With Otherguy Overby buckled into one of its rear port-side window seats, the Boeing 707 took only an hour to fly the 365 miles due south from Manila to the long skinny island that centuries before had been called Sugbo, then Zugbu and, finally, Cebu.
Bristling with a spine of green mountains, the island was three hundred kilometers long and forty kilometers across at its widest point. About halfway between its northern and southern tips, facing east into the Bohol Straits, was the port of Cebu City, population 600,000 or thereabouts, and of all the cities in Asia, Otherguy Overby's absolute favorite.
As the Philippine Airlines 707 began its descent to Mactan Airport, Overby thought about why Cebu City still ranked so high in his pantheon of metropolises. For one thing it's old enough, he told himself, and you like real old towns. Cebu City had been founded in 1565âan easy date for Overby to remember because it was exactly four hundred years later that he had walked down the gangplank of a Sweet Lines coaster and onto Pier Three with $29 and change in his pocket.
A year after that, he had flown up to Manila and then on to Bangkok with close to $3,000 in a brand-new money belt. And that's why you like Cebu best of all, he decided. Because when you were a
kid here you got fat instead of winding up dead broke on the beach.
The Spanish had founded Cebu City forty-four years after Chief Lapu-Lapu's spear ended the life of the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan on Mactan Island, the same island where Overby's plane was landing. They had finally put up a statue to Lapu-Lapu, and named a tasty fish after him, but what the Cebuanos revered far more than the dead chief were the fragments of Magellan's Cross, the first Christian cross ever seen in the Philippines.
The fragments were said to be sealed inside another cross made out of tindalo wood that was on display in a kiosk on upper Magal-lanes Street. Overby remembered that the shrine, if that's what it was, had drawn pilgrims, beggars and pickpockets in almost equal numbers. He assumed it still did.
Once inside the airport terminal, Overby ignored the blandishments of a dozen guitar salesmen and found a driver who swore his taxi's air-conditioning still worked. Partly to get back into practice, Overby haggled with the driver over a flat rate to the Magellan Hotel. The bargain struck, they left the airport, drove up and over the Mandaue-Mactan bridge, past the Timex plant, along the south edge of the Club Filipino golf links and into the short drive of the twenty-three-year-old Magellan Hotel that long ago had awarded itself four stars for ambience and five for service.
Twenty-one years had passed since Overby had first checked into the Magellan Hotel. That had been right after he'd run his $29 stake up to $200 in a touch-and-go deal for ten cases of PX Camels, smuggled down from Subic by the second mate on a Panama-registered freighter. As soon as the $200 was safely buttoned into his hip pocket, Overby had checked out of the YMCA and into the Magellan.
The five-story hotel was built in the shape of a Y. It boasted two hundred rooms and more bellhops than it really needed. Three of them now saw Overby and his bag out of the taxi and into the hotel. As he entered and glanced around, Overby noticed that the lobby still reeked of maximum tolerance. It was the same atmosphere he'd found
the world over in commercial hotels that made a point of not being overly curious about their guests or their guests' friends. He remembered that at one time such hotels could always be found down by the train station. Now they were all out near the airport.
Conservative by instinct, Overby was also pleased to see that almost nothing had changed in the Magellan's lobby. There was still an honest-to-God cigar stand next to the elevators, right where it should be. Across the lobby from the elevators were the reception desk and, next to it, the barred cashier's window. To sit on, there were the same low comfortable chairs and couches, now occupied, he saw, by packaged Japanese tourists in their twenties and thirties who seemed to be wondering where the action was.
At the reception desk, Overby asked about his reservation. The young room clerk sent his eyebrows up and down in the Cebu salute and murmured that the manager would very much like a word with Mr. Overby. The clerk went away and returned with Antonio Imperial.
Overby didn't try to hide his shock. “Jesus, Tony,
you're
the manager?”
Imperial, a short wide man with a wide brilliant smile, spread both hands in a gesture that encompassed the entire hotel. “Imperial of the Magellanâat your service,” he said and reached across the counter to grab Overby's right hand and pump it vigorously. “How long's it been, Otherguy?” Imperial said, still pumping.
“Eight years,” Overby said. “Hell, maybe nine. But back then you were still working the front nights.”
“Remember when you checked in here the first time twenty-one years ago and I was the kid who carried your bag up?” Imperial gave his head a “time flies” shake and turned to the hovering young clerk. “Mr. Overby is to have the best of care, Zotico. The very best.”
“Yes, sir,” the clerk said.
“I've got some other people coming in, Tony,” Overby said.
Imperial recited their names from memory. “Blue and Stallings later today; Wu and Durant tomorrow. Correct?”
Overby grinned. “No wonder they made you manager.”
“Maybe we could have a drink later, Otherguyâcatch up on things.”
“I'd like that,” Overby said.
When Antonio Imperial, general manager of the Magellan Hotel, turned, banged the bell and barked, “Front!” at the cluster of bellhops, Otherguy Overby felt that perhaps, at long last, he really had come home.
