Moondogs - Alexander Yates [46]
“Motherfucker, you didn’t even know what he was till I told you.”
“True enough,” Brig Yapha says. “But the boy’s still mine. He gets no transfer, no discharge without my say-so.”
“Not that we’d keep him from you,” Charlie rushes to add. “But, it’s just, there’s a whole lot of ways you could be helpful in the coming weeks. I mean, today was great—don’t get me wrong … but, you know, it would also be cool if you stood out front a bit more. Gave a few nice words to the reporters. Amoroso’s hammering my ass on law-and-order. Maybe you could say a little something at Director Babayon’s next press conference. Maybe you could get some of the officers to come out for me. I mean, they worship the ground you walk on, Renny.”
“Ah-ha.” Reynato sits forward and places his elbows on the table. He puts his chin in his hands like a girl looking at her date, but his expression is sour. “So, let me get this straight—for years you make yourself famous, and rich, pretending to be me. Then you turn that fame and money into a run for the Senate. You put my name on your campaign posters, fucking act like me while you’re on stage. And now I’m supposed to go out and stump with you?”
“Hey …” Charlie sounds, and looks, genuinely hurt. “That’s not fair. You’ve seen some scratch from those movies, too. I didn’t write your contract. Hell, if you’d have shown it to me back then, I’d have told you to get a lawyer.”
“And you?” Reynato turns on Brig Yapha. “What’s in this for the not-quite general?”
“Don’t get short, Renny,” Yapha says. “What you saw back there wasn’t just political stagecraft. My men are hurting—for ammunition, rations, body armor and some damn downtime. I need all the friends in Manila I can get, and Charlie promises to be one. Besides,” he glances now at the bruhos from the trees, “it’s more than a fair trade. Efrem would be the perfect addition to your wily crew.”
The table goes quiet for a long while. Reynato stirs his coffee, spoon hammering the insides of the cup. Elvis, Lorenzo, and Racha all lean forward like birds over a kill. Finally Efrem breaks the silence with his first utterance since entering Fuentes’s house. “Sorry, but what’s happening? Where am I going?”
Everybody laughs. “Shit,” Reynato says, downing the last of his coffee. “Sorry about that, Mohammed. Don’t mean to treat you like a barter chip—I won’t even take you if you don’t want to come. You see, the boys and I, we run this little task force.”
“Overmodest,” Charlie protests, clearly thrilled by the diffused tension. “There’s nothing little about it, Efrem. We’re talking presidential directive. We’re talking a four-time cover story in the Bulletin. Reynato here runs the finest police crew in—”
“Not strictly police,” Reynato cuts him off. “Our shop gets funded by the National Bureau of Investigation, and we operate across jurisdictions. We specialize in kidnapping cases and the prosecution of outstanding warrants … basically we go in for high value arrests when the local cops can’t close the deal. Some newsboy called us Task Force Ka-Pow a while back, which has kind of stuck. But I’ll give you fair warning, Efrem, if you join up you’ll be dealing with some real rough folks. From Chinese guns in shabu labs, to armored car hijackers with hand grenades, these boys do not play nice. My crew,” he gestures to Lorenzo, Racha and Elvis, “are stretched thin as we get. Poor Racha got shot in the foot just last week.”
Racha nods solemnly.
“So it’s no dream job,” Reynato says. “But our pay is a step up, I can promise that. And you’ll likely get more chances to fight. You like that, don’t you? How could you not, a man with your record?” He smiles. His gums are bleeding. “If you didn’t enjoy pulling the trigger the ninth time, then you wouldn’t have pulled it the tenth. So … would you want in on this dangerous silliness? Should I buy you an early discharge by signing my time away to these two slick motherfuckers?”
There’s no choice here at all. Efrem enjoyed his years in the army, sure, but this is Reynato Ocampo. This is his chance to be the hero that