Out on the Rim

Chapter Ten

Quincy Durant sat propped up in the Hyatt hotel bed, smoking a rare cigarette and drinking Scotch and water, when Artie Wu came out of the bathroom, shrimp pink from his shower and wearing only a pair of voluminous white boxer shorts. Wu started putting on the pants to the white silk money suit. He spoke only after he had the pants on and was buttoning a tent-size blue chambray shirt. “How much?”

“About a thousand,” Durant said. “I spread it around town with the word that I was trying to locate Ernie. I got a call at six this morning from a taxi dispatcher. One of his drivers took an Air Force CID major to that post beer joint, the Nineteenth Tee, where they’d found Ernie. The Major’s car wouldn’t start, which is why he called a taxi. The driver recognized Ernie.”

“But didn’t say anything.”

“Not to anybody but the dispatcher.”

Wu, looking into the mirror, carefully continued to knot his paisley tie. “What d’you think?”

“What or who?”

“Who.”

“A cuckolded husband. A disappointed bankrupt maybe.”

“Christ, that second one’s us.”

“The list goes on,” Durant said and took another swallow of his drink. “A spurned lover, male or female. Some guy who didn’t get the job in the ministry of works, or whatever, that he’d paid Ernie to get him. An NPA sparrow team.”

“Sparrow team. That’s nice.”

“You prefer hit squad?”

Wu shrugged. “Not really, but you may be right at that. Let’s say Ernie’s out cruising. He meets this young sparrow, male or female, in a bar and they agree to a quickie in the front seat of Ernie’s BMW. The second sparrow’s already down behind the back seat. He cuts Ernie’s throat, they drive out to the camp, strip him, cut him some more and leave him in the neo-colonialists’ playground as a warning to whoever they’re mad at this week. If you needed a symbol of corruption, you couldn’t do much better than Ernie.”

“I always kind of liked him,” Durant said.

“So’d I, until he stiffed us.” Wu crossed to the mini-refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer. He twisted off the cap, had a swallow and looked at Durant. “It’s a write-off, isn’t it?”

“The three hundred thousand? Total.”

“How much’ve you got?” Wu asked.

Durant finished his drink, put the glass down, ground his cigarette out, locked his hands behind his head, leaned back against the bed’s headboard and stared at the ceiling. “Three thousand two hundred and twenty-three dollars and a Gold American Express card that’ll lie still for a couple of months if we don’t beat it too hard. You?”

“About the same,” Wu said. “Maybe two or three hundred more. I’m afraid to count it.”

“If we needed to front something, I could probably borrow ten thousand from Emily.”

“Front what, for Christ sake?” Artie Wu said as he put his beer down, picked up the white money suit’s jacket, flicked something from its left sleeve and slipped it on.

“No idea.”

Wu turned to examine himself in the mirror that hung over the bureau. “Boy Howdy’s looking for us.”

Durant’s long face went still. Nothing moved. Not the green-gray eyes or the wide mouth that always stayed turned up at its ends. Artie Wu watched him in the mirror, trying to detect some reaction. It was no use looking for a flush because Durant wore one of those hot country tans that takes years to acquire and never seems to fade, not even in cold climates.

Durant at last unlocked his hands from behind his head and rose slowly. He stood an inch taller than Artie Wu but weighed at least 60 pounds less. At first glance most found him skinny until they realized their mistake and tried slim. When that didn’t quite work either they resorted to lean and left it at that because they couldn’t think of anything else.

In addition to his permanent tan Durant wore a pair of chino pants and a V-neck navy blue cotton sweater but no shirt. On his feet were a pair of expensive but sockless tasseled loafers that hadn’t been shined in a while — if ever. He walked over to the mirror and stared at Artie Wu’s reflection. “I don’t work with that Aussie git,” Durant said, using an offhand tone that Wu long ago had learned to interpret as adamant.

“Okay,” Wu said. “Forget it.”

There was a brief silence while they stared at each other in the mirror. Finally, Durant asked, “What’s Boy got?”

“I don’t know. He might be just the post office.”

“With a hell of a lot of postage due — as always.”

“So?”

“So we don’t have much choice, do we?”

“None at all,” said Artie Wu.

Emily Cariaga, reared by a great-grandmother in Manila who had insisted on speaking only Spanish to her great-granddaughter until the child was six, studied the ridged network of 36 pale scars that crisscrossed Durant’s back. He sat naked on the edge of the bed, smoking a breakfast cigarette. She reached over and ran a gentle forefinger along the longest scar. Durant shivered.

“What time is it?” she asked.

Durant looked at his stainless-steel watch on the bedside table and then slipped it onto his wrist. “Five past five.”

“At dinner last night Artie seemed so — well, I would say pensive, except I’m talking about Artie.”

“Artie’s broke,” Durant said. “When he’s broke, he thinks a lot.”

“You should’ve asked me about Ernie.”

“Probably.”

“I’ve known him all my life.”

Durant put his cigarette out in the ashtray. “And?”

“And Ernesto Arguello Bello Pineda was always a perfectly charming bastard. Utterly untrustworthy.”

