In a corner of the ruins, Elias clears away loose rubble, soil, rocks, and bricks over a square slab of stone before lifting it. A neat, circular hole reveals itself. They go down the stone steps that lead to a cavernous passage. It is two calesas wide, two men high, and lined with red adobe bricks. They have gone in only a few steps when Elias points to a pair of skeletons lying prone on a ledge. They are the remains of not very grown people. “Maybe this was the way our Spanish masters got rid of their vermin too,” he says.
They walk another five meters to a fork in the passageway. “If we go left, we go out to another former convent. If we go right, we end up at the other cathedral, the one that survived the war. Which one do you want to take?”
Isabel’s gaze follows the beam of her flashlight as far as it can go and sees that both tunnels are the same size as the main passage. “The cathedral,” she says.
He leads the way. They continue walking until his flashlight shines on the stone steps leading up. She calculates that they’d be underneath the middle of the cathedral now. Here it is absolutely still.
“Turn around, Elias,” she says. She has taken a pistol out of her pocket, the only thing she has brought with her on this “tour.”
He turns around and the corners of his mouth twitch in amusement. “A mousegun?” he says. Death squad members always use.45-caliber handguns.
“I don’t do this for a living.”
“No, you don’t,” he says. Besides, she was never a doer. She always just read and wrote. As he knew her, this was the last thing she’d be able to do. “And you don’t want to start. It gets easier after the first.” He sees her finger tighten on the trigger. “There are witnesses. All my friends will know it was you.”
He means the security guards. But their loyalty is to their job, Isabel knows that much. Not one of them would be likely to come forward to admit that he’d let two trespassers in on his watch.
Elias guesses what she is thinking. “I mean the police. I help them get rid of the vermin here too.”
“I have the right credentials. What are yours?”
“You’re right. I’m the killer here. You’re the defender of human rights.”
“Only because I wanted to find you.”
“You’re blaming me for your father’s death? It was you who stole that money. Because it certainly wasn’t me. A measly hundred pesos—”
“I tried to make it up to you.”
“With sardines?”
“You wouldn’t let me give you anything else.”
“Give. What could you have given?”
He was put in prison with his mother and father even before he’d committed any crime. Anything Elias did after that was bound to be suspect. Isabel understands this. But none of it had been her making. Nor her murdered father’s.
Elias makes a grab at the gun.
Back in the café, Isabel resumes writing her letter to the mayor of Manila.
Although reports of targeted killings in the Philippines are not new, the number of victims has seen a steady rise over many years. In recent years the geographical scope of such killings has expanded far beyond Davao City on the southern island of Mindanao, to Cebu City in central Philippines, and now to Manila. An already serious problem is becoming much worse.
There is no end to the vermin needing extermination.
Satan Has Already Bought U
by Lourd de Veyra
Project 2, Quezon City
“Do you know what shabu means? Did you know that each letter means something?” Cesar asked, pressing a clean sheet of aluminum foil between two one-peso coins.
“You mean an acronym,” Franco replied, a dull glint of the strip crossing his vision.
“A what?”
“An acronym. That’s what you’re trying to say. Each letter stands for a word. Like PBA. Philippine Basketball Association. Or NBA...”
“I get it. Exactly. An acronym. So... you know what shabu means?”
“I didn’t know it meant anything.”
“Satan Has Already Bought You.”
“What?”
“Satan... has already bought... you,” said Cesar, his index finger digging into Franco’s shoulder for emphasis. “Satan.”
“I don’t remember selling anything. Least of all to the devil,” said Franco, his gaze still fixed on Cesar’s deft hands.
“Satan has already bought you.” Cesar tried to sound priestlike.
“So that means he’s bought you too, Cesar?”
“I guess. Satan has already bought you. You too.”
“Where the hell did you come up with that?” Franco asked.
“Heard it on the radio. Some Christian station.”
Franco chuckled. “Wait. Lemme guess... that’s probably DJ Dan. That holier-than-thou asshole. Did you know he was a major meth-head a couple of years back? You should’ve heard him when he was still with that station RA 106. Major psycho. Broke up with his wife on air, just before he played some stupid Duran Duran song. Oh, these born-again Christian pricks. Getting high on Jesus is the worst. There’s no rehab for that.”
“Satan. Has. Already. Bought. You,” Cesar muttered under his breath.
“What’s with the You? Following that logic, it ought to be SHABY. Right? Or it could also mean, Satan Has Already Bought US.”
“Just shut the fuck up and gimme that packet already, will you? How much is this worth?”
Cesar’s sudden display of impatience shook Franco. “One-five,” he replied, giving the small plastic pocket a little shake to loosen the milky crystal bits inside.
Cesar inspected the packet against the light and made a few gentle taps with his index finger. “This definitely does not look like one-five. Are you trying to put one over on me again?”
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
“This isn’t the first time, Franco. You know that—”
“Hey, fuck you, man.”
“I remember the last time. I just kept my mouth shut. I know you smoked some of my shit at Bing’s house.”
“That’s not true.” Franco’s protest dissipated into a whine.
“And the one before that. One-five? Looked more like P500 to me. You know you shouldn’t be doing that. In other places, you could get killed. You don’t fuck around with other people’s hard-earned money like that.”
“What the fuck are you talking about!”
“Shut up. You’re ruining my concentration.” Cesar reached for a pair of scissors, the cheap, plastic kind for grade-schoolers. It was small but its edges were monstrously sharp, ending in frightful angles. They let kids use these in classrooms? he thought, then snipped off the top of the plastic packet and placed it once more against the fluorescent light.
“I swear, dude, I didn’t smoke from your stash. You gotta trust me.”
“Lemme guess. You sent Jong to do the scoring for you, right? You lazy, thieving subcontractor.”
“No. Look, you know how these things go. There’s no Department of Trade and Industry representative to inspect if they’re serving the exact weight. There ain’t no customer-complaint desk. One week it’s a full packet, the next it’s just a fourth. And if you ask why, they’ll just say, ‘Not enough supply’ or, ‘Cops shaking us down again,’ or some other excuse.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just shut the fuck up and hand me that lighter.”