Money corrupts but anger consumes. Isn’t that what they always say? When the bullet whistled through the air and left a flesh wound in his brother’s arm, Lorenzo Piñera knew he had to do something or Isaiah, that barang whoreson, would definitely hunt them down and kill them all.
YOU MIGHT HAVE heard of them. The Piñeras and the Buenosolteros. Both Filipino-Spanish, both so filthy rich they could throw a million pesos out of the windows of their BMWs and not hurt. According to their countless biographies, they migrated from the Iberian Peninsula years ago, and became sugar traders in Ilocos before taking over the market of the Cagayan Valley and branching out to real estate and banking and shipping. Both owned several properties in the Makati district, policemen, business executives, and politicians included.
The composition of both familias was even similar. On one side, Juliano and Laura Piñera. On the other, Ramon and Monica Buenosoltero. Then the children: twenty-five-year-old Lorenzo Piñera, twenty-two-year-old Luis, thirteen-year-old Ana Maria. Twenty-five-year-old Isaiah Buenosoltero, twenty-year-old Beatrice, sixteen-year-old Miguel. Plus their respective uncles and aunts and cousins who had shot each other to death in the Valley.
They were the kind of families who made sure their children knew how to shoot guns by the age of ten.
But what the police and their business associates and the general public never knew was that the Piñeras (real name: Pantas) and the Buenosolteros (real name: Barang) were the descendants of diwata and mambabarang. Mambabarang were known to enslave and kill diwata to increase their power, but the two families started out as friends. Once, when all a being ever needed was land beneath his feet and trees and stars above his head, a diwata and a mambabarang shook hands and sat down to eat in an age of peace that would be broken, down the line.
Through the centuries, they intermarried. While the Barang clan remained with beings of magic, the Pantas family accepted humans into their fold. Laura Piñera, for example, was a human who married the witch-fairy Juliano. But both families mingled with human beings, and took on Spanish names when the conquistadores arrived. They were the families who refused to remain in the countryside, unlike the manananggal who simply waited in their homes and tended their farms and waited for the war to end. But they also refused to side with the revolution. A story goes that great old Amang Barang turned away Aguinaldo when he asked for an agimat and some special bullets for his gun, and that Kakang Pantas told Rizal to snap out of it, stop using the love potion like it was some cheap perfume.
They sided with power, either out of coercion (a young child held hostage, a house torched) or mere caprice (“As you can see, the Kastila throw grander parties than the indios.”). Of course both families were partial to the first theory, because it sounded more selfless, more romantic.
The Buenosolteros later on amassed greater wealth, and bought the very land on which the Piñera mansion stood. That was all right; the Piñeras understood power and respected it.
What began the feud, really, was a late payment of rent.
“Rent,” Ana Maria repeated idly. It was the night their parents would die, but they didn’t know it yet, and so Luis, while waiting for Lorenzo to finish fixing his tie, told Ana Maria the story again.
SINCE THE BUENOSOLTEROS now owned large tracts of Piñera land, the Piñeras had to pay rent. Sort of like mortgage except that both families knew that it was the kind of mortgage that could never be paid off. If the Piñeras could buy back their land, then well and good, that would be the end of the monthly collection. But how could they, if the Buenosolteros kept raising the required payment?
It wasn’t about rent. It wasn’t about money. The Piñeras believed that the Buenosolteros were doing what they could to slowly break down the diwata clan and siphon off their power.
In months when the Piñeras couldn’t pay human currency, the Buenosolteros asked for alternatives. Diwata artifacts (a genuine lock of Mariang Makiling’s hair, which could be used to create a potent poison or a love potion, depending on the intention of the maker; a sirena song, bottled in glass, which could make its listener temporarily insane; diwata light, which could be transferred in liquid form and which could glow for ten years) were a big hit among the designated rent collectors, but when those ran out they began asking for memories, or blood sacrifices. The elder Piñera, who was head of the family at the time, could no longer recall his dead wife’s name, and the remaining members of his household had all run away, so he had no one else left to sacrifice.
One night, when the Buenosoltero collector knocked on his door, ordering him to pay up, the elder Piñera decided that he had had enough, and took out his gun and shot the collector in the face. The Buenosoltero clan head arrived with an armed contingent the next day, and the elder Piñera used his remaining power to make the group turn on each other. He told everyone that “the Buenosoltero bastard drew the gun first” and “he knew I was on to him.”
Luis and Lorenzo often wondered what the older Buenosolteros told their children. Maybe they described the Piñeras as murderous barang-diwata folks who didn’t know how to honor agreements. The Buenosolteros were gracious enough to let them live on the land; they could have just fire-bombed the Piñeras and let their homes burn to the ground. But were the Piñeras grateful? No! They even had the gall to rebel and shoot a poor, harmless collector on the front porch.
Lorenzo somehow agreed. Also, he believed the elder Piñera was a poor businessman. If Lorenzo had been alive then he would have balanced the family’s accounts and bought back the land in no time.
THROUGH THE YEARS, the two families exchanged blows, at times even forgetting whose turn it was, and why they were shooting in the first place.
TUGUEGARAO, 2008. THE night warm to the touch. They were out partying, Lorenzo and Luis, when the murders occurred. When they arrived home, their sister, Ana Maria, ran barefoot down the marble staircase from the front door, the hem of her white nightgown stained a deep red. You have cranberry juice all over your dress, love, Lorenzo called out in diwata (which sounded to everyone else like Spanish), and Ana Maria stood on the cool marble landing in the moonlight, staring at them with blank eyes. Luis dropped his cigarette immediately and crushed it with the sole of his shoe. “Ana Maria?” he said.
“This isn’t cranberry juice,” Ana Maria said softly, and held the skirt of her gown, the blood of her parents already drying, flaking.
