Out on the Rim (30 page)

Authors: Ross Thomas

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Out on the Rim

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It was 10:29 that morning and already sweltering hot when Artie Wu ran out of road. He had driven the rented Avis van as close as possible to point B on Booth Stallings' map, but the point still remained some four kilometers away. The mountain road Wu had followed out of Cebu City had disintegrated into a rutted trail two kilometers back. He stopped the van when the trail suddenly narrowed into a trace just wide enough for two small goats or one fairly large human.

He turned to Georgia Blue who sat beside him, studying the crude map. “This it?” Wu asked.

She nodded. “This is it.”

Without turning his head, Wu spoke to Durant who sat on the floor in the van's seatless rear. “What d'you think, Quincy?”

“I think we should eat.”

“I think you're right,” Wu said.

After they finished the box lunches provided by the Magellan Hotel, Artie Wu reached into the cardboard carton Durant had loaded into the van that morning and removed a three-inch stack of Filipino fifty-peso
notes that was bound with a rubber band. He also took out a 35mm Minolta camera.

“Here,” Wu said, handing the camera to Georgia Blue who gave it a brief inspection before placing it in her shoulder bag.

Wu divided the stack of fifty-peso notes into guessed-at halves, giving one half to Durant who folded the currency and stuck it down into a hip pocket where it created a noticeable bulge. Wu slipped his own unfolded half into his right pants pocket.

“Okay,” Artie Wu said, “we'll take it slow and easy and try not to hurt anybody.”

“These guys are pros, Artie,” Georgia Blue said.

“Then we'll try not to kill anybody.” He looked at Durant. “You going to flank from right or left?”

“From the right, I think,” Durant said, moved ten feet off the trace and began inspecting what seemed to be an impenetrable barrier of green and black tropical rain forest. Georgia Blue used two seconds to give the contents of her shoulder bag a final check. When she looked up, Durant had disappeared.

“Still the show-off, I see,” she said to Artie Wu.

Wu smiled. “Why hide hidden talent?” He nodded at the trace that led into the rain forest. “Point or drag?”

“You giving me a choice?”

Wu nodded.

“Then I'll take drag.”

Wu took out and inspected the five-shot revolver provided by Vaughn Crouch, shoved it back down into his right hip pocket, hitched his pants up over his big belly and strolled off down the trace, as if beginning his regular morning constitutional.

Georgia Blue slipped her right hand down into her shoulder bag and waited until Wu was twenty feet away. She followed after him then, walking with an athletic stride so smooth and effortless that her heels seemed to make almost no contact with the ground.

They walked like that for twenty-one minutes, Artie Wu in the lead, Georgia Blue twenty feet or so behind him, both moving at an unhurried but steady 105 paces a minute, both listening in vain for Durant on their right flank, but hearing only the fuck-you geckos and the scolding of angry birds.

Wu was wondering for the third or fourth time how such deep cool-looking shade could produce such insufferable heat when he heard the man's voice shout the order.

“Freeze, Wu!”

Wu stopped but didn't freeze. Instead, he raised his hands and turned slowly around. Ten feet away Weaver P. Jordan was in what Artie Wu always thought of as the TV Crouch: wide stance, knees bent, both hands holding the weaponâin this case a revolver with a three- or four-inch barrel.

“Morning,” Wu said just as Georgia Blue slipped out of the tropical rain forest and struck Jordan from the rear with a left-handed chopping blow that immobilized his left arm. Despite the pain, Jordan tried to swing his right arm around and bring the revolver into play. It seemed to be exactly what Georgia Blue expected. She grabbed his right wrist and brought it down and then up behind him, giving it a twist that dislocated the elbow. Jordan went to his knees, dropping the revolver. Georgia Blue kicked it away and then stamped on his left hand which he was using for support. Jordan collapsed, howling.

Just as the howl died away, Wu heard something metallic off to his right that sounded like the slide being pulled back on some kind of automatic weapon. With his hands still raised, Wu turned left just in time to see Durant use a stick to knock a machine pistol out of the hands of a man who wore what appeared to be designer jungle fatigues. The man wearing the camouflage fatigues was the elegant Jack Cray.

Although disarmed, Jack Cray was undismayed. He dropped into a slight crouch, both hands extended and weaving around in some kind of martial arts stance that apparently puzzled Durant who dropped his stick and backed up. With an odd wordless cry, Jack Cray leaped at Durant, trying for a knuckled jab to the throat. Durant slipped it easily and gave Cray a hard open-palm slap to the right ear.

