Out on the Rim (28 page)

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Authors: Ross Thomas

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Out on the Rim
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“Did Overby tell you this?” she said, her voice now cold and angry.
Durant shook his head. “It's just a variation of an old turn called the Omaha Banker.”
“A confidence trick?”
“Sure. That's what Overby does. It's his profession.”
She stared at the floor. “He's very good, isn't he?”
“Not bad.” Durant took a package of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and offered it to Carmen Espiritu. After lighting hers, he said, “Is Booth Stallings all right?”
She blew out the smoke and said, “Yes.”
“Why did your husband insist on him?”
“Because he remembers Stallings as a fool.”
Mistake number one, Durant thought, smiled slightly and said, “What else?”
Carmen Espiritu looked away. “My husband thought if he insisted on an old American comrade-in-arms as the intermediary, it would demonstrate sincerity. My husband's sincerity.”
“And the real reason?”
She looked straight at Durant. “If things went wrong, my husband would have an American hostage.”
“That sounds about right,” Durant said. “Maybe you can tell me something else. Where's the five million coming from?”
“I have no idea.”
Durant made himself look faintly surprised. “Didn't poor old Ernie Pineda tell you up in Baguio before you cut off his balls and slit his throat?”
“You make no sense.”
“Sure I do, Carmen. Ernie worked for you—for the NPA anyhow—as well as for the Palace. He knew everything and everybody. So whose five million did Ernie say it was?”
She shook her head, almost as if she pitied Durant. “You don't understand anything, do you?”
“I'm trying. It'd help if you'd tell me what happened between you and Boy Howdy. I mean, what'd Boy do to make you kill him?”
Carmen Espiritu put her cigarette out and rose. “You should ask the Blue woman.”
“Think she'd know?”
Carmen Espiritu shrugged. “Are you her lover?”
Durant smiled and shook his head. She slowly walked over to where he still leaned against the wall. “Just good friends?” she said.
“Not even that.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and pressed her body against his. “I haven't taken a lover in months,” she said, demonstrating her frustration with small rhythmic thrusts of her pelvis.
Durant kissed her then. He kissed her out of curiosity and because there really wasn't all that much choice. It was a long kiss with much
lip nibbling and teeth clicking and a great deal of tongue work. Durant thought she seemed to enjoy it. He knew he did. When it was over, he said, “Let me get the lights.”
“I like them on,” Carmen Espiritu said in a breathy voice as she gently tugged him toward the nearer of the twin beds.
“Indulge me,” Durant said and went to the door. His left hand turned off the lights and the room went dark. His right hand removed the five-shot Smith & Wesson revolver, the one supplied by Vaughn Crouch, from his right hip pocket. With his left hand he opened the door.
Two Filipinos stood there, one large and one small. The large one, who had beaten Georgia Blue unconscious, held a hotel room key in his right hand. His small partner's right hand was darting toward something stuck down beneath his shirttails in the waistband of his pants. Durant slashed the darting hand with the revolver. The small man gasped and raised the hand to his mouth where he kissed and stroked it tenderly.
“She's just leaving,” Durant said. “Aren't you, Carmen?”
Durant turned sideways, parallel with the open door, not taking his eyes or his revolver off the two men. Carmen Espiritu stopped in front of him. He didn't look at her when she said, “You still don't understand anything, do you?”
“Such as?” Durant said, still watching the two Filipino men.
“That I win, regardless of what happens.”
 
 
After Carmen Espiritu and her two chaperones left, Durant closed the door, shot the dead bolt and fastened the chain. He also went to the phone, picked it up and called Artie Wu's room.
When Wu answered, Durant said, “I just heard from Otherguy. Sort of.”
“Indirectly, I take it.”
“Directly is a path he seldom takes.”
“Well, is he still on track or not?” Wu asked.
“Let's put it this way, Artie. Otherguy's either right on track or he's gone completely off the rails.”
At dawn, Booth Stallings rose naked from his cot in the smallest room of the large nipa hut and dressed in his freshly laundered and ironed clothes. The night before, Minnie Espiritu—not quite by force—had confiscated his shirt, pants, socks, and shorts.
“They stink,” she had said, “so take ‘em off and give 'em here.”
After Stallings had removed his shirt, pants and socks, she said, “Shorts, too.”
When he had hesitated, she grinned. “Old guys don't flick my Bic. They still say that in the States—flick my Bic?”
“I don't think so,” Stallings had said, handing her his shorts. After giving his naked body a frankly curious appraisal, Minnie Espiritu had said, “Not bad. Considering.”
 