Lorenzo made Luis lead Ana Maria into the living room before entering the mansion’s master bedroom. Luis held his sister at arm’s length and straightened her dress, stroked back her hair from her face. She told them, later, that when she heard the gunshots she crawled into what she called her “walk-in closet inside my walk-in closet” and curled there until everything was quiet. Then she went out to check on her mother and father. She found the guards and the maids dead in the kitchen and on the back porch.
Lorenzo entered his parents’ bedroom and saw Juliano and Laura sitting slumped on the floor, their backs to the wall of their bedroom, gunshot wounds clearly visible in the center of their foreheads.
THEY DIDN’T TELL the police, because if it was a feud between the Piñeras and the Buenosolteros, the police would only get in the way. So Lorenzo buried his parents, then asked his brother to wear his best suit and accompany him on a business meeting with the whoresons in the White Lily.
THE TWO FAMILIES might be mortal enemies, but business was business, so Ramon and Monica accepted the invitation. The White Lily was a fine restaurant overlooking the Cagayan River, fragrant and secluded. Lorenzo assured the restaurant would be emptied for the meeting.
Isaiah and Beatrice were to attend a cocktail party in Isabela that night. Ramon, thinking the meeting with the Piñeras would be a good jump-off point for a lesson in the family business, bought a suit for his youngest, Miguel, and informed him that, instead of playing house guard, he would be coming to the White Lily as well. When Beatrice heard of this, she took Miguel aside, reached into her purse, and handed him a gun.
It was a small gun, small enough to fit inside the palm of his hand. Miguel took the weapon with mild surprise. He knew how to use it, he had just never owned one. And why would he need a gun? It was just Lorenzo and that bastard, Luis.
“Those brothers know something,” Beatrice whispered, lighting a cigarette. “Just aim and shoot. And aim for the head.” She touched the back of Miguel’s head to illustrate the point. “All right?”
“Why did you kill them, anyway?” Miguel asked.
“Officially, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Beatrice said. Cigarette smoke blurred her face. “Unofficially, oh you know,” she shrugged, “the usual. Company shares. Reserved parking. Power. You’ll learn in due time.”
“Beatrice,” Isaiah said. Beatrice glanced at Miguel, who quickly pocketed the gun. “We’ll be late. Now what are you two talking about?” Isaiah placed his arm around Miguel’s shoulders and shook him lightly.
“I was just about to tell our little brother here that we act on the order of moms and pops,” Beatrice said. “We’re just drones here, Miguelito, until we become head of the family and inherit power.”
Isaiah looked amused. “And what would you do, dear sister, when you become head of the family?”
“Go to the Bahamas and screw everybody telepathically.”
“Ah. Of course.”
“I haven’t done that. Telepathic screwing. Could be interesting. Don’t you think, Miguelito?”
“You won’t be head of the family,” Miguel said. “Isaiah comes first.”
Beatrice looked at him and smirked.
Isaiah laughed, “He’s got your there, Beatrice. Let’s go.”
On her way out with Isaiah, Beatrice made a gun with her thumb and forefinger and smiled at her brother. Aim for the head, she mouthed. The head.
LORENZO MADE GOOD on his promise. The White Lily was indeed empty by the time the Buenosolteros arrived. Lorenzo and Luis were sitting at a table, facing each other. The restaurant glared with silver cutlery, white tablecloths, vases and vases of fresh lilies. Light shone from the ceiling and was reflected by every object.
The Buenosolteros brought their goons with them, as did the brothers.
Hands were shaken. Lorenzo extended Monica’s arm and kissed her knuckles lightly, his lips skirting her sapphire ring. Everything about her glinted, even her eyes. Lorenzo hated her more for this.
They sat down, and Lorenzo said, “My brother brought something for you, Señor Ramon.”
“This is from my father,” Luis said, and took out a gun from under the table and shot Ramon in the head.
Blood and bone fragments sprayed Monica’s face and dress. Guns were drawn all around the table, but the Piñeras’ guards were faster and soon six men fell facedown on the bright floor of the Lily. Monica reached up a hand to her face, dripping now with parts of her husband’s brain, and screamed.
Miguel Buenosoltero stood up and pointed Isaiah’s gun at Luis’s right temple. The boy was crying, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
“He’s got a gun,” Luis said. Ramon’s body had toppled over and had fallen across Monica’s feet. She continued to scream.
“Impressive,” Lorenzo said. “Did Isaiah give you that gun? He must be really proud of you. Put the gun down.”
Miguel pushed the gun, making Luis jerk his head.
Lorenzo was no longer impressed. “You better stop pointing that gun at my brother, or I’ll have Simon blow your brains out.”
Simon was standing behind Miguel, his gun raised.
“Hey,” Luis said. “If Simon shoots him, he’ll splatter his gunk all over my suit.”
Lorenzo sighed. “Maybe you should take a step back, Miguel, so Simon could get a good shot without destroying a fine piece of clothing.”
Miguel shouted an expletive in diwata.
Luis moved his head back and looked at Miguel in the eye. “Why don’t you pull the trigger, Miguel?”
“Miguel,” Lorenzo said. “You’re not even supposed to be here.”
“Shoot me,” Luis ordered in diwata.
“Luis, stop it,” Lorenzo said, not amused anymore.
But Miguel just stood there.
Lorenzo took out his own gun and discharged a single bullet into the boy’s chest.
Luis watched him fall to the floor. This time, Monica was too stunned to continue screaming. The Lily fell eerily silent.
Simon stepped forward and took Lorenzo’s and Luis’s gun with a white handkerchief.
“They shouldn’t have brought him,” Lorenzo said, and shook his head. Simon positioned himself behind Monica.
“My sister was hiding in her room, did you know that?” Luis told her. “She heard everything.”
“I wonder if you made my mother beg,” Lorenzo said.
Monica looked at him, like an old woman lost in the streets, until her eyes hardened and her lips curled up in a smile. “She begged like a schoolgirl.”
