by Ross Thomas
“Artie’s full of shit then,” Overby said.
A melancholy look spread slowly across Howdy’s knobby face. “I know you, Otherguy. Known you for years. And I know Artie and that fucking Durant. And I know they don’t come cheap and neither do you—and never have done. So what you lads’ve got cooking is something rich and tasty and I think I oughta get my spoonful.”
Overby sighed, stared at the floor for long moments, and then looked up, his eyes brimming with honesty and pure intent.
“Boy, let’s get one thing straight. I’m here to pay you some money. I called you from L.A. and asked you to find Artie and Durant. You did that and I appreciate it. But what I’ve got going is all on spec—except for bare expenses. And that’s all I can offer Wu and Durant: bare expenses plus a slice of some sweet by-and-by. So how many phone calls did you make? Two? Three? Okay. Let’s say three. I’ll pay you one thousand U.S. per call. Three thousand dollars. Now if that’s not more than fair, by God, I don’t know what is.”
Howdy’s face took on a look of utter dejection and wounded pride. “Otherguy, you’re not paying me to pick up the blower and dial some numbers. You’re paying me because I know what numbers to dial and because I run the best fucking message drop between Honolulu and Sydney. So you owe me for unique services, professionally rendered. And if that ain’t worth eight thousand hard cash, I’ll eat my butt.”
“For professional services, I’ll tack on a thousand.”
“Four thousand? That’s a … a professional insult. But because you’re an old customer I’ll drop her to six.”
Again, Overby sighed and again studied the floor. When he at last looked up he said, “By digging into my own pocket, I can go five.” His tone turned cold. “But that’s tapping my own case money.”
“Five, you say?”
“Five.”
“Five it is, then.”
“Okay,” Overby said. “Where’re Artie and Durant?”
“Could I see a bit of the money first, Otherguy?”
Overby bent over and started pulling up the right leg of his jeans. Georgia Blue leaned forward in the chair and reached behind her back, as if to scratch. Boy Howdy walked behind his chrome and plastic desk and opened a drawer.
Taped to Overby’s bare right leg with a strip of Velcro was a fat number ten envelope. He ripped away the Velcro and tossed the envelope onto Howdy’s desk. Howdy grinned, picked up the envelope and looked inside.
“I’ve got their address and phone number right here,” he said, reaching toward the open desk drawer with his right hand.
“Don’t!” Georgia Blue said, snapping the word out.
Boy Howdy looked at her with surprise that could have been either real or pretended. “Don’t what, Miss Sweet Georgia Blue?”
Georgia Blue’s right hand came out from behind her back. In it was the Walther. Boy Howdy’s surprise turned genuine.
“Don’t reach into the drawer,” she said. “Just tell Otherguy what he wants to know and count your money. He’ll phone to confirm Wu and Durant. If you’re not lying, we’ll leave.”
Howdy counted his money first. As he counted it, Overby went behind the desk, reached into the open drawer and brought out a .45-caliber Colt semiautomatic, the 1911 model. He removed the clip, pocketed it and worked the slide, ejecting the round in the chamber. He then put the Colt back into the drawer and the ejected round in his pocket.
“Okay,” Overby said. “Where’re Artie and Durant?”
“The Peninsula,” Howdy said, still counting his money.
“Here or Hong Kong?”
“Here. The number’s—”
“I know the number,” Overby said, picked up the phone, dialed and asked for Mr. Wu. When Artie Wu answered, Overby identified himself and said, “I’m with Boy Howdy, the noted wanker, and we’ve finished our business so I think I’d better drop by and see you and Quincy.” After they agreed on a time, Overby said, “One more thing. I’ve got a surprise for you.” He listened and replied: “It’s not a what, Artie, it’s a her. Georgia Blue … Yeah, you’re right. You had better tell Durant.”
After Overby hung up he turned to give Howdy a bleak look. “We could still take back the five thousand and have you for nothing, Boy.”
Howdy shook his head. “A few years back maybe. But not now. You been away too long, Otherguy. You had yourself an edge once but you went and lost it someplace.”
