Hillerman, Tony (8 page)

Dear Mr. Mathias:

I am a former client of Ricky’s and I think of him as a friend as well. Only today did I hear the sad news of his death. First please accept my condolences. I am sure that the immense admiration Ricky felt for you was mutual and that the loss must be a terrible one. I, too, have a brother with whom I am very close.

I am asking Mr. Castenada to forward this letter to you. By the time you receive it, or very soon thereafter, I will be in Manila at the Hotel Del Mar. Please call me there. I would not ask this of you if it was not a matter of extreme importance. In fact, it is a matter of life and death.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Osa van Winjgaarden

Moon found the Hotel Del Mar in the phone book, picked up the telephone, and then put it back. Life or death or not, it could wait until tomorrow. Mrs. what’s-her-name probably wasn’t even here yet. He did a bit of mental arithmetic and set the alarm beside his bed for two
A.M.
if he had the time zones right that would be ten
A.M.
in L.A. and eleven in Durance, a decent time to be ringing telephones there.

In fact, it was a little early for the person he most wanted to reach. Dr. Serna was in surgery and “not available.” The nurse in his mother’s ward reported her officially in serious condition but sleeping comfortably.

The receptionist answered Debbie’s office number. Someone new. She reported Debbie was off today. She’d called in sick. Try her at home. Moon called his home number, let the phone ring twelve times, and hung up feeling uneasy. Sick? How sick? Debbie was never sick, not even during her period. But Debbie often didn’t bother to answer the telephone. And sometimes Debbie wasn’t home when people thought she was. And for Debbie, calling in sick would not necessarily have much to do with the state of her health.

Moon called the paper. Shirley sounded delighted to hear his voice. How was his mother? How was he? How was Manila? When would he be home? Shirley was going by his house every day to feed her dog and wanted to know how soon— “Why?” Moon asked. “Debbie can feed the dog until I get back.” For Shirley, “going by” his house meant driving a dozen miles in the wrong direction. She was sticking herself with a long round trip just because she was too proud to accept a favor from Debbie. Downright silliness. Moon’s mood had shown in his tone, and Shirley’s tone showed she had noticed it.

“I think Debbie may have gone off on a little journey. Or something.”

“Well,” Moon said, wondering how he could make amends, trying to remember how he came to be tending Shirley’s spaniel. Yes, it was because her apartment had changed ownership and the new landlord didn’t allow pets. She needed a dog tender until she could work something out. “Maybe Hubbell could feed the dog,” Moon said. “What do you think? You know he rents a room from me.”

Shirley laughed, placated. “I think he’d tell me to take care of my own damn dog,” she said. “Or maybe something a little worse.”

“You’re right,” Moon said. “But switch me over and I’ll ask him.”

Hubbell said he’d be willing to haul Shirley’s dog out into the San Juans and let the coyotes solve the problem. And how was Moon’s mother? And were the Manila women as slick as they were when he did his navy time in the Islands, and when was Moon coming back, because it was time to get going on the damned vacation edition, and he was pretty sure Rooney was nipping at the bottle again.

“Bad?”

“You tell me,” Hubbell said. Papers rustled. Hubbell read three of yesterday’s headlines and started a fourth one.

“Lordy,” Moon said. “Did they go to press like that?”

“Those were the ones I didn’t catch.”

“Let me talk to him.”

“He just left,” Hubbell said.

“Tell the son of a bitch to stay sober until I get back or I won’t just fire him, I’ll whip his butt right there in the office.”

“All right,” Hubbell said.

“What else? Any good news?”

“J.D.’s been asking about his truck,” Hubbell said. “Said he wanted to go to Denver.”

“Tell J.D. it was the fuel injection pump. I fixed it, and all he needs to do is put in new glow plugs. He can put it back together himself. Or ask one of the guys down at the truck stop if he has troubles.”

Hubbell laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “Can you imagine that happening? Getting his hands greasy?”

Moon couldn’t, but he didn’t want to talk about it. He told Hubbell he’d be home as soon as he could. Then he just sat on the bed awhile staring at the telephone, mood somewhere between dismal, disgruntlement, and sleepy stupor. He fell back against the pillow, yawned hugely, and went to sleep.

The phone awoke him. Nine-ten. Who would be calling?

It rang again.

He picked it up and said, “Mathias.”

