Out on the Rim

by Ross Thomas

  A rough map had been drawn on the first page. She ignored it and quickly read what was written on the second page. She read it again, this time more slowly. After the second reading she opened the writing desk drawer, selected a sheet of hotel stationery and copied the map with a ballpoint pen.

  Finished, she folded the copy she had made of the map and sealed it in a Magellan Hotel envelope. Picking up the telephone, she dialed an outside number. When it was answered, she said, “Room three-nineteen, please.”

  Room 319 answered on the second ring and Georgia Blue said, “Get a pen and take this down.”

  She waited until whoever had answered the phone was ready. Then she read into the phone the contents of the letter Minnie Espiritu had delivered. She read at dictation speed, spelling out all abbreviations:

  “‘Am bringing A. Espiritu out today, starting approx. 4 P.M. from A on map. Meet us with transp. at B on map, 5:30-6:00 P.M. Stallings.’” She paused. “Got that?”

  There was a brief reply and a question. The question irritated Georgia Blue. “Where the hell would I Xerox a map? I copied it.” Another brief question irritated her even more. “With a goddamn pen, what else?” she said and slammed down the phone.

  At the open-air counter of the Orange Brutus juice stand on the west side of Jones Avenue, Otherguy Overby was lifting a glass of papaya juice to his lips when Carmen Espiritu joined him on the right and something brushed against him on the left.

  Overby put his glass down and turned left to inspect a slim man in his mid-twenties who looked uncomfortable in a white shirt, blue tie and dark gray pants. Overby recognized him as one of the three young men from the night before who had squatted on the mountain trail and smoked cigarettes in the glow of the rented Toyota’s headlights.

  Overby nodded at the man and turned to Carmen Espiritu. “Just him?”

  “There’re two of them, but you need only talk to this one.”

  Overby turned to the man again. “Like some juice?”

  The man smiled. “Yes, please. Thank you.”

  Overby signaled the counter woman to serve juice to Carmen Espiritu and the man. After it came and the man took his first sip, Overby said, “Her name’s Georgia Blue, B-l-u-e.”

  “I can spell blue,” the man said stiffly.

  “She’s in room four-two-six.”

  “Excuse me,” the man said. “But what exactly do we ask her?”

  “You heard about our big fight this morning?” Overby said.

  The man nodded.

  “Ask her about that and what caused it and if I need money and how much.”

  This time the young man looked thoughtful when he nodded. “We are to be very suspicious of you.”

  “Right.”

  “What if she refuses to answer?”

  Overby shrugged. “Slap her around a little.”

  A frown expressed the man’s disapproval. “That is not … nice.”

  Overby stared at the man for a moment and turned to Carmen Espiritu. “Where’d you find Violet here?”

  “He’ll do whatever’s necessary,” she said. “But it’s silly. A staged fight followed by a staged interrogation. What good will it do?”

  “It’ll make Wu and Durant think everything’s going just like they’ve planned it.” He smiled. “Even me.”

  “They’re wondering about you, are they?” she said.

  “A little.”

  “You also make me wonder, Mr. Overby.”

  Overby studied her. “Carmen, would you like me to remind you of something that’ll make you feel just one hell of a lot better?”

  “What?”

  “Your half,” Overby said, smiling his hard and utterly ruthless smile, “will be two point five million.”

  The taxi driver outside the Magellan Hotel knew exactly where the Cebu Plaza Hotel was. But the name of the man to whom he would deliver the sealed envelope that contained the hand-copied map puzzled him. So he asked Georgia Blue to repeat the name slowly.

  “Mr. Boy Howdy,” she said, pronouncing the name with exaggerated care. “Room three-nineteen. The Cebu Plaza. Mr. Boy … Howdy.”

  The driver nodded dubiously and drove off, silently mouthing Boy Howdy to himself. Georgia Blue went back into the Magellan, stopping at the front desk to ask if either Mr. Wu or Mr. Durant was back. After being told that they weren’t she took an elevator up to the fourth floor.

