WEWAK, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Walter Tagobe was drunk. He’d been drunk since arriving in Wewak.
He sat at the bar in a shabby, fragrant waterfront pub next to a small house that had been converted to a hotel of sorts, more a rooming house, and stared vacantly at the glass of amber whiskey in front of him.
His first day away from his native village of Pagwi in the Sepik River basin had been exhilarating for the forty-year-old Tagobe. Aside from six years spent as a youngster in a Catholic missionary school for the “slow-witted” he’d never left Pagwi and had lived in the makeshift home on stilts he shared with his wife and two young boys his entire adult life. Walter may have been slow-witted, the label the nuns had assigned him—feeble-minded others termed it—but he wasn’t stupid. In some ways he was intellectually superior to the other men in his family, although admittedly that was a low bar to vault. Walter had sold wooden bowls he fashioned from fallen trees to tourists until Dr. Preston King had arrived one day to examine a four-acre parcel of land he’d purchased, and on which he intended to grow native plants. Walter thought it was strange to farm plants that were easily collected in the jungle, but he was delighted when the doctor said that he needed someone in Pagwi to oversee the acreage. He hired Tagobe on the spot.
It was a gift from the heavens as far as Walter was concerned. He would be paid a small monthly stipend, which elevated him to almost regal status among the tribe, and despite the frequent expressions of resentment and envy from others he threw himself into the work, hiring local men to plant the species of plants that the doctor wanted, and making sure that the tract was well watered and that local youths didn’t use it for play. He took to wearing a used blue suit jacket and a pair of pants he’d bought from a traveling merchant to better identify himself in his new executive role, despite the oppressive heat and humidity of the river basin, and boasted to his wife that he would eventually be called to Port Moresby to work at Dr. King’s side. His wife scoffed at his pretentions and called him “long-long,” crazy in local parlance, which didn’t quash Walter’s unrealistic dreams of becoming an even more important man.
When the two big white men with blue eyes arrived with a tractor fitted with a large blade, Walter was at the small farm tending to the plants.
“Hello,” one of the men said, smiling. “Name’s Paul. This is my pal Joey. We’re here to bury the crops. Dr. King who owns this plot of land wants the plants overturned and burned to make way for new ones.”
Walter’s only contact with the doctor was when King came to the area and gave him instructions.
Joey handed him an envelope.
“Open it,” Paul said. “The doctor wants you to have it.”
Tagobe did as instructed. In the envelope was money, more money than Walter had ever seen before.
“The doctor says that he wants you to go to Wewak and wait for him there. That’s what the money is for, to take a taxi to Wewak, check into a hotel and—” Paul grinned. “Find yourself a woman and enjoy yourself.” He laughed and slapped Walter on the back of his blue suit jacket. “You know, pal, go and have a good time, lots of pretty girls there.” He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and wrote on it. “You go to this hotel. Nice place. The doctor will meet up with you there. Right Joey?”
Walter smiled. The doctor wanted to meet him in Wewak. That was good. Important men went to hotels to meet with other important men. And so Walter Tagobe wrapped a few belongings in a woven bilum bag, told his wife that he would be gone for a few days “on business,” and took his first ever taxi ride to Wewak where he found the seedy hotel and secured a room. Despite the soiled sheets and single chair with a broken leg repaired with duct tape, it was palatial compared to the bamboo hut in which he and his family lived in Pagwi. Life was good for Walter Tagobe.
After checking in and paying four days in advance, he shoved the remaining cash into a pouch under the waistband of his pants and went to the adjoining bar where he ordered a meal of turtle in sago, a wrap for the meat, and a glass of rye whiskey, and waited for the arrival of Dr. Preston King.
The bartender, who was also the owner, eyed Tagobe suspiciously, his hand never far from the wooden club secreted behind the bar. His clientele certainly weren’t upscale, but he seldom served illiterate natives straight from the jungle.
Tagobe stayed at the bar into the evening, becoming more inebriated with each refill of his glass. The bar began to fill up, mostly waterfront workers, many of them Australians. A group of them began talking with Tagobe, who was pleased to have the attention. In his drunkenness he didn’t realize that they found him amusing and were deliberately getting him drunk.
“You say you’re a big man, mate?” one of the men said.
“Very big,” Tagobe managed in his Pidgin English, smiling broadly as he tried to keep up the conversation with his newfound friends. “I work for a doctor, Dr. King.”
“Who is this doctor? What does he do?”
Tagobe tried to explain but wasn’t getting through. He reached into the pocket of his blue suit jacket and withdrew the slip of paper on which the man had written the name of the hotel. “See? Doctor comes here to see me soon.”
One of the Australians noticed the name printed in red at the top of the paper, “Alard Associates.” He pointed it out to one of his buddies. “Paul Underwood works for them, doesn’t he?”
“I think so. Where is Paul these days, Port Moresby?”
His drinking pal said, “I saw him here in Wewak yesterday, him and his buddy Joey drinking it up at the Lizard Lounge. He’d just come from Port Moresby.”
“What’s this Alard company do?”
“Beats me. Odd jobs. Paul never says much but he always has money in his pocket.”
They returned their attention to Tagobe, who by now had to struggle not to fall off the barstool.
“You work for Alard?” Walter was asked.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Tagobe suddenly lurched from the stool, grabbed one of the men to keep from hitting the floor, stumbled outside, and vomited before bouncing off walls on his way to his room where he collapsed on the bed, still wearing his treasured blue suit jacket. When the other men realized that he wasn’t coming back, they laughed, paid their tab, and left to continue their barhopping into the hot, humid night, heading for the Lizard Lounge, a popular Wewak bar with more upscale patronage.
