He asked to be provided a complete account of your mother’s health. Does that sound reasonable?”
“It does. My mother is married to Tom Morick,” Moon said, aware that his voice sounded stiff. “Morick has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He’s pretty much paralyzed. In fact he’s in an iron lung, dying fast. He’ll want to know everything.”
“We’ll send Dr. Levison all the details, then. He can explain them to Mr. Morick. And your mother is more awake now, if you want to see her.”
Victoria Mathias managed a smile, but just barely. Yes, she was feeling better. Less pain in her chest, but maybe that was the morphine. But what had he found out about the baby? Moon said nothing really definite, and that caused Victoria Mathias to give him a long, silent look.
“Malcolm,” she said, “I’m a big girl. That means the baby hasn’t arrived in Manila, doesn’t it? Does it also mean that Mr. Castenada doesn’t know where she is?”
“That’s what it seems to mean.”
“And that must mean she’s still in Vietnam,” she said.
“Or still en route,” Moon said. “Castenada seemed to believe whoever was supposed to send her off in Saigon was having trouble getting her on a flight.”
His mother studied him. “What did you think of Castenada?”
Moon shrugged. “Hard to tell over the telephone.”
“He doesn’t instill much confidence, I’m afraid.”
“No. He doesn’t.”
She made a feeble effort to move her hand across the sheet toward him. Let it fall. Moon reached out and took it.
“Malcolm,” she said, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to go to Manila and take care of this.”
“I will,” Moon said. “But first we have to get you well.”
“I don’t think there’s time for that. I was watching the television news out at the airport before this happened. Things seem to be going to hell in that part of the world.” -
“I can’t just go off and leave you.”
“Son,” she said, “there’s nothing you can do for me here. It’s up to the doctor. You just have to go and get our granddaughter.”
And so Moon went.
SAIGON, South Vietnam, April 16 (AP)- Communist rockets last night detonated an ammunition dump at Bien Hoa thirty miles north of here. The blast shook the capital and reinforced reports that the Bien Hoa air base, largest in Vietnam, had come under artillery fire.
The Fifty Day
April 17, 1975
THE JET DESCENDED THROUGH RAIN to the Manila airport. Out the water-streaked window beside his seat, Moon could see nothing but the bleak inside of solid cloud cover, then a lush green landscape blurred by the falling water, then puddled runways lined with weeds. His impression of the terminal was of roaring, clamorous confusion. A prematurely old building with flaking paint, cracks in too many floor tiles, and too much dirt. The air conditioner worked too well, making the humid air unpleasantly sticky.
Moon felt smothered, exhausted, uneasy. His mother’s purse with eighty hundred-dollar bills in it was in his suitcase. What was the rule about bringing cash into the Philippines? Moon had a vague recollection of currency restrictions, but that probably concerned taking money out, not bringing it in.
The immigration agent was a skinny middle-aged man wearing what looked like a military uniform. He glanced at Moon’s passport and at Moon and said, “How long in the Philippines?” in oddly accented English.
“Just a couple of days,” Moon said, “maybe less.” But the agent was already looking past him at the pretty girl next in line.
Customs was equally cursory. Moon handed over the declaration sheet he’d filled out on the plane and stood, shoulders slumping, while the agent read it.
“Nothing to declare?” the agent asked, without looking up.
“Just clothing,” Moon said.
He opened Moon’s dented old American Tourister, glanced in, closed it. Then he patted Victoria Mathias’s briefcase.
“This?”
“Business papers,” Moon said. “Letters, personal correspondence, things like that.”
“Urn,” the clerk said. He motioned Moon to pick up his luggage and move along.
The door marked exit to public transportation was guarded by two teenagers in dark glasses, with the khaki uniforms and caps that Moon assumed were Philippine Army uniforms. Soldiers, surely, because they both held the same model M16 automatic rifles that Moon had trained with at Fort Benning. They lounged against the wall looking sinister in their glasses. He carried his bags past them, wondering if they were watching him. They didn’t seem to be watching anyone.