  She saw the slim young man in the white shirt, blue tie and dark gray pants as soon as she entered her room. He had plastered himself to the wall next to the door. She automatically feinted a left-handed stab, her right hand darting down inside her shoulder bag for the Walther. When the slim young man ducked to his right as expected, she caught him with a kick to the stomach that doubled him over.

  It was then that the huge left arm clamped itself around her neck from behind. The bathroom, she thought. This one was in the bathroom.

  A hand that felt like a vise caught her right hand down inside the shoulder bag and immobilized it. She smelled the cloves on his breath although he seemed to be breathing effortlessly. She decided he was immensely strong but not all that good, and that she’d better relax before he snapped her neck out of either incompetence or pique.

  She made herself relax and go almost limp. The man in the white shirt straightened slowly, pressing both hands to his stomach. He looked not at her, but at something that seemed to be a few inches above her head and to the right. “Take the bag,” the man in the white shirt said.

  The enormous left arm stayed clamped around her neck but the other hand released her right wrist and removed the shoulder bag.

  “On the bed,” said the slim young man who had drunk juice with Otherguy Overby earlier that morning.

  The shoulder bag landed on the nearer of the twin beds. The slim young man crossed slowly to the bag, picked it up and dumped out its contents. He examined the Walther, made sure it was loaded, and sat down on the bed, aiming the pistol at Georgia Blue with his right hand, pressing his stomach with the left.

  “Let her go,” he said.

  The arm was removed. Georgia Blue massaged her throat. “May I sit down?” she asked.

  The man on the bed nodded. She went to the room’s one good chair, turned, sat down and had her first look at the man who had choked her. He wasn’t as tall as she had expected—not much more than six feet. But he had immense arms and a massive chest that strained his white short-sleeved shirt. He also had a large head and a curiously placid face with a sweet mouth and dark brown eyes that, for some reason, looked gullible and even trusting.

  Georgia Blue turned to the man with the Walther and asked what she thought he expected her to ask. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “Tell us about Overby.”

  “He’s a rotten son of a bitch. Anything else?”

  “You’re lovers?”

  “No. Not now.”

  “Yet you fought with him at breakfast. Why?”

  “Money.”

  “He wouldn’t give you any?”

  “Just the opposite.”

  “He wanted money from you?”

  She nodded.

  “How much?”

  “Fifty thousand U.S. dollars.”

  “A loan?” asked the sweet-mouthed big man as he moved over to the bed and began poking at the shoulder bag’s dumped-out contents with a thick forefinger.

  “You don’t lend Overby money,” Georgia Blue said. “You just kiss it goodbye.”

  “Why did he want the money?” he asked in a soft and coaxing tone that surprised and bothered Georgia Blue.

  “I didn’t ask,” she said.

  “Could you have lent him that much money?” he asked almost idly as he picked up her billfold and started going through its compartments.

  “No.”

  “Then why did he even ask?” the big man said, discarding the billfold and picking up a plain white envelope.

  “He thought I could raise it,” she said, watching him rip open t
he envelope.

  The big man obviously forgot about Georgia Blue during the seconds it took to read Booth Stallings’ letter and examine the crude map. The placidity vanished from his face. The sweet mouth turned sour. A scowl plowed up his forehead. Glaring at Georgia Blue, he handed the map and letter to the slim young man with the gun.

  When the slim young man was finished with the map and letter, he looked stricken. “Tricked,” he whispered. “We are being tricked.”

  The big man reached Georgia Blue in two long strides. “Who gave you these—these things?” he demanded, all coaxing gone from his voice.

  “It was slipped under the door,” she said. “I didn’t even open it. I thought it was an advertisement or something.”

  “Let’s kill her,” said the slim young man, now using both hands to aim the Walther at Georgia Blue.

  “He wants to kill you,” the big man said, his tone reasonable. “If you stop lying, he might not.”

  “I don’t know what it is or where it came from,” she said, repeating the lies in a monotone the service had trained her to use. “It was slipped under the door. I didn’t open it. I don’t know what’s in it.”

  The dull flat lies succeeded only in removing the last trace of gullibility from the big man’s eyes.

