Out on the Rim

Chapter Thirty-two

Convincing Antonio Imperial to hand over Georgia Blue’s black attache case required far less persuasion than either Wu or Durant had anticipated. She had lodged her case with Imperial for safekeeping and they politely looked elsewhere as the hotel manager worked the combination of the large old Mosler safe that dominated his office.

“How is Miss Blue?” he asked, tugging open the safe’s door.

“Comfortable,” Wu said. “Doctor Bello gave her a sedative.”

“She’s sleeping then?”

“Dozing,” Durant said. “But she needs some of the documents in her case.”

“You wouldn’t mind signing for it, would you?” Imperial asked as he handed Wu the attaché case.

“Mr. Durant’ll be happy to,” Artie Wu said.

Up in Durant’s room, Wu watched as Durant used a nail file and a carefully bent paper clip to open the case’s two locks. It took five minutes of fiddling and swearing before both locks succumbed. Durant opened the case lid, revealing approximately $200,000 in what Otherguy Overby had called the “this-and-that money.” About half was in $100 bills, banded in packets of $5,000, 50 bills to the packet. The rest was in unendorsed American Express traveler’s checks.

“How much?” Durant asked.

“Ten thousand for the Colonel?” Wu suggested.

“Better make it fifteen,” Durant said, removing three of the packets.

“And maybe twenty-five thousand for the warlord.”

Durant frowned. “Think he’ll settle for that?”

“Make it thirty thousand then.”

Durant removed another six packets.

“And five thousand for incidentals.”

Durant nodded, removed one last packet, and closed the attache case lid.

“Don’t lock it yet,” Wu said, going to the writing desk where he wrote something on a sheet of hotel stationery and signed his name. He handed the sheet to Durant who read it aloud.

“‘Expense advance in the amount of fifty thousand dollars drawn against miscellaneous gratuities and incidental outlays. A. C. Wu.’”

“Sign your name below mine and date it,” Wu said.

“Somehow,” Durant said, as he signed his name, “I don’t think this’ll stand up in court.”

After they returned the attache case to Antonio Imperial and, at his insistence, watched him replace it in the old safe, Wu and Durant rode the elevator to the fourth floor and entered room 426. Georgia Blue lay on the farther twin bed, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, a sheet drawn up to her chin.

Artie Wu went over to the bed and said her name softly. When she didn’t stir or respond, he whispered to Durant, “How many Percodans did the doctor give her?”

Durant held up two fingers.

“And you?”

Durant held up two fingers of his other hand.

“Let’s go,” Artie Wu said.

After the door closed, Georgia Blue opened her eyes. She slowly sat up in bed and managed to swing her feet to the floor. She began to sway slightly and tucked her head down between her knees, keeping it there for at least a minute. After that, she lifted her head, breathed deeply and stood up. She again swayed slightly, but recovered, walked slowly to the writing desk, picked up the phone and dialed the number of the U.S. Consulate in downtown Cebu City.

Durant knocked on the door of room 512 in the Magellan Hotel. Wu stood just to his left. The door was opened a few seconds later by the straight up-and-down old man with the silky white hair and the rust-red complexion. He stared at them, not saying anything, waiting for their pitch.

“Colonel Crouch?” Durant said.

Vaughn Crouch nodded.

“My name’s Durant and this is my partner, Mr. Wu. We’re associates of Booth Stallings.”

“So?”

“We’d like to make you a proposition.”

Crouch nodded skeptically. “Am I supposed to buy or sell?”

Durant smiled. “Sell.”

Crouch inspected Wu, taking his time, then Durant again. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”

The room Wu and Durant entered obviously had been furnished to suit a minimalist’s tastes. There were two chairs, a single bed, a pair of lamps, a table that held two bottles — one of gin, the other of Scotch — and four fishing rods that leaned in a corner. It was a room that could be vacated on ten minutes’ notice, its valuables either abandoned, drunk or poured down the sink.

“Sit or stand, suit yourself,” Crouch said, choosing the bed. Durant leaned against a wall, his arms folded. Wu chose the lone easy chair.

“Drink?” Crouch asked.

“No, thanks,” Wu said.

“Well,” Crouch said, “which one of you’s the spieler?”

Artie Wu smiled and said, “We understand you know Alejandro Espiritu.”

“I know a lot of guys.”

Wu nodded, as if he had met with confirmation rather than evasion. “Booth Stallings is bringing him down from the hills tomorrow.”

Crouch rose, crossed to the gin bottle, poured a measure into a glass, and held up the bottle to Wu and Durant who shook their heads. Crouch tossed the straight gin down, made a face and said, “Al willing to come?”

“That’s right,” Durant said.

“What the fuck for?”

“For the five million dollars somebody’s agreed to pay him if he exiles himself to Hong Kong,” Wu said.

Crouch went back to the bed and sat down. “Somebody’s yanking your chain, gents,” Crouch said. “If Al Espiritu ever got his hands on five million, he’d spend it all on ordnance.” He smiled then. “Unless somebody fucked him out of it first.”

There was a silence until Durant said, “Would that worry you?”

“Yes and no,” Crouch said, after giving the question some thought. “I don’t want to see Al hurt or killed or jailed again. But then I don’t want to see that bunch of his running things either.” He paused. “Maybe a trip to Hong Kong might do him good. He could write his memoirs or something.”

“That’s why we came to you, Colonel,” Wu said. “To keep him from being hurt or killed or jailed.”

“I spotted you for a couple of Christians right off,” Crouch said with a snort. “Who d’you think wants to stop him most?”

“You tell us,” Durant said.

