Hillerman, Tony (17 page)

He forced open his windows and stood beside them, breathing in the hot, humid air.

The last glow was dying from the sky along the western horizon, and the jungle was producing the tropical sounds of twilight. Moon stood listening. He could identify the mating song of frogs, which seemed to be universal. The little chirps would be bats patrolling for mosquitoes, just as they did on summer evenings in Oklahoma and Colorado. But most of the sounds were strange to him: a sequence of whistles (perhaps a lizard of some sort), odd grunting sounds, a sequence of rapid clicks, repeated, and repeated, and repeated. They were sounds that might be from another planet, or a science fiction fantasy, and they gave Moon Mathias a sudden overwhelming sense of being absolutely alone.

He turned away from the window. His suitcase was where he’d tossed it on the bed, waiting for him to finish unpacking. The doorless closet space contained only a cluster of coat hangers waiting to be used. The room, even the door to the bathroom, had been painted a color Moon couldn’t identify— what a mortician would think of as flesh tone.

Moon hurried out into the hallway, down the stairs, and into the lobby. Mr. Docoso was sitting there with a middle-aged Japanese couple and a man who looked Arabic. They were watching something on the television set in the corner. The set produced the sound of laughter. Mr. Docoso motioned Moon to join him on the lobby sofa.

“I’m going out for a walk,” Moon said. “I have to get some exercise.”

He took it slowly in this darkness at first, going carefully down the front steps and across the gravel pathway to the parking spaces. But there was still a faint glow of twilight. A first-quarter moon hung halfway up the eastern sky, and Moon’s eyes adjusted quickly. By the time he’d reached the road leading toward town he was walking his standard U.S. Army pace.

The road surface seemed to be a mixture of clay and gravel, packed hard and pocked with deep potholes. The roadside ditches produced frog sounds that his passage affected—loud ahead of him, silent beside him, and rising again to full cry behind him. This phenomenon reminded Moon that he was an intruder in this world of South Asian frogs and South Asian cultures. It reminded him of what he had come here to do.

A roadside palm had fallen there. Someone had sawed off the part that intruded into the roadway, but the remainder still spanned the ditch. Moon sat on it and reviewed his plans.

They were simple. His letter from the consulate had included a note from Assistant Warden Elogio Osoor. Warden Osoor said visiting hours were from one P.M. until two P.M. in the visiting room in the administration building. Convict Rice would be available for an interview. A guard would be present in the room at all times. No weapons or other contraband should be brought into the prison. This note should be shown to the guards at the perimeter.

Fair enough. He would ask Mr. Rice if he knew what the devil had happened to Ricky’s daughter. if he had any idea how to find her. And if Moon was lucky, Rice would say. he didn’t have the slightest idea and he knew of no one else who had an idea, and that the child was probably safe with her Cambodian grandmother somewhere in Thailand by now, and one of these days, when all this trouble was over and Southeast Asia returned to normal, Victoria Mathias would probably be receiving a letter from the Cambodian granny soliciting money for the child’s upbringing.

Whereupon Moon would be free to fly back to Los Angeles, make sure Victoria Mathias was getting proper care, and resume his life as a third-rate managing editor on a third-rate newspaper, sleeping with Miss Southern Rockies when she decided it was a good idea to have sex and trying to persuade her to marry him.

“Aaah!”

The cry came from the darkness down the road and was accompanied by a clatter and then an exclamation, which, while Moon couldn’t understand the language, was clearly an expression of anger and frustration.

He waited. Now the faint sound of footsteps coming toward him. The figure taking shape was tall, slender, female. Carrying a suitcase and a small handbag. Osa van Winjgaarden.

Moon didn’t want to startle her. He said, “Good evening, Mrs. van Winjgaarden.”

She produced what would have been a startled shriek, had she not instantly suppressed it, and said, “Who?”

“It’s just Ricky’s brother,” Moon said, getting to his feet. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” And put down the bag.

What was she doing out here carrying a suitcase? When they’d left the airport she’d said she was going to check into a hotel in Puerto Princesa. She hadn’t said why.

“Have a seat,” Moon said. He gestured to the palm trunk. “It’s comfortable.”

