Tony Hillerman - Finding Moon_v4

by Finding Moon v4(lit)

  "They let her in," he said, waving a hand impatiently. "No question. We all go in. I park at the office in there. I write down the time I wait for you. All right?"

  The gate to the Palawan Island Federal Security Unit proved to be a large palm log blocking the narrow road. The log was overlooked by a palmthatched bamboo hut, which rose on bamboo stilts from the roadside ditch. A neatly printed sign above its door read IWAHIG PRISON AND PENAL FARM.

  The cab stopped. Two men wearing blue coveralls emerged from the hut. If either of them was armed, Moon saw no evidence of it.

  Cabbie and guards exchanged pleasantries and information in a language that wasn't English and didn't sound like the Tagalog Moon had been hearing in Manila. The older of the security men tipped his cap to Osa, gave Moon a curious stare, and held out his hand.

  "He wants to see your pass," the cabbie said.

  Moon handed him the letter.

  The guard examined it, stared at Moon again, returned the letter, and said something to the cabbie. All three laughed, and the older guard, still grinning, waved them through.

  "Like I told you," the cabbie said. "No trouble about the lady."

  Moon could see no sign that the inside of the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm differed in any way from the outside. The potholed road still ran between rice paddies; hills rose a mile or two distant on either side of the road. The hills were covered by the deep green of the jungle, and at the margin of the jungle, bamboo shacks were scattered. Just ahead, two men were walking up the road, shovels over their shoulders. They stepped off into the grass, grinning, and made the universal hitchhiker's signal.

  "We're inside the prison now?" Moon asked.

  "Inside now," the cabbie said. He laughed. "Don't try to get away." He slowed the jeepney to walking speed. The shovel bearers climbed onto the back.

  "But who lives in the houses? Out beyond the rice paddies."

  "The colonists," the cabbie said, gesturing toward his newly acquired passengers. "These guys." He laughed. "They call 'em colonists. After they've been here awhile, not done anything wrong for a while, they can bring their women in and build a house and get some land to raise their crop."

  "Really?" Moon said. He was remembering the cabbie laughing with the guards. Clearly this cabdriver liked his little jokes at the expense of tourists. The hitchhikers were actually prison employees, of course.

  "And the prison keeps some buffaloes. So the prisoners can rent them when they need to plow. And then they turn in part of their rice, and the warden sells it and keeps part of the money to pay for the seed and the fertilizer and the rent." The cabbie laughed again and held up his hand-rubbing his fingers together in all of suffering humanity's symbol of extortion. "And a little something for the warden, I think. And a little something to buy Imelda a present too."

  "They used a system a lot like that in Java too," Osa said. "When it was Dutch." She turned and said something to one of the hitchhikers. The man grinned a gap-toothed laugh and produced a lengthy answer.

  "He said you have to serve a fifth of your sentence before you can bring your wife," Osa explained. "For him that was four years. And now he's growing vegetables."

  "Not everybody wants to be a farmer, though," the cabbie said. "Some of them work in the shop. Carve things. Make antique canes, chairs. Nets to fish with. Blowguns. Things to sell in the market."

  "What were you telling the guards back there at the gate?" Moon asked.

  "I told them the lady was a lawyer the government sent down from Manila to investigate something. I told them you were her bodyguard."

  This time Moon laughed. "You'll have trouble getting me to believe that story," he said. "They looked at the letter."

  Now Osa chuckled. "I'll bet they don't read," she said. "Is that right?"

  "That right," the cabbie said. "I had to tell them what it said. And I don't read either."

  The man who came down the steps when the cab stopped at the administration building certainly could read. "I am Lieutenant Elte Creso," he said, and took Moon's letter. He glanced at it. "You are Malcolm Mathias," he said, and looked at Osa. "It says nothing about a woman. Do you have a pass for the woman?"

  "This is Mrs. van Winjgaarden," Moon said. "My secretary. In Manila they said the letter would suffice for both of us. They said the authorities here would understand that one would be accompanied by one's secretary."

  The lieutenant looked surprised. He considered this, looked at the letter again, sighed, shook his head, and motioned them up the steps.

  The building reminded Moon of buildings he had seen in coastal Louisiana. It was a two-story concrete structure, whitewashed but stained by whatever those organisms are that grow on buildings in the tropics. It was raised some five feet off the earth on posts in tropical fashion and surrounded on both levels and all sides by broad verandas. Moon guessed it had been built early in the century, and not as part of a prison. Perhaps it was a hospital once, or a school. It dominated a broad, grassy plaza, the other three sides of which were lined by one-story buildings. They looked like barracks, Moon thought, but probably were quarters for the nonfarming inmates. He paused in the shade of the portal and looked back. Nothing stirred in the noonday heat.

  It was very little cooler in the whitewashed room where they sat waiting for George Rice to be delivered to them. High ceiling, high windows, and a brass plaque beside the door declaring that Iwahig Prison was built in 1905 by the United States Philippine Commission. Overhead the blades of an ornate ceiling fan made their leisurely effort to stir the humid air. Even the lieutenant, wearing knee-length shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, was wilted. He was also a bit confused. His stare made his suspicious dislike of Moon apparent. But somehow Mrs. van Winjgaarden had charmed him.

