“Quincy’s giving him dinner—or supper—and telling him pretty much what I’ve told you.”
“I bet Otherguy tells Quincy he knows Ione Gamble personally.”
In London, there was either a sigh or more cigar smoke being exhaled before Artie Wu said, “The wonderful thing is, he just might.”
◊ ◊ ◊
Voodoo, Ltd. —50
After the room service waiter had rolled in the breakfast cart and left, Booth Stallings crossed the suite’s living room, heading for Georgia Blue’s closed bedroom door. Before he reached it, the door opened and she came out, walking on bare feet and wearing one of the hotel’s white terry-cloth robes.
Stallings noticed for what must have been the seventh time in less than twenty-four hours that she still moved with the same graceful stride on those long, long legs that made her stand five-ten in her bare feet and at least six-even in heels. Her light green eyes skipped over Stallings to the breakfast cart. When she reached it, she lifted up lids and sniffed hungrily at each dish. Just before reaching for a serving spoon, she ran her hand through her short reddish-brown hair that now boasted a short streak of white less than an inch wide. It had turned white in prison shortly after her thirty-fifth birthday not quite two years ago. The streak was centered above her high broad forehead, behind which, Stallings had long thought, lurked far too many brains.
As Georgia Blue stood there, heaping scrambled eggs, sausage and tropical fruit onto her plate—wearing no makeup, her hair brushed and combed by that one swipe of her hand—Stallings tried to decide whether his infatuation with her had finally turned into an obsession.
He had just decided he didn’t really give a damn what it was when she added two soft rolls to her plate and said, “Christ, Booth, you ordered enough for six.”
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day if you listen to the hog growers, cereal manufacturers and the butter and egg folks.”
“Milk,” she said, pouring herself a glass. “I never thought I’d dream about milk.”
She carried the plate and glass over to a small dining table, set them down and returned to the cart for a fork and spoon, ignoring the knives. Once seated, she attacked the food, sending an occasional wary glance at Stallings, who was filling his own plate with bacon and eggs.
He looked at her, noticed one of the wary glances and said, “Slow down, Georgia. Nobody’s going to snatch it away from you.”
She ignored him and went on with her rapid eating.
Stallings sat down opposite her, buttered a roll and asked, “Why didn’t you lose any weight?”
“Because I took food away from the smaller and weaker women.”
“Wonder they didn’t get together and beat up on you.”
“By then I was the mean gang’s number one ass-kicker.”
Although her plate was still half-full, she put her fork and spoon down, leaned back in the chair, stared at Stallings and said, “If we’re going to leave tomorrow for Los Angeles, I have to buy some stuff.”
“Don’t think I said anything about leaving tomorrow.”
Voodoo, Ltd. —51
“Artie did. I picked up his call between rings, just like the Secret Service taught me, and listened to you two fretting over me like a couple of old-maid aunts. Whatever shall we do about Georgia, poor thing? Well, the first thing you can do is get me some stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” Stallings asked.
She smiled at him. “You think I mean dope, don’t you?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Look, I’m a convicted felon with a commuted sentence, not a pardon. If I’d been convicted in the States, I couldn’t vote or serve on a jury or be elected President unless one of the states restored my civil rights—although the only civil right most felons in California want restored is their right to own a gun. But I was convicted in another country and I’m not sure what the law is, although I’m damn sure the American embassy isn’t going to bust its collective gut to supply me with a fresh passport or the piece of paper it gives felons who want to go home.”
“How come you weren’t deported?”
“That was part of the deal I cut—no deportation.”
“Okay. You need a passport. What else?”
“Clothes.”
“Get dressed and we’ll go across the street and take care of the passport photos. Then I’ll give you some money and you can buy what clothes you need while I go find you a passport.”
“You know how?”
“I know how.”
“Must’ve been quite a learning experience—hanging out with Otherguy for what—five years now?”
“About that.”
“How is he? Not that I give a damn.”
“As ever.”
“Why’d Artie and Durant send you to fetch me and not Otherguy?”
“Because Artie thinks I’m still stuck on you.”
“Are you?”
“What d’you think?”
“I hope not because I can’t give you anything but sex,” she said and then tacked on a perfectly neutral, “baby.”
“Maybe that’s all I want,” Stallings said.
Voodoo, Ltd. —52
Eleven
After his third taxi ride, Booth Stallings made his fourth telephone call, this time from the lobby of the Manila Hotel. It was answered on the first ring by yet another Filipino-accented voice, a woman’s, who told him the pickup would take place in exactly six minutes, one hundred meters south of the hotel on Roxas Boulevard. Stallings was there at 12:08 P.M. And a minute later was climbing into the rear seat of a 1974 Toyota sedan that had a young Filipino driver and failed air-conditioning.
Next to the driver was his equally young wife, girlfriend or even, Stallings suspected, the other half of a New Peoples Army hit squad, which the Filipinos, with their love of nicknames, had dubbed sparrow teams. The pair gave Stallings a sweltering, aimless and mostly silent tour of Manila that lasted exactly fifty-nine minutes.
Stallings was surprised, if not shocked, by how much the sprawling city had decayed since he was last there in early 1988 with Otherguy Overby during their attempt to make a financial comeback after their losses in the stock market crash of 1987.
It was only after Overby explained his scheme again and again, step by step, that Stallings had agreed to buy into the syndicate then being formed to search for the five or fifty or even one hundred tons of gold bullion that, according to legend, had been buried, booby-trapped and abandoned by General Yamashita Tomoyuki, the Tiger of Malaya, as his Japanese army retreated from Manila in the early months of 1945.
Stallings, who considered himself something of an authority on the Philippines, argued that Yamashita’s Gold, as it was called, hadn’t been buried by Yamashita at all, but by Iwabuchi Sanji, the tough and ruthless Japanese rear admiral who reoccupied Manila after Yamashita fled.
It was the admiral who had waged the bitter house-to-house battle for Manila, destroying the city in the process. And it was this last utterly senseless battle that had given Admiral Iwabuchi the time he needed to bury the gold bullion.
Otherguy Overby had listened patiently to Stallings’s lengthy recitation. When it was over, he asked, “You really believe the gold’s there, don’t you?”
“You don’t?”
Voodoo, Ltd. —53
“I believe other people believe it’s there,” Overby said, “just like I believe other people believe in immaculate conception. And that’s what we’re buying into, Booth—pure blind faith.”