Barry Eisler: Killing Rain aka One Last Kill

My search of the third and fourth cars was similarly fruitless. I thanked the bell captain sheepishly and asked him to please call me right away if anyone found a gold wedding band. He assured me that of course he would.

If an opportunity presented itself when we were done with the op, I would retrieve the unit. If I didn’t, eventually someone would find it. But so what? The driver would be reluctant to report it lest he somehow cause trouble for himself. If he did report it, his supervisor would suffer from the same inhibitions. Even if the incident reached management, the hotel could be counted on to take the high road of not advertising that someone had been surreptitiously tracking a guest through the hotel’s own fleet. And thus do greed and shame become progenitors of complicity.

Over the next few days, we used the GPS to track Manny’s movements. He seemed to travel widely within Metro Manila, but there was one commonality: a suburb called Greenhills. He would typically arrive there in the early evening, and, although he would sometimes go out again an hour or two later, he would always return for the night.

“Why do you suppose he’s going out to the suburbs every day and not even staying in the hotel?” Dox asked as we charted his movements.

I paused and thought about that for a moment. “I’m not sure. It could have to do with security, with the multiple locations creating a shell game dynamic. But two shells isn’t much. And his timing is more regular than I would be comfortable with.”

“I reckon he’s got a woman out there.”

“He could get a woman a lot easier in Makati, near the hotel.”

“Maybe this one is love.”

I shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

Upon arriving in Manila three weeks earlier, I had rented an unobtrusive gray Honda Civic, which I had garaged at the Peninsula. In my mind, I was an advance man for a Japanese boss, scouting locations for his arrival in the city. The cover was simple, provided for a wide range of behavior, and would be difficult to disprove. The yakuza maintains a sizable presence in the Philippines, a country that supplies many of Japan’s female “entertainers,” and my story, including a reticence about details, would be adequate to survive any foreseeable inquiries.

I drove out to Greenhills late in the afternoon, before Manny’s usual arrival time. With the GPS information, we knew to within a meter where the car was stopping. It was always in front of 11 Eisenhower Boulevard, which turned out to be a brick-and-glass high-rise condominium that looked like new money. I sat and waited in the window of a Jollibee, the local McDonald’s equivalent, in a shopping mall across the street. I had noted that, with the sun overhead and continuing to move westward, the store glass was mirroring a lot of light, making it difficult to see inside from the street.

I’D SPENT TIME in Manila while with the army in Vietnam, but of course that had been long ago, and the city had changed. Enclaves like what was now called Greenhills had once been rice paddies. The city was denser now: more people, more cars, more frenzy. There was a new air of commercialism, too, with mega-malls visible from auto-choked highways and billboards advertising teeth-whitening toothpastes and modern high-rises emphasizing by contrast the eternal shantytowns and slums around them. For the three weeks before Manny arrived, I had taken in these changes while indulging myself with a Manila-and-environs refresher course. The itinerary varied, but there was certainly a theme. I might have been researching a unique guidebook, something like Trouble in Paradise: Ambush, Escape, and Evasion for the Independent Operator in Metro Manila. The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat, an army instructor once told me, and I’ve never forgotten the lesson. If I ever die during an op, it won’t be because I was too lazy to prepare properly.

Manny showed up at dinnertime. I saw the black S-class round the corner on Eisenhower and pull up in front of the condo. The bodyguard got out first. He spent a moment scanning the street for trouble, but failed to spot it eating a cheeseburger behind the reflective plate glass of the Jollibee. When he was satisfied, he opened Manny’s door, his eyes still periodically roaming the street. Manny got out and the two of them walked inside. Two uniformed guards in front of the building nodded to Manny as he went past, and I realized he was well known to them. Getting to him inside, while offering certain advantages, would obviously pose a challenge. We would have to keep watching for a better opportunity.

I left the Jollibee and entered the shopping mall. I called Dox from a prepaid cell phone I had bought with cash. Dox was also using a prepaid. He had his own GSM unit, but I’d told him to keep it switched off while we were operational. There are ways of tracking a cell phone, and I didn’t know who might have had Dox’s number.

“He’s here,” I told him. “The condominium in Greenhills.”

“I know. I’m watching the little arrow moving around the computer. I saw the car pull up ten minutes ago. Anything interesting?”

“There’s a lot of security at the building. We’re going to need to watch him some more.”

“Roger that.”

“What’s the earliest he’s left the building so far?”

“Hang on a minute.” I heard the sound of the keyboard. “Oh-seven-hundred. Seems like he’s typically on his way by oh-eight-hundred.”

“All right. I’m leaving. I’ll come back in the morning. I’ve seen him arrive. Maybe I’ll learn something watching him go out.”

I returned at just before seven the next morning. It was Sunday. I ate at the Jollibee again. The morning crew was new. Even if they’d been the same as the previous afternoon, I doubted that they would have noticed me. When I want to, I have a way of just being part of the scenery.

Manny came out forty-five minutes later. He was with a pretty Filipina and a boy of about seven or eight who looked to be of mixed heritage. Manny was wearing dark trousers and a cream-colored silk shirt; the woman, dark-skinned, petite, showed a nice figure in a yellow floral dress. The little boy was wearing a blue blazer and khaki pants. He was holding Manny’s hand, and in the instant my mind put all the pieces together in some sort of preconscious shorthand, I realized, He’s just happy to be with his daddy , and was surprised at the acuteness of the pang that accompanied the thought.

They got into the back of the Benz and I watched as it pulled away from the curb. My cell phone rang. It was Dox.

“He’s moving,” he said.

“I know. I’m watching.”

“What do you see?”

I paused, then said, “He’s not staying at the hotel because he’s got a family here in Greenhills. A woman and a son.”

“How do you know?”

“I just saw them all together. From the way they’re dressed on a Sunday morning, I’d say they’re on their way to church. And it makes sense. The file says Manny has a family back in Johannesburg. My guess is that somewhere along the line, say seven, eight years ago from the apparent age of the boy, Manny knocked up a Filipina. That’s why he’s been coming out here so regularly and for so long. It’s not business, or at least it’s not just business. He keeps a room at the hotel so his Johannesburg wife doesn’t get wise, and he goes back there once or twice a day. Think about the times he shows up at the hotel-morning and afternoon in South Africa. Probably calls home from the room so she can see the caller ID readout.”

“I thought old Manny was of the Israeli persuasion. When I was growing up, I didn’t go to church too often, but I don’t remember seeing a whole lot of Jews there at the time.”