Moondogs - Alexander Yates [69]
Efrem doesn’t answer, and Reynato plants one on his cheek. He looks down at the unconscious dealer and grins wide. “I’d hoped for more arrests,” he says, “but your philosophy suits me fine. Better safe than sorry, especially when it’s dear me on the line.” He turns to Elvis, who’s an upright man again and rubbing blood off his chin. “That’s disgusting,” he says. Elvis gives a little shrug, and Reynato hands him a plastic zip-tie. “Get that on the live one before he wakes up.”
Racha crawls toward them, reaching for Reynato’s feet.
“Are you going to be a baby,” Reynato asks, “or can you walk to the hospital?”
Racha stands. He falls.
“Baby it is. Help him up, Lorenzo. And find us a taxi.”
Elvis and Lorenzo set about their tasks. Efrem, still light-headed from the affection Reynato’s shown him, asks how he can help. “You just keep being super,” Reynato says, taking his cigar out of his pocket and planting it back between his teeth. He throws his arm around Efrem’s shoulder and keeps it there. Sunshine pours down on them, and up in the baby-blue sky they can see a crescent moon. It looks pale, like it always does in the daytime.
Chapter 12
AFTER BILIBID
“Good evening, ma’am,” Amartina said as Monique came inside and dropped her purse by the door. A whole year now and still no Tagalog.
“Magandang gabi.” Monique stood on one leg to pull off her pumps. She smelled pork in the oven. Fluorescent light spilled out the kitchen into the dark, empty den. A kettle whistled and oil hissed in a saucepan. “I said no need for dinner tonight. I’m not eating.”
“It’s no problem, ma’am,” Amartina said, already returning to the kitchen.
Monique followed her and sat at the breakfast table. Even with Joe and the kids gone a week, Amartina still prepared enough for four. She poured green tea into a coffee mug emblazoned with a bearcat—mascot for Shawn and Leila’s new school—and set it, along with a bowl of sugar, on the table. Monique sipped. It had been a long, tough day. Actually, more like a long, tough week—no day stood out as most or least aggravating. It was as though all the crazies, the trusty regulars, had received the memo that Chuck would be out of the country, gotten together and decided to run amok. Monique went on no fewer than four prison visits a day, fishing lambanog-stinking retirees out of various barangay drunk tanks, telephoning strangers in the States to let them know that some unheard-from relative was being held for disorderly conduct, taking meetings with weepy young men in ties who were charged with bribing government officials because they hadn’t bribed the right ones. She’d never been so happy to have a weekend. Especially this weekend. She had plans.
“So,” Monique looked up from her tea, trying not to appear too eager, “you’re still going home tonight?” Amartina usually left the city on Saturday mornings to spend a day and a night with her family in Cavite, but Monique was trying to get her to take full weekends while Joseph and the kids were away.
“You do not need me?” she spoke into a pot of boiled potatoes, mashing them with one hand and drizzling in whole milk with the other.
“I don’t. You can go. You should.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Her wrist tipped a little too far and an extra cup or so of milk tumbled into the potatoes. She frowned and turned the gas burner on to simmer them down and thicken them up.
“Is that yes-yes or yes-no? Because I really don’t need you.”
Amartina looked up from her pot and said yes ma’am again.
Out in the den the telephone rang, which got Shawn’s gecko chirping and Leila’s lovebird hollering. Monique looked at her watch and figured that Joseph must have just finished his morning run. He’d been cold before leaving—downright nasty when she brought him and the kids to the airport. But since then his fury was annotated with remorse. She found his