Out on the Rim

by Ross Thomas

  After Kennedy’s death in 1963, Harry Crites had resigned from what he later always referred to not quite accurately as “my White House stint” and moved over to Defense, where he wasn’t at all happy, and from there to State where he landed a slot in the suspect Public Safety Program of the Agency for International Development. AID dispatched Crites to seven or eight lesser developed countries from which came mutterings about some of the deals he had cut with their premiers, presidents-for-life and prime ministers. But Stallings had never paid much attention.

  Besides, it was around in there—1965—that Stallings, his wife and two young daughters, cushioned by a $20,000 foundation grant, had left Washington for Rome where he would continue his research on terrorism.

  In the seven or eight years that followed, Booth Stallings only returned to Washington and sometimes New York when forced to wheedle additional funds out of mostly unsympathetic foundations. And occasionally he would bump into Harry Crites at some unavoidable cocktail party or embassy reception.

  By then Harry Crites’ shiny blue suit and King Edward cigar and the old Ford Fairlane with its rusted-out rocker panels were long gone. Instead, the suits were from J. Press and the cigars smelled of Havana and the car was a beige Mercedes sedan, not the most expensive model, but not the diesel either.

  At these infrequent encounters Harry Crites and Booth Stallings never said much more than hello and how’ve you been, although Crites almost never gave an answer, or waited for one, because there were always others he wanted to talk to far more than he did to Stallings, and usually he was already waving and smiling at them.

  But once there had been nobody—nobody worthwhile anyway—and Harry Crites said he had left government and was now doing liaison work, which meant he was peddling what back then was still called influence but in later years was softened to access. Stallings had sometimes speculated about who might be retaining Crites and his conclusions had left him as depressed as he ever got.

  Harry Crites was twenty-two minutes late when the muscle walked into the Madison and read the lobby with the standard quick not quite bored glance that flitted over Booth Stallings, lingered for a moment on the two Saudis, counted the help and marked the spare exits. After that the muscle gave her left earlobe a slight tug, as if checking the small gold earring.

  Booth Stallings immediately nominated her for one of the three most striking women he had ever seen. Her immense poise made him peg her age at thirty-two or thirty-three. But he knew he could be five years off either way because of the way she moved, which was like a young athlete with eight prime years still ahead of her.

  She was at least five-ten and not really as slender as her height made her out to be. She carried no purse and wore cream gabardine slacks with a black jacket of some nubby material that was short enough to make her seem even taller, but loose enough to hide the pistol Stallings somehow knew she was wearing.

  Her hair was a thick reddish brown with the red providing the highlights. Worn carelessly short, it looked perfect. It also looked as if all she had to do to make it look like that was run her fingers through it. Stallings suspected that nothing perfect was that easy. The red-brown hair framed a more or less oval face whose features seemed to have been placed precisely where they should be—except her forehead, which was a little high. Her eyes were green, although Stallings couldn’t decide whether they were sea green or emerald green. But since she looked expensive, he finally settled on dollar green.

  A few seconds after she tugged at her left earlobe, Harry Crites made his entrance, wearing a nine-dollar cigar and a thousand-dollar camel’s hair topcoat. The coat was worn like a cape, much as a rich poet might have worn it, if there were such a thing, which Stallings doubted.

  The woman nodded at Crites. It was a noncommittal nod that could have meant either have fun or all clear. Crites paused. The woman removed the coat from his shoulders with no trace of subservience. Stallings wondered how much her services cost and what they included. With the camel’s hair coat over her left arm, the woman turned and left the hotel through the Fifteenth Street entrance.

  When Harry Crites caught sight of his dinner guest he narrowed his blue eyes and twinkled them behind what Stallings suspected were contact lenses. The wide joke-prone mouth, a shade or two paler than a red rubber band, stretched itself into a delighted smile, revealing some remarkably white teeth that Stallings knew were capped. After remembering that Crites had been twenty-seven when he had borrowed that still unpaid $35 back in 1961, Stallings put his present age at fifty-two.