“And you’re still fucking hopeless,” Overby said as he turned and went to the door. He held it open for Georgia Blue who backed out of the room, her Walther still pointed at Boy Howdy.
When she reached the hall, Howdy said, “I do like my women big, Sweet Georgia Blue.”
She didn’t reply, nor did Overby as he went through the metal door, closing it behind him. Boy Howdy stood behind his desk for several moments, frowning, then picked up the phone and dialed a number. When it was answered, he said, “It’s me and it went about like I said.” He listened to a question and then replied, “Nah, he’s a lamb. It’s Wu and that fucking Durant you gotta keep an eye on.”
CHAPTER 14
It was past midnight when Artie Wu heard the knock at the door, turned and said, “Let’s get it over with.”
Georgia Blue rose, her hands unconsciously smoothing and tugging at the gaudy Hawaiian shirt she still wore. Head bowed, she walked slowly across the sitting room of the suite in the Peninsula Hotel. Wu and Otherguy Overby watched her, their curiosity evident. Wu was on the couch; Overby in an easy chair. When she reached the door her bowed head came up and both men seemed to relax.
She let her hand rest lightly on the doorknob. The knock came again, two light taps. She gave her lower lip a quick bite, tightened her grasp on the knob and opened the door. Quincy Durant stood in the corridor. It was difficult to tell whether the sight of her shocked or only surprised him.
His eyes reacted first. They blinked twice, quite rapidly, and then his mouth opened, as if there were something he needed to say. But no words came and his mouth spread itself into a wide pleased grin that she thought made him look about six, possibly seven.
Durant said, “Georgia, by God.”
“That’s a silly smile, Durant. It makes you look about six. I was hoping for something older—something that maybe needed a cane.”
Durant ran a hand through his hair. “Like the gray?”
“Not enough of it.”
His smile went away for an instant and then came back, as if taking up permanent residence. “You look almost the same. Except better. I especially like your shirt.”
“Otherguy picked it out.”
“Otherguy. Well. You’re back with him then?”
“I’m his new partner,” Georgia Blue said. “I’m also yours and Artie’s.”
The wide smile slowly went away, an eighth of an inch at a time. “I see.”
“No you don’t,” she said. “But come on in and we’ll explain it.”
After Durant entered and closed the door, he turned to find Georgia Blue standing only a foot or so away. In her eyes and expression was something he interpreted as either a demand or an invitation, so he tilted up her chin with his left hand and put his right arm around her waist. He kissed her then. It was a chaste kiss of the closed-mouth kind that lasted as long as a kiss ever lasts between distant cousins of the opposite sex. Wu and Overby watched with polite detachment.
When the kiss ended, Georgia Blue said, “The fire’s gone out, I see.”
Durant’s right hand patted the Walther that was still stuck down in her jeans. “Must be your extinguisher,” he said.
She reached back and removed the hand. “Years back, Quincy, I had fantasies about you. Real three-in-the-morning S-M stuff that usually ended with my shooting you. But they went away just like cancer sometimes goes away.”
Durant studied her briefly. “Whatever you say, Georgia.”
Durant turned to find Otherguy Overby up and standing by the club chair. Overby wore his hard merry grin. Durant
returned it with a crooked one of his own that was half fond and half wary. “Otherguy,” Durant said, a little surprised by the warmth that had crept unbidden into his tone. He crossed the room and held out his hand. “Quincy,” Overby said as they shook hands.
“I hear it’s fat.”
“You hear right.”
“Good,” Durant said and turned to the beaming Artie Wu who was still on the couch, hands laced across his belly. “When you called,” Durant said, “you kind of forgot to mention Georgia.”
Wu shook his great head. “If I’d told you, your heart would’ve started going pitty-pat and you’d’ve turned all sweaty and gone looking for roses at one in the morning. This way you open the door and—bang! It’s over and done.”
“Like a good neat hanging,” Durant said.
“Exactly,” Wu said and looked at Georgia Blue. “You okay?”
She nodded and sat down on the couch.
