Charlson Ong Blue Angel, White Shadow a novel
BLUE ANGEL, WHITE SHADOW
UST PUBLISHING HOUSE Manila, Philippines 2010
BLUE ANGEL, WHITE SHADOW
Charlson Ong
Charlson Ong
Chapter One
S
A Death in Chinatown
he reminded him of a small bird with its neck broken by a giant hand, laid to rest on a bed of dried leaves. Her head tucked against the left shoulder blade seemed anxious to leave the rest of her. There was blood on the sheets, blood everywhere. So much blood, he thought, she was soaked in her own blood, how could anyone have so much blood, until he realized that she was wearing a shiny red cheongsam and red heels. Then he saw that the blood was really just from the right wrist that had a sharp object protruding from it. She seemed to have been nailed to the bed. He looked closer and saw that it was a hairpin. An elaborate one with a phoenix head, nearly ten inches long, part hard wood and part stainless steel. It was one of those contraptions Chinese ladies used to wear in their hair. His own grandmother had one. She had shown it to him once when he was a boy to scare him off, then told him a story about how her own mother had stuck the brooch into the small of her husband’s back, the tip of his spine, to stop “his stream” and “ebb the swell of his tide,” once when they were “riding the tiger” and he could not “dismount.” “That’s why every mother must give one to a maiden daughter who marries,” his grandmother had said, poking the hairpin menacingly at his eyes. She had spoken to him in Hokkien and he couldn’t understand half of what she said, but for many nights he dreamed of tigers devouring children skewered on flowered hairpins. When he was older and thought he understood her meaning, he dismissed the tale as more of her old woman’s fables. Still he could never look at a large hairpin without 1
Blue Angel, White Shadow feeling queasy. Whenever he felt a need to quell his own desire, as when imagining how he would bite into that lovely bare neck of the mestiza seated at the pew in front of him while the priest delivered a homily about fidelity, he would only recall his grandmother’s monstrous pin and his own tide would ebb. He scanned the bedside table, the plastic chair for the usual suspects—tin foil, powdery granules, tubule, pills, capsules, alcohol—and found none. He inspected her arms and saw no telltale marks. “Inspector Ledesma, the ambulance is here,” the voice roused him from near stupor. It was a voice he thought too gravelly even for a cop. “What?” Cyrus Ledesma inquired from the rookie even as he tried to clear his head of the night’s boozing. “Ambulance? You think it’s going do her any good now?” “It’s S.O.P., Sir. We need a death certificate from the hospital, then she goes to crime lab.” He was amused that the younger cop, Police Officer (PO) 1 San Diego, seemed to be referring to a live victim. Decent guy, Ledesma thought to himself, fresh out of the academy and into the maw of hell. It wasn’t the first time that a younger officer had to remind him about procedure but Ledesma shrugged. He’d been Inspector for less than five months after seven years as a uniformed “floater” or “enforcer”—according to some— and nearly six years in detention. He’d thought his career over even as his life hung by a thread after killing “the Egyptian” in 1998, until his old mentor and uncle, Chief Superintendent Ruben Jacinto—though old timers still referred to him as “the General” from when the police sported military style ranks— returned from provincial exile to become Manila Police Director, quashed the charges against Ledesma, returned his badge to him and told him to report to the Special Detection and Intelligence Unit (SDIU) that was mostly an ad hoc affair directly under Jacinto himself. 2
Charlson Ong Ledesma’s prior police experience and three-week detective course prepared him little for his new job—that involved mostly undercover and “immersion” work—but Cyrus thought resuming his “law enforcement” work despite the danger of being done in by enemies within the force was preferable to growing fat and useless in detention. In any case, his military jailers and volunteer lawyers were running out of options for him. Ledesma checked his watch and saw that it was 4:25 a.m. The woman had been dead for at least two hours, he surmised. Such matters he knew. He saw the policewoman taking photos and another cop dusting for prints. “You have everything you need?” he asked the rookie. By all decent reckoning, he should be home sleeping after interminable rounds of beer with his old gang at the Manila Bay boardwalk. But Jacinto had called up his nephew on his mobile and ordered him over to Binondo to check out some woman who was supposedly found dead inside the property of some guy close to the mayor. “I’m really quite new at this…” Ledesma had mumbled over the phone, nauseous and anxious to get home. “Get over there,” his uncle had barked, “it’s Chinatown!” There was a moment’s silence before the police chief said, “Listen, Hijo, you speak Chinese, this is sensitive. I need you there.” His uncle’s tone had stoked Cyrus’s sense of urgency and made him focus. He remembered how much he owed the older man, his mother’s cousin, almost like a father to him, especially after his own father disappeared from their lives when Cyrus was barely fifteen. Although he’d spent much of his boyhood in the district, Ledesma hadn’t been to Binondo for many years. He wondered if he could still understand much less speak Hokkien that his father and grandma, who called him Eng Hiong— “hero”—or Ah Hiong, had made sure he learned. 3
