Out on the Rim

by Ross Thomas

  Inside the hotel, Wu crossed the lobby to the elevators. Two of them were working and both were on their way down. The first elevator to arrive opened its door with a soft chiming bong and out of it came Carmen Espiritu, wearing an expensive cream silk dress, no brassiere, black pumps, too much makeup and a black matching leather shoulder bag in which her right hand was buried.

  At the sight of Artie Wu she stopped short and an unfamiliar left high heel twisted, causing her to stumble. Wu put out a supportive hand that cupped her left elbow. Carmen Espiritu quickly recovered, backing away from him, her right hand bringing up the black leather shoulder bag.

  “Don’t ever touch me!” she said in a fierce whisper.

  Wu smiled. “Buy you a drink, Carmen?”

  “You people are such … idiots,” she said, turned and hurried away, the wobbling high heels clacking along the marble floor.

  Wu watched her climb into the rear of the green Subaru sedan. The big Filipino, apparently still stricken with either panic or anxiety, closed the rear door with a slam and scrambled into the front seat next to the driver. The Subaru shot away.

  Watching the car drive off, Wu wondered what, if anything, he should do about it. He decided his only sensible move would be to go pound on Boy Howdy’s door.

  He rode the elevator alone up to the third floor, walked down the corridor until he found 319 and the Do Not Disturb sign that hung from its doorknob. Wu pounded on the door. When there was no response, he automatically tried the knob and was surprised when it turned. He glanced quickly up and down the corridor, went through the door and closed it behind him, making sure it locked.

  There was the usual short entryway with the bath on the left and a closet on the right. Beyond the entryway was the room itself where Wu discovered Boy Howdy sitting in an easy chair, slumped in it actually, and wearing nothing but the pillow on his lap.

  CHAPTER 31

  There were two small bullet holes just below Boy Howdy’s left nipple. Blood, although not very much, had made some of the reddish gray chest hair even redder. There were also two bullet holes in the thin pillow, which Wu assumed had served as a make-do silencer.

  Glancing around the room, he noted the rumpled bed clothing and how Boy Howdy’s own clothes formed a kind of trail to the bed. The shirt had been discarded first, then the net undershirt followed by the pants, the Jockey shorts and finally the shoes. Wondering where the socks were, Wu looked back and found a pair of white cotton ones still on the dead man’s feet. The socks made him fret a little about his powers of observation.

  Wu picked up Boy Howdy’s pants and went through the pockets, finding nothing of interest. There was a second thin pillow on the bed, but nothing underneath it. Wu lifted up the mattress and found what he was looking for—Boy Howdy’s wallet.

  It was a large worn ostrich-skin wallet, very old, very thick, that contained 585 pesos, $800 in American Express traveler’s checks, three credit cards, a driver’s license, two condoms, some receipts and a sheet of Magellan Hotel stationery, the same sheet on which Georgia Blue had drawn her fair copy of Booth Stallings’ map.

  Wu put the ostrich-skin wallet back where he’d found it and carried the map to the writing desk. On the desk were a phone, a bottle of Dewar’s Scotch whiskey, a bucket of half-melted ice and two glasses, only one of them used. There was also a nine-sheet stack of Cebu Plaza Hotel stationery. Lying diagonally across the stationery was a hotel ballpoint pen.

  Wu switched on the desk lamp, took the map Georgia Blue had drawn for him and Durant from his hip pocket, and compared it with the one he had found in Boy Howdy’s wallet. The two maps, obviously drawn by the same hand, were virtually identical, except that points A and B on the map drawn for Wu and Durant had been moved a kilometer west and east, respectively.

  Wu smiled and nodded his appreciation of the neat deception. He picked up the Scotch bottle and smelled its contents. It smelled like Scotch whiskey so he had two swallows straight from the bottle. As he used his handkerchief to pat his lips, someone knocked at the door. It wasn’t a polite tentative maid’s knock, but the hard open-up-in-there kind.

  Wu’s reply was a loud growl to indicate he was coming as soon as he could get some clothes on. He studied the two maps that lay side by side, put one on top of the other and folded a crease into both just below the Magellan Hotel letterhead. He tore the letterheads off along the crease and stuffed them into his pocket.

