Chapter 1
Hal Garson, a tall, blond young man with deep-set blue eyes beneath bushy brows, stepped off the Mexican National Railways’ train from Guadalajara, plopped his suitcase in the yellow dust.
Ciudad Brockman—here the search really begins, he thought. And then: The trouble with Antone Luac was that he was too good a cynic. People are of two minds about a successful cynic: they admire his wit, and they fear his attention. A successful cynic can’t just disappear. People secretly want him to come to a bad end—and they want the gory details.
The somber look of Ciudad Brockman caught Garson emotionally. It lay brooding and silent in the siesta-time heat, crouched against a dun-colored mountain like a last stronghold of feudalism held at bay. The mountain formed a threatening backdrop for the city profile of orange roof tiles and jagged steeples.
The look of the place was fitting, all of a piece with the letter from Eduardo Gomez Refugio. The letter had come to Garson in Seattle, forwarded through a magazine that had published a Garson short story about a Mexican brasero in the United States.
“Dear Ser: I rid you history in magzine all aboat good Mejicano werk in Unitd Stados. I want much to go Unitd Stados for brazero werk. Now I werk for bad man gangster from Unitd Stados. He is sicret in Ciudad Brockman. He esend meny brazero to Unitd Stados. Never esend mi, Eduardo Gomez Refugio. I giv all history to you ser when you esend mi United Stados for werk brazero. Plis to be very sicret aboat letter to you. He kill mi. You come to Ciudad Brockman and see I spik truth werds. You ask at Tintoreria Nueva York my cousin Lalo. He to tell mi when you say it and nobody lern. For truth my wards I esend letter of gangster to see his fingerprints for F.B.I. of Unitd Stados. Also his name.
Yours affectionately,
Eduardo Gomez Refugio”
Enclosed had been a sheet of bond paper, and on it in a small script a shard of prose—beautifully simple, tantalizing for its incompleteness; a satiric love scene between someone called Elena and someone called Harold. On the back of the sheet was a signature in the same hand: Antone Cual—and what looked like a grocery list in Spanish.
The prose and name carried an odd sense of familiarity to Garson. And the letter with its air of conspiracy, its plea for caution and secrecy, made him chuckle.
But there had been something pathetic about the Mexican’s plea—a story behind the letter’s labored English that told of a struggle to conquer an alien tongue with nothing more than a dictionary and possibly a phrase book.
Garson’s atlas showed Ciudad Brockman more than 3,000 miles south of Seattle, deep in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Much too far away for the answering of a plea from a half-illiterate Mexican. The letter and enclosure were touched by mystery, but not worth an expenditure of time by a professional writer whose working hours were mortgaged to previous commitments.
He was on the point of filing the letter under unfinished business—in case he ever happened to visit Ciudad Brockman—when his gaze again rested on that neat, concise signature: Antone Cual. Garson’s eyes made a sudden reversal of direction, and the impact of what he saw brought a tremble to his hand as he bent over the paper.
Cual is a simple anagram on Luac! he thought.
He got out the correct volume of his encyclopedia, found the reference:
“Luac, Antone: born Slagville, Iowa, March 21, 1884. Began newspaper career Chicago, Ill., 1908. Reported Mexican revolution 1912–13 for New York Herald. Went to Europe for Associated Press at start of World War I. Returned January 1919 to career as novelist. His better known works: A Handbook for Heaven and Hell, Downright Ditties, Choose Your Weapons, The Kaiser’s War. Luac disappeared in Mexico in August, 1932, in company with Anita Peabody, wife of his friend, Alan Peabody, San Francisco drama critic. Peabody later obtained a divorce, naming Luac correspondent. Several attempts to trace the couple have failed. This is considered one of the celebrated disappearances of the Twentieth Century (See also “Famous Missing Persons” by George Powell Davis.)”
Garson found his copy of A Handbook for Heaven and Hell. The prose from the mysterious letter carried the same casual, biting simplicity.
The fire of discovery began to burn in Garson. He called his agent in New York, explained about the letter from Mexico. His agent caught some of the same fire. Two days later, Garson had a promise from a national magazine to underwrite part of the expenses for an investigation, or to pay all of the expenses if the story proved true.
That was how he found himself standing beside a railroad track in Mexico, staring moodily at Ciudad Brockman.
