TWENTY-ONE
I drove directly to Broadway and Gilmore the next day. Well...almost. I’d made the trip in Setti’s car, which challenged me to locate sufficient parking. I chose the Galleria, a mall one train stop down from PTN’s game studio. The mall consisted of three levels, all of them crammed with holiday shoppers. I walked past a gigantic Christmas tree, several kiosks peddling the latest in cell phones, a teriyaki restaurant, a sporting goods store, a book store, and a plethora of other distractions. The book store in particular beckoned, but I resisted, my mind focused on that task which had so eluded me of late. I simply had to catch the train down to Gilmore and find that vault.
Alas, there came one distraction more insisting than all the others. Hindsight shakes its finger and proclaims the inevitability of stumbling fate. Yet in this case, the stumbler happened to be a little boy, who fell down at the top of an escalator and dropped his ice cream on my shoe. His bottom now pressed to the cool, shiny floor, the dear boy began to cry the most despairing deluge of tears, tears which threatened to break my heart, while his mother, in her own deluge, inundated me with apologies.
“Walang alalahanin,” I replied in earnest, smiling down at the boy. “Ayos ka lang ba? There, there. I’ll buy you another.”
The boy continued to cry as his mother helped him to his feet. Other people stepping off the escalator glanced at us but kept walking, as if they considered our plight by no means tragic. Indeed, they were quite correct. I gave the mother fifty pesos, asking her to please buy more ice cream for the sweet boy. She thanked me profusely as she’d seconds ago apologized. Bidding them both a polite farewell, I made my way into a nearby comfort room, here to clean the chocolate off my shoes.
The room was large, clean, and quite empty of people. Sinks shined beneath steady rows of fluorescent lighting. A row of toilet stalls lined one wall; on another hung a set of white urinals. I wiped my shoes with a paper towel, and was turning to leave when a large man came into the room, blocking my exit.
“Hello, Mr. T.,” the man said, grinning...
Oliver Madilim swung his fist, catching me square across the jaw. A flash of bright pain blinded me, and I must have flown backward against one of the stalls, because that’s where I wound up, my body crumpled on the floor.
I cursed, stroking the side of my face. Oliver was young and strong. He punched like a prize fighter. I was still seeing stars when he said: “Get up.”
I scowled at him. His request would not be difficult to fulfill. Using the stall for leverage, I kicked forward, locking my arms about his knees and tackling him to the floor. My tooth was loose. The oaf’s punch had assured me a trip to the dentist. I wasn’t about to let that slide without inflicting some damage of my own.
Now on top of my adversary, I punched him in the eye, then grabbed a fistful of his hair, wishing quite badly to bash the back of his head on the tiles. I resisted the temptation for fear of doing him permanent damage. This munificent act of humanity came with a heavy price. Oliver jerked his knee hard, catching me in that tender place to which all members of the male gender espouse considerable protection. I rolled off him with groan, bending into a fetal pose just in time to avoid another strike. Oliver’s fist hit the hard floor. There came a cracking sound as his knuckles broke. I punched him under the chin. He head-butted me. I rolled to my feet and made to kick him in the chest. This was my dumbest move yet. Oliver grabbed my shoe and flung me off-balance right through one of the stall doors and onto a seatless toilet, where my bottom touched the water, and I felt ridiculous, but still managed to spring back with a pop to the other’s lip, fattening it beautifully.
Gasping for breath, Oliver stepped back. With his long hair hanging over his face he resembled an escaped lunatic from Insular Psychopathic Hospital. He called me a number of unpleasant names not suitable for this narrative. Then he picked up a soap dish and winged it at my head. I ducked. The dish struck the back of the stall and clattered harmlessly away.
“What’s this about, Oliver?” I panted. “You getting arrested?”
“Hindi ako nagkakasala,” came his blood-dripped reply.
“That isn’t what Detective Lopez thinks.”
Oliver Madilim grinned. A long mirror over the sinks reflected our scene. It was like we were in a funhouse. “Don’t be too sure, Fredo. The cops aren’t stupid like you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means Lopez doesn’t care for loose ends. Hindi lahat ay parang. You’ll find that out soon enough.” The bloody grin widened. “But of course...you already know.”
A man came into the room, saw the two of us, turned around and left.
“You’re full of it,” I told Madilim.
A look of pure disgust took hold my opponent’s face. Shaking his head, he said: “You slowed down our production with your babyish antics. Then you got me arrested. Thrown in jail. Why, Fredo? Because I didn’t like Lester’s Ghosts?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Stop lying. Look how that show turned out. Look at Boom Boody Boom.”
His mention of that other show—the one that turned out so well for PTN’s rival—was in err, for it provided me with cause to inquire how he’d gotten his hands on it in the first place.
“Who gave you that script, Oliver? How did you even find out about it?”
