"Would you have one dance with me?"

Her companions stared in disbelief.

"I know," he said, "how I look. But I can act the gentleman, and am a fine dancer."

Whatever the reason, be it rebellion or reserve, she agreed. He escorted her past stares and whispers.

Then there they were, waltzing to a grace of chords outside existence. They could have been any man and any woman in the ineffable light of what's possible, but they were not. She watched his face, unhurried and without judgment. He was a depiction of personal anguish and soon tears collected at the corners of his eyes.

"Sir," she said, "you're-"

"Yes ... I saw my son for the first time today in almost fifteen years."

"You must be very happy."

"I abandoned him and his mother. She was dark like yourself. She has been dead since before I knew better."

This sudden and unexpected glimpse into someone's soul left her self-conscious. She tried to say something helpful.

"Maybe your son can forgive you this?"

"No, you see ... my son also knows I am a common a.s.sa.s.sin."

The dancing stopped. He saw her confusion laced with fear. He thanked her, then walked away.

JOHN LOURDES SAT at a cafe table outside the Southern. He had three men under surveillance and was writing in his notebook when the father returned. He whistled and flagged him over. "Where have you been?"

The father sat. "Dancing, Mr. Lourdes."

The son leaned toward him. "Three men by the entrance. One is in a white suit."

The father had been studying the face of this stranger sitting next to him in the light of the new reality. He then glanced up through a row of candlelit faces to where three men crowded together over their whiskey gla.s.ses.

"The one in the white suit," said John Lourdes, "is named Robert Creeley. He is part of the U.S. Consulate here in Mexico. The men with him ..." John Lourdes referenced his notes, ". . . are named Hayden and Olsen. They have adjoining suites to Creeley. I don't know what they do."

The father again took to staring at his flesh and blood.

"I bribed a desk clerk ... with some of your money."

"Very practical," said the father.

"Those three were at the mayor's house tonight with a number of other men. Two of them ... Doctor Stallings and Anthony Hecht."

Rawbone sat back. Stallings. He could feel the man's presence hovering over this very moment. The candle on the table flickered abstractly. He stared into its flame.

"Did you hear me?"

"I heard," said the father.

"What happened with Stallings?"

Rather than answer, the father asked, "What were you doing at the mayor's house?"

"Stallings had sent the girl there with the old woman to work. I went to see if they were alright. Men, over a dozen, were having some heated talk. All of them together. What does it mean?"

John Lourdes had been asking himself, but the father answered. "It means the Cains are getting ready to team up against Abel."

The statement was pointed yet cryptic and John Lourdes wanted to question Rawbone about it when the desk clerk walked over. "Mr. Lourdes," he said, "the phone call you've been expecting."

He thanked the man and slipped him some money. "Let's go," he said. The father stood, finished the last of John Lourdes's beer and followed. There was a telephone off the hook at the desk. John Lourdes answered and listened and soon he began to write in his notebook.

The father waited off to one side by the bar. From there he could watch Creeley and the other two. He was calculating how to proceed and whether to tell the son the truth about the conversation he'd had with the good doctor. He knew it would be determinative for John Lourdes.

He turned his attention to the son. All the years wondering what the moment of their meeting would be and it had already taken place in an El Paso lobby. "Keep your eyes at gunsight level," he'd said, "if you mean to make something of yourself ..."

John Lourdes finished the call. "Truck close by?"

"Close by."

"Get it and meet me out front."

John Lourdes was on the street with shotgun and satchel when the truck pulled up. He climbed in. Rawbone noted the shotgun. The son had their destination written out in his notebook. "The Arbol Grande. Know it?"

"I know it."

He drove the tramway road. Marking their way the graying powdered smoke from the huge stacks of the Standard Oil Refinery. On the drive John Lourdes laid out what he'd overheard from that murky root cellar. The mayor of Tampico was receiving death threats because of his allegiance to the present regime. He was pleading for more support and protection. And the way he laid out these demands was no less than a veiled threat, his survival paralleling that of the oil fields, as both were vulnerable to acts of violence. He also insinuated the new regime might well have a different worldview of the oil companies and how they might be treated or taxed. He could not guarantee, under those conditions, the same kind of favorable treatment. Often, he used the phrase "direct American intervention" as the means of security and control.