“Hello. Is this Mr. Mathias?” The voice was hesitant, accented, and feminine.

“Yes. Yes,” Moon said, “this is Mr. Mathias.”

Brief silence. “This is then the room of Moon Mathias? Am I correct?” The voice was small, tone abashed. Moon had a vision of Shirley’s spaniel when Debbie yelled at it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to sound-so grouchy. But, yes, this is Moon Mathias talking.”

“I am Mrs. Osa van Winjgaarden. I had written you a letter. I hope I can talk to you.”

“Of course,” Moon said. What was the accent? Probably Dutch, from the sound of the name. “What can I do for you?”

Silence again. Moon waited. “It is too complicated for the telephone,” she said. “I had hoped we could sit down and talk.”

“Probably,” Moon said. “Where are you calling from? And what will we be talking about?”

“I am at the airport. The Manila airport. I called Mr. Castenada, and he told me you were here. He told me he had given you my letter instead of mailing it on to America. And we would be talking about getting my brother out of Cambodia.”

Good God, Moon thought. What next?

“Look,” Moon said. “I don’t know anything about Cambodia. Or getting people out. What makes you think—”

“I thought you would be taking charge of Ricky’s company. And you are getting Ricky’s daughter out,” she said. “From what Mr. Castenada told me, I understand you are doing that.”

Now the silence was on Moon’s end. Was he doing that? He guessed he would if he could. He didn’t have much choice. But, of course, he couldn’t.

“I would if I could.”

“It won’t be much out of your way,” she said. “And I could be of some help.”

“How?” And what did she mean,
out of your way?
Did that mean she thought she knew where he was going? Did she know where the child might be?

“If you don’t speak the Cambodian version of French, I could be useful there,” she said. “And I speak one or two of the mountain dialects. A little, anyway.”

“Hey,” Moon said, “what did you mean, getting your brother wouldn’t be much out of my way? Where is your brother? What’s the—”

But now Moon was hearing Osa van Winjgaarden saying something to someone away from the telephone mouthpiece. She sounded angry and tired.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t hear you.”

“You’re calling from the airport?” He was thinking, The woman has just got in from Timor, wherever the hell that is, and probably on some little prop-driven airline. She sounded exhausted.

“Yes. A coin telephone box here by the doorway. I am trying to hold a taxi. I’m—”

“Look,” Moon said. “You go ahead. Check into your hotel. The Del Mar, isn’t it? Take a shower. Get some rest. Then call me, and we’ll get together tomorrow morning. Maybe you could come over here and have breakfast and we’ll talk.”

“Oh, yes!” she said. “Thank you!”

He paused. “But I think you are wasting your time. There’s nothing I can do for anybody in Cambodia.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Mathias,” she said. “I don’t think so. Ricky told me about you.”

Special to the
New York Times
WASHINGTON
, April 16—Secretary of State Kissinger said today that the United States Embassy in Saigon had been ordered to reduce the number of Americans remaining in South Vietnam to “a minimum level needed for essential duties.”

MOON WALKED DOWN THE dark streets, emerged into the lights of Quezon Boulevard and the busy noise of traffic, and stopped to get his bearings. He loved to walk. It restored the spirit, cured him of whatever ailed him. But tonight it wasn’t working.

This new task was one he could do absolutely nothing about until tomorrow. Only tomorrow would bring the information he had to have before he could decide what to do. Thus there should be no pressure until then. But the pressure was there. He’d watched the evening news on the TV in his room. Mostly Philippine stuff, but enough videotape of refugees flooding into Saigon to remind him that time was running out. So he went through it all again.

Tomorrow he would meet the woman from Timor. He’d asked the hotel desk clerk the location of that island. The clerk had revealed ignorance even deeper than Moon’s.

“It is somewhere way down on the south coast of Leyte,” the man had said, after thinking about it a moment. “Dirty little port town, I think. Nothing much to see there.” He had wrinkled his nose, made a motion of dismissal. “Smells bad. You don’t want to go to Timor.”

The woman with the Dutch name and the Dutch accent could clear up the geography question for him at breakfast. Beyond that, she’d either tell him something useful or she wouldn’t. If she didn’t, he would begin hunting Ricky’s friends. Perhaps they would justify the optimism of Castenada. Until then there was nothing to do except walk. Carefree hours in a place new to him and exotic. He should be luxuriating in that. Why wasn’t he?

