Chapter 24: Little good deeds

Back in his office, the mayor’s secretary told Boy Deo that three women purporting to be his lost mother wanted to see him. He instructed the secretary to send the three to the City Legal Officer with a note that a determination of facts be established and, if necessary, charges for misrepresentation be leveled against impostors.

The mayor further instructed the secretary that henceforth, all visitors with the same agenda should first be vetted by the legal officer.

Next caller was Reg Makatigbas. Although he lost in his presidential bid, he kept his job as senator. Half of his six-year senatorial term remained unspent that he could revert to. Boy Deo’s senate appearance had wedged a gap between him and the senator, but now that the heat of election-related tussles seemed to have cooled off, relations could be heading back to normal for the hawk and his protégé.   

Makatigbas and Sir Dikomo also appeared to have reconciled. The former mayor had confided to his rival for the presidency that he might be able to locate the birth clinic where Boy Deo was supposed to have been born and thereby help untangle his successor from the identity mess he was in. Almost everybody understood that Boy Deo had nothing to do with that mess, but he was being pilloried for it.

Boy Deo thanked Makatigbas for the latter’s courtesy visit. He also suggested a plan for all concerned—Makatigbas, Sir Dikomo, General Dimas Uy, Lt. Joey Ty and wife Olivia, Judge Vida De Gracia and David, her nephew, Sylvia Monir, Father Andoy, Teresa, Katalina, among others—to come together and celebrate his electoral victory. Makatigbas knew there was another agenda—to help Boy Deo sort of fill in his parentage vacuum—which he himself proposed.

At Boy Deo’s New Manila home, people gathered in what truly was a victory party. It was a food fest. Red wine, tequila, and Filipino beer flowed freely. Everybody was present—including the frail Judge Vida—and were having a good time. It was a night of fun… and a night of serious talk. There were surprises as well, especially for those who were seeing each other for the first time, such as Makatigbas and Katalina.

Also, it was an open secret among guests that Vida remained at odds with Sir Dikomo. “I have forgiven you and asked God’s mercy for our peace of mind,” she replied when Sir Dikomo approached her for a handshake, repeating his apology.

To help set a happy tone for everyone, Boy Deo broke the news that he had an idea of who his father was, but could not disclose names until he was a hundred percent sure of his information’s veracity. He suggested that nothing less than what his missing mother could substantiate was needed to erase all doubts.

Makatigbas and Sir Dikomo agreed that finding the way that would lead to Boy Deo’s mother was next on their agenda. They may have felt humiliated by their loss in the last election, but they lived, so to speak, to fight another day. And Manila’s Boy Wonder could be an ally in the future that no one would wish to oppose.

There was something even more compelling for both Makatigbas and Sir Dikomo. If helping Junie had become a personal mission for Joey, helping Boy Deo had also become a personal mission for Sir Dikomo, largely because of Vida, and for Makatigbas, all because of Teresa, and to some extent because of Junie and Joey.

Makatigbas felt he had not done enough to compensate the Biradayons for what happened to Osang. During the election campaign for the presidency, he made it a point to visit the Biradayons in Biringan. He arranged the visit to make it appear private, lest the media dig dirt and make a controversy out of it, but public enough to satisfy the need for recognition that his hosts expected. Careful not to offend the sensitivity of Teresa’s family, Makatigbas offered financial help not as a philanthropic gesture, much less a handout, but in the nature of mutual help. When Boy Deo appeared in the senate and introduced himself, Makatigbas asked him if he was related to the Biradayons in Biringan. Boy Deo told him he knew one Biradayon—Teresa—who adopted him when he was five years old.

For her part, Judge Vida pledged her support for the rectification of all legal documents related to the mayor’s identity. She could not stay long for the rest of the night, though. She soon asked herself to be excused. Father Andoy also left. 

Buoyed by drinks, talk wandered on the misadventures of their youth. Boy Deo volunteered some of his thoughts. “Those were the days when intervening factors bigger than us got in the way to change the course of history, I suppose.”

As he himself expected, Boy Deo didn’t quite make himself clear. Makatigbas wondered if the mayor was referring to his Biringan adventures. Sir Dikomo thought Boy Deo could be referring to allegations of his links to kidnappers.