“Fuckhead,” Cray said, abandoning his martial arts stance to put a soothing palm to the boxed ear.

“I'll look after Mr. Cray, Quincy,” Artie Wu said with a solicitous smile. “You go tend to Mr. Jordan.”

“What's wrong with him?” Durant asked.

“Georgia dislocated his elbow,” Wu said. “At least, I hope that's all she did.”

Weaver P. Jordan looked up at Durant and said, “Will it hurt?”

“For a second.”

“Then fix it.”

With Wu, Georgia Blue and Cray looking on, Durant placed both hands on Jordan's right armâone on the bicep, the other on the forearm. “Look away, if you want to,” he told Jordan.

Jordan looked away just as Durant pulled so quickly his audience wasn't even sure it heard the soft pop as the elbow was snapped back into place. Jordan howled again.

When he was through howling he glared at Jack Cray and said, “Trust her, you said. She's practically one of us, you said.”

“I was obviously wrong,” Cray said and turned to Wu. “So where does all this leave us?”

“At a point of mutual distrust,” Wu said with a beaming smile.

Weaver Jordan got to his feet, glaring now at Georgia Blue. “You worked us pretty slick, Georgia.”

“Assholes are always easy,” she said.

“Everything is not lost, gentlemen,” Wu said, turning to Durant. “Wouldn't you agree, Quincy?”

“Plenty of glory to go around.”

Jack Cray raised an elegant eyebrow. “What form does this glory take?”

“Human form,” Durant said. “Alejandro Espiritu.”

The raised eyebrow dropped back into place as Cray narrowed his eyes, giving his face an almost crafty look. The expression made Durant reflect that the only thing worse than being half-dumb was being half-smart.

“You want to sell us Espiritu?” Cray said.

Artie Wu looked almost hurt. “Sell him? Good Lord, no. He's a giftâfrom all of us to all of you.”

“A gift?” Jordan said. “For free, you mean?”

“If it's not for free, Weaver,” said Durant, “it's not a gift.”

Jordan worried over Durant's clarification as if it were a particularly abstruse concept. “I guess I don't hang out enough with swifties like you.”

“Just why,” Jack Cray asked, “are you giving us Espiritu if, in fact, you are?”

“Bullshit aside?” Wu said.

Cray nodded.

“Because we'd like to spend our money without the Federales peering over our shoulders.”

Jack Cray nodded approvingly. “At last, a half-sensible answer.”

Which is all, Durant thought, a half-smart question deserves.

CHAPTER 38

Thirty-one minutes later the five of them reached the crude bamboo bridge that spanned the stream that flowed between the two steep ridges. It was point B on Booth Stallings' rough map and Jack Cray, looking around, didn't at all like what he saw.

“Who picked this place?” Cray asked.

“Why?” Durant said.

“It's a perfect trap.”

Durant looked up and around, nodding in what seemed to be surprised agreement. “I believe it is.”

“So who picked it?”

“Espiritu, probably.”

Jack Cray raked one ridge with his eyes, turned and did the same to the other one. “There're bandits up on those ridges, aren't there?”

“Why do you say that?” Artie Wu asked.

“Because you can feel the fuckers, that's why,” Weaver P. Jordan said. “Because when some guy's got a bead on you, you damn well sense it.”

Jack Cray moved as close to Artie Wu as he could without touching him. “Who's up there, damn it?”

Wu sighed. “Mercenaries.”

“Mercenaries! Whose mercenaries?”

“They could be ours. Possibly Espiritu's. Maybe even yours. It all depends.”

The shock appeared first in Cray's eyes, popping them wide, and then flowed down to his mouth, giving him a dim, slack-jawed look. When he asked his question, it was in a low monotone that shock had robbed of all expression, even the normal rising inflection. “That was just a shuck about giving us Espiritu, wasn't it?”

Wu gave the far ridge his own long look before replying. “There's a small problem with that,” he admitted. “You see, to keep the mercenaries away from Espiritu and their hands off whatever price is now on his head, we had to promise them a couple of profitable hostages.”

Weaver Jordan turned apoplectic red. His voice was a shout. “Us? You promised them me and him?”

“You were handy,” Georgia Blue said.