“Well, sometimes reunions aren’t as bad as we—”
“For Christ sake, Artie, drop it,” she said.
Wu smiled agreeably. “Okay. Let’s get down to business.” He rose from the couch. “I’ll pour for whoever’s thirsty. After that, Otherguy’ll go through it from start to finish without interruption. When he’s done, it’ll be question time. Any comments or suggestions?”
There weren’t any. Georgia Blue asked for a glass of white wine. The three men chose beer. Wu served the drinks, then sat back down on the couch, took out one of his immense cigars and held it up to see whether anyone objected. When no one did, he lit it carefully, blew the smoke up in the air and looked at Overby. “Let’s hear it, Otherguy. From the beginning.”
“Let me put the price on it first for Quincy,” Overby said. He looked at Durant. “It’s a five-way even split on five million U.S. There’s another loose half million that’ll go for expenses and the this-and-that.” He paused. “Interested?”
Durant grinned. “Extremely.”
Overby told it then, concisely and quickly, leaving out the adjectives and all hyperbole. He pronounced each name carefully and even spelled it. A brief report on the meeting with Boy Howdy was given without rancor, which somehow made it even more damning. When he was done he leaned back in the club chair, picked up his beer, and drank half of it.
There was a brief silence until Durant said, “Our other partner, the one who isn’t here?”
“Booth Stallings,” Overby said.
“The terrorism expert.”
Overby nodded.
“Is he an expert on its cure and prevention, or is he a how-to-do-it man?”
“I read a book he wrote,” Overby said. “Well, most of it anyhow. He knows a hell of a lot about it—maybe everything. But …” Overby frowned as if his thought had dried up.
“But what?” Durant said.
“Well, when he explains how and why it happens, he stays kind of neutral—you know, like he was above it all.”
Artie Wu blew a large fat smoke ring at the ceiling and turned to Georgia Blue. “Tell us about the other one, Georgia. The poet who hired you as shotgun.”
“Harry Crites.”
Wu acknowledged the name with a wave of his cigar.
“He’s a very smooth, well-connected fixer who works Washington out of his Watergate apartment. He has clients in South and Central America, a kind of poste restante office in London, and makes a lot of trips to the Middle East. To Cairo. Nowhere else there. Just Cairo.”
“What’s his background?” Durant asked.
“Federal,” she said. “White House—well, kind of, a long time ago—then DOD and State.” She paused. “Varied and murky.”
“Langley?” Wu said.
“He says not.”
Artie Wu stuck the cigar back in his mouth, locked his hands behind his head and examined the ceiling. He spoke around the cigar.
“Okay. Harry Crites is the tap that turns on the money. It flows through the pipe that’s our very own Booth Stallings and lands in the bucket—maybe receptacle would be better—that’s Alejandro Espiritu, aging freedom fighter and/or archterrorist.”
He took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at Durant. “Except for the fact that he and Stallings were once comrades-in-arms during the war, what else do we know about Espiritu?”
“Fuck all,” Durant said.
“Then we’d better get a fix on him. You want to take that on, Otherguy?”
Overby thought about it and finally said yes.
Wu picked up an ashtray and carefully put out his cigar. “Now we get to the real question. Just whose money are we going to lift?”
“Stallings had some thoughts on that,” Georgia Blue said. “He thinks it must be dirty money that, once gone, nobody’ll send after. I told him Harry Crites’ll sure as hell send after it and that he’ll probably send me.”
Wu raised his right eyebrow. “And what did Mr. Stallings say?”
“He thought it was a pretty notion.”
“So do I,” Wu said. “Quincy?”
“Very pretty.”
“I think it’s fucking beautiful,” Overby said.
Artie Wu looked at his watch, yawned and stretched. “Somewhere along the way, after the money leaves the tap and before it drops into the Espiritu bucket, we’ll have to siphon it off. I can think of several ways we might do that and Otherguy can probably come up with even more.”
“At least a dozen,” Overby said.
“We’ll have to run it on a no-comeback basis,” Durant said.
“Absolutely,” Wu said.
