“I like your place,” Wu said.
“This going to take a while?” Overby said.
“It could,” Durant said. “You might as well zip up your pants and get rid of her.”
Overby looked down to see whether his fly was really open, zipped it up. Turned toward a closed door, and not quite yelled for Brenda to come out.
The door opened and a young woman of about twenty-three or — four came out of the bedroom. She wore only a wispy pair of bikini panties. Pale green. She had a face that would have been almost pretty except for its wised-up expression. Her hair was long and black, her breasts were nice, and her feet were dirty, especially around the ankles.
She examined Wu and Durant carefully and then turned to Overby. “Well?”
“Come back later,” he said.
She again looked Wu and Durant over with her antique eyes. “I’ll fuck all three of you for fifty bucks.”
“Later,Brenda,” Overby said.
She shrugged, turned, went into the bedroom, and came out carrying a pair of sandals, a blouse, and a pair of shorts. Wordlessly, she went to the hall door, opened it, and left.
“That was Brenda, huh?” Wu said.
“Yeah.”
“She always walk around like that?”
Overby sighed. “She lives across the hall.”
“Well,” Durant said, “it’s been a while.”
“Not long enough,” Overby said. “How’d you know I was in town? My phone’s not listed.”
“We were up in San Francisco — when was it, Quincy, a couple of months ago?”
“About that,” Durant said.
“Well, we were sitting in the Fairmont lobby waiting for my wife — you didn’t know I was married, did you?”
“I heard.”
“Well, we were sitting there and who should walk in but Run Run Keng. You remember Run Run?”
“Yeah,” Overby said, “I remember.”
“I thought you would,” Wu said. “Well, Run Run’s just in from Singapore and we started talking about mutual acquaintances and what they were up to and Run Run mentioned you and how if he had time, which he didn’t, he’d like to look you up for both auld lang syne and that five thousand bucks you owe him.”
“Four thousand,” Overby said.
“Whatever. So we told him we had a somewhat similar interest in paying you a call and he was good enough to give us your address.”
“How much did you finally get for the pearls, Otherguy?” Durant said.
“Let me explain about that. You guys want a beer?”
“Sure,” Durant said. “You can tell us about the pearls over a beer.”
Overby walked into the small alcove that held the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out three cans of Pabst. “I was supposed to fly down from Manila and meet you guys in Cebu, right?” he said, closing the refrigerator door with his knee.
“Right,” Wu said.
Overby came back into the living room and handed Wu and Durant each an unopened can of beer. He popped open his own can and tossed the top at an ashtray on the coffee table. He missed.
“Well, everything was all set. I was at the airport. I had my ticket, the money, and everything. And then I came down with this attack of malaria”
“Jesus, Otherguy, we’re sorry to hear that,” Durant said, opening his beer. He walked over to the coffee table, put his top in the ashtray, and picked up Overby’s and dropped it in.
“Still the fusspot, isn’t he?” Overby said to Wu.
“Neat as a pin.”
“So what happened after you came down with the malaria attack?” Durant said.
“Well, hell, they threw me in the hospital, what do you think? Ten fucking days. Then when I got out I tried to find you guys, I really did, but you’d disappeared. I looked everywhere.”
“Of course you did,” Wu said. “So how much did you get for our pearls?”
“Ten thousand,” Overby said promptly.
Wu sighed. “Otherguy.”
“What?”
“After you had your — uh — ‘malaria attack,’ we flew up to Manila looking for you.”
“I was probably in Hong Kong by then, looking for you. We probably just missed each other.”
“Uh-huh. And when we got to Hong Kong you were in Singapore, and when we got to Singapore you’d just left for Kobe. But in Manila guess who we talked to?”
“Who?”
“Sonny Lagdameo.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, Sonny,” Wu said. “Well, Sonny said he paid you twenty thousand for the pearls because you were in a hurry, but if you’d dickered with him, he’d’ve gone twenty-three, maybe even twenty-five.”
“Which means,” Durant said, “that deducting your commission, an overly generous fifteen percent, as I recall, you owe us exactly seventeen thousand dollars.”
Overby took a swallow of beer. A defiant, stubborn expression spread over his face. “I ain’t got it.”
Durant sighed. “Then we’re going to have to work something out, aren’t we?”
“What?”
“Not what, but how,” Wu said.
The defiant expression slid off Overby’s face. In its stead came the hungry look of the born gossipmonger, the quidnunc who would almost rather die than be the last to know.
“You guys,” he said, “you’ve got one going, haven’t you?”
“Maybe,” Durant said.
“And you’re gonna cut me in.”
Wu swallowed some beer. “We’re thinking about it.”
“For how much?”
“For just what you owe us, Otherguy,” Durant said. “Seventeen thousand.”
Overby’s face fell, but then it brightened as he glimpsed the angle. “Plus expenses,” he said.
Durant sighed again. “Okay, plus expenses.”
Chapter 11
Durant, beer in hand, stood by one of the windows in Overby’s apartment, staring out at the view, which consisted largely of the rooftops of some grimy two- and three-story buildings. The stripped frame of a bicycle, probably stolen, had been abandoned on one of them. Two blocks beyond the buildings a pair of coupled, nearly empty gondolas inched their way up toward the summit of the highest hump in the old roller coaster at the Bayside Amusement Park. The gondolas reached the top of the hump, paused to catch their breath, then plunged down out of sight. Beyond the amusement park, glittering in the afternoon sun, more gray than blue, was the Pacific.
Durant turned. “You never stray too far from the ocean, do you, Qtherguy?”
Overby sniffed. “It’s good for my sinuses. Keeps ’em open.”
Overby was seated on the couch and Wu in one of the chairs. Wu took out one of his long cigars and, after snipping off an end, lit it with his usual kitchen match. When he had it going he critically examined its burning end and said, “Tell us about it, Otherguy.”
“About what?”
“Pelican Bay and how you happened to light here.”
Overby finished his beer. “It’s ripe.”
“Oh?” Durant said.
“Yeah. Very ripe.”
“Tell us,” Durant said.
Overby rose and started for the kitchen before he stopped, remembering his manners. “You guys want another beer?”
Both Wu and Durant shook their heads no.
“Well, when the war ended in Nam things went dead as a doornail out there,” he said, opening the refrigerator and taking out another beer. “Out there” to Overby was the Far East — everywhere from Seoul to Sydney. He popped open his beer and tossed the top at the sink. Again, he missed.