Victoria Mathias’s travel agent had made reservations for her at the Hotel Maynila, a shiny edifice of tropical-modern architecture. Moon explained to the desk clerk why Malcolm Mathias was claiming a room reserved for Victoria Morick. The clerk looked bored, said, “Ah, yes,” expressed sympathy, and handed Moon the key.
It hit Moon, finally, as he stood waiting for the elevator. Jet lag, he guessed. Too many hours without untroubled sleep. He leaned against the wall, eyes closed, surprised by the sound of the elevator doors sliding open. At the door of his eleventh-floor room he had trouble making the key work. He slumped on the bed while trying to dial Castenada’s office and screwed up the number twice before getting a busy signal. When he lay back on the pillow waiting to try again, sleep overwhelmed him.
He came awake slowly, conscious at first of the strangeness of the pillow against his face. Then he was jarringly aware of being on an alien bed. With his clothes on, even his shoes tied. Aware he was in a strange room, with no notion of where he was, or when it was, or why he was here. For Moon it was all too familiar, a skip back into the past of his last year in college and his time in the army. Drinking had become his hobby. Awakening in the wrong bed in a strange room with his head buzzing with hungover confusion had been a regular Sunday morning experience. But that had ended years ago. The last time he had suffered such an awakening had been the worst of all-a nightmare that had ended boozing for him forever.
He’d been aware at first of the bandages, of the pain in his head, of the tubes connecting his arm to something, that his left wrist and hand were encased in a cast. Hearing the breathing of the man asleep in an adjoining bed, the sound of a telephone ringing somewhere: hospital paraphernalia. And then a nurse was there. How did he feel? Was he well enough to talk to the policeman? The woman left while he searched for an answer. The Military Police captain replacing her beside his bed told him he had a right to call a lawyer if he wanted one.
Moon didn’t want to be remembering that. He rolled off the bed. In the bathroom he washed his face and glanced at his wristwatch. But it told him only the Los Angeles time. Here it seemed to be morning. The digital clock beside his bed said nine twenty-two, but not whether it was A.M. or P.M. The sunlight filtering through high thin clouds over Manila Bay seemed to be morning light, and the traffic on the boulevard below-cars headed mostly toward downtown Manila -must be going-to-work traffic.
This morning the telephone in the office of Castenada, Blake and Associates rang only once. A woman’s voice said, “Law offices”; the same words in the same tone one heard in Durance or Denver or-most likely- Karachi. But then Castenada’s voice, with its exotic accent.
“Mi,” Castenada said. “Mr. Mathias. Am I correct that you are in Manila?”
“Yes,” Moon said. “As I told you. I came to pick up Ricky’s child.”
“Yes,” Castenada said. Hesitation. “Can you come down to the office?”
“Of course,” Moon said, puzzled by the tone of this. Of course he would have to come to the office. There would be papers to be signed, fees to be paid, expenses to be covered, arrangements to be explained. “The child,” he said. “She has arrived safely?”
“Mi,” Castenada said. “Not yet. You are at the Hotel Maynila, I think? Where your mother had made reservations. That is about fifteen minutes from here by taxi. Would it be convenie
nt for you to come now?”
The cabbie looked surprised when Moon told him the address, and Moon was surprised at the direction it led them. They turned away from the bay and the towering buildings he’d seen from his hotel window and into narrow old streets where ramshackle apartment buildings were crowded between auto repair shops, mattress factories, even a chicken processing plant. People everywhere, children everywhere, a swarm of street vendors pushing their carts. Dirt, music from upstairs windows, a ragged man begging, color, vitality, the fetid smell of the drainage ditch running beside a broken sidewalk.
Something like a gloriously magnified version of the trumpet vine that had grown on the porch of his childhood grew here from the wall of a shuttered bar. Moon tried to compare it with Mexico, his only out-of-country experience. But Debbie had made their reservations at the Acapulco Pyramid.
They’d seen nothing like this, not even on the drive through the barrio from the airport.