Blue Angel, White Shadow The victim, Laurice Saldiaga, was a twenty-five-yearold native of Tondo who worked as a singer in the Blue Angel Bar and Café that was on the ground floor of the century-old building along Sto. Cristo Street. The joint was a fifteen-table affair that could pack seventy people at most but Cyrus Ledesma doubted the place saw more than a handful of tipsy old fogies most evenings who couldn’t stand going home to their wives. It reeked of oldness: old wood, old linen, old plumbing, and, he could guess, old songs. There was a bright blue neon sign, though, that lit up the stage: The Blue Angel. It was half the size of the one by the door and was written out in cursive. Ledesma saw an upright piano and a man seated before it, staring intently at the keyboard. The light wasn’t too bright but he could make out the features of the guy—the piano player, Ledesma surmised—and his beery stomach rumbled in protest. Why was the fool staring down the piano, as if preparing to play, or perhaps, attack the instrument, when the rest of the place was abuzz over the death upstairs? He could see the waiters, a cook, some women milling, being interviewed by a uniformed cop. Ledesma decided he’d talk to the piano guy before leaving the place, then made his way to the staircase. It was one of those grand hard wood—mahogany, he guessed—staircases that bespoke the former grandeur of the premises. This was no cheap dig. Once upon a time people lived here who wore gemstones on their hair, smelled of faraway essences, and spoke the tongues of kings and angels. He was told as a child how these stone-and-hardwood houses—bahay na bato—were built by rich mestizos during Spanish times. Back then, Binondo was the financial heart of the country, the “gold store,” a teacher once said. If the Governor General and the Archbishop were ensconced inside the walled city of Intramuros, their bankers and barbers did their business across the river where the “beasts laden with gold” thrived. Here, merchants ate from genuine silver plates and drank from ruby-encrusted bottles. As a 4
Charlson Ong boy, roaming the streets of Binondo with his buddy, Javier “JayJay” Reyes, who sometimes collected rent for his family and had since become a priest, Cyrus tried to imagine such opulence even as he saw cotton-shirted textile merchants fingering their abacuses and darker skinned laborers flirting with women vendors and house help. Even then many of the old houses had fallen into disrepair or were bought up by Chinese traders and turned into warehouses and storefronts. The larger homes were sectioned, subdivided, sublet, or converted into student dormitories, noodle stalls, mahjong dens, even a less conspicuous brothel or two. The Ledesmas themselves lived in a looban in Mayhaligue at the other side of Chinatown where Cyrus’s father, Dionisio, sold auto parts for an importer and his mother, Anita, home-tutored elementary school students. Now, Insp. Ledesma noticed how the building housing The Blue Angel, one of the remaining antebellum edifices that had yet to be torn down, had morphed into a maze of back rooms, mini porches, leaking pipes, rusting spiral staircases that led to God knows where. He was reminded of those stately Cadillac limos that have been turned into hearses. The victim’s room was on the mezzanine above the café and in between two other rooms, including that of the proprietor, Rosa Misa. Aside from a single bed, Ledesma saw a dresser stacked with many types of makeup. There was a poster of Mariah Carey and some foreign singer he didn’t know. Curiously, there were no flowers or teddy bears that he always expected to find in women’s quarters. There was a red Chinese lantern and a table lamp with a gold fish design. The room seemed outfitted more for a garage sale than sleeping in, yet going by her wardrobe, he couldn’t say the victim had poor taste. Cyrus decided that Laurice Saldiaga did not think of this as her room, did not care to dress it up with her dreams and fancies, to leave her mark, as it were, on the premises. This was still a place of work to her, an extension of the bar, Ledesma concluded, and wondered what else went on here other than blessed sleep. 5
