I sat back down at the table and my tita Dom took the seat beside me. Beng hustled out of the kitchen with another plate.

“How are my cousins?” I asked.

“They’re okay.” Tita Dom would not go into detail with her sister sitting there. “For how long are you here? Rikki will want to see you.” Rikki and I were close in age. He was at heart a philosopher, although he worked at a bank. “I am so glad you’re here, but why now? These are dangerous times.”

“It’s always dangerous here,” I said. “What’s new?”

“Don’t you write this stuff yourself?” Tita Dom took a sausage and a fried egg. “Didn’t you hear about the Korean businessman?”

“I did. The story was breaking when I started traveling.” The Korean businessman had been kidnapped from his house and murdered.

“They accused him of dealing drugs,” said Tita Dom.

“Who accused him?” I asked.

“Some scallywags, you know. The police. Anyway, they picked him up in his house in Laguna and dragged him off to Crame. His wife paid the ransom, but he was already dead. They cut him up and flushed him down the toilet.”

“Did they find the people responsible?” I asked.

“Yes. The guys who cut him up were paid off with a set of fancy Korean golf clubs, and they got nabbed.” My aunt waggled her eyebrows with a dark humor. “What did those hoodlums want with golf clubs? Are these people going to all of a sudden start playing golf?”

“Maybe they thought they could sell them.”

“This is gruesome talk for the breakfast table,” Tita Rosa interjected. “We don’t want to put Ting off her food.”