Out on the Rim

by Ross Thomas

  Espiritu waved his guest to the bentwood couch and chose one of the matching chairs for himself. Carmen Espiritu stood nearby, leaning against a wall, her right hand down inside her woven fiber shoulder bag. It occurred to Stallings that only recently he had seen someone else stand just like that, leaning against a wall, all coiled up and ready to spring. Durant, of course.

  “Care for a beer before we eat, Booth?” Espiritu asked.

  Stallings said he would and the woman in the red slacks took a bottle of San Miguel from a plastic sack, opened it, crossed the room to Stallings, pausing at the table to pick up one of the two glasses. She handed the bottle and glass to Stallings without a word. He said thank you, but she only nodded and returned to the Sony radio where she glued her left ear back to the speaker.

  Stallings carefully poured the warm beer into his glass, indicated the woman with a nod and asked, “Who’s she?”

  “My little sister,” Espiritu said with a smile. “Although not quite as little as she once was.”

  The plump woman, ear still to the Sony’s speaker, gave the right cheek of her buttocks a defiant smack and went on listening to Mick Jagger.

  “And her?” Stallings asked, indicating Carmen Espiritu with another nod.

  “Who did she say she was?”

  “Your granddaughter.”

  Espiritu giggled and smiled broadly. Stallings noticed that the smaller man’s teeth looked absolutely perfect. If he’s laid off the sugarcane all these years, Stallings thought, he probably hasn’t got a filling in his head.

  “Carmen lies as a matter of course,” Espiritu said. “She’s my bride of six months.”

  “The present Mrs. Espiritu,” Stallings said.

  “The only Mrs. Espiritu.”

  “Well, she certainly keeps busy,” Stallings said and drank some of his beer.

  Espiritu smiled at his wife. “She’s also very ambitious, aren’t you, Carmen?”

  “I do my part.”

  Espiritu turned to Stallings. “Who used to say that, ‘We Do Our Part’?”

  “The Blue Eagle,” Stallings said. “Roosevelt’s NRA.”

  “Price fixing was its purpose, wasn’t it?” Before Stallings could reply or comment, Espiritu went on. “You’re certainly looking well, Booth. Stayed skinny and even grew a little more, didn’t you?”

  “Half an inch.”

  “I didn’t,” Espiritu said with another giggle. “As you must’ve noticed.”

  What Stallings had noticed most was the slight tremor in Espiritu’s left hand. When the tremor threatened to turn into a shake, Espiritu clutched the left hand with his right. And if the teeth were perfect, or nearly so at sixty-two, Stallings found Espiritu’s complexion too sallow and the black eyes too dull.

  But the rest of him seems okay, Stallings decided, although it’s hard to tell with that white shirt buttoned up to the neck and those sleeves down over his thumbs. He also wondered why Espiritu kept the balled-up handkerchief in his left hand. But when the hand trembled its way up to the left corner of the mouth and mopped away the trace of saliva, Stallings thought he had his answer.

  After another swallow of warm beer, Stallings smiled almost gently at Espiritu and asked, “When’d you have it, Al—the stroke?”

  “Still very observant, aren’t you?”

  “When?”

  “Months ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be. I’m quite recovered and the prognosis is good.” He smiled, dismissing the subject. “Shall we eat?”

  Dinner was broiled lapu-lapu, the inevitable rice and a large bowl of fruit. Stallings ate everything set before him; Espiritu only a small portion of rice and a banana. Neither of the women joined the men at table. The plump sister continued to listen to the radio and Carmen Espiritu continued to stand throughout the meal, her right hand down inside the fiber shoulder bag.

  “I suppose you were surprised to see old Major Crouch,” Espiritu said as he peeled his banana. “Colonel Crouch, actually, retired.”

  “Very surprised.”

  “He’s grown garrulous, as I suppose we all do. I sometimes think the old tend to talk mostly about the past because there’s so much of it. And so little future. My wife finds the past boring, don’t you, Carmen?”

  “I find it largely irrelevant,” she said.