Lorenzo felt something slap the side of his face. He felt blood on his cheek. Monica was laughing. He gestured at Simon. The gun exploded. Monica hit her forehead on the white table, staining it with her blood.
Luis looked up and saw the gash on his brother’s face. “She did that to you?”
Lorenzo cursed under his breath. Simon handed him a silk cloth. Luis pressed it to his face.
They stood up and adjusted their ties.
They stepped carefully around Miguel and his widening pool of blood.
Behind them Simon was talking to the proprietor. The sound of a briefcase clicking open. “It was an honor to do business with you,” the proprietor said, and the brothers were followed out of the Lily by the sound of the briefcase clicking shut, sealing the deal.
SHORTLY AFTER, THE siblings moved out of the mansion and into a small townhouse in an academic suburb in Quezon City. Lorenzo was now head of the Piñera Group of Companies, so he had to live closer to the business district. He had also inherited the full power of the Piñera family, the better to protect his siblings with. Minutes before the bullet entered the house and wounded Luis’s arm, the summer afternoon had found the siblings playing pusoy dos in the living room. It was the card game that their mother had bewailed they had picked up from the maids, but the siblings enjoyed it. Play your best five cards until there was nothing left in your hand. It was easy, often mindless. It was perfect.
Lorenzo loved that suburb during the summer. The professors and students living nearby were in the beaches, or in their respective provinces. That afternoon, nothing stirred, nothing sounded but the cards being shuffled in their hands.
It was their fourth round, Lorenzo leading. Both brothers smoked, their fists extended by lit cigarettes, sweat glistening on their arms. Ana Maria watched an old Filipino film on cable while they played.
“What was that?” she asked, her attention halved.
“Full house. Eights.”
Ana Maria glanced at her hand and lay down three jacks and two fives.
Lorenzo scratched his cheek. “Damn it,” he said. “Pass.”
Luis laughed. “You’re going to lose now.”
Ana Maria looked up and groaned. She couldn’t see anything on the TV. The antenna, again.
“I’m telling you,” Ana Maria said. “We should get a flatscreen.”
“The TV’s a family heirloom,” Luis said, and stood up to fix it.
That’s when Lorenzo heard something.
“Wait,” he said, staying Luis with a hand.
Luis sat down obediently. “What?”
Lorenzo looked toward the windows, behind Ana Maria.
“Nobody move,” he said.
They had guards outside, Lorenzo knew, Simon one of them, but still.
“I don’t hear anything, Lorenzo,” Luis said, and stood up.
That’s when the bullet came, driving through Luis’s arm before hitting the floor.
“Get down!” Lorenzo shouted, but Luis was already down. Lorenzo crawled over to him.
“Are you all right?” He touched his brother’s arm and was relieved to see that the bullet didn’t plunge into his muscles. More gunshots came from outside the house. Ana Maria screamed.
“Damn it,” Luis said.
“You’ll be all right.”
Lorenzo had a gun in his ankle holster, and so did Luis. They sat up and took their weapons out.
Ana Maria was gone.
“No,” Lorenzo whispered.
In the melee they were not able to hear the door open.
“No!” Lorenzo shouted, overturning the table, sending the cards flying everywhere.
They ran outside, fired at the black car pulling away. They imagined their sister inside, clawing at the faces of her captors, slamming her fists against the window. Lorenzo tried to control the men inside, but he felt himself being pushed away. They were protected. Isaiah?
Lorenzo and Simon jumped into their cars; Luis followed in another. Sixteen wheels careened down the streets of the suburb.
Luis took a wrong turn and lost the cars for fifteen minutes. “You idiot!” he shouted, hitting the steering wheel over and over, not minding the blood gushing out of the wound on his arm. “Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!”
When he finally caught up with them, the black car was sailing down a sharp ravine, like an empty box. It exploded when it hit the bottom.
Lorenzo had pulled over inside a tunnel, Simon nowhere in sight. Luis saw only darkness in that tunnel, but the explosion made him stop. He had no choice but to stop.
“No,” he said, climbing out of his car. “No.” Lorenzo emerged from the shadows of the tunnel, gripping his shoulder as if it hurt. Now Luis saw Lorenzo’s car, but no, no, he wouldn’t have any of it.
Lorenzo approached him, his face already red from sobbing. “No,” Luis said.
“Luis,” his brother said, reaching out to him. Luis moved away, tried to look over his shoulder past the tunnel, into the ravine. Surely she survived. Surely his sister, that sassy little Ana Maria, was able to jump out at the last second.
“No,” Luis said, and broke down, knowing in his heart that there was no way she could have done that.
“Luis,” Lorenzo said, and touched his arms. Luis tried to break free.
“No,” he said, and Lorenzo embraced him.
“No. No.” Luis held onto his older brother and cried.
QUEZON CITY, 2009. Katherina Esperanza, or Ana Maria Piñera in a different life, sat on her bed and listened to Dominic, banking heir/heiress, BFF, confidante, partner-in-everything, talk about his latest infatuation.
Paulo Elizalde. He said the name slowly, rolled it around his mouth like a lollipop.
“And does this Elizalde guy know you exist?” Kathy nee Ana Maria asked her friend. They were both sitting on Kathy’s bed inside her dormitory room, their legs stretched, their toes twiddling each other’s on the center of the mattress. Kathy’s back was against the headboard, Dominic’s against air, since he was sitting on the very edge of the bed. One little push from Kathy’s feet and he’d be on the floor.
“Of course he does. He works at the mall.”
“At the mall?”
“He’s a cashier at the music store. That’s where I buy my strings.”
“Does this Elizalde guy actually exist?”
“Oh, go to hell.”