His eyes detected a cross on the mountain like a white hole in the blue sky. It prodded his memory of the city’s history learned from his quick research. The cross testified to the Latin passion for monuments to human agony. General Brockman’s peon legions had held out on that mountain top against ten times their number of Spaniards. Two years of death, torture, and cannon shells for the men on the mountain while the Spanish soldiers lived with the defenders’ women in the city.
The mountain and city seemed to say to Garson: “We have seen passion, misery, death and tears before. What is one more story of these things to us?”
A nervous laugh at such dark thoughts escaped Garson. He looked around for a taxi.
Ahead of him a cobbled avenue lined by scarred, dusty trees and high-walled cornfields stretched across the valley floor toward the city and overhanging mountain. The avenue carried traffic of two slow motion burros and a peon. Muddy plaster peeled from the walls lining the avenue, half obliterating the splashed red paint of election announcements.
Over it all, the sun, like a giant ember, seared everything to dusty silence.
To Garson’s left under the open shed of the railroad station, Indians sat on benches—men with huaraches on their feet, dirty white trousers, and the hand-embroidered white shirts they wore to market; the shawled women in black or Carmelite brown dresses, like brooding hens, like pieces of the earth. Children played in the dust beside tethered pigs and chickens. Some of the Indians slept with their heads tilted back, faces hidden beneath straw sombreros. Others stared silently at Garson.
They saw the gringo cut of his clothes, the harsh jaw line, the air of purpose about him. From these things the cinema-steeped Mexicans built a picture of something secretive and official. Before nightfall they were telling each other that he must really be an American secret agent come to investigate the local mystery: the Hacienda Cual.
There was no sign of a taxi. Garson wondered if he would have to walk the sun-scorched avenue. At every other station in Mexico he had been overwhelmed with offers of service. Here, no one approached him.
Then, a group of Indians standing with their backs to him near a wall at the far corner of the station moved aside. Garson saw the hood of an automobile. He stepped forward to get a better look, and the car moved away from the wall.
It was a black limousine with a wooden box newly roped onto the rear. But Garson’s attention remained fixed on the young woman in the rear seat. She had reddish auburn hair, large eyes of a darkness that seemed to trap the light, a complexion like translucent alabaster that—in this latitude—spoke of seclusion, of an old-world custom that hid the fair virgins behind high walls and alert duennas.
As the limousine moved past him, the woman turned, stared directly at Garson. She seemed to catalog him and discard him all in the time that it took her long lashes to flick once over her eyes.
The limousine turned up the avenue, gathered speed. And only then did Garson’s mind—assembling the other elements of the scene—tell him that the man beside the driver had worn crossed bandoliers, studded with cartridges, and held a rifle sternly upright.
And Garson thought: I’d disappear in Mexico myself for something like that! And for the first time, it occurred to him to ask himself: Just what did Anita Peabody really look like? Was she as beautiful as that? The newspaper pictures he had seen—faded and with the woman appearing somehow lumpy in the flapper costume of the era—had left Garson dissatisfied.
A church bell began tolling in the city: a hollow, off-key sound that echoed from the mountain. And now, a pinch-faced boy ran around the station wall, stopped in front of Garson. The marks of Spain and the New World were pressed into the boy’s features as though by a sculptor with a heavy thumb.
“Libre, Señor?” asked the boy.
“Libre” translated to “taxi” in Garson’s mind. He said, “Sí.”
The boy jerked Garson’s suitcase from the ground, led the way at a dog trot through the silently staring Indians. On the opposite side of the station where the limousine had been there was a telephone. Soon, a taxi appeared on the cobbled avenue, bouncing and careening as it sped toward them.
The El Palacio Hotel was a one-story building, tile-floored, dim and cool behind a deep arcade that fronted on a garden plaza. The lobby held three rows of tables that could have been transplanted unchanged from a New York soda parlor, circa 1900. They were marble-topped, set in spindle-legged wrought iron baskets. The chairs had the same unsubstantial twisted-wire appearance.
Two delicatessen cabinets flanked the hotel’s registration desk. The glass fronts of the cabinets revealed rows of bottled beer, American process cheeses, and slabs of Spam.
The clerk was a dark-skinned little man with bright hard eyes, a delicate line of mustache, and the hawk beak of a grandee.
He wrote a room number after Garson’s signature in the heavy register, said, “Gabriél Villazana, a sus ordenes, Señor.”
Garson’s mind did its usual slow-motion translation, noting that the clerk had identified himself as Gabriél Villazana.
