Hillerman, Tony by Finding Moon (v4) [html] Page B

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