Sources suggest the criminal was a member of the senator’s domestic staff. The president herself, who visited Zapanta last Thursday, said, ‘Our thoughts are with any colleague who experiences loss. Theft is theft: one feels violated, always.’
Vice-President Zapanta remains a key witness in the ongoing prosecution of his subsidiary company, Feed Us!, which collapsed with debts of two million dollars and was subsequently implicated in the hiking of rice import duties during the economic downturn last year.
The trial is now in its fourth year and the Star wishes to reaffirm that the vice-president denies all charges.
INQUIRER:
ZAPANTA MOURNS HIS LOSS!
Vice-President Senator ‘We are the people’ Regis Zapanta is said to be ‘extremely concerned’ at the loss – that is, the theft – of an undisclosed sum of money from his property last week. Sources close to the great man say that you can hear a pin drop – a banknote fall – and even the occasional groan of despair. Sources even closer say our much-loved vice-president is ‘enraged’ – and we all know what the senator’s rage has accomplished in the past.
Senator Zapanta achieved notoriety just three years ago when he ordered police to clear squatter camps to make way for his ground-breaking cinema/shopping complex. He was also made famous by a dramatic poster campaign aimed at the illiterate, featuring laughing orphans holding placards that spelled out his name – the children received no fee for their services.
The vice-president has always campaigned for wider education, whilst presiding over an education budget that has dwindled by 18% over two years.
He was not available for comment.
“WHAT THE HELL……?”
DAILY STAR:
Mohun’s diary
Check out the face of super-smiling Regis Zapanta, who’s now wearing a frown – just as the wind appears to be changing! Could the rumours be true? Is our man, who’s spent a lifetime swearing he’s clean, as oily as a back-axle?
If he really has lost ten million dollars, someone’s going to ask the question: ‘What was ten million dollars doing in your house, sir?’ We all need ready cash. We all keep a stash of change … But ten mill in dollars, just in case the ATMs are down?
Ten mill under the bed suggests someone’s either not paying their taxes, or stealing other people’s.
I didn’t say that, sir – don’t close my paper, don’t shoot my family!
UNIVERSITY VOICE:
ENOUGH
is enough, say students
The very fact that Vice-President Senator Regis Zapanta keeps millions of dollars of cash in his home suggests that he is part of a corrupt other world – and should not be re-elected. This country could still move forward, but it won’t until we’ve said goodbye to bad, greedy old men.
It’s time for someone young and new!
Charuvi Adarme, president of the students’ union, made her feelings plain in an impassioned address yesterday to those on the diploma programme.
‘Five years ago,’ she said, ‘Zapanta campaigned on the slogan, The brightest smile, the sharpest mind. I’d add to that, The most questionable conscience and the blackest heart. He’s spent more than three decades lining his pockets, and his main achievement is that he’s made the country’s poor feel worthless and powerless.’
What does the country need right now?
THREE THINGS:
A revolution.
Then a revolution.
Then – when the dust has settled – a revolution.
PART FIVE
1
Raphael, Gardo and Jun-Jun (Rat):
The Day of the Dead is about the biggest festival of the year out here – bigger even than Christmas and Easter together. It’s when ten million candles get lit, and the ghosts come up and walk around arm in arm, and everyone goes to see their departed ones, who stand up out of the ground and say hello.
That was why the traffic soon got slow, and before too long we were in a long jam – at last the taxi dropped us on the road that led off to the cemetery, and we walked in the smell of flowers.
There were crowds pushing everywhere.
People walked with kids and babies in their arms, whole big families, and some of the men had tables on their heads and chairs in stacks, on trolleys; they had cases of beer, great big bottles of water, and the ice carriers were dragging great slabs of ice, shouting for a way through. Little stoves, bags of food, and people dressed up as best they could, as if for a carnival – little girls in new dresses and the boys in ties, even though it was a hot morning. This is the day when your family is together again. You set up house by the grave, and sit and chat and eat and drink right on to midnight. By the time it gets to evening, the whole cemetery is glittering with the candles – and that’s when they say you need an extra chair, and an extra glass. That’s when you can turn round, and dead Grandma’s right beside you, old bones in whatever you buried her, smiling away with a hundred stories to tell. That’s when the kid you lost is playing around at your feet again, and if you had some quarrel with a brother who died, you can talk it through and settle it. Father Juilliard told Rat all about the resurrection one time, and I guess it’s this that he was talking about.
Rat says: I’ve never seen it, of course, but then I have no family here.
I do believe in ghosts, though, and on Sampalo island, where I’m from, people say they come out of the sea sometimes, if a boat goes down. They come into the village, sad as sad, and cry by your door all night. What do I know, though? I’d seen nothing like this.
Around us, the flower shacks got thicker and were overflowing with flowers till the scent lifted you off your feet. There were stores with sweet little Bible verses, plastic statues, plaques and postcards. The lottery sellers were everywhere, carrying wads of tickets and shouting. After all that, we came to the candle stalls – so many candles, thick and thin, tiny as your finger or too big to carry. Back from them there were food stalls, doing good business – and the three of us stopped and ate some fish, because we were hungry again and hadn’t had breakfast.