Kathy attended the Academia Immaculada Concepcion, a private, co-educational Catholic high school for the very rich. Lorenzo opted for her not to be a day girl, because even though he had successfully carted off Luis, poor Luis, to Columbia University in New York, and, since her staged death, Isaiah Buenosoltero had been an accommodating business associate, Lorenzo thought he still couldn’t afford to have Ana Maria driven from Quezon City to Makati every school day. Also, he was the one controlling her glamour, a spell that required calm, and oftentimes, whenever they met, Lorenzo just got stressed. So there she was, in Casa Santa Elena, the best residential building on campus, her bed an explosion of floral colors, her carpet a lush violet, her pillows numerous enough to save a suicide jumper, her walls covered with movie posters and a painting of the sea with a quote from Lorca: “En España, los muertos están más vivos que los muertos de cualquier otro país en el mundo.”
In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.
Kathy almost laughed when she saw that painting in the store. How wrong you were, Lorca, she thought. How wrong you were.
So far, in her almost painless transformation from Ana Maria to Katherina, she had sprayed pink and purple highlights on her hair and painted her nails a metallic blue. When she was bored she would drag Dominic and go to the mall, or else visit Lorenzo in his apartment in Makati, while heavily guarded of course. The Academia sat on a sprawling field of grass and flowers, the air clear enough to accommodate fireflies at night. “When was the last time you saw fireflies in the city?” Lorenzo asked once while they took a stroll around the school.
Kathy could have been happy where she was, if not for that slab of white marble in Tuguegarao that said ANA MARIA PIÑERA, nuestro corazón.
I’m alive, damn it, Kathy would think to herself. She kept a picture of her and her brothers in the deepest corner of her cabinet. It showed her at age six. She was in a dress, her brothers in tuxedos. She could not remember the event, but she was sitting on their knees. Lorenzo was giving her a kiss on the cheek, and Luis was looking at them with a big smile on his face.
Dominic could play pusoy dos, but he wasn’t as ruthless as Luisito, and it just wasn’t the same if the cards were dealt just between herself and Lorenzo on his granite desk. It just wasn’t the same.
“Is he cute?” Kathy asked.
“Is he cute,” Dominic repeated dryly. “Honey, he looks like Antoine Doinel.”
“No.”
That was when Amy Winehouse started to sing about rehab, her repeated negative piercing through the foam of Kathy’s pillows.
“Just a sec, just a sec,” she said, diving sideways, her hands probing her bed for the cell phone Lorenzo had given her as a gift. Kathy peered at the screen. LCN, it said. La Cosa Nostra. Everything connected with her family had been labeled LCN in her phone book, because Lorenzo was mafioso, he was badass, he was so gangsta he could make his own brother believe that their only sister was blown up in a car crash.
Kathy groaned and pushed the phone deeper into her pillows until she couldn’t hear it anymore.
LORENZO, WEARING A suit and tie and still smelling like the conference room of his Makati office, stood in the middle of NAIA’s arrival area, his cell phone to his ear, Simon standing like a boulder at his side, businessmen and tourists in shades flowing around him. Ana Maria just wouldn’t pick up. Lorenzo wanted to kick himself in the head. He should have bought her an answering machine. Even if Ana Maria were just sitting in her room she’d still be able to hear his voice, and wouldn’t that at least get the message across?
Voicemail. Again. Lorenzo left his fifth message for the day. “God damn it, Ana Maria. Luis will be in the country any minute. I’m at the airport. He’s coming over for some teaching post at UP for a month, and UP’s fucking close to the Academia. Please, please, please call me once you get this.”
Beep.
From the onslaught of passengers, Lorenzo glimpsed his brother in a black jacket, a black backpack slung on a shoulder – funeral get-up. Lorenzo shook his head and opened his arms as he approached. They embraced each other.
At Ana Maria’s “burial,” Luis had held onto him as if he were a life vest, saying, “It’s just the two of us, now.” It nearly broke Lorenzo’s heart. It almost made him say, It’s okay. She just dyed her hair.
“You’re looking good,” Lorenzo said, stepping back.
“You, too,” Luis said. “Hi, Simon.”
Oh, Ana Maria, Lorenzo thought. I would have killed you if you weren’t dead already.
LORENZO TOOK HIS brother to lunch at an Italian restaurant. The restaurant was on their payroll, so the maître d’ just turned away when Simon and his boys adjusted their suits and accidentally flashed their guns.
The brothers sat at a table for two, Luis visibly agitated. Simon and the others surrounded their table.
“What’s wrong?” Lorenzo said.
“Do they have to stand behind us while we tell each other how much we miss each other and all that?”
Lorenzo glanced up briefly from the menu. “Yes.”
Luis groaned.
A waitress approached with the coffee.
“Do you have decaf?” Luis asked. “I’ll have decaf.”
Lorenzo stared at him like he’d gone mad.
“What?” Luis said.
“You don’t drink anymore, right?” he said. “Not even a gin and tonic?”
“That’s right.”
“And now you don’t even drink caffeine anymore? What kind of an Ivy League school did I enroll you into?”
Luis laughed.
“I don’t know why you had to quit, Luisito. I mean, you handle your alcohol very well.”
“Right, and this is the part where we show a montage of me puking on someone else’s bed, one hotel room after another, all those sorority girls with coke up to their eyeballs passed out all around me.”
“Or on top of you.”
They laughed.
“Another life,” Luis said, and Lorenzo fell silent.
“Do you have these goons in New York?” Luis asked.
Lorenzo suddenly wouldn’t look up, apparently finding something interesting in the menu.
“Well?”
“You have a three-man detail, Luis.”
Luis crossed his arms.
“Five,” Lorenzo said. “Eight. You have an eight-man detail.”
“You hired eight men to follow me around Columbia?”
“And send me status reports,” Lorenzo said, taking out his phone. He opened a file. “Look, I’m not an expert in Manhattan living, but it appears to me that you don’t have a life.”
“Do they follow me to the bathroom?”
“Nothing too I Heart Huckabees.”
Luis laughed. “Come on. Why all these soldiers? We didn’t have them before, Lorenzo.”