Creeley, the gentleman at the Southern, told the mayor a case for American intervention had to be built carefully, and to that end, he added, unofficially, an investigation on the ground could well be in the works.

Rawbone heard it all, and cold hard reason told him no good would come of this. It smelled of Cuba. And Manila. And the law of a black argument. All he said was, "The shotgun."

John Lourdes glanced at the shotgun across his lap. "We're going to meet someone tonight about the weapons."

THIRTY-TWO.

-LONG THE PANuco everything seemed touched by smoke from the refineries. The buildings packed in along the sh.o.r.e as far as one could see were shrouded in gloom. The tramway crossed a channel that connected the laguna to the Panuco. The country there was wild and dark. John Lourdes took the flashlight from his carryall and the notebook in his hand flared up.

"This is the place."

The truck pulled off into the high reeds. Rawbone sat there vexed and checked his automatic. "Who contacted you?"

"Would it make a difference what name they used?"

The question went to the very core of their being.

"No."

They sat quietly for a bit.

"Why us, for this?" said the father. "Have you asked yourself that?"

"I have."

"And why didn't the good doctor just give us the weapons? To be delivered right off. Have you asked yourself that?"

"I have."

"And do you have an answer in your gunsights?"

"No ... but I believe the answer may have me in its gunsights."

The son shut off the light and lit a cigarette. The father got out of the truck. They waited.

"You were raised in El Paso, were you not, Mr. Lourdes?"

"I was."

"The barrio?"

"The barrio."

He could not see the son from where he'd walked to in the high reeds. There was only the glow from the tip of John Lourdes's cigarette.

"There was a factory," Rawbone said casually, "that sewed American flags. I had a place a few doors up a walking street. Do you know it ... the factory?"

"I seem to recall it."

"It's only an alley now for telephone poles. There's a p.a.w.nshop on one corner and a gun seller on the other where I picked up this Savage the day before we had ... the good fortune ... of stumble-f.u.c.king into each other."

He hesitated. There was only the sound of the water slipping down through the channel to the river and the Gulf beyond. As a man, the father felt completely boarded up, the sh.e.l.l that waited upon the wrecking ball.

"My wife is dead, but I have a son. What do you think, Mr. Lourdes? When I get back to El Paso . . . Do I try to find him? You know me. What I am. What do you think of the idea?"

The ash on the tip of the cigarette branded the dark intensely but never moved, never wavered. It held steady as a star in the night sky.

"I wouldn't answer, myself, Mr. Lourdes. A Chinaman is right. Silence is golden. Except, of course, when you're broke."

They went back to waiting amongst the brittle dry weeds. Each man alone in the wilderness of his existence. From the laguna came the sound of an engine. They could hear it turn into the ca.n.a.l.

"Tom Swift and his motor boat," said the father, "on lake whatever the h.e.l.l it was."

John Lourdes flung away his cigarette. He got out of the truck. He turned the flashlight toward the ca.n.a.l. A voice in Spanish called out, "Jefe."

John Lourdes answered and the engine cut off as it slipped to sh.o.r.e.

John Lourdes approached the ca.n.a.l with Rawbone a few paces off his flank. From the boat one man came ash.o.r.e, another remained onboard. The man introduced himself. His name was Mazariegos. He had a pointed face and whittled eyes and he spoke the king's English. John Lourdes let the beam drift over the boat long enough to recognize the man onboard as being the mayor, and that fact he whispered to Rawbone.

Mazariegos carried a lantern. Before he started discussing an arrangement he wicked up the flame and held the light aloft. From beyond the tramway bridge three hors.e.m.e.n came forward out of the reeds. They disappeared into the shadowline of the ca.n.a.l, then lifted up out of the willows on the near sh.o.r.e, their horses snorting and shaking off the wet. The men were rurales and heavily armed.