  "You know the rules," he said, glowering at Moon and then smiling shyly at Osa. "Visits are limited to twenty minutes for colonists during the first month of their incarceration. Colonist Rice has not been here long enough to qualify for a longer visit. Nothing can be passed to the inmate. Nothing can be received from the inmate. The rules require that a guard will be present at all times."

  This recitation completed, the lieutenant gave Moon a final warning stare and backed out, bowed to Osa, and closed the door behind him.

  They sat in straight-backed wooden chairs behind a long wooden table. And waited.

  "Here we are, then," Osa said. "I think this will be it. I think Mr. Rice will tell us what we have to know. I have prayed for that."

  Moon nodded. "Maybe so," he said. And maybe this would be an appropriate time for prayer. He closed his eyes. Lord, he thought, let this Rice guy be the end of it. Let me just go home. Let this man tell us he doesn't know where the kid is, and he doesn't know how to get to this crazy preacher's mission, and he doesn't know a damned thing useful. He opened his eyes. Closed them again. Arid, Lord, let my mother be well again. And let her forgive me if I disappoint her again. Let her know it just wasn't possible. That I really did- The door opened and a small man walked through it. George Rice. He wore a loose cotton blouse with broad horizontal stripes in black and white. And under the blouse, loose pants with the same stripes. Exactly like the costumes cartoonists put on convicts, Moon thought. But the man didn't look like a convict even in that uniform. He had bright blue eyes, and a broad grin showed perfect white teeth. He had a well-trimmed white beard and mustache. Moon thought of Santa Claus.

  A guard walked in behind him, even smaller. The guard looked about seventeen, and nervous.

  "Well, howdy do!" George Rice said, beaming at Osa. "It is so good to see you agin, darlin'. So very, very good."

  The guard pointed to the chair on the other side of the table and said, "Sit, please."

  Rice sat.

  "Mr. Rice," Osa said, "this is Ricky's brother. We hope you can give us some information."

  "Moon Mathias," Rice said, extending a hand.

  "I'll be damned. You finally got here. Ricky thought you were the greatest thing since sliced br
ead."

  The guard stepped forward. "No touch," he said.

  His expression said he was embarrassed by this rudeness. He looked at Moon, his eyes asking forgiveness.

  "I'm glad to meet you," Moon said. "Ricky told me a lot about you too. I guess you were his right-hand man." A small white lie, but harmless as it was, Moon regretted it, just as he regretted the small ones he told Debbie. All Moon remembered hearing about Rice was a couple of anecdotes about his escapades.

  "Don't believe all you hear," Rice said, grinning. And then, to Osa, "Damn', did you come like the prince came to the tower where the princess was"-he searched for the proper word-"was incarcerated against her will? I trust that is your motive."

  "It would be nice if we could," Osa said. "But we-"

  Rice interrupted her. He turned to the guard. "This is my friend Mr. Preda. Mr. Preda, these are my good old friends, Mrs. van Winjgaarden and Mr. Moon Mathias. Good people. Good friends of President Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda."

  "How do you do," Moon said. Osa said something that sounded like it might be in Tagalog, and Mr. Preda smiled shyly and nodded.

  "Mr. Preda speaks English," Rice said. "But when it comes to La lengua of Shakespeare, to the multiple-syllable latinate vocabulary, then it's a different ball game. You two will understand without any explanation from me the advantage this linguistic situation will have for us." He looked back at Preda, who smiled and nodded.

  Rice smiled back.

  "I understand," Moon said glumly.

  "You don't have to be a Houdini for the first step," Rice said. "I guess you noticed that coming in. A low hurdler could do the palm log. This isn't Sing Sing. That's not the problem. The problem is getting a drawbridge across the moat."

  "The Sulu Sea," Moon said. He wasn't happy about the direction this conversation was taking.

  "Exactly," Rice said. "Or, in our case, it would be the South China Sea."

  "Mr. Rice," Osa said, "to tell the truth, we don't have any way to build bridges over moats. We are trying to find the baby. Eleth's baby. And Ricky's. She was supposed to be brought out to Manila, but she didn't get there. And we want to get my brother out of his mission too. Mr. Brock told us that you might-"

  "Little Lila didn't get to Manila?" Rice said, frowning. "Well, now, she should have."

  "And I would also like you to tell me some way I can reach my brother."

  "Oh," Rice said. He leaned his elbows on the table, hands folded, lip caught between his teeth, thinking. He looked at Moon, blue eyes bright under bushy white eyebrows. And then at Osa. And then down at his hands.

  Young Mr. Preda took a small step backward, leaned against the wall, looked out the window, exhaled a great sigh. Moon became conscious of the perspiration running down his cheekbone, down the back of his neck. The smell of mildew reached him, reminding him of something he couldn't quite place.

  "Where would she be?" Rice asked himself. He glanced up at Moon. "I take it you're telling me they didn't get her onto the flight to Manila," he said.

  "Apparently not," Moon said.

