Out on the Rim

by Ross Thomas

  “I thought I was pretty good.”

  “You’re an amateur,” she said, turning the noun into an epithet.

  “Now start counting.”

  When Stallings’ low soft count reached sixteen, a man’s voice shouted, “Look out, Georgia!”

  Stallings felt himself being grabbed, pushed and then pulled back against something hard which he knew was Georgia Blue’s gun. Now out of her bag, the gun was jammed into the small of his back.

  He found Durant then, no more than fifteen feet away, the five-shot revolver that had been furnished by the retired Colonel held in an unwavering two-handed grip and aimed right at Stallings’ chest. The ferry passengers had also seen it and were yelling, screaming and scrambling away.

  “Let go the case, Booth,” Durant said.

  “If you do, you’re dead,” Georgia Blue promised Stallings in a quiet tone. He believed her promise.

  “I’ll blow right through him, Georgia,” Durant said.

  Stallings also believed Durant. He dropped the attaché case to the deck and kicked it toward him. Durant didn’t glance down. Stallings drew in a deep breath and turned slowly to face Georgia Blue. Her pistol was aimed at his belt. Her dollar-green eyes, steady and unblinking, were aimed at Durant over Stallings’ shoulder.

  “Back again at death’s front door, right, Georgia?” Stallings said.

  “Could be, Booth,” she said, not taking her eyes off Durant.

  “Better make your jump.”

  “You blocking for me?”

  Stallings nodded.

  She backed quickly to the rail. In one smooth flowing motion she was over it, holding on with her left hand, her right hand still aiming the Walther at Stallings. Her feet were braced on the edge of the deck. She bent her knees slightly and then used them to propel herself back and away from the ferry.

  In four strides, Durant was at the rail. Stallings joined him. Below they could see Georgia Blue treading water. An open speedboat was bearing down on her. She waved at it. The hard-faced Chinese at its helm reduced speed.

  It was then that Quincy Durant raised the revolver, aimed carefully and fired five shots at the speedboat. He hit only water, but the speedboat swerved away and sped off, leaving Georgia Blue in its wake. Stallings and Durant watched her, bobbing up and down in the water.

  “How do we stop this thing?” Stallings asked.

  “The ferry?”

  “Christ, yes, the ferry.”

  “We don’t,” Durant said.

  It was then that the ferry changed course slightly. A few seconds later they could see only dirty water and nothing at all of Georgia Blue.

  CHAPTER 42

  At 1:45 that afternoon Artie Wu entered his suite, accompanied by Otherguy Overby, to find Durant leaning against the wall and Booth Stallings pacing up and down the sitting room, a glass of what looked like straight Scotch whiskey in his right hand, the attache case in his left.

  Wu turned to Durant and said, “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He thinks we should’ve stopped the ferry.”

  “To rescue Georgia?”

  Durant nodded.

  “You didn’t tell him?”

  “How could I?” Durant said.

  “Of course. You didn’t know for certain.”

  “Sit the fuck down, Booth, will you?” Otherguy Overby said. “The cops fished her out.”

  Stallings stopped pacing and turned quickly to face Overby. “She didn’t drown?”

  Overby grunted. “Do fish drown?”

  “Where is she?” Stallings said.

  “In jail,” Overby said. “Where the hell’d you think she’d be?”

  Artie Wu went over to Stallings and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Sit down, Booth. Please.”

  Stallings sat down in an easy chair, the attaché case on his lap, the dark drink still in his right hand. He looked up at Wu who was staring down at him with an extremely gentle expression. “Let’s have a beer, Otherguy,” Wu said.

  “Sure,” said Overby and went to the room refrigerator.

  “All of us, Booth, are very fond of Georgia,” Wu said. “Some of us, at one time or other, have been even more than fond of her. Therefore, we wouldn’t do anything to her that she didn’t deserve.”

  “Unless we had to,” Overby said, handing beers to Wu and Durant.

  “It was Otherguy who thought she’d make it past the cops,” Wu said and took a swallow of his beer. “I didn’t. It was Quincy who suspected she’d use the ferry and make the jump. Again, I didn’t think so. But when you two headed for the ferry, I went to the Hong Kong police—the red-faced man, did you notice him?”

