Out on the Rim (14 page)
The old man sighed. “You, Wu and Durant mixed up with Espiritu. Well, you all deserve each other. But I don't want to know about it, Otherguy. For the first time in my life I don't want to be the first to know.”
“Espiritu bothers you, huh?”
The eyebrows shot up and down again. “When he was a kid, he only frightened me. Now that he's an old man, he terrifies me. You won't beat him because he's smarter than you, Otherguy. Smarter than Durant. Smarter even than Artie and that's smart-smart. No matter what, you won't win. So I don't care how fat the deal is, drop it. Go run the Mexican General or the Omaha Banker on somebody in Hong Kong or Bangkok. Or even Singapore, for God's sake.”
Overby smiled. “He's bad, huh?”
“He's death.”
“Pick up your money, Abe.”
Umali shook his head.
“I want you to get a message to him.”
Apprehension battled with curiosity across the old man's face. Curiosity won. “From you?”
“You can get a message to him without either of us getting mixed up in it. You're good at that, right?”
The old man's hand crept across the table and rested on the money envelope. “What's the message?”
“Out of the five, Overby's it.”
The old man stared at him. His turtle mouth went back into a thin line of disapproval. His left eye brimmed over and a single tear ran down his cheek. He didn't bother to wipe it away.
“You're going to stiff Wu and Durant, aren't you?”
Overby made no reply. The old man picked up the money envelope and tucked it against his stomach beneath his belt buckle.
“I'm talking to a dead man,” Umali said. “If Espiritu doesn't fix you, Durant will.”
Overby rose. “See to it, Abe.”
“I don't like talking to dead people,” the old man called, but by then Overby was already walking toward the door.
The first thing Booth Stallings said after Durant introduced him to Artie Wu was, “How'd you get to be the pretender, Mr. Wu?”
“You want a beer or a drink?” Wu said.
“A beer'd be good.”
Durant went to the sitting room's refrigerator and took out three beers. He passed the cans around without opening them. Wu popped his open, took a long draught, sighed with pleasure and said, “I'm the illegitimate son of the illegitimate daughter of the last Emperor of China.”
“The Boy Emperor?” Stallings said without surprise, popping his own beer can. “Old P'u Yi?”
“The same,” Artie Wu said, pleased that Stallings would know, and even more pleased that not much explanation would be necessary.
“Mao threw him in jail for a while, didn't he? And then made him a tourist guide in Pekingâor whatever they're calling it now. Died back in the sixties, I think. Sixty-four, sixty-fiveâaround in there.”
“Sixty-six,” Wu said.
Stallings raised his beer can in a toast of sorts. “Well, here's to Grandpa.”
Wu smiled at the toast and said, “You may as well know the rest.
My real father was an oversexed Methodist Chinese bishop who either sneaked or snuck into my mother's bedroom. She'd been adopted by a Methodist missionary couple in China who brought her back to San Francisco. She was seventeen when the bishop had his way with her and she died having me. My adoptive grandparents were killed in a car wreck a few years later and I wound up in the John Wesley Memorial Orphanage in San Francisco.”
My real father was an oversexed Methodist Chinese bishop who either sneaked or snuck into my mother's bedroom. She'd been adopted by a Methodist missionary couple in China who brought her back to San Francisco. She was seventeen when the bishop had his way with her and she died having me. My adoptive grandparents were killed in a car wreck a few years later and I wound up in the John Wesley Memorial Orphanage in San Francisco.”
“Where he met me,” Durant said.
“And you two've been partners ever since, right?”
Durant nodded.
“Must be a comfort,” Stallings said.
Wu's eyebrows moved up into a quizzical look. “Being partners?”
“Knowing where you spring from. Most people don't even know who Grandpa's pa was. I know I don't. A few years back I thought maybe I should, but then I asked myself what the hell difference would it make and got over it. But I can still see how it could be a comfort.”
“You have children?” Durant asked.
“Two daughters but no grandchildren.”
Wu took out one of his large cigars and went through the ritual of lighting it, talking all the while. “I've always felt that a marketable skill provides far more emotional security than a well-diagrammed family tree. When the rent's due and you're broke, it's not much help to know you're the shirttail relative of some guy who signed the Declaration of Independence, or rode up Cemetery Hill with Pickett, or lent King John a pen.”
He looked up and blew one of his fat smoke rings at the ceiling. “On the other hand, when you reach down into your pocket and nothing jingles, and you have to get out and scratch something up, it's nice to know you've got a skill to sell, whether you're a cooper, a parson, a wheelwright, a miller or even a terrorism expert.”
Stallings winked at Wu. “I sure like the way you slid into that.”
Wu leaned forward, big elbows on broad knees, an interested look
on his face. “So how'd you get to be a terrorism expert, Booth?”
on his face. “So how'd you get to be a terrorism expert, Booth?”
Stallings drank some of his beer, thought for a moment and said, “I learned by doing because that's what I did from about the time I turned nineteen until I was almost nineteen and a half.”
“Here?” Durant said. “I mean, here in the Philippines?”
“Negros and Cebu. Mostly Cebu.” Stallings paused. “You want the rest?”
