Night in Manila

By John Langdon

Night in Manila, published in 1954 (and first published in 1953 under the title Vicious Circuit), is a noir thriller set in the steamy and seedy environs of Manila, Philippines. The action centers around the merchant ship Alvarado, docked in Manila, and from which a large sum of money has disappeared. Within hours after the cash has vanished, Mallory, the ship’s chief electrician is drugged and left for dead. In addition to Mallory, a number of other desperate people are interested in the recovery of the money: corrupt politicians, dangerous criminals, government treasury agents, and a beautiful Filipina.

Two and a half million pesos ... a lot of cash by any standard — had disappeared from the Alvarado, a merchant marine ship docked in steamy Manila Harbor. A number of grimly determined people were interested in its recovery: political outlaws, vicious criminals, the Philippine Governments Treasury Agents, an inscrutable Filipina of great beauty, and an average sort of joe named Mallory.

Only Mallory, the Alvarado’s chief electrician, didn’t want the money for himself. He was implicated involuntarily and strictly from necessity. His friend had been killed because of the money, and its theft placed his own life in jeopardy. Within hours after the cash had vanished, he had been drugged and left for dead. Next time he might not be so lucky.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phocion Publishing
• Release date: Nov 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789129380

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© Phocion Publishing 2019, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

NIGHT IN MANILA

A novel by

JOHN LANGDON

Night in Manila was originally published in 1953 as The Vicious Circle by The MacMillan Company, New York. Re-issued in 1954 as Night in Manila by Pyramid.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

Chapter 1 5

Chapter 2 10

Chapter 3 16

Chapter 4 20

Chapter 5 25

Chapter 6 30

Chapter 7 41

Chapter 8 50

Chapter 9 55

Chapter 10 64

Chapter 11 72

Chapter 12 77

Chapter 13 82

Chapter 14 88

Chapter 15 92

Chapter 16 99

Chapter 17 107

Chapter 18 114

Chapter 19 118

Chapter 20 123

Chapter 21 129

Chapter 22 133

Chapter 23 139

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 142

Chapter 1

I was staring at a patch of blue sky through slitted eyes.

That was all I knew—that I was awake, seeing the sky and the shadowy outline of my lashes. That, and the beginning of a slow grinding ache at the base of my neck. I raised my head.

The pain was explosive. I groaned involuntarily and my head fell back. After what seemed a long time I opened my eyes again. The blue patch of sky was still there.

I didn’t know where I was, but for the moment that seemed a minor detail compared to my painful craving for a long drink of cold water.

I moved my eyes carefully—a little to the left, then a little to the right. Just above and to each side of me were thin translucent leaves on slender stems. Beneath me was sand, fine gritty sand. I wondered if some of it could have got into my eyes, and brought a hand up to my face. My fingers felt numb.

Then my stomach started working. It knotted and crawled and crept toward my throat. Sweat broke out on my forehead and started trickling toward my ears. I sat up and tried to support myself with arms that quivered. My spine threatened to give way on me. I clenched my teeth and held on while the sky slid and bounced around. Things finally settled down and I was still sitting. My stomach had stopped, but I could still taste the dark yellow taste of nausea.

I was on the wide, gently sloping bank of a creek or a small river. About twenty yards from me the mottled green water glittered and winked. The opposite bank was thickly overhung with willowy branches, but the bushes on this side were smaller and sparsely scattered over the fine brownish sand. Two or three hundred yards down, where the stream narrowed and curved, the iron framework of a rusty abandoned crane-derrick dipped into the water. From the end of it to the other shore were tied three floats that looked like iron pontoons. Evidently it was some kind of crossing.

I didn’t think I could stand up. Not right away, at least, and not all at once. I turned very slowly, got my knees under me, and after a moment started crawling toward the creek.

I hadn’t gone far when I saw a woman come out of the thick foliage on the other side. She was a tiny thing, brown and wrinkled, and she balanced a basket of clothes on her head. Placing the basket on a ledge within reach, she tucked her skirt up around her waist and waded out into the stream.

I knew now I was in Manila, or some part of the Philippines.

Late yesterday afternoon—I hoped it had only been yesterday—my ship had docked in Manila, and that evening I had gone ashore with my assistant, Sam. But where we had gone, or what we had done, I could not at the moment remember. To judge by my hangover, or whatever it was—because it didn’t seem to me that even the rawest alcohol could have made anybody feel what I was feeling—we had done no genteel drinking.

I wanted water. I wanted a bath and a clean bed. I wanted a doctor and a nurse. Most of all I wanted to make the distance to the creek under my own power.

Bits of the early evening came back to me: the wood and bamboo booths outside the arched Customs gate and the girls behind the counters calling, Beer? Cold beer, Joe?...The gin mills up the street, and the one with the horseshoe-shaped bar and the young Norwegian sailor who kept dropping his wristwatch in a glass of water to show how good it was...The little Filipina business girl I had been ready to go out with until Sam had given her the brush-off in Tagalog...Sam, joking with the shoeshine boys and cab drivers in Tagalog...A ride along the harbor into districts of wood and nipa-palm huts, down alleys and cobblestone streets, all the while soaking up a fifth of San Miguel or sandpaper gin....