The cabbie was a short, skinny man with very black hair and a barber who had shaved the back of his neck unusually high.
“I wonder if I gave you the right address,” Moon said, and repeated it. “Would there be law offices in this part of the city?”
“Oh, yes,” the cabbie said. “One more block, I think. Then just around the corner. Then we will see.” He laughed. “If not here, we try somewhere else. In Manila, lawyers you can find everywhere.”
The cab stopped at a two-story structure of faded pink concrete block with the barred windows that seemed common to this part of Manila. A half-dozen signs lined the front door, a midnight blue that had weathered, but not enough to fit its pink surroundings. The first sign advertised an accountant, and the second read:
LAW OFFICES
CASTENADA, BLAKE AND ASSOCIATES
The cabbie turned enough to show Moon his profile. “Here it is,” he said. He announced the fare in pisos. That reminded Moon he’d forgotten to change any money into Philippine currency. After laborious conversion mathematics, the cabbie took his pay in U.S. cash and Moon pushed through the blue door with the disgruntled feeling of the tourist who suspects he has been cheated.
The hallway was narrow and dark, floored with linoleum tiles. Moon walked down it, irritation replaced by uneasiness. The door at the end of the hall had a law offices sign beside it. It stood partly open. Alice down the rabbit hole, Moon thought. At the hotel he had felt uneasy about going to this appointment wearing rumpled slacks and a shirt he’d rinsed in his Los Angeles hotel room. That worry had long since vanished.
The door opened into a small reception room. A chair, a padded bench, a secretarial desk with telephone and Rolodex but no secretary. Beyond the desk, another door with a little sign on it saying: MR. CASTENADA. No door for Blake. No doors for Associates.
Moon tapped on the only door.
A masculine voice said something in what Moon guessed was Tagalog and then “Come in” in English. Moon pushed the door open.
He had expected Roberto Bolivar Castenada to be as emphatically Old Spanish as the name. Although this man sat high behind a huge and heavy desk, he was small, frail, and very dark. Emphatically a Filipino. Black eyes prominent in a narrow face, black hair showing gray, a sharp prominent chin, a tentative smile showing large white teeth. About sixty, Moon thought. Maybe older. How could you tell with an unfamiliar race?
“Mr. Mathias,” the man said. “Ricky’s older brother. It is good to meet you at last.” The smile faded. “Even though the circumstances are bleak.”
“You’re Mr. Castenada?” Moon said.
The man nodded, made an embarrassed gesture. “You will please excuse me for not rising to greet you.” He held out a slender hand, expression wry. Moon leaned forward to take it and saw why the man sat so high. He was propped on cushions in a battery-powered wheelchair.
“Malcolm Mathias,” Moon said. “How do you do.”
“Welcome to Manila,” the man said. “Electra has gone out to get some coffee and sweets for our meeting. Otherwise you would have been greeted more properly.”
“No problem,” Moon said. “I have my passport and the papers our mother had with her if you need to look at those.”
The man chuckled. “You are clearly the elder brother of Richard Mathias. You are exactly as he described you. And like this.” The man slid open a desk drawer, extracted a photograph, and handed it to Moon.
The photograph had been enlarged to eight by ten inches, and from its glossy surface the face of Ricky beamed at him. And there he was, standing beside Ricky, wearing his standard stiff snapshot expression, clumsy in his dress uniform, looking slightly stupid, the bridge of his nose bent slightly to the left to remind him of a mistake he’d made trying to block a linebacker who was a half step faster than he’d expected. He hadn’t seen this photo before. He stared at it now, remembering.
Ricky had handed his camera to Halsey, and Halsey had said, “Look brotherly,” or something like that, and shot it.
Moon turned the photo over. Nothing there. It was the last time he’d seen his brother. They’d taken him back to Kansas City to catch his plane for Los Angeles and Tokyo and Saigon, and that was the end of Ricky. They’d driven back to the base and stopped at the General Patton Lounge for a few drinks-and that was the end of Halsey.
