Subic: Alleys of Heaven

By Dean Minnich

Clete Bass likes to sit in a lawn chair on the roof of his bar in Olongapo, The Philippines, drinking San Miguel beer and basking in the freedom of the life of a retired navy SEAL. The war in Vietnam is hitting its peak, the boys in uniform from America are steaming down the dusty streets looking for hot women and cold beer, and Bass has both to offer in ample supply. But even an old Asian hand can be seduced, and when the son of his old high school sweetheart walks into his bar, Bass finds himself taking stock of the life he has chosen. Always able to walk the line or turn his back, he now finds himself forced to face a choice put upon him by a local gangster, and no matter which way he goes, Bass loses.

[Author bio]Dean Minnich is a veteran navy photojournalist and newpaperman who still writes a column twice a week. He was written five books, including two collections of humor and two novels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 1, 2000
• ISBN: 9781469731247

Book preview

OLONGAPO,THE PHILIPPINES,JUNE, 1967

When it’s hot and humid and the sampaguita’s sweet fragrance fills your lungs, a Philippine night hovers over you like a lusty woman.

That’s what I was thinking, grinning to myself, as I lounged in my lawn chair on the flat-topped roof two stories above the street, draining sweating bottles of San Miguel, and taking in the sights and sounds of my world, the streets of Olongapo, Zambales, Republic of the Philippines.

On the wooden deck beside my chair was a pot containing the ravaged remnants of a killer stew called sinigang—sort of a Filipino version of bouillabaisse, with a sour sauce made with fruits and leaves of native plants. Music from the rock band from the bar downstairs was thumping through the rafters, vibrating through my aluminum lawn chair and giving me a little external tingle to go with the internal effects of the food and beer.

To the west, out over Grande Island and beyond, over the South China Sea, flat-bottomed towers of darkness laced the purple skies with flashes of light. Below me, neon and dust mingled to create a Technicolor haze, a rainbow smoke like an old Gene Kelly stage set. The dancers are the people of the streets, the sailors and marines on liberty, the hookers lounging in the doorways of the bars, the armed guards with riot guns at the money changing stands. Bleating Jeepneys, colored as if they had been dipped in a rainbow swirl of melted wax, nosed along in the crowded street, adding their exhausts to the odors of marijuana and beer and pork cooking on grates over buckets of coals on the curbs.

It was a little Bourbon Street and a little Tijuana. Tinny voices hawking sex and music and cold beer. Music spilling out of a hundred bars along the main drag. A town where, like a buddy of mine once said, every night is the Fourth of July and every morning after is April Fool’s Day.

I had my first falling-down drunk in that street seventeen years earlier, back in 1950, when I was still a skinny-necked kid. I had started my first night of liberty in The Philippines at the base enlisted men’s club with a steak and baked potato and a beer, and had steamed out Spanish Gate looking for a piece of ass and a lot more beer and a party time, and I got more than I had bargained for.

I got laid, all right, and good and drunk. I also got rolled for my watch and cash, liberty card, PX card, shoes, belt and white hat, and then suffered the indignity of a night in the base brig for having questioned the ancestry of the marine shore patrolman who was loading me into the back of a patrol wagon to return me to my ship. It was a good time.

And three days later, just as I thought I might live, I discovered that I had contracted a case of clap. Welcome to Olongapo, Gunners Mate Cletus Bass, late of Hampshire, Maryland, more than a world away.

I vowed never to go over into the squalid little city on edge of Subic Bay Naval Base again. I’d promised myself that on a Tuesday, the day my restriction and quarantine was lifted, and by Wednesday I was back in the streets, lured as if some angel of debauchery had taken hold of my soul. But I was a wiser traveler, and as the years went by, I learned how to handle myself in the streets of Olongapo, and developed a respect for The Philippines, and the Filipino people. I took a Filipina for a wife; a common law wife, but as formal as it gets for China sailors like me. And when I retired after 20 years in the United States Navy, busted back down to Gunner’s Mate Second Class from Chief, I took all my savings and gave it to Lourdes and told her to buy a bar for me to run.

Actually, she ran the bar. I just sort of looked after the extras, and did a little free-lance fund-raising on the side. Olongapo was a town that presented myriad opportunities for the entrepreneur unfettered by conventional notions about commerce.

I liked to sit in my chair on the roof under the Philippine night sky and listen to the sounds coming off the street, and sniff the sampaguita in the air, and drink cold beer. So there I sat, thinking that I was the freest man in the world.

A man with two countries and yet an obligation to none. One who had bought and paid for all that I wanted and now owed nothing to anyone.

Twenty years in the navy will tear out your roots and make you think that way. For some, anyway. Others I had known had dreamed of my kind of life, but had not taken hold of it when they had the chance. When their time was up, they had gone back to the states and taken their pensions and some gas station job or security work, and got old and fat and divorced and next to dead. Mortgages and car payments and snotty teenagers and ugly wives or malicious ex-wives. Their big night out spent at the bar at the VFW and their once-a-year vacation adventure a week in Ocean City or a mountain cabin, fishing out of a shitty little boat.

