by Ross Thomas
“What am I supposed to say?”
“‘Fine’ would do. So would ‘Let’s go.’”
“Fine,” Stalling said. “Let’s go.”
“You might take this along,” Espiritu said, indicating a plastic shopping bag that had been placed on a nearby chair.
“What’s in it?”
“Comestibles,” Espiritu said with a smile. “And I do believe it’s the first time I ever used the word.”
Stallings picked up the shopping bag and followed Espiritu out of the hut and down the bamboo stairs. The smaller man wore a blue tails-out shirt, tan cotton pants and a pair of gray Nike running shoes that looked new.
“I like dawn, don’t you?” said Espiritu as they strolled across the hard-packed dirt of the compound.
“Not much.”
“I like to hold meetings at dawn when everyone else is groggy and I’m wide awake.”
“I notice you still like to chatter in the morning.”
“Better that you notice the guards,” Espiritu said.
“Hard not to.”
“They have new orders,” Espiritu said. “From Carmen.”
“Oh?”
“They’ve been ordered not to let me leave the compound.”
“That’s some marriage you’ve got, Al.”
“A marriage of convenience, which is now inconvenient.”
They had just walked past the last hut in the compound when Espiritu stopped and turned to face Stallings. “Over my right shoulder. See him?”
“The guard?” Stallings said.
“His name is Orestes. A most conscientious lad who actually stays awake during his shift. He’s been on since midnight and he’ll be relieved in about ten minutes. Let’s go talk to him.”
Stallings nodded thoughtfully as he swung the shopping bag back and forth in a small arc. “So we’re going now, huh? I mean, really going.”
“Yes. We really are.”
Orestes, the guard, greeted Espiritu with a cheery good morning. He was a solidly built youth of no more than nineteen. His equipment consisted of a water bottle and an M-16 rifle. His eyes looked sleepy.
“Long night, Orestes?” Espiritu asked.
The boy grinned and nodded.
“I just noticed that young stand of bamboo—down the path there.” Espiritu pointed. Orestes turned to look.
“Think someone could sneak up the path and use it for cover?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s take a look.”
The three of them went down the path for ten yards, Espiritu in the lead, until they reached the bamboo. It was a small stand and far from mature. Espiritu studied it for a moment and said, “Let’s see what it looks like from the other side.”
Stallings and Orestes followed him around the bamboo, which now shielded the three of them from the compound. Espiritu backed up a few steps, as if for a better look. Orestes stared up at the bamboo and yawned. He was still yawning when Espiritu landed on his back, clamped a left hand over the still open mouth, and slashed Orestes’ throat twice with a right hand that held a kitchen paring knife.
Espiritu rode the guard to the ground, left hand still clamped around the dying boy’s mouth. After making sure he was dead, Espiritu wiped the knife blade on the boy’s shirt and rose slowly, breathing in short harsh gasps. The hand with the knife, the right one, was rock steady. The left hand trembled. Some drool had formed in the left corner of his mouth and he absently licked it away.
“Jesus Christ, Al,” Stallings said as he bent to pick up the guard’s fallen M-16.
“What should I have done? Just nicked him a little?”
When Stallings made no answer, Espiritu held out his trembling left hand for the M-16. “I’ll take that,” he said.
“The fuck you will,” Booth Stallings said.
At 6:45 that morning Otherguy Overby sat in his rented gray Toyota, waiting for the owner of the small auto repair garage to show up. The owner arrived at 6:59 A.M. in an aging four-wheel-drive Jeep whose enclosed cab looked homemade.
Overby got out of the Toyota and walked over to the garage owner. They walked around the Jeep together. Overby kicked two tires, nodded, reached into a pocket and handed over a roll of bills. The garage owner counted them rapidly. After he counted them again, more slowly this time, he gave Overby the key to the Jeep. Overby said something to the owner and indicated his parked Toyota sedan. The owner nodded indifferently. Overby climbed into the Jeep, started its engine, backed out of the garage drive and drove off.