“Well, there’s Manila, of course,” Crouch said. “Because they’re smart enough to know what he’d do with the money once he got his hands on it. Then he’s got that bunch of young Turks who’re itching to nudge him out of the way. They wouldn’t mind five million either. Washington’s probably split right down the middle, not sure which way to crawfish. About the only ones who’d be rooting for Al is the old Marcos crowd because they can’t lose. If he’s gone, good. If he buys guns, even better because that’d provide an excuse for the coup that’s gonna happen sooner or later anyhow.” He looked at Wu and then Durant. “That about how you guys figure it?”

Durant nodded. “Except we’re not sure about Washington.”

“Spooks sticking their oar in?”

“Could be,” Wu said.

“So what d’you want me to do?”

“Create a diversion,” Wu said.

“You mean stir it up over here while old Al sneaks away over there?”

“Something like that,” Durant said.

There was a long pause as Crouch stared at the floor, considering the proposition. A minute went by before he looked up at Artie Wu and said, “How much?”

“What would you say to ten thousand?” Wu asked.

“I’d say fifteen right off the bat.”

Durant grinned. “Why fifteen?”

“Because I’ve got a granddaughter who wants to go to Swarthmore next year and fifteen thousand’ll just about cover it. Unless I buy myself a new car. Haven’t decided yet.” He grinned. “Things don’t really change much, do they? Back when I was a kid my old man had to decide whether to send me to Dartmouth or buy himself a new Buick. He sent me to Dartmouth, I flunked out and he regretted his choice till the day he died.”

“Okay, Colonel,” Artie Wu said. “Fifteen.”

“You guys got a plan?”

“A germ of one,” Durant said.

“Well, let’s hear it and then I’ll tell you how to make it work.”

The block-long Chinese-owned department store was on Colon Street, the oldest street in Cebu — or in the Philippines, for that matter. Its executive offices were on the fourth floor and it was there that Artie Wu sat on a couch in the reception area, dressed in his white money suit, both hands clasped over the head of his cane, the Panama hat on the arm of the couch. Next to him sat Durant, wearing a light gray suit, shirt, and tie. On Durant’s knees was a leather zip-around envelope case large enough to hold a legal brief. Inside it was $30,000 in $100 bills.

The reception area had been done in pale shades of green and yellow. The chairs and the couch looked as if they had been thriftily salvaged from broken suites in the store’s furniture department. On the walls were six mass-produced oil paintings, all seascapes, two of them identical or nearly so. From the ceiling came Muzak with something syrupy from My Fair Lady. Artie Wu was almost sure it was being played for the third time. At last the green carved door opened and the young Chinese who had introduced himself as Mr. Loh came out. “He’ll see you now, gentlemen.”

The room they entered was large and filled with fine old stuff from Madrid and Seville, Shanghai and Canton. None of the furniture seemed less than 300 years old and its juxtaposition offered a remarkable study in blends and contrasts.

Behind a desk that Durant guessed to be eighteenth-century Spanish sat a small Chinese who looked only a little younger than his desk. He had miles of wrinkles and not much hair and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses that he wore down on the tip of his nose. Two very black, very young-looking eyes peered over the glasses.

He waved Durant and Wu into chairs. They sat down and heard the green door close behind them. “I am Chang and you obviously are Wu and you, sir, Durant,” the Chinese said in a firm high voice that ended in an almost adolescent titter. “Correct me if I’m wrong.”

Wu smiled politely; Durant didn’t.

Chang tilted his head back so that he could peer down through his glasses at the letter in his left hand. “My dear friend Huang in Manila is well?”

“Mr. Huang is very well,” Artie Wu said.

“He writes of you with warm praise.”

“He flatters me.”

“He asks me to show you every courtesy.”

“I would be grateful.”

“And urges me to do business with you because it will be profitable.”

“A fair profit is only just,” Wu said.

Chang put the letter down on his desk, scratched his left ear thoughtfully and said, “Very well. Tell me what you want.”

“Mercenaries.”

Chang nodded as if he sold them every day on the mezzanine. “Good ones?”

“Mediocre ones.”

“Good ones would be expensive.”

“And mediocre ones?”

“Less so — depending on how many you want.”

“Say, two dozen?”

“And what would you do with these two dozen mediocre mercenaries?”

“They will indirectly help Alejandro Espiritu flee to Hong Kong.”

“Flee?”

“Flee.”

“And once there, what will become of him?”

“He will enjoy a comfortable retirement and exile.”

“And what, please, will the mercenaries be required to do?”

“Surrender.”

Chang smiled and tittered again. He had small uneven teeth that seemed to be his own. “How interesting,” he said.

“I am pleased you find it so.”

“Before we discuss details,” Chang said, giving the right ear a scratch this time, “perhaps we should talk of price.”

“As you wish.”

“Do you have a price in mind?”

Wu shook his head. “Price will be determined by our severely limited resources.”

“Are your resources in dollars?”

“They are.”

“Then I can offer a ten percent discount.”

“Ten percent off how much, may I ask?”

Chang thought about it, his eyes now fixed on Durant. “Two dozen mediocre at fifteen hundred each, less ten percent for cash, would be thirty-two thousand four hundred.”

Durant shook his head.

“Say, thirty thousand even?”

Durant nodded.

Chang smiled at Artie Wu. “Your partner drives a hard bargain, Mr. Wu.”

Wu looked at Durant with pride. “He does something else equally well,” he said, turning back to Chang with a suddenly chill stare. “He makes sure that bargains, once made, are kept.”

Chang’s wrinkled face went cold and stiff. He’s freeze-dried it, Durant thought. Then it slowly thawed and a smile appeared. “I share Mr. Durant’s concern,” Chang said to Artie Wu.

Wu relaxed. He relaxed even more when Chang bent forward, his eyes glittering, his tone conspiratorial. “Shall we go into the details now?” he asked. “I’m sure I’ll find them most tasty.”