Cabahug

 Cabahug 

By Paul Davis 

Joselito Cabahug was a scrawny Filipino criminal known to his cohorts as Duling, the Tagalog word for crossed-eyed. But no one dared to call him that to his face, as Cabahug was short-tempered and prone to violence when insulted or angered. 

He was born in Olongapo's Barrio Barreto in the Philippines with his eyes crossed. His poor family were unable to provide medical help for him. Despite his small stature, Cabahug grew up mean and tough and he struck out at anyone who dared to ridicule or tease him about his eyes. In time, his perpetually angry, twisted face and crossed eyes took on a truly sinister look that struck fear into people.   

Cabahug joined a youth street gang in Olongapo in the early 1960s and committed numerous petty crimes, eventually graduating to armed robbery. Due to his frightening looks and his penchant for violence, he rose to be the leader of the teenage gang. He was arrested and sent to prison for armed robbery, and his reputation grew substantially after he performed a contract murder in the prison for Homobono Catacutan. 

The Olongapo gang leader was impressed with the fearless and frightening young thug, and he used bribery to get Cabahug released from prison. Catacutan recruited him and used him as an enforcer for his "shabu" crystal meth business. Catacutan’s customers and rivals, and even the police, were hesitant to confront the gang leader when he had the demented and evil-looking Cabahug at his side.      

Cabahug often backed up the gang’s chief enforcer, Tibayan. The two ferocious killers were ordered by Catacutan to hand out beatings and to assassinate rivals, cheats and police informers. 

Cabahug became legendary in Olongapo when he hunted down two of Catacutan’s shabu dealers who were cheating the gang leader. Cabahug captured the two drug dealers and took them aboard a boat. At sea, he tortured the two until they gave up the whereabouts of their stash of money and drugs. He then stabbed them to death and tossed them overboard. The two mutilated bodies late washed ashore, and the word went out to the underground that Cabahug brutally murdered them. 

Sometime later, Cabahug murdered a bar girl who was suspected of being a police informer. Like the two cheating drug dealers, Cabahug tortured the young woman until she admitted she was talking to the police. Her ravaged body was dumped in front of a police station. 

Cabahug was high on Lieutenant Colonel Rosa’s list of criminals he wanted to bring to justice, but he was unable to get anyone to testify against the notorious killer.          

Bulan befriended Cabahug when he worked as a clerk in Catacutan’s grocery store. Cabahug, who had no true friends, appreciated that Bulan was not frightened of his looks and violent reputation, and the clerk appeared to genuinely like him. Bulan, thinking ahead, wanted the notorious killer on his side when he eventually made his move to take over the gang from Catacutan. Bulan promoted Cabahug after Catacutan was murdered. Bulan from then on had his own loyal bodyguard and killer. He later ordered Cabahug to kill his partner, Tibayan. 

Some years later, Bulan sat in the Ritz, suffering from the gunshot wounds from Salvatore Lorino, the American sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, had inflicted on him. Bulan swore he would get revenge. He finally made up his mind on a course of action. He called over Cabahug and ordered him to find and kill the American sailor named Lorino.     

The following evening, as Lorino was in a hotel room with Jade, there was a knock on the door. Jade answered the door as Lorino lay in bed smoking a cigarette. Cabahug knocked Jade to the floor and rushed in. Thanks to his South Philly hoodlum instincts and criminal experience, Lorino saw Cabahug running in and he dove from the bed as Cabahug drove his Butterfly knife into the bed sheets. 

Lorino was quickly on his feet and grabbed the bedside lamp and smashed it against Cabahug’s head. Lorino was taken aback at the sight of the crazed, crossed-eyed intruder as Cabahug leaped from the bed, his knife in hand. Lorino backed into a wall and leveled a hard kick into Cabahug’s chest as the enforcer rushed in. Cabahug fell back on the bed and Lorino jumped on top of him and knocked the knife from Cabahug’s hand. Lorino brought down a slew of punches to Cabahug’s face. Lorino reared back his right hand and delivered a hard punch that stunned Cabahug for a moment. As Lorino stood up and took a breath, Cabahug recovered, leaped from the bed and ran out the door.         

Later that evening, Cabahug reported to Bulan that he failed to murder Lorino. Bulan looked at Cabahug’s bruised face and dared not reproach his chief enforcer. He simply told Cabahug to try again.    

At the Americano, Lorino told Walker about the attack. He told Walker that he and Jade were fine, although the girl was shaken. When Lorino mentioned that the attacker was crossed-eyed, Walker said, “Cabahug.” 

“Who?” 

