Out on the Rim

Chapter Two

Booth Stallings sat in the lobby of the Madison Hotel near a couple of bored-looking Saudis and waited for Harry Crites who was already 19 minutes late. But Crites had always been late, even back in the early sixties when he would burst into a meeting a quarter hour after it had started, wearing a big merry smile, an inevitable King Edward cigar, and clutching a file of hopelessly jumbled documents. He would then disarm everyone, even the punctuality sticklers, with a wry, self-deprecating crack that had them all chuckling.

After Kennedy’s death in 1963, Harry Crites had resigned from what he later always referred to not quite accurately as “my White House stint” and moved over to Defense, where he wasn’t at all happy, and from there to State where he landed a slot in the suspect Public Safety Program of the Agency for International Development. AID dispatched Crites to seven or eight lesser developed countries from which came mutterings about some of the deals he had cut with their premiers, presidents-for-life and prime ministers. But Stallings had never paid much attention.

Besides, it was around in there — 1965 — that Stallings, his wife and two young daughters, cushioned by a $20,000 foundation grant, had left Washington for Rome where he would continue his research on terrorism.

In the seven or eight years that followed, Booth Stallings only returned to Washington and sometimes New York when forced to wheedle additional funds out of mostly unsympathetic foundations. And occasionally he would bump into Harry Crites at some unavoidable cocktail party or embassy reception.

By then Harry Crites’ shiny blue suit and King Edward cigar and the old Ford Fairlane with its rusted-out rocker panels were long gone. Instead, the suits were from J. Press and the cigars smelled of Havana and the car was a beige Mercedes sedan, not the most expensive model, but not the diesel either.

At these infrequent encounters Harry Crites and Booth Stallings never said much more than hello and how’ve you been, although Crites almost never gave an answer, or waited for one, because there were always others he wanted to talk to far more than he did to Stallings, and usually he was already waving and smiling at them.

But once there had been nobody — nobody worthwhile anyway — and Harry Crites said he had left government and was now doing liaison work, which meant he was peddling what back then was still called influence but in later years was softened to access. Stallings had sometimes speculated about who might be retaining Crites and his conclusions had left him as depressed as he ever got.

Harry Crites was 22 minutes late when the muscle walked into the Madison and read the lobby with the standard quick not quite bored glance that flitted over Booth Stallings, lingered for a moment on the two Saudis, counted the help and marked the spare exits. After that the muscle gave her left earlobe a slight tug, as if checking the small gold earring.

Booth Stallings immediately nominated her for one of the three most striking women he had ever seen. Her immense poise made him peg her age at 32 or 33. But he knew he could be five years off either way because of the way she moved, which was like a young athlete with eight prime years still ahead of her.

She was at least five-ten and not really as slender as her height made her out to be. She carried no purse and wore cream gabardine slacks with a black jacket of some nubby material that was short enough to make her seem even taller, but loose enough to hide the pistol Stallings somehow knew she was wearing.

Her hair was a thick reddish brown with the red providing the highlights. Worn carelessly short, it looked perfect. It also looked as if all she had to do to make it look like that was run her fingers through it. Stallings suspected that nothing perfect was that easy. The red-brown hair framed a more or less oval face whose features seemed to have been placed precisely where they should be — except her forehead, which was a little high. Her eyes were green, although Stallings couldn’t decide whether they were sea green or emerald green. But since she looked expensive, he finally settled on dollar green.

A few seconds after she tugged at her left earlobe, Harry Crites made his entrance, wearing a nine-dollar cigar and a thousand-dollar camel’s hair topcoat. The coat was worn like a cape, much as a rich poet might have worn it, if there were such a thing, which Stallings doubted.

The woman nodded at Crites. It was a noncommittal nod that could have meant either have fun or all clear. Crites paused. The woman removed the coat from his shoulders with no trace of subservience. Stallings wondered how much her services cost and what they included. With the camel’s hair coat over her left arm, the woman turned and left the hotel through the 15th Street entrance.

When Harry Crites caught sight of his dinner guest he narrowed his blue eyes and twinkled them behind what Stallings suspected were contact lenses. The wide joke-prone mouth, a shade or two paler than a red rubber band, stretched itself into a delighted smile, revealing some remarkably white teeth that Stallings knew were capped. After remembering that Crites had been 27 when he had borrowed that still unpaid $35 back in 1961, Stallings put his present age at 52.

Rising slowly, Booth Stallings extended his right hand. Crites grabbed it with both of his and pumped it up and down as he spoke from around and behind the immense cigar. “Goddamnit, Booth, too many goddamned years.”

“Fourteen,” said Stallings who had that kind of memory. “June seventeenth, 1972.”

Crites removed his cigar, flipped back through his own mental almanac and made his eyes dart from side to side in mock panic. “The Watergate break-in. Christ, I didn’t see you there.”

Stallings couldn’t hold back his grin. “My daughter Joanna’s twenty-first birthday. She’s the one you talked to today — the one married to Secretary Know-nothing of the State Department.”