Blue Angel, White Shadow He didn’t think he had much to go by save for a slight scent that seemed out of place. It wasn’t flowers, or perfume, or hair spray but something older yet reminiscent of childhood. Cyrus was overcome by a sudden aching for the victim and had to squeeze his own nape. Then he saw a signed portrait of the mayor and peered at the dedication though he couldn’t make much of it. Why was it hanging up here rather than down in the bar where it might stare down testy patrons and nosey city hall agents? “Did she have another place?” Ledesma asked Rosa Misa who was middle-aged, hard-faced and chain-smoking. She shrugged. “Crazy bitch,” Rosa muttered under her breath. “Hey!” Cyrus blurted out. “What?” Rosa smirked. Ledesma could see that she too must have once been admired, if not desired, by many but the plainclothes cop decided that he didn’t like the woman and would be tough on her. “How old is this place?” “You mean the building?” Ledesma glared at Rosa. “What? Opened the bar four years five months ago… okay?” “You own the premises or renting?” “Sure, it was left to me by my parents who owned half the Great Wall of China! Do I look to you like someone who owns a building in Binondo?” It was Ledesma’s turn to shrug. “Whom are you renting from?” “Cobianco, Antonio Cobianco. He lives at the old house at the top of the street. Owns that too. An old Chinese bachelor, in his sixties.” 6
Charlson Ong “Rice trader. I remember… used to have a German shepherd.” “I think he’s just collecting rent these days. I hear they’re not doing that well anymore. His nephew, Bulldog, wants to sell off the properties to developers. I’m always expecting an eviction notice.” “Bulldog?” “That’s what we call him behind his back. Robert. I hear he raises pit bulls, holds dog fights.” “That’s illegal.” Rosa shrugged again and blew smoke rings. The sikreta was getting on her nerve. “They don’t like each other. Often talks about sending the old man packing to China.” “He lives with the uncle, this ‘Bulldog’?” “No. He has his own family. Lives in Sta. Mesa, I think. He comes sometimes to collect the rent ahead of his uncle but the old man now says not to pay to the young one. I don’t know…these rich people, always fighting over money as if they didn’t have enough.” “How much rent you pay per month?” Rosa’s mood soured. “What’s it to you?” “I ask, you answer.” “Five thousand,” she mumbled. “That’s…” “I know, I know. People would kill for that sort of rent here in Binondo. Damn nephew’s always threatening to raise the rent once the old man croaks. We probably wouldn’t have lasted this long otherwise. This isn’t the best location for a joint like this anyways. But the old man like, comes three or four times a week. Plays the sax, jams often with Rey, the piano player.”
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Blue Angel, White Shadow “Plays the saxophone?” “I know… rich, old Chinaman playing sax… he’s a strange cat, that one.” “So he keeps the joint open for the music?” Rosa smirked once more then pouted towards Laurice Saldiaga who was now covered in a white sheet and being carried down the staircase by ambulance attendants. “He liked her too,” she said. “What do you mean? Was he courting her? Were they lovers?” “Did I say that? Ah… men, you all think with your peckers… young, old, poor, rich… all alike,” Rosa said with much authority and, Cyrus sensed, some pain. “So he was keeping it open for her as well? What else did he do here?” Rosa glared at Ledesma. “I run a respectable business. She’s here to sing. I let her sleep upstairs. What she does on her own time is her business. But I don’t let anything low go on in here. No drugs… no bullshit.” “Good. You don’t have anything to worry about then.” “Look, I don’t know what happened here last night. She never really opened up to me. Young people these days are just screwed up, you never know what’s eating them. Maybe she met someone through the Internet or her cell phone and things didn’t work out, I don’t know.” “Where’s her phone?” Ledesma suddenly remembered what had been bugging him. “I don’t know. You checked out her room.” “I didn’t see any phone. Whoever killed her took it.” “You’re sure someone did this to her? Maybe she misplaced her phone? Or pawned it like the last time she ran out of money?” 8
Charlson Ong Cyrus weighed the possibility but shook his head for no clear reason. “Couldn’t it have been suicide?” the woman asked. “No,” Cyrus said, after a while. Rosa looked at him and shrugged. “You think she did this to herself? Why?” Rosa shook her head, sighed, and looked away. If he had known her well enough he’d have told her that people seldom kill themselves in rooms they have not made their own. They don’t usually off themselves in workplaces, places that said little or nothing about them. “Was she right or left handed?” “What? Right… I think, yes, must be right. I would have noticed if she were left-handed. People notice these things, right?” “She was stabbed on the right wrist… You speak Chinese?” “No.” “Did she?” “No.” Cyrus was beginning to wonder if his knowledge of Chinese would be helpful at all in this case. He had yet to hear a word of it spoken since arriving at the premises half an hour ago. “Has the mayor ever been here?” he regretted asking the question almost at once and knew he’d regret it even more when Rosa Misa seemed thunderstruck. She turned away. “I’ve told you everything I know.” “Yes or no? Has Mayor Go-Lopez ever been here… to listen to music? Have a drink?” “He doesn’t drink… so they say.” “So they say,” Ledesma nodded.
