Tony Hillerman - Finding Moon

Victoria Mathias’s travel agent had made reservations for her at the Hotel Maynila, a shiny edifice of tropical-modern architecture. Moon explained to the desk clerk why Malcolm Mathias was claiming a room reserved for Victoria Morick. The clerk looked bored, said, “Ah, yes,” expressed sympathy, and handed Moon the key.

It hit Moon, finally, as he stood waiting for the elevator. Jet lag, he guessed. Too many hours without untroubled sleep. He leaned against the wall, eyes closed, surprised by the sound of the elevator doors sliding open. At the door of his eleventh-floor room he had trouble making the key work. He slumped on the bed while trying to dial Castenada’s office and screwed up the number twice before getting a busy signal. When he lay back on the pillow waiting to try again, sleep overwhelmed him.

He came awake slowly, conscious at first of the strangeness of the pillow against his face. Then he was jarringly aware of being on an alien bed. With his clothes on, even his shoes tied. Aware he was in a strange room, with no notion of where he was, or when it was, or why he was here. For Moon it was all too familiar, a skip back into the past of his last year in college and his time in the army. Drinking had become his hobby. Awakening in the wrong bed in a strange room with his head buzzing with hungover confusion had been a regular Sunday morning experience. But that had ended years ago. The last time he had suffered such an awakening had been the worst of all-a nightmare that had ended boozing for him forever.

He’d been aware at first of the bandages, of the pain in his head, of the tubes connecting his arm to something, that his left wrist and hand were encased in a cast. Hearing the breathing of the man asleep in an adjoining bed, the sound of a telephone ringing somewhere: hospital paraphernalia. And then a nurse was there. How did he feel? Was he well enough to talk to the policeman? The woman left while he searched for an answer. The Military Police captain replacing her beside his bed told him he had a right to call a lawyer if he wanted one.

Moon didn’t want to be remembering that. He rolled off the bed. In the bathroom he washed his face and glanced at his wristwatch. But it told him only the Los Angeles time. Here it seemed to be morning. The digital clock beside his bed said nine twenty-two, but not whether it was A.M. or P.M. The sunlight filtering through high thin clouds over Manila Bay seemed to be morning light, and the traffic on the boulevard below-cars headed mostly toward downtown Manila -must be going-to-work traffic.

This morning the telephone in the office of Castenada, Blake and Associates rang only once. A woman’s voice said, “Law offices”; the same words in the same tone one heard in Durance or Denver or-most likely- Karachi. But then Castenada’s voice, with its exotic accent.

“Mi,” Castenada said. “Mr. Mathias. Am I correct that you are in Manila?”

“Yes,” Moon said. “As I told you. I came to pick up Ricky’s child.”

“Yes,” Castenada said. Hesitation. “Can you come down to the office?”

“Of course,” Moon said, puzzled by the tone of this. Of course he would have to come to the office. There would be papers to be signed, fees to be paid, expenses to be covered, arrangements to be explained. “The child,” he said. “She has arrived safely?”

“Mi,” Castenada said. “Not yet. You are at the Hotel Maynila, I think? Where your mother had made reservations. That is about fifteen minutes from here by taxi. Would it be convenient for you to come now?”

The cabbie looked surprised when Moon told him the address, and Moon was surprised at the direction it led them. They turned away from the bay and the towering buildings he’d seen from his hotel window and into narrow old streets where ramshackle apartment buildings were crowded between auto repair shops, mattress factories, 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. Alice down the rabbit hole, Moon thought. At the hotel he had felt uneasy about going to this appointment wearing rumpled slacks and a shirt he’d rinsed in his Los Angeles hotel room. That worry had long since vanished.

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.”