Out on the Rim

by Ross Thomas

  Artie Wu smiled, puffed on his cigar and leaned back in the couch.

  Georgia Blue was the first to respond. “Gosh, Artie, that’s the most inspirational thing I ever heard.” She took her right hand out of the robe’s pocket and rose, gathered up the clothing she had left in the sitting room the night before, and disappeared into the bedroom.

  After watching her leave, Durant turned to Wu. “I couldn’t have said it better,” he said. “But I could’ve made it shorter.” He crossed to the door, opened it and looked back at Wu. “I’m going down to the lobby and see if there’s anyone around who’ll talk to us about Emily”

  “I’ll be down later,” Wu said.

  After Durant was gone, Overby rose and looked around the room, nodding a goodbye first to Stallings, then to Artie Wu. “I’ve got to catch that plane,” Overby said.

  “See you in Cebu, Otherguy,” Wu said.

  Overby started for the door, got halfway there and turned back to Wu. “Who was all that shit really aimed at, Artie? Me?”

  “You and everybody else, Otherguy.”

  Overby’s answering nod only served to affirm his disbelief. “I bet,” he said, turned and left the room.

  Booth Stallings rose, went over to the window and looked out at Manila Bay. “You have something on your mind you want to tell me, Artie?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Stallings turned. “No likely suspects, defectors or agents provocateurs?”

  “They’re all likely,” Wu said.

  “Me too?”

  “You too.”

  “What about you and Durant?”

  “Five million’s a lot of money, Booth. Keep an eye on us.”

  “Everybody watches everybody else, right?”

  “It’s the only safe way, if we’re really going to pull it off.”

  “Think we are?”

  Artie Wu didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “I think so. I really do.”

  “So do I,” Booth Stallings said. “Well, I’m off.”

  “Where to?”

  “Corregidor,” Stallings said. “Thought I’d go see if I can ride out on a hydrofoil and take a look.” He patted his pockets to make sure he had his sunglasses, keys and wallet. “Might be the last chance I’ll ever have.”

  Wu smiled. “Not planning to pass this way again?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Stallings said as he opened the door and left.

  When Georgia Blue came out of the bedroom she wore the same clothes she had worn the night before. The same bag hung over her right shoulder and at the sight of the still waiting Artie Wu her right hand slipped down inside it.

  “Sit down, Georgia,” Wu said.

  She moved to the green armchair and perched on the edge of its seat cushion, her knees together, her hand still down inside the bag and wrapped around the Walther.

  “You fucked up, didn’t you?” Wu said.

  “I didn’t know who she was, Artie.”

  “You could’ve checked with somebody.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “Durant’s … well, Durant’s close to the boiling point.”

  She nodded. “I could tell.”

  “If he boils over, the deal’s dead.”

  “I know.”

  “So we can’t take any more fuckups—by anyone.”

  “Especially by me, you mean.”

  Wu shook his head. “Especially by Otherguy.”

  Georgia Blue’s hand slowly came out of the shoulder bag. It was empty. “Well,” she said softly. “What d’you know.”

  “Down in Cebu Otherguy’ll be the Weak Link. You’ll be the Watchman. Your role’s going to be for real—and so is his, I’m afraid.”

  There was a bleak silence until Georgia Blue said, “I’ve known Otherguy a long time, Artie.”

  Wu sighed. “So have I.”

  “You’re sure?”

  He nodded gravely.

  “So … ‘for a handful of silver he left us,’” she began.

  “‘Just for a riband to stick in his coat,’” Wu finished.

  “Browning, right?”

  “‘The Lost Leader.’”

  “Well, shit.”

  “Stay on him, Georgia.”

  She nodded, rising.

  “He’s smart and he’s tricky,” Wu said.

  “I was once his star pupil, Artie.”

  “And mine.”

