Father Revo asked Monsignor Ubanon in private if the Rector thought it was odd for Sir
Dikomo to take Franco away before he could announce to the press that the
kidnapping victim had been found. They agreed in the observation that the media
had to some extent turned the Quiapo kidnapping into a high-profile case,
therefore it would have been a tremendous image-booster for Sir Dikomo to once
more edify yet another sterling accomplishment of his in a press conference.
Monsignor Ubanon
agreed with Father Revo that it might have been better to talk Sir Dikomo out
of his plan to take the child away without first informing the press. However,
he decided against Father Revo’s suggestion that the child be brought to the Hospisyo
instead of the Social Welfare Office, until his parents were identified so they
could reclaim him.
“I miss Father
Andoy,” Monsignor Ubanon told Father Revo. Like priests who had been open
target for tabloid items, Father Andoy was shipped to another diocese where he
was deemed less known by parishioners. He could return to Quiapo after five
years, however. Or he could have been sent to Rome for advanced studies in
Theology, but his academic profile hardly endorsed him for such an opportunity.
Very likely
Monsignor Ubanon was referring to what happened in an all-star baptism of an
abandoned infant about five years ago.
“Yes,” Father Revo chimed in. “He had a way of putting himself in the middle of anything that others would shy away from.” And they both chuckled.
THE
OXD TRIO TOLD General Makatigbas that they needed to be reimbursed when the
latter directed them to drop the operation involving Vida’s child. They asked
for half a million pesos for a month-long surveillance and for the Lancer which
they deemed condemned. The general commented that the person to talk to on OXD
matters was Dikomo. When they replied that Dikomo might have lost trust in them
and were therefore asking the former boss to relay their sentiment to Dikomo,
Makatigbas assured them of his help. But he also explained that the more
immediate concern was to establish the parentage of the child, and to re-unite
him with Judge De Gracia if indeed he was her surrogate child.
The trio adopted
two contingency plans. One was to remain with OXD provided they got compensated
within the next twenty-four hours. The longer it took for them to get paid, the
higher the odds that they would never be paid at all. The other required a tougher
decision-making process. They assumed that, given General Reg’s telling them
that the child was assumed to belong to Judge De Gracia, it had become too
risky to reclaim the child due to her connections within the law enforcement
agencies. But in the event they would indeed find a way to reclaim the
child—against all odds, that is—they could demand no less than a 3-million-peso
ransom, given Judge De Gracia’s rumored wealth.
At five thirty
p.m., 14 April 1990, Punzi received a call from El Odon. On the night of the
previous day, she closely studied the mien of both El Odon and Boynas Diaz. She
thought El Odon was easier to negotiate with. She discreetly approached him and
showed him her duplicate badge. She offered him two thousand pesos in exchange
for information on the whereabouts of the child. Another five thousand pesos
would be given to him if any information he gave to her was deemed helpful for
her work.
On the phone, El
Odon told her that he heard the police would transfer the boy from the rectory
to Sir Dikomo’s office across Lanciano Boulevard.
“A press… press
conference had been… been set… set at eight p.m. eight p.m. in his office…
office,” El Odon reported.
The distance
between the rectory and Sir Dikomo’s office was less than three hundred meters
and, in the trio’s assumption, Franco’s security would probably use the Aguinaldo
Underpass to cross Lanciano Boulevard.
Benjo and Ivanho
moved quickly. Benjo had earlier talked to the Warden of Manila City Jail, who
was a friend from a long time ago when Benjo was still in the police force.
They started as acquaintances when Benjo was attending court hearings. Benjo
offered the warden five thousand pesos for the services of three prisoners,
preferably petty criminals from the Quiapo area, and another one thousand pesos
for honorarium of the guards who would be assigned to secure the detainees. The
task was for the prisoners to clean the streets from Sunday’s litter around
Quiapo in the evening, escorted by prison guards who however did not know what
was going to happen except to prevent any escape. Three prisoners would
normally require three guards, but in this instance, only two guards had
reported for duty.
The prisoners
tripped each other for the opportunity of being sent out on errands like this.
They knew that a number of hours of community service would be deducted from
the full length of their jailtime. There had been other assignments aside from
the so-called Good Conduct Time Allowance incentives, such as those that
entailed payment of “professional fees.” They mostly referred to renting
prisoners as hired assassins, whose cells functioned like safehouses.
At about seven
thirty p.m., Benjo, who had disguised himself as an itinerant vendor, stayed
close to the entrance of the Aguinaldo Underpass at the Plaza Roma side. He was
assuming that Sir Dikomo and his men would take this route to transfer Franco
from the convent to his office across Lanciano Boulevard.
