Out on the Rim

Chapter Forty-three

At 12:45 P.M. on the sixteenth of May, 1986, a Friday, Booth Stallings sat on his favorite bench in Dupont Circle, his face turned up to the spring sun, waiting for his luncheon guest and remembering, for no very good reason, that on this date in seventeen-sixty-something, Boswell had first met Dr. Johnson.

Two minutes later, Harry Crites sat down next to him on the bench, cracked a smile and said, “What’s for lunch?”

“Drugstore chili dogs,” Stallings said, offering a white greasy paper sack.

“I like chili dogs,” Crites said, took one, unwrapped it and, leaning forward to avoid the drip, bit into it.

Stallings slowly unwrapped his own chili dog. “Sorry about your employee, Harry. But there was nothing I could do.”

Crites nodded, chewed and smiled slightly, remembering not to show any teeth. “Georgia, you mean?” he said after he swallowed.

“Georgia,” Stallings said, curious about what kind of self-absolution Crites would offer.

Harry Crites finished his chili dog in two enormous bites, chewed some more, swallowed, wiped his mouth and hands carefully with a paper napkin, rose and stared down at Stallings.

“I didn’t hire her, Booth,” he said. “She hired me.”

Stallings stared back at him, unblinking, determined not to let his face betray anything — not surprise or disappointment or sadness. Especially not sadness. “She hired you to get me fired and recruited,” he said, not making it a question.

“You were sole source, remember?” Crites said. “All it took was half a dozen phone calls, a dinner at the Madison and a trip to L.A.” He smiled the smile of a superior mind. “I imagine you’d like to know how much I cost her.”

Stallings only nodded, despising himself for the curiosity he was unable to stifle.

“Fifty thousand plus expenses.” Crites produced his superior smile again. “But hell, Booth, it all worked out okay. I saw on TV a few weeks back that big funeral they gave Espiritu in Cebu. So in a way you must’ve brought him down from the hills after all.” He shook his head in what seemed to be a mixture of regret and admiration. “That Georgia,” he said. “She’s something, isn’t she?” When Stallings made no reply, he added, “You heard what happened, didn’t you?”

Stallings, still seated, stared up at him and, after a moment, shook his head.

“She cut herself a deal. Traded everything she knew about how Marcos sluices his money around for reduced charges. Christ, she ought to be out in a year or two. Maybe even sooner.” He paused just long enough to give Stallings a cruel smile. “Think you can wait, Booth?”

“Why not?” Stallings said, adding, “Who told you about the deal she cut, Harry?”

Harry Crites seemed almost on the point of answering, but shrugged instead, turned and walked away. Stallings watched him go. He then leaned back against the bench, closed his eyes and lifted his face up to the sun, wondering what Georgia Blue was doing and thinking at that very moment. When this proved both pointless and adolescent, he wondered whether Harry Crites might have been lying.

It was then that it came to him — struck him actually — with startling clarity. And he realized what it was that he missed, needed and even wanted to do and be now that he was all grown up. Or nearly so.

Stallings picked up the empty white paper bag, crumpled it, rose quickly, hurried to the trash basket and tossed it in. After crossing the street to the bank of pay phones near the Peoples Drugstore, he dropped in a quarter, the only coin he bothered to carry, and tapped out the office number of his son-in-law, the criminal lawyer.

As it rang, Stallings was convinced that his son-in-law would have a new phone number where Otherguy Overby could be reached. And he was equally certain that by now Otherguy would have something going. Something Stallings could buy into. Something interesting and different out on the Rim perhaps — or, for that matter, almost anywhere.