Finding Moon

by Tony Hillerman

  “Okay,” Moon said. The man must think his business was important to follow Victoria to Los Angeles. But what sort of business could it be? He was too tired to think. Add it to the list of puzzles.

  “That it?”

  “Except the usual stuff that somebody else can handle.”

  “Did Debbie call?”

  A slight pause. “Let me see. Yes.”

  Moon allowed himself a tired grin. “And said what?” Moon asked.

  “She said to tell you she hoped your mother was all right.” Shirley’s tone was precisely neutral. “And to remind you that Saturday was April twelfth. Was it her birthday?”

  “If she calls back tell her I’ve been trying to call her.” Which was a small lie but undetectable, because Debbie’s office telephone was notorious for its busy signal, and so was the phone they shared at his house. Living with Debbie had taught Moon the value of small, undetectable lies told in the interest of keeping things peaceful.

  “How old will she be?” Shirley inquired sweetly.

  “I really don’t know,” Moon said, avoiding another small lie on technical semantic grounds. How old was Debbie? Twenty-two by her accounting, but since Debbie, too, sometimes told small lies, he really didn’t know.

  “Is Rooney in? Let me talk to him.”

  Rooney was working the slot, editing early and relatively unimportant copy to fill tomorrow’s inside sections.

  “I didn’t hire on to do this kind of crap,” Rooney said. “When are you coming back?” Rooney sounded sober, which was encouraging if not an absolute guarantee. “And how’s your mother?”

  “I guess she’s going to have to have bypass surgery,” Moon said. “But first I want to get a second opinion from a better doctor, and then if she needs an operation I need to find her a different surgeon. The one that has his hands on her now-I wouldn’t even let him work on you.”

  “That bad, huh?” Rooney said. “The way you pick a surgeon is go out in the DOCTORS ONLY parking lot and find the custom-built Mercedes with the TV antenna and the chauffeur wiping the bird shit off it. There’s the surgeon who keeps ’em alive long enough to get the bills paid.” Rooney paused to consider this advice. “That’s what my old granny told me.”

  Moon was not in the mood for Rooney at the moment. “What’s on the menu?” he asked. “What story are you leading with?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Rooney said. “We have a thing out of the State Police and the Game Department about dog packs worrying tourists up around the ski run. I told Hubbell we ought to play that one. Give it eight columns, ninety-six points, all caps: TERRIERS TERRORIZE TOURISTS. Or maybe PET PACKS PROWL PARK. Or how about-”

  “Get serious,” Moon said. Rooney had been hired as a feature writer and did mostly special assignments for the city desk. But once, after too many whiskey sours at an office party, he had confessed to working in a former life as rim man on the Kansas City Star. That careless admission of editing experience had made him the paper’s utility desk man, writing headlines and handling copy in emergency manpower shortages. It was a job he detested, and Moon had learned that his news selection tended to be eccentric if he was drinking. But now, as Rooney provided a rundown on what he’d been using on inside pages and what he was stacking up for potential front-page use, his judgments seemed reassuringly orthodox. There wasn’t anything hot going on, either locally or statewide. Rooney had given big inside space to the Senate approval of price ceilings on domestic oil, which Moon would have used on page one, and the same sort of inside treatment to President Ford’s request to Congress for more aid for Saigon. For the front, he was holding the daily Nam battle story, with a sidebar about refugees clogging the highways; a feature about a local kid building his own computer; a two-fatality collision on the Interstate; and a city council discussion of a proposed sewer bond issue. Not bad, considering that Rooney had written the computer yarn himself before Moon’s departure had switched him from reporter to desk man.

  “Then there’s another sidebar on Cambodia that maybe ought to go on page one. Sounds like the Khmer Rouge is gobbling up Phnom Perth.” Rooney’s tone had lost its flipancy earlier in the recitation of the day’s woes. Now it was grim. “Some of this stuff sounds like Attila the Hun is loose again. Everything but the giant pyramids of skulls.”

  “Yeah,” Moon said. He felt a twinge of anxiety through the fatigue. “Well, tell Hubbell I’m at the Airport Inn and that Shirley has my number. And switch me back to her.”

