Although he had glanced occasionally at the others, Wu had aimed his sales talk, for that’s what it had been, at his primary customer, Booth Stallings. They now waited to hear whether the prospect was buying.
Stallings gave his chin a hard squeeze, his left earlobe a tug and said, “I like it. By God, I do.”
Artie Wu beamed and looked at Georgia Blue. She smiled almost helplessly. “Perfect, Artie. As always.”
Wu turned to Overby. “Well, Otherguy?”
Overby made an effort to erase his smile, but failed. So, still smiling, he said, “You know what it is, don’t you, Artie? It’s new. Brand-new. Not just some old-hat change-up. And I haven’t heard a new one since the Pommie Bastard, may he rest in peace, came up with the Angel Flight in Saigon and that was what? — eleven years ago when they were all climbing over the Embassy walls. They’ll name this one. This one’ll go down in the books. They oughta call it the Big Chinaman.”
Wu beamed. “I take it you approve, Otherguy.”
“I love it.”
“Quincy?” Wu said.
Durant shook his head in admiration. “It’s really rotten, Artie.”
A still beaming Wu turned back to Booth Stallings. “His highest accolade.”
Stallings frowned. “I have a question.”
“You must have several.”
“Everybody has a role to play,” Stallings said. “That’s normal, I take it?”
“A prerequisite,” Durant said. “One turns into an actor. Just as most case officers are top salesmen, all confidence men are actors. You learn your role. You believe in it. You don’t stray from it.”
“I’m Old Buddy, of course,” Stallings said.
Wu nodded.
“You and Durant are the Pair of Knaves.”
Again, there was a confirming nod.
“That leaves the Watchman and the Weak Link,” Stallings said, looking first at Georgia Blue and then at Overby. “Which is which?”
“The Weak Link goes to Cebu first,” Wu said, “followed a day or so later by the Watchman. I rather like Georgia for the Weak Link.”
Durant didn’t. “For Christ sake, Artie. People don’t like surprises. They like typecasting, which is why there’s so much of it. We need to send in a slender reed — not the lady decathlon champion. Look at Otherguy. Go on, look.”
Everyone looked at Overby, as if trying to see him for the first time. He glared back. “Okay,” Durant continued, “he’s a fusspot and neat as two pins. But he lets his beard go for a day or two, sleeps in his suit, wears a little gin on his breath and you’ve got a perfect Judas.”
“That’s not exactly how I see myself, Durant,” Overby said with that hard curious dignity Stallings had noticed before. “And it’s sure as hell not how they remember me in Cebu.”
Durant shrugged. “So you’ve disintegrated.”
Artie Wu frowned, looking from Overby to Georgia Blue and back to Overby. “I don’t know,” he said. “What d’you think, Otherguy?”
“I can do either one, Artie. You know that. If you don’t, then fuck it.”
Wu shook his head a little, as if still in doubt. “Georgia?” he said.
“I’d do better as the Watchman. I can throw in some exaggerated Secret Service crap for verisimilitude and I also think Otherguy’d be a natural for the Weak Link.” She looked at her watch. “I didn’t know this was going to run so late. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an appointment back at the Manila with a hairdresser.”
Wu nodded and Georgia Blue rose and left. After she had gone, Wu looked at the still scowling Overby. “Okay, Otherguy. You fly down tomorrow.”
“Not unless you’re convinced, Artie.”
“I’m more than convinced. So is everyone else — especially Durant.”
“You get to play yourself, Otherguy,” Durant said. “The role of a lifetime.”
The talk went on for another 30 minutes, mostly about the unimportant details that always crop up after the major decisions have been made. Overby was wrangling with Durant over which hotel to use as their headquarters in Cebu when the phone rang. Wu picked it up, said hello, listened and held it out to Durant.
After his own hello, Durant heard Emily Cariaga’s voice. Usually calm and even detached, it now crackled with excitement that bordered on panic.
“You have a car, Quincy?” she asked.
“The hotel’s.”
“Then you can take me to the airport and make sure I get on the plane.”
“You’re going back to Baguio?”
“Barcelona.”
“I see.”
“Don’t say what’s not true. Remember I said I’d ask around to see what I could find out?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I asked around and what I found convinced me I’d better go somewhere else for a while.”
“But you’re going to tell me about it.”
“On the way to the airport.”
Durant looked at his watch. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
Emily Cariaga asked him to make it in twenty and hung up.
Chapter Eighteen
Because of impossible traffic, it was not until 36 minutes later at 3:39 P.M. that Durant drove the hotel Mercedes through the open steel gate of the high breeze-block wall that enclosed Emily Cariaga’s house in Forbes Park. The house was a little more than two blocks south and east of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) and it bothered Durant that there was no guard on the gate and that a beige Toyota sedan was blocking the narrow asphalt drive.
He parked just behind the Toyota and climbed slowly out of the Mercedes, staring at the house. It was one of the older ones in Forbes Park with wide eaves covering a verandah that wrapped itself around two sides and across the front. The windows were large and deeply recessed into thick stuccoed walls. The solid-looking old place seemed to promise it would be ten or even fifteen degrees cooler inside.
The next thing Durant noticed was the pair of running shoes that poked out — toes up, heels down — from beneath an elegant Traveler’s palm. The soles had been worn smooth. The shoes — and the feet inside them — were attached to a pair of jeans-clad legs. The upper legs disappeared into the thick clump of scarlet bougainvillaea that formed a backdrop for the Traveler’s palm.
A gravel path led to the running shoes but Durant avoided it, not wanting the gravel’s crunch to disturb the man in the bougainvillaea if he were asleep or — less likely — drunk. Walking on grass, Durant reached the bougainvillaea and parted it, trying without success to avoid the thorns.
The jeans-clad legs belonged to a stocky man in his mid-twenties. He had a wide ugly face, made even uglier by deep smallpox pits. He was obviously dead with an obviously broken neck. But his dark brown eyes remained open and still wore what may have been a look of mild surprise.
The man’s name was Placido, Durant remembered. He was one of the two guards who worked for Emily Cariaga. The other guard worked nights and his name was Mario. Durant also recalled that Placido was married and had three children, all boys. He couldn’t remember if Mario, the nightwatch, was married.
Durant straightened and turned toward the house. Its front door was ajar, not more than an inch or two. Durant glanced around the carefully tended grounds, looking for something with which to hit or cut or stab. He was hoping for a gardener’s machete, even a spade, or at least a rake. He found only a green plastic garden hose with a seven-inch brass nozzle.