Rising slowly, Booth Stallings extended his right hand. Crites grabbed it with both of his and pumped it up and down as he spoke from around and behind the immense cigar. “Goddamnit, Booth, too many goddamned years.”
“Fourteen,” said Stallings who had that kind of memory. “June seventeenth, 1972.”
Crites removed his cigar, flipped back through his own mental almanac and made his eyes dart from side to side in mock panic. “The Watergate break-in. Christ, I didn’t see you there.”
Stallings couldn’t hold back his grin. “My daughter Joanna’s twenty-first birthday. She’s the one you talked to today — the one married to Secretary Know-nothing of the State Department.”
“Neal Hineline,” Crites said and nodded gravely. “A great fourteenth-century mind. Sound.” He frowned then. “But I don’t remember Joanna’s birthday.”
“That’s because you weren’t there. You were going into that fancy place that closed down and almost got turned into a McDonald’s. The... uh—”
“Sans Souci.”
“Right. And I was heading for a birthday lunch with Joanna at the Mayflower and you looked right through me.”
Crites touched his finger to his right eye. “That was before I found the miracle cure for vanity. Contacts. Now if you’re through fucking me over, let’s eat.”
“Your friend going to join us?”
Crites glanced over his shoulder in the direction the tall woman had gone and then looked at Stallings with a faint smile “She’s not exactly a friend.”
“Then let’s eat,” Booth Stallings said.
They gave Harry Crites the choice northeast corner banquette in the almost empty Montpelier Room. He and Stallings had a drink first, Perrier and bitters for Crites, vodka on ice for Stallings. They both ordered a salad and the veal and a double portion of the first-of-the-season green beans, which the waiter swore had been picked only that morning in Loudoun County, Virginia, although Stallings suspected it was the day before near Oxnard, California. After that, Harry Crites ordered the wine, which required a grave five-minute conference with the sommelier.
Once the wine was ordered, Harry Crites leaned back, sipped his drink, and examined Stallings as if he were still something that would be a wonderful buy despite a doubtful provenance.
Stallings returned the stare, mildly disappointed to find Crites had aged so well. There was just a bit of fat around the middle, although the well-tailored vest helped conceal it nicely. The round face had yet to grow another chin. The color was also good, the broken veins few, and the controlled expression still ranged from glad to gladdest.
There were a few new lines, of course, but apparently none from worry. The hair had stayed light brown, a shade or two off true blond, and what was left was just enough. Only youth was missing. It had fled — along with its twin pals, spontaneity and carelessness. What remained was a careful, if not quite cautious middle-aged man, obviously prosperous, who still planned on getting rich.
“So they bounced you,” Harry Crites said, not making it a question.
“Did they?”
Crites shrugged. “This is Washington, Booth. Where do you think you’ll light?”
“No idea.”
“Interested in a one-shot?”
“Why me?”
“You’re sole source.”
“That means I can charge a lot.”
“A hell of a lot.”
“All right,” Stallings said. “First I eat; then I listen.”
Following the veal, which turned out to be particularly good, Stallings and Crites ordered a large pot of coffee, passed up dessert, and vetoed a cognac recommended by the waiter. After two sips of coffee, Booth Stallings put his cup down and smiled at Crites. “Isn’t it curious though?”
“What?”
“That I got fired at three and by eight-fifteen I’m sitting in the Madison, eating twenty-six-dollar veal and listening to you offer me a sole-source one-shot. Who put the fix in, Harry? At the foundation?”
Crites went on lighting his after-dinner cigar, taking his time, obviously enjoying the ritual. After several puffs he contemplated the cigar fondly. When he spoke, it was more to the cigar than to Stallings. “If I said me, you’d think I was bragging. If I said not me, you’d think I was lying. So I’m going to let you think whatever you like.”
“Let’s have it then,” Stallings said. “The proposition.”
“The Philippines.”
“Well now.”
“You’ve been there.”
“Not recently.”
“A long time ago,” Crites said. “During the war.”
“Right. A long time ago.”
“We — and we means some people I’m associated with—”
Stallings interrupted. “What people?”
“Just let me tell it, Booth, will you? When I’m selling I like to maintain the flow.”
Stallings shrugged.
“Well, these people would like you to go back.”
“And do what?”
“See the man.”
“Who?”
“A guy who read that book of yours — the one that got all the raves.”
“I only wrote the one book, Harry.”
“Yeah. Anatomy of Terror. I read it. Some of it anyhow. But our guy read it all and is very, very impressed. You could say he’s a fan.”
“So what would I do, if I saw him?”
“Convince him to come down from the hills.”
“How?”
“We’ll go as high as five million U.S. deposited in Hong Kong.”
“What’s his name, Aguinaldo?”
“Who’s Aguinaldo?”
“A guy who came down from the hills for a lot of money a long time ago and went to Hong Kong.”
“Never heard of him,” Harry Crites said. “What happened?”
“He was double-crossed.”
“Then what?”
“He went back to the Philippines and turned himself into either a terrorist fool or a revolutionary hero, depending on what source you consult.”
“When was all this?”
Stallings looked away and frowned, as if trying to remember exactly. “About ninety years ago. Around in there.”
“Don’t go looking for historical parallels,” Crites said.
“Why not? They’re useful.”
“Not this time. Our guy’s ready to deal, but we need a closer; an authenticator. You.”
“Me.”
“He knows you.”
“From my book, you mean?” Stallings said, trying not to anticipate Crites’ reply.
“Not just through the book. Personally.”
“Has he got a name?”
“Alejandro Espiritu. You do know him, don’t you?”
“We’ve met,” Booth Stallings said.
Chapter Three
During the next half hour Stallings and Crites drank three cups of coffee and discussed the recent not quite bloodless February revolution in the Philippines. They touched on Ferdinand Marcos’ exile to Hawaii; Imelda’s shoes; the shambles the Filipino economy was in; the disastrous world price of sugar; Mrs. Aquino’s prospects as President (dicey, both agreed); and whether it was four or eight billion dollars that Marcos had managed to squirrel away. After discovering that neither apparently knew much more than what he had read, or seen on television, they returned to Alejandro Espiritu.
“How well did you know him?” Crites asked.
“Fairly well.”
“What was he like then?”
“Short. About five-four.”