Finding Moon Part 7

"People know it's an island," she said. "It's the last large island in the Indonesian chain. Southeast of Borneo. North of Australia." She laughed, her expression apologizing to Moon for underestimating his education. "Of course, north of Australia. Everything is north of Australia. Say halfway between Australia and the Celebes."

"Oh," Moon said. "Sure." Pretending to remember, flattered that she'd presume he could place the Celebes.

"But I don't live on Timor. I was there arranging to buy things. To buy folk art for the export business. I live in Kuala Lumpur."

"Oh," Moon said. That's somewhere in Indonesia too, he thought. Or perhaps the Malay Peninsula.

"And you, of course, are from the United States. I think Ricky said from Colorado."

"From Colorado," Moon agreed.

"So," she said. "Today you intend to talk to Ricky's friends here. And you will learn if someone brought Lila to them but didn't tell Mr. Castenada?"

Moon nodded.

"And if Lila is not here, you will find out if they know where she would be?" she suggested. "Whether she was taken to Saigon. Or perhaps to Ricky's place at Can Tho?"

Moon nodded. Can Tho? Yes. He remembered the sound of that. Ricky had mentioned something about that place when he'd visited at Fort Riley. Halsey had turned the name around and made a joke out of it. And it was mentioned in Ricky's papers. "A town in the Mekong Delta?"

"Can Tho? Yes. Near the river's mouth. Where Ricky had his repair hangars. What are your plans if you find out Lila is there? Bow will you get there?"

He thought. "I guess the airports are closed." He tapped the newspaper.

"They were this morning, except for Saigon," she said. "I think getting into Saigon is still possible." She smiled wryly. "They say the planes are pretty empty going in. Getting out?" She shrugged. "And how do you get from Saigon down to the delta?"

"The rich folks leaving the sinking s.h.i.+p," Moon said.

Their breakfasts arrived. They b.u.t.tered their respective slices of toast. Moon sampled his bacon. Excellent. The eggs tasted fresh. He savored them. Mrs. van Winjgaarden was looking down, toying with the melon. An interesting face, but her short hair looked as if she'd combed it with her fingers, and her jacket was rumpled. Like his own.

"Why did you want to see me?" Moon asked.

She looked up from the melon and down again. "I want to ask for your help. My brother is at a little place in the hills in Cambodia. With some of the Montagnard people. He has a medical station at Tonli Kong, a tribal village. I want you to take me there."

Moon's face showed his amazement. "Me? How?"

"I had called to talk to Ricky about doing it," she said. "That's when they told me he was dead. So I called Mr. Castenada. He told me you were coming to get Ricky's daughter. So I thought I would ask you to help me."

Help me. Always that. Why not the other way around? Why not, How can I help you, Mr. Mathias?

"I don't see how I can do that."

She looked up from the melon, surprised. "I thought you would be taking over Ricky's company. I thought you would fly us up to the hills and we would pick up Damon, and-"

"I'm not a pilot," Moon said. "I can't fly a helicopter. Or anything else."

Mrs. van Winjgaarden stared at him numbly, melon spoon frozen in midair.

"You can't? I a.s.sumed-"

"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 flus.h.i.+ng. He forced a grin. "More little brother talk. The scouts from the colleges recruited Ricky. They didn't offer any scholars.h.i.+ps 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 gla.s.ses. 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 Pa.s.s GO. DO NOT COLLECT TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS GO DIRECTLY TO HEAVEN. DO NOT Pa.s.s 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.

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.

Moon asked it. "What happened?"

"It was about a month ago," the man said. "Maybe a little bit less. I work at night, at the sanatorium, and I was just going to bed when I saw him pull in over there and park. I was looking out and wondering where he had been, getting in just about dawn, you know. And they were waiting for him. Grabbed him just as he got out of his car."

The man telling them this was standing barefoot in the doorway of the apartment just below the one Rice had occupied. He was a very skinny fellow in walking shorts and short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt. It seemed to Moon that he was enjoying the telling of his story. He stopped now and looked from Moon to Mrs. van Winjgaarden, waiting for another question.

"Who grabbed him?" Moon asked.

"Police," the man said. "I counted five of them. Two in uniforms, and three of them looked like Marcos's men. Suits on. Neckties. They took him upstairs, and I could hear them thumping around up there. Moving furniture." The remembered excitement provoked a smile. "I thought it was political," he said, "but it was just dope."

"Just dope," Moon said.

"Well, maybe it was politics; the Express Express said it was heroin. But with the said it was heroin. But with the Express, Express, it's whatever Imelda tells it to say. I think she owns it." it's whatever Imelda tells it to say. I think she owns it."

"Is he in Bilibad?" Mrs. van Winjgaarden asked.

"I guess so," the man said. "The paper said he got twenty-five years."

Back in the taxi, Moon gave the driver the address of Robert Yager, a hotel in Quezon City. "He probably won't be there," he told Mrs. van Winjgaarden. "Castenada said he lives in Phnom Penh mostly. But that's where he stays when he's here."

"Do you know how to go about talking to Rice in Bilibad?" she asked him.

"I'm not even sure I know what it is. A prison?"

"It's the hard-time prison here in Manila," she said. "I think they have another one way down south somewhere. They need a lot of prison s.p.a.ce for all the political enemies Marcos is rounding up."

"I guess I can call the a.s.sociated Press and ask them to find out if he's in there," Moon said. "And they'd know what the rules are for talking to prisoners." And whether the charge was heroin smuggling. Heroin. How much heroin would fit in one of the Huey copters Ricky was repairing?

"I think you might try your emba.s.sy," Mrs. van Winjgaarden said. "The U.S. government and the Marcos people are very friendly. Very close. Unless they think this George Rice is a Communist, they could get you in." She laughed. "Heroin would not be as serious as politics. Unless maybe Mr. Rice forgot to pay whichever of Imelda's cousins has the c.u.mshaw concession for heroin."

Heroin. It should be easy enough to tell heroin from ancestral bones if you looked into the urn Mr. Lum Lee was hunting.

Moon did not want to go to Bilibad and talk to George Rice. He wanted to go to Colorado. Tonight, if possible.