“Of course,” Wu said.
Stallings finished his beer before continuing. “I was a just-commissioned second lieutenant. A replacement. One Hundred and Eighty-second Infantry. The Cebu invasion was set for March twenty-sixth.”
“Forty-five?” Durant said.
“Forty-five. There was a pretty fair guerrilla outfit on Cebu that division needed to make contact with. So they decided to send in an eight-man I and R patrol three weeks earlyâmostly fuckups and new guys like me. Besides me, there were four riflemen, a buck sergeant, a radioman, a T/5 medic and a guerrilla liaison.”
“Alejandro Espiritu,” Wu said.
“Right. Old Al. Well, they caught us on the beach. Japanese infantry. Four of us never even made it out of the rafts. The sergeant and three riflemen died first. The fourth rifleman bought it the second he made the beach. Then the radioman. That left Al, the medic and me. We ran like hell, lost everything in the surf and finally made it to where we were supposed to hook up with the guerrillas, but they were all deadâall nineteen of 'em. We salvaged an M-1 with no rear sight and about a hundred rounds the Japs'd missed.” He paused. “We called them Japs then.”
Wu nodded. “I still do when the TV conks out.”
“After that,” Stallings said, “well, we turned into terrorists, at least Al and I did.”
“What about the medicâProfette?” Durant asked. “The guy with his name up in gold letters.”
“He went apeshit. Hovey was a Quaker and a C.O. who'd misplaced his faith. We were up on a ridge in the Guadalupes, the three of us, when Hovey spotted two scouts from a Japanese company-strength patrol. They turned out to be Imperial Marines. Big fuckers. Well, Hovey wanted to take out the two scouts with that one rifle we had. The one with no rear sight. Al and I didn't think that was such a hot idea. But then Hovey grabbed the rifle.”
There was a silence that threatened to go on and on until Durant broke it with a one-word question. “And?”
“And Al took Hovey out with a bolo.”
“Can't say I blame him,” Durant said.
Wu nodded slowly several times before he asked the next question. “Then what?”
“Then Al and I hooked up with some other guerrillas, ate fish and rice when we could get it, dog and worse when we couldn't, and turned into pretty fair terrorists.”
“When you got back to your own outfit,” Wu said, “did they ask about the medic?”
“They asked. I recommended Hovey for a DSC. He got it, too.”
“And before you got back ⦔ Durant didn't quite make it a question.
The smile that Stallings gave Durant was thin and cold and bleak. His February smile, Durant thought. “Who'd we terrorize is what you want to know, right? Who'd we kill?”
Durant nodded.
“The Japanese were our primary target. We killed a lot of them. Filipino collaborators were our secondary target. We killed a bunch of them, too.”
“How'd you know they were collaborators?” Wu said.
“We had a list.”
“Whose list?”
“Espiritu's.”
“Good list?”
“Good as any.” Stallings paused. “Wartime lists, I discovered later, a lot later, often include the names of the enemies of those who draw up the lists. I imagine old Al sprinkled a few of his in.”
“You have anything ⦠personal against him?” Wu said.
“Espiritu?”
Wu nodded.
“He's a guy I soldiered with a long time ago. That's all. I don't like him or dislike him. But when it comes to trusting him I'm not quite so ambivalent. I don't trust him at all.”
“Then neither will we,” Artie Wu said. He looked at Durant. “Let's order up some lunch and get Georgia and Otherguy in here. We might as well start.”
“I thought we already had,” Durant said as he picked up the phone.
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Georgia Blue and Overby arrived together shortly before a pair of Peninsula Hotel room waiters wheeled in the lunches Durant had ordered. Durant had asked for three fish and two chicken lunches, which worked out well because Wu, Georgia Blue and Stallings asked for fish. Overby and Durant were content with chicken.
During lunch the talk was desultory. By now, everyone knew about the morning episode at the war memorial. There were several long stretches of silence and occasionally Durant would catch Wu staring off into the distance with a curiously blank expression. It was a look that Durant always thought of as Wu's perfectly rotten plan expression.
After the lunches were eatenâor half eatenâWu and Durant stacked the dishes, lowered the wheeled table's sides, and rolled the table out into the hall. Stallings watched them work, almost with the efficiency of room waiters, and wondered how many meals they had eaten in how many hotels. Thousands of meals, he guessed. Hundreds of hotels.
Wu went back to his seat on the end of the couch, took out a cigar, and held it up to see whether anyone would object. No one did. Georgia Blue chose the other end of the couch. Stallings returned to his club chair. Otherguy Overby picked out a straight-back chair and sat, feet firmly planted, knees together, arms folded across his chest. Durant leaned against a wall and lit one of his increasingly rare cigarettes.
Booth Stallings noticed how all eyes, including his, were on Artie Wu. Three fat smoke rings headed for the ceiling. Wu watched as they twisted, swirled and finally disintegrated. He then looked at Stallings.
“I've been thinking about our problem,” Artie Wu said, “and I may have come up with a solution.”
“Let's hear it,” Stallings said.
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?âeleven 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.”
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?âeleven 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 reedânot 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.”
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