Out on the Rim

by Ross Thomas

  He looked at his watch. “That doesn’t give me much time.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay,” Overby said. “I guess you’ll recognize me so I don’t have to worry about recognizing you.”

  “That’s right,” she said and hung up.

  When Overby came out of the hotel entrance, the first thing he saw was the large yellow, blue and black sign of the Rotary Club of Metro Cebu that offered a four-question test. “Of the things we think, say or do,” the sign read, “four questions should be asked: 1. Is it the TRUTH? 2. Is it FAIR to all concerned? 3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS? 4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?”

  After reading the sign carefully, Overby answered all four questions with a silent, “You goddamn right,” and turned into the adjoining Avis office where he rented himself a gray Toyota sedan.

  Overby drove west on General Maxilom Avenue, turned right into Rama Avenue and followed it out to the northwest edge of the city. There the Church of Guadalupe occupied an oblong plot of several acres that was encircled by a broken asphalt drive. Built something like a racetrack, the drive ran straight along the stretches, curving into half circles at both ends.

  Ever suspicious, Overby drove around the church three times. It was a large structure with a massive gray dome at its center. A concrete cross had been placed atop its gabled south entrance. Below the gable was an elaborate stained-glass window. Two huge doors formed the entrance, which was shielded from rain by an arched concrete canopy. A woman stood beneath the canopy. Overby was too far away to see whether she was young, old or in between, but he could see that she was wearing something blue.

  He parked the gray Toyota almost fifty yards away, locked it and started toward the concrete canopy. The woman turned and watched him approach. As he drew near, he saw that she was young, no more than twenty-five or twenty-six, and wore a plain pale blue cotton dress that looked cheap. Over her right shoulder hung a tan woven fiber bag. He also noticed that she had large brown eyes and kept her right hand down inside the shoulder bag.

  When he was a dozen feet away he stopped and said, “I’m Overby.”

  “I’m Carmen Espiritu.”

  “You his daughter, granddaughter, niece—what?”

  “His wife.”

  Overby examined her skeptically. “Been married long?”

  “Nearly half a year.”

  “Well, do we talk here or go somewhere else?”

  “First, you tell me in one short sentence why Overby’s the one,” she said.

  Overby smiled slightly. “Twenty-five words or less, right?”

  She shrugged.

  “Okay, here goes: they’re going to cheat him out of the five million, but if he does what I tell him to, he can keep half.”

  She ran the sentence through her mind, her lips moving slightly. “Twenty-three words.”

  “I didn’t count.”

  “He gets to keep half, you say. Who keeps the other half?”

  “Me.”

  “Then you’re motivated solely by greed.”

  “What else is there?”

  “How’re they planning to divide it?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “You, Stallings, Wu, Durant—and that woman of theirs, Blue.”

  “An even split.”

  “A million each then?”

  “Right.”

  “Aren’t you worried about what they’ll do when they find you’ve betrayed them?”

  “That’s my lookout.”

  “One last question, Mr. Overby.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you care who ultimately gets the other half of the five million?”

  He shook his head slowly. “Not as long as I get my half.” He smiled then, that quick hard utterly ruthless smile. “Aren’t you afraid of what Mr. Espiritu will do to Mrs. Espiritu when he finds out she double-crossed him?”

  “As you say, that’s my lookout.”

  Overby’s smile went away. “There’ll be risk. A lot of it.”

  “I’m used to risk.”

  “So when can I see him and make my pitch?”

  “Pitch?”

  “Sales talk.”

  “Yes. Of course. Is tonight satisfactory?”

  “Where and when?”

  “I’ll telephone you,” she said. “At the hotel.”

  “Fine,” Overby said, took two steps backward, and looked up at the stained-glass window. “It open?”

  “The church?”

  He nodded.

  “You feel the need to pray?”

  “I just like old churches.”