Durant frowned. “But we can’t do that until we know whose money it really is.”
Overby squirmed in his chair, asking for the floor. “Want to know my gut hunch?”
Artie Wu leaned forward, elbows on knees, his expression suddenly interested and wide awake. “Very much,” he said.
“Okay,” Overby said. “We know we’re messing with serious money that involves governments or at least multinationals. I mean, nobody’s going to spend five million just to bring some old ridgerunner down from the hills unless they stand to get five hundred million back, right?”
“Five hundred million worth of something anyhow.”
“Well, I don’t much care whose five million it is so long as we can fix up the no-comeback.” Overby paused. “But my gut tells me what they want that five million to do.” He leaned back in his chair and waited for someone to prompt him, which Durant quickly did.
“Fuck up the Philippines, that’s what,” Overby said as a look of absolute certitude spread across his face.
There was a lengthy silence while Overby’s prediction was digested. Finally, Artie Wu softly said, “Well, I guess it’s not going to happen then, is it?”
Dismay and more than a trace of alarm erased Overby’s normal confidence. “You mean we don’t go for the money?”
“What he means,” Durant said, “is that if we make the money disappear, then it can’t be used to fuck up the country.”
Overby’s relief was apparent. “Yeah. Right.”
“I can’t believe this,” Georgia Blue said.
Overby looked at her. “Why the hell not?”
“Because bullshit in the moonlight still stinks. Do-gooders don’t steal five million dollars. Thieves do. Grifters like us, Otherguy. If those two want romance, fine. I’ll take cash.”
“What’s so wrong with doing a little good while we’re at it?” Overby asked.
Georgia Blue sighed. “Because there’s never any money in it.”
CHAPTER 15
At 7:15 the following morning Booth Stallings came out of the Manila Hotel coffee shop, where he had been among its first customers, and strolled into the lobby. He dumped the three somewhat strident Manila newspapers that had been his breakfast reading into a wastebasket and turned to watch an ABC television news crew fret over the logistics of loading its equipment into a waiting van.
Stallings wondered what the crew’s story might be and what percentage of its vie
wers would know or care that the Philippines were not, after all, in the Middle East just to the left of Syria. That’s the Philistine Islands you’re thinking of, hon. Maybe ten percent, he decided, but immediately raised that to twenty and then, mostly out of unfounded optimism, increased the percentage to thirty.
Knowing where a country is doesn’t make you care what happens to it, Stallings thought, not even if you’d once been enrolled in the ultimate geography lesson of a world war. With a small private grin he recalled what the Marines had said about the Carolines: Who gives a fuck about Truk?
The ABC news team carried out its last big black box and Stallings crossed to the reception desk to see whether he had any messages. The clerk turned, looked and turned back with an envelope. It was a plain white envelope, neither cheap nor expensive.
It was addressed to Stallings in a handwriting that he recognized as Filipino, which he thought to be the prettiest in the world. He also knew his judgment was influenced by the striking similarity of much Filipino penmanship to that of Mary Helen Packer who had sat in front of him in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades, and whose firm but graceful hand had won her a prize every year.
He wondered whether the high quality of Filipino handwriting was a legacy from the Spanish friars or, less likely, from the 540 American schoolteachers who had shipped out to Manila in 1901 aboard the S.S. Thomas, a first echelon that had fanned out over the islands, bringing both English and the Palmer method to the provinces. He remembered Espiritu once mentioning that he had been taught by an elderly Thomasite. From Kansas, Stallings seemed to recall.
He crossed to one of the lobby chairs, sat down and examined the envelope. It was handsomely addressed to Mr. Booth Stallings, The Manila Hotel. Down at the lower left-hand corner were the words: By Hand.
Inside was a once folded sheet of good quality white paper. Black ink had been used to write two lines so straight they seemed almost ruled. The lines formed more of a command than an invitation: “Meet me at nine this morning under my name at the American Memorial Cemetery in Makati.” The letter was signed Hovey Profette. Stallings used a weak smile to block the chill the dead medic’s name was meant to cause.
