They met three hours later in the sitting room of Booth Stallings’ fifth-floor suite. Stallings, wearing a pair of chinos and a dark blue short-sleeve shirt from Lew Ritter’s, still felt groggy from the flight. But Overby seemed rested and wide awake in his well-worn jeans, gaudy Hawaiian shirt and scuffed running shoes that he wore without socks. Stallings wondered why Overby wanted to look like a budget-bound tourist but decided not to ask.
Georgia Blue also appeared rested and alert in her white skirt, tan cotton blouse and brown and white spectator pumps, which Stallings assumed were back in style — or would be shortly. He and Overby drank San Miguel beer out of cans. Georgia Blue sipped a vodka and tonic. The drinks had come from the room’s mini-refrigerator. On the low coffee table was a huge untouched basket of tropical fruit with a “Compliments of the Management” card.
Stallings glanced around the big sitting room whose windows offered a view of Manila Bay and asked, “How much?”
“Regular price is two-eighty a day, U.S.,” Overby said. “But you’re just paying two thirty-four and you can charge it off to front.”
“Only two thirty-four,” Stallings said. “Imagine.”
“Since we’re on money we might as well stick to it for a minute,” Overby said. “Okay?”
“Fine,” Stallings said.
“Georgia and I have to go see a guy who’ll try and hold me up for ten thousand, but who I’m going to beat back down to five. I need the five.”
“This your contact?”
Overby nodded.
“What’s his name?” Georgia Blue asked.
“Boy Howdy.”
“Sounds American.”
“Australian,” Overby said. “Except he may be Filipino now. He married one about ten or twelve years ago.”
“What is he?” she asked.
“A first-class asshole who owns a snakepit over in Ermita. Runs whores, beggar kids, a protection racket, does a little strikebreaking, stuff like that. He also takes messages and that’s what I use him for. Messages.”
“Five thousand,” she said. “Must be some message.”
“I believe it concerns the whereabouts of our other two partners,” Stallings said.
She looked first at Stallings, then at Overby, her disbelief apparent. “You guys don’t even know where they are?”
Overby shrugged. “They move around.”
Something happened to Georgia Blue’s face then. It lost all animation and expression. Stallings decided it was her Secret Service look. When she spoke her lips scarcely moved.
“Have they got names?” she said.
Overby’s eyes wandered the room for a moment or two until they landed on Georgia Blue. “Wu and Durant,” he said.
Stallings watched as the surprise that was almost shock struck Georgia Blue. Her eyes widened and her face paled. Her mouth opened to suck in a lungful of air. For a moment, Stallings thought she might hyperventilate. But then an angry crimson erased her sudden paleness and she used her breath to swear at Overby.
“Goddamn you, Otherguy!”
“What’s up?” Stallings asked.
Overby turned an unpleasant smile on Stallings. “All four of us worked a few deals together in Mexico a long time ago. Her, me, Durant and Wu. When Georgia and I sort of broke up, Durant caught her on the bounce for a while and I guess she’s not over him yet. Right, Georgia?”
“You shit.”
“You can’t work with them?” Stallings said.
“For a million I can work with anybody,” she said. “Even Overby.”
“And Durant?”
“Him too.”
“A rather nice coincidence, isn’t it?” Stallings asked. “Your knowing Otherguy and also Wu and Durant.”
Georgia Blue stared at Overby but spoke to Stallings. “Who sold you the package, Booth?”
“A man named Howard Mott in Washington. Know him?”
She ran the name through her memory. “Lawyer?”
Stallings nodded.
“I’ve heard of him but I don’t know him. Should I?”
“He’s my son-in-law.”
The look Georgia Blue gave Stallings was one of pure malice. “Yes, well, I can see you must be relieved that I don’t know him. Your son-in-law.”
“Very relieved,” Stallings said. “Extremely so.”
Chapter Thirteen
Overby worked it so that he would carry the $5,000 and Georgia Blue the small flat Walther semiautomatic. She wore it stuck down behind her jeans, concealed by the tails of the Hawaiian shirt Overby had found for her in one of the Manila Hotel specialty shops. The Walther was her own.
It was nearly 10 P.M. when they rode the elevator down to the hotel lobby. “We’re Mr. and Mrs. Average B. Tourist,” he said. “The B is for bored and we’re out for a halfway dirty night on the town.”
“Gosh, it’s like a disguise, isn’t it?”
Overby sighed. “If I have to carry a chunk of money around Ermita, I want to do it so nobody notices me. And when I try and beat Boy Howdy down five thousand, I want to look as hard-up as possible.” He inspected her critically. “Trouble with you is, you can’t even look hard-up.”
“My God,” she said as the elevator door opened. “I think you just paid me a compliment.”
“Think again,” said Overby as he walked out of the elevator ahead of her.
Outside the hotel the doorman tried to sell Overby on the safety and security of a hotel limousine. When Overby refused, the doorman shrugged, whistled up a taxi, wrote something down on a small pad, tore it off and gave it to Overby who passed it to Georgia Blue without a glance.
The slip had the name of the hotel printed at the top. Below was the cautionary statement: “Dear Guest: For your Safety and Convenience the vehicle you are now taking bears the following information.” After that the doorman had written the taxi’s name and plate number.
“In case we get banged on the head and dumped in the bay, right?” Georgia Blue said.
Overby nodded as the five-year-old Toyota taxi pulled up to a stop and they climbed into its rear. When Overby said he wanted to go to Boy Howdy’s in Ermita, the driver offered to take them to a much nicer place, his cousin’s, where they wouldn’t be cheated nearly as much. Overby had to decline the offer twice before the driver put the taxi into gear and crept down the hotel drive to Roxas Boulevard.
The trip was short in distance but long in time because of heavy traffic and the sin and sex customers who jammed the short narrow one-way street in Ermita. At the street’s far end was a big flashing pink neon sign that spelled out Boy Howdy’s name. At least a dozen clubs lined the block and outside each of them was a barker, hawking the delights that lay within. About half of the barkers were Australians in their forties and fifties with mean mouths and disappointed eyes.
Prospective customers included Japanese businessmen, wearing stylish sports clothes and foolish grins; American servicemen, all of them young and many of them drunk, and a scattering of European males who seemed torn between apprehension and desire. The rest of the crowd was made up of adult and child prostitutes of both sexes plus a variety of pimps, beggar kids, transvestites, pickpockets, all-purpose grifters and a sprinkling of middle-aged American tourists who looked as if they had bought the wrong guidebook.
When the taxi was fifty yards from Boy Howdy’s, it became stuck in a traffic jam. Overby paid off the driver. Once his passengers were out of the taxi, the driver switched off his engine, rolled up the windows, locked the doors and resigned himself to a steam bath of indefinite duration.
Overby led the way with Georgia Blue slightly behind him and to his left at curbside where the trouble, if any, would come from. Overby ambled along, sticking to his tourist role, his eyes wide and a know-it-all grin plastered across his face.