  Crossing quickly to the bed, Wu took Boy Howdy’s wallet from beneath the mattress and put the false map Georgia Blue had drawn for him and Durant into it, returning the wallet to its quaint hiding place. The map he had found in Howdy’s wallet went down beneath the elastic top of Wu’s left calf-length black sock.

  There was more hard knocking at the door. Wu glanced around the room and headed for the door, pausing only to switch off the desk lamp. He opened the door to discover the pair with the “Made in the U.S.A.” look. Neither made any attempt to hide his surprise. The older of the pair, Weaver P. Jordan, recovered first, smiled his tight no-teeth smile and said, “I told you we’d see you in Cebu.”

  Wu nodded affably. “So you did.”

  The elegant one, Jack Cray, was wearing a different suit but the same suspicious frown. “Where’s Howdy?”

  Wu shook his head sadly and replied in an appropriately hushed tone. “Shot dead, it would seem.”

  Although Wu was already moving back and to one side, Weaver Jordan still said, “Get the fuck out of our way,” as he pushed past him into the hotel room followed by Jack Cray.

  Jordan slowly circled the dead Boy Howdy three times as Cray stood a few feet away, his eyes not on the corpse but darting around the room, searching—Artie Wu presumed—for the killer. Not finding him he turned to Wu and said, “Who killed him?”

  “If you’d asked who wanted him dead, I could give you a long list. Boy had an absolute knack for making life-long enemies.”

  “You kill him?” Cray said, obviously not expecting much of an answer.

  “No.”

  Weaver Jordan stopped circling the dead Boy Howdy long enough to glower at Wu. “What about Durant?”

  “He’s sitting up with a sick friend, even as we speak.”

  “So what’re you doing here?” Cray asked in a tone braced for both lies and evasions.

  Wu smiled. “Since you have no more official authority than I do, I’ll ask the same question.”

  Jack Cray turned to stare somberly at the naked dead man. When he spoke it was in a voice usually reserved for graveside eulogies. “He was one of ours.”

  “Boy was one of everybody’s,” Wu said. “Did he do piecework? Casual labor? Or did you have him on a retainer?”

  When Cray only stared at him bleakly, Wu went on in a half-speculative, half-reminiscent voice. “He was on your books for what—ten years? Fifteen? I’d say fifteen.” A thought seemed to strike him. “You did know he was on Tokyo’s books, didn’t you? And Taipei’s, Canberra’s, Kuala Lumpur’s and, the last I heard, even Bangkok’s, although Bangkok doesn’t really pay all that much.”

  “Bangkok,” Weaver Jordan said, staring at the dead Howdy with disapproval. “Jesus.”

  Cray said nothing. Instead, he gave Wu a slow up-and-down inspection, as if curious about what would come next.

  “His best customer, of course,” Wu continued, “was always the old boy in Malacañang Palace. Howdy was both his supplier and distributor. But you know that, don’t you, because you must’ve bought Palace stuff from Boy so fresh the ink was still wet.” Wu turned to examine the dead Howdy, as if for the last time. “I expect Boy really missed the old guy.” He paused. “I know he missed the money.”

  “You jump to nice conclusions,” Jack Cray said.

  Wu nodded and gave the room itself a final quick glance. “Looks just like a typical honey trap, doesn’t it? Boy has something he wants to sell or buy. She walks in. There’s some talk. Some business. And then some sex—first on the bed followed by a variation in th
e chair. And then bang, bang, Boy’s dead.”

  “Through the pillow,” Weaver Jordan said. “She was probably kneeling on it—at first anyhow.”

  Jack Cray looked at Jordan and made a small gesture. “Toss it,” he said.

  It took only two minutes for Jordan to find the ostrich-skin wallet under the mattress. “Well, lookee here,” Jordan said, handing the map to Jack Cray. Wu sidled up behind Cray, as if trying to steal a glimpse over his shoulder. Cray gave him a cold look and walked to the other side of the room where he continued to study the map.

  Wu watched Weaver Jordan eye the sheaf of Cebu Plaza Hotel stationery on the writing desk. Jordan first looked at it from above and then squatted so he could look across its surface at eye level. While still squatting and looking, he switched the desk lamp on, off and on again. He produced a pencil and began shading in a portion of the top sheet of stationery.