Dimas Uy joined in; he reminisced about his field exploits in Mindesaba. He said he always liked to brag about the professionalism of his men. He mentioned Makatigbas was one of his more trusted lieutenants, whose idealism he could now see in Joey. “I was there when Reg started as a field trooper. Being caught taking missteps in their personal lives is a risk that troopers like him are exposed to. The field manuals help us navigate through enemy territories, but they hardly shield us from storms that batter our personal lives. That is not an excuse, of course, for whatever indiscretions that we, like anyone else, make.”

Minutes later, Teresa and Katalina also asked to be excused. Boy Deo ushered them out, leaving the military icons to themselves momentarily.

Joey seldom talked; he was visibly in awe of his superiors. This time he found his voice, addressing General Uy. “Sir, you are as popular as anyone out there. Why have you not joined politics?”

The question deserved to be responded to with equal daring. “I really don’t think joining politics is necessary. The military can always grab power from the civilian government any time it wants to.”

Everyone thought the revered general was having fun. He was taking liberties at all kinds of jokes he could crack. This one included, “I suppose the likes of Reg and Dikomo join politics simply for the funds of it.”

He was not done.

“Come to think of it, maybe there is even no need for the military to grab power because civilian government bows to the military anyway. Why attract screaming headlines when a little body language is enough to get what you want?”

Sir Dikomo felt obliged to respond in any way; after all, anything that made noise, as the saying went, was satisfactory to a crowd. He opened up as Boy Deo rejoined them. “General, if your theory is correct, then why don’t Joey’s communist friends just send their young recruits to the military academy? These recruits could be generals someday. Then communists could launch their revolution from within government, like Trojan horses?”

Boy Deo, whose association with Joey through his wife Olivia and Teresa had been attributed to, felt slighted. “I think we already have Trojans in OXD, if the gossips are something to go by.”

Boy Deo had stunned the military men with his senate testimony. He just did it again, probably prompting them to ask, what else does he not know?

Being the most senior, experience and age-wise, General Uy felt obliged to defuse the simmering tension among his friends. “I think Dikomo’s idea had been tried before. But it has yet to succeed. There have been one or two who received the rank of a general. You see, the point here is it takes more than that number of warm bodies to command a following big enough to ensure a successful revolution with the necessary support from an insider. And I think there is one frontier in the human being that remains beyond the reach of ideology, and even of technology.

“Conscience.”

General Uy paused, took a deep breath, paused again, then continued, “From the perspective of an organization, a group (and that may include crime syndicates), a nation (and that may include its police or military organizations), or a group of nations, man can rationalize, even justify, the murder of his fellow man.

“That is why we tend to dismiss the transgressions committed by fellow men and women in uniform, because we know that while we have weapons and the license to kill people, we do so to keep the government, and the State it represents, alive.

“But on the individual level, a murderer must go through the wringer of what his own conscience asks. Not many can bear the noise of the silent soul. Often, a man’s heart is too weak for that. And that explains why the communist infiltration of the military did not work. Same thing with OXD, if ever that one exists at all.

“The violence that persists today is no longer about ideology. It is hardly even about money. It is about conscience driven by anger. It is about revenge. Military men who lost friends and family decades ago continue to hunt the rebels, on the pretext that military actions are all sanctioned by government. Rebels—communists or Muslim separatists—who lost friends and family decades ago continue to hunt state troopers, on the pretext that this is what their cause demands.

“At the end of the day, there is a need for our country to have a leader whose vision and representation our people can believe in. One who can break this self-inflicted cycle of anger and violence among our people. And I am looking at our friend and host here, Mayor Boy Deo, who evidently is charismatic, idealistic, and competent. It would do us well if we rally our support for him, now and in the future.”

No one dared question General Uy’s monologue.

SIR DIKOMO REMEMBERED Tho Monir having told him the latter had possession of Sylvia’s documents. He tracked Monir in Malate where he was renting an office. He asked Monir to locate the old Sylvia documents.

Earlier, Sir Dikomo sought Sylvia for information when controversy over Boy Deo’s identity broke out. Sylvia told him she also tried to determine the parents of the abandoned child before she sold him to Trudie and Jovy. She said there might have been clues in the documents she left with Tho Monir but added the two of them were no longer seeing eye to eye. She further said she could not fully recall but suggested there might be contact details of the birthing clinic where the child was born. She hoped Tho was able to safekeep the documents.

At the top shelf of the storeroom where Tho kept his old files, he found Sylvia’s twenty-five-year-old-something folder. He gave it to Sir Dikomo.

