“Let me leave you with this. Every day of my life I deal with my coworkers and my friends, my kabarkada, telling me how ballsy I am. ‘Paré, you’re small,’ they say. ‘But the size of your balls? Grabe!’ They say that because I’m fearless. But Ting, I only have one testicle, courtesy of martial law. That’s ironic, isn’t it? Because what keeps me at it is not what I know I have but what I know can be taken.”

I knew I was getting hotheaded, but my anger was what was holding me together. “Is that a joke?” I asked.

“It is a Filipino joke,” he said.

“Any news on Laird Bontotot?”

“Do you really care?”

I threw down my cigarette, which died in a greasy puddle. “People I care about care.” I turned, preparing to head in. “Honestly, I think Eagle’s Nest is a hotel. I heard Chet mention Baguio. It must be a resort of some kind.”

“I think you’re wrong there,” said José Martin.

“How can you be so sure?”

José Martin composed himself. “The way they talk, it’s like some kind of club. Or a new political party. They talk about traffic and highways, overseas workers, but you know what they don’t talk about? Building. No plans. No permits. And Chet’s in it, that’s irrefutable.”

I had nothing to share, no little bit of information, and on some level, José Martin knew that, but something was up. Chet had been traveling back and forth to Baguio. Once, when Top Gun and I had collected Chet on a corner somewhere off España, I’d seen Rocco Basilang getting into a car on the opposite side of the street. When I’d asked, “Isn’t that Rocco?” Chet had denied it. I’d let it drop because Chet was signaling that it was one of those things that I did not need to know.

“Chet doesn’t tell me about his business and I don’t ask,” I said.

José Martin shook his head and raised his eyes to me, direct and unblinking. “Your friend is not the last person who’s going to die,” he said. “And that attitude”—he pointed at me with his cigarette—“is as deadly as any bullet.”