  Stallings nodded.

  “And suggested that he send a police launch after the ferry. Which he did. The reason we’re so late is that Otherguy and I had to find Georgia a lawyer. A solicitor, actually.”

  “The first thing he wanted to talk about was money,” Overby said.

  “What about extradition to Manila?” Stallings said.

  “He’ll try to delay it.”

  “What about bail?” Stallings said.

  “I don’t think so,” Wu said.

  Overby grinned. “If she got bail, it’d be goodbye, Georgia.”

  Durant left the wall and went over to Stallings. “It’s over, Booth. All over.”

  Stallings nodded.

  “Except for one thing,” Durant said. “Are you sure you gave her the right envelope?”

  Stallings thought about it. “Christ, I don’t know. I was getting nervous in the bank. But I think so. I sure as hell hope so.”

  Overby looked at Wu. “Did she still have her shoulder bag when they pulled her out of the drink, Artie?”

  Wu slowly shook his head no.

  “Jesus,” Overby whispered.

  Durant cleared his throat. “May we take a look, Booth?”

  “You do it,” Stallings said and handed the attaché case to Durant.

  Durant went to the couch, sat down and put the attache case on the coffee table. He stared at it as Overby and Wu gathered round.

  Durant looked up at them, shrugged, undid the brass snaps and raised the lid. A Bank of Hong Kong and Shanghai envelope was all the case contained, except for Stallings’ passport. Durant tossed it to him.

  Again, Durant stared at the envelope, then snatched it up and ripped it open. Inside were five buff-colored checks.

  “I think I’m going to cry,” said Otherguy Overby.

  At 4:15 that afternoon, Booth Stallings stepped out of a taxi and again entered the small Chinese restaurant that was two blocks east and six blocks north of the Hong Kong Peninsula Hotel.

  The same young Chinese woman smiled at him in recognition and led him back to the same last booth. Sitting there, gazing into a glass of beer, was Minnie Espiritu.

  She looked up as Stallings slid into the booth. “I didn’t think you’d show,” she said.

  “I wasn’t sure you would,” Stallings said.

  “Beer?” she asked.

  “Tea.”

  “One tea,” Minnie Espiritu said to the young Chinese woman who turned and left.

  “Well?” Minnie Espiritu said.

  “You want the ground rules again?”

  “Just the catch.”

  “No catch. I give you one million bucks that you can spend any way you want.”

  “Providing?” she said.

  “Providing you give Al his funeral. The biggest one Cebu’s ever seen.”

  Minnie Espiritu leaned back in the booth and examined Stallings coldly. “They don’t know Alejandro’s dead, do they? Manila, I mean.”

  “No,” Stallings said. “They don’t.”

  “But they think you guys are going to kill him.”

  “That’s right.”

  “For the five million. That way they’re not out anything.”

  “Right again.”

  “I could blow both you and Manila out of the water, couldn’t I?”

  “It’
d be a one-day story, Minnie. Maybe two. And you’d be out a million bucks.”

  Seconds went by before she nodded. “Let’s see it.”

  Stallings reached into an inside breast pocket, brought out a buff-colored check and handed it to her just as the Chinese woman returned with his tea. Minnie Espiritu clapped the check against her breasts until the Chinese woman left. She then stared at the check, her lips moving silently as she carefully counted its six zeroes.

  “Made out to cash and certified, I see,” she said and silently counted the zeroes for the second time.

  “No way to stop payment on it either,” Stallings said and sipped his tea.

  “One … million … dollars.”

  “One million,” he agreed.

  “I could run it through our Panama account,” she said more to herself than to him as he took another sip of tea. When he looked up he saw two tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “I spent five years in the States begging for money,” she said, “and in all that time I didn’t even raise one third of this.” She smiled a winner’s smile. “Okay, Booth, he’ll get his rotten funeral.”

  Stallings raised his cup of tea to her. “Have a nice revolt, Minnie.”

