In the Company of Killers, Bryan Christy [love story books to read .txt] 📗

brother what happened on those drives. They found the priest with his throat cut, hanging from a tree. His car was parked nearby. Ras had written ‘I did it’ on the windshield with a bar of soap, and signed his name and address. He was thirteen.”

Eady cleared his throat. “Not a perfect fit. I’ll grant you. That’s fine. No criminal network is consistent all the way through. I am a bit surprised, though. I assumed you’d take every opportunity to go after Botha.”

Klay punched the wall. There was a commotion from Fox’s office. It sounded like a chair falling over.

“You know I would,” Klay said. “I’m on it.”

“Good,” Eady said, and tapped the file with his fingertip. “‘There’s always a who,’ isn’t that what you like to say? Well, this is one of them.” He turned as he was opening the door. “And just so we’re clear, Tom. This is an assignment. It’s not a democracy. The public—”

“—has an interest,” Klay said. “Yeah. I know. I have an interest, too.”

ON THE HUNT

Manila and Cebu Island, Philippines

Klay arrived at the Open Orchid, a shabby hotel in Manila’s old red-light district not far from the American embassy. He set his duffel bag on the floor beside the front desk. “Reservation for Flanagan,” he said, and handed over a passport. “Three nights,” he added, and paid in advance, though he would only stay for one. Klay leaned an elbow on the counter while the thin Filipino clerk jotted his details with a ballpoint pen. “This hotel was recommended by Monsignor Martelino.” The clerk’s pen paused, then continued scribbling.

Across the lobby, a big man who looked to be in his fifties waited for an elevator beside a Filipino boy, maybe nine or ten years old. The man had a football lineman’s size, but there was something not American in his carriage. Hawaiian shirt. Too-short shorts. Sandals with the socks pulled up. German or Australian, Klay guessed.

Klay cleared his throat to get the man’s attention. He wanted to see his face. The big man tilted his head and spoke to the boy. Klay heard bits of German. The man kept his back to Klay until he and the boy were inside the elevator. Then he turned and stared at Klay without expression, his hand on the boy’s scrawny shoulder as the elevator doors closed. Ownership.

Klay felt revulsion turn in his gut, but he had his assignment, and it didn’t start here. He accepted his fake passport back from the clerk and shouldered his bag. Next to the front desk was the doorway to the hotel’s bar-restaurant, the bar a five-stool setup serving bottom-shelf liquor under brown palm fronds. An elderly woman sat behind the bar turning pages in a magazine, smoking a cigarette. Beyond the bar was the restaurant. Klay smelled overheated food. “Pork sisig,” a chalkboard said. He ordered his dinner with the bartender and went up to his room.

A waiter arrived with his food, laid a tray on the foot of his bed, and asked if there would be anything else.

“No,” Klay said, handing him a tip.

“Are you certain?” the young man said. “Boy or girl, doesn’t matter.”

There was a shrewdness in the teenager’s eyes. A certainty in his smile.

“I’m tired,” Klay said and pointed a finger toward the door.

He ate his dinner of a roasted half chicken and French fries, drank the beer. He checked his phone. He carried his dinner tray to the hallway and left it outside his door, then returned to his room and looked at the bed. It was just after seven in the evening local time. For him it was three a.m. He wouldn’t sleep. He popped a ceiling tile in the back of his closet and hid his laptop there. The safe was anything but. He put on his boots, took the elevator down, and walked the neighborhood. He could move his arm without real pain as long as he didn’t try to do anything too sudden. His ribs hurt just enough to remind him he needed to exercise.

It was early evening, but late enough in this part of town. Prostitutes dotted Ermita’s sewage-damp sidewalks. Thin men rose up like grass eels, calling out, “Cialis!” “Viagra!” A block from his hotel, he passed a man walking a dwarf on a leash. The little person wore a leather harness around his body with a handle along his spine. His T-shirt said, “Toss Me!”

“Mister, mister!” A woman tugged his shirt. She held by the hand a young girl, perhaps eight, wearing a pink dress. The little girl turned her palm up. Klay felt street eyes on him, watching to see what he would do.

“Mister,” the girl’s mother pleaded.

He bought a cup of coffee from a street cart, and left ten times the coffee’s cost in change on the counter. He looked at the mother and kept walking. She snatched his money and rejoined him. “Mister. You like my daughter? You want to marry her? Take her to America? Marry her for one hour?”

Two blocks later she was gone, and so was his interest in exploring the neighborhood. He returned to his hotel, got a few hours’ sleep, then took a cab to the airport, and boarded a flight for Cebu Island.

•   •   •

Klay’s target wore black-framed eyeglasses and long white robes emblazoned with the head of a Christ child in gold thread. The fat priest stood at the front of his altar and raised an ivory Christ child above his head for his parishioners to admire. This was the beginning of the annual ceremony called the Hubo, a Cebuano word meaning “to undress.” The Santo Niño de Cebu icon in his hands was the size of a house cat, dressed as a boy king.

Martelino removed the icon’s tiny crown, slipped off its little black boots, unfastened its scarlet cape and gold belt, and removed its tunic. Then he produced a curved knife from the sleeve of his tunic and sliced the back