  “Then I must know all you two know,” she said. “And then some.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Durant noticed the bodyguards first: an almost matched pair of wide thick Filipinos in their late thirties with quick eyes, empty hands and twin lumps on their right hips beneath their sport shirts’ squared-off tails.

  One of their charges was racing on short fat legs toward the Manila Hotel’s newsstand-drugstore. He was followed by a girl of nine who was trying not to hurry so she would appear prim, grown-up and in sharp contrast to her six-year-old brat of a brother, who her parents still swore was not adopted.

  Walking between the bodyguards was the mother, a not quite plump pretty woman in her early thirties, who wore a black linen dress with white piping that Durant suspected had come from Neiman-Marcus. He knew that Neiman-Marcus was the only thing the woman had ever liked about Dallas.

  Rising from his chair, Durant made a slow oblique approach across the lobby so that the woman and her two bodyguards would see him simultaneously. But the quicker of the bodyguards noticed him first and obviously didn’t like what he saw.

  The bodyguard snapped something at his partner who shooed the boy and girl into the newsstand-drugstore. The other bodyguard planted himself squarely in front of the woman, his right hand straying back to the concealed lump on his hip. Durant came to a full stop. The woman in the black dress with white piping touched the bodyguard on the arm and said something that made him relax.

  The woman who now smiled at Durant from behind and a little to the left of the bodyguard was Restituta Ortiz, mercifully called Tootie by almost everyone. She was married to Cristobal Ortiz who had taken his modest inheritance and invested it at first in banking and shipping, with fair results, and then in politics, which had made him rich.

  The dead Emily Cariaga and Tootie Ortiz had grown up together in Manila and later spent a year at Miss Hockaday’s in Dallas, hating every minute of it. Back in Manila they were married within a month of each other. When Durant and Emily Cariaga’s affair had first begun—and the cuckolded Patrocinio Cariaga was still alive—it was Tootie Ortiz who had served the lovers as go-between, even though she was hopelessly inept at keeping the assignation times and places straight. But she wholeheartedly had approved of the affair because, as Emily Cariaga once said, Tootie likes anything romantic, daring and dirty—as long as it’s once-removed.

  When Durant reached her, the first thing Tootie Ortiz did was to take his right hand in both of hers and whisper, “It was beautiful, Quincy. It was the most beautiful requiem mass I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’d’ve liked to have been there, Tootie, but—” He shrugged, making the shrug say that the mass was for the dead Emily’s family and friends and not for her foreign paramour.

  Tootie nodded. “I understand—and so does Emily.”

  “We need to talk, Tootie.”

  “About—?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now?”

  Durant nodded. She looked at her watch. “Well,” she said, her voice full of doubt, “I suppose we could, except—” As was frequently the case, Tootie Ortiz didn’t finish her sentence. The almost chronic incompletions were one of her less endearing habits. Durant waited patiently for the question he was sure she would ask.

  “Did you really find—?”

  “I found her,” Durant said.

  “Was it—?” The expression on her face was a synonym for terrible.

  “It was worse than that, Tootie.”

  She turned to the bodyguard and said something in a low voice. The bodyguard frowned his
disapproval. She snapped at him. The bodyguard gave Durant a glare that was almost a warning, turned and entered the newsstand-drugstore where his partner was reading a comic book to the little boy. The boy’s sister was trying to look as if she had no idea who either of them was.

  “They’ll take the kids to the coffee shop for some, you know—”

  “Ice cream,” Durant said.

  Tootie nodded. “We’ll have something nice in the Cowrie Room.”

  “I don’t think it’s open yet,” Durant said.

  Tootie smiled one of her more patronizing smiles. “They’ll open it for—”

  “Us,” Durant supplied.

  “Me,” she corrected him.

  When Tootie Ortiz swept into the empty Cowrie Room, trailed by Durant, the maitre d’ turned with a frown, saw who it was, erased the frown, slipped into a jacket and ushered them to a corner booth. Tootie Ortiz ordered coffee and caramel pastries for two. Durant didn’t want any pastry but made no objection because he knew Tootie would eat his.