“Neal Hineline,” Crites said and nodded gravely. “A great fourteenth-century mind. Sound.” He frowned then. “But I don’t remember Joanna’s birthday.”

“That’s because you weren’t there. You were going into that fancy place that closed down and almost got turned into a McDonald’s. The... uh—”

“Sans Souci.”

“Right. And I was heading for a birthday lunch with Joanna at the Mayflower and you looked right through me.”

Crites touched his finger to his right eye. “That was before I found the miracle cure for vanity. Contacts. Now if you’re through fucking me over, let’s eat.”

“Your friend going to join us?”

Crites glanced over his shoulder in the direction the tall woman had gone and then looked at Stallings with a faint smile “She’s not exactly a friend.”

“Then let’s eat,” Booth Stallings said.

They gave Harry Crites the choice northeast corner banquette in the almost empty Montpelier Room. He and Stallings had a drink first, Perrier and bitters for Crites, vodka on ice for Stallings. They both ordered a salad and the veal and a double portion of the first-of-the-season green beans, which the waiter swore had been picked only that morning in Loudoun County, Virginia, although Stallings suspected it was the day before near Oxnard, California. After that, Harry Crites ordered the wine, which required a grave five-minute conference with the sommelier.

Once the wine was ordered, Harry Crites leaned back, sipped his drink, and examined Stallings as if he were still something that would be a wonderful buy despite a doubtful provenance.

Stallings returned the stare, mildly disappointed to find Crites had aged so well. There was just a bit of fat around the middle, although the well-tailored vest helped conceal it nicely. The round face had yet to grow another chin. The color was also good, the broken veins few, and the controlled expression still ranged from glad to gladdest.

There were a few new lines, of course, but apparently none from worry. The hair had stayed light brown, a shade or two off true blond, and what was left was just enough. Only youth was missing. It had fled — along with its twin pals, spontaneity and carelessness. What remained was a careful, if not quite cautious middle-aged man, obviously prosperous, who still planned on getting rich.

“So they bounced you,” Harry Crites said, not making it a question.

“Did they?”

Crites shrugged. “This is Washington, Booth. Where do you think you’ll light?”

“No idea.”

“Interested in a one-shot?”

“Why me?”

“You’re sole source.”

“That means I can charge a lot.”

“A hell of a lot.”

“All right,” Stallings said. “First I eat; then I listen.”

Following the veal, which turned out to be particularly good, Stallings and Crites ordered a large pot of coffee, passed up dessert, and vetoed a cognac recommended by the waiter. After two sips of coffee, Booth Stallings put his cup down and smiled at Crites. “Isn’t it curious though?”

“What?”

“That I got fired at three and by eight-fifteen I’m sitting in the Madison, eating twenty-six-dollar veal and listening to you offer me a sole-source one-shot. Who put the fix in, Harry? At the foundation?”

Crites went on lighting his after-dinner cigar, taking his time, obviously enjoying the ritual. After several puffs he contemplated the cigar fondly. When he spoke, it was more to the cigar than to Stallings. “If I said me, you’d think I was bragging. If I said not me, you’d think I was lying. So I’m going to let you think whatever you like.”

“Let’s have it then,” Stallings said. “The proposition.”

“The Philippines.”

“Well now.”

“You’ve been there.”

“Not recently.”

“A long time ago,” Crites said. “During the war.”

“Right. A long time ago.”

“We — and we means some people I’m associated with—”

Stallings interrupted. “What people?”

“Just let me tell it, Booth, will you? When I’m selling I like to maintain the flow.”

Stallings shrugged.

“Well, these people would like you to go back.”

“And do what?”

“See the man.”

“Who?”

“A guy who read that book of yours — the one that got all the raves.”

“I only wrote the one book, Harry.”

“Yeah. Anatomy of Terror. I read it. Some of it anyhow. But our guy read it all and is very, very impressed. You could say he’s a fan.”

“So what would I do, if I saw him?”

“Convince him to come down from the hills.”

“How?”

“We’ll go as high as five million U.S. deposited in Hong Kong.”

“What’s his name, Aguinaldo?”

“Who’s Aguinaldo?”

“A guy who came down from the hills for a lot of money a long time ago and went to Hong Kong.”

“Never heard of him,” Harry Crites said. “What happened?”

“He was double-crossed.”

“Then what?”

“He went back to the Philippines and turned himself into either a terrorist fool or a revolutionary hero, depending on what source you consult.”

“When was all this?”

Stallings looked away and frowned, as if trying to remember exactly. “About ninety years ago. Around in there.”

“Don’t go looking for historical parallels,” Crites said.

“Why not? They’re useful.”

“Not this time. Our guy’s ready to deal, but we need a closer; an authenticator. You.”

“Me.”

“He knows you.”

“From my book, you mean?” Stallings said, trying not to anticipate Crites’ reply.

“Not just through the book. Personally.”

“Has he got a name?”

“Alejandro Espiritu. You do know him, don’t you?”

“We’ve met,” Booth Stallings said.