“Joselito Cabahug, a thug who works for Bulan,” Walker said. “He’s a cross-eyed, crazy-looking bastard.”    

“I hit the motherfucker so hard, I think I might have uncrossed his eyes,” Lorino told Walker. “But he still got up and ran out the door.” 

Walker left the bar and walked over to Camama’s hotel to pass on to the Old Huk what Lorino told him about the murder attempt. The elderly gang leader had already been informed about the incident by one of his hotel clerks. Camama was furious that Bulan would dare to send the crazy killer Cabahug to his hotel to murder one of his American shabu dealers. Camama told Walker to have Duke Valle shadow Lorino for his protection. Lorino was a good earner for the Camama gang, and the Old Huk didn’t want anything to happen to him.  

The Old Huk turned to Sicat after Walker left and told his lieutenant to retaliate. Sicat nodded. Sicat and Coco Labrador, another veteran killer, roamed Olongapo hunting for Cabahug, but he appeared to go underground. But there were other targets, and the Old Huk approved of Sicat’s idea. 

Benigno Del Rosario was dapper, handsome and loquacious. He rose from being a waiter and bartender to become the Ritz’s popular manager. Del Rosario was in the Ritz working when one of his waiters told him that one of the bar girls was outside of the bar throwing up in the street. A hands-on manager, Del Rosario went outside to investigate. 

As Del Rosario stepped outside, Sicat and Labrador opened up on the bar manager and shot him multiple times. Del Rosario collapsed and died instantly. Sicat and Labrador ran down the street and leaped into a jeepney, which sped off.

Lieutenant Colonel Cesar Rosa came on the scene of the murder in front of the Ritz. Shooting people down in public in front of bars that drew in American sailors and their valued dollars was bad for Olongapo. Rosa and his officers interrogated witnesses. A bartender informed Rosa that a waiter had told Del Rosario that one of the bar girls was sick outside of the bar, which caused the manger to venture outside where he was shot and killed.

Rosa questioned the waiter, who at first denied he told Del Rosario anything. But when the waiter was dragged to the police station and harshly questioned, he confessed that Coco Labrador had threatened his family if he didn’t set up the bar manager. Rosa and his men sought out Labrador and arrested him at the Americano bar. At the police station, Labrador denied threatening the waiter and denied knowing anything about the murder. He also refused to implicate his boss, Sicat or the Old Huk. 

After Rosa left the interrogation room to urinate, Labrador punched the police officer guarding him. He took the officer’s sidearm and ran out of the interrogation room. Rosa encountered Labrador in the hall as he was fleeing, and Rosa pulled his sidearm from its holster and shot Labrador dead.      

Lorino spent the evening with Jade at the Americano. When the bar closed, Lorino and Jade left the bar and headed towards the hotel next door. Cabahug leaped from a jeepney and began firing at Lorino. Lorino pushed Jade to the ground and fell on top of her. Duke Valle came out of the shadows and shot Cabahug twice in the head. Valle placed the barrel of his gun under his nose and sniffed it like he saw so many cowboys do in the movies.          

When Bulan heard the news of Cabahug’s death, he gripped his knee in pain and cursed his luck. He did not grieve for Cabahug. Bulan would have to think of another way to pay the American sailor back. 

© 2025 Paul Davis 

Reeinald Bulan

 Reeinald Bulan

 By Paul Davis 

The son of an honest and hard worker in a restaurant in Olongapo, Reeinald Bulan grew up in a large, happy family. Reeinald Bulan, however, was the only member of the family not happy with his lot. The timid, chubby, shaggy-haired boy was bullied unmercifully in school and on the streets of Olongapo. The berated, bruised and battered teenager dreamed of becoming a powerful and feared crime boss. Then, he dreamed, he would take revenge against those who tormented him. 

Bulan scoffed at his father’s work ethic and the long, hard hours he put in at the restaurant, thinking he was a fool. Instead, Bulan admired Homobono Catacutan, an elderly and gaunt criminal with a scary knife scar across his right cheek and nose. Catacutan owned the grocery store where Bulan worked as a clerk. 

To Bulan, Catacutan didn’t appear to work at all. He mostly sat in a chair, drank San Miguel beer, smoked cigarettes and gave orders to his underlings. Bulan enjoyed bringing Catacutan his beer and cigarettes, and he enjoyed listening to the gang leader snap orders to his gang members. 

The Olongapo gang leader liked Bulan’s apparent cleverness as well as his subservient and slavish attitude towards the boss. Catacutan took Bulan under his wing and trained him to handle the legitimate business books as well as the illegitimate books for his criminal enterprises. 

