The elegant man examined Durant with interest. “I don’t believe you’re Mr. Stallings, are you?”
“I don’t believe I am.”
“I’m Jack Cray and he’s Weaver Jordan. We’re from the Embassy and since Mr. Stallings apparently isn’t here, we’d very much like to talk to you, Mr. Durant. And also to Mr. Wu.”
“What about?”
Cray erased the polite smile he had been wearing and made himself look serious — even grave. “Prison, I suppose, and how to avoid it.”
“Come in,” Durant said.
After the introductions were over they all sat down, except Durant, who leaned against a wall. Cray and Jordan took chairs; Wu the couch. “I think I’d like a beer,” Wu said with a smile. “Anyone else?”
“Yeah, I’ll take a beer,” Jordan said, ignoring the chilly look Cray gave him.
Durant served Wu and Jordan beers and then resumed his place at the wall. Jordan popped his can open, drank thirstily and grinned at Durant. “You’re the stand-up guy, huh?”
“Piles,” Durant said, looked at his watch and then at Jack Cray. “We’re a little rushed.”
The answering expression on Cray’s face seemed indifferent to time. It was a lean face that stretched tanned skin over crags and hollows, planes and ridges. The mouth curved slightly up at one end, down at the other, giving the entire face a look of chronic dubiety. The voice matched the face. It was a baritone, harsh and dark and full of gravel.
“As our beloved Vice-President might put it,” the gravelly voice said, “you guys are in deep doo-doo.”
“That bad?” Artie Wu said.
Jack Cray ignored Wu and looked at Durant. “You and/or Mr. Wu did identify or discover the bodies of the late Emily Cariaga and the equally late Ernesto Pineda, right?”
“Right,” Durant said.
“And both of you are associated with a Mr. Booth Stallings who arrived in Manila accompanied by a Miss Georgia Blue and a Mr. Maurice Overby, also known as Otherguy Overby?”
Weaver Jordan belched softly and said, “Old Otherguy. And here I thought he was in jail again.”
Wu studied Weaver Jordan, nodded as if at some sad conclusion, and turned to Cray. “Was your last sentence an accusation or merely a question?”
“A question.”
“Then the answer is no.”
“You’re not associated with them?”
Wu drank some of his beer and said, “Mr. Durant and I are ‘associated,’ as you call it. We’re partners. We’ve also known both Miss Blue and Mr. Overby for quite a few years. Mr. Stallings we met only recently.”
“Let me put it another way,” Cray said. “Are you engaged in any venture with Stallings, Blue and Overby?”
“To put it still another way,” Durant said, “that’s none of your fucking business.”
Cray smiled and shifted his gaze to the ceiling. “I think I’ll try delicacy.” He brought the gaze down and locked it on Durant. “Two weeks ago, or thereabouts, Booth Stallings was approached to serve as an intermediary to a political figure here in the Philippines. He was smart enough to discuss the proposition with his son-in-law who holds a responsible post at the State Department.”
“The car wax king,” Durant said.
Cray ignored the description. “Mr. Stallings’ son-in-law eventually committed the gist of the proposition to paper and circulated it within the department just at a time when policy toward the Philippines was undergoing an extensive review. The memorandum caused serious discussion at the highest level.”
“The shit hit the fan,” Weaver Jordan said with a grin.
“His son-in-law wired Mr. Stallings, urging him to abandon his project,” Cray went on. “The message was delivered personally to Mr. Stallings today.”
“By me,” Weaver Jordan said. “Stallings fired back a rocket that said, ‘Get stuffed, Love, Dad.’”
“Pithy,” Artie Wu said.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Stallings’ reply brought our shop all the way into the picture,” Cray said.
Wu looked at Durant, apparently puzzled. “Their shop?”
“That big store out in Langley,” Durant said.
“Oh.”
Cray’s sigh was one of nearly exhausted patience. “It was decided at a very high level that Booth Stallings is to be prevented from carrying out his... venture.” Cray paused to stare coldly first at Durant, then Wu. “Those who aid or abet him, wittingly or unwittingly, will also be... discouraged.”
Artie Wu turned to Durant. “I’d say old Booth’s gone and got himself into a real pickle.”
“Dearie me, yes,” Durant said as he left his spot by the wall and moved over to where Jack Cray sat. Staring down at Cray, he asked, “What do the Aquino people say about all these crazy Americans running around, trying to interfere with their government?” When Cray made no reply, Durant looked surprised. “Don’t tell me you haven’t even mentioned it to them?”
Weaver Jordan tossed his now empty beer can into a wastebasket and said, “Why don’t we just load these two assholes on the next flight back to L.A.?”
“Yes,” Artie Wu said softly. “Why not, Mr. Cray?”
Cray rose. Although he had been sitting for at least 15 minutes there were no wrinkles in his gray suit. He gave Wu and Durant a final inspection.
“Within a week we’ll’ve turned you two inside out.” He smiled. “Unless Lieutenant Cruz beats us to it.”
When neither Wu nor Durant replied, Cray turned, walked swiftly to the door and opened it. Weaver Jordan also started for the door, but stopped long enough to give Wu and Durant one of his small tight grins and a wink.
“See you in Cebu, guys,” he said and followed Jack Cray out of the room.
Chapter Twenty-four
With Otherguy Overby buckled into one of its rear port-side window seats, the Boeing 707 took only an hour to fly the 365 miles due south from Manila to the long skinny island that centuries before had been called Sugbo, then Zugbu and, finally, Cebu.
Bristling with a spine of green mountains, the island was 300 kilometers long and 40 kilometers across at its widest point. About halfway between its northern and southern tips, facing east into the Bohol Straits, was the port of Cebu City, population 600,000 or thereabouts, and of all the cities in Asia, Otherguy Overby’s absolute favorite.
As the Philippine Airlines 707 began its descent to Mactan Airport, Overby thought about why Cebu City still ranked so high in his pantheon of metropolises. For one thing it’s old enough, he told himself, and you like real old towns. Cebu City had been founded in 1565 — an easy date for Overby to remember because it was exactly 400 years later that he had walked down the gangplank of a Sweet Lines coaster and onto Pier Three with $29 and change in his pocket.
A year after that, he had flown up to Manila and then on to Bangkok with close to $3,000 in a brand-new money belt. And that’s why you like Cebu best of all, he decided. Because when you were a kid here you got fat instead of winding up dead broke on the beach.
The Spanish had founded Cebu City 44 years after Chief Lapu-Lapu’s spear ended the life of the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan on Mactan Island, the same island where Overby’s plane was landing. They had finally put up a statue to Lapu-Lapu, and named a tasty fish after him, but what the Cebuanos revered far more than the dead chief were the fragments of Magellan’s Cross, the first Christian cross ever seen in the Philippines.
The fragments were said to be sealed inside another cross made out of tindalo wood that was on display in a kiosk on upper Magallanes Street. Overby remembered that the shrine, if that’s what it was, had drawn pilgrims, beggars and pickpockets in almost equal numbers. He assumed it still did.
Once inside the airport terminal, Overby ignored the blandishments of a dozen guitar salesmen and found a driver who swore his taxi’s air-conditioning still worked. Partly to get back into practice, Overby haggled with the driver over a flat rate to the Magellan Hotel. The bargain struck, they left the airport, drove up and over the Mandaue-Mactan bridge, past the Timex plant, along the south edge of the Club Filipino golf links and into the short drive of the 23-year-old Magellan Hotel that long ago had awarded itself four stars for ambience and five for service.