“Ana Maria was alive before.”
Silence.
Luis looked away.
“Shit,” Lorenzo said. “I just ruined lunch.”
“I was her favorite, you know,” Luis said.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to do anything,” Lorenzo said.
The statement seemed to jolt Luis like a bolt of lightning. “It’s not your fault.”
Lorenzo had no reply to that.
TWO WEEKS AFTER they buried a casket containing nothing but a white dress and the vestiges of Ana Maria Piñera’s former life, Lorenzo had Luis come over to his office to pore over his application to Columbia University. Luis had been wishing to take up a master’s degree in Spanish Language and Literature (he had a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from UP) for the longest time, and now, with his sister dead, it was either that or a fatal jump from the twentieth floor of a random hotel.
To Lorenzo’s horror, Isaiah was standing in the lobby of the Piñera Tower when they got there. He felt Luis bristle beside him, and he readied himself. He knew he would have to restrain his brother soon.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Luis said quietly, as though he himself was too astonished to shout. Then he jumped forward, ready to tackle Isaiah right there in the lobby.
Lorenzo pulled him back. “Easy now,” he said. Luis calmed down, and Lorenzo approached Isaiah.
“I’m an investor, Lorenzo,” Isaiah said with an easy smile. “Surely investors are allowed in this building.”
“Get out of my building,” he said.
“You’re the one to speak.” They had shifted to diwata at this point, now that every ear was pinned to their conversation. “You shot my brother.”
Lorenzo grabbed him by his lapels and shoved him against the front desk. The receptionist screamed and jumped out of her seat. “And you incinerated a thirteen-year-old girl,” he spat. Lorenzo found himself crying, and was surprised. “You didn’t even spare us a limb to bury.”
Isaiah was suddenly mute. He had fallen to his knees, sobbing, when he received news that Miguel had been shot. The news of his parents’ deaths didn’t surprise him – he had expected it, even – but Miguel? Why? They did not turn the Piñera’s mansion upside-down looking for Ana Maria, even though he knew she was there, hiding.
He sent out two of his men to Quezon City and specifically told them to shoot Luis. He would have wanted to have Lorenzo killed, but he thought the man would suffer more if his brother died in his arms. Now, Isaiah still couldn’t understand why the two lunatics didn’t even check if they were able to successfully kill Luis, why they even grabbed the girl. Did they plan to take her to him as a trophy?
Stupid, brainless fucks.
Lorenzo released him and steered his brother, quickly, toward the elevators, their bodyguards following.
“I didn’t wish for this to happen, Lorenzo,” Isaiah said, and he meant it.
Up in his office, Simon handed Lorenzo a box of Kleenex and said, “That was great acting, sir.”
“Really?” Lorenzo said, wiping his face. “I was thinking maybe I overdid it.”
“No, sir. It was perfect.”
Lorenzo nodded, satisfied. “Thanks.”
LORENZO LEFT ANOTHER message for his sister. Message number nine: “I swear to God, Ana Maria,” Lorenzo said into his phone. “I swear to God. You better call me now.”
KATHY AND DOMINIC went out of the mall into the sunlight, their arms linked, their hands carrying milkshakes with fancy straws. Kathy had bought them matching sunglasses with white frames, big enough to touch their cheekbones.
“He’s a bastard and you deserve better,” Kathy said.
“But he does look like Antoine,” Dominic said, who, considering the rejection he just received, was recovering quite well. “Admit it.”
“He does have great skin.”
“It feels like these sunglasses are covering my entire face,” Dominic said. “Yours are smudged.”
The sunglasses could have been the perfect disguise, but Dominic said hers were smudged, and so Kathy transferred her milkshake to her other hand and took them off to take a look.
A young man in dark blue jeans and a Columbia T-shirt the color of a lake suffering from eutrophication had been following them ever since they got out of the mall. He was there to buy toiletries and school supplies when he saw the girl buy the sunglasses for herself and her friend. There was something about her, something about the way she laughed, that frightened the young man.
There was something about the girl that reminded Luis of Ana Maria.
And now, with her sunglasses off, Luis saw her eyes for the first time, and saw beyond the glamour controlled by Lorenzo, and his heart fell to the soles of his feet.
“Ana Maria?” Luis said, dropping his groceries. A man in barong swooped close to fetch them.
Kathy could have just said, What? No. You’re mistaken. It would have been easy to shrug Luis off. But her brain refused to function, so instead she said, “Shit,” biting hard on the sibilant sound, and dropped her milkshake into a trash can, shouting at Dominic to run for it.
“Wait!” Luis shouted.
Kathy ran, Dominic huffing and puffing beside her.
“Who was that?” Dominic shouted.
“Shut up!” Kathy said. She caught a glimpse of the Columbia shirt her brother was wearing, and felt a distinct sense of loss. How was New York? she wanted to ask him. She couldn’t believe she had missed all that. Damn Lorenzo. She’d make him pay for this.
“Ana Maria!” Luis shouted, pumping his legs behind them. “Wait!”
Kathy and Dominic dove into the crowd and disappeared.
Luis bent at the waist, breathing hard. The man in the barong approached him. “Sir?”
“Take me to my brother,” Luis said.
It began to rain around lunchtime. Simon held out a black umbrella to shield Lorenzo from the rain. They found Luis sitting on the steps leading to the entrance of the Piñera Tower, smoking.
“Well, this is a pleasant surprise,” he said, yanking Luis to his feet. “I thought you were fixing your apartment unit in QC.”
Once they were in Lorenzo’s office, Luis threw his fist back and punched Lorenzo in the face. Lorenzo fell on his back. Simon and his boys drew out their guns and pointed them at Luis.
Lorenzo raised a hand, but they kept their guns pointed, ready to shoot.
“Luis,” Lorenzo said from the floor. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I saw Ana Maria at the mall.”
