“Looks like you picked the wrong rooster,” Moon said.
“I think maybe a draw,” Tino said.
The handlers picked up their roosters. The maestro called them together. They held out the birds, head to head. Red Feathers was obviously out of it. Another morsel for the pollos fritos stand. But the black bird had no fight left. Instead of pecking, he pulled his head back. Maestro ordered a retrial. Again, Black Feathers wanted no more combat. His backers in the audience groaned. Maestro made a washing gesture with his hands while the bird holders departed. He said something unintelligible into the mike and signaled the next fight.
Both fat men climbed into the ring, one with a handlebar mustache and holding a mostly white rooster. Mr. Delos, surely, since the other one was clean-shaven. The ritual was repeated, the birds pecked at each other, the uproar of betting resumed, and the fight began. This one lasted a little longer and ended with the white rooster prone and breathing its last.
Tino grinned at Moon. “Pretty good, huh?” he said. “I don’t think you have anything in America like this.”
“Just hockey,” Moon said. “I guess that’s as close as we get.”
This time when the concluding test was applied, the winning bird had retained enough martial spirit to deliver a couple of farewell pecks. The maestro pointed to it and said the proper words into the mike, and bedlam again ensued. This time the yelling and pointing was accompanied by the passing of money up and down the rows and across the seats-the white cock’s backers paying their gambling debts to the winners. The honor system in practice, Moon thought, which was something else now missing from American athletics. But he didn’t have time to watch. Mr. Delos was carrying his deceased bird out of the stadium.
Moon caught Delos at the pollos fritos stand, in a glum conversation with the cook. But any grief Mr. Delos might have been feeling for his bird vanished when Moon introduced himself. The round brown face of Mr. Delos went aglow with delight as he pumped Moon’s hand.
“At last. At last,” he said. “Your brother told us he hoped you would be coming, and Mr. Brock said he expected you. I am so happy to meet you.”
“Mr. Brock. Is he here?”
“He has gone back to Manila,” Mr. Delos said. “There was a business arrangement to complete with Thousand Islands Airways. Ricky had made a proposal-” Mr. Delos remembered that delight was not appropriate. His expression changed. “We are so sorry about Ricky. What a terrible loss for you and for your mother. Please accept my condolences.”
“Thank you,” Moon said. “Where can I reach Mr. Brock in Manila?”
Finding that address required going back to the office. Delos checked in his Rolodex file. He extracted a card with the same address Castenada had provided. That and the telephone number with it had been scratched out and replaced only by a different telephone number. Mr. Delos was apologetic.
“His apartment, they tore it down so he moved, but it’s just until he can find a new place so he didn’t put down where he is now. Just the phone number.”
Moon called it, and while he listened to it ring Mr. Delos talked about business. Ricky had persuaded Thousand Islands it should expand its copter fleet by tapping into the huge surplus that the end of the fighting in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia would make available. M. R. Air would do the brokering and the conversion from gunships to transports, would handle maintenance, and would even subcontract some island-hopping jobs.
“We have more than a thousand islands in the Philippines,” Mr. Delos said. “Too rough for airstrips, just perfect for landing pads. And then we think maybe we can get maintenance work for the Manila police. The U.S. government gave them a dozen copters but I think only about two now are safe to fly. And then-”
The telephone was not going to be answered. Moon hung up and listened with pseudo-attention until Mr. Delos completed his account of business prospects. He asked Mr. Delos to have Mr. Brock call him at the Maynila if he checked in, shook hands, and left.
In the parking lot, Tino was squatting beside the left rear wheel of his little Toyota taxi, examining a very low tire.
Moon looked at his watch. It was already well past the noon hour when AP hoped to call him.
“A nail or something out at the stadium, I guess,” Tino said, sounding disconsolate.
“I’ll help you change it,” Moon said.
“Okay,” Tino said. “But the spare’s flat too.”
WASHINGTON, April 18, (AP)-The Senate Foreign Relations Committee today approved a $200 million appropriation for humanitarian aid for South Vietnam, but a $722 million request for military aid remained stalled in Congress.
Still the Seventh Day
IN THE SHOP OF THE HOTEL Maynila, Moon bought copies of the two English-language Manila evening papers with the least flamboyant typography. He sat in the lobby reading, watching the dinner-hour traffic pass in tuxes, cocktail gowns, and the formal wear of various desert sheikdoms. If getting Tino’s multiple flats fixed hadn’t made them so late he would have been tempted to ask Mrs. van Winjgaarden to join him for dinner. Not that he would have done it. Partly because he couldn’t dress for anything more chic than a greasy spoon coffee shop but mostly because she would have pressed him to help her, probably in some fairly subtle way. Besides, she was several degrees out of his class and wouldn’t be dining with him unless she wanted something. Even so, eating alone in a dining room surrounded by couples and foursomes had been a dreary affair. Equally dreary was the prospect that now confronted him: spending the evening watching the rain splash against the windows of his room.
The biological clock operating behind Moon’s forehead had not yet compensated for Los Angeles -to- Manila jet lag. He’d been sleepy about noon. Not now. In fact, he doubted if he’d be sleepy until about Manila sunrise. He skipped through the papers again. Nothing he found in either made the prospects of flying off to the Republic of Vietnam or the former Kingdom of Cambodia seem promising. The South Viets’ strategy, if they had one, seemed to be defending Saigon and the Mekong Delta, letting Uncle Ho have the rest of it, and hoping for the best. Floods of refugees were pouring out of the highlands. Floods of refugees were also pouring into Thailand from Cambodia, carrying terrible tales of Pol Pot’s “Zero Year” campaign. The stories of slaughter and atrocities sounded to Moon exaggerated by a factor of about a hundred. But even when you discounted it, the news made any notion of joining Mrs. van Winjgaarden on her journey to extract her suicidal brother from the Cambodian hills seem stupid.
He refolded the papers and put them on the chair beside him. Not sleepy but tired. He’d tried Brock’s Manila number as soon as he got back to the hotel, with no answer. He’d try it again tomorrow morning. The Associated Press day manager had left a message as promised. It was short and clear: “Bilibad says it has no George Rice. Media man at embassy (Del Fletcher) says he will check other possibilities tomorrow.” Another thing to deal with in the morning.
Moon felt a stirring of hope. George Rice would have jumped bond and vanished from the planet. Brock would answer his telephone and report that he knew absolutely nothing about the whereabouts of Ricky’s kid. Whereupon Moon would arrange his return flight to Los Angeles, express his regrets to the Dutch lady, and get the hell out of there. Or, better yet, Brock would say he had the child here in Manila and would Moon please drop by and pick her up? Then he’d go get the child and the two of them would fly home.