He gave his when-in-doubt answer: “Gracias.” The clerk nodded, waved up an urchin who staggered along beneath Garson’s bag.
The room was at the end of a hall off the lobby. It was a high-ceilinged space with a half wall in one corner separating shower and toilet. The light came from a skylight directly above a brass spool bed that sagged in the center. There was a mildewed smell about the room. Garson noted that a pile of dead crickets had been swept into one corner.
Gabriél Villazana handed Garson a heavy iron key for the door, accepted his tip with a swift motion of hand into pocket, produced a yellow envelope from another pocket.
“Para usted, Señor.”
Garson took the envelope, saw that it was a telegram addressed to him at “El Mejor Hotel de Ciudad Brockman.”
The best hotel in the city. He grinned, tore open the envelope. It was from his agent:
“The Times morgue says Anita Peabody secretary-treasurer of Friends of the Poor: on first list of front organizations. Branches in Mexico. Maybe this helps. Maybe it only confuses. Good hunting.”
Garson re-read the telegram. Something to do with the communists in this? And he thought of the bitter cynicism behind Antone Luac’s writing. Not a chance! Luac was an incipient royalist. He’d spit in the Reds’ eyes!
He tossed the telegram onto the swaybacked bed, decided to use the siesta time for a shower, shave, and change of clothing before seeking out his contact at the Tintoreria Nueva York—The New York Dry Cleaners.
It turned out to be a day of half-accomplishments for Garson. And the telegram kept returning to his mind, nagging at him. He wondered if there were a secret message in the telegram—something urgent his agent felt that he must know.
Or why would he send a telegram?
He decided finally that it was the brooding atmosphere of mystery about Ciudad Brockman causing his uneasiness. But he still did not feel satisfied.
The Tintoreria Nueva York was directly across the garden plaza from the hotel. It fronted on another arcade behind a mosaic walk. The tintoreria had once been a residence. The patio glimpsed through a half open door behind the long wooden business counter had a cracked fountain, rows of potted plants.
Eduardo Gomez’s cousin was a blond, Germanic type—round cheeks, a sunburned complexion, small eyes, a personality like an adding machine. What did not add up to money for this man did not exist. He gained interest only when Garson—with the aid of a phrase book—said that he had business with Eduardo Gomez.
Through frequent reference to the phrase book and a pocket dictionary, Garson presently understood that Eduardo Gomez possibly would be in town that day—possibly the next day—possibly the following week—or perhaps not for a month.
Garson turned the conversation to the Hacienda Cual, saw the cousin mentally retreat. A door seemed to close behind his eyes.
A customer entered the tintoreria. The cousin excused himself.
Garson returned to the hotel, feeling his uneasiness intensified.
What did Eduardo Gomez write in his letter? “He kill mi.” Could there be something in that?
Gabriél Villazana, the hotel clerk, was disposed to practice his high school English. He was also less inhibited on the subject of the Hacienda Cual.
“Sí, Señor. Un mystery. Very big mystery.” He leaned across his registration desk. “The trucks, Señor.”
“Trucks? What trucks?”
“Every three, four months, Señor. They come. They go.”
“What’s in them?”
Gabriél Villazana shrugged. “Quién sabe?” He cocked his head to one side. “Perhaps you are interested in the Señorita Cual, Señor.” His eyes rolled heavenward. “Ah, Señor. She is a mango!”
It turned out that a “mango” could be literally translated as “a dish.” Garson immediately recalled the queenly young woman in the limousine.
The conversation turned to the peace and beauty of Ciudad Brockman. Gabriél Villazana emphasized that there had not been a gun fight in the plaza for almost two years.
Garson registered appropriate admiration, returned to the subject of the Hacienda Cual. “Is it far from here?”
“No, Señor. One hour by car.” Abruptly, he stared at Garson with a look of shock. “But you are not thinking of going there, Señor?”
“Why not?”
“They kill you, Señor!”
“Huh?”
Gabriél Villazana became excited, lapsed partly into Spanish with bits of shattered English.
There were guards at the hacienda. Very fierce guards. People disappeared. When one approached the Hacienda Cual there were warning shots—then… Again, the expressive shrug of the shoulders. And the Señor Cual, the old man, he had important friends in the government.
Garson tried to get a description of the Señor Cual.