  Rising slowly, Booth Stallings extended his right hand. Crites grabbed it with both of his and pumped it up and down as he spoke from around and behind the immense cigar. “Goddamnit, Booth, too many goddamned years.”

  “Fourteen,” said Stallings who had that kind of memory. “June seventeenth, 1972.”

  Crites removed his cigar, flipped back through his own mental almanac and made his eyes dart from side to side in mock panic. “The Watergate break-in. Christ, I didn’t see you there.”

  Stallings couldn’t hold back his grin. “My daughter Joanna’s twenty-first birthday. She’s the one you talked to today—the one married to Secretary Know-nothing of the State Department.”

  “Neal Hineline,” Crites said and nodded gravely. “A great fourteenth-century mind. Sound.” He frowned then. “But I don’t remember Joanna’s birthday.”

  “That’s because you weren’t there. You were going into that fancy place that closed down and almost got turned into a McDonald’s. The—uh—”

  “Sans Souci.”

  “Right. And I was heading for a birthday lunch with Joanna at the Mayflower and you looked right through me.”

  Crites touched his finger to his right eye. “That was before I found the miracle cure for vanity. Contacts. Now if you’re through fucking me over, let’s eat.”

  “Your friend going to join us?”

  Crites glanced over his shoulder in the direction the tall woman had gone and then looked at Stallings with a faint smile “She’s not exactly a friend.”

  “Then let’s eat,” Booth Stallings said.

  They gave Harry Crites the choice northeast corner banquette in the almost empty Montpelier Room. He and Stallings had a drink first, Perrier and bitters for Crites, vodka on ice for Stallings. They both ordered a salad and the veal and a double portion of the first-of-the-season green beans, which the waiter swore had been picked only that morning in Loudoun County, Virginia, although Stallings suspected it was the day before near Oxnard, California. After that, Harry Crites ordered the wine, which required a grave five-minute conference with the sommelier.

  Once the wine was ordered, Harry Crites leaned back, sipped his drink, and examined Stallings as if he were still something that would be a wonderful buy despite a doubtful provenance.

  Stallings returned the stare, mildly disappointed to find Crites had aged so well. There was just a bit of fat around the middle, although the well-tailored vest helped conceal it nicely. The round face had yet to grow another chin. The color was also good, the broken veins few, and the controlled expression still ranged from glad to gladdest.

  There were a few new lines, of course, but apparently none from worry. The hair had stayed light brown, a shade or two off true blond, and what was left was just enough. Only youth was missing. It had fled—along with its twin pals, spontaneity and carelessness. What remained was a careful, if not quite cautious middle-aged man, obviously prosperous, who still planned on getting rich.

  “So they bounced you,” Harry Crites said, not making it a question.

  “Did they?”

  Crites shrugged. “This is Washington, Booth. Where do you think you’ll light?”

  “No idea.”

  “Interested in a one-shot?”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re sole source.”

  “That means I can charge a lot.”

  “A hell of a lot.”

  “All right,” Stallings
said. “First I eat; then I listen.”

  Following the veal, which turned out to be particularly good, Stallings and Crites ordered a large pot of coffee, passed up dessert, and vetoed a cognac recommended by the waiter. After two sips of coffee, Booth Stallings put his cup down and smiled at Crites. “Isn’t it curious though?”

  “What?”

  “That I got fired at three and by eight-fifteen I’m sitting in the Madison, eating twenty-six-dollar veal and listening to you offer me a sole-source one-shot. Who put the fix in, Harry? At the foundation?”

  Crites went on lighting his after-dinner cigar, taking his time, obviously enjoying the ritual. After several puffs he contemplated the cigar fondly. When he spoke, it was more to the cigar than to Stallings. “If I said me, you’d think I was bragging. If I said not me, you’d think I was lying. So I’m going to let you think whatever you like.”

  “Let’s have it then,” Stallings said. “The proposition.”

  “The Philippines.”

  “Well now.”

  “You’ve been there.”

  “Not recently.”

  “A long time ago,” Crites said. “During the war.”