I wondered where Sam was now. In some unfamiliar barrio or somewhere in these bushes? It was hard to imagine him getting drunk enough to pass out. I had seen him, more than once, quietly and unspectacularly finish a fifth of gin during an eight-hour working day and show no more effect than if he had been drinking soda water.

Wherever Sam was, he was able to take care of himself. My job was to get to my feet. I was not going to crawl while that woman was down there.

I watched her beat the clothes against a rock with a wooden paddle. She rinsed them and beat them again. The flat rhythmic smack of the paddle against the clothes became monotonous. I crouched, took a breath, and tried to stand.

It was too sudden. My knees buckled and I was on my back again. I lay there, my eyes closed, sweating from every pore. The woman had let out a startled scream when I had lurched into view and flopped. I waited, and when I heard the wet smack of the paddle again, I opened my eyes. I didn’t want to move but I couldn’t stay here. I rolled over, got on my hands and knees again, then slowly stood up. Barely lifting my feet and keeping my eyes fixed just ahead of them, I shuffled toward the creek and knelt carefully on all fours, the water up to my wrists.

Before I could dip my face, I heard a sharp cry and looked up. The woman was waving her paddle in the air and yelling something in Tagalog. I shook my head and started to lower it again.

No! No drink! Make sick! Water bad! Very bad! She pronounced it berry bad.

She was right. Even though we had been inoculated for typhus, typhoid, and cholera, and vaccinated for smallpox, there was no telling what else might lurk in this water. Pink-eye, perhaps.

Okay, I said. Me no drink. Holding my breath, I dunked my face, and when I stood up with my head dripping and my collar, shirt front, and handkerchief soaked, I felt a little better. I was ready to try to find my ship, if I could.

The woman was watching me, smiling. Light gleamed from twin rows of gold.

How far to town?

Her grin widened and she shook her head. I tried again.

How far, Manila?

She giggled, the nervous giggle of a person who does not quite understand. Then she stopped giggling. Far, she said, and waved her paddle in a direction that probably meant upstream. I saw I wasn’t going to get much information out of her. I started toward the derrick and the pontoon crossing.

It was no surprise to find I had been cleaned of everything except the key to my room, which was still in my shoe. But I had left everything of value, including my wristwatch and seaman’s papers, aboard ship. Whoever had robbed me had got only a little money. What did surprise me, though, was that they had left me with my pants and shirt and shoes, and with my throat uncut.

I remembered what one of the passengers, a little Filipino with whom I had talked several times during the trip, had said just before the ship docked:

Manila has its dangers, Mr. Mallory. Too little value is placed on human life. Hunger, poverty, the brutalities of the recent war and Japanese occupation have left my people bitterly cynical. Such an atmosphere breeds crime and violence.

And I had smiled and said I could take care of myself.

At the crossing a path led up the creek bank on my side. I got to the top of the bank and stood there, blinking.

I had reached the end of the road, literally. Miles of emptiness stretched around me, miles of flat brown barren country. A single-track road straight as a ruled line crossed it. At some time or other an automobile must have come this way, for there were tire marks in the turning place that ended at the creek bank.

I shaded my eyes and stared back up the road. The only visible house was a bamboo shack perched on stilts. Near it were a few black dots which I judged to be carabao. On the other side of the creek there was no road, nothing but the broken brown land, the low hills, and beyond them, the distant blue mountains. There might be people living in the jungle-like tangle along the creek, but I could imagine getting lost in there and wandering endlessly. I decided on the road. It wasn’t more than three miles to the house, though it seemed like twenty.

Dust rose in little clouds and hung motionless in the air behind me. The sun drilled through my scalp. My mouth and nostrils became caked with dust. It rimmed my eyes, settled on my clothes, sifted through them, and sealed my pores. I stumbled off the road, came back and plowed on, head down. Twice I tripped and fell. The second time I stayed on my hands and knees a long while.

I remembered what Sam had once told me about sweating the heroin habit out of his system by walking nearly two hundred miles across desert country, stopping at every service station to fill up with water; and it was almost as if he were here beside me now, smiling sardonically, his clear green eyes amused and glowing, his low voice taunting. I got up and went on.

There were times when I was sure he was beside me, then times when I knew I only thought he was. But I kept hearing him:

"Come on, Birch, you’re only dogging it now....What’s the matter, this too tough a rap to sweat out?...What’ve you got for guts, kid, tissue paper? I could do this one on my hands!"

I was just barely conscious, just managing to put one foot in front of the other, when I saw the path angling away from the road and raised my head.

There was the house, off to the right. Some small black pigs rested in the shadow beneath the raised open-front porch. A dusty yellow half-starved dog gave an anemic bark and slunk away. Then I saw the old woman. She was standing on the porch at the head of a slanting bamboo ladder, smoking a fat, bunchy, crooked cigar that was tied together with bits of red twine. I lurched to the foot of the ladder.

Water! Drink of water!

The old woman blinked and removed her cheroot. Without turning her head or taking her eyes from me, she rapped out something in Tagalog. There was a patter of bare feet, and a young woman nursing a baby at her breast came to the door. Her eyes got wide and round.