It was sufficient for the clerk that the old man of the hacienda had a distinguished face, white hair, and a small beard on the chin that Garson decided must be a goatee.
The incomplete description was another of the afternoon’s frustrations.
Garson excused himself.
Gabriél Villazana had one more thought. “Do you have a gun, Señor?”
“Of course not. Why do you ask?”
“There are people who do not like those who ask questions about the Hacienda Cual. Perhaps you would like to buy a gun, Señor. I know a man who sells them.”
“I think not. Thanks anyway.”
Again, the shrug of the shoulders.
Garson returned to his room to rest until dinner time. He felt immensely tired, blamed it on the altitude.
Maybe Eduardo Gomez will actually come to town today, he thought.
But he did not really believe it.
“Señor! Hssst! Señor Garson! Hssst!”
Garson awoke. His eyes looked upward to the skylight of his hotel room. A pale mauve sunset color tinted the opaque glass.
For a moment, he had no idea where he was. Then he remembered: Ciudad Brockman—El Palacio Hotel. He recalled taking a shower in the afternoon heat, deciding to nap before going out to dinner. At the thought of food, his stomach pained him like a child yowling for its supper. He lifted his wristwatch from the bedstand, found that he had been sleeping more than two hours.
What awakened me? Hunger?
Again his stomach constricted.
He could hear a low-voiced conversation in Spanish outside his door. Then “Hsssst! Señor Garson!” The voice was high pitched with an air of nervousness.
“Who is it?”
“It is Eduardo Gomez Refugio, Señor.”
Garson said, “Un momento.” And he thought: For crying in the dark! He did show today!
He got up, slipped on a pair of trousers, ran a hand through his hair as he opened the door.
A thin, dark-haired man in a poorly cut navy blue copy of an American business suit stood at the door. The man had eyes like varnished grapes, fearful and subservient. His manner suggested an inner war between servility and self-assertion. He spoke with a grave, comic dignity, a faint bowing of the head.
“Señor Garson, I have the honor to be Eduardo Gomez Refugio at your service.”
Garson saw Gabriél Villazana, the clerk, behind his caller. The clerk nodded, returned to the front of the hotel. Garson stepped aside.
“Come in. I was just taking a nap.”
Eduardo Gomez glanced behind him, entered the room. “Sí. Sí. Con mucho gusto.”
Garson closed the door, turned to Gomez. “You speak English, I see.”
Gomez stared at him. Then: “Eenglays? Sí, Señor. I espeak.”
“Well… uh… glad to meet you.” Garson held out his hand.
Gomez shook hands with a single, chopping motion. His palm felt hard and calloused. “I esmae, Señor.”
Silence settled between them.
Garson felt uncomfortable under the steady examination of the other’s eyes.
“I got your letter, Mr. Gomez. And I…”
“Sí, Señor. The letter.”
Garson had the distinct feeling that Gomez now regretted the letter. There was an air of tragedy about Gomez, a sense of inevitable pathos.
“I’d like to meet this Señor Cual,” said Garson.
Gomez glanced at his wristwatch. It seemed a motion designed to point out that he owned a watch rather than an actual interest in the time. He returned his attention to Garson.
“You esend me to Uneeted Estados, Señor?”
“That’s part of the bargain.”
The varnished grape eyes looked to the door, back to Garson. “Please not use name of gahngster. Very danger. Many spies. Ciudad Brockman bien full of spies.”
“Okay. But can I see this man?”
“I drive automovile of her señorita today, Señor. Tonight, I come. We espeak.”
Garson started to reply, but his memory nudged him to an abrupt silence. He realized that he had seen Eduardo Gomez before, that this thin little man had been sitting behind the wheel of a limousine at the railroad station.
“The señorita,” said Garson.
“La hija, Señor.”
The daughter! Luac and Anita Peabody have a daughter!
The realization that the daughter was the queenly beauty of the limousine did nothing to reduce Garson’s excitement.
“What time will you come?”
Gomez stared at him without comprehension.
He speaks English like I speak Spanish!
Garson gestured to his own wristwatch. “La hora?”
Gomez nodded. “Sí, Señor. Está la hora. Tonight I come. You get all history.”
“Yes, but…”
“No talk to any mens, Señor.” Gomez went to the door, peered out, turned back to Garson. “Very danger.”
It dawned on Garson that Gomez was about to leave. The Mexican confirmed this by saying “Adiós, Señor. I go with God.”
