by Ross Thomas
Durant looked at his watch when Wu began to talk. He talked steadily and confidently, as if from a carefully prepared outline. With a change of pitch, he even dropped in the occasional footnote exactly where needed. Stallings leaned forward, listening intently. An admiring smile spread slowly across Overby’s face and refused to go away. Georgia Blue gazed at Wu with a look that could have been interpreted as adoration, but which Durant knew to be awe and respect. There was a final summary paragraph and Wu was done. Durant looked at his watch. Wu had spoken without pause or interruption for exactly twenty-six minutes.
Although he had glanced occasionally at the others, Wu had aimed his sales talk, for that’s what it had been, at his primary customer, Booth Stallings. They now waited to hear whether the prospect was buying.
Stallings gave his chin a hard squeeze, his left earlobe a tug and said, “I like it. By God, I do.”
Artie Wu beamed and looked at Georgia Blue. She smiled almost helplessly. “Perfect, Artie. As always.”
Wu turned to Overby. “Well, Otherguy?”
Overby made an effort to erase his smile, but failed. So, still smiling, he said, “You know what it is, don’t you, Artie? It’s new. Brand-new. Not just some old-hat change-up. And I haven’t heard a new one since the Pommie Bastard, may he rest in peace, came up with the Angel Flight in Saigon and that was what?—eleven years ago when they were all climbing over the Embassy walls. They’ll name this one. This one’ll go down in the books. They oughta call it the Big Chinaman.”
Wu beamed. “I take it you approve, Otherguy.”
“I love it.”
“Quincy?” Wu said.
Durant shook his head in admiration. “It’s really rotten, Artie.”
A still beaming Wu turned back to Booth Stallings. “His highest accolade.”
Stallings frowned. “I have a question.”
“You must have several.”
“Everybody has a role to play,” Stallings said. “That’s normal, I take it?”
“A prerequisite,” Durant said. “One turns into an actor. Just as most case officers are top salesmen, all confidence men are actors. You learn your role. You believe in it. You don’t stray from it.”
“I’m Old Buddy, of course,” Stallings said.
Wu nodded.
“You and Durant are the Pair of Knaves.”
Again, there was a confirming nod.
“That leaves the Watchman and the Weak Link,” Stallings said, looking first at Georgia Blue and then at Overby. “Which is which?”
“The Weak Link goes to Cebu first,” Wu said, “followed a day or so later by the Watchman. I rather like Georgia for the Weak Link.”
Durant didn’t. “For Christ sake, Artie. People don’t like surprises. They like typecasting, which is why there’s so much of it. We need to send in a slender reed—not the lady decathlon champion. Look at Otherguy. Go on, look.”
Everyone looked at Overby, as if trying to see him for the first time. He glared back. “Okay,” Durant continued, “he’s a fusspot and neat as two pins. But he lets his beard go for a day or two, sleeps in his suit, wears a little gin on his breath and you’ve got a perfect Judas.”
“That’s not exactly how I see myself, Durant,” Overby said with that hard curious dignity Stallings had noticed before. “And it’s sure as hell not how they remember me in Cebu.”
Durant shrugged. “So you’ve disintegrated.”
Artie Wu frowned, looking from Overby to Georgia Blue and back to Overby. “I don’t know,” he said. “What d’you think, Otherguy?”
“I can do either one, Artie. You know that. If you don’t, then fuck it.”
Wu shook his head a little, as if still in doubt. “Georgia?” he said.
“I’d do better as the Watchman. I can throw in some exaggerated Secret Service crap for verisimilitude and I also think Otherguy’d be a natural for the Weak Link.” She looked at her watch. “I didn’t know this was going to run so late. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an appointment back at the Manila with a hairdresser.”
Wu nodded and Georgia Blue rose and left. After she had gone, Wu looked at the still scowling Overby. “Okay, Otherguy. You fly down tomorrow.”
“Not unless you’re convinced, Artie.”
“I’m more than convinced. So is everyone else—especially Durant.”
