“How’ve you been, Emily?”
“Let’s talk about that later. Here’s Quincy.”
The first thing Quincy Durant said was, “Where are you — the Pines?”
“Quincy,” Wu said. “The Pines burned down two years ago.”
There was a brief silence until Durant said, “I blocked it, I guess. So. If you’re not at the Pines, you’re at the Hyatt.”
“Right.”
“I’ll pick you up downstairs in ten minutes and we’ll go see him.”
“See who?”
“The Cousin,” Durant said. “Who else?”
Camp John Hay served primarily as a country club for the U.S. airmen and officers stationed at Clark Air Base. In addition to its kilometer-and-a-half altitude, it offered golf, tennis, swimming, bowling, American films, a wealth of PX goods and an ocean of beer. But mostly it offered an invigorating change of climate. Well-behaved Filipinos could also use certain sections of the carefully tended grounds as a public park.
It was almost dark when Quincy Durant stopped the Honda Prelude he had borrowed from Emily Cariaga at the camp gates and asked the MP on duty how to get to the post hospital. The MP handed Durant a map marked with a red X. As they drove on, Artie Wu asked, “Who’re we?”
“Business associates,” Durant said.
At the post hospital an enlisted orderly steered Wu and Durant into a small office where a young uniformed Army doctor, wearing a captain’s bars, sat with his feet on a desk, reading Time. He looked up at Durant, then at Wu and back at Durant.
“You the Durant who called?”
Durant nodded. “I’m Durant; he’s Wu.”
The Captain put his Time on the desk, his feet on the floor and rose. “I’m Doctor Robbie. Let’s go.”
Wu and Durant followed the Captain down a hall, a flight of metal stairs, and along a short basement corridor. The Captain used a key on a lock and tugged open a thick door. Wu and Durant felt a rush of cold air.
Captain Robbie reached around the door and switched on a light. Wu and Durant followed him into the room, Wu closing the door behind them. It was cold inside and the only furniture in the 9 X 12-foot refrigerated room were two gurneys. On one of them was a man, naked except for a bath towel with Camp John Hay stitched across it in red letters. The towel covered the man’s crotch. He had light brown skin, a handsome playboy face, and appeared to be about 30. His throat had been cut. Captain Robbie lifted the towel to give Wu and Durant a glimpse of the man’s crotch. “They got his balls too,” Captain Robbie said as he let the towel drop and turned to Durant. “Well?”
“What was he wearing?” Durant said.
“Why?”
“When they cut off his balls did they take his pants down, off or what?”
Captain Robbie gave his head a small shake, as if he didn’t understand Durant’s questions. “They found him just like that, naked as a jaybird, at oh-three-hundred this morning down by a post beer joint that’s called the Nineteenth Tee. His throat was cut and his balls were gone. No socks, no shoes, nothing. Just him. Buck naked and stone dead. You guys know him or not?”
Durant looked at Wu. “I’d say that was Ernie, wouldn’t you?”
Wu nodded. “Poor old Ernie.”
Captain Robbie took a ballpoint pen and a small spiral notebook from a shirt pocket and clicked the pen into write. He opened the notebook and looked at Durant. “Ernie what?”
“Ernesto Pineda,” Durant said and spelled the surname slowly.
“He was what to you?”
“We did some business with him once,” Wu said. “We thought we were going to do a little more, but I guess we aren’t.”
“I guess not,” Captain Robbie said. “Who’s his next of kin?”
“The only kinfolk I ever heard him mention was a third cousin,” Durant said.
“Nobody closer?” Captain Robbie asked. “Wife, parents, brother, sister — even a niece or nephew?”
Durant shook his head regretfully. “That third cousin was the only one Ernie ever mentioned.”
The Captain shook his head and asked, “What’s the cousin’s name?”
“Ferdinand Marcos,” Durant said.
Captain Robbie’s smooth young face wrinkled itself into lines of worry and disbelief. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
Wu solemnly shook his great head from side to side.
Captain Robbie winced and turned to stare down at the exiled President’s dead third cousin. “Goddamnit, Ernie, what a pain in the butt you’ve turned out to be.”
Chapter Ten
Quincy Durant sat propped up in the Hyatt hotel bed, smoking a rare cigarette and drinking Scotch and water, when Artie Wu came out of the bathroom, shrimp pink from his shower and wearing only a pair of voluminous white boxer shorts. Wu started putting on the pants to the white silk money suit. He spoke only after he had the pants on and was buttoning a tent-size blue chambray shirt. “How much?”
“About a thousand,” Durant said. “I spread it around town with the word that I was trying to locate Ernie. I got a call at six this morning from a taxi dispatcher. One of his drivers took an Air Force CID major to that post beer joint, the Nineteenth Tee, where they’d found Ernie. The Major’s car wouldn’t start, which is why he called a taxi. The driver recognized Ernie.”
“But didn’t say anything.”
“Not to anybody but the dispatcher.”
Wu, looking into the mirror, carefully continued to knot his paisley tie. “What d’you think?”
“What or who?”
“Who.”
“A cuckolded husband. A disappointed bankrupt maybe.”
“Christ, that second one’s us.”
“The list goes on,” Durant said and took another swallow of his drink. “A spurned lover, male or female. Some guy who didn’t get the job in the ministry of works, or whatever, that he’d paid Ernie to get him. An NPA sparrow team.”
“Sparrow team. That’s nice.”
“You prefer hit squad?”
Wu shrugged. “Not really, but you may be right at that. Let’s say Ernie’s out cruising. He meets this young sparrow, male or female, in a bar and they agree to a quickie in the front seat of Ernie’s BMW. The second sparrow’s already down behind the back seat. He cuts Ernie’s throat, they drive out to the camp, strip him, cut him some more and leave him in the neo-colonialists’ playground as a warning to whoever they’re mad at this week. If you needed a symbol of corruption, you couldn’t do much better than Ernie.”
“I always kind of liked him,” Durant said.
“So’d I, until he stiffed us.” Wu crossed to the mini-refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer. He twisted off the cap, had a swallow and looked at Durant. “It’s a write-off, isn’t it?”
“The three hundred thousand? Total.”
“How much’ve you got?” Wu asked.
Durant finished his drink, put the glass down, ground his cigarette out, locked his hands behind his head, leaned back against the bed’s headboard and stared at the ceiling. “Three thousand two hundred and twenty-three dollars and a Gold American Express card that’ll lie still for a couple of months if we don’t beat it too hard. You?”
“About the same,” Wu said. “Maybe two or three hundred more. I’m afraid to count it.”
“If we needed to front something, I could probably borrow ten thousand from Emily.”
“Front what, for Christ sake?” Artie Wu said as he put his beer down, picked up the white money suit’s jacket, flicked something from its left sleeve and slipped it on.
“No idea.”
Wu turned to examine himself in the mirror that hung over the bureau. “Boy Howdy’s looking for us.”