I saw his face slacken. “Never mind.”
“No one knew about it. Until somehow, magically, you brought it into Reyes’ office that day. Pretty slick.”
“So what? That’s how discoveries get made, you idiot.”
“Yes, but Oliver—”
He tensed as if to strike me again. I immediately fell into a defensive stance, prompting Oliver, who perhaps by this time had grown weary of his own “babyish antics”, to stand down. The disgusted look returned to his features. Slowly he shook his head, as if he couldn’t fathom to what lowly depths a dullard like me would descend. Then he trudged across the room and out the door. Gone.
I imagined that, if I wished, I could find him in another comfort room, washing his wounds. No such journey was necessary on my part. I washed up at the sinks. My body was sore and bruised. Checking my tooth in the mirror, I could see the gum swelling. I hoped Oliver’s eye would turn black, and his lip fat. If ever these things did happen, I am to this day uncertain. Since our fight in the Galleria comfort room, I haven’t once seen Oliver Madilim.
∞
My trip to PTN’s gaming studio would not be deterred. With broken tooth, sore groin, and wet bottom, I rode the train to Gilmore. It was nearing lunchtime. Manila’s elevated systems were packed shoulder to shoulder, but as my destination was only a single stop down, I endured the discomfort, stepping into Gilmore station with considerably more appreciation for personal space than ever I’d hitherto been aware.
The station guard said nothing. He glanced at my puffy mouth but said nothing. I went down to a dirty, crowded street, where a number Jeepney horns blared, chasing stray dogs to my heels. Memory has me buying chicken for one of these dogs—one that must have looked, at least in part, like little Tiki. At first the dog cowered from my offering, but eventually worked up the courage to accept with a small, delicate bite, ready to flee should the occasion turn fierce.
From this bit of charity I made my way down two blocks to the gaming studio. It stood on the opposite side of the street, obliging me to duck and dodge my way through two blaring rivers of traffic. I passed a construction site where barefoot men wore no hats or harnesses of any kind. Over a crooked, corrugated fence the men stared at my rumpled dress clothes. One of them pointed at my bottom and laughed, doubtless amused by what appeared to be a most comedic mishap in the recipe of that late womanizing jester from the United Kingdom, who’d ridden lucratively upon the Thames before suffering a disgraceful dismissal, and a lonely death.
Then came the games studio. It was a low, modern building on the corner of Broadway and Aurora. I use the word “modern” for that seemed to be the style on its architect’s mind. Where that architect was on this day I couldn’t hazard a guess. Yet despite this building’s myriad arch-ways and angles and pastel pink paint, it still looked older than any of the more regal, dignified homes along Gilmore, or Baleta Drive. It pulled this horrid gaffe off by way of the chipped, splintered concrete walls that faced the parking lot, walls covered in a layer of dirt from the road. Windows neither round nor square shined in the November sun. Above them was a sign: PTN. Next to that stood another, blaring the name of the game show. All of these—dirty walls, neo-geo windows, garish signage—put me in mind of a grinning child who’d been caught eating a worm. Happy yet bereft. Friendly but deviant.
I went inside.
Here the surroundings became surprisingly gloomy, though a number of gypsy kiosks lit the wide hall, which was dotted with shoppers. Through the air above me curved a number of ramps—all empty—leading to other parts of the studio. I had no interest in what lay in the lofts, however. What I wanted was buried deep. I politely twisted and turned my way through the shoppers, ignoring several calls from the gypsies, whose mannerisms were those of the dejected soul cheated away from a higher purpose. They cried with false spirit the benefits of plastic hand-held fans and light-up tiaras. Christmas tree stars, some tiny, others gigantic, flashed their enthusiasm for a gift-giving season. From beneath one of these stars a round woman offered to sell me a wind up, barking toy dog. Now my dear, Gentle Reader, I ask you ever so humbly, how could I refuse her?
“Magkano bato?” I asked like a fool, all too aware of my expat appearance.
The gypsy was also aware. She inflated the price of the toy to some absurd amount, which I paid without the slightest protestation, though had Setti been with me that day she might have slapped the old woman cold. I thanked her—the woman—before departing with my purchase. It came in a cardboard box with Chinese writing on it, and I failed miserably to dodge the idea that the gypsy had made off far better than myself or the unfortunate Chinese worker who’d assembled the toy.
The entrance to the game studio lay at the end of a long hall meant to accommodate waiting lines. I thought to try my luck here first. Today the hall was empty and dark, but down the end I could see a guard on duty. I approached him, displayed my employee badge, and asked where the network vault might be. The guard pointed over a seating area that sloped down to a quiet stage. At the back of the stage, he told me, I would find a door.
“That’s the vault, sir.”
“Ah,” I nodded. “Salamat. And if I need to borrow something is it okay?”