  “Debbie’s been calling. Asking about you. I think she misses you.” Unlike Shirley, Rooney liked Debbie. All males liked Debbie.

  “What’s she want?”

  “To know when you’d be coming back.”

  “Tell her I’ve been trying to call her,” Moon said. “And, look, did I ever tell you how nasty Shakeshaft gets about drinking? If I didn’t, I’m doing it now. When he hired me I got the temperance sermon. My first job is to make sure nobody drinks in the newsroom. And my second job is to make sure nobody’s been drinking before they come in. After that, I worry about getting the paper out.”

  “I’m not drinking,” Rooney said. Coldly.

  “Good,” Moon said. “But did I tell you old Jerry has a habit of looking into desk drawers, poking around under piles of papers, and-”

  “And smelling your breath,” Rooney said. “I used to have a managing editor like that.”

  “You still do. I smelled it last Monday,” Moon said, and dropped it there.

  He called Colorado Mortgage and Title Insurance. The woman on the reception desk was somebody he didn’t know. She said Debbie’s line was busy. She took his hotel number and said, yes, she’d tell Debbie he’d called and to call him.

  “You did say J.D., didn’t you?” she asked.

  “No,” Moon said. “Tell her Moon Mathias called;”

  He looked at his watch. Probably too soon to try the Manila number again. Not the hour to sleep either. He was tired, almost dizzy with fatigue, but too tense to sleep. The shower would help. He rescued his shirt from the floor and inspected it. He’d packed without any real thought-shirts, socks, and underwear for a couple of days. The shirt he’d been wearing was knitted of something or other and could serve a second day. He carried it into the bathroom and carefully rinsed out a smudge below the pocket. He was hanging it up to dry when he heard a tapping at the door.

  “Just a second,” Moon said. He pulled on his trousers.

  Two men were at the door, the one in front small, frail and old, the one behind big and young. Both Chinese, Moon thought and, as he thought it, amended the thought to Oriental, and amended that to Asian. It seemed clear that his dead brother was pulling him inevitably into a world where one would need to know the difference between Chinese and Vietnamese and Japanese, Cambodians, Indonesians, and all the rest.

  The small man dipped his head slightly and looked up at Moon through thick round glasses. “Mr. Malcolm Mathias?” the man said. “I beg your pardon for this intrusion.”

  “Yes,” Moon said, “I’m Malcolm Mathias. What can I do for you?” The man was wearing a brown suit made of some expensive-looking silky material which, so it appeared, had been slept in. Behind him, the big young man was smiling an apprehensive smile.

  “My name is Mr. Lum Lee. I wish to express my concern about the health of your mother.” He dipped his head again. “Also, I wish to express my condolences at the death of your esteemed brother, Mr. Richard Mathias.” Mr. Lum Lee cleared his throat. “Your brother was a good friend to me…” He paused, inspecting Moon, and added in a voice not much above a whisper, “And sometimes an associate in business.” He cleared his throat again, looked at Moon, and added, “Sometimes. Yes. And I hope the health of your mother is improving.”

  “Yes,” Moon said. “Thank you.” He held out his hand. “Malcolm Mathias,” he said. “How do you do. Come on in. Find a place to sit down.”

  Mr. Lee’s hand was small and dry. Totally without strength. It made Moon think of bi
rd bones.

  “Excuse me,” Mr. Lum Lee said. “I would present the son of my oldest daughter, Mr. Charley Ming. Mr. Ming has been good enough to be of assistance to me while I am in the United States.”

  Mr. Ming’s hand, in contrast to his grandfather’s, was a wrestler’s: broad, hard, strong. But his smile was bashful. He held one of the room’s two chairs for his grandfather, refused Moon’s offer of the second one, and sat ramrod erect on the edge of the bed, holding his hat in his lap. Mr. Lee had placed his hat on the dresser beside his chair. His thick gray hair was cut short, into military bristles.

  “I think your secretary will have told you I called,” Mr. Lee said.

