Killing Rain

precariously to the undersides of highways and train tracks, their rusted corrugated walls provisional, yet also, somehow, timeless; their inhabitants sitting, sometimes squatting, before their wretched domiciles and among chickens and foraging dogs, watching uncomplaining as the Mercedes crawled past them in the thickening morning traffic. Beyond EDSA, the highway that encircles Manila like a traffic-choked noose, the city gave way to rice fields and green hills in the distance, and I had the odd and not unpleasant sense that I was being driven back into Vietnam. We picked up speed. Goats and gaunt cows observed our passage without evident interest. We passed a thin boy riding a water buffalo alongside the highway. He ignored our passage, but I noticed that he was smiling dreamily to himself as he swayed atop the animal, and I wondered for a moment what random thoughts might have provoked such gentle rapture. The lake itself, utterly placid, surrounded the cone of an active volcano that seemed to be merely sleeping, perhaps soon to stir. Because of the earliness of the hour no tourists had yet alighted, and I was gratified to have a moment to contemplate the water, the sky, the buzz of insects, and the calls of tropical birds before heading back to the density of Manila and the weight of the operation.
    Back at the hotel, Dox and I took turns monitoring the feed from in front of the elevators for a sign of Manny’s return. It was boring work, as surveillance inevitably is. This time we were lucky: he showed up at a little after two in the afternoon, having kept us waiting only a few hours. As soon as we saw him and the bodyguard moving past the camera, I walked out to the carport.
    In a heavy Japanese accent and broken English, I explained to the bell captain what had happened. One of the cars had taken me out to Lake Taal, I said, and somehow I had misplaced my wedding ring during the trip. The man seemed genuinely sympathetic: he must have understood how it would look to my wife when I tried to explain that I had lost my wedding ring in Manila, a city notorious for its pleasure quarters. He examined some paperwork, then gestured to one of the cars. “There, Mr. Yamada, the one on the far left, that’s the one you were in. Please, have a look.”
    I thanked him and made a show of feeling around in the gaps in the seats and looking under the floor mats. Strangely enough, my ring was nowhere to be found.
    “Not there,” I said, shaking my head in apparent agitation. “You are certain . . . that is correct car? All look same.”
    “Quite certain, sir.”
    I rubbed a hand across my mouth. “Okay if I check others? Please?”
    He nodded and offered the sympathetic smile again. “Certainly, sir,” he said.
    I made sure to search license plate MPH
    777 next, going through the back in the same thorough fashion I had used a moment earlier. But this time, I left behind the GPS unit, adhered to the underside of the driver-side seat. The driver was chatting with another of the hotel staff by the front door and seemed neither to notice nor to care about my brief intrusion.
    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