Lorenzo wondered if his face betrayed anything but confusion.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He climbed unsteadily to his feet and touched his face. Luis’s punch had drawn blood.
“Get your gun off of me,” Luis told one of the men.
“Luis,” Lorenzo said.
Without a word, Luis elbowed the man away and grabbed his gun. Simon and the boys drew closer, tightening the circle.
Luis raised the gun. “What,” Lorenzo said, laughing, “you’re going to shoot me?”
“She was buying milkshake,” Luis said, crying now, “and sunglasses.”
“Luis, she’s dead.”
“Why do I have this feeling that you’ve got something to do with this?”
Lorenzo raised his hands to lower Luis’s gun. Luis resisted at first, but Lorenzo managed to draw his brother close.
“You’re seeing things.”
“No.”
“She must have resembled her so much,” Lorenzo said.
“No, it was her.”
Luis dropped the gun. Lorenzo waved the men away. They filed out of the room silently.
“This happens to me all the time in New York,” Luis said, and Lorenzo hugged him tighter. “I’d see a girl, with her eyes, and I’d think –”
“She’s gone,” Lorenzo said. “We should move on.”
“I’d think –”
Lorenzo let Luis cry, his tears seeping into his suit.
IT RAINED AGAIN when night came, but the rain was light, raising a musky smell from the grass and the ground. Lorenzo, with Simon and another of his boys following him, squelched around behind Casa Santa Elena and waited. Lorenzo had draped himself in glamour, looking to anyone who’d care to glance at him as a middle-aged man in a black jacket and a baseball cap. Simon and his boys were made to look like young men with beer bellies.
Lorenzo made Simon call her, and this time, Ana Maria answered. “Tell my brother I’m going to kill him!” she said.
The rain stopped. Water dripped from the leaves of the trees. Ana Maria, in a pink sweater and red boots, approached them.
“What was that all about?” Lorenzo said when he saw her.
Ana Maria’s jaw hung open. “What do you mean what was that all about?” she said. “I should be asking that question! What was Luis doing in the country?”
“I told –” Lorenzo was so mad he couldn’t finish his sentence. “Don’t you listen to your voice mails? I left nine messages!”
Ana Maria glared at him.
Lorenzo said, “He saw you at the –”
“Mall! Yeah! So I’ve heard!”
“Calm down. We can’t let this happen, Kathy.”
“Don’t call me that,” Ana Maria said. “How come you get to meet him?”
“Kathy –”
“Don’t call me that!” Ana Maria said, then swore at him in diwata.
“Oh, come on,” Lorenzo said when she was finished. “You don’t mean that.”
“You should have seen him when he saw me,” Ana Maria said, her eyes filling with tears.
“Ana Maria.”
“We’re horrible people,” Ana Maria said. “Horrible.”
Lorenzo let her cry for a while.
“We should have told him that day!”
“I’ve told you a hundred times, Luis is a bleeding heart. He wouldn’t have let the sham funeral happen. He probably would have come after Isaiah himself.”
“We have to tell him sometime,” Ana Maria said. “I mean, we can’t remain like this forever.”
“Ana Maria –”
“We’re horrible, horrible – ”
“Okay,” Lorenzo said, squatting in front of her. “All right.”
“We have to tell him.”
“All right.” His head was reeling.
“Now.”
BEATRICE BUENOSOLTERO WAS sleeping with one of the Science teachers and one of the senior female students at the Academia. Best of both worlds, she loved to say. The Science teacher was married, so they did it in his car, the gear shift hitting Beatrice on the small of her back. And early that evening, she went with the student to her room in one of the more rundown-looking dormitories, posing as her sister.
Beatrice traveled without guards, and so when she passed by the Casa Santa Elena and saw a man in a cap talking to a girl, they didn’t see her. She was just a woman walking on campus at night, her red sweater wrapped around her. Even with the bloody tint of her clothing, she didn’t draw attention to herself.
“Hello, Isaiah?” she said into her phone, when the glamour slipped for a few seconds and confirmed her suspicions. “I have a wonderful piece of news for you.”
LUIS WAS STAYING in a building also owned by the Piñeras. Ana Maria looked at her reflection in the elevator doors. She had changed into a white blouse, combed her hair back, and perfumed herself thoroughly.
“It smells like a fruit stand in here,” Lorenzo said. Ana Maria whacked him on his stomach.
“Do you have a bulletproof vest on?” she asked.
“What?”
“Luis is going to kill you.”
“No, he won’t.”
“Maybe you should have worn a helmet.”
“Ana Maria.”
“He’s going to come at you with knives if he didn’t have a gun around. But I’m sure he has a gun ready.”
Lorenzo sighed wearily and wondered again why he had agreed to this.
The hallway was deserted. Lorenzo knocked on the door and motioned for Ana Maria to stay at his side, where she’d be unseen.
Luis opened the door. He was still in his clothes from that morning: jeans, the university shirt. He looked miserable.
“Look, Lorenzo, I’m sorry about –”
Lorenzo waved his apologies away. “I came because I have a surprise for you.”
He pulled Ana Maria so she’d stand in front of him. “Hola,” Ana Maria said, waving.
Luis collapsed.
TEN MINUTES LATER he was sitting up groggily on a couch still covered with plastic, with Lorenzo beside him and Ana Maria – Ana Maria? his mind wondered – sitting at his feet.
“You’re not a ghost, are you?” Luis said.
Ana Maria smiled and touched his leg.
Luis howled and threw himself at her.
“Ow, Luisito, you’ll crush my windpipe,” Ana Maria said.
“How,” he said, sniffling. “How –”
“Ask Lorenzo.”
Suddenly, Luis’s entire demeanor changed. He reached for his ankle holster and pushed Lorenzo against the wall, the gun pressed to his face.
“Hey!” Lorenzo said, his arms raised. “Hey! Hey! Hey!”
