Hector Urdaneta did not know it yet, but the tingling in his left arm was the precursor to a massive heart attack. That Saturday seemed to pass uneventfully – the usual stroll through Luneta Park with his wife and daughters, lunch at The Aristocrat for steamed pork siopao and mami noodle soup, then home to prepare for work. Despite martial law being imposed that September, life was good, or so Hector thought. But in the early hours of December 10, 1972, a distressed trainee escorted the military police to the air traffic control tower at the new Manila International Airport.
Hector was dead.
Whether it was a cock-up or a conspiracy, the investigation into Hector’s death had concluded well before the day shift controllers arrived. The MPs ruled it a natural death, just your garden-variety heart attack. No autopsy. No inquest. He was, after all, a middle-aged man in a high-stress job. His body, though still muscular, was showing signs of age and overindulgence. His time was up.
Hector would have vehemently disagreed, but sadly, dead men tell no tales. In his dying moments, his fingers scrabbled for the keyboard, and what he could only describe as a wasabi headache radiated from his greying temples to his tightening jaw. All the while, memories of the previous day flashed before him. Luneta Park… Something in his past had come to roost. He had seen someone, he thought, but his memory was failing as he fell atop the radar display.
***
December is the rainy season in Manila, and tonight, the streets were rivers of murky brown water as the sewers filled to capacity. Just before midnight, on his way to work, Hector inhaled a heady mix of ozone and perfume from the carachuchis trees outside the Plaza Hotel. The MPs stopped Hector’s shiny Volkswagen Beetle. A soldier – perhaps no older than his eldest daughter – rapped his knuckle on the driver’s side window. Hector produced his driver’s license and work badge.
At that moment, the poison in Hector’s system produced an eruption of gastric acid. Indigestion? He would ask his wife to pack antacids and a bottle of Yakult next time. Hector drummed his fingers on the metal lunchbox his wife had packed. A retired naval officer like him had no reason to be nervous. Yet no one was above suspicion these days, so he willed his labored breathing still. Curfews had become a regular part of life. Checkpoints dotted the capital region and the provinces in response to increasing guerilla attacks. He had to get used to these stops, or he would die of an ulcer.
Hector arrived at the airport later than he would have liked, his years in the armed forces having ingrained punctuality in him. He was proud of his service to his country, commanding a patrol boat in the South China Sea. In hushed tones in the breakroom, he sometimes bragged to his new team how his crew had captured a notorious drug runner whom the military secretly executed by firing squad. Unfortunately, a gunshot to the leg took him out of commission, and now he was managing the night shift at the Manila Airport control tower.
Standing before the expansive windows, Hector admired the Manila skyline. The glittering lights along the tarmac reminded him that Christmas was just two weeks away. At Robinson’s Department Store, he had spied a tortoiseshell cigarette holder to replace his wife’s current black one. Would that be enough? For good measure, maybe throw in a handbag with those bamboo handles that were in fashion. He thought he might buy a fountain pen for himself and Swiss chocolates for the girls’ stockings. Nothing too bongga, nothing too ostentatious.
These were dangerous times. The mere suggestion of civil servants taking bribes could land someone on the muddy floor of a detention camp deep in a mosquito-riddled forest. You had to fly under the radar, as it were. Hector laughed to himself. Under the radar, indeed.
Securing his headphones, Hector watched as the yellow line swept the radar screen. He guided two commercial flights that had been cleared for takeoff. From his vantage point, Hector spotted two cargo planes whose flight plans he reviewed and cleared.
He was unsure why, but about an hour into his shift, unexpectedly, he felt he was being watched. The sensation had visited him earlier at Luneta Park and again at The Aristocrat. Feigning interest in a colleague’s work shirt, Hector looked over the man’s shoulders, surveying the reflections in the tower’s windows. It was a skeleton crew tonight: a junior supervisor, three other air controllers, a female trainee, and the elderly janitor. No one was watching Hector, but old habits die hard.
The trainee piqued his interest. It was unusual to have women in air control towers, let alone attractive ones. Except for the blue eyeshadow and heavy eyeliner, he found her pleasing. Tonight, her shapely legs were accentuated by white leather boots that clung to her calves. Hector felt the blood rushing through his body, mistaking it for desire.