Girls were never much interested in Bulan as a teen, but in his mid-20s he was an assistant to Catacutan, and due to that exalted role, he was able to have nearly every girl he desired. Catacutan paid him well and Bulan lived lavishly and enjoyed the night life of Olongapo with beautiful girls at his side. He moved out of his father’s modest home and took the apartment above the grocery. He paid good money to furnish the apartment well and he entertained women and Catacutan’s gang members in the apartment, suppling food, alcohol and drugs. 

Thanks to his lavish parties and his ingratiating manner towards his fellow criminals, Bulan became popular with the drug dealers, enforcers, and thieves in the gang. Catacutan did not see Bulan’s budding popularity as a threat. Rather, he was proud of Bulan. He saw Bulan as an up and comer in his criminal enterprises. He did not, however, see Bulan as a future gang leader, as he thought the portly young man was physically weak and lacked the sort of command presence that crime bosses in Olongapo needed to thrive and survive.    

The child-less Catacutan believed that he needed an heir who had brains like Bulan but also had the toughness of Ernesto Tibayan, his short, squat and not-to-bright chief enforcer. Catacutan wanted to train someone to step up as the gang leader in the event that he retired, went to prison or died. Catacutan regretted that he did not have anyone in his gang who had both skill sets needed to take over his criminal empire.    

Catacutan’s criminal empire included two hidden labs that produced shabu and a small army of dealers selling the crystal meth in Olongapo. He also employed several tough, violent men to act as enforcers. His dealers sold shabu in his bar, the Ritz, and Catacutan used his grocery store as a front to sell stolen items from the American naval base on the black market. Catacutan also sponsored and bankrolled several criminal gangs who pulled heists, kidnappings and other profitable criminal acts. 

In the mid-1960s there were several gangs selling shabu and committing other crimes, but Catacutan’s only true competitor was the Old Huk, whom Catacutan hated and feared. On several occasions, the Old Huk’s men came into conflict with Catacutan’s men. But both gang leaders were wise enough to cease the hostilities before it came to an all-out war between the two major criminal gangs. Open gang warfare in Olongapo would bring the police out in force and both businesses would suffer.    

Although he acted like an amiable toady, Bulan was secretly ambitious. He still harbored an ambition to become a crime boss, but he kept that plan to himself. He knew that Catacutan saw him as only a glorified clerk, albeit a criminal one.

So when Tibayan was ordered by Catacutan to murder a dealer whom the crime boss discovered was cheating him, Bulan asked Tibayan if he could come along and do the murder. Tibayan, who liked Bulan, agreed.

Tibayan and Bulan entered the Ritz and saw the dealer sitting at one of the tables. Tibayan walked past the dealer and motioned for him to follow him and Bulan into the men’s room. The dealer, who was soaring high on shabu, got up quickly and followed the two other men into the rest room. Once a customer in the men’s room left and the men had the room to themselves, Tibayan grabbed the dealer’s arms and held him tight. Bulan pulled out a knife and plunged it into the dealer’ midsection. The dealer struggled as Bulan stabbed him several more times.   As Tibayan dropped the dealer to the floor, Bulan laughed uncontrollably.

Tibayan told Bulan to stop laughing, calling him a gago in Tagalog. He told the young fool to wash the blood from his hands and arms. 

Tibayan reported to Catacutan that Bulan murdered the dealer, swiftly and without hesitation, but the experienced enforcer was concerned about Bulan’s odd reaction to the murder. Laughing hysterically after killing someone was peculiar and to Tibayan, a professional killer, it constituted unprofessional behavior.

Still, Catacutan was proud of Bulan for committing the murder and he gave his clerk a cash bonus. From then on, Bulan became Catacutan’s chief lieutenant.  

Bulan was now involved in all aspects of the gang’s criminal activities and Catacutan relied on Bulan’s advice.           

Bulan was happy to finally be accepted in the gang as the boss’ lieutenant, but he was in a hurry to be the boss, and he didn’t think Catacutan would retire or die anytime soon. To hedge his bets, Bulan became a police informant, providing an Olongapo police officer with information about Catacutan’s criminal activities. He hoped that the police officer would arrest Catacutan and send him to prison, opening the way for Bulan to become the boss. He also thought that it was good to have a serious professional relationship with a police officer. 

Another police officer who was on Catacutan’s payroll discovered that Bulan was an informant, and he reported this fact to the old gang leader. Catacutan was furious as well as hurt, as he had treated Bulan like a son. Catacutan lured Bulan to the back of his grocery store where he planned to have his protégé murdered. Catacutan brought along Ernesto Tibayan and he ordered the enforcer to shoot and kill Bulan. 