  “I saw a guy do that in a picture once,” Wu said.

  “We employ all the latest techniques,” Jordan said, shading away. “Invisible ink. Poison toothpaste. Real state-of-the-art shit.”

  He kept on shading the stationery with his pencil for another three or four seconds before he said, “Well, now, by God.” He put the pencil down and bent over the sheet. “Listen to this, Jack, will you: ‘Am bringing A. Espiritu out—’”

  Jack Cray cut him off with a sharp, “Goddamnit, Jordan!” He then turned to Wu and said, “You want to stay around for the cops?”

  “Not particularly.”

  Cray smiled his coldest smile. “Then we’ll tell them you weren’t here.”

  “Should it arise.”

  Cray nodded. “Should it arise.”

  Artie Wu turned and headed for the door, but turned back. “In that picture I saw,” he said to Weaver Jordan. “The guy went to all the trouble of shading the pad with a pencil, but you know what the secret message turned out to be?”

  “A fake,” Weaver Jordan said.

  “I guess we saw the same picture.”

  “I guess we did,” Weaver Jordan said.

  CHAPTER 32

  Convincing Antonio Imperial to hand over Georgia Blue’s black attache case required far less persuasion than either Wu or Durant had anticipated. She had lodged her case with Imperial for safekeeping and they politely looked elsewhere as the hotel manager worked the combination of the large old Mosler safe that dominated his office.

  “How is Miss Blue?” he asked, tugging open the safe’s door.

  “Comfortable,” Wu said. “Doctor Bello gave her a sedative.”

  “She’s sleeping then?”

  “Dozing,” Durant said. “But she needs some of the documents in her case.”

  “You wouldn’t mind signing for it, would you?” Imperial asked as he handed Wu the attache case.

  “Mr. Durant’ll be happy to,” Artie Wu said.

  Up in Durant’s room, Wu watched as Durant used a nail file and a carefully bent paper clip to open the case’s two locks. It took five minutes of fiddling and swearing before both locks succumbed. Durant opened the case lid, revealing approximately $200,000 in what Otherguy Overby had called the “this-and-that money.” About half was in $100 bills, banded in packets of $5,000, fifty bills to the packet. The rest was in unendorsed American Express traveler’s checks.

  “How much?” Durant asked.

  “Ten thousand for the Colonel?” Wu suggested.

  “Better make it fifteen,” Durant said, removing three of the packets.

  “And maybe twenty-five thousand for the warlord.”

  Durant frowned. “Think he’ll settle for that?”

  “Make it thirty thousand then.”

  Durant removed another six packets.

  “And five thousand for incidentals.”

  Durant nodded, removed one last packet, and closed the attache case lid.

  “Don’t lock it yet,” Wu said, going to the writing desk where he wrote something on a sheet of hotel stationery and signed his name. He handed the sheet to Durant who read it aloud.

  “‘Expense advance in the amount of fifty thousand dollars drawn against miscellaneous gratuities and incidental outlays. A. C. Wu.’”

  “Sign your name below mine and date it,” Wu said.

  “Somehow,” Durant said, as he signed his name, “I don’t think this’ll stand up in court.”

  After they returned the attache case to Antonio Imperial and, at his insistence, watched him replace it in the old safe, Wu and Durant rode the elevator to the fourth floor and entered room 426. Georgia Blue lay on the farther twin bed, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, a sheet drawn up to her chin.

  Artie Wu went over to the bed and said her name softly. When she didn’t stir or respond, he whispered to Durant, “How many Per-codans did the doctor give her?”

  Durant held up two fingers.

  “And you?”

  Durant held up two fingers of his other hand.

  “Let’s go,” Artie Wu said.

  After the door closed, Georgia Blue opened her eyes. She slowly sat up in bed and managed to swing her feet to the floor. She began to sway slightly and tucked her head down between her knees, keeping it there for at least a minute. After that, she lifted her head, breathed deeply and stood up. She again swayed slightly, but recovered, walked slowly to the writing desk, picked up the phone and dialed the number of the U.S. Consulate in downtown Cebu City.

