Out on the Rim

Chapter Seven

Booth Stallings sat at the large round table in Billy Diron’s elaborate kitchen and watched Overby make two canned corned beef sandwiches. He made them with the quick economical moves usually learned in either a delicatessen or an institutional kitchen. Since he suspected Overby would starve before working in a delicatessen, Stallings decided not to ask for the name of the institution in which he had trained.

Overby served the sandwiches on two plates, each containing exactly seven potato chips and three slices of dill pickle. Stallings had watched him count out both the potato chips and the pickles. To drink were two more bottles of San Miguel beer.

After Overby sat down, Stallings took a bite of the sandwich. Between the slices of dark rye he found not only corned beef, but also several leaves of Boston lettuce, a thick slab of Bermuda onion, and a dressing of mayonnaise and two kinds of mustard that Overby had carefully measured out and blended together.

After Stallings swallowed his first bite of sandwich, he said, “Tell me.”

“What?” Overby said.

“How old are they?”

Overby tried to recall. “Well, Artie must be—”

“That’s Wu, right?”

Overby nodded. “Arthur Case Wu. He must be around forty-four now, but it’s kind of hard to tell about Durant on account of there was never any birth certificate. But Durant thinks he’s about the same as Artie. Forty-four. Around in there.”

“What else?”

“Well, they were both raised in this San Francisco Methodist orphanage, ran away when they were fourteen, wound up at Princeton for a while, and they’ve been partners ever since.”

“They went to Princeton — to college?”

“I never got that quite straight. Artie went on a scholarship and Quincy sort of went as Artie’s bodyguard.”

“Dear God,” Stallings said. “Their specialty is what exactly?”

“This and that. But most of the time they probably do pretty close to what you’d want ’em to do.”

“I haven’t said.”

“Maybe you should.”

“I’ll get to it,” Stallings said and ate some more of his sandwich, washing it down with the Filipino beer. “They married?” he asked.

Overby produced one of his sly grins that displayed no teeth. “To each other, you mean?”

“To anybody.”

“Durant’s not married and fools around. But Wu’s married to this lady from Scotland, and by lady I mean she’s got some sort of thoroughbred bloodlines — eighteenth cousin to the Queen twice removed or something — which suits Artie just fine on account of he’s still pretender to the Emperor’s throne.”

“Emperor?” Stallings said. “What emperor?”

“The Emperor of China, who else?”

“Sweet Jesus.”

“He’s even got genealogical charts and everything. He also figures if there were about two revolutions, three wars and maybe ten thousand deaths of just the right people, his oldest twin boy could be both King of Scotland and Emperor of China.”

“He has twin sons?”

“Twin sons and twin daughters. Cute kids — or were the last time I saw ’em. The girls are younger than the boys.”

Stallings slowly poured more beer into his glass and tasted it. “He’s not... obsessed with this emperor thing, is he?”

Again, Overby smiled slyly. “Artie figures he’s the last of the Manchus.”

“How about a straight answer?”

Overby’s frown managed to make him look both grave and highly proper. Stallings thought it must be one of his most useful expressions. “Artie knows exactly who he is,” Overby said. “More’n anybody I ever met.”

“And Durant?”

“He doesn’t much give a shit who he is.”

“When’d you meet them?”

“The fourth of July in sixty-eight, Bangkok. At the Embassy reception.” He paused. “The Ambassador’d invited everybody who even looked American. Even us.”

“What were you doing in Bangkok?”

“Looking around. I’d bumped into Wu and Durant and they needed a crimp for a little something they’d decided to play off against the chief of station.”

“The CIA chief of station?”

“Who else.”

“So what happened?”

Overby looked puzzled. “What d’you mean what happened? We ran it and walked away with about sixty-three thousand. That was major money back then, in sixty-eight.”

“And what did he do about it?”

“The chief of station? He ate it. What else could he do? He sure didn’t go around bragging about the bad case of greed he’d come down with.”

“Were either Wu or Durant ever hooked up to Langley?”

Overby’s answering shrug was a bit too elaborate to satisfy Stallings. “Is that a maybe yes or a maybe no?”

“Artie says that a couple of times they were maybe unwitting assets. But Durant always says they were half-witted assets and no maybe about it. They moved around a lot and sometimes they just took whatever turned up.”

“When’s the last time you worked with them?”

“Seven or eight years ago. We went in on a deal together and we all got well.”

“Where?”

“Here. In California.”

“What kind of deal?”

“That’s none of your fucking business, is it?”

They stared at each other for long moments, each searching for the other’s weakness, only to find there was none. Stallings finally replied to Overby’s question. “No,” he said, “I don’t guess it is. Any of my fucking business.”

Overby drank some of his beer and said, “Tell me about your deal.”

“All right.” Stallings was silent for perhaps ten seconds as he edited what he planned to say. “Somebody,” he said, “and I don’t know exactly who, wants to pay me half a million dollars to bribe a Filipino freedom fighter and/or terrorist to come down from the hills and light out for Hong Kong where five million dollars U.S. will be waiting for him. Or so they say.”

Although Overby’s face and eyes remained calm and even impassive, his nose betrayed him with a long, long sniff as if he suddenly smelled sweet profit. After the sniff came the white, wide and utterly ruthless grin, which Stallings found curiously merry.

“You need help,” Overby said.

“I know.”

“You need Wu and Durant.”

“So it would seem.”

“You also need me.”

Stallings raised his eyebrows to register surprise. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Overby’s ruthless, merry grin returned. “Like hell.”

“It’s an interesting notion.”

“Where’s this freedom fighter and/or terrorist of yours holed up — central Luzon?”

Stallings shook his head. “Cebu. Know it?”

Overby’s grin grew even wider. “Lapu-Lapu land. Yeah, I know Cebu. Like my name. Not to get too commercial and all, but what kind of split are we talking about?”

“You’re negotiating for Wu and Durant now, right?”

Overby nodded. “For both them and me.”

“I was thinking in the neighborhood of fifty-fifty.”

Overby’s feigned disappointment took the form of a sorrowful frown. “I think we’d need just a little more taste than that.”

“It’s take it or leave it, Otherguy.”

The frown went away and the grin came back. “Well, hell, half of five hundred thousand split three ways, less expenses, is about eighty thousand each, which isn’t bad. Not good, you understand, but not bad.”

“I guess I didn’t make myself clear,” Stallings said. “I intend to split the entire five million — not just the five hundred thousand.”

Overby didn’t try to disguise anything. The big white smile was back, never more ruthless, never more merry. “You’re talking interesting fucking money now.”

Stallings didn’t return the smile. Instead his eyes took on the look of someone who has dipped into the future and is dismayed by what he’s seen.

“It’s poisoned money,” Stallings said.

“Money’s money.”

“Not this time.”

Guided only by his almost infallible con man’s instinct, Otherguy Overby came up with exactly the right measure of reassurance.

“In that case, friend,” he said, “you sure as hell got off on the right floor.”