'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 glass, 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 glass 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 assassin 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 glass. He drank.
'Mr. Lourdes, do you think they'd actually let the munitions be delivered?'
'Not on their lives.'
John Lourdes set the glass down. The father had picked up an attitude in the son's voice, a glimmer in the way he stared. Aye, Rawbone recognized it, alright. It was a piece of himself. The piece meant to defy the laws of men, it had somehow broken through the birth canal and made its way into John Lourdes's soul. 'They have a name for what you're thinking ... you could call it madness ... you could call it intervention ... but it sure is not what justice Knox had in mind.'
The son's fingers brushed against his stubbled chin. His mind was tracking some private reserve. 'What is required ... but to do justice.'
'Mr. Lourdes, take the Lord's Prayer and tie it around your neck and you'll find out it won't keep you from hanging.'
The son leaned in close now to the father, so close they were near to being one. 'I heard you by the canal,' he said.
The father felt his guts cinch.
'And I heard you when we were sitting outside earlier slip around answering what Stallings talked about after I left.'
'That.'
'I'm going to hurt you in a way you could never imagine.'
'Well, Mr. Lourdes, that would be a feat.'
John Lourdes stood. 'I'm going to put my faith in you. Not as an agent for the Bureau of Investigation ... but as a man. That's how I'm going to hurt you.'
John Lourdes took the father's glass and drank it empty then set the glass upside down on the bar. 'Finito, jefe.'
He took up his carryall and shotgun and started out.
'Mr. Lourdes.'
He turned.
'You've never once called me by my name. I've kept mark. Never once.'
'And I never will.'
The father nodded. 'Fair enough.'
THIRTY-THREE
STORM BLEW IN from the Gulf that night. By the next morning the tide swept over the breakers and sandbars and the river turned too rough for traffic. Down from the Southern, along the Panuco wharfs, was an open-air market that went on for blocks. Many of the stalls were covered with corrugated roofs. Rawbone stood out of the rain by a vendor who sold coffees and teas that could be laced with home-brewed mescal. He was waiting on Doctor Stallings, who now approached down that muddy causeway.
He wore a long black slicker and his umbrella was angled against the sheeting rain. Rawbone was leaning against a post and sipping from a steamy cup when Doctor Stallings joined him. Neither man spoke. Stallings shook the wet from his umbrella and then closed it up. He asked, 'Are you going to tell me about last night?'
Rawbone drank but did not answer.
The rain came down in sheets across the corrugated roof, creating that hard drum echo, and from the fires to heat the coffee and fight the damp the air was misty and flueish.