  Durant knocked on the door of room 512 in the Magellan Hotel. Wu stood just to his left. The door was opened a few seconds later by the straight up-and-down old man with the silky white hair and the rust-red complexion. He stared at them, not saying anything, waiting for their pitch.

  “Colonel Crouch?” Durant said.

  Vaughn Crouch nodded.

  “My name’s Durant and this is my partner, Mr. Wu. We’re associates of Booth Stallings.”

  “So?”

  “We’d like to make you a proposition.”

  Crouch nodded skeptically. “Am I supposed to buy or sell?”

  Durant smiled. “Sell.”

  Crouch inspected Wu, taking his time, then Durant again. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”

  The room Wu and Durant entered obviously had been furnished to suit a minimalist’s tastes. There were two chairs, a single bed, a pair of lamps, a table that held two bottles—one of gin, the other of Scotch—and four fishing rods that leaned in a corner. It was a room that could be vacated on ten minutes’ notice, its valuables either abandoned, drunk or poured down the sink.

  “Sit or stand, suit yourself,” Crouch said, choosing the bed. Durant leaned against a wall, his arms folded. Wu chose the lone easy chair.

  “Drink?” Crouch asked.

  “No, thanks,” Wu said.

  “Well,” Crouch said, “which one of you’s the spieler?”

  Artie Wu smiled and said, “We understand you know Alejandro Espiritu.”

  “I know a lot of guys.”

  Wu nodded, as if he had met with confirmation rather than evasion. “Booth Stallings is bringing him down from the hills tomorrow.”

  Crouch rose, crossed to the gin bottle, poured a measure into a glass, and held up the bottle to Wu and Durant who shook their heads. Crouch tossed the straight gin down, made a face and said, “Al willing to come?”

  “That’s right,” Durant said.

  “What the fuck for?”

  “For the five million dollars somebody’s agreed to pay him if he exiles himself to Hong Kong,” Wu said.

  Crouch went back to the bed and sat down. “Somebody’s yanking your chain, gents,” Crouch said. “If Al Espiritu ever got his hands on five million, he’d spend it all on ordnance.” He smiled then. “Unless somebody fucked him out of it first.”

  There was a silence until Durant said, “Would that worry you?”

  “Yes and no,” Crouch said, after giving the question some thought. “I don’t want to see Al hurt or killed or jailed again. But then I don’t want to see that bunch o
f his running things either.” He paused. “Maybe a trip to Hong Kong might do him good. He could write his memoirs or something.”

  “That’s why we came to you, Colonel,” Wu said. “To keep him from being hurt or killed or jailed.”

  “I spotted you for a couple of Christians right off,” Crouch said with a snort. “Who d’you think wants to stop him most?”

  “You tell us,” Durant said.

  “Well, there’s Manila, of course,” Crouch said. “Because they’re smart enough to know what he’d do with the money once he got his hands on it. Then he’s got that bunch of young Turks who’re itching to nudge him out of the way. They wouldn’t mind five million either. Washington’s probably split right down the middle, not sure which way to crawfish. About the only ones who’d be rooting for Al is the old Marcos crowd because they can’t lose. If he’s gone, good. If he buys guns, even better because that’d provide an excuse for the coup that’s gonna happen sooner or later anyhow.” He looked at Wu and then Durant. “That about how you guys figure it?”

  Durant nodded. “Except we’re not sure about Washington.”

  “Spooks sticking their oar in?”

  “Could be,” Wu said.

  “So what d’you want me to do?”

  “Create a diversion,” Wu said.

  “You mean stir it up over here while old Al sneaks away over there?”

  “Something like that,” Durant said.

  There was a long pause as Crouch stared at the floor, considering the proposition. A minute went by before he looked up at Artie Wu and said, “How much?”

  “What would you say to ten thousand?” Wu asked.

  “I’d say fifteen right off the bat.”

  Durant grinned. “Why fifteen?”

  “Because I’ve got a granddaughter who wants to go to Swarthmore next year and fifteen thousand’ll just about cover it. Unless I buy myself a new car. Haven’t decided yet.” He grinned. “Things don’t really change much, do they? Back when I was a kid my old man had to decide whether to send me to Dartmouth or buy himself a new Buick. He sent me to Dartmouth, I flunked out and he regretted his choice till the day he died.”