Durant turned around to look at her as she lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, her small breasts bare, the rest of her covered by the sheet. “He checked out okay,” Durant said.

“With whom?” she said. “You and Artie talked to the wrong set. You talked to those who hoped to get a few crumbs from Ernie’s table. You should’ve talked to the ones who own the table.”

Durant smiled. “Your set.”

“My set.”

He shrugged. “It’s finished.”

“Whatever did you pay him all that money for?”

“To grease the skids; cross a few palms. The deal was a casualty reinsurance pool.”

“To insure insurers, right?”

“Right. Poor old Ernie claimed he knew people who’d cut us in for a twenty percent share of the pool. For their kindness, they’d be rewarded with two hundred thousand U.S., all cash. Ernie’d get one hundred thousand for all his hard work. Once we had it signed and sealed, Artie and I knew some money guys in London we could’ve laid our twenty percent off on. We were figuring on doubling our money or better.”

Emily Cariaga smiled. “Little lambs.” She ran a forefinger down the inside of Durant’s forearm. Again he shivered. “Didn’t anyone ever warn you against well-spoken strangers?”

“That’s what was really bothering Artie last night,” he said. “You see, until we bumped into Ernesto Pineda, Artie and I were always the well-spoken strangers.”

“Poor you.”

Durant nodded his agreement. “Poor is right.”

“You need money?”

He smiled, leaned over and kissed her. “That’s sweet of you. But no. Not yet anyway.”

“Let me know.”

Durant nodded and rose. “I’d better get dressed.”

She propped herself up on one elbow and stared at him. Spanish blood had bequeathed her a nicely boned chin and a straight thin nose that was large by Filipino standards. Above the well-shaped chin was a wide and perhaps overly generous mouth that grinned more often than it smiled. Best of all, Durant thought, were her eyes — enormous black ones that looked solemn until the grin came and they narrowed themselves into mischievous, faintly mocking arcs. With skin almost as dark as Durant’s dark tan, she stood five-three, except her posture was so perfect it seemed to add a couple of inches. With heels, she could pass for five-seven, even five-eight.

“Do you really want to find out what happened to Ernie and your money?” Emily Cariaga asked.

Durant didn’t reply for several seconds. “I really don’t give much of a damn about Ernie, but I was rather fond of the money.”

“Then I’ll ride down to Manila with you and Artie. Talk to a few people. It shouldn’t take me long to learn something.”

Durant nodded. “Okay. Fine.”

“When’s Artie coming by?”

“Six.”

“And it’s what now?”

Durant looked at his watch. “Five-fifteen.”

She patted the bed. “Then we just have time, don’t we?”

“Yes, I think we do,” Durant said as he slipped back into bed.

Durant said he’d already seen the great stone head of Ferdinand Marcos more times than he really needed to, so Artie Wu took the traditional Kennon Road back down through the mountains to the highway that ran south to Manila. The narrow two-lane Kennon Road twisted, curved and turned back upon itself. Traffic was light that early in the morning and Wu drove expertly, if too fast, making prodigal use of his horn on the curves.

Because riding in the back seat made her carsick, Emily Cariaga sat in front with Wu. Durant sat braced in the back. Whenever a curve came up he closed his eyes. Artie Wu’s driving was one of the few things that absolutely terrified Durant.

The old Jeepney formed the roadblock. Positioned across the narrow road, the Jeepney’s red and yellow paint was faded and peeling, but it still boasted two small chromed rearing horses on its hood. The hood and its radiator were all that still resembled the surplus Army jeeps after which it had been named.

They had parked it exactly right. When Wu came speeding around the curve he had just time enough to slam on the brakes. The Mercedes skidded to a stop a foot away from the Jeepney. In the rear seat Durant said, “Shit.”

They came out from behind the Jeepney then. There were five of them — four men and a woman, all in their twenties. Durant thought most of them were under 25 — at most, a year or two older. The woman seemed to be in charge.

The five wore what Durant had come to think of as standard international guerrilla gear: jeans, the inevitable jogging shoes, some kind of fatigue jacket with camouflage markings or, lacking the jacket, a dark T-shirt. Two of the men also wore Timex gimme caps.

The two with the caps and the M-16s took the right side of the Mercedes. The other two men, armed with sawed-off repeating shotguns, took the left side. The woman wore dark aviator glasses and carried a .38 semiautomatic down at her side. She walked slowly up to the driver’s door and stared through the dark glasses at Artie Wu who, after a moment’s hesitation, rolled down the window.

“Hi, there,” Artie Wu said with his friendliest smile.

“American?” she said.

“American.”

“Her?” the woman said, indicating Emily Cariaga.

“Filipina,” Wu said.

“And him?” she said, giving Durant a nod.

“American,” Wu said.

“Passports and ID, please.”

“Right,” Wu said and reached slowly into his inside breast pocket for his passport. The woman brought up her pistol and aimed it at him. Wu noticed it was of Colt manufacture; that it looked too large for her hand, and that the one safety he could see had been switched to off. He handed her his passport, collected Durant’s, an ID card from Emily Cariaga and passed them over. The woman backed up two steps. One of the men with a sawed-off shotgun took her place.

