He spent an hour and a half being animated and dramatic and hilarious and when he had finished they were both exhausted.
Cat appeared in the hallway and reminded him their plane was ready to fly and then was gone.
He turned to her and told her where they were going.
She said she knew. She said she was from there. From Dallas.
He said he missed Texas.
So did she, she said.
There was a long pause. Downstairs, rock and roll began thumping from somewhere.
Then why don’t you come along? was his next question.
She looked up at him, her head tilted to hear the muffled sounds.
“I will,” she replied.
And she did.
Chapter 7
They were having a drink or three in the bar at LAX waiting for their connecting flight to Dallas when two young coed types waltzed in wearing aquamarine shorts and deep equatorial tans followed by two boys just as dark wearing sombreros on which was stitched “Acapulco.”
Jack Crow, about to climb aboard his fifth jet in less than twenty-four hours, zonked by in-flight sleep and in-flight food and three or four drinks ahead of the Planet Earth, found this an inspiration.
“That’s what we oughta do,” he announced. “Go to Acapulco! Or better, Cancun or Isla de Mujeres! It’ll take a coupla weeks to get settled into the new shack anyway.”
“We’ve already checked our bags on through to Dallas,” Cat pointed out.
Jack frowned at Cat’s lack of enthusiasm. “So we leave from Dallas.”
“Naw,” said Carl, burping softly. “I gotta get all our bullet stuff ready.”
Jack looked at him. “Yeah. Well… But the rest of us can go. Annabelle?”
Annabelle barely smiled. “Who’s going to do all that ‘settling in’?”
“But the rest of you can go ahead,” offered Annabelle in her very best martyred tone.
Jack stared at his drink. “Naw.”
Annabelle smiled. “You may as well, Jack. You never do any unpacking anyway.”
Jack grinned back at her. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to be near you while
“How near?”
“I thought I’d stay at the Adolphus Hotel downtown.” He looked at the others. “I thought we all would the first couple of days.”
Annabelle sipped and smiled. “If you like.”
Carl had his hands clasped across his great belly and was mumbling to himself. Adam, seated beside him, leaned closer.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, concerned.
Carl looked at him. “I don’t unnerstand it, padre!”
“What, Mr. Joplin?”
“Call me Carl.”
“Okay, Carl. What is it?”
“My drink.” He pointed to the glass before him.
“It’s empty,” Adam noticed.
“That’s what I don’t unnerstand! It was full only minutes ago.”
Adam stared, comprehended, grinned.
“Oh my God!” Cat all but shrieked, shoving his empty glass away from him across the table in mock tenor. “It’s happened to mine, too!”
And then Carl and Cat looked at one another and began humming the theme from
While the others laughed, Jack held his face in his hands and shook it mournfully. “My Team,” he muttered. “Nurse!” he called to the young waitress scurrying by. “An Emergency Round.”
On the plane they gathered together in the first-class lounge to hide from the food. One more airline meal, Jack felt certain, would make him left-handed. So they sat and drank and played cards and chatted. Jack brought up the subject of Mexico again but in an odd way and with an odd look on his face.
“I used to work in Mexico,” he dropped briefly and then blatantly waited for someone else to urge him to continue. Davette complied and Team Crow wondered if she could possibly have known him well enough this soon to feel the oddness his eyes could shed.
Cat curled up in his seat like his namesake and prepared not to miss a single word.
What’s going on? he wondered, but said nothing out loud.
He didn’t have to, for all who knew Jack Crow were thinking the same.
And as for Jack himself.
They are going to have to know this. They won’t understand him otherwise. They might not understand him even then. Or me, for bringing him along.
But they’re going to have to know.
And maybe if I tell them the good part first.
He smiled and turned to the others. “It was during the initial phase of my government career.”
Cat frowned, said nothing. Annabelle spoke up. “You mean before you joined the army.”
“Nope. Afterward.”
“But you said the first part of..
“No,” he corrected with a smile. “I said during the
“Which means?” asked Carl sounding as bored as he knew how.
“Which means I was under deep cover for the NSA on assignment to the CIA working as an agent for the DEA.”
“What the hell is all this supposed to mean?” Carl wanted to know.
“Well, my job was to check out the Cuban connection into raw brown Mexican heroin, so I was along the Texas border trying to find out if all the rumors about a big-time purging of the hippie smugglers was true.”
“Was it?” somebody asked.
“It was. They were wiping out all the amateurs to get ready for the big money they were monopolizing.”
“So what did you do?” somebody else asked.
Jack shrugged, grinned. “Got in the way mostly. It was a dumb assignment and a dumb idea to send me along. I liked the NSA but they didn’t trust me. I liked the CIA but they didn’t even trust each other. I was scared of the DEA and they hated me but had to take me because of orders from upstairs.
“It was a mess.”
He paused, looked around, and grinned easily. “But I did have an interesting couple of weeks.”
And Cat thought, Here it comes. He glanced around at the others in the lounge and wondered how they were gonna take whatever it was that Jack was trying to sneak up on them.
And then he thought, He’s trying to sneak it up on me, too. First time ever. Of course, there’s a first time for everything, so…
So why am I so scared?
And once more Jack Crow began to speak.