  “It’s open,” she said, turned and walked quickly away. After Overby watched her disappear around the far corner of the church, he turned, tugged open one of the massive doors and went inside. Superstitious, if not religious, Overby dropped fifty pesos into the poor box for luck and took a seat in the rear row. There, he folded his arms across his chest and began to figure out his next moves. When he reached the sixth move, he stopped because after the sixth there were too many permutations. But the first move would be to buy the gun, a five-shot revolver, if possible—a belly gun. As he sat on the bench in the old church, arms still folded, Overby wondered where he should make his purchase and finally decided on Pier Two. If not Pier Two, then Pier Three. On Pier Three you could always buy damn near anything although it always cost a little more.

  CHAPTER 25

  It was the Magellan Hotel’s general manager, Antonio Imperial himself, who registered Booth Stallings at 5:41 P.M. on April Fools’ Day, 1986. Noting that Stallings was not burdened with luggage of any kind, Imperial smiled and said, “Airline lose your bag, Mr. Stallings? They’re very good at that.”

  “A mix-up in Manila,” Stallings said, as he filled out the registration form. “Some friends are bringing it down.”

  “Mr. Wu and Mr. Durant?” When he saw Stallings look up with the beginning of a frown, Imperial hurried on. “Otherguy—I mean, Mr. Overby—checked on all your reservations and, since Miss Blue’s already here, I assumed Wu and Durant would be bringing your luggage down tomorrow.”

  The frown was canceled and Stallings smiled slightly. “Known Otherguy long?”

  “More than twenty years.”

  “He changed much?”

  “An interesting question. I’d have to say no, not really. He’s—well, timeless, I suppose.” Imperial turned, took Stallings’ room key from its slot, turned back, reached under the counter, and came up with a small sealed clear plastic bag that contained a throwaway razor, a toothbrush, miniature tubes of shaving cream and toothpaste, and a small bottle of shampoo.

  “Our compliments,” Imperial said, placing the key and the plastic bag on the counter.

  “Thanks very much,” Stallings said. “What room’s Miss Blue in?”

  “She’s just next door to you, four twenty-six.” Imperial snapped his fingers, as if remembering something. He turned again, picked up a small stack of mail, thumbed through it, selected a letter and handed it to Stallings. “This arrived just before you did,” he said.

  Stallings examined the envelope which was square, white and cheap. His name was printed in ink. Down in the lower left-hand corner, someone had written: “Hold for arrival.” Stallings shoved the letter down into a hip pocket, gathered up his room key and plastic bag, and started for the elevator.

  “Like a bellman to show you up, Mr. Stallings?” Imperial asked.

  Stallings turned back. “No, but you might send up a couple of cold beers.”

  It was only after the beer came, and he had drunk half of one bottle, that Booth Stallings took the letter from his hip pocket, held it up to the light, sniffed it, smelled nothing and finally tore it open.

  On a single, once-folded sheet of cheap white paper, a precise hand had written:

  Dear Booth,

  Welcome back to Cebu. Someone we both know will call on you. Please do exactly as instructed.

  Very truly yours,

/>   Al

  Still holding the letter, Stallings crossed to the room’s window and raised the venetian blind. He reread the letter and then stared out at a red sun setting behind the Guadalupe Mountains, the same mountains in which Stallings and Alejandro Espiritu, the boy terrorists, had done much of their killing. Neither of you, he thought, ever really rid yourself of its fascination. The only difference is that you examined it and poked at it and wrote about it and made a living from it while Al, well, Al just kept on doing it.

  Stallings watched what looked like a large Cessna come in for a landing at the old Cebu airport that was now used only by private planes. When his commercial flight from Manila had started its approach to Mactan Airport, Stallings at first thought he had boarded the wrong plane. But Mactan was Cebu’s new airport. The one just down the road from the Magellan Hotel was the old one that he and Espiritu, from their vantage point in the mountains, had watched the Japanese military fly in and out of.

  Just as the Cessna disappeared behind some trees, there was a knock at the door. Assuming it was either Georgia Blue or Overby, Stallings said, “Come in,” and continued to stare out at what was left of the brief tropical sunset. When the door opened and a gruff voice said, “Stallings?”—making it an accusatory question—he turned quickly and found himself staring at a tall old man in his mid-to-late sixties who wore a short-sleeved tan safari jacket with a great many pockets, all of them bulging, and a matching pair of slacks.

