Carmen Espiritu took the bag from her shoulder and dropped it through the window onto the back seat. After opening the front door, she slipped behind the Toyota’s steering wheel.
“How long will those guys hold still like that?” Overby asked.
“Until I tell them to move,” she said. “But if you dim the headlights, they’ll sit down.”
Overby dimmed the headlights and the three men with the M-16s sat down on the dirt road and lit cigarettes.
“I went looking for Booth tonight at the Magellan and found the old Colonel,” Overby said. “Colonel Crouch. Guess what he told me after a couple of drinks?”
“I don’t care to guess,” she said.
“He told me he’d dropped Booth off about an hour after sunset right here at this very spot where you called and told me to be at midnight. So here I am and here you are and my question, I suppose, is where the hell’s old Booth?”
“With my husband.”
“Really.”
“Yes.”
“Let me ask a real dumb question, Carmen. Is your husband alive?”
“That is a stupid question.”
“Well, it’s just that the only Espiritu anybody’s heard from in the flesh is Mrs. Espiritu, and I was just wondering if Mr. Espiritu is alive, dead or maybe in a coma.”
“He’s quite well.”
“Good. And he’s planning to hang on to Booth for a while?”
“Yes.”
Overby nodded approvingly. “A hostage, huh?”
“Stallings is insurance,” she said. “His other use is to convince my husband of the money’s... legitimacy.”
“Jesus, lady. Buy-off money’s always a bastard.”
“Convince him of the money’s existence, not its genealogy. My husband suspects this could be a very elaborate trick to lure him to Hong Kong where there’ll be no money and he’ll find himself just another penniless exile.”
“I like the way his mind works,” Overby said. “When was this deal first dangled in front of him?”
“Less than a month ago.”
“And he nibbled, but insisted on Stallings as the go-between.”
“Yes.”
“Who approached him?”
“I won’t answer that, Mr. Overby.”
Overby grinned. “Don’t blame you. If you did, then I’d know what you know.”
“How soon do you need to see my husband?” she asked.
“Tomorrow at the latest. And you’ll have to get Stallings out of the way for an hour or two so your husband and I can be alone.”
She nodded. “Be back here at three tomorrow afternoon and I’ll take you to him.” She smiled for the first time. “But don’t expect me to leave you alone with him, Mr. Overby.”
Overby returned her smile. “I didn’t think that for a second.”
Chapter Twenty seven
At 1:43 A.M. Otherguy Overby returned to the Magellan Hotel, parked the gray Toyota and entered the lobby to discover Artie Wu seated on one of the low couches, hands clasped across his belly, eyes fixed on the entrance.
“Artie,” Overby said, his eyes darting first to the right where Durant leaned on the counter of the closed cigar stand, and then to the left where Georgia Blue stood in front of the closed cashier’s cage, her right hand down inside her shoulder bag. It was then that Overby resolved never again to have anything to do with women who wore shoulder bags.
He also decided to preempt Wu. “I think they’ve got Booth Stallings,” he said, watching carefully for Wu’s reaction, which turned out to be only a polite nod of limited interest.
“They?” said Durant who somehow was now only a foot or so away from Overby. “Who the fuck’re they?”
Overby wasn’t surprised by Durant’s ability to transport himself, as if by magic, but he didn’t have to like it. “Christ, you’re sneaky,” Overby told him and turned back to Wu.
“When’d you guys get here, Artie?” Overby asked. “You weren’t due till tomorrow.” He remembered the time then and amended his statement. “Or today, I guess it is now.”
“Something came up and we chartered a plane,” Wu said. “A Cessna, wasn’t it?” The question went to Durant.
“A Cessna,” Durant agreed.
“We came in at sundown,” Wu said, again staring at Overby. “Landed at the old airport up the road. The flight down was quite interesting. We flew at about six thousand and were able to see a lot. The islands all looked very lush, Otherguy, very prosperous.” He paused. “Very deceptive.”
“Ask him who’s got Stallings,” Georgia Blue said, crossing from the cashier’s cage to stand behind Wu’s couch.
“Never hurry Otherguy,” Wu said. “He’ll tell us after he decides what he wants us to know.”
“You want me to tell it down here?” Overby said. “Or up in the room of somebody who’s got a bottle because I don’t.”
“I’ve got Scotch,” Durant said.
Wu rose from the low couch without any help from his hands. “Then let’s use your room, Quincy.”
Durant leaned against the wall as usual. Overby sat in the room’s one armchair. Georgia Blue was at the small writing table. Wu sat on the bed, leaning against its headboard. Durant had mixed and served the drinks of Scotch and not very cool tap water after Wu went next door to his room and returned with two more glasses.
After a long swallow of his drink, Artie Wu put it down and took out a cigar. While inspecting it carefully, possibly for hidden flaws, he said, “So who has Booth Stallings, Otherguy?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Espiritu,” Overby said, flicking his eyes from Wu to Durant to Georgia Blue, trying to gauge the effect of his revelation. He was neither surprised nor alarmed when there was none. Overby drank some of his Scotch and water, leaned back in the armchair and waited to see what course Wu would take.
“Mrs. Espiritu?” Wu said, raising a mildly perplexed eyebrow.
Overby let himself relax although he didn’t let it show. “Carmen Espiritu,” he said. “I think everybody’s met her at one time or another. Everybody but me.”
“She told us she was his granddaughter,” Georgia Blue said. “Although Booth didn’t believe her.”
“From what I hear, she lies a lot,” Overby said.
“You hear that where exactly?” Durant asked.
“I’ll tell you where,” Overby said. “I went looking for Stallings this evening — yesterday evening, I guess — to see if he’d like a drink. I called his room, banged on his door — nothing. Well, the hotel manager’s a friend of mine. Tony Imperial. When I first knew Tony twenty years ago he was a bellhop. So I asked him if he’d seen Stallings and he says he saw him with a retired U.S. Army colonel who lives here in the hotel. A guy called Crouch. Vaughn Crouch, like Vaughn Monroe — remember him? And Tony says Crouch and Stallings left in the Colonel’s car. An old yellow VW. Okay?”
Wu nodded for Overby to continue. “Well, I hang around and the Colonel comes back alone. So I make a small move on him in the bar, nothing special, and after a couple of drinks he tells me how back in World War II he sent Stallings and Espiritu and six other guys into Cebu on an I and R patrol that only those two came back from. Stallings and Espiritu. So when he retires here in, I think, seventy-two, the Colonel looks up Espiritu and keeps in touch, even after Espiritu goes underground. Well, the Colonel claims it was Espiritu who asked him to drive Stallings up into the hills there. And that’s what he did. So I ask him where in the hills did he drop Stallings off and he draws me a map. Well, I got in the car that I rented from Avis next door and drove up to take a look.”
“At night?” Wu asked.
“Sure at night. When else was there? You can see things at night, Artie. For all I knew they’d have signs up: This way to the NPA Camp. Except they didn’t. So I came back. Oh, yeah. It was the Colonel who told me about Carmen and how much she lies. The Colonel doesn’t much like Carmen.”