“You get to play yourself, Otherguy,” Durant said. “The role of a lifetime.”
The talk went on for another thirty minutes, mostly about the unimportant details that always crop up after the major decisions have been made. Overby was wrangling with Durant over which hotel to use as their headquarters in Cebu when the phone rang. Wu picked it up, said hello, listened and held it out to Durant.
After his own hello, Durant heard Emily Cariaga’s voice. Usually calm and even detached, it now crackled with excitement that bordered on panic.
“You have a car, Quincy?” she asked.
“The hotel’s.”
“Then you can take me to the airport and make sure I get on the plane.”
“You’re going back to Baguio?”
“Barcelona.”
“I see.”
“Don’t say what’s not true. Remember I said I’d ask around to see what I could find out?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I asked around and what I found convinced me I’d better go somewhere else for a while.”
“But you’re going to tell me about it.”
“On the way to the airport.”
Durant looked at his watch. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
Emily Cariaga asked him to make it in twenty and hung up.
CHAPTER 18
Because of impossible traffic, it was not until thirty-six minutes later at 3:39 P.M. that Durant drove the hotel Mercedes through the open steel gate of the high breeze-block wall that enclosed Emily Cariaga’s house in Forbes Park. The house was a little more than two blocks south and east of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) and it bothered Durant that there was no guard on the gate and that a beige Toyota sedan was blocking the narrow asphalt drive.
He parked just behind the Toyota and climbed slowly out of the Mercedes, staring at the house. It was one of the older ones in Forbes Park with wide eaves covering a verandah that wrapped itself around two sides and across the front. The windows were large and deeply recessed into thick stuccoed walls. The solid-looking old place seemed to promise it would be ten or even fifteen degrees cooler inside.
The next thing Durant noticed was the pair of running shoes that poked out—toes up, heels down—from beneath an elegant Traveler’s palm. The soles had been worn smooth. The shoes—and the feet inside them—were attached to a pair of jeans-clad legs. The upper legs disappeared into the thick clump of scarlet bougainvillaea that formed a backdrop for the Traveler’s palm.
A gravel path led to the running shoes but Durant avoided it, not wanting the gravel’s crunch to disturb the man in the bougainvillaea if he were asleep or—less likely—drunk. Walking on grass, Durant reached the bougainvillaea and parted it, trying without success to avoid the thorns.
The jeans-clad legs belonged to a stocky man in his mid-twenties. He had a wide ugly face, made even uglier by deep smallpox pits. He was obviously dead with an obviously broken neck. But his dark brown eyes remained open and still wore what may have been a look of mild surprise.
The man’s name was Placido, Durant remembered. He was one of the two guards who worked for Emily Cariaga. The other guard worked nights and his name was Mario. Durant also recalled that Placido was married and had three children, all boys. He couldn’t remember if Mario, the nightwatch, was married.
Durant straightened and turned toward the house. Its front door was ajar, not more than an inch or two. Durant glanced around the carefully tended grounds, looking for something with which to hit or cut or stab. He was hoping for a gardener’s machete, even a spade, or at least a rake. He found only a green plastic garden hose with a seven-in
ch brass nozzle.
Durant unscrewed the nozzle, trotted to the house, went quickly up the steps of the verandah, crossed to the door and kicked it open. The door didn’t bang against the wall as it should have. Instead, it hit something soft and yielding that made no noise.
The Filipino giant stepped out from behind the door. In his right hand was a tiny knife. As the knife flashed toward him Durant decided—almost dreamily—that it was actually a big knife, a shakeout with a seven- or eight-inch blade. The giant’s huge hand only made it look tiny. Still appraising the knife, Durant spun sideways, arching his body back like a matador anxious to avoid the horn. The knife sliced through his shirt.
Durant drove the brass nozzle into the giant’s left eye. The giant grunted and clapped his left hand to the eye. Durant pivoted and slammed the fist with the nozzle into the giant at least six inches below the massive silver belt buckle. The giant said something that sounded like whoof, took one step back and kicked Durant in the chest.