By 7:18 A.M., Overby was again standing at the counter of the Orange Brutus fruit juice stand on Jones Avenue, breakfasting on coffee, juice and two freshly baked rolls. He was joined at 7:20 by Carmen Espiritu. She drank a single cup of coffee while Overby finished his second roll. They spoke only a few words. Both wore running shoes and blue jeans. His looked almost new; hers were old and faded. Above his jeans Overby wore a tan loose-fitting short-sleeved bush shirt with six pockets. She wore a dark blue cotton blouse with long sleeves. The blouse was buttoned to her neck.
At 7:30 A.M., Overby looked at his watch and said something to Carmen Espiritu. She reached down to pick up the woven fiber reticule at her feet. It seemed heavy, but Overby didn’t offer to carry it. They walked to the rented Jeep and got in. Overby started the engine and drove off in the direction of the Guadalupe Mountains.
At 8:00 A.M., Artie Wu drove the blue Nissan van he had just rented from Avis up to the entrance of the Magellan Hotel where Quincy Durant and Georgia Blue waited. The van was the panel kind with no side windows.
Georgia Blue climbed into the van and sat next to Artie Wu. Durant slid back a side panel, lifted a cardboard box the size of a beer case into the van and climbed in after it, sliding the panel shut.
The van rolled out of the Magellan Hotel drive and turned west, heading toward the Guadalupe Mountains.
The retired Colonel lay on his sixty-seven-year-old stomach thirteen miles west of Cebu City. He lay on a low ridge dotted with coconut palms, clumps of bamboo, lush ferns, at least four kinds of orchids and a dozen fine dipterocarp trees that somehow had escaped the woodman’s ax. Vaughn Crouch lay there, staring down at the small stream that was spanned by a crudely built bamboo bridge. The bridge was point B on the rough map Artie Wu had given him.
The ridge on the other side of the stream was higher than the one Crouch lay on by at least fifteen meters—maybe even twenty, he decided. The opposite ridge also afforded excellent cover, thus making the bridge and the stream it crossed, in Crouch’s opinion, prime ambush property. He smiled, thinking of Booth Stallings. Well, Lieutenant, you sure must’ve learned something about bushwhacking from all those months you and old Al spent in these hills. Because you sure as shit picked us a doozy.
The big twenty-three-year-old Filipino mercenary that Crouch had promoted, almost on sight, to unofficial first sergeant, flopped down beside him, breathing hard from his climb up and down the two ridges.
“Get ’em all in place?” Crouch asked.
The first sergeant nodded, not wanting to waste breath on speech.
“Two hours on, two hours off?”
Again, the mercenary nodded and managed a yes.
“Same thing on this side, understand?”
“Sure.”
“How d’you like it?” Crouch asked, giving the bridge and the stream a pleased nod. “Think it’ll work?”
“Fuckin’ A,” the first sergeant said.
Crouch nodded his agreement, sat up and scooted backward until he could lean against the bole of a coconut palm. He pulled the blue gimme cap down low over his eyes, rested his right hand on his holstered .45-caliber semiautomatic, dropped his chin to his chest and told the first sergeant to wake him in two hours.
After 129 minutes of hard steady walking it was Booth Stallings who called for a stop. Only minutes after killing the guard, Espiritu abandoned the well-traveled path that led past the young stand of bamboo, and had taken what Stallings though
t of as a goat track that headed down and mostly east.
Espiritu stopped and looked back. “You’re soft, Booth.”
“Not soft. Old.”
“It’s not far now.”
“How far’s not far?”
“Another two kilometers. Perhaps three.”
Stallings used his already soaked handkerchief to mop sweat from his face. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
It took them another twenty-three minutes to reach the stopping place, which was just below a barren rocky ridge. The goat track they had been following suddenly broadened into a steep rutted path that hugged the ridge’s side.
“We stop here,” Espiritu said.
Stallings looked around, not liking what he saw. “Couldn’t you have picked something with shade?”
“I picked something better than shade,” said Espiritu with a grin that Stallings thought knocked ten years off his age. “I chose air-conditioning.” Espiritu gestured. “Just look around.”
Stallings looked around, saw nothing of interest and shook his head.
“You’re not only soft, Booth, but you’ve lost your eye and your memory’s in rotten shape. You’ve been here before, you know.”