 
Stallings entered the nipa hut's main room to find Alejandro Espiritu seated at the rough board table, drinking a cup of tea. He smiled up at Stallings. “What would you say to a pre-breakfast stroll?”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“‘Fine' would do. So would ‘Let's go.'”
“Fine,” Stalling said. “Let's go.”
“You might take this along,” Espiritu said, indicating a plastic shopping bag that had been placed on a nearby chair.
“What's in it?”
“Comestibles,” Espiritu said with a smile. “And I do believe it's the first time I ever used the word.”
Stallings picked up the shopping bag and followed Espiritu out of the hut and down the bamboo stairs. The smaller man wore a blue tails-out shirt, tan cotton pants and a pair of gray Nike running shoes that looked new.
“I like dawn, don't you?” said Espiritu as they strolled across the hard-packed dirt of the compound.
“Not much.”
“I like to hold meetings at dawn when everyone else is groggy and I'm wide awake.”
“I notice you still like to chatter in the morning.”
“Better that you notice the guards,” Espiritu said.
“Hard not to.”
“They have new orders,” Espiritu said. “From Carmen.”
“Oh?”
“They've been ordered not to let me leave the compound.”
“That's some marriage you've got, Al.”
“A marriage of convenience, which is now inconvenient.”
They had just walked past the last hut in the compound when Espiritu stopped and turned to face Stallings. “Over my right shoulder. See him?”
“The guard?” Stallings said.
“His name is Orestes. A most conscientious lad who actually stays awake during his shift. He's been on since midnight and he'll be relieved in about ten minutes. Let's go talk to him.”
Stallings nodded thoughtfully as he swung the shopping bag back and forth in a small arc. “So we're going now, huh? I mean, really going.”
“Yes. We really are.”
Orestes, the guard, greeted Espiritu with a cheery good morning. He was a solidly built youth of no more than nineteen. His equipment consisted of a water bottle and an M-16 rifle. His eyes looked sleepy.
“Long night, Orestes?” Espiritu asked.
The boy grinned and nodded.
“I just noticed that young stand of bamboo—down the path there.” Espiritu pointed. Orestes turned to look.
“Think someone could sneak up the path and use it for cover?”
“I don't know.”
“Let's take a look.”
The three of them went down the path for ten yards, Espiritu in the lead, until they reached the bamboo. It was a small stand and far from mature. Espiritu studied it for a moment and said, “Let's see what it looks like from the other side.”
Stallings and Orestes followed him around the bamboo, which now shielded the three of them from the compound. Espiritu backed up a few steps, as if for a better look. Orestes stared up at the bamboo and yawned. He was still yawning when Espiritu landed on his back, clamped a left hand over the still open mouth, and slashed Orestes' throat twice with a right hand that held a kitchen paring knife.
Espiritu rode the guard to the ground, left hand still clamped around the dying boy's mouth. After making sure he was dead, Espiritu wiped the knife blade on the boy's shirt and rose slowly, breathing in short harsh gasps. The hand with the knife, the right one, was rock steady. The left hand trembled. Some drool had formed in the left corner of his mouth and he absently licked it away.
“Jesus Christ, Al,” Stallings said as he bent to pick up the guard's fallen M-16.
“What should I have done? Just nicked him a little?”
When Stallings made no answer, Espiritu held out his trembling left hand for the M-16. “I'll take that,” he said.
“The fuck you will,” Booth Stallings said.
 
 
At 6:45 that morning Otherguy Overby sat in his rented gray Toyota, waiting for the owner of the small auto repair garage to show up. The owner arrived at 6:59 A.M. in an aging four-wheel-drive Jeep whose enclosed cab looked homemade.
Overby got out of the Toyota and walked over to the garage owner. They walked around the Jeep together. Overby kicked two tires, nodded, reached into a pocket and handed over a roll of bills. The garage owner counted them rapidly. After he counted them again, more slowly this time, he gave Overby the key to the Jeep. Overby said something to the owner and indicated his parked Toyota sedan. The owner nodded indifferently. Overby climbed into the Jeep, started its engine, backed out of the garage drive and drove off.
By 7:18 A.M., Overby was again standing at the counter of the Orange Brutus fruit juice stand on Jones Avenue, breakfasting on coffee, juice and two freshly baked rolls. He was joined at 7:20 by Carmen Espiritu. She drank a single cup of coffee while Overby finished his second roll. They spoke only a few words. Both wore running shoes and blue jeans. His looked almost new; hers were old and faded. Above his jeans Overby wore a tan loose-fitting short-sleeved bush shirt with six pockets. She wore a dark blue cotton blouse with long sleeves. The blouse was buttoned to her neck.
At 7:30 A.M., Overby looked at his watch and said something to Carmen Espiritu. She reached down to pick up the woven fiber reticule at her feet. It seemed heavy, but Overby didn't offer to carry it. They walked to the rented Jeep and got in. Overby started the engine and drove off in the direction of the Guadalupe Mountains.
 
 
At 8:00 A.M., Artie Wu drove the blue Nissan van he had just rented from Avis up to the entrance of the Magellan Hotel where Quincy
Durant and Georgia Blue waited. The van was the panel kind with no side windows.
Georgia Blue climbed into the van and sat next to Artie Wu. Durant slid back a side panel, lifted a cardboard box the size of a beer case into the van and climbed in after it, sliding the panel shut.
The van rolled out of the Magellan Hotel drive and turned west, heading toward the Guadalupe Mountains.
 