Punzi and Ivanho
were at the Lanciano Boulevard side of the Underpass, just across from where
Benjo was. The trio planned a scenario where a commotion, to be triggered in
large part by Quiapo’s habitués—so that Sir Dikomo would not suspect somebody
was on the loose trying to snatch Franco—could create enough distraction for
the toddler’s security.
Unknown
to them, Sir Dikomo had his own counter-security steps all planned out and set
for execution, in the event something untoward happened. Plan A was to bring
Franco in on board a secure car, from the convent then south toward Mediatrix
Street and back to the other side of Lanciano Boulevard. Plan B—in the event
there was heavy traffic at Mediatrix—was for the fetching unit to cross Lanciano
Boulevard on foot via Legnica Overpass. The Aguinaldo Underpass route was the
last and the least likely option.
Sir Dikomo had the
foresight not to inform Vida about Franco before the press conference, because
that, to him, was a sure way to invite unknown forces at the behest of General
Uy. In the eyes of the venerable Judge Vida, and most especially before the
press, he did not wish to share the limelight with any law enforcer to whom one
way or the other she could be indebted for the rescue of Franco.
Benjo could be
seen next as if he was in an earnest conversation with a bystander. The latter
would move toward another huddle, this time involving what appeared to be two
loose groups—a game of dama (a local derivative for chess) was in progress in
one of them while a card game was about to begin in the other. These diversions
often morphed into drinking sprees as evening progressed deeper into the night.
At least two, one after the other, followed the bystander’s prompting; they got
up to have a better look at a street sweeper some sixty meters away.
“You looking for
Bodabil?” one of the card wagers asked the bystander.
“No, he was asking
if anyone remembers Bodabil, the snatcher of Sta. Cruz…” volunteered an
onlooker of the dama game.
“I remember the
name, but not the face…” shared another. “He stabbed the friend of a friend.
Let me correct myself, my guess is that he is a member of a big-time
kidnap-for-ransom syndicate with reward money on his head.”
The unwritten rule
among gangsters in the area was that there was hostility toward anyone who
harmed their kind. Often what determined which gang ruled over a territory was
the clandestine support given by some members of the police who demanded
protection money. Whichever gang delivered on a consistent basis their end of
the unwritten contract with the police was assured of continued operation of
whatever underground business they were into.
Quiapo had been a
prime location for gangsters as it was for men of the cloth. It need not be
said that in this church, clergymen collected bumper harvests from
devotees—although they represented just a small portion of total donations
collected during mass—that flocked to the church every day. Those harvests were
made more abundant during Sundays and Fridays. Even priests from faraway places
could request, especially if they had connections to the hierarchy, to
officiate one of the Friday masses on the ground that they needed extra funds
for their respective parishes, such as when they got hit by calamities. The
immortal joke was that the calamities included fellow priests getting their
girlfriends pregnant.
The crowd
attracted predators of all kinds—snatchers, swindlers, sellers of fake items,
petty criminals, organized criminals, etc. Like barracudas that ambush a school
of mackerel, these predators, some of them itinerant just like many of the
churchgoers who came from faraway places, freely pounced on unsuspecting
prey.
Quiapo was also a
haven for beggars. Devotees who came to either ask or thank the Black Nazarene for
whatever favor they felt had been granted to them were likely to cast
sympathetic eyes upon the downtrodden.
“Let’s take a
look, shall we?” It was a command, not a question, from the one who most likely
was the boss.
The
Bodabil they were referring to was Yago to his friends and acquaintances in the
Sta. Cruz area. In the hierarchy of the underworld, he was the thief among all
thieves. Specializing in snatching and pickpocketing, he could have easily won
grand slam titles if awards were given to sleight-of-hand artists. He was so
good at his craft that he once stole a 24-carat gold necklace from the pool of
stolen items being kept at the safehouse maintained by Police Officer Domingo
“Madis-ogon” de Sabado, one of Sir Dikomo’s sidekicks. Madis-ogon had a
three-day window within which to determine if claimants (victims of theft) that
came forward were known to him, or known to his relations, friends, or fellow
policemen. If after three days no one came forward to complain with the police,
Madis-ogon would proceed to sell the stolen goods through his network of fence
buyers. Pawning these hot items was also common practice, especially when the
need for cash was urgent. Proceeds were divided among the team, with Madis-ogon
and the thief who brought in the stolen item getting the lion’s share.
Madis-ogon in turn shared the loot with some of his accomplices at the police
station.
