Moondogs - Alexander Yates [101]
Efrem joins Lorenzo at the window, gazing out at the night-drenched avenues and towers. Commuter helicopters drift and trawl through the smog, and the traffic below sparkles like phosphorescent plankton. His deep shame at being a source of aggravation for his lifelong hero is counterbalanced by the exhilarating thought that Reynato deems him worth it. Lorenzo glances at him sidelong and misreads his expression as one of continued awe at the opulent bruho apartment.
“Who’s your daddy?” he says.
“I don’t know,” Efrem responds, flatly, and without guile.
Lorenzo blinks at him for a moment. Then he laughs so hard that his forehead strikes the window and scares Elvis off the sill. The glass vibrates with the strike, and for a moment it looks as though the city itself is shaking.
AND SO, FOR TEN-ODD DAYS Ka-Pow lays dormant while their leader shills for the windbag would-be senator. Reynato doesn’t show until the evening after the election, and he looks supremely put out, grumbling: “So help me, Mohammed, you better be worth this silly shit.” He says it’s time they got back to their true calling. He says the country needs Ka-Pow tonight. He says they’ll be hunting pirates.
The target is a well-known smuggler of knockoff medications—sugar tablets sold throughout the provinces as cancer medicine, heart drugs, antibiotics, even boner-pills. The right size and color, packaged up in bottles looking just like the real thing. “But they’re as good as rat poison to people who are sick,” Reynato says. “He’s moving a shipment from producers to a distribution warehouse tonight. They’ve already escaped three raids by the Manila Police, so the NBI has requested that we come in for the assist.” Lorenzo gives an appreciative hoot at this, and Reynato grins. Everybody, it seems, is hurting for some action.
Ka-Pow collects just after sunset on the garbage-strewn banks of the Pasig River, some hundred meters upstream of the warehouse. They hide behind the hull of a rusted, mudsunk jeepney, awash in stinking steam rising off the green water. Efrem uses his fantastical peepers to gaze up the loading ramp, under the door and into every corner of the warehouse. Three men await the pirate—two playing Pusoy Dos in the back office, another sleeping on a chair just inside the loading dock.
“Three doesn’t sound too bad,” Racha says, furrowing his welted brow, maybe wondering how bad his injuries will be this time around. Efrem feels little sympathy for him. Knowing that only Racha will be hurt tonight is calming.
The moon intrudes on twilight, and stilted shanties on the opposite bank go dark, snuffing their electric and oil-fueled lamps. Finally a little truck turns a corner and wrecks the quiet with air-brakes. The loading dock opens and men inside wave the pirate up the ramp. A second engine in the warehouse barks and a small forklift emerges. The pirate opens his truck and loads boxes onto an empty palate. Efrem tenses. Reynato grabs him by the wrist.
“Easy, killer. You see any weapons inside?”
His eyes are all pupil. “One shotgun on a desk in the office,” he says. “And the pirate has a Colt in his belt. That’s it.”
Silence. Warehouse tenders finish loading the pallet and the pirate follows them inside. “Elvis!” Reynato hisses. “You first. Get inside. You’re on that shotgun.”
Elvis stands, kicking mud off his toes. He performs the first half of a high jump and disappears. A bald starling fills his spot in the sky. Wings beating air like a swimmer, he flies clumsily over the riverbank and into an air vent on the warehouse roof. Efrem watches him negotiate the rafters, perching beside pigeons above the open cubicle office. Then, following Reynato, he creeps through syrupy garbage. Edging along the wall, they stop just short of the dock. Reynato takes Glock out of his belt. “Be loud,” he says. “Scaring them is more than half of it.” He breathes long and deep, cramming air, chambering a shout.