It was a hard kick powered by a telephone-pole leg. If Durant hadn’t spun right, bending over, offering only his left thigh, the kick would have caught him in the groin. But it missed the groin and the thigh and struck just below the sternum. Durant discovered he could no longer breathe and that it hurt too much to try. He sank to his knees and then curled up on the cool terrazzo floor.
As he lay on the floor, wondering about suffocation and waiting for the knife blade, Durant felt the giant’s hand go through his pockets. He heard the Mercedes key jingle on its ring. He heard the front door slam and wondered whether the kick had broken any ribs and whether the ribs had punctured his lungs. Durant tried for a deep breath but the pain wouldn’t permit it. He attempted a single cautious shallow breath. It burned like a poison gas, but some air flowed into his lungs and Durant discovered he wasn’t going to suffocate after all.
He heard the Mercedes’ engine start. Then a car door slammed. Another engine started, this time the Toyota’s, and there was the unique strained sound of a car being driven in reverse. After that, it was quiet.
Durant made himself sit up. He made himself breathe small shallow breaths. The pain in his chest was still excruciating but at least he could pull air into his lungs. He rose slowly, a few inches at a time. He tried to stand up straight, found that he couldn’t, and stood—bent over—breathing little sips of air. Finally, he straightened, ignoring the pain, and shuffled into the long living room, moving like a ninety-six-year-old emphysemiac with bad feet.
A tan suitcase and a dark brown carry-on bag were on the floor next to the baby grand piano. The piano’s lid was closed. Someone had left a woman’s cordovan purse on top of it.
Durant tried to call Emily Cariaga’s name, but all that came out was a high-pitched croak. Durant sucked in his first deep breath. It seared his lungs, but again he refused to acknowledge the pain and used the breath to bellow her name. He waited, listening. There was no reply.
He left the living room and walked slowly down the long hall toward her bedroom. The door was closed. Durant reached for the doorknob, hesitated, opened the door and went in.
She lay on her back near the foot of the large spool bed, dressed for traveling in gray slacks and a dark blue blouse. Near her left hand was a heavy dark gray tweed jacket because she always said it turned cold once you reached Hawaii. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open, and she had been stabbed in the chest. Durant knelt beside her and noticed she had been stabbed three times and that there really wasn’t very much blood.
He was never quite sure how long he knelt beside Emily Cariaga’s body. It could have been one minute, or it could have been ten. But after she at last turned from Emily Cariaga into a corpse, Durant rose, walked around the bed to the telephone and called the police. After that, he called Artie Wu.
The name Hermenegildo Cruz was centered on the engraved business card the Manila detective lieutenant had handed Durant. In the lower left-hand corner was a telephone number. In the lower right, a discreet one-word advertisement in six-point italics: Homicide.
Durant guessed Lt. Cruz had had the cards printed at his own expense since it was unlikely the Manila police would have paid for engraving. Durant also found the homicide detective to be almost as novel as his business card—what with the buttery vanilla raw silk suit and the brown and white shoes with their fleur-de-lis toes and almost invisible built-up heels. Then there was the blue chambray cotton shirt with its button-down collar and what Durant suspected to be a Paul Stuart label. Finally, there was the hand-painted tie, featuring a long thin silvery waterfall and tall pines that spoke of either a mischievous regard for camp or extraordinarily bad taste.
Lt. Cruz himself, although not very tall, had one of those long slender faces that perfect bones make almost pretty. Under a small straight inquisitive nose grew a mustache. It wasn’t of the American highway-patrol-macho variety, but rather of the suave and immaculate strain much favored by film stars in the thirties and forties. The homicide lieutenant also had a wealth of neatly trimmed thick black hair garnished with a pushed-up wave in front. The wave provided a resting ledge for a pair of expensive aviator sunglasses. Beneath the glasses, the hair, and an unlined forehead were two of the smartest brown eyes Durant had ever seen.
