Overby looked at Wu. “Did she still have her shoulder bag when they pulled her out of the drink, Artie?”
Wu slowly shook his head no.
“Jesus,” Overby whispered.
Durant cleared his throat. “May we take a look, Booth?”
“You do it,” Stallings said and handed the attaché case to Durant.
Durant went to the couch, sat down and put the attache case on the coffee table. He stared at it as Overby and Wu gathered round.
Durant looked up at them, shrugged, undid the brass snaps and raised the lid. A Bank of Hong Kong and Shanghai envelope was all the case contained, except for Stallings’ passport. Durant tossed it to him.
Again, Durant stared at the envelope, then snatched it up and ripped it open. Inside were five buff-colored checks.
“I think I’m going to cry,” said Otherguy Overby.
At 4:15 that afternoon, Booth Stallings stepped out of a taxi and again entered the small Chinese restaurant that was two blocks east and six blocks north of the Hong Kong Peninsula Hotel.
The same young Chinese woman smiled at him in recognition and led him back to the same last booth. Sitting there, gazing into a glass of beer, was Minnie Espiritu.
She looked up as Stallings slid into the booth. “I didn’t think you’d show,” she said.
“I wasn’t sure you would,” Stallings said.
“Beer?” she asked.
“Tea.”
“One tea,” Minnie Espiritu said to the young Chinese woman who turned and left.
“Well?” Minnie Espiritu said.
“You want the ground rules again?”
“Just the catch.”
“No catch. I give you one million bucks that you can spend any way you want.”
“Providing?” she said.
“Providing you give Al his funeral. The biggest one Cebu’s ever seen.”
Minnie Espiritu leaned back in the booth and examined Stallings coldly. “They don’t know Alejandro’s dead, do they? Manila, I mean.”
“No,” Stallings said. “They don’t.”
“But they think you guys are going to kill him.”
“That’s right.”
“For the five million. That way they’re not out anything.”
“Right again.”
“I could blow both you and Manila out of the water, couldn’t I?”
“It’d be a one-day story, Minnie. Maybe two. And you’d be out a million bucks.”
Seconds went by before she nodded. “Let’s see it.”
Stallings reached into an inside breast pocket, brought out a buff-colored check and handed it to her just as the Chinese woman returned with his tea. Minnie Espiritu clapped the check against her breasts until the Chinese woman left. She then stared at the check, her lips moving silently as she carefully counted its six zeroes.
“Made out to cash and certified, I see,” she said and silently counted the zeroes for the second time.
“No way to stop payment on it either,” Stallings said and sipped his tea.
“One... million... dollars.”
“One million,” he agreed.
“I could run it through our Panama account,” she said more to herself than to him as he took another sip of tea. When he looked up he saw two tears rolling down her cheeks.
“I spent five years in the States begging for money,” she said, “and in all that time I didn’t even raise one third of this.” She smiled a winner’s smile. “Okay, Booth, he’ll get his rotten funeral.”
Stallings raised his cup of tea to her. “Have a nice revolt, Minnie.”
When he returned to the Peninsula Hotel at 5:21, Stallings called Artie Wu’s room. When there was no answer, he asked hotel information for the room numbers of Durant and Overby. A few moments later, the operator said, “I’m sorry, but Mr. Durant and Mr. Overby have checked out.”
“What about Mr. Wu — Mr. Arthur Wu?”
It took her another five seconds to check. “I’m sorry, but he too has departed.”
Booth Stallings thanked her, hung up the house phone, and wandered over to a table in the lobby where he ordered a Scotch and water. As he waited for it, he took out the other buff check and, like Minnie Espiritu, counted the six zeroes silently, wondering how he would spend the money.
Chapter Forty-three
At 12:45 P.M. on the sixteenth of May, 1986, a Friday, Booth Stallings sat on his favorite bench in Dupont Circle, his face turned up to the spring sun, waiting for his luncheon guest and remembering, for no very good reason, that on this date in seventeen-sixty-something, Boswell had first met Dr. Johnson.
Two minutes later, Harry Crites sat down next to him on the bench, cracked a smile and said, “What’s for lunch?”
“Drugstore chili dogs,” Stallings said, offering a white greasy paper sack.
“I like chili dogs,” Crites said, took one, unwrapped it and, leaning forward to avoid the drip, bit into it.
Stallings slowly unwrapped his own chili dog. “Sorry about your employee, Harry. But there was nothing I could do.”
Crites nodded, chewed and smiled slightly, remembering not to show any teeth. “Georgia, you mean?” he said after he swallowed.
“Georgia,” Stallings said, curious about what kind of self-absolution Crites would offer.
Harry Crites finished his chili dog in two enormous bites, chewed some more, swallowed, wiped his mouth and hands carefully with a paper napkin, rose and stared down at Stallings.
“I didn’t hire her, Booth,” he said. “She hired me.”
Stallings stared back at him, unblinking, determined not to let his face betray anything — not surprise or disappointment or sadness. Especially not sadness. “She hired you to get me fired and recruited,” he said, not making it a question.
“You were sole source, remember?” Crites said. “All it took was half a dozen phone calls, a dinner at the Madison and a trip to L.A.” He smiled the smile of a superior mind. “I imagine you’d like to know how much I cost her.”
Stallings only nodded, despising himself for the curiosity he was unable to stifle.
“Fifty thousand plus expenses.” Crites produced his superior smile again. “But hell, Booth, it all worked out okay. I saw on TV a few weeks back that big funeral they gave Espiritu in Cebu. So in a way you must’ve brought him down from the hills after all.” He shook his head in what seemed to be a mixture of regret and admiration. “That Georgia,” he said. “She’s something, isn’t she?” When Stallings made no reply, he added, “You heard what happened, didn’t you?”
Stallings, still seated, stared up at him and, after a moment, shook his head.
“She cut herself a deal. Traded everything she knew about how Marcos sluices his money around for reduced charges. Christ, she ought to be out in a year or two. Maybe even sooner.” He paused just long enough to give Stallings a cruel smile. “Think you can wait, Booth?”
“Why not?” Stallings said, adding, “Who told you about the deal she cut, Harry?”
Harry Crites seemed almost on the point of answering, but shrugged instead, turned and walked away. Stallings watched him go. He then leaned back against the bench, closed his eyes and lifted his face up to the sun, wondering what Georgia Blue was doing and thinking at that very moment. When this proved both pointless and adolescent, he wondered whether Harry Crites might have been lying.
It was then that it came to him — struck him actually — with startling clarity. And he realized what it was that he missed, needed and even wanted to do and be now that he was all grown up. Or nearly so.
Stallings picked up the empty white paper bag, crumpled it, rose quickly, hurried to the trash basket and tossed it in. After crossing the street to the bank of pay phones near the Peoples Drugstore, he dropped in a quarter, the only coin he bothered to carry, and tapped out the office number of his son-in-law, the criminal lawyer.