Little Tiny Teeth

murdered. Murdered and carved up, not even necessarily in that order.

The man was watching from under lowered lids to see their reaction to the weapon, and he must have loved Vargas’s. The captain’s eyes bugged out, his mouth popped open and then closed with a click as his teeth snapped together, and he took a stuttering step back.

227

Gideon was determined to provide no similar satisfaction. Swallowing down the seeming ball of cotton that had suddenly clogged his throat and crossing his arms to make sure his hands didn’t tremble, he said in Spanish: “We could use some water.”

“Oh, they could use some water,” the man said, grinning, and there was some low chuckling from the other table. “Sure. Why not?” He called out a command to the old woman. As with so many other people in this part of the world, his teeth were in wretched condition, some of them nothing more than yellow nubbins barely protruding from his gums.

“Senor, I don’t know what this is about . . .” Vargas said pitiably, practically wringing his hands. If he’d had a forelock, he would have been tugging on it. “But I assure you, there has been a misunderstanding of some—”

“I told you once to shut up,” he was told. “I’ll deal with you later. Right now, I want to talk to the professor.”

That came as a shock to Gideon. How did he know I was a professor? That meant he had been brought there not by pure accident, not because he’d happened to be with Vargas at the wrong time in the wrong place, but on purpose, because he was who he was. But how does he know me? What the hell was going on here?

“I am called Guapo,” the man said, speaking directly to Gideon.

Guapo. It meant handsome, but if this Guapo had ever been handsome, it had been a long time back. A fleshy, beetle-browed man, he was cut from the same cloth as Colonel Malagga: gross-featured, brutal, thuggish, with the high, thick shoulders of a bull buffalo, no neck to speak of, and small, mean, piggish eyes. A lush, silky, jet-black mustache (the only conceivable basis of the “guapo” nickname) drooped over the sides of his mouth, Pancho Villa style.

228

Like the other men Gideon had seen in this settlement, he hadn’t shaved for three or four days. He wore jeans, sandals, and a dirty, white soccer jersey with Alianza Lima on the chest. The belly- ballooned front of the jersey was smeared with finger marks where he’d wiped his hands on it.

“So, you heard of me?” Guapo prompted. He had a serious drinker’s voice, husked and whispery, from deep in his throat.

“No, I never heard of you.” Gideon’s own voice, he was glad to hear, remained steady, although his breath was a little short. He was looking about him as inconspicuously as he could, with his mind working at top speed. What were the ways out? Forget the way they’d come in. There were three white men and three Indians with guns between him and the door. But in the wooden wall right behind Guapo were two large, windowless openings. Could he get by the man and his knife and through one of them before someone with a rifle could get a bead on him? No, not if he made a run for it around the table. But what if he acted with enough suddenness, at a moment of inattentiveness, launching himself right onto the tabletop, kicking or swatting Guapo over in his chair and vaulting over him through the opening ...maybe even grabbing the knife on the way, if he could? But what about poor Vargas? What about—

The corners of Guapo’s mouth turned down. “No, he never heard of me,” he said sarcastically, and unpleasant laughter came from the three men at the other table.

“Sit down, Professor.” With his foot, Guapo kicked out one of the chairs. Gideon took it, angling it slightly and moving it back a little to give himself room for a better shot at the opening.

“I’ll go and sit over there,” Vargas offered, indicating the one unoccupied table. “I don’t want to intrude.”

229

“No, you’ll sit here. I want you to see what happens to him. I want you to have a real good view, so you’ll remember.”

It didn’t seem possible for Gideon’s stomach to sink any lower than it already had, but it did. Guapo didn’t intend to kill them, he intended to kill him. He noticed that Guapo’s fingers lay loosely on the knife, but he wasn’t actually holding it. If he were to move his hand or turn to look away, even for an instant . . .

The woman shuffled over with a bottle of mineral water and two cloudy glasses. She was blind, Gideon realized from the way she touched the table before setting them down. Guapo himself poured for them with the expansive, benevolent air of a host providing for his guests—first moving the knife out of their immediate reach and keeping his hand on it—and Gideon and Vargas each gulped down a glass of the closest thing to nectar Gideon had ever tasted.

“More?” Guapo asked hospitably and was answered by two vigorous nods. The second glasses were emptied as fast as the first and once again eagerly held out. Strange. Minutes from probable death— an unimaginably unpleasant death—and yet one could take so much grateful pleasure from a glass of cold water.

When Gideon had put down his glass again without signaling for another, Guapo said something to him that he didn’t understand. Something about the river and the Adelita. Gideon asked him to repeat it.

He said it again and Gideon still couldn’t make it out. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

Guapo was suddenly furious. He slammed the table with a heavy hand (Vargas actually jumped out of his chair; Gideon managed— just—to stay in his), grabbed the monstrous knife, and waved its

230

point at Gideon’s eyes. “Don’t play dumb with me, you bastard! I

know you speak Spanish.”