  “WHY?” he bellowed, caught up in a sudden rage that threatened to consume him. “Why do you foreign people do these bad things to us?”

  Georgia Blue started to ask, “What things?” but there wasn’t time because his locked-together hands came smashing down at her like a hammer. She tried to slip the blow but the huge hands slammed into her head, just missing the temple.

  There was the imagined taste of something in her mouth, something from her childhood that she couldn’t identify. But it lasted only the instant before oblivion came and she could no longer taste anything, not even the copper in her collection of old Indian head pennies.

  CHAPTER 30

  She lay on the floor by the room’s one good chair in that discarded rag doll position that only the dead seem able to manage. Artie Wu thought she certainly looked dead. Antonio Imperial, whose passkey had unlocked the door to room 426, was convinced of it. Only Quincy Durant had any doubt as he quickly crossed the room to kneel beside Georgia Blue.

  His hands seemed to know exactly where to go and what to do. He felt first for the big artery in her neck. He then peeled back an eyelid. Next he opened her blouse and put his left ear to her chest. Then he sat back on his heels and studied her for a moment before looking up at Imperial.

  “She’s alive, but you’d better get a doctor.”

  “Shouldn’t she go to hospital?” the hotel manager said.

  “That’s up to the doctor. But if you don’t get her one, she could die on you.”

  “I’ll get one,” Imperial said and hurried out.

  After the door closed, Durant said, “Let’s put her on the bed.”

  Wu frowned. “Should she be moved?”

  “You want to talk to her?”

  Wu nodded his reply and helped Durant lift her gently onto the nearer twin bed.

  “Get a cold wet washcloth or towel,” Durant said.

  While Wu was in the bathroom, Durant examined the ugly swelling just above Georgia Blue’s left ear. After Wu returned with a wet towel, Durant’s practiced hands applied it to the swollen area. Georgia Blue’s eyes flickered, opened, closed and opened again. She made a retching noise far down in her throat.

  “Get a bucket,” Durant snapped.

  Georgia Blue threw up into the metal wastebasket Artie Wu held for her. After lying back down and closing her eyes, she asked Durant, “How bad?”

  “You’ll live, but you’ll have one hell of a headache.”

  “A doctor’s on his way, Georgia,” Wu said as he came back from the bathroom where he had emptied the wastebasket.

  She opened her eyes to look at Wu. “An NPA sparrow team, Artie. One big; one little. The big one was almost as big as you.”

  “Tell us about it,” Wu said. “If you can.”

  “They wanted to know about me and Otherguy and that stupid fight we put on. And then they wanted to know about the letter from Stallings.”

  Wu and Durant looked at each other. “What letter?” Durant said.

  In sentence fragments and disjointed phrases she told them about Minnie Espiritu delivering the plain white unaddressed envelope. About checking at the desk to see if Wu and Durant were in. About going up to her room and finding the two men, one big, one little. About kicking the little one and being choked by the big one. About the little one finding the Walther and the big one the letter. But she said nothing about opening Stallings’ letter and reading it over the phone to Boy Howdy, and nothing about sending a copy of the map to Howdy by taxi.

  “Any idea of what was in Booth’s letter?” Wu asked.

  “He—he read it to me,” she lied.

  “The big one?” Durant asked.

  “Yes. There was the letter and a map. He read me the letter and showed me the map. They wanted to know how I got them.”

  “What’d you tell them?”

  “Lies.”

  “Can you remember what was in the letter?” Wu said.

  She closed her eyes again, as if struggling to recall. “Most of it, I think,” she said, opening her eyes.

  “Let me get something to write on,” Wu said, going to the desk and returning with a magazine and several sheets of hotel stationery. “Okay,” he said and clicked his ballpoint pen.

  “I … I think,” Georgia Blue said haltingly, “that it went something like, ‘I’m bringing Espiritu out tomorrow from A on map.’” She paused. “And then there was something about when they’d start. Four, I believe.”

