But what if Brock answered the phone and said the child was somewhere in Vietnam or Cambodia? What would he do then? He’d think about that only if he had to think about it. No need to think about it tonight. Instead he probed around for any other possibilities. Any loose ends he’d overlooked. Should he go back and cross-examine Castenada? Nothing to be gained from that. He imagined a recuperating Victoria Mathias sitting across a table from him, full of questions, looking for a reason to go over there and find the kid herself. Were there any loose ends he’d overlooked?
One. Ricky’s Manila apartment. He’d have to find it and take a look. He dreaded doing that. Dreaded it. But something there might be useful. Probably would be. Old letters. Old notes with names of people, names of friends of a pretty young woman named Vinh who had borne Ricky’s child, perhaps people who would take in this orphaned child.
From his pocket, Moon extracted the key Castenada had given him and checked the address on the tag attached to it. Then he walked out into the warm darkness and signaled a cab.
The address was Unit 27, 6062 San Cabo, Pasay City, less than three miles from his hotel. The building was a two-storied M-shaped structure surrounded by palm trees. Unit 27 was on the end of the upper floor. Moon climbed an external stairway and walked down the porch, checking numbers, hearing music through door panels, hearing laughter through opened windows, seeing the warmth of reading lamps through blowing curtains. Unit 23 was dark and silent. So were Unit 25 and Unit 27.
The key didn’t seem to fit. Moon inspected it, listened to the rain pattering against the roof tiles overhead, turned the key over, and slid it in. The lock clicked. Moon turned the knob and stepped into the darkness. He inhaled, testing for the stale, musty air of a room closed too long, feeling on the wall for a light switch, finally finding it.
The air, which should have had the mustiness of a long-unused apartment, was not musty at all. He was inhaling the aroma of onions, of burnt toast, of coffee, of talcum powder, of human perspiration. He was hearing someone breathing.
Moon pushed the light switch. Across the tiny living room in the doorway to a bedroom a man was facing him. Naked. He was a thin man, with thinning red hair and drooping mustache. In his right hand he held a large black pistol pointed at Moon’s chest.
“Hands on top of your head,” the man said. “And turn around.”
“Who the hell are you?” Moon asked. What are you doing here?”
The pistol looked like one of those old army-issue.45-caliber semiautomatics, exactly like one Moon once carried in his own army-issue holster. The naked man clicked back the hammer. “Turn around, you son of a bitch. Kneel and get yourself facedown on the floor.”
Moon turned around and knelt, hands atop his head. The carpet beneath him was grimy. Moon’s anger offset his fear. To hell with this.
“If this is Unit Twenty-seven,” he said, “then this is my brother’s apartment, and what the hell are you doing in it? If it’s not, I made a mistake. And I apologize.”
From somewhere behind him Moon heard a woman’s voice. “Who is it, Tommy? Do I call the police?”
“Your brother?” the naked man said. Brief silence. Then: “What’s your brother’s name?”
“Ricky Mathias.”
“Well, shit,” the man said. “I’ll be damned. Are you Moon Mathias? You look like you’re big enough.”
Moon stood up and turned around. “I’m Moon Mathias, and who the hell are you?”
“Tommy Brock.” He shifted the pistol to his left hand and held out his right.
Moon shook it.
“Nina,” Brock said. “if you’re decent, get out here and meet the famous Moon Mathias, Ricky’s brother. You’ve heard Ricky tell about him.”
Nina emerged from the bedroom in a short white nightgown. She was small and dark with long tousled hair. She examined Moon with frightened eyes, nodded, said “Hello,” and slipped back through the doorway into the darkness.
Moon found himself breathing normally again. Almost normally. Anger had replaced the fright.
“You’re sort of trespassing, aren’t you?” Moon said. “How the hell did you get in here? I want you to get your clothes on and get your asses out.”
Tommy Brock was disappearing into the bedroom. From the waist upward he was brown, waist downward virginal white-the two-tone coloration of one who works shirtless in the sun.
“I mean right now,” Moon said. “Out.” But even as he said it, he realized he had questions to ask this man.
“Well, now,” Brock said from somewhere out of sight in the bedroom, “what’s the goddamn rush? Get down to it, maybe you’re the one trespassing. This place is on lease to R. M. Air. Or M. R. Air as we’re calling it now. I’ve got the key. Everybody with the company picks up the key when they come to Manila.”
With that Brock emerged, looking amused, khaki pants on now and buttoning a short-sleeved shirt. The pistol seemed to have been left behind. He padded barefoot past Moon into the kitchen. “Have a seat,” he said. “I’ll put on some coffee. Or do you want something stronger? Ricky said you swore off drinking, but maybe you’d make an exception after somebody points a forty-five pistol at you.”
Embarrassment replaced Moon’s anger. He cleared his throat, thought of nothing to say, seated himself on the edge of the sofa. The light had gone on in me Kitchen. A clattering of utensils. How about I heat up what we had left over? It’s still sort of warm. Not really stale. We just got in from seeing a movie and were going to bed when you-when you got here.”
“Warmed up’s fine,” Moon said.
Brock was leaning against the kitchen doorway, looking happy, good-natured, and amused. “You sure favor that picture Ricky had of you,” he said. “You going to take over the outfit?” His expression turned wry. “Lordy, there’d be enough irony in that for anyone. Ricky always wanted to get you out here. Said we’d be the Air Express of this whole corner of the world. We wouldn’t need the ARVN connection.” He shook his head. “Now you get here and it’s too damned late. Too late, anyway, for Ricky. Maybe not too late for the company, though. We’ve got several things working.”
“How did it happen?” Moon asked. “With Ricky, I mean. We never knew much except it was a copter crash.”
Brock frowned. “Nobody told you anything?”
“Just the official word from the embassy,” Moon said. “No details.”
“Well, then,” Brock said, looking somber, “I think I’d better start at the beginning. Skip back enough so you’ll know -why things weren’t quite normal.”
Brock said Ricky had concluded that they must move the R. M. Air repair base out of Can Tho. Can Tho was right beside the Hau Giang arm of the Mekong. The Vietnam navy had been slacking off its Mekong patrols and the Vietcong were raiding just upstream. That was in February. Ricky flew to
Saigon and met with the ARVN general they’d been doing business with. The general and Ricky had agreed that R. M. Air would move its operations down to a building the general owned in Long Phu. An ARVN ranger battalion was based there, and it was practically on the coast of the South China Sea. A comparatively safe place and easy to evacuate when everything went to hell. So they started moving stuff. Their two regular pilots were flying Hueys loaded with spare parts and office equipment down to Long Phu when an old Chinese man came in and wanted a hurry-up flight into Cambodia to pick up a cargo.