Georgia Blue was the first to respond. “Gosh, Artie, that’s the most inspirational thing I ever heard.” She took her right hand out of the robe’s pocket and rose, gathered up the clothing she had left in the sitting room the night before, and disappeared into the bedroom.
After watching her leave, Durant turned to Wu. “I couldn’t have said it better,” he said. “But I could’ve made it shorter.” He crossed to the door, opened it and looked back at Wu. “I’m going down to the lobby and see if there’s anyone around who’ll talk to us about Emily”
“I’ll be down later,” Wu said.
After Durant was gone, Overby rose and looked around the room, nodding a goodbye first to Stallings, then to Artie Wu. “I’ve got to catch that plane,” Overby said.
“See you in Cebu, Otherguy,” Wu said.
Overby started for the door, got halfway there and turned back to Wu. “Who was all that shit really aimed at, Artie? Me?”
“You and everybody else, Otherguy.”
Overby’s answering nod only served to affirm his disbelief. “I bet,” he said, turned and left the room.
Booth Stallings rose, went over to the window and looked out at Manila Bay. “You have something on your mind you want to tell me, Artie?”
“I don’t think so.”
Stallings turned. “No likely suspects, defectors or agents provocateurs?”
“They’re all likely,” Wu said.
“Me too?”
“You too.”
“What about you and Durant?”
“Five million’s a lot of money, Booth. Keep an eye on us.”
“Everybody watches everybody else, right?”
“It’s the only safe way, if we’re really going to pull it off.”
“Think we are?”
Artie Wu didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “I think so. I really do.”
“So do I,” Booth Stallings said. “Well, I’m off.”
“Where to?”
“Corregidor,” Stallings said. “Thought I’d go see if I can ride out on a hydrofoil and take a look.” He patted his pockets to make sure he had his sunglasses, keys and wallet. “Might be the last chance I’ll ever have.”
Wu smiled. “Not planning to pass this way again?”
“Not if I can help it,” Stallings said as he opened the door and left.
When Georgia Blue came out of the bedroom she wore the same clothes she had worn the night before. The same bag hung over her right shoulder and at the sight of the still waiting Artie Wu her right hand slipped down inside it.
“Sit down, Georgia,” Wu said.
She moved to the green armchair and perched on the edge of its seat cushion, her knees together, her hand still down inside the bag and wrapped around the Walther.
“You fucked up, didn’t you?” Wu said.
“I didn’t know who she was, Artie.”
“You could’ve checked with somebody.”
“But I didn’t.”
“Durant’s... well, Durant’s close to the boiling point.”
She nodded. “I could tell.”
“If he boils over, the deal’s dead.”
“I know.”
“So we can’t take any more fuckups — by anyone.”
“Especially by me, you mean.”
Wu shook his head. “Especially by Otherguy.”
Georgia Blue’s hand slowly came out of the shoulder bag. It was empty. “Well,” she said softly. “What d’you know.”
“Down in Cebu Otherguy’ll be the Weak Link. You’ll be the Watchman. Your role’s going to be for real — and so is his, I’m afraid.”
There was a bleak silence until Georgia Blue said, “I’ve known Otherguy a long time, Artie.”
Wu sighed. “So have I.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded gravely.
“So... ‘for a handful of silver he left us,’” she began.
“‘Just for a riband to stick in his coat,’” Wu finished.
“Browning, right?”
“‘The Lost Leader.’”
“Well, shit.”
“Stay on him, Georgia.”
She nodded, rising.
“He’s smart and he’s tricky,” Wu said.
“I was once his star pupil, Artie.”
“And mine.”
“Then I must know all you two know,” she said. “And then some.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Durant noticed the bodyguards first: an almost matched pair of wide thick Filipinos in their late thirties with quick eyes, empty hands and twin lumps on their right hips beneath their sport shirts’ squared-off tails.
One of their charges was racing on short fat legs toward the Manila Hotel’s newsstand-drugstore. He was followed by a girl of nine who was trying not to hurry so she would appear prim, grown-up and in sharp contrast to her six-year-old brat of a brother, who her parents still swore was not adopted.
Walking between the bodyguards was the mother, a not quite plump pretty woman in her early thirties, who wore a black linen dress with white piping that Durant suspected had come from Neiman-Marcus. He knew that Neiman-Marcus was the only thing the woman had ever liked about Dallas.
Rising from his chair, Durant made a slow oblique approach across the lobby so that the woman and her two bodyguards would see him simultaneously. But the quicker of the bodyguards noticed him first and obviously didn’t like what he saw.
The bodyguard snapped something at his partner who shooed the boy and girl into the newsstand-drugstore. The other bodyguard planted himself squarely in front of the woman, his right hand straying back to the concealed lump on his hip. Durant came to a full stop. The woman in the black dress with white piping touched the bodyguard on the arm and said something that made him relax.
The woman who now smiled at Durant from behind and a little to the left of the bodyguard was Restituta Ortiz, mercifully called Tootie by almost everyone. She was married to Cristobal Ortiz who had taken his modest inheritance and invested it at first in banking and shipping, with fair results, and then in politics, which had made him rich.
The dead Emily Cariaga and Tootie Ortiz had grown up together in Manila and later spent a year at Miss Hockaday’s in Dallas, hating every minute of it. Back in Manila they were married within a month of each other. When Durant and Emily Cariaga’s affair had first begun — and the cuckolded Patrocinio Cariaga was still alive — it was Tootie Ortiz who had served the lovers as go-between, even though she was hopelessly inept at keeping the assignation times and places straight. But she wholeheartedly had approved of the affair because, as Emily Cariaga once said, Tootie likes anything romantic, daring and dirty — as long as it’s once-removed.
When Durant reached her, the first thing Tootie Ortiz did was to take his right hand in both of hers and whisper, “It was beautiful, Quincy. It was the most beautiful requiem mass I’ve ever seen.”
“I’d’ve liked to have been there, Tootie, but—” He shrugged, making the shrug say that the mass was for the dead Emily’s family and friends and not for her foreign paramour.
Tootie nodded. “I understand — and so does Emily.”
“We need to talk, Tootie.”
“About—?”
“Yes.”
“Now?”
Durant nodded. She looked at her watch. “Well,” she said, her voice full of doubt, “I suppose we could, except—” As was frequently the case, Tootie Ortiz didn’t finish her sentence. The almost chronic incompletions were one of her less endearing habits. Durant waited patiently for the question he was sure she would ask.
“Did you really find—?”
“I found her,” Durant said.
“Was it—?” The expression on her face was a synonym for terrible.
“It was worse than that, Tootie.”
She turned to the bodyguard and said something in a low voice. The bodyguard frowned his disapproval. She snapped at him. The bodyguard gave Durant a glare that was almost a warning, turned and entered the newsstand-drugstore where his partner was reading a comic book to the little boy. The boy’s sister was trying to look as if she had no idea who either of them was.