Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [79]
“Will I ever be poor again?” supposedly was one of Imelda’s favorite palm inquiries. Ferdinand had his own interest—Yamashita’s Gold, vast war loot said to have been left behind by the Japanese general. One rumor passed on to me by a Filipino cop was of the skeleton factory, where people murdered by cops were taken. Bones were boiled, marrow separated, steamed and blow-dried, then looped through with wiring before shipment to foreign scholars and labs. The skeleton chop-shop never stayed in the same place. I spent, given my curious propulsion toward the socially abnormal, a good part of the night with the cop looking for one in every fetid crevice. “We’ll know it by the smell,” he kept saying. We found one shop but it was empty, abandoned, with only a sweet excrescence faintly in the air and a splinter of bone the cop picked up in a corner.
It did not surprise that President Marcos agreed to an interview with myself and Peter Bonventre of Newsweek. That was the whole purpose of the fight, access and exposure to the rest of the world, to show that Manila was no more an outlaw city, that foreign investment was secure, that martial law, for all its connotations, was a cleansing instrument; Martial Law with a smile. For that opportunity, Marcos’s share was $5 million toward the promotion, $4.5 million to Ali, the rest to Frazier. Guns by the hundreds of thousands had been peaceably given up by Manilans. Rumors were considered subversive—and punishable by death. A 12 P. M. curfew, obeyed only by the poor, was in place. Young women were no longer kidnapped from the streets, taken into concubinage, or sold abroad. No tanks in the streets. He was a cool customer sitting there in his white barong, made of pineapple fiber, with a jutting pompadour and a face like a folk art engraving. It was all rather boilerplate masquerade, a show, an interview done at the request of the home office. Behind the smiling coercion, though, were the mothers searching for missing children and those skeleton factories.
Marcos had a high opinion of himself as a sportsman and a man of fitness, and at age fifty-six considered himself the most athletic head of state in the world. An aide later boasted of it, too, so I asked him if I could watch him go through his routine. No problem, and two days later, standing around like a court idiot, I attended a Marcos workout, wishing that I had kept my mouth shut. “I make my decisions early in the morning,” he said, “while jogging in place in the bedroom.” He played a fast game of pelota, moving like a jumping coffee bean. He did ten laps in the pool, then, just when I thought he would ask for a game of chess or pick up a piece to demonstrate his famed sharpshooting, he was off to his golf course, trailed by a platoon of aides; several carried automatic rifles, another a holster and a.45 that belonged to Marcos. There were scattered claps to his reasonably good strokes. He was asked his preference in the fight. “Lady Imelda,” he said, “is in love with Ali.” He laughed: “She has a taste for the feminine in men. I’m partial to Frazier. There is a danger about him.” I remarked on Ali’s reception at the airport. “If he was Filipino,” he said dryly, “I’d have to kill him. So popular.” He then said: “That’s a joke now, of course.” A big bird, perhaps a buzzard, began to annoy him by dropping down uncannily for four or so holes, say thirty yards in front of his shot. Marcos suddenly requested his .45, then aiming, the muzzle flashed, the bird bounced. He pushed on, stepped over the bird without notice.
“Quite a wingspan,” I noted.
“Not anymore,” he said curtly.
I wondered if there was a school for dictators, so confident was his stride and manner, with the detachment of a minor conquistador.