“Yes. You’ll have to sign for it, but yes.”
That seemed fair enough. Thanking the guard again, I went down the slope. Three contestant boxes, their screens blank, faced me from the stage. Off to the left was a podium for the host. All of these furnishings I passed with scarcely a glance, targeting a small, plain door almost hidden in the gloom. It opened on a flight of steps that carried me down to a surprisingly small room lined with metal shelves, four tiers to a shelf. On each shelf were a number of labeled boxes. And inside the boxes...
PTN’s library was stored on what looked to be DVDs and VCDs. Not wishing to spend a lot of time in the vault (half the day was already gone and I hadn’t been to work yet), I thumbed through a number of dates I felt were close to when Giselle Chavez had died. In that it was so easy to find gave me a second surprise. In a box labeled 2004 I came across a plain, cracked VCD case. On that case was a stick of masking tape where someone had written in crooked blue ink: G. Chavez/Accident.
Satisfied with my search, I took the VCD upstairs and had it checked out.
“Good?” the guard asked.
“Good,” I said. “When is this due back?”
Now the guard shrugged. “Whenever.”
I do appreciate countries like the Philippines, where the proletariat lives his life not to extend suspicion upon his neighbors, but trust in the facilitative mechanisms of simple kindness. Promising the guard that I wouldn’t have the VCD for long, I left the studio.
Our new hit show was on location that day. We were shooting at a planetarium, to which I barely made it in time to approve a list of changes our director wanted to make to the script. These approvals I gave without complaint, remembering my vow to remain aloof from creative decisions until I understood more clearly what Filipino audiences wanted from their television. As for the catering...it was still bad. I ate a cold chicken leg for dinner. The leg lay next to a clump of rice on a cracked plate. When I tried to cut the rice with a plastic fork, the fork broke.
“Dammit, Martha,” I said under my breath. Then I turned to the writer, who sat next to me wearing a look that mirrored my disgust. “Okay,” I said to him, “time to fire her.”
“Please, Fredo!” he implored.
I made a cutting gesture across my throat. “Pfft! She’s gone.”
“Hallelujah.”
That night I went home to an empty condo unit. I was not perturbed, as Setti had taken up the habit of jaunting back and forth from her father’s place in Greenheights. I switched on a few lights and re-heated some old lasagna for dinner. Tonight the kitchen bar seemed a cozy enough place to eat. The stools reminded me of many pleasant, late night drinking sessions with Allen Bautista. From here my mind jumped to Bautista himself. It was nearing eleven o’clock, which meant I was just in time for his broadcast. Leaving my lasagna to await patiently its destruction, I went to the living room to switch on the flat screen TV. Back at the little bar, I was able to see the screen while I stuffed my face. At precisely the top of the hour, my friend appeared.
“The PTN evening news,” our familiar announcer said over the sound of typing keys, “with Allen Bautista.”
“Salamat!” Allen boomed from behind his desk. “Maraming Salamat aking Mga kaibigan! Today was a quiet one in Manila, with only twelve murders, twenty-six auto accidents, and eight Jeepney heists! On November 26th, the Miss Earth beauty pageant will be held at the National Museum Grounds! Our local girl, Catherine Untalan, will be one of the contestants! Although standing at over six feet tall,” Bautista added more quietly, “if she wins, someone will need a fucking ladder to get the tiara on her head.”
“Allen!” a voice screamed off camera.
“Sorry, sorry!”
It was unfortunate that I had decided to take a swig of beer at this moment, for when I laughed the counter—along with my food—got amply sprayed.
Bautista reported on a few other issues before handing things over to PTN’s meteorologist, a baggy old man whom we’d plucked out of retirement from another network. He’d been complaining about boredom and wanted to get back in front of the camera, even if it meant working cheap. Once Rodrigo Reyes got wind of this last segment of the factoid, he’d dialed the old man straight up to offer him one third his original salary. Allen Bautista told me about it, after maybe five or six beers. I still miss PTN sometimes. The lulls were so very few and far between.
“Yaw,” our meteorologist said, pointing to a map after hitching up his pants. “We’ve got what appears to be a tropical depression forming out near the Chuuk Islands. This may or may not be a problem for us...”
I switched the TV off. Seconds later, as luck would have it, the landline phone rang. All but certain it was Setti, I snatched up the receiver.
“Hey babe!”
“Mister Trentinara?” a cool, male voice responded.
“Ah! Sorry. I was expecting someone else.”
The voice at the other end did not seem receptive to the apology. “This is Detective Lopez,” it went on flatly. “I’m calling from the bureau of investigation.”
His words took all the wind out of that evening’s folly. “Detective,” I said, more than a little displeased that he’d called. “How can I help you?”
There was a pause from the other end. Then: “Funny. That’s the second time you’ve asked me that. And yet you never really seem willing to help me at all, Mr. Trentinara.”
