Moondogs - Alexander Yates [129]
HE AND ALICE spent the next two days at the embassy. On Thursday the Marine on duty granted them visitor’s badges, and they passed hours in a tiny media center in the annex. They were idle, mostly. Alice read yellowing stacks of back-issue Inquirers and Bulletins—her notes beside her always—while Benicio pretended to do research about the Abu Sayyaf online. But he was really just thinking about Solita. Solita and June. Solita and June, and all that cash he’d found in his father’s suite. The hours passed very slowly.
On Friday they met his father’s business partner for lunch at a carpeted Chinese restaurant across the boulevard. No one ate much. Hon was already there when they arrived, and he shot up from his table. His face shone with the memory of blubbering, and when they hugged—Benicio tried for the handshake but Hon was intent on the hug—Benicio felt the unpleasant slickness of cooled tears on his cheek. Hon hugged Alice as well, and Benicio was reminded of Howard when they’d picked him up at O’Hare, before the funeral. Howard had hugged her just like that. He hadn’t known who Alice was, but he knew she was with Benicio, and it was a sad time, so she got a hug, too.
Hon led them back to his table, where he’d been drinking ice water from a beer mug and eating a bowl of maraschino cherries. They sat. Hon stared at Benicio for a long while. “You’re different,” he finally said. “In the last picture I saw, you looked very different. You looked so much younger.” He ate a cherry. It seemed he was going to start crying again. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he said, quavering. “I know I’m not, but I feel responsible.”
“You shouldn’t feel responsible,” Alice said. She briefly touched his arm.
“I know. I’m not. But still. I should have said something. I should have checked in with other people when Howie was a no-show. I just figured he was with Charlie. I guess he figured that Howie was with me. And it’s just like Howie, you know? When he wants something … he wants it. He needs a break—he goes. He takes it. He ignores your calls. How could I have known what happened?”
“You couldn’t,” Benicio said.
“I couldn’t,” Hon said. He smiled sadly, as though happy they three agreed on this. He ate another cherry. “I saw you today, late morning,” he said. “If your dad could see it, he’d be really proud.”
“Thanks,” Benicio said, but he was pretty sure his father wouldn’t be proud. That morning he’d given a brief statement; hemmed-in under a scrim of cameras and boom microphones, just a rickety composite podium between him and the pressing press. Monique had been confident it would get carried wide but even she seemed surprised as they watched Benicio on CNN International not ten minutes later on a television in her office. The shot changed to stock footage of a jungle clearing where Abu Sayyaf terrorists rested rifle butts on their hips and pumped rocket-propelled grenade launchers above their heads like little barbells, the audio from Benicio’s statement still running as their mouths moved soundlessly. Then the picture of his father filled the screen—the one recovered from the kidnappers’ cell phone. It was the first time Benicio had seen it, and it was terrible. The shot switched back to him as he concluded the statement and took questions. He looked much more composed on TV than he remembered feeling. Too composed, he thought.
Benicio got up from his chair across from Hon and moved to sit in the one beside him. “I have something I need to ask you,” he said. The gesture, and the question, seemed to put Hon on guard. He straightened