“There’s just one more thing,” I said.
“There always is,” Juan Miguel said.
“The archaeological items you wanted from Beatrice. They are real and they are available. They are for sale.”
“You must be out of your mind,” Juan Miguel said. “I would not buy them from you.”
“Well, you see,” I said, “they sort of go with the deal.”
“Then we are not talking half a million of your dollars, are we?”
“I suppose not. I will reveal the location of the facades when I see the money.”
“I no longer want them.”
“That doesn’t matter. You’ll pay for them anyway. And then I won’t give them to you. I’ll donate them to the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City.”
“How much?”
“That’ll be another half million.”
“A million American dollars. That is outrageous. No woman is worth that.”
“Well, considering you can buy pussy for about two dollars in some places, I reckon you’re right,” Jim Bob said. “But if this woman is someone you like specifically, and can’t be replaced easy – and let me tell you, she looks to me hard to replace under any circumstances – well, then, at least to you, she’s worth a million dollars. It was me, and I was in your position, I’d buy her back. Oh boy, would I. And you want her, good buddy, you better let us leave in less than five minutes so we can stop and make a phone call along the way, say the deal’s on so she doesn’t get snuffed. And don’t follow. I wouldn’t like it.”
“My men could work on you until I knew what I wanted to know,” Juan Miguel said. “They are very good at that sort of thing.”
“That’s nice, but we made a pact with our group. We don’t know anyone’s real names. That way, you can torture us all you want, and we can’t even tell you where each other lives, except the two of us. We know each other. But you got us. So how would that help? And it don’t matter we did know, we told you where she is. By the time you get through doing what you got to do, it’ll be way too late. I can hold out that long, I promise you.”
Juan Miguel looked at his men, then he looked at us. I tried to remain cool and calm. I glanced at Jim Bob. He looked like he was waiting on a waiter to bring him a beer.
“Go,” Juan Miguel said. “Go. I will be waiting for her call. And she must answer me. It cannot be thought to be a recording. I must ask a question and she must answer so that I know she is alive and unharmed.”
“Fine,” Jim Bob said. “Remember, we’ll be listening. And I better not see your men, or your giant, anytime during the dealings. And when it comes time to trade, you’ll do it our way. Just you. And dress up, would you? And by the way, before we leave I want my pocketknife, and he wants his four pesos back.”
We went out to the car. Jim Bob drove us out of there. When we were away from the house, he checked the rearview.
“Well?” I asked.
“No one’s following.”
“Good,” I said, letting it out like a sigh.
Jim Bob held out his hand. It was shaking violently. He said, “Will you look at that?”
I held up my own shaking hand.
“Twins,” I said.
33
That night, in the hotel, Brett and I sat by our window in chairs pulled close together. I had wrapped some ice in a towel, and was holding it to the back of my head, trying to bring the swelling down on a knot one of Juan Miguel’s Golems had given me.
We sat there with the shades wide, looked at the pedestrian walk and the sea beyond. The water looked oily and there were a number of dead fish washed up close to shore and they too were covered with something dark and slick.
The moon was a nasty slice of limburger, spotted by clouds that looked like soggy boles of field-spoiled cotton.
Jim Bob had dropped me off and driven out to Cesar’s.
“You really think Juan Miguel will come through with the money?” Brett asked.
“Truthfully, I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. We don’t want the money.”
“But he might come through with it.”
“You want the money, right?”
“Of course not. It’s blood money. I don’t want that. But what if he did come through with the money?”
“We meet him, he has the money, we kill him. We leave the money.”
“It would be a shame to leave all that money. A quarter million first time, right? I mean, that’s a lot of money to just leave lying around.”
“Brett, I don’t steal from the dead.”
“I know. But listen. What if you took the money and gave it to Ferdinand? He could buy a new boat. He could go on with his life. If anyone deserves the money, it’s him. His daughter was killed by that animal. Charlie, he doesn’t have anyone he’d want to have the money. Certainly not his ex-wife.”
“You got a point. It works out that way, okay. Ferdinand gets the money. Maybe Cesar will have other ideas. I don’t know. But it’s okay with me.”
“You’re going to have him deliver half, right?”
“It’s all he’ll ever deliver,” I said. “We’re going to kill him, remember? Then let the girl go.”
“You want to do this right, want to get him good, have him pay all the money, and on the last delivery kill him.”
“You’re cold, Brett.”
“We’re going to kill him anyway, right?”
“Right.”
“He’s a piece of shit, right?”
“Right.”
“So we kill him, and we take him for a million. Ferdinand would never have to worry. And with that kind of money, neither would we.”
I turned in my chair and looked at her.
“Brett, I’m not sure I believe my ears. Didn’t you just say you didn’t want the money?”
“It’s a lot of money.”
“It’s not like we’re finding it in a pig track. It’s blood money.”
“I was just thinking out loud,” she said. “Jesus. Will you listen to me? Money does corrupt. I feel like Humphrey Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”
“Well, one thing you got going for you, you don’t look like Bogart. And if it’s any consolation, I’ve thought of the money too. You can’t help but think about it. But we start getting greedy, even if we get greedy for someone else, we’re gonna end up messing up.”
“Don’t you want the Anthropology Museum to have those facades?”
“Brett, we don’t need money for them to have the facades. We just give them a tip-off on where they’re hidden. They’ll do the rest.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot. But you know what?”
“What?”
“You could quit working at the chicken plant. You could do what you want. So could I.”
“For a while. Even if we took the money, it would be split between everyone, our share would be small for a lifetime. We could live on it for a while, but then what?”
“We invest it.”
“And maybe we lose it.”