Moon cleared his throat. He handed the photo back to Castenada.
“Ricky gave you this?”
“Actually, he gave it to Electra. She asked him for a picture.”
Moon didn’t want to pursue that. He wanted to get his business done here and pick up Ricky’s child, deliver the kid to his mother, and go home. But what was he going to do with Ricky’s kid if Victoria Mathias was still in the hospital? As she would be, of course. And what if his mother didn’t make it? What would he do with the kid then?
“You said the child hadn’t arrived yet. When is she getting here? I was hoping I could pick her up today. Or at least get the paperwork done. Does she have a passport? Or does a child that young need one?”
Castenada’s welcoming smile had disappeared while Moon was looking at the photo. Now his face was somber.
“The problem is we don’t know where she is,” he said. “She wasn’t on the flight she was supposed to be on. So I have a man out at the airport checking all the flights coming in from Saigon. He is also checking everything that comes in from Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur or Singapore or anywhere else appropriate, in the event they could not get her onto a direct flight and took a roundabout way. All flights have been checked. And there are no flights any longer from Phnom Penh.”
“You don’t know where she is?” Somehow this didn’t really surprise him. Somehow he’d half expected some awful screwup. It seemed fitting and logical. He just hadn’t allowed himself to think of it.
Castenada was shaking his head. “Not in Cambodia, we think. And that is the very important thing. Because if she was still in Cambodia it would be very, very complicated. And maybe not in Saigon, which is where she was supposed to be placed on the flight. Thailand closed its border with Cambodia, and Ricky’s people in Bangkok say they don’t believe she came there.”
“My God!” Moon said. “You’re telling me you really don’t have any idea where the baby is?” His voice was louder than he’d intended.
“Not yet,” Castenada said.
“Not yet,” Moon repeated. “When will you know?”
Castenada’s expression suggested he’d not liked Moon’s tone. He removed his hands from the desktop, leaned back in his chair, and examined Moon over his glasses. “Perhaps never,” he said. “If you wish me to be realistic, perhaps never.”
“I’m sorry,” Moon said. “I just don’t understand the situation. My mother was too ill to explain anything. I hoped I was just coming to Manila to pick up the girl and take her back to the States. All of this is-”
“Of course,” Castenada said. “I should have taken time to explain on the telephone.” He explained now, his expression cordial again but still leaning bac
k from the desk. He said Castenada, Blake and Associates represented small international companies, mostly export-import, which operated across the various borders of Southeast Asia. Ricky had retained him first to incorporate R. M. Air in the Republic of the Philippines, then to handle the leasing of property where Ricky intended to establish a repair operation north of Caloocan City, to unravel a misunderstanding with a bonded warehouse in Singapore, and to recover an aircraft impounded by Laos authorities at Vientiane. Castenada delivered this recitation slowly, digressing to explain if it seemed necessary. He paused and threw his hands open in a gesture of finality.
“The point is that our relationship was primarily business. Which bureaucrat at Bangkok in which office did one need to approach? Which law in Malaysia was being enforced this year and which one winked at? So I know his business associates. But I do not know his friends.”
He paused again, thinking, then added, “Only a few of them. And of course one’s daughter would be entrusted to friends, not to business associates.”
Moon could think of nothing to say to this.
Castenada waited, made a wry face. “I think to find the child you will need his friends. To help you.”
“I don’t know his friends either,” Moon said. “Not his friends out here.”
If Castenada heard this, he ignored it. “Because I think this person who was bringing out the child, I think he must have gone to earth somewhere. Somewhere safe until they could travel again.” Castenada threw up his hands. “Everything is going to hell over there. Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous. Nothing can be counted on, nothing. Offices closed. Flights are canceled. Telephones go unanswered.”
“So,” Moon said, feeling totally out of his depth, “what do I do now?”
Castenada considered, looking first at the pyramid he’d made of his fingers and then at Moon. To Moon’s amazement, Mr. Castenada was grinning.
Finding Moon Page 5