She had been on his mind since he bumped into her on the elevator, the back of his hand skimming the soft skin below the hem of her dress. It was she who bumped into him that day, wasn’t it? He had thought about her more and more. He even thought he had seen her in Luneta Park yesterday. He waved, but it turned out to be an older woman.
Pearl earrings instead of the handbag, Hector interrupted his thoughts. They had the money, bundles of facilitation payments hidden in the false bottom of his wife’s sewing machine. He would add a pair of earrings to his wife’s presents as penance for his dalliances. The trainee would be worth his wife’s displeasure. The lady would be an excellent lover to take.
She was a pretty, young thing. Quiet. Seemingly unaware of the tumult she created in men’s hearts and other parts. He would enjoy corrupting her. He would chat her up later, suggesting they take their cigarette break on the tower’s observation deck, away from prying eyes.
Later never came.
Upon hearing his death cry, Hector’s employees rushed to his station only to find him slumped on the radar display. What appeared to be a pool of blood was determined to be sauce from the cherries jubilee Urdaneta’s wife had packed in his lunchbox along with a note:
With all my love.
All flights were grounded until Hector’s body had been removed. In the break room, men in fatigues interrogated anyone present at the time of Hector’s death. There was a cursory search of his body, desk, and car. There was no sign of foul play. Had there been signs, it would be another twenty-two years before toxicology tests could detect the poison in Hector’s blood.
***
The failed assassination of Hector Urdaneta, a corrupt Naval intelligence officer, was a success even if he had not died at her hands. In a dim corner of the control tower, behind the small desk that Urdaneta allowed her to have, the thwarted assassin adjusted her white boots. She flicked open the lighted compact and refreshed her blue eyeshadow. She would take credit for the hit. The rat had, after all, been eliminated.
Just before Urdaneta retired from the Navy, he had been embedded with a Coast Guard team tasked with hunting down modern-day pirates, illegal fishing boats from Malaysia and Indonesia, and drug smugglers. Urdaneta was dirty and played both sides, lining his pockets with bribes from smugglers while passing on useless information to a newly created drug task force. He could never have imagined how the “useless” information he peddled would lead MPs to a squalid souvenir shop in Manila’s Chinatown. Hiding in the back room was none other than Lim Seng, a notorious drug smuggler who had avoided capture for decades.
Seng’s arrest sent shockwaves through his organization, threatening to destabilize it. His deputies demanded swift retribution to send a clear message – don’t fuck with us. It would start with the informant. And so, the hunt for Hector Urdaneta began.
The retired naval commander would not be an easy target. He was careful and circumspect, the product of years as a military spook. He lived in a gated village. Armed guards patrolled the subdivision with machine guns slung across their bodies. According to some reports, the family cook and gardener were Urdaneta’s old naval bodyguards turned family protectors. No, it would not be easy, but her clients had the resources. She had the skills.
Among his social set, Urdaneta was known to be a righteous family man. Among his colleagues, though, his womanizing was an open secret. That was the way in. She greased the palms of airport officials to secure a spot in the trainee program. She planned to seduce Urdaneta before torturing and killing him, the prospect of which aroused her.
***
The trainee stepped out onto the observation deck for some fresh air, where she happened upon the janitor. He offered her a puff of his menthol cigarette, its mostly spent body burning smaller and shorter between the janitor’s calloused fingers. It reminded the trainee of a smart, black cigarette holder she had spotted from a distance yesterday in Luneta Park. The holder had been cradled between the elegant fingers of Urdaneta’s wife. She recalled the discrete tap-tap tapping on the slim tube above his soda can at the park. Urdaneta’s wife had repeated the gesture above his bowl of noodle soup.
It dawned on the trainee that she had not imagined the white powder falling from the cigarette holder. Nor had she imagined the cigarette that never seemed to burn low on that fateful Saturday afternoon when Urdaneta nearly caught sight of her among the crowd. It was a failure of the trainee’s imagination, her blindness to what a woman might be capable of, that made her underestimate the cunning of Urdaneta’s long-suffering wife.
[Image Credit : Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash]
Madeleine Tan is a Dallas-based author who believes a clue is just a mistake in disguise. Born in the Philippines and raised in the birthplace of Rock and Roll, her taste for murders runs the gamut from cozy to dark thrillers.
