Wheelchair Moccasins by David J. Wighton
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Chapter 6
With the Wilizy now entering a slow, non-urgent period in their investigation of Safe Haven's management files, we can return our collective eyes back to the Philippines. It is current time, Wednesday July 3, and we find ourselves looking inside a large house in Maasin City in the province of Southern Leyte. A young man named Pablo is running his index finger over the shiny black surface of the refrigerator in El Patrón's kitchen. Nobody else that he knew had such a kitchen. He stared at the refrigerator with the freezer section at the top. The big black stove with four burners received a jealous glance too. As did the machine that washed dishes. All run by electricity – the only home in the area to have a black wire leading directly from a wooden pole into the house.
This magnificence was all for two people. El Patrón and his daughter, Kashmira. Their servants ate at their own homes, although there were sufficient bedrooms on the second floor to house them if that were necessary. The third floor had rooms for the guards to sleep if that were necessary too. More importantly, El Patrón had space in the basement for all servants and guards to hide safely in the event that the house came under attack. El Patrón and Kashmira could live for weeks in a self-contained vault in the very middle of the basement. Pablo had never been to the basement – he had heard rumours that it had an escape tunnel.
Pablo hadn't been anywhere in the house other than the kitchen, although he had been coming to the mansion every day for the last three years. Back then, he was known as Pablocito. Now 13, he was simply Pablo. Each day, he brought fresh fruit and vegetables from his family's stall three blocks away. He'd slide off his bike with the big metal carrier on the front handlebars at the front gate. The guard would nod at him and open the gate. Pablo would walk his bike to the back of the house, park it, collect the bags of food, and enter the kitchen through an unlocked door. The guard at the back of the house would nod at him too. For the first year, that guard would check the contents of the bags in his carrier, but he didn't do that any longer. Pablo would pack the food into the refrigerator and leave.
Today, the beginning of summer holidays from school, Pablo was earlier than usual. Nobody else was in the kitchen, so he decided to look around. He quietly opened some cupboard doors and peeked inside. Dry food in one; metal cans and glass bottles in another; fancy plates in a third. He poked his nose out of the kitchen and into the dining room. He admired a big long shiny table. He saw only two chairs, one at each end of the table. The sound of angry voices approaching from the back of the house caused him to retreat quickly into the kitchen. Three men came into the adjoining hallway and then disappeared. Pablo couldn't help but notice them. He knew who they were. Everybody in Maasin City knew who they were, just like they knew who El Patrón was. The man in the blue suit was the head of the smugglers who brought banned goods into the city and sold them on the black market. This man was known as "El Jefe." [The chief] The two men in blue jeans and black leather jackets were El Jefe's guards. Pablo's family did not sell any of El Jefe's smuggled goods. They were considered part of El Patrón's family because they lived in one of his shacks.
Following the first three men into the hallway were El Patrón and Ramón, his chief of security. The five men clustered around the door to the garage and their voices became louder. Pablo was invisibly pinned to the kitchen wall – he would have been seen if he had tried to leave by the back door. El Jefe's voice became loudest of all. He made a demand. "Give us access to your ships."
El Patrón answered more quietly. "Never. You would ruin us all."
Pablo heard the garage door open and El Jefe's solar car leave. The garage door came down again, driven by the house's electricity. Pablo would have been amazed at this had he not been so scared.
"Did anybody see them arrive?" El Patrón's voice.
"No. The back alley was deserted. We saw to that."
"Is their car's mechanic still friendly to us?"
"We help with his daughter's medical expenses. In exchange, he doesn't say anything about the explosive I planted in El Jefe's car last year."
"You have men following the car?"
"At a distance, yes."
"Blow them up when they're out of the city. Bury their bodies in the jungle. Make the remains of the car disappear too."
Ramón was putting his pinky-ring computer to his mouth when he and El Patrón came into the kitchen and saw Pablo. The two men joined Pablo in a frozen tableau.
"Pablo, why are you here?"
"I was delivering your food order, Patrón. I didn't hear anything, Patrón."
"I'll deal with Pablo, Ramón. You take care of the smugglers."
# # # # # # # #
"I won't say anything, Patrón. Really, I won't. I swear."
"Was the front street busy when you came in, Pablo?"
"Yes, of course. Please don't burn my testicles off, Patrón." El Patrón had a unique way [Narrator: perhaps better written as a "eunuch" way] of dealing with somebody who had been a friend of the family but had betrayed them. Ramón would strip him, pour a litre of acid on his groin, and he and El Patrón would watch and listen as he died. They'd leave the body in a public space. El Patrón didn't have to worry about betrayals very often.
"You're still in the house. Nobody has seen you leave. And you've been in the house much longer than you normally are. You'll be late returning to your stall. Your family will ask you why you are so late returning to work. Other people will wonder too." El Patrón was summarizing these details as much for himself as for Pablo's benefit. The boy was a walking ticking bomb that could destroy El Patrón.
"I won't say anything to my family, Patrón. Please don't kill them. They warned you about that man hiding on a roof, remember?"
