging around backstage at NAIA?"
     "We don't need a lot."
     "How  much time do you  think might  pass before this baggage handler's
conscience finally gets the better of him and he decides to step forward?"
     Attorney Alejandro shrugs. "A  couple of weeks, perhaps. For  it to  be
done properly. How are your accommodations?"
     "They suck. But you know what? Nothing really bothers me anymore."
     "There is  concern among some of  the  officials of  the prison service
that when you get out, you may say harsh things about the conditions."
     "Since when do they care?"
     "You are a little famous in America. Not very famous. A  little. Do you
remember the American boy in Singapore, who was caned?"
     "Of course."
     "Very bad publicity for Singapore. So there are officials of the prison
service who would be  sympathetic to the  idea of putting you  in a  private
cell. Clean. Quiet."
     Randy cops a questioning look, and holds up one hand and rubs his thumb
and fingers together in the "money" gesture.
     "It is done already."
     "Chester?"
     "No. Someone else."
     "Avi?"
     Attorney Alejandro shakes his head.
     "The Shaftoes?"
     "I cannot answer your question, Randy, because I do not know. I was not
involved  in  this decision. But whoever did it was also  listening  to your
request for some way to kill the time. You requested books?"
     "Yeah. Do you have some?"
     "No. But  they will allow this." Attorney  Alejandro now  opens up  his
briefcase, reaches in with  both hands, and pulls out Randy's new laptop. It
still has a police evidence sticker on it.
     "Give me a fucking break!" Randy says.
     "No! Take it!"
     "Isn't it like evidence or something?"
     "The police are finished. They  have opened it  up and looked for drugs
inside. Dusted it for fingerprints you can still  see the dust.  I hope that
it did not damage the delicate machinery."
     "Yeah, me too. So, are you telling me that I'm free  to take this to my
new, clean, quiet, private cell?"
     "That is what I am telling you."
     "And I can use it there? No restrictions?"
     "They  will  give  you  an electrical  socket.  A  plug  in,"  Attorney
Alejandro  says,  and then adds  significantly,  "I  asked them,"  which  is
clearly  a little reminder that any  fees eventually paid  to him will  have
been richly earned.
     Randy  draws  a   nice   deep  breath,  thinking,  <I>Well,  it   is  just
fantastically generous in fact, a little bit startling that the powers