  When he returned to the Peninsula Hotel at 5:21, Stallings called Artie Wu’s room. When there was no answer, he asked hotel information for the room numbers of Durant and Overby. A few moments later, the operator said, “I’m sorry, but Mr. Durant and Mr. Overby have checked out.”

  “What about Mr. Wu—Mr. Arthur Wu?”

  It took her another five seconds to check. “I’m sorry, but he too has departed.”

  Booth Stallings thanked her, hung up the house phone, and wandered over to a table in the lobby where he ordered a Scotch and water. As he waited for it, he took out the other buff check and, like Minnie Espiritu, counted the six zeroes silently, wondering how he would spend the money.

  CHAPTER 43

  At 12:45 P.M. on the sixteenth of May, 1986, a Friday, Booth Stallings sat on his favorite bench in Dupont Circle, his face turned up to the spring sun, waiting for his luncheon guest and remembering, for no very good reason, that on this date in seventeen-sixty-something, Boswell had first met Dr. Johnson.

  Two minutes later, Harry Crites sat down next to him on the bench, cracked a smile and said, “What’s for lunch?”

  “Drugstore chili dogs,” Stallings said, offering a white greasy paper sack.

  “I like chili dogs,” Crites said, took one, unwrapped it and, leaning forward to avoid the drip, bit into it.

  Stallings slowly unwrapped his own chili dog. “Sorry about your employee, Harry. But there was nothing I could do.”

  Crites nodded, chewed and smiled slightly, remembering not to show any teeth. “Georgia, you mean?” he said after he swallowed.

  “Georgia,” Stallings said, curious about what kind of self-absolution Crites would offer.

  Harry Crites finished his chili dog in two enormous bites, chewed some more, swallowed, wiped his mouth and hands carefully with a paper napkin, rose and stared down at Stallings.

  “I didn’t hire her, Booth,” he said. “She hired me.”

  Stallings stared back at him, unblinking, determined not to let his face betray anything—not surprise or disappointment or sadness. Especially not sadness. “She hired you to get me fired and recruited,” he said, not making it a question.

  “You were sole source, remember?” Crites said. “All it took was half a dozen phone calls, a dinner at the Madison and a trip to L.A.” He smiled the smile of a superior mind. “I imagine you’d like to know how much I cost her.”

  Stallings only nodded, despising himself for the curiosity he was unable to stifle.

  “Fifty thousand plus expenses.” Crites produced his superior smile again. “But hell, Booth, it all worked out okay. I saw on TV a few weeks back that big funeral they gave Espiritu in Cebu. So in a way you must’ve brought him down from the hills after all.” He shook his head in what seemed to be a mixture of regret and admiration. “That Georgia,” he said. “She’s something, isn’t she?” When Stallings made no reply, he added, “You heard what happened, didn’t you?”

  Stallings, still seated, stared up at him and, after a moment, shook his head.

  “She cut herself a deal. Traded everything she knew about how Marcos sluices his money around for reduced charges. Christ, she ought to be out in a year or two. Maybe even sooner.” He paused just long enough to give Stallings a cruel smile. “Think you can wait, Booth?”

  “Why not?” Stallings said, adding, “Who told you about the deal she cut, Harry?”

  Harry Crites seemed almost on the point of answering, but shrugged instead, turned and walked away. Stallings watched him go. He then leaned back against the bench, closed his eyes and lifted his face up to the sun, wondering what Georgia Blue was doing and thinking at that very moment. When this proved both pointless and adolescent, he wondered whether Harry Crites might have been lying.

  It was then that it came to him—struck him actually—with startling clarity. And he realized what it was that he missed, needed and even wanted to do and be now that he was all grown up. Or nearly so.

  Stallings picked up the empty white paper bag, crumpled it, rose quickly, hurried to the trash basket and tossed it in. After crossing the street to the bank of pay phones near the Peoples Drugstore, he dropped in a quarter, the only coin he bothered to carry, and tapped out the office number of his son-in-law, the criminal lawyer.

  As it rang, Stallings was convinced that his son-in-law would have a new phone number where Otherguy Overby could be reached. And he was equally certain that by now Otherguy would have something going. Something Stallings could buy into. Something interesting and different out on the Rim perhaps—or, for that matter, almost anywhere.

