Out on the Rim

Chapter Eight

The pretender to the Emperor’s throne stood in the innermost sanctum of the deposed ruler’s palace and listened, beaming with pride, as the younger of his ten-year-old twin daughters finished reading the framed poem aloud. The poem had been left behind on the wall when the deposed ruler fled into the night.

“‘Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it,’” she read, “‘And — which is more — you’ll be a man, my son.’”

The ten-year-old girl had read Kipling’s “If” with what at one time was called expression. The Filipinos in the line behind her applauded enthusiastically. She turned, curtsied prettily — despite the jeans she wore — then looked up at the big Chinaman (as she and her sister always thought of him) who was not only her father, but also pretender to the throne of the Emperor of China.

“Very, very nice,” said Artie Wu who stood six foot two and three-quarters inches and weighed 249 pounds, only six percent of it pure blubber.

His younger daughter made a face at the poem on the wall. “God, that’s dumb.”

“Mr. Kipling had an unhappy childhood,” Agnes Wu explained. “To make up for it he sometimes became a trifle optimistic and overly sentimental.”

Her daughter nodded wisely. “Mush, huh?”

“Mush,” agreed Agnes Wu whose Rs were tinged with a slight Scot’s burr. Everything else she said sounded like the English spoken by those who have gone to proper schools that place a high premium on received pronunciation. But none of the schools were able to do anything about the burr of Agnes Wu who had been born Agnes Goriach.

The older of the twin daughters (older by 21 minutes) turned on her sister. “It wasn’t half as dumb as ‘Invictus’ that you got out of and Mrs. Crane made me memorize last year. You want mush? ‘Out-of-the-night-that-covers-me-black-as-the-pit-from-pole-to-pole-I-thank-whatever-gods-may-be-for-my-unconquerable-soul.’ That’s mush.”

“You’re holding up the line, ladies,” said Artie Wu as sternly as he ever said anything to his daughters. Totally incapable of assuming the heavy father role, Wu continued to be surprised at his daughters’ reluctance to take advantage of his faltering will. His twin 13-year-old sons were something else. His sons would flimflam a saint.

The Wu family moved out of Ferdinand Marcos’ small private study whose shelves still contained scores of pop histories, biographies and steaming political exposes, written — for the most part — by American authors. The study was a windowless room tucked away in the Malacanang Palace on the banks of the Pasig River in Manila. The Wus had already toured the discothèque, the throne room, and were heading for Imelda Marcos’ bedroom when Agnes Wu turned back to the trailing Peninsula Hotel limousine driver who was also visiting the palace for the first time.

“How much time do we have, Roddy?” she asked.

Rodolfo Caday glanced at his watch. “Plenty, ma’am. The flight’s not till four and I fix it with A and A to meet us here outside.”

A and A were the twin 13-year-old Wu sons, Arthur and Angus, who already had toured the palace twice on their own. “Then we don’t have to go back to the hotel for them?” Agnes Wu said.

“No, ma’am.”

With a small gesture that took in the palace, Agnes Wu said, “Well?”

Rodolfo Caday frowned, then shrugged. “Much foolishness.”

In the bedroom of Imelda Marcos one of the volunteer Filipina docents was commenting in a not quite bored voice on several of the room’s more interesting items, particularly the huge red satin bed. Some ten thousand Filipinos were trooping through the palace each day and the handful now in the bedroom made no effort to disguise their voyeurism. Some of the men nudged each other. Some of the women giggled. Others kept handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths as if to strain out any of the remaining bad-luck germs that had infected Imelda Marcos.

Artie Wu’s younger daughter looked up at him. “How come they bought so much — well, muchness?”

“It may have been a way to keep score.”

“You mean the lady with the most shoes wins?”

“Maybe.”

“But she didn’t.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” Artie Wu said.

Standing in the center of the bedlam that was the Manila International Airport, Wu peeled off 50-peso notes and handed them to sons and daughters, porters and self-proclaimed expediters, and to the driver, Rodolfo Caday, dispatching them all on real and imagined errands that would give Wu a few minutes alone with his wife.

Almost everyone liked to stare at Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Case Wu. They especially liked to gape at the tall woman with the pale yellow hair, the big smart gray eyes, and the not quite perfect features that seemed almost regal until she grinned. When she grinned she looked just a bit wacky.

The gapers also liked to dart quick and, they hoped, undetected glances at the big Chinese in his white silk suit and Panama hat who carried an ebony cane — a walking stick, really — that they all knew concealed a sword, although it didn’t. Agnes Wu always referred to the white silk suit as the “get out of here and get me some money suit” because Wu almost never put it on unless they were broke or nearly so.

Agnes Wu ran a hand down the suit’s immaculate lapel, smoothing out an imaginary wrinkle. “So riddle me this,” she said. “When you get up to Baguio, what if you and Durant still can’t find the Cousin?”

“We’ll find him,” Artie Wu said.

“You’re going to have to face it sooner or later, Artie. The Cousin took you and Durant.”

