“No,” Moon said. “I’m no pilot. I took a few flying lessons once.” He shrugged. It was one of the things he wasn’t good at.
Mrs. van Winjgaarden put down the spoon, expression puzzled. “Then how did you hope to get out? How did you hope to get the baby out? Getting in would be, I think, fairly easy if we don’t wait too long. But getting out…” She let the sentence trail off. Why say it?
Moon found himself taking a perverse pleasure in this; in defeating this overconfident woman’s overconfident expectations.
“If you don’t go in, there’s no problem getting out,” he said.
Mrs. van Winjgaarden picked up the spoon, put a bit of melon in her mouth, and chewed thoughtfully, looking at him. She reached a conclusion, swallowed.
“Oh,” she said. “You’ll go in. Alone.” She nodded to herself. “You don’t want me along. You’ll have enough problems without excess baggage.”
Moon’s pleasure went away, replaced by irritation.
“Look,” he said. “I will check with whichever of Ricky’s friends I can find. if they know where the kid is in Manila, I collect her and take her home. if they know she’s somewhere I can get to, I go get her. Otherwise, I go back to the States. Back to minding my own business.”
Mrs. van Winjgaarden listened carefully to every word of this, smiling slightly. Moon’s irritation edged toward anger.
“Believe what you like,” he said. “What makes you think I’m so eager to risk my neck?”
The smile broadened. “I know about you,” she said.
“That I’m crazy? Who told you?”
She shrugged. “Ricky. Ricky’s friends. Mr. Castenada.”
That stopped him. He sipped his coffee, remembering what the lawyer had said. Remembering Electra. Remembering old Mr. Lum Lee.
“What did Ricky tell you?”
“That you were marvelous.”
Her face was dead serious as she said it, and Moon realized that he was being teased. Victoria had teased him sometimes when he was a child, when he was angry or moody. And the woman who taught calculus when he was in high school did it. But no one since then.
“Ricky told us about your football playing. About knocking the other players down so he could run. About throwing the shotput when your back was hurt. About beating the big man who was drowning the dog. About the time-” She was ticking them off on her fingers when Moon stopped her.
“That was a little brother talking,” he said. “In our family, in our town, Ricky was the star.”
“And modest,” she said. “Ricky told us about that too. He said when you played football, he just followed behind you. He told us, ‘Moon knocked them over and I got the credit.’ That’s what he told us about you.”
Moon felt his face flushing. He forced a grin. “More little brother talk. The scouts from the colleges recruited Ricky. They didn’t offer any scholarships to me.”
“Because of your knee,” she said. “A knee was hurt. You had to have an operation to fix it. And you could always repair things. The car you boys bought. The machines at your mother’s printing place. The-”
“Why can’t your brother just come out by himself?” Moon asked. “Why do you need. to go get him?”
Mrs. van Winjgaarden looked down at the melon. “Because he won’t. He is a stubborn man. He wants to stay with those people in the mountains. With his tribe. He thinks of them as his responsibility.”
“How about the Khmer Rouge? From what I read they’re rough on Americans. On Europeans.”
“Rough?” she said. “Yes. They kill them. And their own people too. We hear they usually tie them to a tree or something and beat them with sticks. Not using up their ammunition that way. They say Pol Pot’s children kill everyone who is well dressed. Or well educated. Or wears glasses. Anyone who has soft hands.”
“Surely your brother must know that.”
“Yes.” She looked directly into his eyes now, as if she thought he might have some explanation for what she was saying. “But you see, Damon wants to die.”
Moon had nothing to say to that.
“He told me he wants to be a saint. Like the martyrs who died for their faith,” she said. “I think that is true. Damon is a minister. A Lutheran missionary. He wants to give those people some proof that he believes the Gospels he has been teaching them. A demonstration of self-sacrifice.” She said it all matter-of-factly, in a voice devoid of emotion. Then laughed. “Greater love hath no man,” she said. “Do you play Monopoly? GO DIRECTLY TO HEAVEN. DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS. Damon wants to go directly to heaven.”
To his surprise, Moon found he was feeling disapproval. “You don’t believe in that?”
“Oh,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh, “I suppose I believe in the abstract idea. But I love him. Damon is my brother. When he was little I looked after him. I don’t want Pol Pot’s crazy children to beat him to death.”
She attempted a smile but didn’t quite make it. Her expression was forlorn.
Moon thought, Here it is. Here is what always overwhelms me. Pity. Always pity. How do people sense that? How do they read me so easily? And Mrs. van Winjgaarden seemed to read even the thought.
“I wish I could help you,” he said. It’s just-”
“But first you must find Ricky’s friends here. To learn about the child. Yes. I understand.”
And so they went to find Ricky’s friends
BANGKOK, Thailand, April 17 (Agence France-Presse)-A blackout of customary news channels wrapped developments in Cambodia in uncertainty today amid rumors that the new government had ordered an evacuation of the capital and reports that some government army units were still resisting in the south.
Still the Sixth Day
FINDING THE ADDRESS CASTENADA had given him for George Rice proved relatively simple by Manila standards. The taxi driver repeated the street number doubtfully and asked, “In Pasay City?” Moon had simply shrugged. But Mrs. van Winjgaarden said, “Yes. Pasay City. It’s off Taft Avenue. Close to the Manila Sanatorium.”
Which proved to be correct and left Moon wondering how a woman who lived in Kuala Lumpur, wherever that was, was so familiar with this address. She took his surprise as a question and extracted a little book from her purse.
“I buy street guides,” she said. “I keep them~ I think I must have twenty by now.”
The apartment with the Rice number on it was on the second floor of a ramshackle cement-block building smothered with tropical vegetation. Its two windows facing the porch were open and so was the door. Moon’s tap on the screen brought forth a small young woman clad in a loose pink house-dress.
She stood behind the screen wordlessly inspecting them.
“My name is Mathias,” Moon said, “and this is Mrs. van Winjgaarden. We are looking for George Rice.”
Her neutral expression became a scowl. She shook her head.
“We were given this as his address,” Moon said.
“Not now,” she said. “No more.”
“Do you know where we could find him?”
The expression changed. She knows, Moon thought, and she thinks it’s funny.
“It is very important,” Mrs. van Winjgaarden said. “It concerns the welfare of a child.”
“I don’t know,” the woman said. She shut the door, and as they were walking away down the porch they heard her shutting the windows.
“Well,” Moon said, “I guess we can check off Mr. Rice.”
“The neighbors will know something,” Mrs. van Winjgaarden said. “We will try some of the other apartments. I think someone will tell us something.”
Someone did. But he wanted to start at the beginning. This man, he said, didn’t actually live in the apartment. He came now and then, always driving a rental car, and then he would be gone for a long time, and then he would come again and stay a few days and then be gone again.
“This time, I think he will be gone a long, long, long time.” He extended two skinny arms all the way, suggesting something like infinity. He waited for the question.