Sir Dikomo scanned every paper in the folder. He did not find anything of consequence, except probably a one-fourth sheet of bond paper with notes that roughly indicated the address of a birthing clinic in San Miguel, Manila.

At the birthing clinic, the former mayor surprised everyone when he told them he was looking for old records. The clinic staff were more than happy to help him. After an hour of searching, they were able to locate the file of a patient that delivered a baby on April 16, 1985. The name of the patient was Katleya Ramos. Her address was in a compound in Aguila Street, near Mendiola. They called Sir Dikomo on his cellphone to tell him they had found something.

Sir Dikomo did not lose a minute looking for the address. When he reached the address, he found that a townhouse had replaced the compound in which Katleya was supposed to have rented an apartment. On further investigation, Sir Dikomo was referred to old residents at the corner of the street where they might have had information about renters in the old compound.

Somebody told him he knew of someone named Meldie De Masinloc who worked with Katleya. His informer said Katleya helped organize antigovernment rallies in Mendiola involving students and labor union members, adding the compound was once raided by the Metrocom because of her.

De Masinloc once lived across Aguila Street. Her former neighbors informed Sir Dikomo she had transferred to a condominium unit in Sagrario. When Sir Dikomo finally found De Masinloc in a condominium in Sagrario, he found out that she was living all by herself. He surmised that De Masinloc was a lesbian. From De Masinloc he also learned that Katleya was arrested by the police five days after she gave birth to a son.

“As she was frisked away by the police, she asked me to take care of the child,” De Masinloc said. “But she knew I go to the United States every six months, hence it was impossible for me to babysit the child. I guess she understood my predicament when I shook my head. Then she hastily added—‘can you find a way for one of the priests in Quiapo Church to take custody of him?’ So, one day in April—I think it was in 1985, if I am not mistaken—I dropped him in Quiapo in the middle of the night. I marked the box he was in with big black letters ‘Please send this boy to a priest in Quiapo Church.’

“A week later, I visited Katleya in Camp Crame. She was not there. Somebody in Camp Crame told me she went Sisa (a character in Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere who snapped and lost her mind when she lost her two sons); they sent her to the mental hospital. I feared she might have been summarily executed. So, I went to the mental hospital in Ocaranza just to make sure. I found her there, but there were intervals when she did not recognize me at all. You can go there yourself and check if she is still there.”

Sir Dikomo lost no time informing Boy Deo. He dialed the mayor’s cell phone number. He asked the mayor if he could come over. Just to make sure that there would be no surprises, Sir Dikomo told Boy Deo what he had just found. He advised Boy Deo to hear first what De Masinloc had to say. He added, “Try not to disclose that the boy she dropped in Quiapo is now the mayor of Manila so that she will have no reason to alter her story in any way.”

By instinct and by a habit developed by his military training, Sir Dikomo scanned his network that he thought would enable him to access more information. He dialed Reg Makatigbas to update him on his lead.

“Does the name Katleya Ramos ring a bell to you? She is alleged to have led some student organizations that staged antigovernment rallies at the time when you supervised Oplan GMRC, if I am not mistaken.”

Makatigbas froze for the second time in his military life. Never had he felt this numb, immobile, and speechless during his early years as a government trooper, ducking live bullets in the Ispratly and Cubacabana war zones.

The first time he experienced this kind of feeling was when Teresa confronted him about Osang, and the daughter he had with her that Teresa told him had been renamed Katleya Ramos.   

Minutes later, the lobby of the condominium teemed with people. Some of them were carrying TV cameras. It was rare for a place like this one to be visited by a mayor; in this case, the visitor was not only the mayor but also accompanied by the former mayor of the city, along with a senator.

De Masinloc could not hide her excitement when she saw Boy Deo, Sir Dikomo, and Makatigbas. Sir Dikomo asked De Masinloc to tell the present mayor what she had narrated to the former mayor. De Masinloc repeated her tale with gusto.

The thought that she was unable to help Katleya in her time of desperation had been a burden she needed to unload, De Masinloc confessed. For two decades she had suffered the fate of being a prisoner of her own conscience. Truth be told, she had shared Katleya’s story with acquaintances several times before. She didn’t feel relieved then. It was totally different talking to Boy Deo and company about Katleya. In her excitement, she could not help but ask Boy Deo what his birth date was. Boy Deo smiled but said nothing.

De Masinloc tried again. “By the way, how old are you, Mayor?”

