Tony Hillerman - Finding Moon

“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 ship,” Moon said.

Their breakfasts arrived. They buttered 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 assumed-”

“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 flushing. He forced a grin. “More little brother talk. The scouts from the colleges recruited Ricky. They didn’t offer any scholarships 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 glasses. 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 PASS 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.