  “Right. A long time ago.”

  “We—and we means some people I’m associated with—”

  Stallings interrupted. “What people?”

  “Just let me tell it, Booth, will you? When I’m selling I like to maintain the flow.”

  Stallings shrugged.

  “Well, these people would like you to go back.”

  “And do what?”

  “See the man.”

  “Who?”

  “A guy who read that book of yours—the one that got all the raves.”

  “I only wrote the one book, Harry.”

  “Yeah. Anatomy of Terror. I read it. Some of it anyhow. But our guy read it all and is very, very impressed. You could say he’s a fan.”

  “So what would I do, if I saw him?”

  “Convince him to come down from the hills.”

  “How?”

  “We’ll go as high as five million U.S. deposited in Hong Kong.”

  “What’s his name, Aguinaldo?”

  “Who’s Aguinaldo?”

  “A guy who came down from the hills for a lot of money a long time ago and went to Hong Kong.”

  “Never heard of him,” Harry Crites said. “What happened?”

  “He was double-crossed.”

  “Then what?”

  “He went back to the Philippines and turned himself into either a terrorist fool or a revolutionary hero, depending on what source you consult.”

  “When was all this?”

  Stallings looked away and frowned, as if trying to remember exactly. “About ninety years ago. Around in there.”

  “Don’t go looking for historical parallels,” Crites said.

  “Why not? They’re useful.”

  “Not this time. Our guy’s ready to deal, but we need a closer; an authenticator. You.”

  “Me.”

  “He knows you.”

  “From my book, you mean?” Stallings said, trying not to anticipate Crites’ reply.

  “Not just through the book. Personally.”

  “Has he got a name?”

  “Alejandro Espiritu. You do know him, don’t you?”

  “We’ve met,” Booth Stallings said.

  CHAPTER 3

  During the next half hour Stallings and Crites drank three cups of coffee and discussed the recent not quite bloodless February revolution in the Philippines. They touched on Ferdinand Marcos’ exile to Hawaii; Imelda’s shoes; the shambles the Filipino economy was in; the disastrous world price of sugar; Mrs. Aquino’s prospects as President (dicey, both agreed); and whether it was four or eight billion dollars that Marcos had managed to squirrel away. After discovering that neither apparently knew much more than what he had read, or seen on television, they returned to Alejandro Espiritu.

  “How well did you know him?” Crites asked.

  “Fairly well.”

  “What was he like then?”

  “Short. About five-four.”

  “Come on, Booth.”

  “Okay. He was smart. Maybe even brilliant. About twenty-two or twenty-three then and tough. He was also kind of flexible—for a guerrilla.”

  “He was one of those commie guerrillas, wasn’t he—what they called Huks?”

  “The Huks were mostly up north—in Luzon. We were down south. Negros and Cebu. Most of the time Cebu.”

  “What’d Huk stand for anyway? I forget.”

  “For Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon,” Stallings said, pleased he could still remember the Tagalog. “That translates into something like, ‘People’s Army to Fight the Japanese.’ It was shortened to Hukbala-hapa, which finally got cut down to Huks so it’d fit in a headline. Then Lansdale came along in the fifties and helped Magsaysay put the boot to them. You remember General Lansdale, don’t you, scourge of the Orient?”

  Crites ignored the question and said, “They’re calling themselves the NPA now—the New People’s Army.”

  “Not the same bunch. Most of what was left of the Huks turned into mercenaries and strikebreakers.”

  “You sure?”

  “Christ, Harry, if they were still the same guys, you’d have some pretty superannuated guerrillas puffing up and down those mountains.”

  “But the NPA’s also red as a rose.”

  Stallings shrugged. “So?”

  “You ever talk politics with Espiritu?”

  “I was nineteen. My job was to kill people, not discuss dialectics.”

  “Let me tell you what Espiritu is to the NPA,” Crites said and drew on his cigar. He inhaled a tiny portion of the smoke and then blew it all out—and away from Stallings. “He’s their secular archbishop. Their grand panjandrum. Their oracle. Their high lama. Their keeper of the sacred and everlasting flame. Some claim he’s even been to Moscow.”

