“Sorry, I have the wrong number,” Durant said and hung up.
Artie Wu went back to his chair with a broad grin. “Otherguy and the Secret Service,” he said.
Durant wasn’t smiling. “I wonder who that dipshit told them he was?”
“You ever hear him do Overby of Reuters? Very plummy. Or he might’ve been the Embassy’s first secretary calling at the Ambassador’s behest. For that he’d’ve used some Yale gargle.” Wu’s smile went away and he sighed. “You know who he was calling Washington about, of course.
Durant nodded. “Let’s go talk to Georgia.”
Wu rose. “See how she’s feeling.”
It was always Otherguy Overby’s theory that if you wanted to lose yourself, you should head for the last place they would ever look. That was why, after checking out of the Magellan Hotel, he had checked into the Cebu YMCA at 61 Jones Avenue. Using his YMCA membership card, Overby had been given a five percent discount off the 40-peso price of his single room with electric fan.
Overby had carefully kept his YMCA membership up to date ever since 1965 when he first had checked into the Christian hostelry on Jones Avenue. From time to time, he had either hidden out or economized in YMCAs from New York to Hong Kong. The one in Kowloon, located just down the street from the Peninsula Hotel, was his particular favorite. It offered the same view as the Peninsula for a tenth of the price. In the early seventies Overby had lived in the Kowloon YMCA for two months while operating out of the Peninsula’s splendid next-door lobby. After scoring US$60,000 off a Taipei industrialist, Overby checked out of the YMCA and into a suite at the Peninsula. But first he made sure it offered exactly the same harbor view as did his room at the YMCA.
He sat now in a wooden straight chair in his small one-window room, his shirt off, arms folded across his chest, feet firmly on the floor, a can of cold beer handy. The YMCA’s electric fan blew muggy air at him. He was thinking about his phone call to Washington. He had made it because it was a loose end and his finicky nature demanded that loose ends be either tied up or snipped off.
The phone call to the Secret Service had done neither. Instead, it had proved to be a hard tug at a thread that could unravel the entire skein and — if he worked it right — turn into the sweetest no-comeback deal of all time with the chance of retribution so slight as to be almost nonexistent. Except for that fucking Durant. Overby decided he would have to think some more about Durant.
When Wu and Durant came into her room, Georgia Blue waved the $50,000 receipt under Wu’s nose. “Just what the hell is this, Artie?” she demanded.
“Precisely what it says. You were asleep. We needed the money. So we helped ourselves and left the marker. If you need a detailed accounting, you can have it when it’s over.”
“I have a right to know what you blew fifty thousand on — and don’t give me any of that ‘need to know’ crap either.”
Artie Wu looked around the room. “I seem to remember a bottle of Scotch somewhere.”
“What’d you blow it on, Artie?” she said.
“Where’s the bottle?” Durant said.
“In there,” she said, pointing to the closet. “Top shelf.” She turned back to Wu. “Well?”
“Everything’s reached that delicate stage, Georgia, where compartmentalization is best. You don’t know what the fifty thousand went for. We don’t know what Otherguy’s up to. Or you, for that matter. We have to assume that each of us is working along the general outline agreed to in Manila. With individual improvisation and variations, of course.”
“Tell her about Otherguy’s variation,” Durant said as he came back with a bottle of Scotch in one hand and three small glasses in the other. He poured whiskey into the glasses, offering them to Georgia Blue and Artie Wu.
“What about Otherguy?” she asked after a sip of the whiskey.
“He made a phone call and checked out,” Wu said. “No forwarding, as the skiptracers put it.”
“Who’d he call?”
“A number in Washington.” Wu looked at Durant. “You happen to remember it, Quincy?”
Durant looked up at the ceiling and rattled off (202) 634-5100 as if it were printed there.
Wu kept his gaze on Georgia Blue. She was wearing only a thin white silk robe, not quite transparent, but so sheer that Artie Wu almost thought he could see the flush race up her body and pinken her cheeks.
“You fucks,” she said. “You called it, didn’t you?”
“Recognize the number, Georgia?” Durant asked.
“The Service’s number. The Connecticut Avenue office.”
“Wonder why Otherguy would call the Secret Service?” Durant said.
“To find out if I’m still working for them. That’s how that rat’s nest he uses for a mind works.”
“And are you, Georgia?” Wu asked softly. “Still working for them?”
“Sure I am, Artie.”
Wu smiled. “I didn’t think so.”
“But you weren’t certain, were you?”
Still smiling, Wu shrugged.
“Did you check my calls today?” she asked.
“Just Otherguy’s,” Wu said.
“If you’d checked mine, you’d’ve found I called Harry Crites.”
“The man with the money,” Durant said.
She nodded. “The man with the money. I asked him to transfer it all to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.”
“Which branch?” Wu asked. “That new headquarters they’ve built on Des Voeux Road?”
“That’s the one. I asked Crites to make it a joint account, Artie. Booth Stallings’ name and mine. Five million dollars. It’ll take both of us to draw it out.”
“Then I very much hope that nothing happens to you,” Wu said.
“Or to Stallings,” she said, turning to Durant. “But you’ll make sure of that, won’t you, Quincy?”
“Bet on it,” Durant said.
Artie Wu and Georgia Blue were talking about Otherguy Overby again when Durant left them and went to his room. He opened the door, switched on a light and found Carmen Espiritu seated in the chair by the window air-conditioning unit. She wore a light tan dress. Both hands were in her lap. They were also wrapped around a semiautomatic pistol that was aimed at Durant. He thought it looked like a small Browning.
“How’re you, Carmen?” Durant said, went to the closet door, opened it, looked inside and moved to the bathroom, which he also inspected. He then crossed to Carmen Espiritu, took the pistol from her, noting that it was a .38-caliber Browning, and shoved it down into his left hip pocket under the squared-off tails of his sports shirt.
“How did you know I wouldn’t shoot?” she asked, as if not really interested in an answer.
“Because if you were going to, you’d’ve done it when I turned to switch on the light. What’s on your mind?”
“Overby.”
“What about him?” Durant asked as he went to a wall and leaned against it.
“He says you and the woman and Wu are going to cheat my husband out of the money. The five million.”
“Overby told you that?”
She nodded.
“What else?”
“He said that if I’d arrange for him to see my husband, he’d present a plan that would let Alejandro keep at least half of the five million.”
“And Overby’d get the other half.”
“Yes.”
“So you set up the meeting and they froze you out.”
“I... I don’t quite understand what you’re—”
Durant interrupted. “Come on, Carmen. You approach Overby — or he approaches you. He warns you that the people he works with are crooks and swears that if you’ll work with him, you two’ll split the five million. But to make his plan work, he has to talk to the mark — your husband. Alejandro Espiritu. Himself. So you arrange the meeting and they cut you out because you’re no longer needed. Overby’s going for the whole five million, of course — not just half.” Durant paused. “And I’d say so is your husband.” He grinned at her. “Some trio.”