Stallings looked around again but there was no recollection in his expression. “I give up.”
“Crab meat,” Espiritu said.
It came back to Stallings then, not in a flood, but in indistinct bits and pieces. It was like trying to remember an indifferent dream. He looked up, scanning the ridge carefully, and saw it—a black, irregularly shaped hole the size of an automobile tire.
“It was bigger then,” he said. “Christ, it was ten times as big.”
“We filled in the entrance,” Espiritu said. “Come on.”
The smaller man scrambled up the side of the ridge as if going up a flight of stairs. Stallings followed slowly, wary of the loose shale and rocks. He watched Espiritu duck and disappear into the black hole. Stallings made sure the M-16’s safety was off, switched the weapon to automatic fire, and followed Espiritu into the cave.
It was almost as he remembered it, the cave that had been blasted out of solid metamorphic rock by Japanese combat engineers and used to store food. The roof was an irregular dome. The floor slanted up toward the rear. Its dimensions were approximately fifteen feet wide by ten feet high by thirty-five feet deep. The entrance hole provided perpetual twilight.
As he entered the cave, Stallings saw Espiritu squatting by a large cardboard box. He lifted out two plastic bottles. “Water,” Espiritu said, reached back into the box and came up with a revolver. He smiled at Stallings. “Now we both have something to shoot with,” he said, sticking the revolver down into the waistband of his pants and covering it with his shirt.
Stallings noticed it was at least fifteen degrees cooler in the cave. Handing the shopping bag of food to Espiritu, he said, “You can fix lunch,” and sat down, leaning against the cave wall. The M-16 in his lap was pointed in Espiritu’s general direction.
From the shopping bag Espiritu took packets of newspaper-wrapped food. Some of them were grease-stained. “How many did we kill in here, Booth?” he asked, unwrapping a mound of cold rice. “Six? Seven?”
“Seven.”
“With one grenade. Marvelous.” He looked at Stallings. “And then you ate their crab meat.” Espiritu chuckled. “There were cases and cases of it, remember? And you ate seven or eight cans.”
“Poppy brand,” Stallings said.
“What?”
“The cans had an orange poppy on them.”
“I was wrong. Your memory’s perfect.”
“Selective,” Stallings said. “I remember the irrelevant best. My seventh-grade junior high school locker number, for instance. Two-twelve. The combination of its lock. Ten right, twenty-five left, ten right.”
“Remarkable,” Espiritu murmured, unwrapping the last of the packets. He indicated the food with a small gesture.
“So. The perfect lunch. Rice, fish and fruit.” He smiled. “Haven’t forgotten how to eat with your fingers, have you?”
“No,” said Stallings as he leaned forward and took a handful of cold rice. “After I ate all that crab meat, I got sick. Remember?”
“Indeed.”
“Well, I never touched crab again. Never. What I’m saying is that a trick memory like mine can’t keep me from making a mistake.” He smiled coldly at Espiritu. “But it sure as hell can keep me from making it twice.”
Thirty minutes later they heard the low whistle from outside the cave.
“They’re here,” Espiritu said.
“Who?”
Instead of answering, Espiritu imitated the whistle. Stallings could hear feet slipping and sliding on the shale and rocks. He shifted so that he could cover both Espiritu and the cave entrance with the M-16. “Who the fuck’s out there, Al?”
“Friends.”
The first friend through the cave entrance was Otherguy Overby, hot, sweaty and exasperated. Just behind him came Carmen Espiritu with her woven fiber reticule. She looked cool, fresh and exceedingly stern.
Overby glanced around, taking in the cave. As always, he remarked the obvious. “Christ, it’s cool in here.”
Booth Stallings aimed the M-16 at Overby and said, “What d’you say, Otherguy?”
“Not a hell of a lot.” He nodded at Espiritu. “How’re you, Al?”
“Very well, thank you, Mr. Overby,” Espiritu said with a wry smile and turned to his wife. “Any difficulty?”
“Not yet.”
“You sound as if you’re expecting some.”
“You have to make the choice.”