I could spend a paragraph or two describing how this obnoxious statement irritated me, but what would be the point? If my feelings for this man are not already clear to you by now, the chronicle has failed. “How do you mean?” I asked.
The detective gave out a laugh. “Well, the way you could help me is by telling the truth about what happened at PTN. And yet you refuse.”
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
“Indeed? Well perhaps you simply forgot about tampering with police evidence then.”
Now I couldn’t really say why my chest tightened at these words, except to theorize that when suspecting eyes chance to rest upon the burial place of some murdered truth, the perpetrator begins to feel cold. “My dear detective,” I spoke steadily, “it would be quite impossible to forget something that never occurred.”
Lopez did not sound intimidated in the least when he inquired: “Mr. Trentinara, did you handle any of the urine sample test tubes besides your own?”
“No.”
“Are you quite sure? Because we found a smattering of fingerprints on some of the others. Your fingerprints.”
“No,” I said again. “That can’t be right. Why would I play around with things like that?”
“Well, perhaps you weren’t playing around at all. Are you familiar with the word chicanery, Mr. Trentinara?”
“Don’t condescend to me!”
“I have reason to believe,” the detective went on, as if I hadn’t answered, “that you somehow switched your urine sample with that of Oliver Madilim’s. And once I find out that’s actually true...”
He talked on, a man with his hand on a table vice, twisting the crank. But I was in no way obliged to listen to his drivel. If Detective Lopez wanted to confront me with accusations, a considerably higher degree of professionalism was in order. Also, I thought that it might be time to hire a lawyer.
So I hung up the phone on him. He didn’t ring back, though I waited for several tense minutes. Sitting on the couch with my hands wringing, I came to understand much better why Oliver had attacked me at the mall. Lopez doesn’t care for loose ends. You’ll find that out soon enough. It seemed Madilim knew a little something already about what Lopez had found. Still...I couldn’t fathom how my fingerprints had gotten on any of the other test tube samples. Memory failed to serve any image but of me, placing my sample in a wooden rack and walking away. How then? How?
Using my cell phone, I placed a call to Setti. No one answered. Then I called the landline in Greenheights and let it ring ten times before giving up.
“S.O.B.” I said to the empty living room.
I was still seated on the couch. It was easy enough to hear, however, the bathroom faucet suddenly gush into life.
“Oh, no.”
I stood up, running a hand through my hair. The last thing I needed that night was a broken pipe to fix. Indeed, I wasn’t even certain there would be a way to fix it. Not at this hour.
I went to the bathroom to find the hot water tap running at full blast. Steam rose up the mirror, fogging my image. I seized the tap, turned it. The water stopped. Then I opened the cupboard to check the lines. All looked tight and secure. And even if they weren’t—even if there’d been a leak—who had turned on the tap?
As I emerged from beneath the sink, my condo unit began to feel very strange. I felt as if something silent and transparent had its eye on me. I peered into the steamed mirror. It showed me the bathtub and part of the tiled floor. Flowers on the wall.
I stepped into the bedroom, snapped on the light. All looked right and normal except for the blankets, which were imprinted, as if a body had recently lain upon them.
When the living room TV came on I jumped. This because the volume was turned up to full. The condo’s silence flew apart like glass. A bellowing commercial for SkyFlakes crackers had raped it raw. With spine tingling, I rushed into the living room and snatched the remote.
“WATCH BOOM BOODY BOOM!” the TV screamed. “EVERY TUESDAY AT 8PM! RIGHT HERE ON—”
My thumb found the power button. The screen went black.
“Fredo?” Setti called from the bedroom. Her voice sounded slightly irritated, bleary from sleep. “Is that you?”
I turned. The door behind me let on blackness. After staring through it for a long time, I said: “You’re not in there.”
“It’s late, sweetheart. Please come to bed.”
There came the sound of covers being thrown over. Setti was getting out of bed. Coming to check on me.
“Okay!” I said quickly, before she could appear at the door. “I’ll be there!”
“Don’t take too long,” I heard her warn. Her voice sounded much closer—just out of reach of what light the living room managed to provide.
“All right,” I managed. “All right.”
Yet for all my staged assuredness I found it impossible to obey her command. Just moments ago our bed had been empty. Now Setti beckoned from the sheets. Unless she’d been hiding somewhere (Setti was indeed something of a playful sprite, but this didn’t seem like the kind of night for such antics) it failed all the guidelines for logic.
I couldn’t even work up the nerve to brush my teeth. I lay back on the couch and blinked at the ceiling for an unknown number of quiet, disturbing minutes. A light still glowed from the kitchen. Other than that my domain was dark. Rife with brooding shadows that seemed to reach for the couch every time I dared close my eyes. And because the back of the couch faced the bedroom, I couldn’t see whether or not Set