El Patrón expected the people in his neighbourhood to be loyal to him. For three full blocks around his mansion, families like Pablo's lived for free in El Patrón's shacks. They also received free medical care. If they had businesses, El Patrón would send them customers. Two of the neighbourhood women worked in his house. All of the neighbourhood children went to a private school that had good teachers and good equipment – all at no cost to the families. Some of them were even in the same grade 7 class as Kashmira. In return, these families made sure that no harm came to El Patrón or to Kashmira. One of Pablo's older brothers had seen a man with a rifle hiding on a roof near El Patron's mansion and told Ramón. That was why Pablo's family was able to add a restaurant shack to their vegetable and fruit business. But if anybody in the neighbourhood angered El Patrón, everybody in the family would die, including cousins, aunts and uncles.
El Patrón stared at Pablo who fell to his knees and raised his clasped hands in silent prayer. El Patrón had felt kindly towards Pablocito when he had started delivering food to the house. He was in the same school class as Kashmira. The family had nine children and all but the very youngest worked in their businesses. But Pablo had been in the house far too long. People would talk. The Guardia would investigate El Jefe's disappearance. They'd suspect that El Patrón had consolidated his business operations once again. They'd be asking people if anything unusual had happened on the day of El Jefe's disappearance. An unfortunate accident to Pablo in the busy streets would be easy to arrange if El Patrón couldn't come up with an explanation why Pablo had been in the house for so long.
At that point, his explanation walked into the kitchen.
"What are you doing on your knees, Pablo?" Kashmira asked.
Kashmira was the heartthrob of the private school that Pablo attended. As far as Pablo was concerned, she was the most beautiful girl who had ever existed. Many would agree. So would El Patrón. That's why the school had no male teachers or custodians.
In addition to being the most beautiful girl to have ever existed, Kashmira was El Patrón's daughter. People who might dislike El Patrón could decide to attack him through his daughter. That's why whenever she was out of the house, Kashmira was accompanied by a qu
Everybody in the neighbourhood knew when Kashmira was out of the house. The street would suddenly become quiet. Pedestrians would rush to the other side of the street as they saw the guards coming. Nobody ever walked within conversational distance (or shooting or stabbing distance) to her when Kashmira was in public.
Kashmira led a somewhat more conventional life inside the school. The guards would stay on the street, watching all entrances and exits. In her classroom, boys mostly stayed clear. They may have secretly taken pictures of her and those pictures may have ended up under their pillows in their bedrooms, but few ever approached her to talk with her. Pablo certainly didn't. He'd be close to falling down in a dead faint if she uttered a word to him.
Most of the girls in the class hated her – jealous of her beauty and her wealth. Teachers were afraid of her; anxious lest she complain at home about something that they may have said. Reportedly Kashmira had had a boyfriend once; he had left the school unexpectedly and now nobody knew where he was. His family wasn't talking.
"What are you doing on your knees, Pablo?" Kashmira repeated.
Pablo kept his mouth closed. He didn't want to give El Patrón another reason to pour acid on his genitals.
"Pablo was asking me for a favour," El Patrón replied for him.
"What favour?"
"He really likes you. He wants to be your boyfriend. I suspect that he wants to have sex with you."
El Patrón's daughter said nothing. The temperature in the kitchen had suddenly become frigid – quite the unusual weather for a city in the Philippines.
"Pablo, I'll show you to Kashmira's bedroom," El Patrón continued. "You can stay there all afternoon and have sex with her. She's not a virgin any more, so I see no reason why you shouldn't enjoy yourself as another already has. Consider this as a reward for your continued silence about a certain matter."
El Patrón pulled Pablo to his feet, grabbed the collar of his shirt, pushed him down the hallway and into Kashmira's bedroom. "Take your clothes off, pull back the covers of the bed, and sit on it," he instructed. "Kashmira will be here shortly."
Pablo's summer holidays would start with a special treat.
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Chapter 7
"Father, I'm not having sex with Pablo," Kashmira declared when El Patrón returned to the kitchen. She was standing in front of the stove. One of the elements on the stove was pink.
"You had sex with the other boy in your school. Why not this one too?"
"I had sex with him so that Leonardo's family would turn down the marriage you were forcing me into."
"You embarrassed me in front of another family. Leonardo's family and our family would have had strong business ties. Together we would have controlled all of Southern Leyte. I don't see why you objected. He was good looking."
"He was a pig. I'll choose who I will marry."
"I'm your father. Filipino laws permit me to arrange your marriage. Even your religion gives a father authority over a daughter."
"You won't find many takers now that I'm not a virgin."
"Not true. The Sierra family in Baybay City is interested. I told them that you are very enthusiastic in your many relationships. They want a meeting."
"You described me as a slut?"
"If you're not a virgin, you may as well be a slut. Men are interested in both."
"I will not be a slut for you. I'm not having sex with Pablo."
"Yes you will. You will have sex with him at least three times this morning."
"I won't have sex with Pablo. I have the right to decide who I have sex with."
"You're a woman. You have to obey your father, and after you marry, your husband."
Kashmira held her hand over the bright red element. "I won't."
