Out on the Rim by Ross Thomas Page B

understand, but not bad.”
    â€œI guess I didn’t make myself clear,” Stallings said. “I intend to split the entire five million—not just the five hundred thousand.”
    Overby didn’t try to disguise anything. The big white smile was back, never more ruthless, never more merry. “You’re talking interesting fucking money now.”
    Stallings didn’t return the smile. Instead his eyes took on the look of someone who has dipped into the future and is dismayed by what he’s seen.
    â€œIt’s poisoned money,” Stallings said.

    â€œMoney’s money.”
    â€œNot this time.”
    Guided only by his almost infallible con man’s instinct, Otherguy Overby came up with exactly the right measure of reassurance.
    â€œIn that case, friend,” he said, “you sure as hell got off on the right floor.”

CHAPTER 8
    The pretender to the Emperor’s throne stood in the innermost sanctum of the deposed ruler’s palace and listened, beaming with pride, as the younger of his ten-year-old twin daughters finished reading the framed poem aloud. The poem had been left behind on the wall when the deposed ruler fled into the night.
    â€œâ€˜Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it,’” she read, “‘And—which is more—you’ll be a man, my son.’”
    The ten-year-old girl had read Kipling’s “If” with what at one time was called expression. The Filipinos in the line behind her applauded enthusiastically. She turned, curtsied prettily—despite the jeans she wore—then looked up at the big Chinaman (as she and her sister always thought of him) who was not only her father, but also pretender to the throne of the Emperor of China.
    â€œVery, very nice,” said Artie Wu who stood six foot two and three-quarters inches and weighed 249 pounds, only six percent of it pure blubber.
    His younger daughter made a face at the poem on the wall. “God, that’s dumb.”
    â€œMr. Kipling had an unhappy childhood,” Agnes Wu explained.
“To make up for it he sometimes became a trifle optimistic and overly sentimental.”
    Her daughter nodded wisely. “Mush, huh?”
    â€œMush,” agreed Agnes Wu whose Rs were tinged with a slight Scot’s burr. Everything else she said sounded like the English spoken by those who have gone to proper schools that place a high premium on received pronunciation. But none of the schools were able to do anything about the burr of Agnes Wu who had been born Agnes Goriach.
    The older of the twin daughters (older by twenty-one minutes) turned on her sister. “It wasn’t half as dumb as ‘Invictus’ that you got out of and Mrs. Crane made me memorize last year. You want mush? ‘Out - of- the - night - that - covers - me - black - as - the - pit - from- pole-to - pole - I - thank-whatever- gods- may - be - for - my- unconquerable-soul.’ That’s mush.”
    â€œYou’re holding up the line, ladies,” said Artie Wu as sternly as he ever said anything to his daughters. Totally incapable of assuming the heavy father role, Wu continued to be surprised at his daughters’ reluctance to take advantage of his faltering will. His twin thirteen-year-old sons were something else. His sons would flimflam a saint.
    The Wu family moved out of Ferdinand Marcos’ small private study whose shelves still contained scores of pop histories, biographies and steaming political exposes, written—for the most part—by American authors. The study was a windowless room tucked away in the Malacanang Palace on the banks of the Pasig River in Manila. The Wus had already toured the discothèque, the throne room, and were heading for Imelda Marcos’ bedroom when Agnes Wu turned back to the trailing Peninsula Hotel limousine driver who was also visiting the palace for the first time.
    â€œHow much time do we have,