  The old man had plumb-line posture, silky white hair, a rusted complexion, small blue eyes that needed trifocals and a mouth that obviously liked giving orders. Only the thin-lipped mouth with its pronounced overbite seemed vaguely familiar to Stallings.

  “Don’t remember me, do you?” the old man said in the gruff baritone that could have belonged to a thirty-year-old.

  “No,” Stallings said. “Should I?”

  “Name’s Crouch. Vaughn Crouch. Except it was Major Crouch when you knew me.”

  “Good Lord.”

  “Finally got to be Colonel Crouch.”

  “You sent us in.”

  Crouch nodded. “You and Al Espiritu. I’m the guy.”

  “What’re you—”

  Crouch interrupted, as if he didn’t have enough patience for fool questions. “I live here.”

  “In Cebu.”

  “Here in the goddamn Magellan. Put my thirty in and retired back in seventy-two. Been here ever since. It’s cheap and if I need some part fixed, like the prostate, I can fly up to Clark or even back to Schofield in Hawaii and let the quacks there patch me up for free.” He raised his head slightly to study Stallings through the bottom lens of the trifocals. “You’ve changed some. Wouldn’t’ve known you if I’d passed you on the street. You ready?”

  “For what?”

  “I remember you being kind of quick, Stallings. A little snotty maybe, but quick.” Crouch shook his head. “Can’t stand dumb. I can put up with goddamn near anything but dumb.”

  “Espiritu sent you.”

  “He didn’t send me,” Crouch said. “He asked. Can’t say much for old Al’s politics, but he’s got a good tactical mind and always did. His fucked-up politics are his business.” Crouch paused. “Well, you ready or not?”

  “Let’s go,” Stallings said.

  The retired Colonel’s car was a well-maintained ten-year-old yellow Volkswagen convertible that he drove, top down, with what Stallings quickly decided was far too much dash. The highway up into the mountains started off well enough, but soon disintegrated into broken pavement, patchy gravel, and finally into a twisting red dirt road that was not much more than a trail.

  “Why retire here?” Stallings asked. “Why not Fort Sam in San Antonio?”

  “With the rest of the old farts?” Crouch said, shaking his head and gearing the VW down for a curve. “I had three wars. Two bad and one good. I sure as shit wouldn’t retire to Seoul or Saigon—even if I could—so with the wife dead and both kids either married or divorced, I figured what the hell, you like the Filipinos and always did, so you might as well go live there and see what the fuck happens.” He gave his head another shake, this time a satisfied one, and said, “It’s sure been interesting.”

  They drove on without speaking for minutes until Crouch said, “Al lent me that book you wrote.”

  Stallings’ reply was a noncommittal, “Oh.”

  “I didn’t agree with everything you claimed, but you sure got most of it right. So I don’t guess I have to tell you that if you’re doing a deal with Al, watch him. He’s tricky.” Crouch glanced at Stallings. “But I expect you must’ve figured that out by now.”

  “A long time ago,” Stallings said.

  They drove on in more silence for what Stallings estimated to be three miles. That made the trip thus far about twelve miles—or not quite halfway across the island. Crouch came to a curve. In the VW’s headlights it looked just like any other curve, but he slowed down to fifteen miles per hour, then to ten, and finally stopped.

  “End of the line,” he said.

  “What happens now?”

  “You get out, stand around and admire the Southern Cross, if you’ve a mind to. Somebody’ll come fetch you. It won’t be long. They’re out there somewhere, just waiting to make sure nobody followed us.”

  “How do I get back?” Stallings said.

  “Beats me.”

  Stallings opened the door, stepped out of the Volkswagen, and looked down at Crouch. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Maybe someday you or Al might tell me what the fuck this is all about.”

  Stallings only nodded.

  “And maybe not,” Crouch said as he put the car into reverse, backed around and shot off down the rough mountain trail.