  The three who survived the ambush on the black-sand beach were the nineteen-year-old second lieutenant of infantry; the five-foot-four guerrilla; and the huge, somewhat crazed medical corpsman who had sweated, starved and raved away sixteen pounds in the week that followed.

  Yet it was Hovey Profette, the Arkansas medic, who first noticed the two Imperial Marines in the valley below, some forty or fifty yards away, as they slowly emerged from a grove of neglected coconut palms. “Shoot the little fuckers,” the medic urged in a hoarse whisper.

  Booth Stallings, the second lieutenant of infantry and putative leader of the ambushed intelligence and reconnaissance patrol, flattened himself between the pair of sun-baked black rocks. After brushing away what seemed to be four dozen flies he squinted down through the afternoon haze at the two figures in their mustard uniforms. Both Imperial Marines had stopped and were glancing around with the apprehensive air of point men who suspect someone is about to shoot at them.

  “I’d say that second little fucker’s at least six-two, maybe even six-three,” Stallings said.

  “Imperial Marines,” the guerrilla murmured. “There is a minimum height requirement.”

  For the fourth time that day the medic’s terrible rage exploded without warning. It surged up his eighteen-inch neck in a bright wave, turning his curiously small ears a lipstick red and twisting his face into a fat pink angry knot that Booth Stallings thought might never be untied.

  “You ain’t even gonna try and shoot ’em, are you, Lieutenant Pissant?” the medic said, enough menace in his soft question to make it a death threat.

  Booth Stallings shook his head no as he continued to gaze down at the two Imperial Marines who were now moving slowly across the clearing that once had been planted to maize. “They’re scouts, Hovey,” Stallings said, forcing a measure of reasonableness into his answer. “They’ve got a squad behind them at least. Maybe a platoon. Maybe even a company.”

  “Probably a company,” the guerrilla said in the flat, almost toneless Kansas accent he had acquired at the hands of a Thomasite maiden lady who had landed on his shores in 1901 and spent the next forty years teaching little brown boys to speak and write America
n English the way it was spoken and written back in Emporia.

  Hovey Profette, still crimson-faced and seething, ignored the guerrilla and stuck out his right hand for Stallings’ rifle, the sole community firearm. “Gimme the piece,” he demanded. “I’ll shoot the fuckers.”

  Stallings again shook his head no, trying to insert a trace of unfelt regret into the gesture.

  “There’s no rear sight, Hovey,” said Stallings. “That dead guerrilla I took it from must’ve pried the sight off and thrown it away. Guerrillas think rear sights just fuck things up—right, Al?”

  Alejandro Espiritu, the five-foot-four guerrilla, smiled politely. “An old and much observed military tradition in my country.”

  “You know what you are, Lieutenant Stallings, sir?” the medic said, his voice almost too loud, his color far too high. “You’re just a … a great big pile of yellow shit, that’s what.”

  Hovey Profette lunged for the Garand, tore it easily from Booth Stallings’ grasp, jammed its butt into his own right shoulder and was sighting down the sightless barrel when the blade of the guerrilla’s bolo sliced almost halfway through the eighteen-inch neck.

  The medic made a sound that was part sigh, part wheeze and collapsed atop the unfired rifle. A gurgling noise followed that Booth Stallings thought went on forever but lasted only seconds. When it was over, Hovey Profette, infantry medic and failed conscientious objector, lay dead on the tropical volcanic ridge that afforded Imperial Marines on one side and a fine view of the Camotes Sea on the other.

  Stallings jerked the sightless Garand from beneath the dead man. Not bothering to wipe away the blood, he flicked the safety to off and aimed the rifle at the squatting guerrilla who ignored it and went on wiping Profette’s blood from the bolo with a handful of wild monkey grass.

  “Why the hell didn’t you just nick him a little?” Stallings demanded.

  Espiritu the guerrilla carefully examined the two-foot bolo before shoving it back down into its homemade wooden scabbard. “He might’ve screamed,” he said finally and pointed with his chin down into the valley where a long line of Imperial Marines was now moving quickly across the clearing. “A company at least,” he said. “Just as you and I thought.”