Raphael: I cleaned the blood off my arms, and Gardo said it was time for a plan. Opening up the Bible, we sat eating and reading, and nobody bothered us, because who’s going to get upset about even street kids, if they’re reading the Bible on All Souls’ Day? There was that breeze again, getting stronger still with all that flower smell, and we could feel the freak typhoon coming in on us again, ripping at the tents. It was going to be hard keeping the candles lit, so there were lots of people buying little jars for that reason.
I said, ‘Where we lay,’ and I scratched my head. ‘I guess he’s buried here. Does that make sense?’
‘He won’t be buried anywhere,’ I said (this is Gardo). ‘If the police killed him, he’s going to be burned up by now and in the trash. Also, he must have wrote all that before he died.’
That was true and we all agreed. But we also thought, What if his wife’s buried here? If that was the case, then Where we lay could mean the family grave. And that was what we decided to look for.
* * *
Rat now: I felt bad then, because that meant reading was needed. I couldn’t read, and that meant I’d be no use. There was nothing for it, though, so we finished our fish and started, and I carried the papers and the book and followed on.
Like I said, it’s the biggest graveyard in the city. Once through the gates, there were walkways spreading off to left and right, stretching for miles. We were soon lost in graves, trees and monuments. There were bushes and shrubs, and as we walked, great big angels would suddenly appear at you out of the leaves. Peaceful-looking Madonnas looking into the distance, and weepy little Jesuses on tiny little crosses, and then big-brother Jesuses stretched out, with eyes up to heaven. I had never been watched over by so many saints and I nearly got split up from the boys looking at them.
The tables were going up and picnics were opening. The parties were starting, and soon Raph and Gardo knew they’d never fi
nd one name in all these millions.
‘We can ask,’ said Raphael. ‘There’s an office with lists of names … is that a big risk?’
‘Everything is,’ said Gardo, looking around, still looking mean. ‘Everything has been.’
That was when I said I would do it. I said, ‘I can pretend Mrs Angelico did me a good turn and that I’ve come to say hi.’
So Gardo counted me back a bit of my money – he’d become the money-man after the deal with Marco. ‘Get her some flowers,’ he said. ‘That’ll make it real.’
That’s what I did, and it took three hours or more. There was a big queue of people, and I kept getting shoved back. When I got a guard to see me, he said he needed twenty to check the record – which was a lie, but I gave it to him. Then he went off and took ages, answering all sorts of other questions from people, so I just sat with my flowers, hoping he wouldn’t forget me altogether. It was late afternoon when I got my slip of paper, and Gardo thought I’d been off drinking.
‘B twenty-four/eight,’ I said to Raph. ‘He says, “Top of the slope and look for a pink angel.” ’
‘It’s getting dark,’ said Gardo. ‘Can you see pink in the dark?’
Raphael led the way, strong again, and ready.
Raphael now.
It was getting busier and busier because the evening is the busiest part of the day. There were barbecues starting up now, and people selling snacks. We were amongst wealthy people in very fancy clothes, and we felt even greyer and dirtier, but there was nothing for it, and still nobody was worrying about us – no one seemed to see us, like we were the ghosts.
After twenty minutes we got to the top of the slope.
I saw so many angels, and the light was way too bad to see a pink one, and I was ready to curse the guard who wasted our time – but then Gardo saw one made of marble, on a grave the size of a truck. In the candles it was pink as a salmon, and it was staring back over the city, arms up like it had just scored one hell of a goal. A great big family were sitting all around it, playing cards, and there were brandy bottles everywhere, and more people arriving, hugging each other.
We left them to it, and went in and out of the neighbouring graves, wondering what B24/8 might mean, and looking for the name ‘Angelico’, and finding nothing.
Soon it was completely dark, and we couldn’t read the names any more. So we went back to the pink angel, and climbed up on a wall nearby, and wondered what to do.
And that is when we saw the brightest light.
2
Raphael, Gardo and Jun-Jun (Rat):
We’d been looking in the wrong place, and the fool of a guard who took our money must have thought we knew the cemetery and didn’t bother to explain, or was just too lazy. The cemetery, you see, is divided by a wall – and that was the wall we were sitting on. The wall divides the rich quarter, where the dead get buried in earth, from the poor quarter, where the dead get stacked up in boxes.
We’d wasted the day walking among the rich when we should have been on the other side of the wall. The brightest light was the poor part of the cemetery, where thousands of candles were coming together as everyone streamed in after work. It was bright as day, bright as a furnace, and the candles were moving in great rivers as people made their way to their loved ones. It was like a little town down there, with narrow streets through all the tombs.
B24/8 would be the number of one of the concrete boxes.
Raphael: I remember Gardo looking at me and smiling, and then Rat gave me a hug because we’d cracked it again. We jumped down and came to a little broken doorway that let you into the other side. Right away, we saw a sign in the candlelight, high up on one of the grave-stacks. It said G9, so we moved past it, trying to work out the system.
It really was like a town: people lived in this part of the cemetery – they had houses there. There were little shanties built round the back of the grave-boxes. There were shacks up on top too – little huts and bits of plastic, and to get to them you climbed ladders. We could see kids running on the tops with a kite, getting it up into the typhoon breeze. So many people always, and it struck me again what my auntie used to say: there is nowhere people will not live.
