Moondogs - Alexander Yates [146]
Down below Ka-Pow lifts Howard Bridgewater to his feet. Efrem hears them count down from three before, in one single movement, shoving Howard at the Abu Sayyaf and catching the money sack hurled in exchange. Efrem takes aim at the space between the Holy Man’s dark lenses. His fingers shake as he squeezes off a shot. When it’s done, the world shakes with him.
Chapter 28
GECKO
Despite the excitement of the evening before, Monique had a good night’s sleep at the converted BOQ motel, and woke feeling rested and whole. It was late morning already and Reynato was gone. He’d scrawled a note into the back of one of Monique’s business cards and left it beside her pillow.
Dear Bruha—
If it wasn’t an emergency, I’d still be there. Expect good news shortly. Left the car. Room’s paid through Sunday. Take the break you need. And don’t hurt anybody!
—Your Bruho
She was irritated at his having left her just hours after they were assaulted—or rather felt she should be. But an undeniable sense of relief pushed that perfunctory irritation aside. For the first time since Joseph and the kids left, she had a day that was all hers. Eager to make use of it, she dressed in her wrinkled one-button pantsuit from the day before and left the bungalow-style motel room. Reynato’s Honda waited at the far end of the lot, busted left headlight making it look like it was winking. Walking toward it, Monique caught a whiff of the pepper spray she’d emptied the night before and noticed some dried blood speckling the gravel like hearty lichen. The police had searched the bamboo thicket for a good hour and failed to find the scarred attacker. She was strangely unconcerned by this. The whole memory felt surreal, and harmless.
It had been years since she drove stick, but the empty roads afforded her some practice. She had her route all figured out. Heading northeast, she looped around the old Binictican Golf Course where she used to watch her father hit balls into trees. Further north she saw that the commissary was still standing, as was the Kalayaan elementary school that she’d attended off and on during her father’s deployments. She stopped in Onongapo for lunch, eating pancit from a cart and feeling conspicuous, like a tourist. Then it was back south to the airport on Cubi Point. She swung around All Hands Beach, cut back up behind the converted BOQ motel and finally stopped at the married officers quarters. Reynato had been wrong. Her house was still there, sulking darkly downhill at a short remove from the other quarters. The windows were boarded up and many of the flagstones had been salvaged from the front walk. Part of the roof had caved in, and waxy leaves climbed out of the hole like smoke from a chimney. Seeing it brought a lingering worry to the front of her mind—that seeing it might not change anything.
Monique parked the car and picked her way down the muddy hill. The front door was unlocked, but humidity had swollen the frame so badly that she had to tug hard to get it open. There was nothing inside. The floor was speckled with sunlight, broken glass and the droppings of a small animal. There was some graffiti on the walls and a used condom so old it looked like snakeskin. Rather than walk through the filth, she cut around the side and found that the back porch was still there, rotting peacefully. Monique kicked dead leaves off the splintered wood and sat, looking out on the same view she’d had as a child. Sagging, vine-heavy woods. A dirt trail that ran from the bus stop on the main road down to the huts and bangka moorings on the water. The same trail had brought the cleaning woman to their home three times a week. It was spotted today, as it had been years ago, with intermittent foot traffic. A teenager walking a bicycle like it was a crippled friend.