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 of the doll’s white underwear, which fell to a golden bowl held by an altar boy. Hundreds of sweating parishioners sang out, “Christe exaudi nos.”