Garson held out a hand. “Wait!”
“Sí, Señor. You wait.”
With that he was gone, the door closed quickly and softly behind him.
Garson crossed to the door in two steps, opened it, looked out. Most of the lobby tables were occupied. He caught one glimpse of Gomez as the man stepped into the arcade.
I go with God. Such a curious air of tragedy about the statement. Garson experienced a creeping sense of menace, of premonition. He felt that the little man’s words might haunt him.
He closed the door, finished dressing.
A warm darkness filled the street outside the arcade when Garson emerged. He stepped from the lobby into a flow of people. There was a new spirit about everyone. Children ran up and down the arcade, whirled around the posts that fronted on the street. Voices were lighter, swifter, as though relieved of some pressure known only to the day.
Ciudad Brockman’s mood of sad brooding had disappeared with the coming of night.
“You’re the newcomer.” It was a deep voice speaking at Garson’s shoulder.
He turned, confronted a tall, heavy man with the most ferocious face he had ever seen. The skin was pockmarked, knife-scarred, burnt almost black by the sun. His eyes were like two hunting animals lurking in slitted caves. A wide straw sombrero shaded his face from the arcade’s yellow lights, creating an effect of concealment. The man’s mouth was a thin slit beneath a handlebar mustache, his chin blunt and square. The nose had been broken and mashed.
“I admit I’m not pretty,” said the man, “but it’s not polite to stare.”
Garson felt his face grow hot. “I’m sorry,” he stammered.
“Don’t be.” The man held out a blunt hand. “I’m Carlos Medina. Call me Choco.”
Garson shook hands, felt a casual, almost brutal strength in the other’s grip. “I’m Hal Garson.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Garson.” The English was spoken with easy confidence, totally without a Spanish accent. “What brings you to Ciudad Brockman?”
Garson parried the question. “You sound like someone from the chamber of commerce.”
Choco Medina smiled, revealing even, gleaming white teeth. “That’s true in a way. I’m an interpreter, and I have a car for hire. I make my living from visitors.”
“Not many gringos come here, do they?” asked Garson.
“No, not many.”
“You speak excellent English,” said Garson.
Medina shrugged. “I was born in El Paso, grew up there and in Juarez.”
“Oh.” Garson studied the battered face, wondered at the instinctive liking he felt for this man with the evil features. “It just might be that I could use a car and interpreter. What’s the rate?”
“Five pesos an hour, twenty-five pesos a day.” Again he smiled. “That’s for interpreting. The car is one peso a kilometer.”
Garson converted twenty-five pesos to dollars at the current exchange: two dollars.
“That’s pretty cheap, Mr. Medina.”
“In dollars, maybe. But it’s the local rate.”
“Okay. You’re hired.”
“When do I start?”
“How about right now?”
“Fine. What are we doing?”
Garson sensed that there was more than casual interest in the question, said, “I’m a writer. I’m here to research the material for a magazine article.”
Medina nodded. “Good.” He gestured toward the hotel. “Let’s get a beer in the lobby here, and you can tell me about it.”
Gabriél Villazana served them at one of the marble-topped tables, appeared to focus with an abrupt recognition on Garson’s companion.
“Buenas tardes, Gabriél,” said Medina.
Villazana’s head bobbed like a puppet’s. “Buenas tardes, Choco.” He backed away, turned, almost ran to his counter.
Medina raised his bottle to Garson. “Salud.”
“Salud.”
The beer tasted cool and tangy. Garson drained half the bottle, put it down, said, “I see you know the clerk.”
“We’re acquainted.”
“He seemed a little afraid of you.”
“Maybe I was too rough on him when I asked about my brother.” Medina stared at Garson as though expecting a response.
“Am I supposed to say something?” asked Garson. “What about your brother?” He put the beer bottle to his mouth.
“Someone murdered him.”
Garson choked on a swallow of beer, coughed. “Sorry.” He stared at Medina. “Did Villazana have something to do with it?”
“I don’t think so. But he was in Torleon when it happened.”
“Torleon?”
“The little town about ten kilometers south of here. It has a good bullring. My brother was murdered on a Sunday—in the crowd coming out of the plaza after the bullfights.”
“Who did it?”
Medina leaned back in his chair, shook his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I have only one clue—from the daughter of an old man who was hit by a car and killed on the day after my brother was murdered.”
Garson wondered why he was being told these things, said, “What’s the clue?”