Oh! What you want?

Wa— The second syllable stuck in my throat. I swallowed, gagged, and tried again. Water!

Oh! She shoved the baby into the old woman’s arms, went inside, and came back with a chipped enamelware cup of warm water.

More? she asked when I had finished it.

I nodded and gave her the cup.

With the fourth, or maybe the fifth cup, I rinsed the caked dust from my face and eyes. I learned that it was about two miles to a main street called Blumentritt and that once there I could get a bus or taxi to my ship. I said nothing about having no money. I tried to thank them, but I didn’t need words. The young woman understood. Her eyes twinkled and she bobbed her head and smiled. But the old woman’s eyes were hard and dark, and not a flicker of expression showed on her chiseled face.

After a while the houses were closer together, and a cluster of them merged into a community with a few booth-like stores. I recognized Blumentritt when I came to it; busses and jeeps passed by fairly often. To my right, as I walked along Blumentritt, was a huge cemetery, a vast area of tombs and plain white markers. In front of a large building that looked as if it might be a dance hall, a passing jeep pulled to a stop and a young Filipino hailed me.

Where to, Joe?

I told him, then said, But I’ve got no money.

He looked me over. He seemed particularly interested in my shirt. Finally he said, How much, that?

This? I pointed to my shirt. He nodded and I did some figuring. It was a good shirt, had cost me $12.50, and there was nothing wrong with it that laundering wouldn’t fix. But I was in no position to bargain. I said, It cost me twenty-five pesos, but you drive me back to my ship and it’s yours.

He nodded. Okay, Joe. Let’s go.

I slumped down in the front seat and closed my eyes. The wind felt good on my face.

He was stopped at the Customs gate. I got out, unbuttoned the shirt, took it off, and gave it to him. I went through the gate, turned and walked along the wide, partly cobblestone street to the big corrugated metal pier shed. I went through the pier shed, and there was my ship, still there, down at the far end of the open dock.

It wasn’t until I was going up the gangplank, hauling myself along by the rope guides, that I saw the mark on my left arm. It was a dark lavender stain, about the size of a quarter, in the bend of the elbow where the large vein crossed over. And in the center was the tiniest of punctures, so small as to be almost invisible.

Chapter 2

I wasn’t sure whether it was the sound of voices or the distant hum of music that awakened me, but it was pleasant lying there with my eyes closed, listening to it. It had a regular rise and fall that kept time to the skipping catch of my heart beat. Suddenly my heart stalled; air caught in my throat; cold stabbed my ankles and spread upward as if I were being slowly shoved, feet first, into an icebox. Then I was over the hump and going again.

I identified the sound as an electric fan with one loose brush that made it wobble, slow down, then speed up. I tried to turn my head but it was too painful. I wondered how many times I had to go through this. Then I remembered the hypodermic mark on my left arm and opened my eyes.

Above me was an enameled white bunk with white coil springs and a white mattress-cover slip bulging between the coils. Therefore I had to be on a ship. But what ship? There should have been the varnished wood bottom of the upper bunk above me. I wondered if the ship was moving.

Take it easy. You’re all right.

The voice came out of nowhere. A blur of face hovered above me. I blinked and got it into focus. I didn’t much like what I saw when I saw it. A sallow bird-like face. The light glinting on a pair of rimless, purplish-tinted glasses. Dark eyes, enlarged slightly by the glasses, studying me. The face went away, came back, and a hand with a towel wiped the sweat off my forehead.

Feel better?

I nodded and he smiled thinly. I wondered what the hell he found so amusing. I tried to push off the covers but my arms wouldn’t move. The muscles swelled, but the harsh-textured cloth wouldn’t give. I felt as if I were suffocating.

Take it easy, take it easy!

He lifted my head and propped a pillow behind it. He got a paper cup of water and held it to my mouth. I drank it, then rolled my head to one side and saw that I was in a ship’s hospital. There were double white bunks, empty now, on the other side of the room, and between that set of bunks and this one was a white metal table with bottles and an enameled tray on top.

The water loosened my tongue from the roof of my mouth.

Where am I?

"On your ship, the Alvarado."

I looked again, located the dangling light socket I had intended to repair, and mechanically made a note that I would have to replace the short brush in the fan.

What day is this?

Sunday.

That startled me some. But not so much as it might have. In a way, I had been expecting something like this. It had been Friday evening when Sam and I had gone ashore. It had been Saturday morning, or so I assumed, when I had come to on the creek bank and made my way back to the ship. I had lost twenty-four hours. That is, if it was still morning.

Morning or afternoon, Doc?

Morning, he said. He looked at his wristwatch. A little after nine.

Birdface pulled up a three-legged stool and sat down a few feet from me. He wore a light sun-tan shirt with two gold bars on each shoulder and the insignia of two snakes twirling up a winged staff on the lapels of his collar. I remembered the emblem was called a caduceus. That gave me a lift. I hadn’t lost all my marbles.

What happened, Doc?

He took his time, smiling a little, then hiding it beneath the curve of his forefinger.

Nothing to worry about. You got a little out of hand.

"Out of