“That’s my lookout.”
“One last question, Mr. Overby.”
He nodded.
“Do you care who ultimately gets the other half of the five million?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not as long as I get my half.” He smiled then, that quick hard utterly ruthless smile. “Aren’t you afraid of what Mr. Espiritu will do to Mrs. Espiritu when he finds out she double-crossed him?”
“As you say, that’s my lookout.”
Overby’s smile went away. “There’ll be risk. A lot of it.”
“I’m used to risk.”
“So when can I see him and make my pitch?”
“Pitch?”
“Sales talk.”
“Yes. Of course. Is tonight satisfactory?”
“Where and when?”
“I’ll telephone you,” she said. “At the hotel.”
“Fine,” Overby said, took two steps backward, and looked up at the stained-glass window. “It open?”
“The church?”
He nodded.
“You feel the need to pray?”
“I just like old churches.”
“It’s open,” she said, turned and walked quickly away. After Overby watched her disappear around the far corner of the church, he turned, tugged open one of the massive doors and went inside. Superstitious, if not religious, Overby dropped 50 pesos into the poor box for luck and took a seat in the rear row. There, he folded his arms across his chest and began to figure out his next moves. When he reached the sixth move, he stopped because after the sixth there were too many permutations. But the first move would be to buy the gun, a five-shot revolver, if possible — a belly gun. As he sat on the bench in the old church, arms still folded, Overby wondered where he should make his purchase and finally decided on Pier Two. If not Pier Two, then Pier Three. On Pier Three you could always buy damn near anything although it always cost a little more.
Chapter Twenty-five
It was the Magellan Hotel’s general manager, Antonio Imperial himself, who registered Booth Stallings at 5:41 P.M. on April Fools’ Day, 1986. Noting that Stallings was not burdened with luggage of any kind, Imperial smiled and said, “Airline lose your bag, Mr. Stallings? They’re very good at that.”
“A mix-up in Manila,” Stallings said, as he filled out the registration form. “Some friends are bringing it down.”
“Mr. Wu and Mr. Durant?” When he saw Stallings look up with the beginning of a frown, Imperial hurried on. “Otherguy — I mean, Mr. Overby — checked on all your reservations and, since Miss Blue’s already here, I assumed Wu and Durant would be bringing your luggage down tomorrow.”
The frown was canceled and Stallings smiled slightly. “Known Otherguy long?”
“More than twenty years.”
“He changed much?”
“An interesting question. I’d have to say no, not really. He’s — well, timeless, I suppose.” Imperial turned, took Stallings’ room key from its slot, turned back, reached under the counter, and came up with a small sealed clear plastic bag that contained a throwaway razor, a toothbrush, miniature tubes of shaving cream and toothpaste, and a small bottle of shampoo.
“Our compliments,” Imperial said, placing the key and the plastic bag on the counter.
“Thanks very much,” Stallings said. “What room’s Miss Blue in?”
“She’s just next door to you, four twenty-six.” Imperial snapped his fingers, as if remembering something. He turned again, picked up a small stack of mail, thumbed through it, selected a letter and handed it to Stallings. “This arrived just before you did,” he said.
Stallings examined the envelope which was square, white and cheap. His name was printed in ink. Down in the lower left-hand corner, someone had written: “Hold for arrival.” Stallings shoved the letter down into a hip pocket, gathered up his room key and plastic bag, and started for the elevator.
“Like a bellman to show you up, Mr. Stallings?” Imperial asked.
Stallings turned back. “No, but you might send up a couple of cold beers.”
It was only after the beer came, and he had drunk half of one bottle, that Booth Stallings took the letter from his hip pocket, held it up to the light, sniffed it, smelled nothing and finally tore it open.
On a single, once-folded sheet of cheap white paper, a precise hand had written:
Dear Booth,
Welcome back to Cebu. Someone we both know will call on you. Please do exactly as instructed.
Very truly yours,
Still holding the letter, Stallings crossed to the room’s window and raised the venetian blind. He reread the letter and then stared out at a red sun setting behind the Guadalupe Mountains, the same mountains in which Stallings and Alejandro Espiritu, the boy terrorists, had done much of their killing. Neither of you, he thought, ever really rid yourself of its fascination. The only difference is that you examined it and poked at it and wrote about it and made a living from it while Al, well, Al just kept on doing it.
Stallings watched what looked like a large Cessna come in for a landing at the old Cebu airport that was now used only by private planes. When his commercial flight from Manila had started its approach to Mactan Airport, Stallings at first thought he had boarded the wrong plane. But Mactan was Cebu’s new airport. The one just down the road from the Magellan Hotel was the old one that he and Espiritu, from their vantage point in the mountains, had watched the Japanese military fly in and out of.
Just as the Cessna disappeared behind some trees, there was a knock at the door. Assuming it was either Georgia Blue or Overby, Stallings said, “Come in,” and continued to stare out at what was left of the brief tropical sunset. When the door opened and a gruff voice said, “Stallings?” — making it an accusatory question — he turned quickly and found himself staring at a tall old man in his mid-to-late sixties who wore a short-sleeved tan safari jacket with a great many pockets, all of them bulging, and a matching pair of slacks.
The old man had plumb-line posture, silky white hair, a rusted complexion, small blue eyes that needed trifocals and a mouth that obviously liked giving orders. Only the thin-lipped mouth with its pronounced overbite seemed vaguely familiar to Stallings.
“Don’t remember me, do you?” the old man said in the gruff baritone that could have belonged to a 30-year-old.
“No,” Stallings said. “Should I?”
“Name’s Crouch. Vaughn Crouch. Except it was Major Crouch when you knew me.”
“Good Lord.”
“Finally got to be Colonel Crouch.”
“You sent us in.”
Crouch nodded. “You and Al Espiritu. I’m the guy.”
“What’re you—”
Crouch interrupted, as if he didn’t have enough patience for fool questions. “I live here.”
“In Cebu.”
“Here in the goddamn Magellan. Put my thirty in and retired back in seventy-two. Been here ever since. It’s cheap and if I need some part fixed, like the prostate, I can fly up to Clark or even back to Schofield in Hawaii and let the quacks there patch me up for free.” He raised his head slightly to study Stallings through the bottom lens of the trifocals. “You’ve changed some. Wouldn’t’ve known you if I’d passed you on the street. You ready?”
“For what?”
“I remember you being kind of quick, Stallings. A little snotty maybe, but quick.” Crouch shook his head. “Can’t stand dumb. I can put up with goddamn near anything but dumb.”
“Espiritu sent you.”
“He didn’t send me,” Crouch said. “He asked. Can’t say much for old Al’s politics, but he’s got a good tactical mind and always did. His fucked-up politics are his business.” Crouch paused. “Well, you ready or not?”