  “Moscow,” Stallings said. “Think of that.”

  “Listen, Booth. If Espiritu comes down from the hills and exiles himself to Hong Kong, my people figure it’s eight to five that Madame Aquino can cut a deal with the NPA and keep on being President.”

  Stallings studied Harry Crites’ expression, looking for guile and deception, but finding only a crack salesman’s normal greed and unassailable confidence. “With the token communist or two in her cabinet, right?”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because then it would be all over for the NPA, Harry. Capitulation. Surrender. Defeat. And for what? So they can come down and starve in the barrios? They can do that up in the hills. Look. If the NPA makes a deal with Aquino, they won‘t’ve won anything and they’ll’ve lost what power they had. It doesn’t work like that. Not in the Philippines. Not in Afghanistan. Not in El Salvador or Lebanon. Not in Peru. Not in the Basque country or Northern Ireland. Not anywhere.”

  Crites put his cigar out in the ashtray, taking his time, tamping it carefully, making sure no spark was left. When he looked up, it was with an expression from which all friendliness had vanished. The blue eyes had come down with a chill and the wide joke-prone mouth had slipped from glad into grim. A faintly surprised Stallings realized that the son of a bitch didn’t like me—surprised not so much by the realization as by the surprise itself.

  “They say you’re the expert,” Crites said, not bothering to keep the disbelief out of his tone. “That’s what they say. Everybody. But my people’re willing to bet five million bucks you’re wrong.”

  “Five million could buy the NPA an awful lot of M-16s and AK-47s and Uzis—maybe enough to bring back martial law.”

  “My people figure five million’s not enough to buy anything but one guy.”

  “And just who the fuck are your people, Harry?”

  “Money people, who else?”

  “I think they’re the duck people.”

  The frost suddenly melted from Crites’ eyes and the wiseacre smile returned. “The Lan
gley ducks, you mean.”

  Stallings nodded. “You sure quack like one.”

  “No ducks,” Crites said.

  “Who then?”

  “Suppose there was a bunch of people,” Crites said slowly and carefully, “a consortium, let’s call it, that has a billion or so already invested in the Philippines. And this consortium is still hoping to make a return on its investment, or break even, or maybe just cut its losses a little. But its only hope in hell of doing any of that is with a stable government.”

  Crites paused, as if waiting for encouragement. Stallings gave him an impatient go-on nod.

  “Okay. So if this consortium spends another five million—which is maybe one-half of one percent of what it’s already sunk out there—well, it just might bring it off. And that’s it, Booth. The whole plate of fudge. Tranquillity instead of trouble. A few years of peace and quiet. And my people’re willing to spend a few bucks to get it.”

  “And buy off the chief troublemaker.”

  “Pension him off.”

  “You’re going to bribe him, Harry, and you want me for your bagman.”

  “Not me. Him. Espiritu. Like nine-tenths of the world, he doesn’t much trust or like Americans—God knows why, wonderful as we are. But he will deal with his old asshole buddy from World War II. So that means you’ll be our authenticator, our bona fides, and convince him the deal’s really kosher. Then he can retire to Hong Kong, spend his money and watch the Chicoms take over.”

  “He’s already nibbled then, hasn’t he?” Stallings said. “If he hadn’t, you and I wouldn’t be talking.”

  “He’s nibbled.”

  There was a long silence as Stallings drew careful cross-hatch patterns on the tablecloth with the tines of his unused dessert fork. The patterns turned into a Filipino nipa hut. A smile of anticipated victory spread slowly across Crites’ face. “Well?” he said and then went on without waiting for an answer. “You want in, don’t you, Booth?”

  Booth Stallings looked up slowly from his tablecloth sketch. “I want ten percent.”

  Crites’ victory smile vanished and his mouth formed a small shocked O. The eyes widened with what Stallings judged could only be horror. Nor was there any mistaking the fury in the whisper. “You want half a million dollars?”