“Thank you,” she said. She left the bag on the road and sat. Even in the dim moonlight, he could see she was trembling.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She laughed. “It wasn’t your fault I’m so spooky.

What could you do? Just sit there and hope I didn’t -notice you when I walked past? That would have scared me to death.”

“An, well,” Moon said. “Anyway, it’s a nice night for a walk.”

“If you don’t break your ankle. I stepped in a hole back there.”

“I heard you,” Moon said.

Brief silence. Then she laughed. “I hope you don’t understand Dutch. Or the Indonesian Dutch we speak out here. You would have been shocked at my language.”

“I translated it to mean something like ‘Oh, shoot!’ in English.”

A chuckle. “That was kind of you,” she said. “And close enough, I guess.”

Moon had exhausted his small talk. He wanted to ask her what she was doing out here. Walking from her hotel in the town to Imelda’s hotel, apparently. Surely not all the way to the airport. But why not take a cab? Was she out of money? If the rates here were as cheap as Manila, it would have been less than half an American dollar. Moon’s lack of response didn’t seem to bother her. She sat motionless, looking at the night sky.

“You’re Dutch, then?”

“Van Winjgaarden,” she said. “That’s as Dutch as windmills and tulip fields.”

“It’s your husband’s name, though,” Moon- said. “Your maiden name might be French, or Italian, or Spanish, or just about anything.”

Silence. “No. Winjgaarden is my family name. Only the Mrs. isn’t really mine. I never married.”

“Oh,” Moon said.

“In my work I have to travel a lot. All over. In Asia, a woman traveling alone attracts attention— the wrong kind of attention. So I use the Mrs. and I bought myself the wedding ring.”

“Does it work?”

“It seems to be effective.” And she laughed. “Or maybe I just flatter myself with this. Maybe I just
think
I need the Mrs. and the ring.”

Moon thought about that. And about her. Remembering how he had first seen her walking into the hotel restaurant. A handsome woman, really. Graceful. Feminine. The sort of woman one saw in Cadillac commercials, escorted by a man in a tux. Not the sort of woman Moon would even think of approaching. But he knew a lot of men who would.

She glanced at him now, and away. It occurred to Moon that her remark wasn’t one to be left hanging. Silence would seem a confirmation.

“No,” he said. “I think you need the ring and the Mrs. I’m surprised they keep the wolves at bay.”

“Wolves at bay?”

“Wolves,” Moon said. “American slang for men who go around trying to connect with unattached women. I’m surprised you don’t attract them even with the ring and the title.”

“Oh,” Mrs. van Winjgaarden said. “Thank you.” And in an obvious effort to change the subject, added, “Have you noticed the constellation just above the horizon? The Southern Cross. I don’t think you see that in the United States. Aren’t you too far north of the equator?”

“We are in Colorado,” Moon said. “Can I ask where you are going with your suitcase?”

“To the new hotel. The one in the town was much cheaper, and I thought— Well, when I was here once before, the little hotel in the town wasn’t so bad. The ships’ officers stayed in it, and I guess the tourists stopped there when there were any, and a few businesspeople who came here. So they made the plumbing work and it was clean. Well, so-so. And the screens kept the mosquitoes out. But that was four years ago, and now the businesspeople come out to this new hotel, and the old one—” She shuddered. “The old one is awful. The smell. The roaches.”

“The new one is pretty good,” Moon said. It didn’t seem the time to mention the lack of refrigerated air.

“And of course I couldn’t get a taxi.” She laughed. “Puerto Princesa has only four with motors and then some pedicabs. But they all seem to quit at night.”

“No place much to go,” Moon said. “But weren’t you nervous? I mean, walking all the way out here in the dark. Alone.”

“No,” she said. “No tigers out there. But I was thinking of other things and when your voice came out of the dark, calling my name, then I was surprised.”

“What did you buy in Puerto Princesa? When you came four years ago?”

“Let me remember,” she said. “Yes. I bought ten dozen bamboo blowguns with pigskin quivers, four bamboo darts in each quiver. And one hundred fetish figures, carved out of bamboo, and some little things made out of shark bones, and—” She stopped. “Things like that. Then we sell them to exporters who resell them to importers, and someday they end their travels on the wall of someone’s parlor in Tokyo or Bonn or New York.”