“Look who’s here,” one of them said when they walked in and spotted Paul Underwood with two friends at the Lizard’s bar. “Just talking about you, mate.” They joined Underwood, a bear of a man with a buzz cut and wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and leather sandals, and his friends, including someone they knew only as Joey. One of the men who’d been with Walter Tagobe pulled out the note that Tagobe had shown him, and that he’d kept. “What’s with this Alard company you work for?”
Underwood took the note and squinted at it through bloodshot eyes. “Where the hell did you get this?”
The man explained about meeting “this ignorant native in a bar.”
“He gave you this?”
The man said through a laugh, “He says he’s some big shot waiting for a doctor to meet up with him. He’s a moron.”
Laughter all around.
“He say who this doctor is?” Underwood asked.
The late arrivals looked at each other.
“King, I think,” one said.
“I’ll be back,” Underwood said, leaving the bar and going outside where he made a call on his cell phone. When he returned Joey asked, “A problem?”
“No,” Underwood said, grabbing his glass from the bar and downing its contents. “Let’s go.”
Underwood and Joey headed across town to the hotel in which Walter Tagobe slept.
“What room is the native in?” Underwood asked the owner, who sat at the makeshift desk.
“Who?”
“The native.” Underwood turned to Joey. “What’s his name?”
“Toboggin, something like that.”
“Yeah, Taboge,” Underwood said. “That’s it.”
“He’s expecting you?”
“Yeah, he’s expecting us.”
The owner gave him the room number, which was on the ground floor at the rear of the building. The men went to it and Underwood opened the unlocked door. “Hey,” he said, “wake up. Come on, get up.” They stood over Walter on opposite sides of the bed.
Tagobe looked up through his haze, fear in his black eyes.
“Hey pal, it’s me,” Underwood said. “Remember? I gave you the money to come here.”
Tagobe managed to sit up. He rubbed his eyes and moaned against the throbbing in his head.
Underwood and Joey reached down, grabbed Walter under his arms, and yanked him to his feet, holding him upright as he threatened to slip from their grasp and slide to the floor.
“You’ve been going around talking, huh?” Underwood said.
Walter didn’t understand and said nothing.
“Come on, we’ll take a walk.”
Tagobe pulled loose from Joey’s grip and stumbled back toward the bed. “The doctor,” he said. “Where is the doctor?”
Underwood looked at Joey and grinned, said to Tagobe, “Right, the doctor. He’s here, wants to see you.”
“Where?”
“In the bar next door. He sent us to get you.”
“The doctor is here?” Tagobe said.
“That’s right,” Underwood said as Joey regained his hold on Tagobe. “The doctor is here.”
Tagobe’s mouth felt as though it was stuffed with cotton, and the incessant pounding in his head hadn’t abated. But he nodded, and a small smile came to his face. “I go to see the doctor. Big man, important man.”
With Underwood and Joey holding him up, they left the room, passed through the lobby where the owner pretended not to be interested, and went out to the street. Underwood nodded toward an alley that separated the hotel from the bar, and they escorted Walter into it, rats scurrying out of their path. Underwood slammed Tagobe against a wall and snarled in his face, “You don’t talk about nothing, damn it!”
“The doctor,” Walter said.
“The doctor doesn’t give a damn about you,” Underwood said. “You keep your black mouth shut, you hear me?”
Walter tried to shake loose but the two big men had him securely pinned to the wall.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Joey said, and slapped Tagobe’s face, hard. He slapped him again, and Underwood rammed his fist into his belly, causing Walter to double over. He retched, his vomit spewing from his mouth; some of it landed on Underwood’s toes that protruded from his sandals.
Underwood kneed Tagobe in the face, breaking his nose and neck. He slowly slid down, blood dripping from his broken nose and split lip.
Underwood swore again. “Look what he did to my foot,” he growled.
“Let’s get out of here,” Joey said.
“Yeah,” Underwood agreed. “He got the message.”
* * *
Walter Tagobe’s lifeless body was discovered the following morning by the owner of the bar in which the Sepik River tribesman had done his drinking. Before calling the police he went to Tagobe’s room and removed the primitive bag in which Walter’s few possessions were wrapped. He then called the police, who dispatched a unit including a small white panel truck into which Tagobe’s body was loaded for a trip to the city morgue. He was stripped naked upon arrival, which revealed to the technician not only the raised welts on the back and torso of a man who’d undergone the ritual of the crocodile in his youth, but also a wad of kina banknotes that had been stuffed into his loincloth. The tech shoved the bills into the pocket of the lab coat he wore and continued readying the body for insertion into a vault.
“Any ID on him?” one of the cops who’d responded asked.
“Just this.” He handed the cop a wrinkled, smeared one-page letter from a nun at the Catholic school where Walter had studied as a boy. On it she had written that he was a good boy and did his schoolwork. Walter had carried that letter with him ever since, seldom leaving home without it, and it had been taken from the blood-spattered blue suit jacket he’d been wearing.
“Walter Tagobe,” the cop muttered.
“Must be from one of the tribes, maybe in Sepik,” the tech said.
“Anything else on him?”
“No.”
“He got beat up? A mugging?”
“Looks like it. Back of his head bashed in. Here.” He handed the cop half of the money he’d taken from the body.
“Ta,” the cop said, slipping the bills into his pants pocket. He shook his head. “That’ll teach him to stay with his own. What’s a Sepik native doing here in the city? Serves him right. G’day, mate.”