“Bishop must have lost his mind,” Paco muttered when they entered the coffeehouse; he was fortified with whiskey and determination, but still had reservations. “A man can get himself killed in this place.”
“It’s the only place we won’t arouse too much suspicion by meeting our contacts.”
“Sí, but we look more like easy marks than patrons,” Paco grumbled.
Steve grinned. “You always look like an easy mark. It’s your innocent face that gives you away.”
"¡Mierda!" Paco swore, then laughed. “Only you would think I have an innocent face, amigo. Your wife sees right through me. I saw her today, down at the docks as she was riding back with Girard. She has a way with her, you know, and somehow I let it slip that you would not be staying with us the entire way to Mexico. Por Dios, but she can make me say things I had no intention of saying, and then I stand there like a fool trying to explain it away.”
“I know the feeling. Don’t worry, I’ll handle Ginny.”
It was said more confidently than he felt at the moment. Christ, Paco was right. Ginny had a way of making him say things he regretted later.
“Is that O’Brien?” Paco indicated a beefy man with a scarred face; he was carrying a huge oak cudgel and with him was a man who looked equally rough, both of them cut from the same coarse cloth.
“Yeah, looks like both of them.”
Matt and Hugh O’Brien had grown up in the Live Oaks gang. Their father had died five years before while drunkenly trying to rob a fisherman from a rowboat on the Mississippi River. In their midtwenties now, the men were notorious troublemakers around Gallatin Street, always ready to make money at any task except an honest living. They had the kind of connections that could be useful in this hellish underworld of crime.
After buying a round of drinks—the Irish whiskey little more than neutral spirits with a half pint of creosote dumped into it—Steve got right down to business.
“I’m told you gentlemen have the merchandise we need.”
The older O’Brien, Hugh Jr., looked at him with narrow eyes that were as flat and black as a lizard’s. “Maybe we do. Maybe we don’t. I ain’t seed no money yet.”
“You were paid a conscription on order. You get the rest when the merchandise is delivered to the docks.”
Steve met his gaze with the same cold expression. It was a familiar game, a poker bluff to see who blinked first.
“Yeah, well, we had more trouble than we thought we was,” O’Brien growled. “That warehouse was locked tighter’n a whore’s purse, and we had to git rid of a guard that we didn’t expect.”
“That’s not my problem.” Steve eyed him, aware that the younger man was shifting from foot to foot, his hands still wrapped tightly around the neck of the heavy cudgel capable of taking off a man’s head in one blow. “We had a deal. It’s up to you if you want the rest of the money.”
After a short silence, O’Brien jerked his head in a nod. “I’ll git the rifles to the dock. You just git me my money.”
“How many?”
“Two thousand, maybe more. Hell, there’s enough crates to reach from here to Canal Street, end to end. Somebody at the Custom House is going to be pissed as hell that they ain’t there no more. Took us damn near all night to load them sonsabitches on wagons and git ’em took off and hid. We should git a bonus fer that.”
A heavy layer of smoke drifted in the close, dark saloon, smelling of tobacco, whiskey and stale sweat. It was rife with danger as well, and belligerence that could prove deadly.
“Your efforts won’t go unrewarded, gentlemen,” Steve said easily. “Just have the rifles at the dock by midnight tonight. We sail in the morning.”
It was ironic, Steve thought, that the United States government was providing ammunition to a Mexican dictator—or to his successor. Whichever man promised to come out the victor in this latest rebellion would receive the sanction of the powerful nation to the north. He could remember how discreetly Juarez had been given assistance in his struggle to keep the French from taking Mexico, to ensure that Mexico was kept in the hands of the people instead of a foreign power that might be a threat to the security of the United States.
As usual, it had to be silent aid, with no overt tones of interference. “A most delicate situation,” Bishop called it in his typical dry understatement. “Of course, if you are discovered…”
It went without saying that they were on their own. Steve, with his connections to Mexico, would be assumed to be acting in his own interests, as would Paco Davis. They were the natural men to assign this task, and as appointed ambassador, Steve was less likely to be searched or suspect upon his arrival in Mexico. Yes, it was perfect.
Except for the complication Ginny could provide if she balked or created a scene when she learned that he would be more involved in the rebellion than he had told her.
“I begin to think it most inconvenient that you brought your wife with you,” Bishop had said, his gimlet gaze holding no hint of the disapproval he voiced. “She has been known to be a distraction in the past.”
“If I’d left her behind, she was liable to come after me and be even more of a distraction,” Steve replied shortly. “And you know what she can do when she’s angry.”
Paco had smothered a laugh quickly at Bishop’s sharp glance, but it was obvious they shared the same opinion: Ginny was always an unknown quantity.
“Keep her happy,