  “What was it Santayana said?” Espiritu asked. “‘Those who—’”

  Carmen Espiritu interrupted the familiar quotation. “Santayana was an ass.”

  Espiritu smiled at Stallings. “A woman of strong opinions, especially about history. Anything that happened before she was born is irrelevant. As for her politics …” He shrugged, still smiling at Stallings. “What do you do for politics these days, Booth?”

  “I do without.”

  “Really? After all those years of studying what you insist on calling terrorism?”

  “Terrorism’s just a shorthand term.”

  “Yes, but for what?”

  “It’s like pornography, Al. Everybody knows it when they see it, but they can’t agree on a definition.”

  “Like to hear mine?”

  “Sure.”

  “Politics by extreme intimidation.”

  Stallings grunted. “Needs a little work.”

  “I thought it rather good. Maybe we can discuss it further in the morning.”

  “In the morning?” Stallings said. “Where?”

  “Here, of course. Right after we discuss the five million. We are going to talk about that, aren’t we? Or we could talk about the money now, and my definition over breakfast.”

  Stallings leaned back in his chair with a bleak smile. “I’m your hostage, huh?” He looked at Carmen Espiritu. “Or hers.”

  “Yes,” Espiritu said. “I believe you are.”

  Carmen Espiritu came away from the wall, looking at her watch. “That took long enough,” she told her husband and turned to Stallings. “I’m leaving now, Mr. Stallings. Our people surround and protect the compound, so please don’t go wandering off.”

  After Stallings nodded, she turned to her husband. “Expect me when you see me.”

  “As always,” he said.

  Carmen Espiritu turned and left the room. Twisting around in his chair, Stallings watched her leave through the front entrance. When he turned back he was surprised to find Espiritu’s plump sister also gone.

  A long silence followed, raising a barrier between the two men. Stallings leaned forward, elbows on the table, and broke the silence, if not the barrier, with a recommendation he made in the form of a question.

  “What if we just took off, Al?”

  “It’s quite simple,” Espiritu replied. “You’d be shot.”

  As far as Otherguy Overby could determine, his rented gray Toyota was parked just where the voice on the phone had told him to park it: 19.3 kilometers from the Magellan Hotel at a curve on the dirt road that led up into the mountains.

  Overby also knew he was on time, but he checked his watch anyway. It was two minutes before midnight. The five-shot Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special he had bought for US$500 from a buy-and-sell man on Pier Three was tucked beneath his right thigh.

  Because all the Toyota windows were open, Overby could hear them off to his right as they stumbled and cursed their way down the mountain trail. Overby was certain no self-respecting freedom fighters, terrorists, guerrillas or whatever the fuck they were would make that much noise or shine their flashlights around like that.

  So he turned his head to the left, just enough for his peripheral vision to become useful. He also removed the five-shot revolver from beneath his thigh and folded his arms across his chest. The pistol, now in his right hand, was pointing at the open left window.

  When Carmen Espiritu materialized at the window, Overby wiggled the revolver a little, just to make sure she saw it. “Put both hands on the windowsill, Carmen.”

  She hesitated, as if calculating long odds, and then put her hands on the sill.

>   “Call ’em off,” Overby said.

  She whistled two loud sharp trills. The flashlights went off. Overby switched on the Toyota’s headlights, flicking them up to high beam. The headlights illuminated three young men twenty feet away at the edge of the dirt road. Each was armed with what looked like an M-16. Each raised a hand to shield his eyes from the headlights’ glare.

  “I’m going to slide over into the passenger seat, Carmen,” Overby said in a quiet conversational tone, “and you’re going to get in behind the wheel. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  “But before you do,” Overby said, “drop that shoulder bag on the back seat. Gently.”

  Carmen Espiritu took the bag from her shoulder and dropped it through the window onto the back seat. After opening the front door, she slipped behind the Toyota’s steering wheel.

  “How long will those guys hold still like that?” Overby asked.

  “Until I tell them to move,” she said. “But if you dim the headlights, they’ll sit down.”