But, as Boats’’ liked to say, I didn’t put up with all those years of chickenshit navy regulations to spend the rest of my life under a load of middle class bullshit.’’ No way. I had followed the scent of the sampaguita, had wrapped my arms around the dusky sultry loins of southeast Asia, and I was home, sweet home.

Just Lourdes, Boats, and me.

Or so I thought, most of the time. I had other moments, now and then.

Just as I sucked in another snoot full of sweet flower smell and held it while I chugged a few swallows of San Miguel, Cruz appeared at the top of the steps and brought me one of those other moments, getting my attention with the universal Filipino signal for attention, a "Tsssst!’’

hissed between the teeth.

There was a body, he said. At the back door, in the alley.

Lightning scorched the air up in the hills, and thunder growled like a tiger in the bush. The sour sauce from the sinigang burned my innards and climbed into my throat.

Byron "Boats’’ Rhyl, a burly, sour-faced Welshman who had decided to retire from the navy after 30 years as a bosun’s mate to watch over me, was standing in the open doorway to the alley behind the bar, sucking hard enough on a Camel to make the tip glow like a steel furnace.

He looked at me and shook his close-cropped bullet of a head. Son of a bitch,’’ he said. Somebody dumped a dead nigger in our laps.’’

The body was up against the building and to the right of the open doorway, wedged face down against the concrete block wall. His dress whites were soiled where his bowels had let loose, and the mud beneath him was soaking up his blood.

Not dumped,’’ I said. I think he was killed here. Too much blood. He wasn’t inside?’’

Boats cocked his head and looked at me as if I had belched in church. "Inside? A coon? In this end of town?’’

"Okay, okay. Stupid question. So did anybody see or hear anything?’’

"Not ‘til Jesse came out with some trash, just a couple of minutes ago. Then the kids started gathering around. I asked ‘em if they seen anybody, but you know how they are. Just giggle and stare and pull their skivvies outta their ass.’’

A gekko barked in the rafters of the porch roof, and from inside the bar the music of The Rolling Stones reverberated. They insisted they ain’t got no satisfaction.

I heard a siren in the distance. We’d be getting visitors from the local police any minute.

"Call it in. Locals and shore patrol,’’ I said to Cruz, who just looked at me, questioning.

"I know somebody called it in already, but I want to be on record as having called it in, too.’’

Cruz nodded and disappeared back into the bar. I looked at Boats. "We need to demonstrate that we have nothing to hide,’’ I said.

"Carrington’s gonna be all over this like a fly on warm shit,’’ he said.

"Yup. Any ideas on why somebody chose our back door for this? You piss off anybody, so they might be trying to set us up?’’

Boats looked hurt. "Me? Why’s it gotta be my fault we got a dead nigger on our hands? I ain’t even punched one of ‘em out since that time in Kowloon.’’

"It’s just that your way with words and your attitudes about social issues might be considered by some to be inflammatory.’’

He shook his big head. "This ain’t none of my doin’.’’

"Don’t let anybody move him until the law gets here.’’

"Right. Maybe Carrington will get blood and shit all over his white shoes.’’

I went in and got another beer. And a smoke.

For some reason, I thought of Victor Reyes. Was that bastard involved in this? And what had made me think of him?

Outside, the wind ahead of the storm was sweeping the dust off the streets of Olongapo.

The head of Subic Bay Naval Base Shore Patrol, dressed in crisp whites, stepped over the body on the doorstep and entered through the back door of my bar. His black name tag over his right shirt pocket announced his rank, name and title, and over the left shirt pocket were two rows of ribbons, including one row dedicated to his recent tour of duty in Vietnam. He was still pissed about that tour of duty, and he took it out on anybody who came across his bow.

And he already had other reasons not to consider me a potential dance partner.

We were behind the mirrored wall that backed up to the bar and overlooked the dance floor. I could stand back here and see everything that was going on in the place. Other mirrors, at strategic locations on the walls and in the corners, allowed me or my helpers to keep an eye on the crowd without looking like chaperones at a teen skating party. I saw Lourdes, my wife, standing at the end of the bar, her back to me, on guard like a good soldier. Lourdes was a rock.

Carrington was pleased. Amused, even. He always liked it when I was in hot water, and he figured I was in real hot water this time. Outside, a Navy chief petty officer was supervising the initial interrogation of anybody who even smelled like a witness, including my bartender, Jesse. The coming monsoon was blowing grit, and the crowd in the alley was heading for shelter before the rains came.

I know you’re enjoying this,’’ I said. But don’t get all delighted too soon. This didn’t happen on my watch.’’

