He firmly repeats his lie that he knows nothing about the bag they want. There, they beat, threaten and ridicule him. The police arrest Raphael and take him to headquarters. They learn that the police recently killed Jose Angelico. The letter, signed by a man named Jose Angelico, contains a message for Gabriel and a strange numerical code the boys can’t decipher. They sneak in, open the locker and find an envelope addressed to a man named Gabriel Olondriz in Colva Prison. While the police pay other citizens of Behala to look for the bag, the three boys discover that the key belongs to a locker in the train station.

Raphael and Gardo ask him to hide the bag for them. The boys enlist the help of their fellow worker Jun-Jun, a small, skeletal boy known to most people as Rat because he has no family and lives with the creatures.

Raphael’s aunt slips and tells the police that Raphael said he found something interesting. When the police start swarming around the dumpsite and asking questions about a missing bag, the boys realize there’s more at stake than just the money. Then one day, while working with his friend Gardo, he discovers a leather bag with 1,100 pesos inside. He almost never finds anything but human muck. Like so many children in his unnamed developing nation, Raphael survives by sifting through the massive piles of squalor that make up his city, Behala. Fourteen-year-old Raphael Fernandez is a dumpsite boy.

Trash andy