Espiritu nodded slowly, looking first at Overby, then at Stallings. “Mr. Stallings has an automatic weapon with its safety off that he keeps aimed more or less in my direction. Mr. Overby does not. The choice seems obvious.”
Carmen Espiritu’s right hand went down into the woven fiber reticule. Espiritu turned away, as if to spare himself some unpleasant sight.
“Sorry,” Carmen Espiritu said to Overby.
Otherguy Overby’s face turned still and remote as he nodded at some private conclusion and backed up two careful steps.
Booth Stallings kept his gaze on Espiritu. He watched him turn away and then spin back, aiming the revolver he had taken from the cardboard box at his young wife.
Stallings opened his mouth to yell, but Carmen Espiritu had already seen the pistol. If rage hadn’t driven her to curse her husband, she might have had time enough to tug her own weapon from the reticule. But it snagged on something and Alejandro Espiritu shot her twice—first in the chest and again, lower down, in the midsection. The two rounds drove her back against the cave wall, which provided enough support to keep her standing for a moment or two, looking far more surprised than hurt. She then pitched forward onto her face.
Carmen Espiritu twitched two or three times after she fell and then lay still. Overby was pressing both hands against his ears as if they hurt. Espiritu had clapped his left hand to his left ear, but his right hand still held the revolver. Because Booth Stallings had opened his mouth to yell just as Espiritu fired, his ears didn’t bother him. Both his M-16 and his eyes were still trained on Espiritu.
Seconds passed before anyone spoke or took their hands down from their ears. The first to speak was Espiritu whose voice sounded even more Kansas and toneless than usual, as if he couldn’t quite hear what he was saying.
He used the flat voice to deliver a kind of eulogy about his dead wife. “Carmen had many fine qualities and one glaring fault,” he said. “She thought everyone was a damned fool. Except her.”
Another silence followed. Overby cleared his throat, but said nothing and kept his expression cold, remote and wary. When Booth Stallings spoke, it was in a tone he might have used if speaking to the slightly deaf. “I’ll take that now, Al.”
Alejandro Espiritu looked down at the revolver in his right hand, as though faintly surprised it was still there. He smiled and pointed
it at Booth Stallings. “No, Booth,” he said, as if addressing a child. “I don’t think so.”
There was another silence as Stallings and Espiritu stared at each other. Without looking at Otherguy Overby, Espiritu gave him instructions. “Take his rifle, please, Mr. Overby.”
Overby, his face a study in neutrality, shook his head. “It’s not my play.”
“Well,” Espiritu said. “We seem to have a—what do they call it—a Spanish standoff.”
“Mexican,” said Overby.
“Yes, Mexican,” Espiritu said and stuck his revolver back into the waistband of his pants. He looked up quickly at Stallings. “Tell me, Booth. Am I the mistake you don’t intend to repeat?”
“You’re it, Al,” Booth Stallings said.
CHAPTER 36
They came out of the cave, Overby first, Espiritu second and then Booth Stallings who kept his M-16 pointed at the Filipino. They left the dead Carmen Espiritu where she lay, next to the empty cardboard box.
After walking nearly a kilometer along a steep rutted track that was not quite a road, they reached Overby’s rented Jeep. “You could’ve driven closer, Mr. Overby,” Espiritu said.
“If I had, I couldn’t’ve turned around,” Overby said as he slipped behind the wheel and watched curiously to see how Booth Stallings would climb into the Jeep’s small rear seat without exposing his back to Espiritu.
Stallings managed by backing through the Jeep’s flimsy homemade door and into the rear seat. Espiritu, half-smiling, climbed into the seat next to Overby.
The rutted track was still so narrow it took Overby four back-and-fill tries before he got the Jeep turned around. He drove down the track slowly, never more than fifteen miles per hour, hugging the right side of the ridge. To the left was a sheer drop of at least three hundred feet.
Stallings leaned forward and asked, “So why’d you kill her, Al?”
“To keep myself alive,” he said, turning to look at Stallings. “It was all her idea—having someone pay me five million to go into exile. Carmen’s scheme was that I’d go to Hong Kong, grab the five million, use it to buy arms and then slip back into the country.”