  Overby dimmed the headlights and the three men with the M-16s sat down on the dirt road and lit cigarettes.

  “I went looking for Booth tonight at the Magellan and found the old Colonel,” Overby said. “Colonel Crouch. Guess what he told me after a couple of drinks?”

  “I don’t care to guess,” she said.

  “He told me he’d dropped Booth off about an hour after sunset right here at this very spot where you called and told me to be at midnight. So here I am and here you are and my question, I suppose, is where the hell’s old Booth?”

  “With my husband.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me ask a real dumb question, Carmen. Is your husband alive?”

  “That is a stupid question.”

  “Well, it’s just that the only Espiritu anybody’s heard from in the flesh is Mrs. Espiritu, and I was just wondering if Mr. Espiritu is alive, dead or maybe in a coma.”

  “He’s quite well.”

  “Good. And he’s planning to hang on to Booth for a while?”

  “Yes.”

  Overby nodded approvingly. “A hostage, huh?”

  “Stallings is insurance,” she said. “His other use is to convince my husband of the money’s … legitimacy.”

  “Jesus, lady. Buy-off money’s always a bastard.”

  “Convince him of the money’s existence, not its genealogy. My husband suspects this could be a very elaborate trick to lure him to Hong Kong where there’ll be no money and he’ll find himself just another penniless exile.”

  “I like the way his mind works,” Overby said. “When was this deal first dangled in front of him?”

  “Less than a month ago.”

  “And he nibbled, but insisted on Stallings as the go-between.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who approached him?”

  “I won’t answer that, Mr. Overby.”

  Overby grinned. “Don’t blame you. If you did, then I’d know what you know.”

  “How soon do you need to see my husband?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow at the latest. And you’ll have to get Stallings out of the way for an hour or two so your husband and I can be alone.”

  She nodded. “Be back here at three tomorrow afternoon and I’ll take you to him.” She smiled for the first time. “But don’t expect me to leave you alone with him, Mr. Overby.”

  Overby returned her smile. “I didn’t think that for a second.”

  CHAPTER 27

  At 1:43 A.M. Otherguy Overby returned to the Magellan Hotel, parked the gray Toyota and entered the lobby to discover Artie Wu seated on one of the low couches, hands clasped across his belly, eyes fixed on the entrance.

  “Artie,” Overby said, his eyes darting first to the right where Durant leaned on the counter of the closed cigar stand, and then to the left where Georgia Blue stood in front of the closed cashier’s cage, her right hand down inside her shoulder bag. It was then that Overby resolved never again to have anything to do with women who wore shoulder bags.

  He also decided to preempt Wu. “I think they’ve got Booth Stallings,” he said, watching carefully for Wu’s reaction, which turned out to be only a polite nod of limited interest.

  “They?” said Durant who somehow was now only a foot or so away from Overby. “Who the fuck’re they?”

  Overby wasn’t surprised by Durant’s ability to transport himself, as if by magic, but he didn’t have to like it. “Christ, you’re sneaky,” Overby told him and turned back to Wu.

  “When’d you guys get here, Artie?” Overby asked. “You weren’t due till tomorrow.” He remembered the time then and amended his statement. “Or today, I guess it is now.”

  “Something came up and we chartered a plane,” Wu said. “A Cessna, wasn’t it?” The question went to Durant.

  “A Cessna,” Durant agreed.

  “We came in at sundown,” Wu said, again staring at Overby. “Landed at the old airport up the road. The flight down was quite interesting. We flew at about six thousand and were able to see a lot. The islands all looked very lush, Otherguy, very prosperous.” He paused. “Very deceptive.”

  “Ask him who’s got Stallings,” Georgia Blue said, crossing from the cashier’s cage to stand behind Wu’s couch.

  “Never hurry Otherguy,” Wu said. “He’ll tell us after he decides what he wants us to know.”

  “You want me to tell it down here?” Overby said. “Or up in the room of somebody who’s got a bottle because I don’t.”

  “I’ve got Scotch,” Durant said.

  Wu rose from the low couch without any help from his hands. “Then let’s use your room, Quincy.”