The stove's element wasn't the only thing in the kitchen that was getting hot. By now the quiet conversation that Kashmira had been having with her father was bright red in loud anger. For both parties.
"Burning your hand won't hurt me at all. It will just mean that you'll never play your guitar again. That only hurts you. Men won't care. It's not your hand that they're interested in."
"I won't have sex with him."
"I remind you of your first boyfriend. After I heard that he had taken your virginity, I arranged a job for him far from here. I let him live because it wasn't his fault that you had seduced him."
"I'm supposed to thank you for not castrating him?"
"I know where he lives."
Father and daughter locked eyes again. They had done that many times before.
Kashmira spun on a heel and stormed down the hallway to her bedroom.
Diego clipped the tip off a fat cigar, lit it from the stove's element, turned the element off, and left the kitchen.
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Chapter 8
Back to North America we go. The reader doesn't have to worry about rocket lag, skipping through time zones, oxygen sickness, or sleep deprivation. Thanks to the magic of literary trickery, you are arriving in Chicago on Friday July 5 at 8 p.m. Right now, you are walking through the front door of Paddy's Waddy, a bar frequented by people who like bars that have rhyming names. It was also frequented by people who like bars that have a lot of hot chicks sitting around with empty glasses in their hands. In the Waddy, men could buy hot chicks double-strength drinks at half the price without the chicks being aware of how cheap the men were being. If the chicks were drunk enough, they wouldn't notice the strength of the drink either.
Entering the bar was a very tall, slender teenager with curly brunette hair. An attractive man in a blue shirt winked at one of the waiters who gave her a table right at the edge of the dance floor. She ordered a drink. The waiter winked at the barkeep. The waiter brought the stick-like-chick a free Paddy's Baddy. "From the man in the blue shirt," the waiter announced. "No charge."
[Narrator: I should give this young chick a name. I'll choose a girl's name at random. Let's try a name that's a little unusual. I'll call her Benedikta or Bean for short].
Bean took a sip of the drink and grimaced. She looked at Blue Shirt's smarmy smiling face and went to the bar to ask for a glass of water. The barkeep grinned at her and obliged. Bean leaned over the bar, emptied half of her Paddy's Baddy into a convenient sink, and added some water from the glass. She sat down on a bar stool, sampled the drink, and nodded. She didn't have to wait long for her newfound friend to join her.
Bean put up with his charming offensive for about half an hour. She told him several times that she did not want to have sex with him. Each time she spoke loudly enough to be heard by a passing waitress. She nursed the one drink, and when it was finished, she turned down a refill and left. Alone. A few seconds later, Blue Shirt also left. That was a decision he didn't live long enough to regret.
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Bean was in Chicago strictly by chance. At first, she had planned to live in Minneapolis but it was too small to do much hunting. Her hobby successes in the past had been carefully arranged to be unnoticeable. But if she stayed in one place for as long as she wanted to do in her new life, her hobby could be noticed even in a city like Minneapolis. She chose the closest big city to Minneapolis and that took her to Chicago.
Chicago had a university. Name of Loyola – a private university founded and run by Roman Catholics. Bean was attracted to this university because she was thinking of entering their Religious Studies program. Becoming a nun was a possibility. Loyola also enjoyed the reputation of having an outstanding volleyball program. Bean was 19 years old. The idea of a volleyball-playing nun who counselled women on religion was not out of the question for somebody with her naiveté of the real world. The benefit of her semi-developed plan was that nobody would suspect a nun of enjoying a hobby like hers.
Two nights later, Bean was in another bar – much more conventional this time. She wasn't hunting this evening. All she wanted was to do was sit alone, nurse a drink, and enjoy a good meal – meaning one that she didn't have to cook herself. This pub's kitchen had a good reputation.
Sometimes even though you aren't looking for trouble, trouble finds you. Bean left earlier than planned, but first she ensured that a passing waitress heard her tell the unwelcome guest at her table that she didn't want to have sex with him.
One of the attractions to living in Chicago was the huge lake to its north. It was too dark for her to see a grove of deserted peach trees languishing in the mudflats north of the city as she flew to the middle of Lake Michigan to dump some trash. They probably wouldn't have meant anything to her had she seen them. They certainly didn't mean anything to her trash.
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Chapter 9
It was Monday – five days after Pablo had entered the world of sexually active men. The teenage stranger strolling through Maasin City's crowded market was gangly and a little taller than the usual Filipino teenager. He wandered into each stall that he passed, peered at what was available for sale, and even picked up one or two items before easing them carefully back into place. When the stall owner approached and tried to engage him in conversation, the young man would say simply, "No, gracias" and continue with his browsing. He'd say the same thing when the stall owner asked if he could show the young man something, if he would like a guide to take him through the market, if he would like to eat some freshly baked delicacy, if he would like to sell his strange looking clothes, if he would like to mate with the dog lying in the corner, or if he would like to fly into the air squawking like a rooster for the stall owner's entertainment. Some Filipinos have a warped sense of humour that can come become particularly biting when a non-Spanish speaking foreigner is in their shop and not buying anything.