“I told you,” Ana Maria said from behind Luis. She sat on the sofa.
“I’m ‘seeing things’?” Luis shouted at him loud enough to shatter an eardrum.
“Luis –”
Luis pushed him, hurting his back. “What the hell is going on?”
“Luis, I can explain.”
LORENZO EXPLAINED. THERE was no plan, he said, just a nugget of an idea when the black car hit the side of the tunnel. If Luis didn’t make that wrong turn during the chase, Lorenzo wouldn’t have pushed through with it.
While Lorenzo, Simon, and Luis tailed the car, Ana Maria sat in the backseat with one of the men, counting to ten over and over in her head to calm herself. They didn’t tie her up, which was a mistake. They probably thought she wasn’t a threat, an assumption she proved wrong when she reached for the man’s belt and pulled out his gun. She hit both of them in the head, knocking them unconscious. The windshield cracked when they hit the wall of the tunnel.
“Ana Maria!” Simon and Lorenzo, guns drawn, ran toward the totaled car. Simon opened the door to the backseat.
“I’m all right,” Ana Maria said, stepping out. “Where’s Luis?”
“He must have gotten lost,” Simon replied.
But Lorenzo wasn’t really listening to them. He was staring at the car, thinking.
“Get in the car with Simon,” Lorenzo said.
“What are you planning to do, Lorenzo?” Ana Maria said.
“Please,” Lorenzo said.
“What the hell is this?” Ana Maria said, in her anger suddenly shifting to diwata. She sat in the backseat. “What the hell are you doing?”
Lorenzo closed the car door. “I’ll explain later!” he said.
Lorenzo watched Simon pull away. He got to the black car, pushed the driver toward the passenger seat, and drove to the very edge of the ravine.
He got out. Far off, he could hear the engine of Luis’s car, rumbling like distant thunder.
“AND NOW ISAIAH thinks we’re even,” Lorenzo said.
Luis regarded him for a second, then released him. Lorenzo tugged at his tie, fixed it.
Luis knelt slowly in front of his sister and kissed her face. “I love what you did with your hair,” he said.
“I painted my fingernails, too!” Ana Maria said. “See?”
“They look like candy!”
They laughed at this.
“Oh, good,” Lorenzo said. “You hate me now?”
“I can’t believe you could do this to me, Lorenzo,” Luis said without looking at him.
“Do this to you?” Lorenzo said. “I did this for you! Now, I can’t be sure, but I can safely bet who Isaiah’s original target was. You, Luis. You. Because he knew killing you was better punishment than shooting me in the head.”
Luis glanced over his shoulder at his brother.
Silence.
“What do we do now,” Luis said, standing up. He held Ana Maria’s hand firmly in his.
Lorenzo shrugged. “Nothing. Just go on with our lives.”
Luis and Ana Maria shared a look, and Lorenzo sighed deeply. He knew what was coming.
“Can I stay here?” Ana Maria said, and Luis shouted, “Don’t you fucking dare say no.”
Lorenzo smiled. “I won’t.”
Ana Maria cheered. Lorenzo watched his two younger siblings hug each other, his smile faltering.
Luis noticed this. “Maybe you should stay over, too.”
“What?” Lorenzo said. “No, no. I have work.”
“I have school,” Ana Maria said.
“On a Saturday?” said Luis.
“Religion.”
“Oh. Right.”
“No,” Lorenzo said, shaking his head. “I don’t think –”
“Come on,” Luis said. “It’ll be like old times.”
“We can play pusoy dos again,” said Ana Maria.
Lorenzo tried hard not to look too eager, but he couldn’t help it.
“Oh, all right, then,” he said.
“THAT FUCKER,” ISAIAH Buenosoltero said, standing behind the mini-bar in his office. “That lying, filthy –” He threw his glass at the wall, making the plaster cry rhum.
Beatrice lit a cigarette. “I told you my love affairs could lead to something useful.”
“Don’t be smart with me, Beatrice,” Isaiah said. “Please.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Isaiah,” she said. “I have a plan.”
Isaiah put his face in his hands and whispered a prayer. Something about Miguel, forgive me, Miguel. Beatrice raised an eyebrow. She had always hated that little bastard.
ANA MARIA WAS listening to her Religion teacher talk about tolerance when a student assistant she had never seen before knocked on the door and handed Sister Nancy a folded note. “Kathy Esperanza?” she said. “You’re needed at the Director’s office.”
“Me?” Ana Maria squeaked. Now what?
The student assistant walked with her in the empty corridor. They passed by the door to the Director’s office, but the SA kept walking.
“Excuse me,” Ana Maria said, “but that’s the –”
“Don’t say a word.” The SA said. She was now pushing a small gun against Ana Maria’s ribs. Ana Maria gulped, imagining her guards dead somewhere.
Ana Maria thought: I’m a member of the taekwondo team, goddamn it. I can take on this bitch. I can just raise my arms and grab her –
The SA’s fingers landed on the back of her neck like flies.
“You may not see me around often,” she said. “But I’m Beatrice, dear. Isaiah’s only sister? I know pressure points, and pain. You do not want to make me angry. Do you understand?”
Ana Maria fell silent for a moment, the fingers as light as cockroach legs on her skin but feeling as heavy as lead. They walked.
Lorenzo and Luis were just about to sit down to breakfast when Lorenzo’s phone rang.
“Don’t hang up, Piñera.”
It was a woman’s voice.
“We have your sister.”
The sound was garbled, but Lorenzo could distinctly hear Ana Maria screaming at someone furiously in the background.
“What?” Luis told Lorenzo.
“Ay, she’s a feisty one,” the woman said. “We’re listening to a live telecast, sweetheart. She’s in a house somewhere. We, on the other hand, are right outside your door.”
Lorenzo glanced at the door and stood up. “Who the hell is this?” Lorenzo said.