  “Yes,” Moon said. “But she didn’t tell me anything about your business. She didn’t say you would be coming to see me.” How had this man located him? It must have been through either the airline security office or the hospital. And, if his courtesy went deeper than his words, why hadn’t he called from the lobby to see if this visit was welcome? Was it because he didn’t want to take a chance that Moon would want to avoid him? Moon found himself smiling at that. He’d seen too many movies about Oriental intrigue.

  Mr. Lee looked abashed. “I am very sorry about this,” he said. “I hope this visit is not inconvenient to you in any way. If it is-” Mr. Lee reached for his hat and started to rise.

  “No, no. Not at all,” Moon said. “I’m delighted to meet a friend of my brother.”

  “And a business associate as well,” Mr. Lee added.

  “We don’t know much about his death,” Moon said. “Just what his attorney told my mother, and what the American consulate told us. All about the same. But no details.”

  “It was a tragedy,” Mr. Lee said. “A genuine loss. A fine young man. An honorable man.” He shook his head solemnly. His eyes behind the thick lenses seemed even more watery and vague.

  “Could you tell me anything more about it? All we were told is that he was in a helicopter in Cambodia, and it crashed in the mountains near the border with Vietnam, and Ricky was killed.”

  “I understand the wreckage was found by a unit of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam,” Mr. Lee said. “The helicopter had burned when this unit arrived.”

  “Ricky was flying it?” Moon said.

  “I think not. Another man was the pilot, I believe, excuse me,” Mr. Lee said. “A Mr. Pol Thiu Eng, who works for R. M. Air. I believe it was him. I beg your pardon.”

  “They never told us anything,” Moon said. “Just that it was an accident. Do you know how it happened? Or what Ricky was doing? They said he was flying out of Cambodia.”

  Mr. Lee looked thoughtful. “Business,” he said. The sound of jet engines overhead engulfed the room. Mr. Lee sat patiently, studying his hands, waiting for silence. “I would think it would have been business.”

  “His business was helicopter repair and maintenance,” Moon said. “Mostly avionics. Repairing the electronic gear on aircraft. He has a maintenance contract with the South Vietnamese Air Force. Or had one.”

  “With the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, I believe,” Mr. Lee said. “With ARVN and with the RVN, the navy, too. Excuse me. With General Thang, I believe. Yes. But Mr. Mathias also had other business as well, and in Cambodia I believe it would be primarily the delivery business.”

  “Delivery?” Of course Ricky would have other businesses. Ricky wasn’t the sort to be happy with just one iron in just one fire.

  “A good business in recent times,” Mr. Lee said. And added what sounded like “Unfortunately.” But the word was drowned by another jet overhead. When it had passed, Mr. Lee allowed his small round mouth to shape itself into a smile. “Delivering things out of places where the

  Communists are coming in. Delivering property to Hong Kong and Singapore and Manila -places that are secure. People who own valuable things will pay well for such deliveries.”

  “Oh,” Moon said.

  Mr. Lee shrugged, his expression philosophical. “I myself have paid well,” he said. “It is these terrible times we live in. Buddha taught us that one who runs against the wind carrying a torch will surely burn his hand. And yet we run against the wind.”

  “This is how you were associated with Ricky?”

  Mr. Lee nodded.

  “As a customer?”

  “As a contractor,” Mr. Lee agreed. “Mr. Mathias’s company sometimes contracted to pick up an item somewhere for me and take it someplace else.”

  “In Cambodia?”

  “In Cambodia. In Laos. In Vietnam. My home had been in Vietnam, in the highlands where it is cooler. But unfortunately, the war-” Mr. Lee shrugged again and lapsed into silence. Moon thought of the letter to Ricky. The details that had been incomprehensible when he’d read it must have referred to this delivery business.

  “And now, where is home?”

  Mr. Lee smiled. “Home?” He thought about it and smiled ruefully. “It is still in Vietnam,” he said. “I moved out of the mountains to a place near Hue. It proved an unfortunate choice.”

  “I guess I meant the family home,” Moon said, wondering why he’d bothered to ask that standard polite question.

