Out on the Rim

Chapter Thirty-one

There were two small bullet holes just below Boy Howdy’s left nipple. Blood, although not very much, had made some of the reddish gray chest hair even redder. There were also two bullet holes in the thin pillow, which Wu assumed had served as a make-do silencer.

Glancing around the room, he noted the rumpled bed clothing and how Boy Howdy’s own clothes formed a kind of trail to the bed. The shirt had been discarded first, then the net undershirt followed by the pants, the Jockey shorts and finally the shoes. Wondering where the socks were, Wu looked back and found a pair of white cotton ones still on the dead man’s feet. The socks made him fret a little about his powers of observation.

Wu picked up Boy Howdy’s pants and went through the pockets, finding nothing of interest. There was a second thin pillow on the bed, but nothing underneath it. Wu lifted up the mattress and found what he was looking for — Boy Howdy’s wallet.

It was a large worn ostrich-skin wallet, very old, very thick, that contained 585 pesos, $800 in American Express traveler’s checks, three credit cards, a driver’s license, two condoms, some receipts and a sheet of Magellan Hotel stationery, the same sheet on which Georgia Blue had drawn her fair copy of Booth Stallings’ map.

Wu put the ostrich-skin wallet back where he’d found it and carried the map to the writing desk. On the desk were a phone, a bottle of Dewar’s Scotch whiskey, a bucket of half-melted ice and two glasses, only one of them used. There was also a nine-sheet stack of Cebu Plaza Hotel stationery. Lying diagonally across the stationery was a hotel ballpoint pen.

Wu switched on the desk lamp, took the map Georgia Blue had drawn for him and Durant from his hip pocket, and compared it with the one he had found in Boy Howdy’s wallet. The two maps, obviously drawn by the same hand, were virtually identical, except that points A and B on the map drawn for Wu and Durant had been moved a kilometer west and east, respectively.

Wu smiled and nodded his appreciation of the neat deception. He picked up the Scotch bottle and smelled its contents. It smelled like Scotch whiskey so he had two swallows straight from the bottle. As he used his handkerchief to pat his lips, someone knocked at the door. It wasn’t a polite tentative maid’s knock, but the hard open-up-in-there kind.

Wu’s reply was a loud growl to indicate he was coming as soon as he could get some clothes on. He studied the two maps that lay side by side, put one on top of the other and folded a crease into both just below the Magellan Hotel letterhead. He tore the letterheads off along the crease and stuffed them into his pocket.

Crossing quickly to the bed, Wu took Boy Howdy’s wallet from beneath the mattress and put the false map Georgia Blue had drawn for him and Durant into it, returning the wallet to its quaint hiding place. The map he had found in Howdy’s wallet went down beneath the elastic top of Wu’s left calf-length black sock.

There was more hard knocking at the door. Wu glanced around the room and headed for the door, pausing only to switch off the desk lamp. He opened the door to discover the pair with the “Made in the U.S.A.” look. Neither made any attempt to hide his surprise. The older of the pair, Weaver P. Jordan, recovered first, smiled his tight no-teeth smile and said, “I told you we’d see you in Cebu.”

Wu nodded affably. “So you did.”

The elegant one, Jack Cray, was wearing a different suit but the same suspicious frown. “Where’s Howdy?”

Wu shook his head sadly and replied in an appropriately hushed tone. “Shot dead, it would seem.”

Although Wu was already moving back and to one side, Weaver Jordan still said, “Get the fuck out of our way,” as he pushed past him into the hotel room followed by Jack Cray.

Jordan slowly circled the dead Boy Howdy three times as Cray stood a few feet away, his eyes not on the corpse but darting around the room, searching — Artie Wu presumed — for the killer. Not finding him he turned to Wu and said, “Who killed him?”

“If you’d asked who wanted him dead, I could give you a long list. Boy had an absolute knack for making life-long enemies.”

“You kill him?” Cray said, obviously not expecting much of an answer.

“No.”

Weaver Jordan stopped circling the dead Boy Howdy long enough to glower at Wu. “What about Durant?”

“He’s sitting up with a sick friend, even as we speak.”

“So what’re you doing here?” Cray asked in a tone braced for both lies and evasions.

Wu smiled. “Since you have no more official authority than I do, I’ll ask the same question.”

Jack Cray turned to stare somberly at the naked dead man. When he spoke it was in a voice usually reserved for graveside eulogies. “He was one of ours.”

“Boy was one of everybody’s,” Wu said. “Did he do piecework? Casual labor? Or did you have him on a retainer?”

When Cray only stared at him bleakly, Wu went on in a half-speculative, half-reminiscent voice. “He was on your books for what — ten years? Fifteen? I’d say fifteen.” A thought seemed to strike him. “You did know he was on Tokyo’s books, didn’t you? And Taipei’s, Canberra’s, Kuala Lumpur’s and, the last I heard, even Bangkok’s, although Bangkok doesn’t really pay all that much.”

“Bangkok,” Weaver Jordan said, staring at the dead Howdy with disapproval. “Jesus.”

Cray said nothing. Instead, he gave Wu a slow up-and-down inspection, as if curious about what would come next.

“His best customer, of course,” Wu continued, “was always the old boy in Malacañang Palace. Howdy was both his supplier and distributor. But you know that, don’t you, because you must’ve bought Palace stuff from Boy so fresh the ink was still wet.” Wu turned to examine the dead Howdy, as if for the last time. “I expect Boy really missed the old guy.” He paused. “I know he missed the money.”

“You jump to nice conclusions,” Jack Cray said.

Wu nodded and gave the room itself a final quick glance. “Looks just like a typical honey trap, doesn’t it? Boy has something he wants to sell or buy. She walks in. There’s some talk. Some business. And then some sex — first on the bed followed by a variation in the chair. And then bang, bang, Boy’s dead.”

“Through the pillow,” Weaver Jordan said. “She was probably kneeling on it — at first anyhow.”

Jack Cray looked at Jordan and made a small gesture. “Toss it,” he said.

It took only two minutes for Jordan to find the ostrich-skin wallet under the mattress. “Well, lookee here,” Jordan said, handing the map to Jack Cray. Wu sidled up behind Cray, as if trying to steal a glimpse over his shoulder. Cray gave him a cold look and walked to the other side of the room where he continued to study the map.

Wu watched Weaver Jordan eye the sheaf of Cebu Plaza Hotel stationery on the writing desk. Jordan first looked at it from above and then squatted so he could look across its surface at eye level. While still squatting and looking, he switched the desk lamp on, off and on again. He produced a pencil and began shading in a portion of the top sheet of stationery.

“I saw a guy do that in a picture once,” Wu said.

“We employ all the latest techniques,” Jordan said, shading away. “Invisible ink. Poison toothpaste. Real state-of-the-art shit.”

He kept on shading the stationery with his pencil for another three or four seconds before he said, “Well, now, by God.” He put the pencil down and bent over the sheet. “Listen to this, Jack, will you: ‘Am bringing A. Espiritu out—’”

Jack Cray cut him off with a sharp, “Goddamnit, Jordan!” He then turned to Wu and said, “You want to stay around for the cops?”

“Not particularly.”

Cray smiled his coldest smile. “Then we’ll tell them you weren’t here.”

“Should it arise.”

Cray nodded. “Should it arise.”

Artie Wu turned and headed for the door, but turned back. “In that picture I saw,” he said to Weaver Jordan. “The guy went to all the trouble of shading the pad with a pencil, but you know what the secret message turned out to be?”

“A fake,” Weaver Jordan said.

“I guess we saw the same picture.”

“I guess we did,” Weaver Jordan said.