Thankfully for Bulan, Tibayan turned his gun on Catacutan, shooting him in the head. Tibayan told the relived and laughing Bulan that he felt Catacutan had outlived his usefulness. He said the two of them should work together and take over Catacutan’s gang and both the old gangster’s legal and illegal businesses.

Bulan quickly bought out the legitimate businesses from Catacutan’s widow. The widow, afraid that she too would be murdered, sold the bar, the grocery store and other property to Bulan at a very reasonable price. 

With Bulan’s sharp business mind and Tibayan’s fearsome reputation, the two took over the gang without complaint from the criminal underlings. One of Bulan’s first acts as the boss was to go after his chief tormentor when he was a teenager.

Rodrigo Torres went to work on the U.S. Navy’s Subic Bay naval base as a welder after he left school. Married with two young children, Torres was no longer a bullying adolescent. He had matured and was loved by his family and well-liked by his friends and co-workers on the naval base. 

Bulan assigned two of his enforcers to find out where his old classmate lived and worked. When they reported back to Bulan that Torres worked at the naval base and lived in a small home with his family, he ordered the two men to cut him down with bolo knives. Preferably, Bulan said, on a public street in front of his family to humiliate him before killing him. 

A few days later, as Torres was leaving the naval base’s gate, his young wife greeted him. The two enforcers pulled out their long bolo knives and began to attack him. The crowd in front of the gate dispersed in fear and horror from the brutal attack as Torres’ wife tried to stop the bolo-wielding killers. One of the enforcers kicked the woman hard and she fell to the ground. Two U.S. Marines at the gate came running out of the base, their M-16 rifles pointed at the killers. The two enforcers saw the Marines coming towards them and they abandoned the bloody body on the ground and took off running. 

The two Marines, unsure if they had the proper authority, did not fire at the fleeing killers. They knelt at the hacked and bloodied body, and they attempted to give Torres first aid, but he was dead. His wife stood over her husband, crying and screaming, as the Olongapo police came on the scene.   

The two enforcers reported proudly to Bulan how they butchered Torres in front of his wife and the other Filipino base workers. They neglected to tell Bulan that they ran in fear from the American Marines. Bulan was pleased. 

Another of Bulan’s initial acts was to eliminate one of the gang’s smaller competitors. Catacutan allowed Manny Bautista and his small gang to operate in Olongapo as he saw no threat or true competition from them. Catacutan also liked Bautista. But Bulan wanted to show his ruthlessness. He had Tibayan and two enforcers attack the gang’s leader in his home in front of his wife and children. Tibayan and his men entered Bautista’s home early one morning and they beat both him and his wife severely as the children cried and huddled in a corner. 

After the vicious beating, Tibayan took out his gun and shot Bautista in the head and killed him. He grabbed Bautista’s wife by her hair and lifted her up to her feet. Tibayan told her that she must leave Olongapo, or they would be back to murder her and her children. She agreed to leave Olongapo.            

The three murders in succession; Catacutan, Torres, and Bautista, cemented Bulan’s reputation as a gangster to be feared. Even the Old Huk, who in his time murdered far more than three men, took notice of the up-and-coming gang leader.

After a year of successfully running the gang’s criminal enterprises, Bulan felt he no longer needed Tibayan. Bulan now had under him other far cheaper men for muscle. So he ordered one of those cheaper killers to murder Tibayan.

Even with the Old Huk as a stern competitor, business and life was good for Bulan.

Then he met Salvatore Lorino.

© 2025 Paul Davis 

Mouth

 Mouth 

By Paul Davis 

I recently went for a haircut to a local barber shop located about four blocks from my home in South Philadelphia. 

The barber in residence was a young man and a good barber who had a mostly younger clientele. I happened to sit next to another old timer who, like me, missed the good old days when Frank and Sonny ran the shop. 

Originally from Sicily, Frank and Sonny Provenzano came to Philadelphia in 1955 and opened their barber shop in 1965. In the 1960s, when I frequented the shop as a teenager, and into the 70s, 80s and 90s, the Frank and Sonny’s barber shop had a congenial atmosphere akin to an old-fashioned taproom bar or a social club, minus the alcohol. Although the barbers put out bottles of scotch, vodka and sambuca during the Christmas and New Year season. The barber shop was authentically “South Philly.” 

The barber shop back then was always crowded, and on any given day, customers came and went after participating in the day’s running debate on sports or current events, moderated by the two barbers. The ongoing debate, often enlivened with abundant humor, made the long wait for a haircut enjoyable in the always crowded shop. 

