up by each arm. He was stumbling, nearly deadweight, too far gone to resist. They got him down the stairs and crossed the walkway to the gate in the wall of the residence compound. They were practically dragging him now, and if anyone had seen them, the scene would have looked like exactly what it was: two thugs strong-arming a kid from the country.
But this was bustling Manila. Nobody noticed; nobody cared. They hustled the kid across the walkway and through the opening in the wall, Totoy shut the gate behind them, and it was done.
Twelve
Favor told Mendonza that he wanted to wait for the last plane of the day from Tacloban to Manila. It left at 7:35 p.m., which gave them a few hours to watch the building across the street from the pension house. The path from the moment of Marivic’s disappearance, traced backward in time, lay through the building. Therefore it was worthy of observation.
Patient and unobtrusive observation was a callback to their Bravo years. To go convincingly undercover, you learned to quietly absorb a place and a situation. Watch and listen … just be there.
While Mendonza left to buy the plane tickets, Favor stationed himself in a chair at the window with Mendonza’s camera and a telephoto lens. He watched young men and women entering the building, then coming out about an hour later with the gauze patch under a piece of tape. About four an hour, he guessed.
He had a good view down into the two first-floor windows. One showed a partial view down into the clinic’s waiting room. It showed a chair that was sometimes occupied, sometimes not. The other gave him an angle down into a room that Favor thought might be a storage area.
Through the powerful lens, Favor saw boxes of bandages and tape and latex gloves and tongue depressors. On a white counter along one side of the room, Favor could make out a rack with small vials, clear glass or plastic, sealed with a stopper. About every quarter of an hour, a middle-aged Filipino man in a lab coat—the doctor, Favor guessed—would enter the room and stand at the counter to fill one of the vials with dark liquid from a syringe. Favor knew this must be the blood draw from an examination, taken from another applicant. The doctor would seal the vial, write out a label, wrap the label around the vial, and place it in a small refrigerator under the counter. A couple of minutes later, one more young man or woman would leave the building: exam completed, application submitted.
This routine continued throughout the day, unvarying, into the afternoon. Mendonza returned after a while with a roasted chicken and rice and some San Miguel beer and soft drinks. Favor kept watching the building while he ate. When Mendonza stretched out on the bed to nap, Favor stayed by the window, sipping from a bottle of beer, patiently watching.
In the late afternoon, the light softened and shadows lengthened. The people of Tacloban began heading home. Traffic picked up in the street below, mostly jeepneys and three-wheel motorcycles with rudimentary covered passenger seats. In Tacloban, they were sometimes called trikes, sometimes sidecars.
At 5:55, the nurse from the clinic left the building and flagged down an empty trike. She folded herself into the passenger compartment and the trike buzzed off, skittering through traffic like a rasping water bug.
At 6:05, Lisabet Bambanao walked out of the front door and out to the sidewalk. She waved at a jeepney; it pulled across traffic to stop in front of her, and she climbed into the back.
A few minutes later, Mendonza woke and looked out the window. He checked his watch. The airport was about four miles away, ten or fifteen minutes. He told Favor that they ought to leave by quarter to seven, give themselves plenty of time to make the 7:35 flight.
“Sure,” Favor said. He was watching the second window across the street, the storage room. The doctor was at the white counter, but he wasn’t doing the usual routine of filling a vial this time. Instead he was reaching into the refrigerator and taking out a rack with a couple dozen filled vials, blood specimens.
He took a box from under the counter. The box was plain, cream-colored, no printing. He placed the rack with the filled vials into the box.
“You hear from Lorna’s boy, Ronnie?” Mendonza asked.
“No,” Favor said. “I thought he must’ve called you while you were out.” Favor was still