even a chicken processing plant. People everywhere, children everywhere, a swarm of street vendors pushing their carts. Dirt, music from upstairs windows, a ragged man begging, color, vitality, the fetid smell of the drainage ditch running beside a broken sidewalk.
Something like a gloriously magnified version of the trumpet vine that had grown on the porch of his childhood grew here from the wall of a shuttered bar. Moon tried to compare it with Mexico, his only out-of-country experience. But Debbie had made their reservations at the Acapulco Pyramid.
They’d seen nothing like this, not even on the drive through the barrio from the airport.
The cabbie was a short, skinny man with very black hair and a barber who had shaved the back of his neck unusually high.
“I wonder if I gave you the right address,” Moon said, and repeated it. “Would there be law offices in this part of the city?”
“Oh, yes,” the cabbie said. “One more block, I think. Then just around the corner. Then we will see.” He laughed. “If not here, we try somewhere else. In Manila, lawyers you can find everywhere.”
The cab stopped at a two-story structure of faded pink concrete block with the barred windows that seemed common to this part of Manila. A half-dozen signs lined the front door, a midnight blue that had weathered, but not enough to fit its pink surroundings. The first sign advertised an accountant, and the second read:
LAW OFFICES
CASTENADA, BLAKE AND ASSOCIATES
The cabbie turned enough to show Moon his profile. “Here it is,” he said. He announced the fare in pisos. That reminded Moon he’d forgotten to change any money into Philippine currency. After laborious conversion mathematics, the cabbie took his pay in U.S. cash and Moon pushed through the blue door with the disgruntled feeling of the tourist who suspects he has been cheated.
The hallway was narrow and dark, floored with linoleum tiles. Moon walked down it, irritation replaced by uneasiness. The door at the end of the hall had a law offices sign beside it. It stood partly open.
The door opened into a small reception room. A chair, a padded bench, a secretarial desk with telephone and Rolodex but no secretary. Beyond the desk, another door with a little sign on it saying: MR. CASTENADA. No door for Blake. No doors for Associates.
Moon tapped on the only door.
A masculine voice said something in what Moon guessed was Tagalog and then “Come in” in English. Moon pushed the door open.
He had expected Roberto Bolivar Castenada to be as emphatically Old Spanish as the name. Although this man sat high behind a huge and heavy desk, he was small, frail, and very dark. Emphatically a Filipino. Black eyes prominent in a narrow face, black hair showing gray, a sharp prominent chin, a tentative smile showing large white teeth. About sixty, Moon thought. Maybe older. How could you tell with an unfamiliar race?
“Mr. Mathias,” the man said. “Ricky’s older brother. It is good to meet you at last.” The smile faded. “Even though the circumstances are bleak.”
“You’re Mr. Castenada?” Moon said.
The man nodded, made an embarrassed gesture. “You will please excuse me for not rising to greet you.” He held out a slender hand, expression wry. Moon leaned forward to take it and saw why the man sat so high. He was propped on cushions in a battery-powered wheelchair.
“Malcolm Mathias,” Moon said. “How do you do.”
“Welcome to Manila,” the man said. “Electra has gone out to get some coffee and sweets for our meeting. Otherwise you would have been greeted more properly.”
“No problem,” Moon said. “I have my passport and the papers our mother had with her if you need to look at those.”
The man chuckled. “You are clearly the elder brother of Richard Mathias. You are exactly as he described you. And like this.” The man slid open a desk drawer, extracted a photograph, and handed it to Moon.
The photograph had been enlarged to eight by ten inches, and from its glossy surface the face of Ricky beamed at him. And there he was, standing beside Ricky, wearing his standard stiff snapshot expression, clumsy in his dress uniform, looking slightly stupid, the bridge of his nose bent slightly to the left to remind him of a mistake he’d made trying to block a linebacker who was a half step faster than he’d expected. He hadn’t seen this photo before. He stared at it now, remembering.
Ricky had handed his camera to Halsey, and Halsey had said, “Look brotherly,” or something like that, and shot it.
Moon turned the photo over. Nothing there. It was the last time he’d seen his brother. They’d taken him back to Kansas City to catch his plane for Los Angeles and Tokyo and Saigon, and that was the end of Ricky. They’d driven back to the base and stopped at the General Patton Lounge for a few drinks-and that was the end of Halsey.
Moon cleared his throat. He handed the photo back to Castenada.
“Ricky gave you this?”
“Actually, he gave it to Electra. She asked him for a picture.”
Moon didn’t want to pursue that. He wanted to get his business done here and pick up Ricky’s child, deliver the kid to his mother, and go home. But what was he going to do with Ricky’s kid if Victoria Mathias was still in the hospital? As she would be, of course. And what if his mother didn’t make it? What would he do with the kid then?
“You said the child hadn’t arrived yet. When is she getting here? I was hoping I could pick her up today. Or at least get the paperwork done. Does she have a passport? Or does a child that young need one?”
Castenada’s welcoming smile had disappeared while Moon was looking at the photo. Now his face was somber.
“The problem is we don’t know where she is,” he said. “She wasn’t on the flight she was supposed to be on. So I have a man out at the airport checking all the flights coming in from Saigon. He is also checking everything that comes in from Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur or Singapore or anywhere else appropriate, in the event they could not get her onto a direct flight and took a roundabout way. All flights have been checked. And there are no flights any longer from Phnom Penh.”
“You don’t know where she is?” Somehow this didn’t really surprise him. Somehow he’d half expected some awful screwup. It seemed fitting and logical. He just hadn’t allowed himself to think of it.
Castenada was shaking his head. “Not in Cambodia, we think. And that is the very important thing. Because if she was still in Cambodia it would be very, very complicated. And maybe not in Saigon, which is where she was supposed to be placed on the flight. Thailand closed its border with Cambodia, and Ricky’s people in Bangkok say they don’t believe she came there.”
“My God!” Moon said. “You’re telling me you really don’t have any idea where the baby is?” His voice was louder than he’d intended.
“Not yet,” Castenada said.
“Not yet,” Moon repeated. “When will you know?”
Castenada’s expression suggested he’d not liked Moon’s tone. He removed his hands from the desktop, leaned back in his chair, and examined Moon over his glasses. “Perhaps never,” he said. “If you wish me to be realistic, perhaps never.”
“I’m sorry,” Moon said. “I just don’t understand the situation. My mother was too ill to explain anything. I hoped I was just coming to Manila to pick up the girl and take her back to the States. All of this is-”
“Of course,” Castenada said. “I should have taken time to explain on the telephone.” He explained now, his expression cordial again but still leaning back from the desk. He said Castenada, Blake and Associates represented small international companies, mostly export-import, which operated across the various borders of Southeast Asia. Ricky had retained him first to incorporate R. M. Air in the Republic of the Philippines, then to handle the leasing of property where Ricky intended to establish a repair operation north of Caloocan City, to unravel a