He and Lt. Cruz sat at either end of a couch in the living room near the baby grand piano. Emily Cariaga’s purse was still on its closed lid, her suitcase and carry-on bag nearby on the floor. Durant had gone through all three before the police arrived.
There were perhaps a dozen uniformed and plainclothes police in the house. One of them, a middle-aged crusty-looking uniformed sergeant, was on the living room phone, speaking a mixture of English and Tagalog as he notified the victim’s relatives of her death. His surprisingly gentle tones were pitched too low for Durant to hear anything that was said.
Lt. Cruz asked Durant the same question for the sixth or seventh time, again phrasing it in a different way. “You’re positive you saw nothing or no one out of the ordinary?”
“Two dead persons,” Durant said. “That’s a little extraordinary for me.”
“Setting them aside for the moment.”
“Nothing,” Durant said and tried for a deep breath, only to cough it out. Lt. Cruz eyed him sympathetically.
“Do you suffer from asthma or bronchitis, Mr. Durant?”
“Asthmatic bronchitis,” Durant said, not at all sure there was such an affliction. “Stress sometimes brings it on. I must be allergic to stress.” He smiled faintly, hoping the smile would be taken as an apology for his evident lack of sterner stuff.
“Do you smoke?” Cruz asked.
“I’m trying to quit.”
Lt. Cruz’s manicured right hand grabbed a fistful of air. “You must grasp the nettle.”
Durant smiled his weakling’s smile again. “And the withdrawal pains?”
“They will pass quickly,” Lt. Cruz said in the hectoring tone of a reformed smoker.
“That’s good to know,” Durant said and coughed two small, almost delicate coughs.
“Were you sleeping with the deceased?” Lt. Cruz asked in the same tone he had used to ask if Durant smoked.
“I beg your pardon,” Durant said, letting his inflection measure out just the right amount of resentment.
“Sorry, but I must know the depth of your relationship. Was it casual? Purely social? Intimate? What?”
“We were good friends.”
“Lovers.”
“We enjoyed each other’s company.”
“In bed?”
Durant turned his mouth into a thin offended line and let his silence voice more resentment.
Lt. Cruz sighed. “Where did you meet?”
“At the dentist’s.”
An eyebrow hopped up to signal Lt. Cruz’s skepticism.
“We were in the waiting room,” Durant explained. “Both of us were scheduled for root canals. We started talking and decided we’d rather have a drink than a root canal and so that’s what we did.”
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“When?”
“About three years ago.”
“She was still married when you met her?”
“Yes.”
“And her husband died—when was it—six months later?”
“About that.”
“You know, of course, how he died?”
“In San Francisco.”
“That’s where—not how.”
“A hit-and-run accident.”
“The driver was never caught.”
“No.”
“The date,” Lt. Cruz said, “was August twenty-first, 1983.” He paused, as if waiting for Durant to point out the date’s historic significance.
Durant decided to oblige him. “They both died the same day, didn’t they? Benigno Aquino, gunned down here at the airport, and Patrocinio Cariaga, struck down in San Francisco on Polk Street.” Durant shook his head slightly, as if at the wonder of it all. “Emily and I sometimes talked about it and whether it meant anything. We didn’t come to any conclusion except coincidence but that’s not much of a conclusion.”
“You knew him then—Cariaga?”
“Sure. I knew Pat.”
“Were you friends?”
“Not exactly.”
“Did he know you were sleeping with his wife?”
“He never mentioned it, but then he had no reason to, did he?”
“That’s what I’m trying to determine,” Cruz said, staring at Durant as if he had finally decided to memorize him. “I believe Pat Cariaga and Ninoy Aquino were political allies, true?”
“Not really.”
“They both opposed Marcos.”
“But from opposite ends of the political spectrum,” Durant said. He gestured with his left hand. “Aquino was sort of over here.” He gestured with his right hand. “Pat was sort of over there.”
“You talked politics with Cariaga then?”
Durant shook his head. “I listened to his views is all.”
“And?”
“I thought they were claptrap.”
“Bullshit, you mean?”
“Right.”
“Why were they—claptrap?”