Mazariegos was there to oversee the discussions, but since both John Lourdes and Rawbone spoke fluent Spanish the talks became direct and unshaded. The price of the munitions had been settled by others, this was about where and when. "Where" was determined to be the head of the laguna at the place it fed into the ca.n.a.l. The campesinos would bring boats, as boats would give them ample routes of escape should there be trouble.

"When" was the following night. John Lourdes was in the process of agreeing when Rawbone interceded. He wanted it to be three nights from now, as extra time was imperative to ensure a safe delivery. Both sides were adamant, so it was left to Mazariegos to bring about a compromise of two nights hence.

"THE MAYOR DEMANDS protection," said Rawbone. "So Doctor Stallings guarantees his security against the very people the mayor is dealing munitions to."

They were by the truck after all had left, son and father. What one could not surmise, the other was sure of.

"Mr. Lourdes, you're either not seasoned enough or not cynical enough."

"Given enough selfishness and disdain I'm sure I can measure up to your standard."

"You're missing the point, Mr. Lourdes."

"Am I?"

The father came to him. He took the son by the vest collar in a scornful but gentlemanly way. "Mr. Mayor . . . I can solve both our problems. I want you to put out the word. I'll get you weapons. You get those campesinos to think you're quietly on their side. Put on your best political face. After you deliver them, we'll cut their f.u.c.kin' heads off. How does that sound, Mr. Lourdes?"

"It sounds ... possible."

"If only the turkey could read a calendar, there'd be no Thanksgiving. Mr. Lourdes, you told me you heard the mayor making veiled threats out of one side of his mouth while asking for protection out of the other. He's a walking conflict of interests. I say they have the mayor in their gunsights. The practical application of strategy ... they mean to have order and they're making a case for intervention. The oil fields are too valuable to the future."

Rawbone drove back to the Southern while John Lourdes sat beside him in silent council with his thoughts. Along the tramway, when they'd pa.s.s the occasional light from some roadside building, Rawbone would study the man who was his son. The child he'd squandered had defied the crime of chance. He had not been despoiled or destroyed by the laws of a vile gravity.

They entered the Southern lobby. It was down to the nighthawks now and the couples tucked away in quiet corners. A gentleman played piano softly in the bar. Rawbone stopped halfway through the lobby and took John Lourdes's arm so they could talk a moment.

"Walk out of here. Away from this. You've done it. All that was required and more. This is a quagmire, Mr. Lourdes. And it will never end like you think. Whatever I am, I know the world."

Rawbone went to the bar and ordered 100 proof drinkin' whiskey. He sat alone in the moody dark. He had come to a place in his own life he could not have fathomed. A place he could neither admit nor exceed. The son would never acknowledge him and he would not break faith with that. He would prove himself, he would hold to it, not because it was right or wrong, but because John Lourdes had willed it and he would match him will to will.

As a water gla.s.s with a lethal dose of liquor was placed before him, money was thrown upon the bar. He looked to find John Lourdes easing onto the seat beside him. The father looked furrowed in a manner the son had not seen before.

"We could have made tomorrow night," said the son. "Why did you want the extra days?"

The father sipped at the whiskey. Then, setting the gla.s.s, said, "I was hoping to buy you time to change your mind."

The son crossed his arms on the mahogany bar. He looked at the father through the gla.s.s behind the bottles.

"Mr. Lourdes, a hundred years from now there will be two gents sitting like we are now. One may be a federal agent for the Bureau of Investigation like yourself, the other may be a common a.s.sa.s.sin like yours truly, and they'll be in another Manila, or another Mexico. And they will be facing the same poison we are.

"There are two governments now, Mr. Lourdes. There is one that controls the White House, and there is one that controls the rest."

John Lourdes half turned. He reached for the father's gla.s.s. He drank.