Wu nodded. “That’s why we have to find him. After all, Quincy and I have our reputations to think of.” Then he smiled — the great white Wu smile behind which laughter bubbled, threatening to erupt. The smile told Agnes Wu she could disregard everything her husband had just said.

She grinned back at him, again making herself look just a few charming bubbles off level. “So when you don’t find the Cousin and your reputations are in shreds, then what?”

“Then we come back down here and take the next plane to London and the fast train up to Edinburgh. Durant likes trains.”

“Bring money, Artie.”

“Don’t I always?”

“Bring bagsful this time.”

“Bagsful,” he promised.

“Take care of yourself.”

He nodded.

“And look after Durant.”

“Or vice versa,” Artie Wu said.

The Peninsula Hotel in the Makati section of Manila was owned and operated by the same organization that operated the Hong Kong Peninsula. About the only difference Artie Wu could detect was that the Hong Kong Peninsula sent a Rolls-Royce to pick you up at the airport whereas the Manila Peninsula made do with a Mercedes.

As Wu entered the many-sided lobby he saw that most of its tables were filled as usual by well-dressed Manileños who had gathered to gossip and drink coffee or maybe something with ice in it. And, as usual, many of them stared at him when, swinging his cane, he strode across the lobby toward the concierge. Wu looked left once and right once, checking to see if there were any faces out of his past.

The only familiar one belonged to the Graf von Lahusen whose ancestral estates lay unfortunately on the wrong side of the Elbe. The 37-year-old count had dropped out of the Sorbonne at 19 to take the hippie trail to Southeast Asia where he soon discovered that his title, looks and four languages could earn him a decent if questionable living.

Wu was remembering the time the count and Otherguy Overby had run the ancient Omaha Banker wheeze, Overby playing the role of the remorse-stricken banker to perfection, when the Graf von Lahusen looked up, saw Wu, rose and bowed gravely. Artie Wu stopped and bowed gravely back. The count’s mark, a middle-aged Japanese, twisted around in his chair to see who was doing all the bowing and scraping. He seemed visibly impressed by the Chinese gentleman in the splendid white silk suit and Panama hat who carried what obviously was a sword cane.

Wu continued to the concierge’s desk, pleased to see that Mr. Welcome-Welcome was on duty. The assistant concierge’s name was really Bernard Naldo but Wu always thought of him as Mr. Welcome-Welcome because that’s what he always said to Wu, even when they had seen each other only minutes before.

“Welcome, welcome, Mr. Wu,” the assistant concierge said as Wu reached the counter and leaned on it, noting that Naldo still looked like a genial brown frog, all dressed up in a black coat, white shirt and striped pants, who would turn back into a prince once he had answered the millionth tourist’s millionth dumb question.

“Got my bill ready, Bernie?” Wu said.

Naldo reached beneath the counter and came up with a thick sheaf of computer-printed billings. “As requested,” he said. “The total is, let’s see, sixty thousand two hundred and nineteen pesos.”

“Settle for three thousand U.S., cash money?”

“Of course.”

Wu took out a fat roll of $100 bills and started counting them onto the counter.

“Wife and kiddies get off safely?” Naldo asked.

Wu nodded and kept on counting.

“You had a visitor.”

Wu stopped counting and glanced up. “Who?”

Naldo sniffed his disapproval. “Boy Howdy. He was looking for either you or Durant.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“That you were out sight-seeing and that Durant was touring somewhere down south. Mindanao, I told him, around Zamboanga.”

“He believe you?”

“No.”

“When he comes back tell him I checked out and Durant’s down on Negros, dickering for a sugar plantation.”

“He won’t believe that either.”

“I don’t want him to believe it; I just want him to feel unwanted.”

Naldo sniffed again. “Terrible man. But I suppose he really can’t help it, being Australian.”

“Three thousand,” said Wu, sliding the money toward Naldo who picked it up and counted it with amazing speed. “Three thousand two hundred,” he said.

“I know.”

“Oh,” Naldo said, pocketing two of the $100 bills. “How can I be of service?”

“I need one of the hotel Mercedes for a few days.”

“Of course. Would you like Roddy to drive again?”

“No driver.”

Naldo was instantly dismayed. “You want to drive yourself? The hotel can’t be responsible.”

“It’s my kind of traffic, Bernie. I’m like a fish back in water.”

“No, I’m sorry, but we can’t permit it.”

“Bernie, let me ask you something. How much money have Durant and I spent with you guys the last three or four months?”

“You’re both highly valued guests, but—”

“I want the car outside at seven tomorrow morning, all gassed up and ready to go.”

Naldo sighed. “Do you mind if it’s our oldest Mercedes?”

“As long as it has wheels.”

“And your suite?”

“Run a tab on it.”

“When can we expect you and Mr. Durant back — should you both survive?”

“A few days.”

“You wouldn’t reconsider and—”

“No,” Artie Wu said. “I wouldn’t.”