  But she almost forgot to eat her own when Durant began his heavily varnished account of the discovery of the dead Emily Cariaga. It was almost a duplicate of the report he had given Lt. Cruz, the homicide detective, except he now made it slightly more lurid for Tootie’s benefit.

  She listened, eyes wide, mouth slightly open. When he had finished, she said, “Dear God, how awful,” picked up her fork and attacked the pastry.

  Durant waited until she had chewed and swallowed two bites. Then he said, “First poor Ernie Pineda up in Baguio, then Emily.”

  The fork stopped inches from Tootie’s partly open mouth. The mouth closed and she lowered the fork slowly to the plate. “They weren’t connected,” she said. “They couldn’t have been because—” Again, her sentence died prematurely.

  “They were in a way, Tootie,” Durant said. “Connected.”

  “How?”

  “You know Artie Wu?” he said.

  “Of course I know Artie.”

  “Well, Artie and I were doing some business with poor Ernie and we were the ones who had to identify his body.”

  She leaned toward him, her pastry for the moment forgotten. “You actually saw—”

  Durant nodded.

  She looked around and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Did they really—”

  “They cut ’em off, Tootie,” Durant said.

  “But Emily didn’t tell me—” She stopped and attacked her pastry again, finishing it in four large bites.

  “Didn’t tell you what?” Durant said when the last bite was being swallowed.

  She reached for his plate, using a small smile to ask him if he really wanted it. He pushed the plate toward her. “Didn’t tell you what, Tootie?” Durant said again.

  “About you and Ernie.”

  “You talked to her?”

  Tootie, busy chewing, only nodded.

  “When?”

  She swallowed and said, “When she came back down from Baguio. She called to tell me about Ernie and wanted to know why anyone would, you know, want to do what—Well, I pointed out that Ernie, after all, was his third cousin and—”

  Again, she arrived at one of her badly timed verbal red lights. Durant pretended not to notice. He took out a cigarette and lit it. After he blew some smoke up and away, he said, “You were saying?”

  “Everybody’s talking about it.”

  “Are they?”

  “Of course.”

  “About Emily.”

  “About poor Ernie.”

  “Oh. Right. Him.” Durant ground out his scarcely smoked cigarette in an ashtray. “Who’s everybody, Tootie?”

  She moved her shoulders as if to say that everyone knew who everybody was. When Durant still looked skeptical, she said, “Cris,” thus proving her point by invoking her husband’s name.

  “How’s old Cris bearing up now that his patron’s gone to Hawaii?”

  “They still talk.”

  “Cris calls to cheer him up, I suppose.”

  “The President calls him.”

  “What do Cris and the old boy talk about?” Durant said. “The dead third cousin?”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “You haven’t said anything yet, Tootie. There’s nothing to disbelieve.”

  “All right,” she said, leaning forward again. “I’ll tell you exactly what I told Emily.”

  “Which is what Cris told you, right?”

  “Cris knows what’s—” She stopped again.

  “Going on,” Durant finished. “I’m sure he does.”

  Tootie looked around to make sure there were no eavesdroppers. “He at least knows Ernie was a—”

  “A what?” Durant said, surprised at the harshness of his voice.

  It also surprised Tootie. “A … a communist,” she said.

  Durant smiled. The smile turned into a broad grin. “Our Ernie?”

  She gave Durant an arch look. “They thought he was. He was their line into the Palace.”

  “Ernie was the New People’s Army line into Malacañang?”

  She nodded.

  “What’d Ernie use for bona fides?”

  “Money,” she said. “He was always getting cut in on those Palace deals. You know that. So he gave half of what he made to the NPA.”

  “He also gave them information, I bet.”

  “It wasn’t real information. It was—”

  “Cooked up by the Palace,” Durant finished.

  She nodded.

