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