Frank Provenzano, the older brother, was a short, balding, avuncular man who retained his Italian accent even after all his years in America. Sonny, who was some years younger than Frank, was short with curly black hair and possessed a sardonic wit that sometimes offended his customers. 

The two barbers supplemented their income by operating as bookmakers and loan sharks, and my crowd often made sport bets there and borrowed money from them when the bets didn’t work out. Like many of the young guys from my crowd, I thought of Frank and Sonny as my uncles rather than just my barbers. 

In the late 1970s, when I was in my late 20s and single, the shop was so busy that the two brothers brought in a pretty young girl to cut hair in the third chair they had in the barber shop. 

I recall one Saturday afternoon when the shop was standing room only. When it was my turn, the young girl waved me towards her chair. I told her that I would wait for Sonny. 

Although my short dark parted hair and my short trimmed dark beard was easy to cut, I was fussy and particular about who cut my hair. Not counting the four years I spent in the Navy, Frank and Sonny were the only barbers who had cut my hair since I was a kid. 

“Go ahead, let her cut your hair,” Sonny said. “She’s good.” 

Reluctantly, I agreed. 

I sat in her chair as she wrapped a long white sheet around my shoulders and placed a white strip around my neck. She then just stood there beside me as I sat in the elevated barber’s chair and looked at me with her head cocked to the right. She turned to Sonny in the middle chair. 

“I can’t cut his hair,” she said with an exasperated air. “He’s too good-looking.” 

Sonny frowned, Frank chuckled, and the other customers in the barber shop roared with laughter. The girl was soon let go by the brothers and she went to work at a nearby woman’s beauty salon. 

I was teased mercilessly both in the barber shop and elsewhere for some months after that. Friends would greet me with “Hey, Good-looking.” And a bartender and friend at our bar looked at my other friends when I walked in and said, “I can’t serve Paulie a drink. He’s too good-looking.” 

That got a big laugh at my expense.       

 When I wrote about the barber shop in the mid-1990s in my column in the local newspaper, I quoted Frank stating, “We are a friendly shop. Everybody is more of a friend than a customer. We have customers who have moved to New Jersey and other places far away, but they still come back here for a haircut. A lot of shops give them a haircut and throw them out. Our friends stay about talk about the salaries of ball players and such. This is an Italian neighborhood, although we have all kinds living here, and we all get along.” 

Thanks to their loyal, multi-generational following, the shop remained open for years even during the long hair days of the 1960s, when many other barber shops folded. 

Frank and Sonny always seemed to have a handful of oddball characters hanging around the shop. They would sweep up the hair from the floor and make coffee runs to a nearby delicatessen for the two barbers and any customers who also wanted coffee. But mostly the characters entertained the barbers and the customers with unintentional humor.    

One of their most entertaining and often annoying characters was Martin Alberto. 

Alberto was around 5’10, lean with dark wavey air and a permanent five o’clock dark shadow on his face. He was a minor criminal, into “this and that,” but he often spoke like he was a big shot mobster, even though everyone knew he certainly wasn’t.    

As he was a non-stop, speed-talker, known as a chiacchierone - a chatter box in Italian - Alberto was called “Marty Mouth,” Motor Mouth,” Mighty Mouth,” or simply “Mouth.” 

I recall one early evening when I entered the shop and Alberto was pacing up and down the shop and talking fast. Sonny had an older man I didn’t know in his chair and Frank had my friend Bob Longo in his chair. Frank and Bob were smirking as Alberto went on and on.     

“I know it ain’t right to do a cop,” Alberto said. “But I gotta tell ya this prick detective is getting on my last nerve. He’s always pulling me over when I’m driving around the neighborhood and questioning me right in front of everyone. He even pulled me into South Detectives and grilled me for an hour, but I didn’t fold. I didn’t tell him shit.” 

Alberto, voice high and fast, spoke of how this detective was pressing his luck by harassing him. 

“He don’t know who Marty Alberto is! I’m into some heavy shit right now, and this cop is crowding me. If I gotta go to the bosses and ask permission to whack this fucking cop, I will. And if they don’t give me the OK, I may whack his fucking fat ass anyway. I tell ya, I had it with this prick supercop.”            

Just then Frank pulled off the barber’s neck to knees white sheet and Alberto saw Bob Longo’s blue police uniform, badge and sidearm. 

Alberto was – for perhaps the first time in his life – speechless. 

Alberto turned quickly and bolted out the door as Bob Longo just shook his head and I, the two barbers and the other customers roared with laughter.

© 2025 Paul Davis