“Of course I do not know,” he said. “But they must be very powerful, and the longer we can keep them from knowing we are there, even for a day or two, the safer we will be.”

· 5 ·

An undertaker in Bacolod prepared the body. It arrived in Manila that afternoon and went out a few hours later. I never would have known if I hadn't called Dalzell, to tell him I wanted to look through Collins's effects.

     He asked, why would you want to do that?

     I said, because I sure would like to figure out what he was doing there in the middle of the night.

     That's when he told me that the body was coming in and his stuff ought to be with it. He said he'd go through and pull out anything that looked as if it could be business-related. It would be late, though. Why didn't I meet him tomorrow for breakfast?

     He gave me the name of a restaurant on Padre Faura Street. Or I took it for a restaurant; it turned out to be a go-go palace off Del Pilar, with a facade of gold-tinted plastic. Next door was a medical clinic: Dr. Lorenzo Suarez, Specialist in Diagnosis and Treatment of Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

     I walked out of the steamy morning, opening the door and pushing aside a black curtain. Inside it was dark and cool and still, no music, no dancers. At the back, beyond many tables where the chairs pointed their legs to the ceiling, was a horseshoe bar with a lit TV on the wall. That's where I found Dalzell and ten or twelve other Americans, perched on stools, watching basketball.

     First round of the NBA playoffs, he said. From Oakland, on the Armed Forces Network. We ordered food