  Wu looked up from his notes. “Four P.M. tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Then something like, ‘Have transportation at B on map,’ except transportation was abbreviated and I’m fairly sure the time for that was between five-thirty and six.”

  “What about the map?” Durant asked. “Did you get a good look at it?”

  “Yes.”

  Wu leaned forward. “Can you remember where points A and B are?”

  “Give me some paper, Artie. Maybe I can draw it.”

  It took her ten minutes to draw the map on a sheet of hotel stationery. It took that long because she kept hesitating and changing her mind and discarding wadded-up sheets of stationery. Finally satisfied, she handed what she had drawn to Wu. It was another fair copy of the map Booth Stallings had drawn, except that on this second version points A and B were about a kilometer farther west and east, respectively.

  Wu studied the map with care. “Nice,” he said, passing it to Durant. “You have a good memory.”

  Durant examined it and looked up. “Some map,” he said.

  Georgia Blue wearily closed her eyes. “It could be a little off.”

  “How little?” Durant asked. “Twenty yards? Five hundred meters? A mile or two?”

  “You want a money-back guarantee?” she said, opening her eyes to glare at him. “That map and what I told you are all I know. Everything. Except, well, except one dumb question they asked that made no sense.”

  Wu smiled encouragingly. “And what question was that, Georgia?” “They asked me, or rather the big one did, what Boy Howdy was doing at the Cebu Plaza. I said I didn’t know. So the one time I tell the truth the big bastard hits me.” She attempted a smile and nearly made it. “But that’s okay, I guess, since the little one wanted to shoot me.”

  “Why do you think they asked you what Boy’s—”

  A loud knock at the door kept Wu from completing his question. And before he could get around the twin beds, the door opened and a man in his late thirties strode in, a doctor’s bag in his left hand and a worried-looking Antonio Imperial just behind him. The man with the doctor’s bag stopped in the middle of the room and glanced around, as if expecting evidence of a riot, revolution or at least a three-day orgy.

  He wore an expen
sive green polo shirt, pale yellow linen slacks and a competent look on a narrow face that featured gentle dark brown eyes and an unforgiving mouth.

  “I’m Doctor Bello,” he announced to the room at large. “Who the hell are you two?”

  “Friends of the patient,” Durant said.

  “Friends of the patient will kindly wait outside.”

  Antonio Imperial went away, leaving Wu and Durant waiting in the corridor just outside room 426. He went away somewhat relieved after they both assured him that Georgia Blue had no intention of suing his hotel. When he had gone, Durant unfolded the map and examined it with a sigh. “Some map,” he said again. “It’s got a rough scale and everything.” He handed the map to Wu who folded it back up and tucked it away in his right hip pocket.

  “I think,” Wu said as he buttoned the pocket, “I think I’d better drop by the Cebu Plaza and have a talk with Boy.”

  “Want me to go along?”

  “I want him talkative, Quincy. Not terrified. And somebody has to stay with Georgia.”

  “Otherguy can stay with her.”

  “You’re forgetting this is Otherguy’s afternoon to defect.”

  “Mr. Trustworthy.”

  Wu shrugged. “He’s what we’ve got.”

  Artie Wu went to his room and telephoned the Cebu Plaza Hotel. He told a room clerk that he had a package for Mr. Howdy and should he send it to room 314 or 514? The room clerk said neither—that the package should be addressed to room 319. Wu said he wished certain people would learn to write legibly and the room clerk said that would indeed be a blessing because Wu was the second person that very day to have the wrong number for Mr. Howdy’s room.

  Downstairs, Wu took a taxi to the Cebu Plaza, which had been built late in the Marcos reign and was not only much newer than the Magellan but also much taller. As Wu paid off his driver, he noticed the green Subaru four-door sedan that waited with engine running outside the Cebu Plaza’s entrance. He noticed it mostly because of the big Filipino who stood by the sedan’s open rear door. Artie Wu always noticed men who were nearly as large as he. And this one was especially worth a second glance because of his obvious anxiety. Behind the wheel of the Subaru sat a smaller man wearing a white shirt. Wu couldn’t decide whether he was also having an anxiety attack.