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Blue Angel, White Shadow “Is he a friend of your landlord Cobianco?” He wanted to ask further but decided it would be best to keep Rosa on a leash for now rather than scare her away. Ledesma wandered towards the stage. He saw by the wall a framed photograph of a burly black man named Satch Mo blowing on a trumpet. There was another portrait of another black man in coattails playing the piano. They reminded him of some movies he’d seen as a boy. He saw a picture of Frank Sinatra as a lean young man—that guy he knew of—then he saw signed portraits of Diomedes Maturan and Katy De la Cruz—names, faces from his past, names he heard from his own mother—he only knew that they were in movies, entertainers. The place exuded an edgy, romantic air. He caught a whiff of day-old sampaguita and felt drowsy. At least there was no videoke machine in sight. He hated those contraptions. He hated it when drunken fools abused his night with their infernal warbling. “You play here every night?” Ledesma asked the piano player. Reynald Nadurata thought the stranger in the black flak jacket had requested for him to play a tune he didn’t know, hadn’t heard of. He stared blankly at the man, clean-shaven but with eyes that clearly begged for sleep. “Were you here last night?” the man asked again, peeved, it seemed. The piano player nodded. He wasn’t sure anything more was expected of him but the stranger’s face dimmed. “Yes,” Rey blurted out. He found speech a chore, especially with strangers. He lived inside melodies, tunes, and songs. “I play here from 8 p.m. onwards nightly except on Sundays and Mondays.” “What time do you knock off?” “Depends.” “On what?”
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Charlson Ong “On who’s around. If Mr. Cobianco’s here we can go on till two or three in the morning. He plays the sax. It’s his place, really… Tips me well, too. He sometimes gives me more for the night than what Rosa pays.” “Was he here last night?” “He left early.” “What time?” Rey shrugged. “What time?” Ledesma insisted. “Around 11 p.m., I think. I’m not too sure but he didn’t jam with me. I didn’t see his sax. He left after… she did her second set.” “So why’d you hang around so late? Were there other patrons? How many?” “Two or three tables. Around twelve guys, I guess. They left around 12:30 a.m. Maybe.” Ledesma swallowed hard, his tongue was parched from the alcohol. “The death was reported at 3:35 am. She must have been killed no later than two…” he said. He had felt her neck, her skin, her still soft, warm hands. “You think someone did it?” “Yes. You don’t think so?” Rey looked down at the keyboard. He had yet to get up from the piano since the cops came over. There was a tune that kept running inside his head but he couldn’t work it out, couldn’t “see” it in his mind. He had wanted her to hear it again, his song for her. And now it was too late. “So you were still playing here at three in the morning?” Ledesma asked the piano player who now seemed distraught. Rey nodded but more to himself and the music lurking inside his head than to the pesky detective. 11
Blue Angel, White Shadow “Alone? You said the customers had left earlier.” The piano player seemed shrouded now in grief and Ledesma was suddenly excited. “So you had a thing for her too didn’t you?” Ledesma was tempted to ask the piano player but held his tongue. He was awed by his own instincts. He might have been meant for this job, after all. Still, men could always tell when other men were truly pained or pissed by some woman’s actions or fate, he surmised, male desire marked territory like cat or dog piss and this piano man was now wallowing in his unconsummated yearning. Ledesma had only to recall his earlier aching for the victim, Laurice Saldiaga, to know that Rey Nadurata was now telling him, “Back off! Let me drown in my own stale lust, fool!” Yes, Rosa Misa was right, a sharp mama that one, Cyrus thought, and decided he’d talk to her some more, sometime. “How you wish you’d had her, don’t you? Too late, now,” Ledesma was quickly appalled by his own thought and asked instead: “Did she do a third set?” Rey shook his head slowly and Cyrus had thought to leave it at that but the piano player said, “I was playing for the waiters, the girls, the cook, Frankie. Rosa lets us jam on Saturday nights. No work on Sundays.” Ledesma suddenly awoke to the fact that it was Sunday. He could see daylight through the window. It was almost six in the morning. “Did you go upstairs anytime between twelve and two a.m.?” He asked Rey who appeared deeply violated. The piano player stared at the cop, incredulous. Then he turned back to the piano and shook his head. “I don’t go upstairs,” he whispered. “I have no business upstairs.” “Oh ya?” Ledesma was tempted to taunt the musician. “You never snuck up to her room, just to see what she wears when she’s asleep? Just to smell the bath soap? The lotion? Liar!” 12
Charlson Ong He wanted Rey Nadurata to blow his top, snap, curse, lash out just so the cop could assuredly strike off piano player from his mental list of suspects but Cyrus remembered it was the Lord’s Day and that such matters must wait. As he wandered outside to greet his boyhood street for the first time in over ten years, Ledesma could hear the tinkling sounds from the piano. He stopped to listen and breathe in the melody-like mist but it reminded him of a half-forgotten tale and filled him with such longing that he knew it was too soon to discount the piano player. No, not yet, he’d at least have to hear the whole song.
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