Moondogs - Alexander Yates [105]
Then the door crashes open, spilling light into the ablution room and over the wrestling bodies. Ignacio looks up at a silhouette in the light. The Imam turns back and squints at the brightness, first white, then green. He doesn’t know what hits him. In an instant he’s on the floor, his arms over his face as he tries to protect himself from pecking, scratching, wing-beating Kelog.
Littleboy is next inside, filling up so much of the doorframe that the ablution room goes dark again. Two long steps bring him to Ignacio’s side and he grabs each of the young men by their throats and hurls them into the tiled walls. Littleboy helps Ignacio up and points out, politely, that everything is going wrong.
Barefoot and soaking, Ignacio runs through the courtyard, out the mosque entrance and back down the Cavite alleyways. Littleboy follows, and then Kelog, flapping his wings madly. They regroup a few blocks away and do a fast-walk to the car, trying their best to look like normal people. The normal people they pass are unconvinced and stare at them.
Once in the car, Ignacio takes his shirt off and bunches it up under his bleeding nose. He calls his wife on Littleboy’s phone.
“You need another picture?” she asks. “I’m about to give him his lunch.”
“Throw the phone away,” Ignacio says.
“What are you talking about? It’s brand new.”
“Throw it away. The police are going to get the other one, and it has your number in it.”
“The who has what? Are you eating something? I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
Ignacio pulls the bunched shirt off of his busted nose and half-clotted blood tumbles down his lip. “Keep the damn phone then,” he yells. “Just open it up and cut the Sim card in half. If anyone knocks, pretend you’re not there. And gag Howard.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” she says. “It’s hard enough for me to do these things, but when you call him that—”
“You’re killing me,” Ignacio says. “You’re ruining my life.”
“What an awful thing to say.”
Ignacio is quiet for a while. “You’re right,” he says. “I’m sorry. I love you. We won’t be home for a few hours. I want to take the long way back, in case we’re followed.”
“Who would be following you?” she asks.
Ignacio hangs up. He looks out the window. Littleboy speeds to overtake a truck on the highway, signaling as he does so. Ignacio puts a hand on him and a hand on Kelog. “I love you, also,” he says.
Chapter 19
ARRIVAL
That night Benicio had the dream again. His father was on Corregidor Island, in a snowbound jungle. Fat flakes tumbled down through shivering vines, drifting about palm trunks rooted in the loamy soil. His father looked up at the sky and flakes settled on his face. He was not alone. A dark shape emerged from the trees and stood a few paces away. It was a dog, big as a small pony, dusted with snow.
The dog eyed Howard with ears back and tail swishing. It pawed the turf and whined. Howard began to walk away, but the dog followed, matching him step for step. Howard broke into a sprint, bounding into the brush, but the dog kept up at an easy canter. And in the dream, Benicio was Howard. He was fat, and almost blind, and bleeding