Chet’s apartment at this time of day was very quiet. I had my books sprawled across the dining table and an espresso, made with the brand-new Italian machine that had appeared in the kitchen. Perhaps I could spend more time on headhunting. Without this and the human zoo, the Bontoc were just an ordinary tribe of brown people in loincloths, planting rice and hunting deer. Headhunting, a practice both religious and social, was basically a system of revenge. A Bontoc tribe would go on a mission to a Kalinga tribe to collect heads as restitution for an earlier assault that had resulted in the loss of heads, and this “settling” would go on and on. Given the practice, it was surprising that the males in these tribes hadn’t evolved into a shorter gender that terminated in a set of shoulders. But headhunting wasn’t always simple retribution. There was liget, an emotion that existed only among the headhunting tribes. Liget was a form of grief that laid one bare, that could be unburdened only through fearsome violence. Liget was an energized sorrow that led one to take a head.

My laptop was open to an intimidating, blank document—an accusation of smooth, pixelated white—that even the curious practice of headhunting seemed incapable of marring.

Having given up on my work for the day, I was currently using the good Wi-Fi to stream the latest season of Poldark as I flipped through a thick compendium of fabric samples. I could hear the cook and the maid chattering quietly as a soap opera played in the kitchen. Chet had wanted drapes in shades of beige, which he said would look natural, but the apartment, with its proscribed layout and expanse of glass, already inclined to the office-like. Curtains could warm the place up, although I did wonder why he needed curtains at all. The apartment was up in the clouds and thus, gloriously isolated.

When the phone rang, I thought it had to be Chet telling me that he wasn’t going to be back in time for dinner. But it was Zackito.

“Zacky, what are you up to?”

“Ting,” he said. “Where are you?”

“I’m at Chet’s. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Turn on the TV now. Channel Four.”

“Give me a minute.” The remote bristled with mysterious buttons, but I managed to navigate to Channel 4. The rapid-fire news story was difficult for me to follow. The police had discovered a body, another EJK. The body was lying on its back, a tall, thin person but hard to identify because the head had been wrapped entirely in yellow tape. Someone had taken the time to wrap that person’s head so neatly that it looked more like a hive than a head. I listened hard, listening also to Zackito’s breathing on the other end of the line—but all I could understand was the much repeated “droga,” drugs, and then a name, Sebastiano Pagangpang.