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 assassin.'
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 glasses.
'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