  Durant leaned against the wall as usual. Overby sat in the room’s one armchair. Georgia Blue was at the small writing table. Wu sat on the bed, leaning against its headboard. Durant had mixed and served the drinks of Scotch and not very cool tap water after Wu went next door to his room and returned with two more glasses.

  After a long swallow of his drink, Artie Wu put it down and took out a cigar. While inspecting it carefully, possibly for hidden flaws, he said, “So who has Booth Stallings, Otherguy?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Espiritu,” Overby said, flicking his eyes from Wu to Durant to Georgia Blue, trying to gauge the effect of his revelation. He was neither surprised nor alarmed when there was none. Overby drank some of his Scotch and water, leaned back in the armchair and waited to see what course Wu would take.

  “Mrs. Espiritu?” Wu said, raising a mildly perplexed eyebrow.

  Overby let himself relax although he didn’t let it show. “Carmen Espiritu,” he said. “I think everybody’s met her at one time or another. Everybody but me.”

  “She told us she was his granddaughter,” Georgia Blue said. “Although Booth didn’t believe her.”

  “From what I hear, she lies a lot,” Overby said.

  “You hear that where exactly?” Durant asked.

  “I’ll tell you where,” Overby said. “I went looking for Stallings this evening—yesterday evening, I guess—to see if he’d like a drink. I called his room, banged on his door—nothing. Well, the hotel manager’s a friend of mine. Tony Imperial. When I first knew Tony twenty years ago he was a bellhop. So I asked him if he’d seen Stallings and he says he saw him with a retired U.S. Army colonel who lives here in the hotel. A guy called Crouch. Vaughn Crouch, like Vaughn Monroe—remember him? And Tony says Crouch and Stallings left in the Colonel’s car. An old yellow VW. Okay?”

  Wu nodded for Overby to continue. “Well, I hang around and the Colonel comes back alone. So I make a small move on him in the bar, nothing special, and after a couple of drinks he tells me how back in World War II he sent Stallings and Espiritu and six other guys into Cebu on an I and R patrol that only those two came back from. Stallings and Espiritu. So when he retires here in, I think, seventy-two, the Colonel looks up Espiritu and keeps in touch, even after Espiritu goes underground. Well, the Colonel claims it was
Espiritu who asked him to drive Stallings up into the hills there. And that’s what he did. So I ask him where in the hills did he drop Stallings off and he draws me a map. Well, I got in the car that I rented from Avis next door and drove up to take a look.”

  “At night?” Wu asked.

  “Sure at night. When else was there? You can see things at night, Artie. For all I knew they’d have signs up: This way to the NPA Camp. Except they didn’t. So I came back. Oh, yeah. It was the Colonel who told me about Carmen and how much she lies. The Colonel doesn’t much like Carmen.”

  A silence followed Overby’s recitation. Wu finally lit his cigar and blew three plump smoke rings at the ceiling. When he spoke, it was more to the rising smoke rings than to Overby.

  “That’s a very interesting story and I suspect that much of it is even true.”

  “Thirty percent anyway,” Durant said. “Maybe forty.”

  Overby looked at Durant indifferently. “Just hum me the parts you don’t like.”

  Durant turned to Georgia Blue. “Tell him, Georgia.”

  She cocked her head to one side, examined Overby with care, gave her head a small shake of wonder and said, “I talked to the Colonel, Otherguy. What you say doesn’t quite check out.”

  “When’d you talk to him?” Overby asked.

  “Around midnight.”

  “Was he sober?”

  “Not very.”

  Overby shrugged. “The guy’s on the sauce. He puts away maybe a fifth a day. I can’t help it if he can’t remember what he said or who he talked to.”

  “You said you rented a car after you talked to him,” Georgia Blue said.

  “I said I rented a car.”

  “After you talked to him.”

  “Not after. That’d be around eight or so. Avis is closed then. I rented it around three-thirty or four.” Overby dug into a pants pocket, came up with the Toyota key and tossed it to Georgia Blue who caught it easily.