“What a good boy,” said the beaming look that Artie Wu gave Jack Cray. Aloud, he said, “And thus we all arrive safely at the perfect stalemate.”
“Otherwise known as mutual blackmail,” Durant said.
“I like detente better,” Weaver Jordan said.
Wu beamed again. “Then we’ll call it detente.”
They came out of the tropical rain forest at 3:31 P.M., both limping a little, Otherguy Overby in the lead, Booth Stallings a dozen or so feet behind. They saw the bamboo bridge first and then, a little to the right of it, seated in the shade of some flourishing nipa palms, Wu, Durant and Georgia Blue.
Durant was up first and trotted toward Overby who stopped and waited for him. “Where the hell is he?” Durant demanded.
“Right behind me the last I looked,” Overby said and turned to find Booth Stallings moving slowly toward him. “Yeah. There he is.”
Durant waited patiently until Stallings joined them. “I mean Espiritu.”
“Oh,” Overby said. “Him. Well, he couldn’t make it.”
“Espiritu’s dead,” said Stallings.
“What happened?”
Neither Overby nor Stallings apparently wanted to speak first. Finally, Stallings said, “We’d like to sit down in some shade, have a drink of water and maybe a sip of whiskey, if anybody’s got any, and then I’ll tell you what happened. And if Otherguy doesn’t like my version, he can tell his.”
They sat in a row in the shade of the flourishing nipa palms, three big wide-eyed kids named Wu, Durant and Blue, listening transfixed to the tale told at storytime in the jungle kindergarten. At least, that’s how Otherguy Overby would later remember it.
Stallings, the tale teller, began with the death of Alejandro Espiritu’s nephew, Orestes; continued with the death of Carmen Espiritu in the cave; reached his climax with the death of Espiritu himself (“Otherguy shot him twice in the back before old Al shot me. Afterward, Otherguy felt a little bad about it but I sure as hell didn’t”); and ended with the arrival of Minnie Espiritu and her five young guards.
When Stallings was done with his story, he asked, “Anybody think to bring a bottle?”
Georgia Blue reached into her apparently bottomless shoulder bag and produced a half-liter of Black and White Scotch, which she handed to Stallings. He twisted off the cap, had a long swallow and passed it to Overby who drank and offered it to Artie Wu who shook his head. So did Durant. Overby gave the bottle back to Georgia Blue and then crept into his private sealed-off place to wait and see who would get blamed for what.
Wu looked at Overby and nodded sympathetically. “Is that about what happened, Otherguy?”
“That’s it.”
“So what d’you think went wrong?”
“Overall?”
Wu nodded.
Overby thought before answering. “You came up with a real smart plan, Artie. One of your best. Maybe a little tricky here and there, and maybe a little too egg-crated, but what the hell, there was a big score involved and none of us, except you and Durant, have worked together for a while. So that was okay. And everybody was given a job to do and, as far as I can tell, everybody did their job — except one person.”
“Who?” Durant asked.
Although sweat still flowed down over Overby’s face, the smile he gave Durant was one of chilly disapproval. “Espiritu. You guys sort of forgot to give him the whole script. Especially the last act. If you had, well, maybe, things would’ve turned but better.”
“Maybe,” Artie Wu said. “Maybe not.” He leaned toward Overby, his expression frankly curious. “What if you hadn’t shot him, Otherguy?”
Overby sighed. “Well, Booth here’d be dead and I — well, I probably could’ve been five million bucks richer.” He paused. “Two and a half million anyway.”
Durant glared at him. “You were going solo, weren’t you?”
Overby returned the glare. “Was I?”
Artie Wu smiled. “Let’s assume the thought crossed your mind — fleetingly, of course.”
Overby only shrugged.
Booth Stallings looked at Overby with a wry fond smile. “That was a hell of a choice you made, Otherguy.”
Overby nodded. “Well, I made it,” he said. “And now I’ll just have to live with it.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
When Booth Stallings came down to breakfast at 6:30 the next morning after three and a half hours’ sleep, the only other customer in the Magellan Hotel’s Zugbu restaurant was the retired Colonel, Vaughn Crouch. Stallings helped himself to rice, fruit and scrambled eggs from the breakfast buffet and sat down at Crouch’s table.
“What time’d you get back?” Crouch asked, spearing the last piece of ham on his plate.
“A little before three this morning.”
“I got back yesterday afternoon — around four-thirty.”
“You didn’t have to walk as far.”
“The rest of your bunch sleeping in?”
Stallings nodded and tried some of the eggs, which tasted like eggs had tasted when he was a child.
“Then I guess they haven’t seen this yet,” Crouch said, handing Stallings a Cebu City morning newspaper. “My kids made the front page,” he announced proudly. “Had themselves a hell of a time.”
Booth Stallings read the headline first, which claimed in 48-point Bodoni bold italics across three columns: ‘SURRENDER’ REPORT DISPUTED. He then read the story, or at least its first three paragraphs:
CEBU CITY — Yesterday’s surrender of 24 rebels in Catmon Town, north of this city, was immediately branded as an “elaborate psy-war operation run by the CIA and the army’s Regional Unified Command to demoralize revolutionary forces.”
The statement challenging the alleged surrender was issued by the Cebu Provincial Operational Command of the New People’s Army (POC-NPA) and signed by “Commander Min,” the nom de guerre (war name) of Miss Minerva Espiritu, sister of NPA legend, Alejandro Espiritu.
The 24 alleged rebels who “defected” yesterday were accompanied by two men eyewitnesses described as “European males.” Catmon Town police refused to identify the two European males and later denied their existence.
Stallings gave up on the story, handed the paper to Crouch and went back to his breakfast. After another forkful of eggs, he said, “Where were you?”
The retired Colonel grinned. “Once I shadowed the kids and those two Langley shitbirds down from the hills, I kind of disappeared.” He indicated the newspaper. “Sure you don’t want to finish the story?” he said. “It gets better.”
“Who cares?” Stallings said and pushed his breakfast plate away.
Crouch slipped on his trifocals to give Stallings a closer inspection. “Something happened, didn’t it — up in the hills?”
Stallings nodded. “Al got himself killed. I guess you could call that something — something you’d better not tell anyone.”
“By God. Old Al,” Crouch said, leaned back in his chair, took off his glasses and stared off into blurred nothingness for almost a minute. “Well, I think he was just about due, don’t you?”
“I don’t think Al thought so,” Booth Stallings said.
At a few minutes after nine that morning, Otherguy Overby came out of the entrance to the Magellan Hotel, heading for the air-conditioned hotel van that would take him, Wu, Durant, Stallings and Georgia Blue to the Cebu airport and the eleven o’clock flight to Manila.
Something blue, yellow and black caught his eye. It was the Rotary Club of Metro Cebu’s four-question billboard whose fourth question still wondered: “Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?”