Boy Deo joked that his age was half her age. De Masinloc thought how foolish it was for her not to think about Katleya when the much-publicized identity crisis hit the mayor several months ago. On the spur of the moment, she rushed inside her room. When she re-emerged, she gave Boy Deo a picture of a mother and her child.

“That one is Katleya.” De Masinloc pointed at the mother in the picture. Boy Deo thanked her. He pushed the picture inside the left pocket of his jacket.

When Boy Deo, Sir Dikomo, and Makatigbas left for the mental hospital in Ocaranza, the TV camera crews and tens of reporters followed them.

Boy Deo did not show any emotion the first time he saw Katleya. If De Masinloc’s story was true, then all the pain he suffered as a child and as a teen was nothing compared to what Katleya had gone through. For her part, Katleya was noncommittal, behaving as if nothing unusual was happening to her surroundings, despite the sudden surge of onlookers. She did not look different from the wretched and homeless women he saw every day when he was a child grinding it out in Quiapo.

Boy Deo asked the permission of hospital management for him to bring Katleya home, saying she was a member of his family. The hospital had no record of her family members, so the staff considered it a breakthrough that somebody as famous as the Manila Mayor would come forward to claim her as one of his own.

Boy Deo was turning 30. He surmised that if Katleya was her mother, she must have been sick, deprived of family and of liberty for 30 years also. He doubted if sane people would have the emotional capacity to survive such an agonizing stretch, one that spanned his own lifetime. He remembered the other day’s gospel.

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” 

He rationalized that one did not need to be literal about everything; but how he wished he could commit more time to visit people who are serving time in jail and recovering from sickness in health wards, family relations or not.    

The mental hospital staff suggested that Katleya be transported in a separate vehicle. But Boy Deo insisted that she sit beside him. A hospital doctor and a nurse accompanied them.

On board the ambulance, Makatigbas whispered to Boy Deo if it was ok for the nurse to get him a blood sample of Katleya, to which Boy Deo did not object.

Katleya remained expressionless the whole time she sat beside Boy Deo in the vehicle. When the convoy of vehicles arrived at his New Manila home, Boy Deo studied Katleya’s poise. She answered questions thrown at her, even from among the press. Often, she sounded sensible to him.

He decided not to ask her about anything for as long as he did not feel confident enough to kind of break the ice with her. The doctor explained to him her condition, diagnosed as psychosis with severe dysfunction caused by depression and schizophrenia, adding that a family environment could help her recover her sanity.

Boy Deo next dialed Father Andoy. He asked the priest if it was possible for him and somebody he referred to as “a guest” to see Father Revo at the hospital. It was Friday the thirteenth in June of 2014, the feast day of Saint Anthony of Padua, patron saint of lost items.

Father Andoy cheerfully granted Boy Deo’s request. Minutes later, Father Andoy ushered Boy Deo and Katleya into Father Revo’s room. It was the first time the four of them saw each other together.

Boy Deo could tell from Father Revo’s facial expression that the priest had recognized Katleya. But her own usual noncommittal behavior did not encourage the ailing priest to offer any gesture of greeting or salutation. Boy Deo did everything under the circumstances to help Katleya feel relaxed. He turned an electric fan on and helped her take a seat opposite Father Revo. Boy Deo also sat down next to the priest.

Boy Deo understood what kept the surprise meeting awkward. He offered Father Revo an explanation. “She is Katleya Ramos. We just fetched her from the mental hospital.”

When Father Andoy and the hospital doctor left the three of them alone, Boy Deo pulled the picture out of his pocket and showed it to Katleya from a distance of about seven feet. Boy Deo and Father Revo could see every muscle that moved in her face. For the first few seconds she did not show any interest in the picture. But Boy Deo kept showing it in front of her. Then she stared at it, initially with hesitation, until she got so engrossed with the picture that she seemed to be oblivious to anything and anyone else. Then tears started to roll down from her eyes.

Boy Deo could no longer take it. He got up and hugged Katleya. She sobbed in his chest.

Before the three of them left, Father Revo gave the Leo Benedicto ring to Boy Deo. "Hope you keep it. I hope that one day you will be able to accept me as your father."

Boy Deo replied: "I will keep it. Thank you... Dad."

Then they headed for the exit door.

After a few reluctant steps, Boy Deo stopped. He glanced back toward his father. "If it was up to me to forgive you, and if there was anything for which you need forgiveness, as you asked the other day, you are forgiven."