The standard
procedure at the police station was to reassure complainants of theft that the
police would let them know in the event the thief was apprehended and the
stolen item was recovered. Complainants were then requested to leave their
addresses or contact numbers at the help desk.
When a victim came
forward to complain with the police and the latter was able to determine later
within the three-day window period that he or she was fair game, the item
stolen from him/her went to the selling or pawning block. Otherwise, Madis-ogon
would come out to produce the stolen item and return it to the victim, who then
would normally show his or her appreciation to the policeman by offering
thank-you gifts. Testimonials praising Madis-ogon were told and retold in the
neighborhood. In a hypothetically morbid event that Madis-ogon passed away
today, mourners praising his good deeds would far outnumber those cheering the
end of his worldly existence.
Yago used to be a
freelancer in the Tepeyac area, a few blocks northeast of Quiapo, victimizing
mostly students. Aside from pickpocketing, he also mastered the evil trick of
shortchanging customers when he moonlighted as a sidewalk vendor. The modus
worked when a customer paid a large bill. He counted the change (consisting of
smaller bills) before the victims’ eyes. Then he rolled with one of his
concealed fingers more than half of the bills toward his palm just as he
pushed, which he used as distraction, the remaining wads of bills to the
waiting open palm of a victim.
While he got his
“earnings” all to himself, he flirted with near-fatal mishaps in at least three
instances. The first—after he snatched a necklace—was when he tripped over a
boulder while fleeing from a mob. He broke one of his right ribs. This happened
in 1974 when he was barely fifteen.
The second
happened a year later. His pickpocket attempt went awry when he fumbled the
wallet of the victim inside a passenger jeepney. The victim happened to have
several companions inside the jeepney, and he got lynched. Perhaps the only
reason his attackers left him alive was because of his being a minor.
And the third—as
the cheating vendor—happened when he tried to cheat a customer of the latter’s
change. The would-be victim saw through his deception and, after a commotion,
Yago got himself stabbed, with no clear identification of who the suspect was.
The policemen who attended to the crime scene sent him to a public hospital. He
was confined for three weeks.
At the hospital,
the attending physician remarked that Yago was lucky the hostile weapon missed
his heart by no more than an inch.
The police in the
Sta. Cruz, Quiapo, and even Iztapalapa areas had a general profile of most of
the people who got involved in petty crimes, either as suspect or victim, or
both. The ones that brought Yago to the hospital knew that he had been a
suspect more times than he had been a victim. They sent an emissary from the
underground network to talk him into joining their team, supposedly the elite
band of gangsters in the area.
Aside from the
fact that Yago had felt indebted to the police and their cohorts for bringing
him to the hospital (and therefore helping save his life), and for settling his
hospital bills (an amount that was relatively big for an itinerant gangster
like him), it had become clear to him that he needed some kind of mob help: a
sort of insurance or protection cover.
While returns for
him were high as a freelancer, risks to his life and limb were also high. He
needed alliances with whom to share his expertise. Back in the street a month
later, Yago was in as a member of Madis-ogon’s elite rogue team.
At nineteen, Yago
was the top producer for Madis-ogon’s gang. Within that team was his own
unit—called “Bodabil,” a code name for their cover which referred to “My Way,”
a cabaret house in Sta. Cruz that earned a reputation for their vaudeville
shows. However, a big portion of My Way’s income came from an integrated
prostitution ring it operated, which counted among its patrons the rich and
famous, particularly politicians.
Aside from Yago,
Bodabil consisted of veterans, namely: Ricardo “Tirador” Tacastacas, Ferdinando
“El Kupitan” Biglang-awa, and Paquito “Kamao” Sarabosing—the one who “stabbed
the friend of a friend.” They dabbled as on-call bouncers and referral agents for
My Way. As referral agent, the team earned commissions from every amount spent
by customers they sent to the establishment, including “bar fines” for the
dancers, entertainers—even receptionists and waitresses—who also moonlighted as
prostitutes.
Yago reinvented
himself under Madis-ogon’s wings. Where before he pounced on every opportunity
to steal—victimizing students, commuters, professionals, and paupers alike,
even fellow thieves—he now targeted mostly patrons of other establishments that
competed with My Way, especially those who showed signs of being drunk. Where
before—being untrained and finding that making a living from honest labor was
too complicated for him—he stole for survival, now he stole for business
strategy.
Too often he heard
tipsy customers—like big-time contractors and the politicians they brought
along—brag about how easy it was to steal and make money from government
projects. In more ways than one, Yago found meaning to and justification for
his own meandering ways.