The old man’s wet eyes widened and the smile returned. “Ah. That money. A real secret.” He turned to the young women. “My hearts — could you — would you — please — just for a few minutes?”
The two young women giggled, eyed Overby, giggled again, rose and hurried away. “Sit, Otherguy. Have something cool.”
Overby sat down and said he would have a beer. Umali ordered it. When it came, he poured it carefully into a glass and served it to his guest. As Overby took his first swallow, Umali said, “I hear you saw Boy Howdy last night.”
Overby nodded.
“I hear it was a warm talk you had. Very warm.”
“You ever talk to Boy without raising your voice?”
Umali shrugged. “You paid him good money — or so I hear.”
“I paid him to find me Wu and Durant.”
Umali’s eyebrows went up and down twice in what Overby always thought of as the Cebu salute. The rapid movement of the eyebrows could signal approval, commiseration, agreement, doubt, disappointment or even, Tell me more. “They’re at the Peninsula,” Umali said. “Have been for a month.” He paused. “I would’ve told you for nothing.”
“I want you to tell me something for something, Abe.”
“Is there a figure?”
“Two thousand.”
“Pesos?”
“Dollars,” Overby said. “U.S.”
The old man’s eyebrows rose and fell again, indicating what Overby interpreted to be interest.
“I hear very little these days,” Umali said, obviously lying. “I’m an old man now and I have to pay young women to listen to me. I like to talk to them about the past — about the old days in Cebu. You remember them, Otherguy?”
“They’re not so far back,” Overby said. “Ten, twelve, fifteen years ago.”
“I mean forty, forty-five years ago.”
“About the time I was born. Maybe you and I can even talk about that a little.”
“For money?”
Overby nodded. Umali’s eyebrows went up and down, up and down. Overby took the unsealed Peninsula Hotel envelope from his inside pocket and placed it on the table in front of Umali.
“May I?” he said. Overby again nodded. Umali opened the envelope, peeked inside and sent his eyebrows into motion again. “You can ask,” he said. “Maybe I can answer. Maybe not.”
“Tell me about Boy Howdy,” Overby said. “Tell me why he sort of turned over on his back last night, stuck his paws up in the air, and begged me to scratch his stomach.”
Umali looked left, as if in that direction lay orderly thoughts. “You, Durant and Wu, right?”
“Right.”
“Interesting,” Umali said. “Well, first, you have to understand that Boy’s in a state of shock since our leader ran away.”
“Boy’s afraid Aquino’s not going to let the good times roll much longer?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
Overby waited. Finally, the old man said, “Boy believes in the second coming.”
Overby’s hard, merry grin came and went. “Faith is a wonderful thing.”
“Boy’s willing to back his faith with — what’s the saying? — his fortune and his sacred honor, such as it is. His honor, I mean.”
“He really wants Marcos back?”
“Many do. But Boy is betting everything he’s got on it.”
“What’re the odds, Abe?”
“For a Marcos return?” He shook his head. “For somebody else?” The eyebrows rose and fell twice.
“Who?”
Again, Umali’s eyebrows made a “who knows?” reply.
“Has Boy got a favorite?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
“Okay,” Overby said. “That was my first question.”
“How many more d’you plan to ask?”
“One more.”
The eyebrows said one more would be allowed.
“You know Cebu,” Overby said. “You were born there.”
Umali shrugged.
“Tell me what you know about Alejandro Espiritu.”
The old man’s thin mouth stretched itself into a wide tight reproachful line. His eyes grew even wetter. He sniffed, either to hold back tears or because he smelled something unpleasant. Then he said, “Go away, Otherguy. Take your money with you.”
Overby hitched his chair forward, leaned across the table and tapped the money envelope with his right forefinger. “Two thousand U.S., Abe. Just for a sentence or two.”
The old man sighed. “You, Wu and Durant mixed up with Espiritu. Well, you all deserve each other. But I don’t want to know about it, Otherguy. For the first time in my life I don’t want to be the first to know.”
“Espiritu bothers you, huh?”
The eyebrows shot up and down again. “When he was a kid, he only frightened me. Now that he’s an old man, he terrifies me. You won’t beat him because he’s smarter than you, Otherguy. Smarter than Durant. Smarter even than Artie and that’s smart-smart. No matter what, you won’t win. So I don’t care how fat the deal is, drop it. Go run the Mexican General or the Omaha Banker on somebody in Hong Kong or Bangkok. Or even Singapore, for God’s sake.”
Overby smiled. “He’s bad, huh?”
“He’s death.”
“Pick up your money, Abe.”
Umali shook his head.
“I want you to get a message to him.”
Apprehension battled with curiosity across the old man’s face. Curiosity won. “From you?”
“You can get a message to him without either of us getting mixed up in it. You’re good at that, right?”
The old man’s hand crept across the table and rested on the money envelope. “What’s the message?”
“Out of the five, Overby’s it.”
The old man stared at him. His turtle mouth went back into a thin line of disapproval. His left eye brimmed over and a single tear ran down his cheek. He didn’t bother to wipe it away.
“You’re going to stiff Wu and Durant, aren’t you?”
Overby made no reply. The old man picked up the money envelope and tucked it against his stomach beneath his belt buckle.
“I’m talking to a dead man,” Umali said. “If Espiritu doesn’t fix you, Durant will.”
Overby rose. “See to it, Abe.”
“I don’t like talking to dead people,” the old man called, but by then Overby was already walking toward the door.
Chapter Seventeen
The first thing Booth Stallings said after Durant introduced him to Artie Wu was, “How’d you get to be the pretender, Mr. Wu?”
“You want a beer or a drink?” Wu said.
“A beer’d be good.”
Durant went to the sitting room’s refrigerator and took out three beers. He passed the cans around without opening them. Wu popped his open, took a long draught, sighed with pleasure and said, “I’m the illegitimate son of the illegitimate daughter of the last Emperor of China.”
“The Boy Emperor?” Stallings said without surprise, popping his own beer can. “Old P’u Yi?”
“The same,” Artie Wu said, pleased that Stallings would know, and even more pleased that not much explanation would be necessary.
“Mao threw him in jail for a while, didn’t he? And then made him a tourist guide in Peking — or whatever they’re calling it now. Died back in the sixties, I think. Sixty-four, sixty-five — around in there.”
“Sixty-six,” Wu said.
Stallings raised his beer can in a toast of sorts. “Well, here’s to Grandpa.”
Wu smiled at the toast and said, “You may as well know the rest. My real father was an oversexed Methodist Chinese bishop who either sneaked or snuck into my mother’s bedroom. She’d been adopted by a Methodist missionary couple in China who brought her back to San Francisco. She was seventeen when the bishop had his way with her and she died having me. My adoptive grandparents were killed in a car wreck a few years later and I wound up in the John Wesley Memorial Orphanage in San Francisco.”