like a Zippo lighter without a top. It was filled with a kind of red paraffin. Below the device was a battery cell and a tiny switch. Julio dipped the key in a small bottle of white liquid on the basin. Then he turned on the switch and placed the key in the wax. He explained that the cell heated the wax sufficiently to take an impression. In a few seconds, he turned off the switch, waited a few seconds more, then gently pulled out the key, which he washed with hot, soapy water and carefully dried. The whole operation took less than sixty seconds!
'Get this back… and be careful,' he told her. Then he kissed her lightly on the lips. 'How was it?' he asked, his professional cool barely concealing his jealousy.
'Just a job, like any other job,' she answer, trying to appear nonchalant.
'Con cuidado, senorita,' he cautioned her. 'That is what all the hookers say…'
She left him, her eyes blazing with anger and indignation. This would be the worst part – getting the key chain back on the belt loop and the key into the pocket without being discovered. She would get Julio later for his unkind insinuation. For now, survival was foremost in her mind, and she opened the door a crack to peer into the bedroom. The lamp was still on, and Ernesto's back was to her, as it had been when she left. She estimated that she had been gone about three minutes, possibly four.
It took that much time to get the damned chain back on the belt loop! She was hurriedly gathering up her clothes when she tripped on a shoe, and fell backwards onto the floor!
Garcia awoke with a start. He rolled over, blinked and looked down at her. She looked like a frightened waif with her clothes bundled between her legs.
'What are you doing there, Nina?' His look was more puzzled than suspicious.
Jill's heart was in her throat, and when she spoke, the words came out in a high-pitch squeak. 'I… I thought you would sleep better if I went back to my room. Besides, there are people around and…'
He smiled sympathetically at her. 'Of course, Nina. I understand. But I shall miss you. Very much.'
'I'm going to miss you too, Ernesto. I really will…'
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They flew back to Mexico City the next morning, dropping Garcia and Jack Dawson (who clutched the wrapped lithographs tightly under his arm) at the gallery. Julio drove to an old section of town. They walked for two blocks, hailed a taxi and rode for several blocks more, then walked another block, into a locksmith shop, where Julio handed the stooped keymaker a brass padlock, explaining in Spanish that he had lost the key. The old man's face was expressionless as he shuffled into the back of the shop. In about five minutes he returned, handing Julio the lock and a key. Julio thanked the man, paid him and they left, taking a different route back to the parked Mercedes.
In the limousine, he explained that the man was 'with us…'
When they got back to the house, Julio went immediately to the study. Using the key the locksmith had given him, he opened the padlock, which was hollowed out. Inside was an exact duplicate of the key on Garcia's chain.
Julio quickly opened the drawer and read the paper which lay on top. His eyes widened. 'Caramba!' he breathed. 'We've got him!'
Taking what looked like a package of chewing gum out of his jacket pocket, Julio held the wrapper between his thumb and index finger, pulling out one of the 'sticks'. He produced a miniature camera, which he used to photograph the paper. It was a list of names and numbers – series numbers like those used on lithographs! There were also dates next to the numbers. This was a real bonus. Now Julio knew who the 'clients' were and when they were to come for their dope. If all went well, they could nab all the big dealers in the Western Hemisphere!
Julio pulled out the second 'stick' and placed it in front of the first one. He took another photograph. He handed the stick to her. 'Here. Guard this with your life. If anything happens to me, take this to a man named Roy Harris at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. Tell him Senor Sombrero asked you to give it to him.'
'Oh Julio,' she cried, throwing her arms around his neck, 'I don't want anything to happen to you. I love you!'
He looked at her strangely, wistfully. 'Que lastima!' he said softly. 'What a dirty business it is, avenging crime. In order to bring criminals to justice, we must become criminals ourselves at times.'
He left her then. He had things to accomplish before he picked the two men up at the gallery to chauffeur them back to the house. Then he would drive to the ranchero to fetch the girls. She would not see him again until the 'exhibit'…
The hour for the orgy arrived. Jill had let herself be drugged with cocaine, and she accepted any drink that was offered to her. Julio had promised her that when the raid came he would give her an injection of some powerful antidote that would clear her mind and rouse her from her drugged stupor. God, she prayed, don't let anything go wrong!
Her whole body felt numb from the coke she had snorted, and the alcohol had dulled her brain. Yet she felt horny as anything! She was introduced to the other 'artists', and each of the girls kissed her on the mouth. They were all in various stages of druggedness and intoxication. Lovely girls with beautiful figures, and each costumed to represent a character from a famous painting. Jill detected several foreign accents. The air was thick with a mixture of hashish, incense and cigar smoke.
She saw Dawson feeling the ass of one willowy young blonde whose silky hair hung down over one eye. Valdez, her employer at La Jacaranda, was there, in close conversation with Ernesto and two other men, one of whom she recognized from the bullfights. And there were several others whom she had never seen before. All the men had an aura of wealth and importance about them. There was even one in uniform with stripes on his epaulets and badges on his chest who was introduced as 'El Capitan'. There were no women, other than the young females who would prostitute their bodies for the lusting guests.
Her self-portrait drew genuine compliments and enthusiastic response, even from the girls. She wondered sadly what would become of it once Don Ernesto was arrested.
Even her many sketches of Julio, and the portraits she had done in Acapulco were displayed around the room – a large mirrored ballroom in a separate wing of the house. (Even the ceiling was mirrored!) In the center of the room was an enormous circular platform (it must have been twelve feet in diameter) and flanking it, four curved, sectional sofas. The male guests sat on these as Ernesto announced each painting character and the girl appeared, parading around the stage like a beauty pageant contestant to the men's cheers.
Jill was the last to come on stage, taking her place in the center while the other girls did a kind of Busby Berkely ballet around her.
'It's time to strip, baby,' Goya's Maya whispered to her. Under the influence of dope and alcohol, Jill's inhibitions were thoroughly repressed, and stripping seemed like the natural thing to do. Lautrec's La Goulue rolled down her black silk stockings. The Mona Lisa unfastened her dark dress and let it fall from her shoulders. Monet's Odalisque, a sloe-eyed Oriental girl, took the veil from her face and wriggled out of her sheer harem pants. Clothes were flying in the air like a line of wash in a high wind and there were female hands all over her, caressing her hardened nipples, stroking the dark curls of her pubic hair.
The forbidden act of a naked girl intimately touching another naked girl strangely excited the drugged young ingenue. Primitive Spanish folk music played loudly in the background. A battery of colored lights and psychedelic slides played grotesquely on the girl's beautiful naked bodies as they danced and kissed and fondled each other's bodies. They wrestled and rolled together on the stage, pressing their warmly pulsing cunts together tightly, stirring in Jill a forbidden excitement she couldn't deny… the gnawing ache, the yearning for sexual fulfillment, the hot feeling that craved a cock, a tongue, a finger. When the blonde girl tongued into her mouth passionately while thrusting a finger into Jill's heated pussy, a man cried, 'Vamanos!' and leaped up on the platform. The others joined him, and soon there were naked male and female bodies locked in sexual maneuvers all over the place, with clothing of every sort flying off the platform.
Jill couldn't keep tabs on her conflicting emotions. On one hand, she was horrified at the things that were
