Free Out on the Rim by Ross Thomas Page B

understand Durant’s questions. “They found him just like that, naked as a jaybird, at oh-three-hundred this morning down by a post beer joint that’s called the Nineteenth Tee. His throat was cut and his balls were gone. No socks, no shoes, nothing. Just him. Buck naked and stone dead. You guys know him or not?”
    Durant looked at Wu. “I’d say that was Ernie, wouldn’t you?”
    Wu nodded. “Poor old Ernie.”
    Captain Robbie took a ballpoint pen and a small spiral notebook from a shirt pocket and clicked the pen into write. He opened the notebook and looked at Durant. “Ernie what?”
    â€œErnesto Pineda,” Durant said and spelled the surname slowly.
    â€œHe was what to you?”
    â€œWe did some business with him once,” Wu said. “We thought we were going to do a little more, but I guess we aren’t.”
    â€œI guess not,” Captain Robbie said. “Who’s his next of kin?”
    â€œThe only kinfolk I ever heard him mention was a third cousin,” Durant said.
    â€œNobody closer?” Captain Robbie asked. “Wife, parents, brother, sister—even a niece or nephew?”
    Durant shook his head regretfully. “That third cousin was the only one Ernie ever mentioned.”

    The Captain shook his head and asked, “What’s the cousin’s name?”
    â€œFerdinand Marcos,” Durant said.
    Captain Robbie’s smooth young face wrinkled itself into lines of worry and disbelief. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
    Wu solemnly shook his great head from side to side.
    Captain Robbie winced and turned to stare down at the exiled President’s dead third cousin. “Goddamnit, Ernie, what a pain in the butt you’ve turned out to be.”

CHAPTER 10
    Quincy Durant sat propped up in the Hyatt hotel bed, smoking a rare cigarette and drinking Scotch and water, when Artie Wu came out of the bathroom, shrimp pink from his shower and wearing only a pair of voluminous white boxer shorts. Wu started putting on the pants to the white silk money suit. He spoke only after he had the pants on and was buttoning a tent-size blue chambray shirt. “How much?”
    â€œAbout a thousand,” Durant said. “I spread it around town with the word that I was trying to locate Ernie. I got a call at six this morning from a taxi dispatcher. One of his drivers took an Air Force CID major to that post beer joint, the Nineteenth Tee, where they’d found Ernie. The Major’s car wouldn’t start, which is why he called a taxi. The driver recognized Ernie.”
    â€œBut didn’t say anything.”
    â€œNot to anybody but the dispatcher.”
    Wu, looking into the mirror, carefully continued to knot his paisley tie. “What d’you think?”
    â€œWhat or who?”
    â€œWho.”
    â€œA cuckolded husband. A disappointed bankrupt maybe.”
    â€œChrist, that second one’s us.”

    â€œThe list goes on,” Durant said and took another swallow of his drink. “A spurned lover, male or female. Some guy who didn’t get the job in the ministry of works, or whatever, that he’d paid Ernie to get him. An NPA sparrow team.”
    â€œSparrow team. That’s nice.”
    â€œYou prefer hit squad?”
    Wu shrugged. “Not really, but you may be right at that. Let’s say Ernie’s out cruising. He meets this young sparrow, male or female, in a bar and they agree to a quickie in the front seat of Ernie’s BMW. The second sparrow’s already down behind the back seat. He cuts Ernie’s throat, they drive out to the camp, strip him, cut him some more and leave him in the neo-colonialists’ playground as a warning to whoever they’re mad at this week. If you needed a symbol of corruption, you couldn’t do much better than Ernie.”
    â€œI always kind of liked him,” Durant said.
    â€œSo’d I, until he stiffed us.”