Philippine Hardpunch (12 page)

The car gained on the walking teenager, who had no idea she was being followed.

“Very slow, now,” Ramos whispered.

He licked his lips, unlatched his door, and got ready.

She slowed her pace the more she thought.

She Wondered what she was accomplishing by running away again.

That’s what really happened with that lizard, Locsin, she thought, and thinking about it made her hurt more inside. She had
run away then, too, from her responsibilities, from her parents, from herself, and the result had been she screwed things
up totally.

Or was she selling herself, and her parents, short?

They had been through an unbelievable experience together and part of that was the awful thing she had done, the betrayal.

Yet she had seen, on the way to meet the helicopter in the jungle, and during the flight to the base and after they landed,
that her parents seemed to understand what she had been too stupid to grasp while it was happening.

If Mom and Dad could forgive her, if the three of them could somehow, after all this, face the future as a family, she would
never stop loving them for that, and, maybe someday, after a long, long time, she would learn to forgive herself.

She decided to turn around, go back and face the music.

The Jeffers family was of tough stock, she told herself, and it was like a giant weight lifting off her shoulders, and her
mind.

She started to turn.

And became aware for the first time of the car, a rusting, battered Renault; must have been coasting up on her, closing in
on her, along the curb from behind while she had been so lost in thought.

A man appeared from the side of the car facing her, a man she had never seen before. Filipino, she registered.

Then they were upon her—it happened so fast.

“What—” she started to say.

The Filipino’s arm snaked around her before she could react.

She realized before she could cry out that she was being pulled-tossed into the backseat of the moving Renault.

The driver punched the accelerator. The car leaped away from the curb, into the traffic. The man who grabbed her followed
her into the backseat, the door slamming shut behind him.

The driver merged the Renault with the traffic flow, the whole incident having taken no more than two to three seconds—and
it could have been a lovers’ quarrel or anything, she realized in that capsizing moment, and no one passing had suspected
a thing, if anyone had noticed!

She twisted in the confines of the backseat, toward the man crowding her.

“Who are you? Let me out of here! Let me—”

Ramos punched her with a sharp right to the jaw.

Ann’s eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled into the narrow space on the floor.

The Renault tooled along. It was hot and stuffy in the car.

Jorges chuckled from behind the steering wheel.

“She has spirit, this one!”

Ramos massaged his knuckles, gazing down upon the unconscious girl.

“She has been through too much for one so young and innocent.”

“It will not be easy for her.”

“I know. If you want to know the truth, Jorges, I feel sorry for her. But it is too late now for any of us to turn back, even
if we wanted to.”

M
anila has not been beautiful since World War II.

The older houses that remain have fallen victim to the deterioration of the merciless Asian climate and the plummeting standard
of living surrounding them, their tin roofs in serious need of repair, the upper stories jutting out over the streets crying
out for paint rollers and several fresh coats, the windows behind boxed-in trelliswork staring out blankly upon the world
like the empty eyes of drunks who have seen too many mornings after.

The teeming boulevards and narrow streets overflow with coursing humanity, thousands of people on foot, on bicycle, on every
manner of vehicular contrivance, shouldering for space along tattered, grim boulevards and narrow streets overhung with phone
and electrical wires, the noisy, chattering, beeping throngs pushing and shoving to the hot, humid throb of violence lurking
always just beneath the surface.

The natural beauty of Manila Bay clashes with the squalor, the exhaust fumes, the unending cacophony of humans, the gutters
stacked high with garbage, the miles and miles of ugly, squat concrete buildings, some burned out, where humiliation and hatred
are born and nurtured.

Mara Zobel had been born forty-one years ago in Leveriza, Manila’s densest slum, where more than 25,000 souls try to live
together within one-fifth of a square mile.

Mara had come of age in the ankle-deep filth of this hellhole of communal water faucets, scant occasional electricity and
no public sanitation—one of ten children raised in a one-room tin hut.

Her father, a janitor, had felt lucky to land a janitor’s job for seven hundred pesos, about thirty-five dollars a month.

The family had existed on perhaps a thumb-sized piece of bread for each mouth for breakfast, sugared rice for lunch, and for
dinner, maybe a three-peso bag of vegetables split twelve ways.

Mara Zobel always carried around in her mind, clear as a picture, the day many years ago when her mother had taken her and
some of her brothers and sisters past Malacanang Palace, from which Marcos had ruled. She still remembered, with even more
clarity, having to go back to that smelly, dank, cramped little tin hut in Leveriza, and wondering if anything better in this
life could ever be hers.

Prostitution, beginning at age thirteen, had been Mara Zobel’s passport out of Leveriza, as it had been for countless others,
but she had never, ever thought of herself as a mere
whore
.

Right now, seated behind the desk in her plush third-floor private office of the Gilded Peacock on Pilar Street, surrounded
by the brown paneled walls and the red carpeting, with that look of fear in the eyes of the young man who stood in front of
the desk, facing her, she felt once again that satisfaction in knowing how far she had come.

She was in charge here. She did not wield power outside the walls of this club, but she knew that this could also change within
the next twenty-four hours, if things went as Vincente and his friends intended…

Then her cultivation of Vincente Valera would pay off in a very big way, for if he rose to a visible position of power, he
would need to become more “respectable.”

And she would become Mrs. Vincente Valera and would share in and benefit from the power that would be his.

She felt confident of this. She knew how strong was her hold on him. He would not, could not, find the white heat she brought
him with anyone else.

Who could say? Perhaps one day she, herself, would be invited to Malacanang Palace.

She had worked her way up faster than most from whore to
mama-san
at one of the better houses, where the clients had been primarily the wealthy, the powerful, from the upper-class Manila
suburbs.

This was how she had met Valera.

She had become his private whore.