  “The family comes from South China,” Mr. Lee said. “ Canton. But the Nationalist Army defeated the warlord faction there, and my grandfather moved our family to the south. Then the Japanese defeated the Nationalists. My grandfather was killed, and my father moved the family down toward the border of Vietnam. Then the Japanese were defeated by the Americans and we moved again. And then the Communists defeated the Nationalist Army and my father was killed.”

  Mr. Lee sighed. “A long story,” he said. “I moved the family into Indochina. But the French came back in when the Japanese were driven out, and the Viet Minh, who had been fighting the Japanese, began fighting the French. My two brothers and my son were killed then. After the French were driven out, the Americans came in, and my wife and one of my grandchildren were killed and we moved again-” Mr. Lee broke off the recitation with an apologetic look at Moon. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “You were being polite. I was boring you with a family history.”

  “No, no,” Moon said. “I am interested.”

  “But you are also a busy man. With many responsibilities. I must not waste your time. I must tell you that I am here because one of the very last transactions your brother and I engaged in was not concluded. Not totally completed. The tragedy interrupted it. The delivery was not consummated.”

  He peered at Moon through the thick lenses, his watery eyes seeking understanding.

  “The goods were on the helicopter when it crashed?”

  “I think not,” Mr. Lee said, looking sad.

  A jet came over, lower than usual. Mr. Lee waited.

  So did Moon. It was the fatigue, he thought, that gave these two men, and the room, and everything else, a sense of unreality. He glanced at Mr. Charley Ming, who-caught staring-looked away. Mr. Lee was looking down at his small hands, folded in his lap.

  “I want to learn where my merchandise has gone,” he said. “I think Mr. Mathias put it somewhere for safekeeping. But the people at his company knew nothing about it. Your brother’s papers had already been sent to his attorney in Manila. But when I got to Manila, again I was too late. He had sent everything to your mother in the United States.” He shrugged, looking at Moon with the question in his face.

  “You want to look at Ricky’s papers to see if they’ll help you find-whatever it was?”

  “Exactly,” Mr. Lee said. “For that I came to the United States. But when I reached Miami Beach, your mother had already left.”

  “She brought a few things with her,” Moon said. “Mostly letters, I think. She wouldn’t have brought business papers. In fact, I doubt if she would have received his business stuff. Whoever is running the business would need them. They would still be in his office, I’d think.”

  Mr. Lee looked at Moon, examining his face. He made a deprecatory gesture. “I think not necessarily so,” he said. “To
o bad, I think, but some business in some places must be kept very confidential.”

  Mr. Lee’s expression said that he knew Moon, a sophisticated man, would have already known this, but he explained.

  “It is not just in deference to the interests of his clients who don’t want their privacy invaded, but in the interests of your brother. He wouldn’t want too much unneeded information written down in files. Almost everybody can open files.”

  “Oh,” Moon said, digesting this. “You’re saying some of the things Ricky was doing were illegal?”

  Mr. Lee looked startled. “Oh, no. No,” he said. “Mr. Mathias was an honorable business person. But-” He paused, shrugged. “The helicopters, for example,” he said, voice patient. “One of the assets of Mr. Mathias’s company is control of helicopters of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. And sometimes RVN helicopters. His people fix them and test-fly them, and then he notifies the army, and ARVN pilots come to fly them back to Saigon. Or sometimes pilots of R. M. Air return them to their bases.”

  “And who is to say where the copter was flown on the test flight?” Moon said. “Or how long it took to repair it?”

  “Exactly,” Mr. Lee said. “And who is to care? And, of course, a helicopter of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam can fly to places where flying other aircraft would be-” Mr. Lee searched for the right explanation.

  “Not be allowed?” Moon suggested. “Or raise questions? Or provoke curiosity?”

  “Exactly,” Mr. Lee said again. “There would be much filling in of forms, and getting permits, and waiting, and-” Mr. Lee grimaced and rubbed thumb and fingers together, the universal symbol for bribery.

  Moon nodded. Ricky was not the sort to overlook an opportunity.

  “So one would not look for a file on the business he did with me in the business office of R. M. Air,” Mr. Lee said. “One would expect more discretion.”