The Dogs of Mexico Read Free Page B

course,” Duane said, trying to recall the particulars of Eduardo’s domestic situation. “That can be arranged.”
    “Listen, I have contacts in the diamond district in New York. You do this and we will split the take. The two of us, right down the middle.”
    “Where are you now?”  
    Duane heard an audible sigh in the receiver. Then: “Are you in, or shall I look elsewhere?”
    “And you have the diamonds?”
    “Even as we speak.”  
    “Mm–hmm. So not only is De Beers after you, but every terrorist in North Africa as well.”
    “Are you in or not?”
    “Give me your number. I’ll make arrangements and call you back.”
    “No, no. I will call you. We meet on neutral ground. I’m thinking Acapulco. I will send information for birth certificates, legitimate citizenships. So, please, you will have everything in order when you arrive.”
    Duane couldn’t help but smile at Eduardo’s attempts at caution. “Sure,” he said. “That’s doable.”
    “This one is going to set us free. Free at last, free at last!” Eduardo sing-songed in a Martin Luther King parody.  
    “Call me. Two days.”
    Duane broke the connection, moved to another station, dialed again. He checked with two stringers, one in Cape Town, the other in Gibraltar. From Cape Town: Yes, a well-armed gang thought to be a splinter of some North African terrorist group knocked over a De Beers Consolidated Mines courier and got away with millions in diamonds. De Beers was keeping it out of the news. Bad press.  
    The Gibraltar call was less successful, but the stringer promised a callback. In the meantime, Duane checked out the Hotel Santa Clara Centro for any info not in the database: The hotel was once a convent— Don’t miss seeing the downstairs bar with its tombs , the copy read. Duane sighed. The world was full of irony.  
    He felt bad for what he was about to do. On the other hand, he visualized Susan’s cheerful smile, credit cards reinstated, heading off to New York for a day of shopping. He hated this in himself. This weakness.  
    In less than ten minutes the phone rang. Gibraltar: Yes, Abda Mufi’s mother, wife, and two children were living in Morocco in the old French Colonial district.  
    Duane took down the address and hung up. He sat for a long moment, mentally resorting conversations and information. He looked again at the Abda Mufi Moroccan address; finally he entered it in his private database and backed it up on a second drive under Active—North Africa.  
    He would do right by Eduardo’s family. See that they got his company pension.

3
    Wayfarer

    N ORMAN SOFFIT PAID the taxi driver. He and the girl got out and carried the bags of clean laundry down the pier to where the Texas Moon was docked. He let his bag down and handed the old man standing watch fifty pesos. The old man nodded once and left and Soffit picked up the laundry again.
    The girl climbing aboard said something and laughed. He started to ask what she was talking about, but he didn’t understand half the stuff she said anyway and he let it go.
    He had picked her up down in Colombia where she was stranded on the beach there, calling herself Mickey Sierra. No money and no way home. He guessed she was fifteen or sixteen, though she claimed to be nineteen. Lying like a dog. She was a crazy kid anyhow in her lowrider cutoffs and junk jewelry, her pins and buttons, black nails dusted with some silver glitter stuff, spiked green and orange hair looking like it been run over by a dull lawnmower. A bunch of rings and studs circled the rim of one ear, an old-timey brass key hanging from the lobe like a question mark.  
    She had a good body but still carried some baby fat. Except for that and a tattoo he hadn’t seen but the top half of—this angel floating up behind her low riders to just below her belly button—she might not be bad looking. A gold ring in her navel stood in for a halo over the angel’s head. Crazy kid all right, but he liked her. He