Durant studied the glassy-eyed Cray and the crimson-faced Jordan. “How much would Langley pop for you two?” he asked. “A rough guess.”

Cray answered as if by rote. “Not a dime. The agency will not negotiate with terrorists.”

“No one need ever know,” Wu said.

“You'd know,” said Weaver Jordan.

Artie Wu nodded sadly. “Yes, I suppose we would, wouldn't we?” There was a silence and then Wu smiled, as if suddenly struck by an idea so wise and wonderful that it bordered on pure inspiration. “You could, of courseâ” Wu broke off. “Well, never mind.”

“We could what?” Cray asked.

“You could make your own deal with them.” Wu turned to Durant. “What d'you think, Quincy?”

Durant appeared to give it some thought. “Sure. Why not?”

“Georgia?” Wu asked.

“It'd be better than your playing hostage up in the hills for a year or six months,” she said to Cray and Jordan. “Unless you're both crazy about fishheads and rice.”

Resignation spread across Cray's face, erasing the last vestige of shock. Cynicism, in the form of a slight smile, moved in to replace resignation. “Isn't this where I ask: I don't suppose they take American Express?”

Wu's frown was one of deep concern. “Money does present a problem.”

“But not an insurmountable one, right?” Cray said.

Wu looked a question at Durant who nodded his answer. “Yes, well, I suppose Quincy and I could lend you the money and you could give us an IOU or something.”

“A promissory note would be best,” Durant said.

“You fucks,” said Weaver Jordan.

Jack Cray again looked first at one ridge, then the other, turned to Wu and said, “Write it out.”

Wu smiled at Georgia Blue. “Georgia.”

She reached into her shoulder bag and removed an envelope. From the envelope she took a thrice-folded sheet of bond paper, which she unfolded and handed to Jack Cray.

He looked at it. “Neatly typed, I see.”

“What's it say?” Weaver Jordan asked.

“It's headed âPromissory Note' and then it says, âFor value received we promise to pay to Arthur Case Wu and Quincy Durant on demand the sum of forty-eight thousand Filipino pesos or twenty-four hundred U.S. dollars with simple interest accruing at the rate of six percent per annum.' And then there're places to fill in the date and sign our names.

“Who's got a pen?” Weaver Jordan asked. “I'll sign the fucker.”

Georgia Blue silently handed him a ballpoint pen. Using Durant's back as a desk, Jordan signed his name with a flourish and handed
the promissory note to Cray who glared at Wu. “We're signing under duress, of course.”

Wu smiled politely. “We'll let the lawyers argue about that, should it ever come up.”

Cray signed, handed the note to Wu and said, “Okay. Let's get it over with.”

Durant turned toward the far ridge, took a white handkerchief from his pocket and waved it back and forth above his head.

“What the fuck're you doing?” Weaver Jordan said.

“Surrendering, what else?” Durant said.

Up on the far ridge, Vaughn Crouch grinned down at the handkerchief-waving Durant, turned to his temporary first sergeant and said, “Well, son, you know what to do.”

“Right,” the first sergeant said.

Barking out his orders, the first sergeant had lined up his twenty-three armed mercenaries in two neat rows near the bamboo bridge. Twelve men stood at near attention in the front row; eleven in the rear. Weaver Jordan and Jack Cray were the paymasters. Carrying the thick stack of Filipino fifty-peso notes, Cray counted out 2,000 pesos at a time. He handed each payment to Jordan who in turn handed it with his undamaged right arm to the next mercenary in line. The first sergeant approved each payment with a grunt and a nod.

When Cray and Jordan were halfway down the front row, Georgia Blue took the 35mm Minolta from her shoulder bag and began snapping pictures of the payments. Jack Cray stopped, turned and started to say something, but changed his mind when the first sergeant clapped a large but gentle hand on his shoulder. Georgia Blue captured Cray with his mouth open and the first sergeant's hand on his shoulder.

After the last mercenary was paid, Cray and Jordan walked over to Wu and Durant, accompanied by the first sergeant.

“Now what?” Cray said.

“Well, we come now to the glory part,” Wu said. “You and Mr. Jordan will escort these brave ex-NPA freedom fighters back to Cebu City where they'll meekly surrender to the proper authorities. Just how the CIA talked them down out of the hills we'll leave to your imagination. But whatever you guys dream up, they'll swear to. Right, Sergeant?”

“Absolutely,” the first sergeant said.