 
The retired Colonel lay on his sixty-seven-year-old stomach thirteen miles west of Cebu City. He lay on a low ridge dotted with coconut palms, clumps of bamboo, lush ferns, at least four kinds of orchids and a dozen fine dipterocarp trees that somehow had escaped the woodman's ax. Vaughn Crouch lay there, staring down at the small stream that was spanned by a crudely built bamboo bridge. The bridge was point B on the rough map Artie Wu had given him.
The ridge on the other side of the stream was higher than the one Crouch lay on by at least fifteen meters—maybe even twenty, he decided. The opposite ridge also afforded excellent cover, thus making the bridge and the stream it crossed, in Crouch's opinion, prime ambush property. He smiled, thinking of Booth Stallings. Well, Lieutenant, you sure must've learned something about bushwhacking from all those months you and old Al spent in these hills. Because you sure as shit picked us a doozy.
The big twenty-three-year-old Filipino mercenary that Crouch had promoted, almost on sight, to unofficial first sergeant, flopped down beside him, breathing hard from his climb up and down the two ridges.
“Get 'em all in place?” Crouch asked.
The first sergeant nodded, not wanting to waste breath on speech.
“Two hours on, two hours off?”
Again, the mercenary nodded and managed a yes.
“Same thing on this side, understand?”
“Sure.”
“How d'you like it?” Crouch asked, giving the bridge and the stream a pleased nod. “Think it'll work?”
“Fuckin' A,” the first sergeant said.
Crouch nodded his agreement, sat up and scooted backward until he could lean against the bole of a coconut palm. He pulled the blue gimme cap down low over his eyes, rested his right hand on his holstered .45-caliber semiautomatic, dropped his chin to his chest and told the first sergeant to wake him in two hours.
 
 
After 129 minutes of hard steady walking it was Booth Stallings who called for a stop. Only minutes after killing the guard, Espiritu abandoned the well-traveled path that led past the young stand of bamboo, and had taken what Stallings thought of as a goat track that headed down and mostly east.
Espiritu stopped and looked back. “You're soft, Booth.”
“Not soft. Old.”
“It's not far now.”
“How far's not far?”
“Another two kilometers. Perhaps three.”
Stallings used his already soaked handkerchief to mop sweat from his face. “Okay,” he said. “Let's go.”
It took them another twenty-three minutes to reach the stopping place, which was just below a barren rocky ridge. The goat track they had been following suddenly broadened into a steep rutted path that hugged the ridge's side.
“We stop here,” Espiritu said.
Stallings looked around, not liking what he saw. “Couldn't you have picked something with shade?”
“I picked something better than shade,” said Espiritu with a grin that Stallings thought knocked ten years off his age. “I chose air-conditioning.”
Espiritu gestured. “Just look around.”
Stallings looked around, saw nothing of interest and shook his head.
“You're not only soft, Booth, but you've lost your eye and your memory's in rotten shape. You've been here before, you know.”
Stallings looked around again but there was no recollection in his expression. “I give up.”
“Crab meat,” Espiritu said.
It came back to Stallings then, not in a flood, but in indistinct bits and pieces. It was like trying to remember an indifferent dream. He looked up, scanning the ridge carefully, and saw it—a black, irregularly shaped hole the size of an automobile tire.
“It was bigger then,” he said. “Christ, it was ten times as big.”
“We filled in the entrance,” Espiritu said. “Come on.”
The smaller man scrambled up the side of the ridge as if going up a flight of stairs. Stallings followed slowly, wary of the loose shale and rocks. He watched Espiritu duck and disappear into the black hole. Stallings made sure the M-16's safety was off, switched the weapon to automatic fire, and followed Espiritu into the cave.
It was almost as he remembered it, the cave that had been blasted out of solid metamorphic rock by Japanese combat engineers and used to store food. The roof was an irregular dome. The floor slanted up toward the rear. Its dimensions were approximately fifteen feet wide by ten feet high by thirty-five feet deep. The entrance hole provided perpetual twilight.
As he entered the cave, Stallings saw Espiritu squatting by a large cardboard box. He lifted out two plastic bottles. “Water,” Espiritu said, reached back into the box and came up with a revolver. He smiled at Stallings. “Now we both have something to shoot with,” he said, sticking the revolver down into the waistband of his pants and covering it with his shirt.
Stallings noticed it was at least fifteen degrees cooler in the cave. Handing the shopping bag of food to Espiritu, he said, “You can fix
lunch,” and sat down, leaning against the cave wall. The M-16 in his lap was pointed in Espiritu's general direction.
From the shopping bag Espiritu took packets of newspaper-wrapped food. Some of them were grease-stained. “How many did we kill in here, Booth?” he asked, unwrapping a mound of cold rice. “Six? Seven?”
“Seven.”
“With one grenade. Marvelous.” He looked at Stallings. “And then you ate their crab meat.” Espiritu chuckled. “There were cases and cases of it, remember? And you ate seven or eight cans.”

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