  Stallings watched until the Volkswagen convertible disappeared around the curve. He decided that once again the grown-ups had sent him out on his own, just as if he had good sense. On the drive up he had remembered more vague details about his elderly chauffeur. In 1945, Crouch had been a twenty-six- or twenty-seven-year-old major, a war lover, and somebody who, before the war, had done more than just go to high school. He had either held down a job, or joined the CCC, or bummed around the country, or graduated from Michigan State or Texas A&M. Something anyway.

  In 1945 that seven- or eight-year experience gap had seemed unbridgeable to Stallings. In 1986 it still seemed just as wide and just as deep. You’d better grow up fast, sonny, Stallings decided, or you’ll slip from acute chronic adolescence into senility with nothing in between. He turned and looked up at the Southern Cross, only to discover—with a trace of surprise—that it, like himself, hadn’t changed at all in forty-one years.

  Stallings wasn’t sure how long he stared up at the constellation before he heard them. It was at least five minutes, maybe ten, possibly fifteen. They came down the hill, stumbling and muttering in the dark, indifferent to the noise they made.

  Stallings turned to watch their bobbing flashlights approach. He jumped when something hard was jammed into the small of his back by the one who had slipped up silently from behind.

  “Please don’t move, Mr. Stallings,” she said and he recognized the voice of the woman who called herself Carmen Espiritu.

  “How’ve you been, Carmen?”

  “Please don’t talk either,” she said.

  The ones who had muttered and stumbled their way down the hill turned out to be three in number. All were men, none more than thirty. While Carmen Espiritu kept the muzzle of her gun in Stallings’ back, one of the men searched him with quick, expert hands.

  “Nothing,” the man said.

  She moved around in front of Stallings. With the help of the three flashlights he saw that she wore yet another semiautomatic pistol, a dark T-shirt, jeans and running shoes. The T-shirt advertised a cantina called Hussong’s in Baja California.

  “How’s your health, Mr. Stallings?” she asked.

  “Well, I sometimes get a mild touch of sciatica, but it comes and goes.”
/>
  “I mean can you walk three kilometers into the hills without us carrying you?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Let’s go.”

  In Booth Stallings’ opinion, there was far too much up hill and not nearly enough down dale. But he was pleased by how well he kept up and surprised by how vividly he remembered the way he and Espiritu had once bounded up and down such trails like a couple of goats. Young goats.

  They climbed for an hour and fifteen minutes before they stopped. One of the men imitated the cry of a bird whose species Stallings didn’t even try to identify. After an answering bird cry, they crossed through a cornfield whose rustling stalks provided an effective early-warning alarm system.

  Just beyond the cornfield was a large nipa hut of at least three or four rooms. It rested on poles that were the usual five or six feet high. Soft kerosene lamp light came from the hut’s open windows and also from those of the three or four smaller nipa huts that made up the compound.

  A man who wasn’t very tall came through the large hut’s main door and stood, staring down at Stallings as he emerged from the cornfield with Carmen Espiritu at his side.

  “How’ve you been, Booth?” Alejandro Espiritu asked.

  “Fine, Al,” Stallings said. “And you?”

  CHAPTER 26

  After a warm handshake and a somewhat stiff embrace at the top of the bamboo stairs, Stallings followed Carmen and Alejandro Espiritu into the nipa hut, which was really more house than hut.

  They came into a combination kitchen-living-and-dining-room. Food was being cooked over a charcoal brazier by a plump handsome woman in her fifties who wore bright red slacks. An old plank table had been set for two with glasses, plates, forks and spoons, but no knives, which many Filipinos seldom use, preferring to cut whatever needs to be cut with the edge of a spoon.

  The living room area was furnished with four bentwood chairs and a matching couch. There were no pictures on the wall or rugs on the polished split bamboo floor. But music came from a small battery-powered Sony shortwave set that was softly playing something by the Rolling Stones. The woman in the red slacks left her cooking, went to the radio and turned up its volume slightly, placing her left ear close to the speaker. No one introduced the woman to Stallings.