There was a silence that went on and on until Jordan looked at Jack Cray and said, “You know. It just might work.”

After a moment, Cray nodded and looked at Durant. “What else?”

“One last item,” Durant said. “If ever asked, you know nothing about anyone called Wu, Stallings, Overby, Blue or Durant. Nothing pertinent anyhow.”

Cray turned the threat over in his mind. “If we know nothing about you,” he said slowly, “then you can't know anything about us, can you? And you'd have no use for that promissory note or the photos.”

“What a good boy,” said the beaming look that Artie Wu gave Jack Cray. Aloud, he said, “And thus we all arrive safely at the perfect stalemate.”

“Otherwise known as mutual blackmail,” Durant said.

“I like detente better,” Weaver Jordan said.

Wu beamed again. “Then we'll call it detente.”

They came out of the tropical rain forest at 3:31 P.M., both limping a little, Otherguy Overby in the lead, Booth Stallings a dozen or so feet behind. They saw the bamboo bridge first and then, a little to the right of it, seated in the shade of some flourishing nipa palms, Wu, Durant and Georgia Blue.

Durant was up first and trotted toward Overby who stopped and waited for him. “Where the hell is he?” Durant demanded.

“Right behind me the last I looked,” Overby said and turned to find Booth Stallings moving slowly toward him. “Yeah. There he is.”

Durant waited patiently until Stallings joined them. “I mean Espiritu.”

“Oh,” Overby said. “Him. Well, he couldn't make it.”

“Espiritu's dead,” said Stallings.

“What happened?”

Neither Overby nor Stallings apparently wanted to speak first. Finally, Stallings said, “We'd like to sit down in some shade, have a drink of water and maybe a sip of whiskey, if anybody's got any, and then I'll tell you what happened. And if Otherguy doesn't like my version, he can tell his.”

They sat in a row in the shade of the flourishing nipa palms, three big wide-eyed kids named Wu, Durant and Blue, listening transfixed to the tale told at storytime in the jungle kindergarten. At least, that's how Otherguy Overby would later remember it.

Stallings, the tale teller, began with the death of Alejandro Espiritu's nephew, Orestes; continued with the death of Carmen Espiritu in the cave; reached his climax with the death of Espiritu himself (“Otherguy shot him twice in the back before old Al shot me. Afterward, Otherguy felt a little bad about it but I sure as hell didn't”); and ended with the arrival of Minnie Espiritu and her five young guards.

When Stallings was done with his story, he asked, “Anybody think to bring a bottle?”

Georgia Blue reached into her apparently bottomless shoulder bag and produced a half-liter of Black and White Scotch, which she handed to Stallings. He twisted off the cap, had a long swallow and passed it to Overby who drank and offered it to Artie Wu who shook
his head. So did Durant. Overby gave the bottle back to Georgia Blue and then crept into his private sealed-off place to wait and see who would get blamed for what.

Wu looked at Overby and nodded sympathetically. “Is that about what happened, Otherguy?”

“That's it.”

“So what d'you think went wrong?”

“Overall?”

Wu nodded.

Overby thought before answering. “You came up with a real smart plan, Artie. One of your best. Maybe a little tricky here and there, and maybe a little too egg-crated, but what the hell, there was a big score involved and none of us, except you and Durant, have worked together for a while. So that was okay. And everybody was given a job to do and, as far as I can tell, everybody did their jobâexcept one person.”

“Who?” Durant asked.

Although sweat still flowed down over Overby's face, the smile he gave Durant was one of chilly disapproval. “Espiritu. You guys sort of forgot to give him the whole script. Especially the last act. If you had, well, maybe, things would've turned but better.”

“Maybe,” Artie Wu said. “Maybe not.” He leaned toward Overby, his expression frankly curious. “What if you hadn't shot him, Otherguy?”

Overby sighed. “Well, Booth here'd be dead and Iâwell, I probably could've been five million bucks richer.” He paused. “Two and a half million anyway.”

Durant glared at him. “You were going solo, weren't you?”

Overby returned the glare. “Was I?”

Artie Wu smiled. “Let's assume the thought crossed your mindâfleetingly, of course.”

Overby only shrugged.

Booth Stallings looked at Overby with a wry fond smile. “That was a hell of a choice you made, Otherguy.”

Overby nodded. “Well, I made it,” he said. “And now I'll just have to live with it.”