Out on the Rim (29 page)
“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.”
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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 twiceâfirst 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 aâwhat do they call itâa 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.
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 ideaâhaving 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.”
“Sounds okay,” Overby said.
“She'd go to Hong Kong with me, naturally.”
Overby grunted. “Bad idea.”
Espiritu smiled his agreement. “I suspected that if she did, I'd suddenly be leaving behind a very rich widow. But I told her to go ahead and make the initial contact.”
“Who with?” Stallings asked.
“Ernesto Pineda. He was a devious sort from up in Baguio who sometimes worked for usâand sometimes for his third cousin who'd be putting up the money.”
“This third cousin with all the millions,” Overby said. “You happen to remember his name?”
“Ferdinand Marcosâwho else,” Stallings answered, deciding that the world was far more deceptive and dangerous than he had ever supposed. It was Wu and Durant's kind of world. And Otherguy's, of course.
Espiritu, still turned around in the front seat, looked at Stallings with something like approval. “So you didn't really believe that nonsense about it being an American business consortium?”
Stallings only shrugged.
Espiritu nodded sympathetically. “Americans always seem to be swinging from utter naivete to raging paranoia and back again. But how could anybody believe a group of hardheaded American businessmen would spend one peso, let alone five million dollars, to get rid of me? I'm their blessed communist menace, Booth, that doesn't cost them a cent. I'm what's going to justify the coup that'll dump Aquino and get things back to normal where deals can be cut and profits made.”
“If I was them, I'd pay you to stay on,” Overby said.
“Precisely.”
“And Marcos?” Stallings asked.
“As usual, he's being more subtle. Maybe too subtle. He's only agreed to pay me to go into exile. But he thinks he knows what I'll really do once I get my hands on the money. He thinks I'll buy weapons, sneak back here and raise hell. That, I suppose, is our unspoken agreement. The rest is foolishness.”
“And Marcos will wind up financing the NPA.”
“He prefers to think he's financing a quick coup.”
“What would you really do, Alâwith the money?”
Espiritu smiled. “I'm still not quite sure.”
Hungry for details, Overby asked, “So it was Carmen who worked out the deal with the cousin, what's his name, Pineda?”
“Yes,” Espiritu said.
“Then what?”
“After the five million was transferred to LuxembourgâI think it was LuxembourgâMarcos could no longer control it. So Carmen quite sensibly executed the cousin who, after all, was our only real link with Marcos. She had a good mind, did Carmen.”
“The guy in Washington, Harry Crites,” Stallings said. “The one who recruited me. Does he know whose money it really is?”
“No.”
“Then whoâ” Stallings said, but was interrupted by Overby who had a question of his own. “Now which way?”
Espiritu turned around to look. They had reached a fork in the track. “To the right,” Espiritu said, “and I'd like to make a comfort stop, if you don't mind.”
“Up around that bend okay?”
“Perfect,” Espiritu said.
When the Jeep was around the bend, Overby pulled it over to the edge of the track that had almost widened into a road. Espiritu got out and walked over to a thick wall of tropical foliage where he stood
with his back to the Jeep. Stallings climbed out, slung his M-16 over his right shoulder, and joined him. Overby, now out of the Jeep, leaned against its front right fender and waited.
with his back to the Jeep. Stallings climbed out, slung his M-16 over his right shoulder, and joined him. Overby, now out of the Jeep, leaned against its front right fender and waited.
As they stood urinating, Espiritu said, “Remember my definition of terrorism, Booth?”
“Sure. Politics by extreme intimidation.”
“You said it needed work.”
“Still does.”
Espiritu zipped up his fly. “What about: âPolitics without moral compunction'?”
Stallings thought about it as he zipped up his own fly. He shook his head and said, “That doesn't quite cut it either.”
“I really don't have any, you know,” Espiritu said. “Any moral compunction.”
Stallings turned to find Espiritu aiming the revolver at him.
“Well, shit, Al,” Stallings said.
“This will simplify things.”
Stallings looked at Otherguy Overby who still leaned against the Jeep's right front fender. “Guess you'd like things simple too, Otherguy.”
Overby's only reply was his remote, sealed-off look.
“You want to turn around, Booth?” Espiritu asked.
Stallings thought about it and was surprised by his decision. “Yes, by God. I think I do.”
Stallings turned slowly, discovering that of all places, Cebu was absolutely the last place he'd have chosen to die. He was almost completely turned around when he heard the two shots. They were fired so closely together they sounded like one. He tensed, waiting for the pain, even as his mind told him there would be noneânot if he'd heard the shots. Finally, he turned to find Alejandro Espiritu sprawled facedown in the dirt, part of the right side of his head gone. The second round had made a hole dead center in the back of his blue shirt.
Otherguy Overby, the pistol he had paid $500 for on Pier Three dangling from his right hand, stared down at the dead Espiritu from less than six feet away.
He looked up at Stallings. “I don't guess I've got a whole lot of moral compunction either,” Overby said.
“You've got enough,” Stallings said.
They heard the unmistakable sound of a Jeepney's diesel engine long before it chugged around the bend in the road and came to a stop. Five armed men scrambled out. Stallings recognized them as five of the young guards who had been posted around the perimeter of the Espiritu compound.
Minnie Espiritu was the last one out of the Jeepney. She climbed down slowly from the rear, wearing her bright red slacks and a black cotton sweater. In her right hand was a machine pistolâan Ingram, Stallings saw, wondering where she had got it. She nodded at Stallings, gave Overby a sour look and walked over to where her brother lay dead.
She stared down at him for several moments before looking up at Stallings and Overby. “Which one of you killed him?”
When neither answered, she said, “Whoever it was saved me the trouble.” She looked back down at Espiritu. “We found Carmen in that silly cave of his. He kill her?”
“Yes,” said Stallings.
“He would.” She sighed heavily. “That Orestes kid, too?”
“Him, too.”
She shook her head, as if in disbelief. “The kid was my son. Picture that? Alejandro killing his own nephew?” She turned to look at both men again. “Yeah, I think you can picture that.”
She sighed again, even more heavily than before, and said, “He went bad by stages, you know. Not all of a sudden.” She looked at Overby. “Think he might've had a tumor on the brain or something?”
“I couldn't say,” Overby replied.
Minnie Espiritu indicated the M-16 that was still slung over Stallings' right shoulder. “That Orestes' piece?”
He nodded.
“I'll take it unless you wanta come help out with the revolution.”
“No, thanks,” Stallings said, unslinging the rifle and handing it to her. She gave it to one of the young guards and said something in Cebuano. The five young guards turned and headed toward the Jeepney.
Minnie Espiritu gave her dead brother a long look, turned to nod goodbye at Overby and Stallings, and started after the young guards. She turned back at Stallings' question. “What do you want to do with Al, Minnie?”
She gave her brother one quick final glance. “The wild pigs'll eat him by noon,” she said, turned and slowly walked to the Jeepney. After she climbed into its rear, the Jeepney bumped off down the rough road.
Otherguy Overby, ever literal, said, “There aren't any wild pigs up here.”
“So?”
“So is that what they say when they don't want to say, âWho gives a fuck?'”
“How would I know?” Booth Stallings said.
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