Lieutenant Commander Rodney Carrington, United States Navy, gave me a fake wide-eyed look. "Enjoy this? Me? Come on, Bass, you must believe me, I am absolutely devastated at your misfortune. Why, an incident like this could cause you to be placed off limits, maybe lose your license permanently.’’

He grinned. It was a mean grin. "I certainly hope there is nothing here to connect you personally with the unfortunate demise of one of Uncle Sam’s uniformed enlisted men. That could get very grim for you.’’

"Go ahead and have your fun, Carrington. That kid was killed outside the bar, and from all indications, he was never in here. Probably was taking a shortcut down the alley to a sexual adventure and ran into somebody with no sense of romance.’’

Boats, who had moved within earshot, snorted his appreciation and gave Carrington a grimace before he moved away again. Carrington watched the round old bosun’s mate swagger back into the barroom.

"Well, well, you have the crime all but solved. Perhaps it is unfair to jump to conclusions, just because you have blood on your doorstep, if not on your hands. I suppose you were up on your rooftop pedestal at the time of the deed, and neither saw nor heard anything?’’

"I was around.’’

"‘Around’? And who was the adult in charge of supervising the activities of all the little darlings who frequent your little social club, to see to it they don’t start fornicating on top of the tables, instead of just under the tables?’’

"You know better, Carrington. I run a clean club.’’

Excuse me, I forgot. That little episode a few months ago was all a misunderstanding. Your whore—or shall we say, female hostess—found that sailor’s dick on the floor and was just handing it back to him, only he didn’t want to take it, and—

I fired that girl. They take their dates out of the bar, and I don’t allow any groping or drugs. Especially drugs. The no-groping rule is, well, hard to enforce.

Yes, well, I guess I should be glad that you’re such a stalwart citizen, Bass. Not all pimps are as principled as you.

I took a pull on my beer. Carrington was staring me down. I grinned at him.

Tell you what, commander. When you really, really want to take me down, call me a pimp again sometime when I’m not in my usual good humor. But do it knowing that it might cost you your pretty face. Now, you wanna get your Elliot Ness act out of my bar and do your investigating out back, where the crime occurred, or do I call my city councilman?

Ah, yes, I thought. My city councilman. Senor Reyes. Maybe that’s why I had thought of him. And speaking of the Devil, he was coming in the front door at that very moment.

Did news travel the streets that fast, or was this just a coincidence? Probably neither, knowing Reyes. Behind him, the rain was a curtain, above us, a roar on the roof.

Lourdes nodded Victor Reyes past the bar and through the beaded curtains to where Carrington and I stood.

The look on his thin face was that of a mortician who was trying to balance his professional grief for the client with jubilation at the prospect of fresh business.

"Bass, I heard on the police monitor there was trouble here. As chairman of the city council’s police committee—and your friend—I felt compelled to leave my meeting and come see if I could be of assistance.’’ He almost smiled.

Behind him, in the shadows of the bar, I saw light reflect off the lenses of wraparound sunglasses affected by his alert bodyguard, Angel. Angel was watching me, and Boats, at the far end of the bar, was watching Angel. The knife and the hammer. In a fight, they would kill each other, Angel dying quickly from massive trauma, and Boats taking a long, slow bleed-out. I wondered if our back stoop guest had been in the recent company of the Angel with the silver eyes.

Reyes was a snake. His smile was almost trance-like, as if its presence could be used to hypnotize his quarry. If I wondered before, I was now certain that the gift on my back step was courtesy of this skinny, balding, bespectacled half-Chinese, half Spanish, all greedy mobster. Officially, he was a lawyer. He was a member of the city council and he had strong ties to both the Navy brass on the base— some said all the way back to Washington—and to the Philippine Senate, to which he aspired.

Unofficially, he ran a small army of the prostitutes that served the needs of the United States Navy and Marine Corps, both base and transient, and had a piece of many of the bars and the back room gambling joints in Olongapo. I heard he also had a club in Manila, and it was said that he held an interest in another in Hong Kong, but I knew that to be a lie he allowed to be told to give him international status. He looked like a dentist or doctor, but his operations were dirty and often fatal.

He was my sometimes business partner. Nothing major—just an occasional errand, or messenger service. I tried to keep any business dealings part-time, so I could feel that my personal needs, like breathing, remained full time. But it was difficult to say no to Reyes. The wrong "no’’ or the wrong timing could result in being permanently out of business.

For his part, Reyes seemed to know that I had a point where I’d dig in my heels, and I might make an inconvenient enemy.

He smiled cheerfully at Carrington and greeted

Reviews for Subic

[minfo_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mid-1967: I was there too. Although there is some 'literary license', the author recreates a number of the sights, sounds, and - sometimes - smells that made "outside" Subic so unique. The Kindle version suffers from a couple of dozen misspelled words and broken sentences (a line break where there shouldn't be one) but these are a small diversion from what is otherwise an interesting tale, set in a local that SO many passed through about this time. If you were at Subic in the 60s or 70s, you'll probably enjoy reading this.