The woman stuck the semiautomatic pistol down in the leather belt that ran through the loops of her jeans. She was not very tall, no more than five-two or three. Her straight black hair had been cut off into a kind of Dutch boy bob. Wu couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark glasses, but he thought what he could see of her face was attractive, even pretty.

The woman studied the ID card and the two passports carefully. She then took out a small notebook and used a ballpoint pen to copy down some particulars. After she put the notebook and pen away, she looked at her watch, nodded in a satisfied way, took the pistol from her belt and walked slowly back to Wu’s window.

“What is your occupation, your work?” she said. “You and the one in the rear. American passports don’t reveal it.”

“Businessmen.”

One of the men with the shotguns said something to her in Tagalog. “He wants to know how much your company would pay for you,” she said.

“We don’t have a company,” Wu said. “We’re private investors.”

“If you have money to invest, you must be rich. You wear a fine white suit and drive an expensive car.”

“Alas,” said Artie Wu. “The suit is old, the car is rented, and our last investment turned out badly.”

The woman smiled. She had extraordinarily white teeth. “Did you really let Ernie Pineda take you for three hundred thousand U.S.?”

Artie Wu didn’t try to hide his astonishment. He swallowed as much of it as he could and said, “I don’t know what—”

Durant leaned forward, interrupting. “It was around in there. Three hundred thousand.”

The woman nodded and tapped the two passports and the ID card on the car windowsill. “What happened to Ernie could happen to you. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Not exactly,” Durant said, still leaning forward.

“This is a corrupt country with a new government that promises to end corruption. Although we don’t believe those promises, we do believe the new government needs to be reminded of what can happen unless those promises are kept. Poor talkative Ernie was such a reminder. I’m still trying to decide if three additional reminders would be useful or counterproductive.”

The woman again tapped the passports and the ID on the windowsill several times and suddenly thrust them at Artie Wu who accepted them with a grateful nod.

She backed away as one of the men with an M-16 climbed into the old Jeepney and began grinding its starter. The battery was low and the grinding grew weaker and weaker. Just when it seemed that the battery was doomed, the engine caught and spat out a black cloud of diesel smoke from its exhaust. The man with the M-16 raced the engine several times and then backed and filled until there was enough room for the Mercedes to get by.

Wu put the Mercedes into drive and crept slowly forward. Durant stared out through the rear side window at the woman with the semiautomatic pistol. She reached up with her left hand and removed her dark aviator glasses. She had shining brown eyes that stared at Durant. After a moment, she nodded at him. He thought the nod could have meant goodbye, or we’ll meet again, or remember what I said, or even nothing at all. He nodded an equally equivocal reply. Wu fed the engine more gasoline and the Mercedes shot past the Jeepney.

When they were safely around the next curve, Wu broke the silence with, “What the hell was all that about?”

“It was about just what she said it was about,” Emily Cariaga said.

Wu wrinkled his forehead into an unbeliever’s frown. “Maybe,” he said.

“Tell me something, Artie,” Durant said. “Did you really say ‘alas’ back there?”

Wu sighed. “Alas. I really did.”

At seven that evening Wu and Durant were up in Wu’s suite in the Manila Peninsula, debating whether to go to dinner at a new German restaurant that had been touted to them by the Graf von Lahusen, or wait for Boy Howdy to return their call. Waiting for the call meant dining on room service fare, which appealed to neither of them. They had almost agreed to give the German restaurant a try when the phone rang. Durant answered it.

Boy Howdy’s harsh Australian accent crackled over the line. “That you, Artie — or that fucking Durant?”

“That fucking Durant.”

“Listen, Durant, I’ve really got a ripe one for you lads this time.”

“Tell it to Artie,” Durant said. Wu rose from the couch and took the phone.

“How are you, Boy?” Wu said and began to listen. He listened for nearly two minutes without making a sound except for two noncommittal grunts. When he finally spoke, his tone was cool and indifferent.

“Tell him we’re interested, that’s all,” Wu said, listened some more and then said in a new hard tone, “No, you sure as hell do not tell him it’s on, Boy. You tell him exactly what I told you: that we’re interested.”

Wu went back to listening and when he spoke again there was nothing but deal-breaking finality to his tone. “Absolutely not,” he said. “Your cut comes out of his end, not ours.” There was some more listening until Wu broke in with an indifferent, “Okay, Boy. As you say, the fuck’s off.”

Wu hung up the phone, smiled pleasantly at Durant, and waited. Twenty seconds later the phone rang. Wu picked it up, said hello and again listened. Finally, he nodded, as if with satisfaction, and said, “Right. I think we finally understand each other now, Boy.”

After he hung up this time, Wu turned to Durant, smiled again, took a cigar from a shirt pocket, eased himself down into a club chair and squirmed around in it until he was comfortable. He lit the cigar and carefully blew three perfect smoke rings up into the air. Durant watched it all with an amused smile.

“Tell me,” Artie Wu said. “Do you still believe in the good fairy?”

“Has the good fairy got a name?”

Wu blew another perfect smoke ring. “Otherguy Overby,” he said.

Durant’s smile widened and he began to clap slowly and softly. “I believe,” he said and, still smiling and clapping, said it once again.