broke in a great crash of foam and sent them tumbling over the sand.
It became her habit to have a long solo swim on every visit to the beach. On one such swim a trio of dolphins suddenly appeared beside her, and she trod water as they circled her, rolling under and up again, blowing spray. She laughed and stroked them as they passed. Then one came up under her and with its face against her bottom raised her out of the water entirely and dropped her with a splash. The twins were watching from down the beach and heard her happy shriek. Far up the beach in the other direction a small party of people was watching too and they cheered when the dolphin tossed her. Then the dolphins vanished and she swam to shore and the other people waved to her and she waved back and came sprinting toward the twins, grinning wide, no hand at her mouth, shouting, Did you see! Did you
They practiced their fighting techniques on the beach and it pleased her to watch them at it, to witness their dance-like spins and torsions as they threw and dodged open-hand punches fast as snake strikes, never hitting each other in the face with more than a brush of fingertips but exercising no such reserve with blows to the body, and she cringed at each loud smack of palm to belly or ribs. At the end of every session, both of them sported large red blotches on their stomachs and chests.
Their social world contained the three of them alone and they were content within it. They sometimes spoke of Vicki Clara and hoped she was doing well, and of young Juan Sotero. But they would not chance a letter to her lest John Samuel somehow get hold of it and know by the postmark where they were and pass the information to Mauricio Espinosa. What if they wrote to their cousin Bruno, Marina said. They didn’t really know him, they said, not enough to trust him. Josefina they missed dearly. To her they might have chanced a letter had she known how to read—but they would trust no one to read it to her.
In their fourth year they began to run low on money but they were unworried. There was always money to be made, always someone willing to pay you to provide them with something they could not get for themselves. In fact the twins were eager to return to work, though they would not go back to the hide business. The swamps teemed with alligators but there was no shortage of hunters or buyers and the market was glutted. As in Veracruz, however, there was a Chinese quarter, and as in Veracruz the Chinese did not dare to fish in the open gulf for fear of attack by Mexican boats. The twins found their way to a man named Chu, the quarter’s chief broker in various enterprises. As they had hoped, he was in the market for shark fins. Like Mr Sing, he had inland buyers who were always in short supply of fins—and of shark livers, to which some of the local Chinese attributed medicinal and aphrodisiacal power. Mr Chu agreed to the twins’ rate for fins and they agreed to his for livers. And they were back in the shark trade. They had thought that, as in Veracruz, they might have trouble when the local crews found out they were selling to a Chinaman. But unlike the Veracruzanos, the twins learned, the Tampiquenos didn’t care who caught fish for the Chinese so long as it wasn’t the Chinks themselves.
They eventually yielded to Marina’s entreaties and let her go sharking with them—and she loved it from the first and fast proved an able hand. She was awed by the sharks, exhilarated by the process of catching and killing them. She could soon do every job the twins could except reel in a big one by herself, or—for her fear of guns— shoot one dead. But she was very good with the shark knife and became so adept at extracting livers and excising fins that the twins soon left those tasks entirely to her.
Over time they came to believe that Mauricio Espinosa was either no longer looking for them or was never going to look for them in Tampico. It was of course also possible that his men had come to Tampico and made inquiries and then reported to Mauricio that no one here had seen any twins of the Wolfes’ description.
Marina believed it would be best for the twins to retain their distinct appearances. “It is better to be in safety,” she said, “than to be in sadness.” Her English was improving, though she would never gain command of its grammar or solid footing with its idioms.
And if they kept themselves looking different, Blake Cortez said, it would be better for whoever might prefer the excitement of two different-looking men in bed with her than the boredom of twins.
She blushed and stuck her tongue out at them.
Her thirty-fifth birthday was notable in that nobody else in her family had ever lived that long. So far as she knew, only her Uncle Brito had made it to the age of thirty-four, in which year he was killed trying to stop a fight between his two best friends. I have become
They insisted that such a significant birthday called for a significant celebration. They bought her a finer dress than she had ever aspired to wear and new suits for themselves. They had always been disinclined toward settings that called for formal clothes, but on this occasion they insisted on taking her to El Palacio, the city’s most elegant establishment. Owned by an American from Memphis, it contained a restaurant and ballroom and casino. The staff was Mexican but every waiter spoke English, and it pleased Marina to give her dinner order in that language. She had been afraid she might make a fool of herself in such a refined place, but the twins had tutored her in etiquette, and midway through the meal she was no longer uneasy. After dinner they went into the ballroom and each twin took a turn on the floor with her. Vicki Clara had taught them to waltz and they taught Marina. Then they went upstairs to the casino and there were informed it was restricted to members only.
The manager was summoned, a man named Murtaugh. He inspected the cut of their clothes and asked in English who they were and they said the Clayton brothers out of New Orleans, where they owned a fishing company called The Gulf Bounty. They were thinking about setting up a small company in Tampico too. Murtaugh shook their hands and smiled at Marina and approved them for club membership. He apologized for the interrogation, but membership was the best way to keep out undesirables. The twins said they understood the need and approved of the policy.
They had enjoyed gambling ever since boyhood games of dice and cards in the hacienda stables and in the cantina of Santa Rosalba. On their first few visits to Veracruz they had played in most of the gambling halls, but they were all strident places of rough patronage and prone to sudden violence, usually incited by allegations of cheating. The twins had made a careful study of methods for cheating and they thought about using their own dexterous chicanery to counter that of the Veracruz halls, but decided not to. If they were caught at it, or even only accused, it would not be worth the consequences—the certain brawl to follow, the possible killing, the intervention of summoned police who were sure to be in league with the establishment. They liked Veracruz and dealing with Mr Sing and did not want to risk having to exile themselves from the city for doing injury or worse to any of its policemen. So they quit the Veracruz halls. And on finding that the public gambling houses in Tampico were no less crooked, they had shunned them too.
But the handsomely appointed casino at El Palacio was a far remove from the public halls. There were roulette wheels, tables for dicing, tables for cards. With Marina between them, the twins strolled about the floor, pausing at one table and then another to scrutinize the play, and they detected no sign of underhandedness. The casino seemed satisfied with the profits ordained to it by the iron law of percentages. They were also pleased to see that at most of the card tables the game was jackpot draw poker, their favorite. There was no betting limit and both Mexican and American money was acceptable. Moreover, property could be wagered in lieu of cash, contingent on the consent of the players still in the hand. Such bets were not uncommon among these men with large holdings in real estate, and most of the regular players always brought a deed or two to the tables. The casino kept a contract lawyer on hand to certify bills of sale and transfers of title. After being assured Marina would be properly safeguarded by Palacio personnel at a side gallery reserved for the women of the players, Blake Cortez accepted the floor manager’s offer of an open chair at one poker table and James Sebastian was seated at another. They were cordially received by the other players—a mix of Americans, Britishers, and Mexicans.
Both twins fared very well that first night. In addition to cash, Blake won the deed to a small orange grove a few miles upriver and would two days later sell it for twice as much as the bet it had covered. Their fellow players grumbled good-naturedly about a chance to regain some of their losses, and each twin smiled and promised to return.
For almost two years they went after shark in the first half of every month and played poker at the casino in the latter half. Sometimes Marina would put on her fine dress and go to El Palacio with them. They would have