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Seated in front of the window air-conditioning, Overby had just opened his second bottle of beer when the phone rang in his fifth-floor room that offered a view of the golf course. He crossed to the phone and answered with a hello.
The woman's voice said, “Mr. Overby?”
“Yes.”
“The same Overby as in, âOut of the five, Overby's the one'?”
After a moment's hesitation, Overby said, “Could be.”
“Then I think we should meet.”
“Where?”
“Guadalupe.”
“The church?”
“Yes, the church.”
“That's way on the other side of town.”
“Yes,” she said.
Again, Overby hesitated. “All right, when?”
“Four?”
He looked at his watch. “That doesn't give me much time.”
“I know.”
“Okay,” Overby said. “I guess you'll recognize me so I don't have to worry about recognizing you.”
“That's right,” she said and hung up.
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When Overby came out of the hotel entrance, the first thing he saw was the large yellow, blue and black sign of the Rotary Club of Metro Cebu that offered a four-question test. “Of the things we think, say or do,” the sign read, “four questions should be asked: 1. Is it the TRUTH? 2. Is it FAIR to all concerned? 3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS? 4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?”
After reading the sign carefully, Overby answered all four questions with a silent, “You goddamn right,” and turned into the adjoining Avis office where he rented himself a gray Toyota sedan.
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Overby drove west on General Maxilom Avenue, turned right into Rama Avenue and followed it out to the northwest edge of the city. There the Church of Guadalupe occupied an oblong plot of several acres that was encircled by a broken asphalt drive. Built something like a racetrack, the drive ran straight along the stretches, curving into half circles at both ends.
Ever suspicious, Overby drove around the church three times. It was a large structure with a massive gray dome at its center. A concrete cross had been placed atop its gabled south entrance. Below the gable was an elaborate stained-glass window. Two huge doors formed the entrance, which was shielded from rain by an arched concrete canopy. A woman stood beneath the canopy. Overby was too far away to see whether she was young, old or in between, but he could see that she was wearing something blue.
He parked the gray Toyota almost fifty yards away, locked it and started toward the concrete canopy. The woman turned and watched him approach. As he drew near, he saw that she was young, no more than twenty-five or twenty-six, and wore a plain pale blue cotton dress that looked cheap. Over her right shoulder hung a tan woven fiber
bag. He also noticed that she had large brown eyes and kept her right hand down inside the shoulder bag.
When he was a dozen feet away he stopped and said, “I'm Overby.”
“I'm Carmen Espiritu.”
“You his daughter, granddaughter, nieceâwhat?”
“His wife.”
Overby examined her skeptically. “Been married long?”
“Nearly half a year.”
“Well, do we talk here or go somewhere else?”
“First, you tell me in one short sentence why Overby's the one,” she said.
Overby smiled slightly. “Twenty-five words or less, right?”
She shrugged.
“Okay, here goes: they're going to cheat him out of the five million, but if he does what I tell him to, he can keep half.”
She ran the sentence through her mind, her lips moving slightly. “Twenty-three words.”
“I didn't count.”
“He gets to keep half, you say. Who keeps the other half?”
“Me.”
“Then you're motivated solely by greed.”
“What else is there?”
“How're they planning to divide it?” she asked.
“Who?”
“You, Stallings, Wu, Durantâand that woman of theirs, Blue.”
“An even split.”
“A million each then?”
“Right.”
“Aren't you worried about what they'll do when they find you've betrayed them?”
“That's my lookout.”
“One last question, Mr. Overby.”
He nodded.
“Do you care who ultimately gets the other half of the five million?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not as long as I get my half.” He smiled then, that quick hard utterly ruthless smile. “Aren't you afraid of what Mr. Espiritu will do to Mrs. Espiritu when he finds out she double-crossed him?”
“As you say, that's my lookout.”
Overby's smile went away. “There'll be risk. A lot of it.”
“I'm used to risk.”
“So when can I see him and make my pitch?”
“Pitch?”
“Sales talk.”
“Yes. Of course. Is tonight satisfactory?”
“Where and when?”
“I'll telephone you,” she said. “At the hotel.”
“Fine,” Overby said, took two steps backward, and looked up at the stained-glass window. “It open?”
“The church?”
He nodded.
“You feel the need to pray?”
“I just like old churches.”
“It's open,” she said, turned and walked quickly away. After Overby watched her disappear around the far corner of the church, he turned, tugged open one of the massive doors and went inside. Superstitious, if not religious, Overby dropped fifty pesos into the poor box for luck and took a seat in the rear row. There, he folded his arms across his chest and began to figure out his next moves. When he reached the sixth move, he stopped because after the sixth there were too many permutations. But the first move would be to buy the gun, a five-shot revolver, if possibleâa belly gun. As he sat on the
bench in the old church, arms still folded, Overby wondered where he should make his purchase and finally decided on Pier Two. If not Pier Two, then Pier Three. On Pier Three you could always buy damn near anything although it always cost a little more.