Out on the Rim

Chapter Three

During the next half hour Stallings and Crites drank three cups of coffee and discussed the recent not quite bloodless February revolution in the Philippines. They touched on Ferdinand Marcos’ exile to Hawaii; Imelda’s shoes; the shambles the Filipino economy was in; the disastrous world price of sugar; Mrs. Aquino’s prospects as President (dicey, both agreed); and whether it was four or eight billion dollars that Marcos had managed to squirrel away. After discovering that neither apparently knew much more than what he had read, or seen on television, they returned to Alejandro Espiritu.

“How well did you know him?” Crites asked.

“Fairly well.”

“What was he like then?”

“Short. About five-four.”

“Come on, Booth.”

“Okay. He was smart. Maybe even brilliant. About twenty-two or twenty-three then and tough. He was also kind of flexible — for a guerrilla.”

“He was one of those commie guerrillas, wasn’t he — what they called Huks?”

“The Huks were mostly up north — in Luzon. We were down south. Negros and Cebu. Most of the time Cebu.”

“What’d Huk stand for anyway? I forget.”

“For Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon,” Stallings said, pleased he could still remember the Tagalog. “That translates into something like, ‘People’s Army to Fight the Japanese.’ It was shortened to Hukbala-hapa, which finally got cut down to Huks so it’d fit in a headline. Then Lansdale came along in the fifties and helped Magsaysay put the boot to them. You remember General Lansdale, don’t you, scourge of the Orient?”

Crites ignored the question and said, “They’re calling themselves the NPA now — the New People’s Army.”

“Not the same bunch. Most of what was left of the Huks turned into mercenaries and strikebreakers.”

“You sure?”

“Christ, Harry, if they were still the same guys, you’d have some pretty superannuated guerrillas puffing up and down those mountains.”

“But the NPA’s also red as a rose.”

Stallings shrugged. “So?”

“You ever talk politics with Espiritu?”

“I was nineteen. My job was to kill people, not discuss dialectics.”

“Let me tell you what Espiritu is to the NPA,” Crites said and drew on his cigar. He inhaled a tiny portion of the smoke and then blew it all out — and away from Stallings. “He’s their secular archbishop. Their grand panjandrum. Their oracle. Their high lama. Their keeper of the sacred and everlasting flame. Some claim he’s even been to Moscow.”

“Moscow,” Stallings said. “Think of that.”

“Listen, Booth. If Espiritu comes down from the hills and exiles himself to Hong Kong, my people figure it’s eight to five that Madame Aquino can cut a deal with the NPA and keep on being President.”

Stallings studied Harry Crites’ expression, looking for guile and deception, but finding only a crack salesman’s normal greed and unassailable confidence. “With the token communist or two in her cabinet, right?”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because then it would be all over for the NPA, Harry. Capitulation. Surrender. Defeat. And for what? So they can come down and starve in the barrios? They can do that up in the hills. Look. If the NPA makes a deal with Aquino, they won’t’ve won anything and they’ll’ve lost what power they had. It doesn’t work like that. Not in the Philippines. Not in Afghanistan. Not in El Salvador or Lebanon. Not in Peru. Not in the Basque country or Northern Ireland. Not anywhere.”

Crites put his cigar out in the ashtray, taking his time, tamping it carefully, making sure no spark was left. When he looked up, it was with an expression from which all friendliness had vanished. The blue eyes had come down with a chill and the wide joke-prone mouth had slipped from glad into grim. A faintly surprised Stallings realized that the son of a bitch didn’t like me — surprised not so much by the realization as by the surprise itself.

“They say you’re the expert,” Crites said, not bothering to keep the disbelief out of his tone. “That’s what they say. Everybody. But my people’re willing to bet five million bucks you’re wrong.”

“Five million could buy the NPA an awful lot of M-16s and AK-47s and Uzis — maybe enough to bring back martial law.”

“My people figure five million’s not enough to buy anything but one guy.”

“And just who the fuck are your people, Harry?”

“Money people, who else?”

“I think they’re the duck people.”

The frost suddenly melted from Crites’ eyes and the wiseacre smile returned. “The Langley ducks, you mean.”

Stallings nodded. “You sure quack like one.”

“No ducks,” Crites said.

“Who then?”

“Suppose there was a bunch of people,” Crites said slowly and carefully, “a consortium, let’s call it, that has a billion or so already invested in the Philippines. And this consortium is still hoping to make a return on its investment, or break even, or maybe just cut its losses a little. But its only hope in hell of doing any of that is with a stable government.”

Crites paused, as if waiting for encouragement. Stallings gave him an impatient go-on nod.

“Okay. So if this consortium spends another five million — which is maybe one-half of one percent of what it’s already sunk out there — well, it just might bring it off. And that’s it, Booth. The whole plate of fudge. Tranquillity instead of trouble. A few years of peace and quiet. And my people’re willing to spend a few bucks to get it.”

“And buy off the chief troublemaker.”

“Pension him off.”

“You’re going to bribe him, Harry, and you want me for your bagman.”

“Not me. Him. Espiritu. Like nine-tenths of the world, he doesn’t much trust or like Americans — God knows why, wonderful as we are. But he will deal with his old asshole buddy from World War II. So that means you’ll be our authenticator, our bona fides, and convince him the deal’s really kosher. Then he can retire to Hong Kong, spend his money and watch the Chicoms take over.”

“He’s already nibbled then, hasn’t he?” Stallings said. “If he hadn’t, you and I wouldn’t be talking.”

“He’s nibbled.”

There was a long silence as Stallings drew careful cross-hatch patterns on the tablecloth with the tines of his unused dessert fork. The patterns turned into a Filipino nipa hut. A smile of anticipated victory spread slowly across Crites’ face. “Well?” he said and then went on without waiting for an answer. “You want in, don’t you, Booth?”

Booth Stallings looked up slowly from his tablecloth sketch. “I want ten percent.”

Crites’ victory smile vanished and his mouth formed a small shocked O. The eyes widened with what Stallings judged could only be horror. Nor was there any mistaking the fury in the whisper. “You want half a million dollars?”

Stallings smiled. “I’m sole source, Harry, and I get to charge a lot.”

They used the silence that followed to stare at each other: Stallings with amusement; Crites with something that resembled rage. Then the rage, if that’s what it was, suddenly went away, replaced by what Stallings interpreted to be an utter and alarming confidence. Crites reached for the dinner check. He studied it and when he spoke his tone was neutral and businesslike. “You’ll pay your own expenses, right?”

“Sure,” Stallings said.

“Then let’s start right now,” Crites said and dropped the check on top of the nipa hut sketch.

After they left the Montpelier Room, Booth Stallings $126 poorer, they headed across the lobby to the 15th Street exit where the tall woman was waiting, camel’s hair topcoat over her left arm, quite ready, in Stallings’ opinion, to spring and kill. He indicated her with a nod. “Why the nanny?”

They were still a dozen feet away when Stallings asked his murmured question and Crites didn’t answer immediately. First, he had to turn so the woman could drape the topcoat over his shoulders like a cape. After that he had to cock his head to one side and give Stallings a careful head-to-toe inspection. Only then did Harry Crites smile and answer.

“Enemies,” he said. “What else?”

Without waiting for a reply or even a farewell, Crites turned and sailed through the open 15th Street door, his camel’s hair topcoat billowing out behind. The tall woman with the dollar-green eyes looked at Stallings, nodded to herself as if reconfirming some previous assessment, smiled pleasantly, said, “Goodnight,” and followed Harry Crites out the door.