We passed so many graves.
Saddest were the open ones – the ones that were broken open – and everyone knows that story, and I found myself looking away. Each little concrete hole costs the family two thousand-five for five years. You cannot buy a box, you see – you can only rent one. After five years you pay again, or the box is taken back. And people move away, or people spend the money, and sometimes the payment just doesn’t get made – so what happens? The sledgehammer is what happens. They break open the seal, and out comes the body. There’s a part of the cemetery where old bones are thrown and left to rot amongst the trash. Somebody’s child, or somebody’s grandma – out on the rubbish like a dog. The empty holes scared me, because nothing is more sad than that, and I didn’t want to look. They leave the bodies in there for a few weeks sometimes, hoping they’ll be claimed, because I guess nobody likes throwing people away like that.
Gardo.
I was working it out, though.
I led them round the back, and talked to some kids perched up on the grave-stacks. They pointed, and we found the track that was D, then C, then B, so then we came along, counting – fifteen, twenty and twenty-two. Four graves up, and there she was, we found her: Maria Angelico, wife of José Angelico, picked out on a little stone plaque. Raphael and me climbed up and leaned in to read, because the words under the name were small. The brightest light, they said, and I went cold, because those words were the ones we’d been following, and what we’d seen, and it was all coming together – we were close to the end. Around the words were scorch marks, from the candles that had been lit. Raphael read the words out to Rat, calling out loud because there were people everywhere and a lot of drinking going on and a lot of laughter. I looked at the box underneath, and I called that out too:
‘Eladio “Joe” Angelico,’ I said. ‘My good, good son.’
Raphael grabbed me and said, ‘We’re where we’re supposed to be! This is his boy.’
I said, ‘I know that.’ That was clear. But I was also thinking … What’s there to find? We’ve found the poor man’s family grave – is that really such a big deal now? This sad man, whose face we first saw when we found a wallet on the dumpsite … he loses his wife and his boy and we’re poking around, hunting his money? He couldn’t have hidden it here.
‘We’re where we should be,’ I said. ‘But he can’t have put it in a grave.’
‘I agree, ’ said Rat. ‘How would he do it?’
‘What’s that one there?’ said Raphael, looking up. ‘Is that his as well?’
He was looking at the stone above the man’s wife, and I had to climb higher up to see that one. It was clean and new, and the words were harder to read because the light was bad, so Rat handed me up a candle, and I figured them out slowly, Raphael helping.
‘Seeds,’ I said. ‘Something about those seeds again … Then it says: To har … vest. My. Child. It. Is … Something long, I can’t see.’
‘Accomplished,’ we said, together.
‘It is accomplished,’ I said. ‘It is accomplished. Love and … hope. And there’s a name – just a little name,’ and I traced it with my finger.
* * *
Raphael.
The name on the stone was Pia. Then, Dante. Pia Dante. I looked down at Rat. ‘Oh my,’ I said, and I felt so sad. ‘That’s the little girl.’
I thought of the photo, of the little schoolgirl with her wondering eyes, and felt so bad. We’d all thought she was alive, or hoped she was.
Rat said, ‘He lost everything, man …’
‘He was sending her to school,’ I said. ‘That’s what the paper said.’
‘It was in the letter too,’ said Gardo. ‘The letter to Mr Olondriz. If it comes to your hand, then you know I am taken. Ask after my daughter, please – use any influen
ce you have, for I am afraid for Pia Dante now.’
We were quiet a moment, and then I jumped down.
‘What now?’ I said. ‘What are we expecting to find here? What do we do?’
Gardo said, ‘I don’t know.’
I said, ‘A message, maybe? Look for another message …’
‘Where?’ said Rat. ‘Where’s he going to put it?’
We all looked around wildly, maybe thinking there’d be a letter, or some other clue – but it seemed pretty hopeless – it all seemed like a dead end.
‘We’ve got this far,’ said Gardo, getting angry like he does. ‘There must be something!’
‘Nothing,’ said Rat. ‘Where’s there to look, and what are we looking for? I think he was taken and killed before he could do anything.’
‘Maybe the police have been and got it?’ I said. ‘They tracked it other ways, maybe.’
Gardo sat down again. ‘Why is this so crazy?’ he said.
I sat next to him, and we thought and thought, but there was nothing to think. Then, right by us, a big family arrived, pressing into the graves with a load of candles and a cooking stove, so we moved off across the path and found a quieter place, higher up.
‘Look,’ I said. I couldn’t let it go. ‘If he had all that money … If he got away with it – if he really had a fridge full of money … Are we thinking he buried it here, with his wife and kids? Why would he do that?’
‘To come back later and get it,’ said Rat. ‘No one’s going to break open a paid-for grave, are they?’
‘The police would,’ said Gardo. ‘If they had even one slight suspicion. That’s why the code. If the police had got the letter we got – if they did what we did – went to the prison and saw Mr Gabriel … he would not have let on about the Bible and the book-code. So they would never have got this far.’ He smiled, and said what we all knew: ‘The man was smart.’