“The nickname of the triggerman. The old man evidently saw only the back of his head, but he heard him called ‘La Yegua.’ That’s a common nickname for bad-tempered people. It means ‘The Mare.’”
“Was the old man killed to shut him up?”
“That’s my guess.”
“This is very interesting,” said Garson. “I’m sorry, of course, to hear about the tragedy in your family.”
“Perhaps you can use it in your story, Mr. Garson.”
“I doubt it.”
“What are you going to write about?”
Again Garson sensed that something important hung on his answer. He decided to try for maximum effect. “I’m going to write about Antone Cual. That’s not really his name, though. It’s Antone Luac, the famous writer who disappeared in Mexico in 1932 with another man’s wife.”
Medina remained impassively calm. “That’s a dangerous assignment,” he said.
“Why?”
“The hacienda is well guarded.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps to keep out such as yourself.”
Garson smiled. “He’s never been up against me before.”
“Do you carry a gun?” asked Medina.
“I won’t need a gun.” And he thought: I’ve never met that question before in my life but here—twice in one day!
Medina pulled back a flap of his jacket, revealed a heavy revolver in a belt holster. “I carry this for La Yegua.” He closed his jacket, leaned forward. “Allow me to explain some of our quaint customs. Here in the back country, two out of three people carry a revolver. They are either like me: gunning for someone; or they are afraid someone is gunning for them.”
“So?”
“So bodies are occasionally found, Mr. Garson. It is not a rarity. In fact, it is sufficiently common that the police are not too zealous in finding out who pulled the trigger.”
“Do the police know you’re carrying a gun?”
“Undoubtedly, but they try not to know it officially. No cop wants to buy in on somebody else’s feud. This is asking for trouble.”
Garson realized abruptly that this was part of the atmosphere that had produced the air of musical comedy melodrama in Eduardo Gomez’s letter. He said, “Are you trying to warn me off?”
Medina shrugged. “I merely point out one of the obvious difficulties in your path.”
“Thanks. I think I’ll go ahead anyway. The American Consulate knows I’m here. Maybe the police would be more zealous in my case.”
“We can hope there will be no case, Mr. Garson.”
A chill passed over Garson. He reacted with a nervous laugh, said, “I’m just a writer. People don’t go around killing writers—poof!—just like that!”
“The story going the rounds is that you’re a secret agent.”
Garson stared at him, shocked. “That’s crazy!”
Medina smiled. “Mexicans try to make a mystery out of everything. If there’s no mystery, they manufacture one. Sometimes, the mysteries they manufacture are better than real ones.”
“But why are they interested in me?”
“Because you’ve been asking around about the Hacienda Cual—and that’s already a favorite mystery here.”
“So you already knew why I was here?”
“I’ve learned not to trust Mexican rumors.”
“What are the rumors about the Hacienda Cual?”
“There are so many I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Well, it’s no mystery, Mr. Medina. It’s…”
“Please call me Choco.”
“Okay, Choco. The Hacienda Cual is really a very simple matter. It started with a love story—a man and a woman.”
Medina raised his eyebrows. “Hell! Everything starts that way!”
Garson laughed, glanced at his wristwatch, was surprised to find it almost seven o’clock.
“Are you expecting someone?” asked Medina.
“No. I’m going to eat dinner and knock off for the night. I can’t seem to get enough sleep.”
“It’s the altitude. You’ll get used to it.”
“Unless I’m forced to get used to a much higher altitude first.”
This seemed to strike Medina as funnier than Garson had expected. The Mexican guffawed, attracting the attention of people at surrounding tables.
“Maybe you don’t think writers should go to heaven,” said Garson.
Medina wiped a tear from his right eye. “You should write humor, Mr. Garson.”
“Perhaps I should.”
The Mexican sobered, leaned far back in his chair. “What time will you want me in the morning?”
“Will eight o’clock be all right?”
“Good enough.” Medina pushed away from the table, got to his feet. “Then, if you won’t be needing me anymore tonight…”
“See you in the morning,” said Garson.
Gabriél Villazana came to Garson’s table as soon as Choco Medina was gone. “That is a very bad man,” said Villazana.
“I suppose so,” said Garson. “But I kind of like him.”
Villazana’s shrug seemed to say that he had done what he could, that all gringos were crazy anyway, that after all only a confirmed idiot stands in the path of fate.