  “And he fed the Palace whatever he could find out about the NPA.”

  “Of course.”

  “What’d they have on him?”

  “Who?”

  “The NPA. Ernie didn’t just wander around until he bumped into some NPA type and said, ‘Hi, there. I’d like to be your Palace spy.’”

  “They blackmailed him into it,” she said. “Pictures of him in bed with-”

  “Boys?”

  She nodded.

  “Ernie didn’t give a damn who knew about that.”

  “But they thought he did.”

  Durant shook his head slowly several times. “The NPA’s too smart for that. They took Ernie’s money and his cooked-up Palace lies and spoon-fed him their own lies for him to feed the Palace. But when Marcos scampered, poor Ernie’s usefulness came to an end and so did he.”

  “They killed him then, didn’t they? The NPA.”

  “I don’t know,” Durant said. “Did they?”

  “But why would—” Again, Tootie Ortiz didn’t finish what she had begun. Except this time it wasn’t out of habit, but because of what she saw over Durant’s shoulder.

  Durant turned. Striding toward the corner booth was Artie Wu, tracked by the two bodyguards. Wu held the six-year-old giggling boy in the crook of his left arm. In Wu’s right hand was the hand of the nine-year-old sister who smiled up at him adoringly.

  “Tootie,” Artie Wu said as he put the boy down and bent over to kiss the mother on her cheek.

  “Artie! So good to—Quincy and I were having such a—”

  “Nice talk,” Artie Wu finished for her.

  Tootie looked at her watch. “Oh, my God!” She slipped out of the booth. “I really must be—”

  “You’re looking great, Tootie,” Wu said.

  She smiled and turned to Durant. “Quincy, I do hope you won’t—”

  “Don’t worry,” Durant said, not at all sure what she was hoping.

  Tootie Ortiz smiled nervously, took her children by their hands, and swept out of the Cowrie Room. One of the bodyguards preceded her. The other one followed, walking backward, his eyes fixed on the booth where Artie Wu was now seated across from Durant.

  “Well?” Wu said.

  “Guess what poor Ernie is?”

  “Is or was?”

  “Is.”

  “No idea.”

  “He’s a real dead double agent.”

  “Must be a different Ernie,” Artie Wu said.

  CHAPTE
R 23

  At 10:47 that morning Booth Stallings was almost halfway to the island of Corregidor when one of the hydrofoil’s two engines failed and the pilot immediately switched off the other one. The Filipino crew, Booth Stallings and nearly three dozen other passengers, including twenty-four young Japanese naval aviators in immaculate white uniforms, began drifting with the tide in Manila Bay.

  One of the aviators and Stallings had been carrying on a kind of conversation, almost shouting to make themselves heard above the engines’ scream. The young aviator’s English was rudimentary but he seemed determined to make his point, which was that the United States was most fortunate to be led in these times of grave international peril by the greatest President in its history. When Stallings replied that the President certainly had an unusual grasp of history, the young aviator had nodded his solemn agreement.

  They drifted only a few minutes before a twin hydrofoil came alongside and the two Filipino crews held a quick conference. Since the Japanese Navy was a steady repeat customer, it was decided that the aviators would be transferred to the other hydrofoil and ferried on to Corregidor. The remaining dozen or so passengers would remain aboard the disabled craft, which would limp back to port (Do hydrofoils limp? Stallings wondered) where all fares would be cheerfully refunded.

  The announcement was met with resignation by all of the seasoned tourists except a gray-haired American who immediately did a rain dance around the bemused Filipino crew, accusing it of incompetence, favoritism and, most of all, ingratitude. The Filipino crew members, ever polite, nodded in agreement and sniggered behind their hands.

  When the hydrofoil docked at Manila, the neatly bundled cash refunds were ready. The irate American insisted on counting his twice while Stallings waited in line behind him. Instead of counting his own refund, Stallings simply folded it once and stuck it in a pants pocket.