“Beatrice. Tell your men to put down their guns, or Ana Maria will be burned alive.” Lorenzo grabbed his brother’s arm and pulled him to the center of the room.
“What’s going on?” Luis asked.
“They have Ana Maria.”
“What?”
“Well?” Beatrice said.
“Put down your guns,” Lorenzo told Simon and the others.
“We’re coming in now!” Beatrice said.
Beatrice and six men in black shirts entered the apartment, guns drawn. The brothers raised their arms.
“I’m afraid we’d have to pat you down, boys,” Beatrice said. “Uy, Luis. Long time, no see.”
“I should just stab you in the eye, you skank.”
Beatrice hit him in the face with the barrel of her gun. Luis fell to the floor, his temple bleeding. Lorenzo struggled to get to him, but Beatrice’s men pulled him back.
“Enough with the smart mouth,” Beatrice said, and took Luis’s gun from his ankle holster. “Check Lorenzo. You! Get up!”
Lorenzo grabbed Luis under the armpits and pulled him to his feet before Beatrice could kick him. He patted Luis’s chest, calming him down.
“We’re using your car, boys,” Beatrice said. “Lorenzo, you’re driving.”
Beatrice reeked of gin. She sat in the backseat with two of her men. The rest followed in another car.
The brothers buckled up. Beatrice caressed Luis’s cheek with her gun. “No monkey business, Lorenzo, or Luis will get it in the head.”
“God, you stink,” Luis said, and Lorenzo bristled, waiting for the blow, but Beatrice just sat back and laughed.
She gave the directions. It wasn’t long before Lorenzo realized she was guiding them to their own townhouse, the same house where they had shot Luis in the arm.
“Home sweet home,” Beatrice slurred when they pulled over.
Ana Maria was seated on a chair in the middle of the living room, tied up and gagged with duct tape. The rest of the furniture was covered in immaculate white sheets. Isaiah was walking in circles around her.
“Special delivery,” Beatrice said.
“You are horribly drunk,” Isaiah said.
“Fuck you.”
Lorenzo and Luis stood in front of the chair. Isaiah glared at them, then jabbed his gun at Ana Maria’s head.
“Give me one reason,” Isaiah said, “one reason why I shouldn’t shoot her right now.”
“It was my idea, Isaiah,” Lorenzo said. “Luis knew nothing about this until yesterday.”
“Well, I bet, or else I’ll personally deliver an Oscar to his doorstep!” Isaiah said. “But you did good, too, Lorenzo. ‘You didn’t even spare us a limb to bury.’ Remember that? That was a good one.”
“Isaiah, for God’s sake.”
“You shot our youngest,” Isaiah said. “Now I’ll shoot yours.”
“You’re the one who gave Miguel the gun, Isaiah,” Lorenzo said. “If he were unarmed we wouldn’t have touched him.”
This made Beatrice laugh for some reason.
Isaiah’s face drew a cold, hard blank.
“The hell with you and your filthy human mother,” he whispered, his finger ready to pull the trigger.
But somebody pulled the trigger first.
Isaiah fell to the floor, Beatrice standing over him, her gun held in both hands.
The Piñeras (and even the armed men standing behind them) gaped in surprise.
Beatrice lifted her gun and made it glow. She laughed, amused. With Isaiah dead she now had the power of the Buenosoltero family.
Lorenzo was very, very worried. The Buensolteros did not have human blood; this meant that their magic was perfect and absolute. Isaiah had restraint, but Beatrice was just plain crazy. She could turn them to dust now, if she wished to, and Lorenzo wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to deflect that. He pushed his siblings an inch further away from her.
But Luis was too angry to see what just happened. “What?” Luis said after a beat.
“I’ve wanted to do this ever since Miguel died,” Beatrice said, unsteady now on her feet. The smell of gin wafted around the room, stronger than ever. “But I got busy with several love affairs, and Isaiah was just too bent on murdering you, so I thought, The hell with it, I’ll find a way to off the son of a bitch.”
Beatrice saw Lorenzo looking at her and laughed.
“That was fun, wasn’t it? Oh, the look on your faces. Don’t worry,” she said, sitting down on a sheet-covered sofa. “I won’t kill you. Not now, anyway. Frankly, the three of you don’t interest me that much. I’m more interested in going to the Bahamas. Have you ever tried telepathic screwing?”
Luis untied Ana Maria, who was getting more confused by the minute. He shielded his siblings and walked backward out the door, not wanting for one second to take his eyes off Beatrice.
“Telepathic screwing, Lorenzo!” Beatrice was saying. “You should try that sometime, you uptight little bastard.”
“Yeah,” Lorenzo said. “Sure.”
Then they were running toward the car, Lorenzo shifting gears as fast as he could.
“That family’s fucked,” Luis said, then began to laugh. Lorenzo and Ana Maria laughed with him.
ANA MARIA MET up with Dominic in the Casa lobby.
“What happened to you?” Dominic said. Fifteen minutes ago, Luis had urged Lorenzo to stop at a convenience store so they could buy gin. “I thought you didn’t drink anymore,” Lorenzo said, to which Luis replied, “Hell, I need a drink now.” They were now parked behind the Casa, sitting on the hood of the car, watching the Soccer Club play on the field while passing the gin bottle between them. “You disappeared right in the middle of Religion.”
Ana Maria sat heavily on the lobby sofa. “Got called to the Director’s office.”
“Oh? What for?”
Ana Maria shrugged. She didn’t know if she was just imagining it or not, but she could distinctly hear her brothers’ now drunken voices screaming at the Soccer Club members: “Stupid pass, asshole!” She smiled.
“Oy,” she said suddenly. “How does dinner with my brothers sound to you?”
Dominic raised his eyebrows. “Sounds like fun. Are they cute?”
“Super cute.”
They giggled.
“Oh, and can I ask a favor from you?”
“Sure.”
She smiled. “Call me Ana Maria,” she said.