“Could you buy poison for the darts if you wanted it?”

“I never asked,” she said. “But I think they still hunt with blowguns back in the hills, so they’d have to make the poison. It would be trouble for the importers, though.”

“Just imagine. You could carry one of those right through the metal detectors at airport security and then hijack the airliner,” said Moon, who found he was enjoying this conversation. “I wonder why the terrorists haven’t thought of it.”

The frogs had become used to them by now and reassured by their silences. Now there was frog song all around them, and from somewhere near, a whistling, and from somewhere far away, the sound of something huffing and grunting.

“We don’t have many night sounds in the mountains,” Moon said. “Just silence in the winter. In the summer, sometimes you hear the coyotes, and that starts the dogs barking.”

“You’re a long way from home,” she said. “Halfway around the world.”

Moon thought about that. This was like a totally different planet.

“Did you hear any news today?”

“No,” Moon said.

“There was a radio—shortwave I think—playing at the hotel in town. It said ARVN troops had commandeered two evacuation planes at one of the big airports. They threw off the civilians. Running away.”

“Urn,” Moon said.

“They said Vietcong and North Viet troops had captured the provincial capital just north of Saigon. And the airport north of Saigon had been hit by rockets.”

Moon could think of nothing to say.

“And they had a report from Bangkok. Refugees from Cambodia were saying that the Khmer Rouge were forcing city people out into the country. That whole towns were being totally emptied and the Khmer Rouge were killing those who looked professional.”

“It doesn’t sound reasonable,” Moon said. “It sounds like propaganda. Don’t you think so?”

She sat looking out through the sound of the frogs, across the road, across the rice paddy, into the jungle. The moonlight illuminated her face, but the jungle was dark.

She said, “Are you ever afraid?”

She was looking at him now and Moon studied her expression, not sure exactly what she meant. She was hunched forward, hugging herself.

“I’m afraid sometimes,” she added. “When I let myself think of going into Cambodia, I’m terrified.”

Moon had parted his lips, beginning the standard

reassurance, which was something like, There’s nothing to be afraid of. But he bit that off. There was a hell of a lot to be afraid of.

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “I don’t think you should go. Surely your brother will come out.”

“No,” she said. “He won’t. So I am also terrified that I won’t be able to get to him there. And then I am terrified that I will be able to get there, and the Khmer Rouge will get me. Afraid of what they would do to me. Afraid that Damon already is dead.” She paused. “Just scared. Of everything. Of failing. Of being alone. Of being alive. Of dying. I really doubt if you can understand this business of being afraid.”

“I can,” Moon said. He saw she was shivering.

“Did you ever wish you could be little again? Just a child with somebody taking care of you?”

“Yes,” Moon said.

“Really?”

“Sure,” Moon said. “To tell the truth, I’m afraid too. Right now.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know what I’m getting into. I don’t know who I can trust. It’s like—” He tried to think of an analogy. “Like walking around with a blindfold on.”

She laughed. “You’re trying to make me feel better. To make me cheerful. I can’t imagine you being afraid. Ricky told me too much about you.”

“Ricky didn’t know what he was talking about,” Moon said.

The faintest hint of a breeze stirred the palm fronds somewhere behind them. Moon smelled dampness, the yeasty smell of decaying vegetation, and the perfume of flowers. The frogs were totally reassured now; their calls rose to full volume.

“I should go and see if they have a room for me,” Mrs. van Winjgaarden said. She pushed herself, wearily, up from the palm trunk.

Of course, Moon thought. She would be exhausted. He’d taken a shower, rested awhile, had a drink. She’d spent the time inspecting cockroaches, trying to get a cab, and making the long dark trek through the darkness up the potholed road.

He carried her bag. She explained that the whistling was the mating signal of the male of a species of tree lizard, and the odd high-note low-note call they were hearing now was from the gecko, another climbing lizard, and the huffing came from water buffaloes resting after a day’s work in the rice paddies.

“And how about that sweet smell?” Moon asked. “Sort of like vanilla?”

Mrs. van Winjgaarden gave him the name of the vine that produced that aroma. It was a Dutch word. As he repeated it after her, Moon became aware that he no longer felt quite so lonely.