He was nervous, that was why. He was nervous about Mr. Lum Lee for one thing. It was a rare feeling for. Moon, and he tried to deduce the reason. Perhaps it was the Chinese-looking man in the lobby who seemed to be watching him. More likely the man had seemed to be watching him only because Moon was already nervous. He was an Oriental wearing a blue turtleneck shirt. Chinese, Moon guessed, but that was probably because Chinese had been his generic label for all Orientals who were not clearly Japanese. And why had Mr. Lum Lee followed him to Manila? He’d called the number Lum Lee had left for him. No one had answered.

“Who’s the man sitting over there by the fountain?” he’d asked the clerk. “Wearing the blue shirt? Is he one of the guests?” And the clerk had looked, shook his head, and said, “Maybe. I think not so.” And then when Moon had walked away from the hotel, past the line of waiting taxis, he’d seen Blue Turtleneck standing in the doorway looking after him. Or possibly just looking at the weather.

The weather was mild, dead calm, more humid than he’d ever experienced. Prestorm weather, he thought. Certainly far different from the high dryness of the Colorado Plateau. The surface of Manila Bay reflected city lights, the lights of traffic along Quezon Boulevard. Moon walked briskly, at the three-miles-in-fifty-minutes pace the U.S. Army had taught him, past dark warehouses and the twinkling mast lights of a thousand boats docked in the Manila yacht basin. He smelled fish, oil, flowers, salty ocean air, decayed fruit, a strange animal aroma. The perfume of the tropics, he guessed. Strange, exciting country. He should have been enjoying it.

The vehicles passing him were mostly World War II vintage jeeps, remodeled as taxis, garishly painted, honking for no reason he could understand. The sidewalk now was illuminated by the yellow glare of a streetlight. It showed him a shallow flood of dark water running down the concrete toward him.

Water?

Moon stopped, stared, sucked in his breath, and jumped to one side.

The stream was a multitude of insects: agile, light brown cockroaches. A migration of them flowing rapidly down the sidewalk. The crunching he’d felt under his shoe soles on the dark street behind him hadn’t been dead leaves as he’d thought. Feeling slightly sickened, he hurried down the sea-wall away from this grotesque strangeness.

The rain caught Moon as he crossed the park in front of the Manila Cathedral. A drizzle at first, the tiny droplets oddly warm. But the drizzle quickly became a heavy shower. Moon ran across the grass and up the cathedral steps. In the shelter of the vestibule he stopped to catch his breath, looked back. A man was hurrying through the rain behind him, protecting his head with a newspaper. He wasn’t wearing a blue turtleneck.

Moon sat at the end of the final pew. A dim red light at the main altar told him the Consecrated Host was there. An electric bulb cast a yellow glow on one of the side altars, silhouetting two kneeling men and a woman. But the body of the church was dark, lit only by a bank of offertory candles burning before an ornate crucifix in an alcove. The breeze brought in the smell of rain, of pollen, of mildew, seaweed, and decay. And then the breeze died. Moon found himself engulfed in the aroma of burning candle wax, furniture polish, old incense. Engulfed in memories.

Of sneaking with Eddie Tafoya and Ricky into St. Stephen’s and salvaging guttered-out candles, melting them down, making their own candles which Eddie believed, erroneously, they could sell in competition with Father Kelly. Of swinging the censor in the sacristry, fanning the charcoal to red heat, producing a great blue cloud of aromatic smoke. Moon closed his eyes, trying to remember the sound of the Latin—“Qui
tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis”—and
Ricky saying, “Who told us pick cotton Monday,” and getting away with it because Father Kelly was too deaf to tell the difference.

“He who takes away the sins of the world,” Moon said, “have mercy on us.” He slid out of the pew, walked down the side aisle, looked out the doorway at the rain, examined the stained-glass window above him—the Holy Family in faded colors. He walked past the row of confessionals, the center door of each with its barred window curtained in black and the doors to the penitents’ booths solid wood. Much like the ones in old St. Stephen’s.

That was so Father Kelly could see who was coming, Eddie .had always insisted, so he’d know which boy was admitting his awful crimes against God and society. Moon had asked his mother about that and she’d laughed. Actually, Victoria had said, it was because the priest had to sit in that hotbox for hours and needed the air to keep from smothering.