  Rice sighed. "The way it was supposed to work, we'd handle it at the Nam end and that lawyer- Castenada, I think his name is, the one that Ricky retained for R. M. Air-was supposed to meet the plane and get the kid sent along to the grandmother in the States." Rice paused, lip between teeth again, remembering.

  "I flew her up to Saigon," Rice said. "Lo Tho Dem was there at the airport. He had his wife with him. They took the little girl. Dem said he thought everything was going to be okay but he might need a little more cash"-he glanced up at Moon as he rubbed his fingers together, making sure he understood such things-"because things were getting tense in Saigon already. The rich folks wanting out. People standing in line at the embassy for papers and visas. There was already a big run on the airlines for tickets. But Dem-"

  Moon interrupted. "Who is Lo Tho Dem?"

  Rice laughed. "I never was quite sure who the hell he was," he said. "Anyway, he was Ricky's man in Saigon. Your brother had a talent for finding useful people. I'm pretty sure Mr. Dem sometimes did a little work for the CIA. That must have been where Ricky got acquainted with him: when Dem was working on one of those little jobs for the Company."

  "Oh," Moon said. "And Ricky sometimes did a little work for them too?"

  "And that's why Dem figured he could get the paperwork through in a hurry. And get the airline ticket. All that. From what little I know about it, the Company owed your brother a few favors."

  "You think that was the problem?" Moon asked. "Dem couldn't get a visa?"

  "Well, now," Rice said, "when you get right down to it I gotta admit the real problem was me being stupid. The problem was, Ricky was dead. To make it worse, the Company knew he was dead. No more favors expected from Ricky Mathias. And the CIA don't have a reputation for paying off favors to people who can't do 'em any more good."

  Rice was biting his lip again. He gave Moon an apologetic look and slammed his fist into his palm.

  "Son of a bitch! I should have thought of that."

  Mr. Preda shifted his weight against the wall, looked at his watch, sighed.

  "So how can we find the child now?" Moon asked. "Did you have some sort of backup plan? Would this Dem guy keep her, or what?"

  "I don't know," Rice said.

  "How can I find Dem, then?"

  "He lived in Saigon. Ricky had his address and telephone number in his file."

  "At Can Tho?" Moon asked.

  "We were pulling out of there," Rice said. "I guess Ricky's files would be downriver at Long Phu." He shook his head. "That is, if they got all the stuff out of Ricky's office moved."

  "This Dem had a Saigon telephone," Moon said. "How's chances of calling information, getting it that way?"

  "From what I've been hearing in here about the war the past few days, I say about a snowball's chance in hell. You can't get a call through to

  Saigon without some sort of special pull. And if you got it through, you couldn't get the number. And if you got the number, the system wouldn't be working. Not out to the residences."

  "So what do you recommend?" Moon asked.

  Rice leaned back in the chair and rubbed his beard, thinking about it.

  He will tell me we will have to just forget it. It's absolutely impossible, like finding a needle in a haystack. He will tell Osa there's no way to reach her brother. That the Khmer Rouge have already found him and made a martyr out of him and she should go home and pray for the repose of his soul.

  "You have to have a pilot," Rice said. "Ricky wanted you to come out and help run the place. But he said you didn't fly."

  "I don't," Moon said. "And while you're thinking, do you have any ideas about an urn Ricky was bringing out of Cambodia for an old Chinese man named Lum Lee?"

  "Urn? Oh, yeah. Lee's ancestral bones, wasn't it? I'd forgotten about that job."

  "Know where it is?"

  "Sure," Rice said. "Or where it was. Ricky had gone up-country to get it. And he called in to say he had it. And then he stopped at the Vinh place and dropped off the kid to visit Eleth's mother there. And there wasn't any sign of an urn in what was left of the helicopter. So I'd say it had to be back in the Vinh village."

  "Just a matter of getting there," Moon said.

  "Yep," Rice said. "And getting yourself out again. Alive and with all your arms and legs still in place."

  Osa had been sitting silently, hands folded in her lap. She leaned forward. "I think we could do it easily enough in a helicopter," she said. "Just as we did last summer when you flew me up there. It took less than an hour."

  "I remember, darlin'," he said. "It was a most pleasant little trip. But that was last summer. Pol Pot's bloody little bastards, with their tripod-mounted antiaircraft machine guns and little hand-held missile launchers, had not yet come down from the north."

  "Are there any copters left at your hangars? Would any pilots still be there?"

  "Copters, I'd say yes. We had eight or nine b
eing fixed when I left, some of them ready to go. And two pilots. That was then. Now I'd say you could subtract two pilots and two copters from that number."

  "No pilots?" Osa said.

  "Not if they have any sense. And they were sensible fellows. Smart enough to know the Vietcong wouldn't like 'em." He thought about it. "It's Viet Cong territory-the Mekong Delta is. if the ARVN Yellow Tiger Battalion is still there, maybe. But I doubt it. Why stay? They could fly one of those copters away to Bangkok or get it down to Jakarta or Singapore and get a ton of money for it."

  "Without any proof of ownership?" Moon asked.

  Rice grinned at him. "Mr. Mathias," he said, "we are now in Southeast Asia. I don't think the Republic of Vietnam is going to be around long enough to file suit."