She became manager of this lucrative nightspot.

She did things, made him do things, that he said he could not live without, and could ask from no other because they would
not understand. She was his mistress in more ways than one.

Thus she knew she
owned
powerful Vincente Valera not because she understood his needs—hardly that—but because she understood how to exploit them.

Yes, a very long way from Leveriza.

She turned her mind from the thing Valera had told her was to take place soon.

He had been no more specific than that, but she knew he was involved in something, something big, and the pressure he was
under had been obvious to the point that even his more base needs had tapered off.

His tension became contagious and he had started her mind wandering more often than she cared to admit, like right now.

She brought her attention back to the young man and what he was saying.

“I’ve done everything I possibly can,” he was whining.

He was in his early twenties, but already his features were beginning to bloat around the jowls and beneath his eyes, denoting
the dissipation already setting in.

Mara plucked up the handfuls of IOUs and wagged them angrily at him, bringing her mind back to the business at hand.

“This alone is from two weeks, Felix. Tonight is the end of your credit until these have been paid.”

“I’ve explained to you that it is only a matter of time,” he protested. “The will is taking time moving through the courts.
It is always so. But the money will be mine, and then it will be yours.”

“If I let you slide,” she snapped, “everyone will want to cry on my shoulder.” She threw the IOUs upon the desk. “Enough.
I want my money.”

The young man nervously licked his lips.

“I—I hesitate to remind you, but the Aquilar name is one of the most respected in all Manila. And, uh, those debts are not
legally collectible. Besides, really, I don’t have the money, but—”

“I have done some checking on you, Felix.”

“Checking?”

The kid’s face fell as if he knew he’d just said the wrong thing.

“There’s a morals clause in your father’s will. You are to receive a monthly allowance until you’ve reached your thirtieth
birthday, at which point you will receive the principal with no strings.

“
Unless
evidence of excessive, unseemly behavior is drawn by you to your family name.”

Felix Aquilar looked stunned.

“Wh—what are you saying?”

Mara brushed aside some papers on the desk. She picked up a sheaf of several glossy pictures, 8 × 16s, and handed them across.

Aquilar looked at those pictures and his complexion grew more pale with each one. He did not look at them all, but dropped
them halfway through as if they were too hot to the touch.

“I… those… you bitch! You said… you said those were
private
rooms!”

“Your father was apparently quite concerned that this family name you’re so proud of stay clean,” she snarled. “If you bring
dirt on the family name, you lose it all, don’t you, Felix? The monthly allowance, the payoff down the line when you’re thirty,
every penny. I’d say these pictures of you and your, uh, ‘friends’ from downstairs should do that.”

“Don’t,” he gulped. “I’ll… see you get your money!”

“By bank closing time tomorrow.”

She pointed a finger his way for emphasis.

“Tomorrow? But… that’s a small fortune!”

“Find a way. It’s a bigger fortune you lose if you try to hold out on me.”

“I’ll get you your money,” he promised sulkily. “Damn you.”

“Next time don’t wager more than you can afford to lose.”

“Those pictures?”

“Stay with me.”

“But—”

“Show him to the door, Edmundo.”

The hulking bodyguard, who had been posted silently at the door, came forward, grabbed the young man around the arm above
the elbow, and propelled him out through a door he held open with his other beefy fist.

Felix Aquilar exited unceremoniously.

Edmundo kicked the door shut after him and turned to the woman behind the desk.

“You are one tough lady, boss.” He chuckled.

She dismissed that with a snicker, scooping up the photographs of young Aquilar and some of her B-girls from downstairs, and
slipped them into one of the desk drawers.

She locked the drawer.

“You know a better way to do business?”

They both heard the sounds of a car door slamming in the alley that ran alongside the Gilded Peacock.

Edmundo crossed to part the draperies that blocked out the harsh midday sun. He looked down into the alley.

“It’s Ramos and Jorges,” said Edmundo.

She turned to look out the draped window behind her desk.

“They’re back early.”

She peered down into the alley in time to catch the briefest glance of two of her bouncers trundling a third person, a female
figure, against her will.

She stepped back from the window.

“It appears, Edmundo, that things want to get interesting.”

Ann Jeffers regained consciousness.

The Renault had slowed down for the turn into the alley.

She had no idea how long she had been unconscious. At first everything tilted and swirled crazily around her and she wanted
to throw up, but she mentally forbade herself to do so and her stomach and vertigo steadied themselves.

She sat upright, looking around.

The driver braked the car to a stop.

The walls of the building abutting the alley towered overhead from either side of the Renault like a canyon. Much of the ruckus
of the surrounding city was blocked from this narrow space, as if the confines of the alley existed like a world onto itself.

The driver shut off the engine, opened his door, and climbed out.

Ann realized a man sat next to her in the backseat. She opened her mouth to scream, anyway.

The man jabbed the snout of a pistol painfully into her ribs.

She gasped in pain. The outcry died stillborn.

“It would be best for your health, Miss Jeffers, if you kept your mouth shut.”

“You… know my name?”

He grabbed her wrist nearest to him and yanked her from the car.

“Not a word now, and you won’t get hurt,” he snarled.

She looked down at either end of the long alley, but the pedestrians she glimpsed walked past without looking in her direction
and before she knew it she was inside the building, being half-dragged up the stairs by the man who had not released her wrist.

The driver followed them up, locking a metal door behind them.

She heard the muffled sounds of a jukebox and people noises beyond several walls. The musty stench of too much cigarette smoke
and not enough ventilation stung her nostrils.

A tavern or club on the other side of that hallway leading off from the bottom of the stairs!

Her mind racing, she yanked her arm in the man’s grip and the force and suddenness of it almost tugged her loose from his
clamping fist. She felt her wrist slipping from his grip.