He released a happy groan and was grinning again. His English improved suddenly. He rambled on about glory, about his military days and many gangster triumphs, some of these two one in the same, it seemed. He boasted of running the show in China, which he called Manchukuo. “Special units,” he said. “We eliminated so many, we showed them,” he blathered on. Then he made sliced motions with an imaginary sword that was all too real. She was sure he had been in Nanking. It was just as she thought. But it was all hemming and hawing.

Then he said, “You are not my wife?”

“What? No, dear.”

“Where is she, eh?”

“She’s back home? That’s my guess.”

“Oh,” he said.

She rubbed at his thigh and squeezed his hand, wide and full of knuckles, all rough skin. “Now, like you were saying—you like to give me that location.”

He nodded. “San Mariel,” he whispered.

“What’s that?” She’d heard the name but had to be sure.

He opened his mouth to repeat it, but instead said, “Cagayan Valley.”

“Cagayan Valley. I see. Where’s that?”

“Cagayan Valley in the Philippines.”

“Philippines?”

“Oo,” he said, nodding, the two Os pronounced like Oh-Oh, then he clicked his mouth shut and wiped at his lips.

Oo meant yes in Filipino. She’d heard it on the plantation. She’d heard Frankie say it.

“Mabuti,” he added, which meant good.

That was it. Her job was done. She was only supposed to extract the name of the location. She was supposed to stop there. But the stuff in his drink was still working away. He stared at the ceiling fan, losing himself in its turns. He started talking to it, in a mix of Japanese and English.

“That big old mango tree, at base of hill. It all covered . . .” His mouth hung open.

Covered up? She waited it out.

“Beware!” he snapped.

She started.

His eyes darted. “Many traps. Many! All deadly. All dead . . .”

What was she going to do, not listen?

“Find him,” he muttered.

“Find who?” she whispered.

“De Garza. He the one.”

“He’s the one how?”

He shook his head. Sneered at the fan blades whirring. “Golden Lily,” he muttered eventually.

What was that? Was that his name for her or something else? She stared, willing him to say more.

He patted at his chest and looked at it with a gentle expectation, as if a carnation should’ve been pinned there.

“Whose name is that?” she asked.

“No who—what. But . . . Hindi na.”

No. No longer. “What is covered up?”

He beamed up at her. His eyes elsewhere, beyond those fan blades.

“You thinking of your wife? Your children?”

“You my wife,” he said. His eyes seemed to float in their sockets, and they were like glass balls on ocean. Empty. Going.

“Sure. That’s right. Sure I am,” she whispered.