Angels in Heaven

number 943 leaving tomorrow at eight-fifty a.m. I made a reservation in your name
just in case. To be precise, in one of your names.”
    “Which one?”
    “The one that’s in that forged
passport of yours.”
    “Forged?” Benny said indignantly. “Forged?”
    “Well, it’s not in your name, is it,”
I said, “unless I’ve been wrong all these years and you really were baptized
Henry Albert Sanderson? What’s the big deal, anyway? You’ve forged everything
else in your life of crime.”
    “That may be true,” Benny said, “but
not that passport. It is possible to legally have more than one name, you know.
Actors do it. Companies do it. Married ladies have a choice of names.
Songwriters, you may like to know, have the right to register two aliases with
whoever it is they register things with. It’s just a question of knowing how to
go about it.”
    “You must tell me sometime,” I said.
    “I’d be delighted,” he said. “If
you’ll tell me what I do when I get to Mérida besides drink a lot of good
beer.”
    “This sort of thing,” I said, passing
him over the lists I’d been making under the heading “MEXICO.”
    “You are going to be a busy boy, I
will tell you that. There is a lot I need to know about and fast.”
    “It’s just a passing thought,” Benny
said, “but why don’t you go?”
    “Because I am extremely noticeable,”
I said, “due to my amazing build and stunning good looks, while you are not
only extremely unnoticeable by birth and by life-style, but a master of
disguise. Also you speak the lingo fluently, while all I’ve got are a few vital
phrases like ‘Another pitcher of margaritas please, garçon’ and ‘Where is the
nearest toilet?’ Also, I do not want to be spotted ambling around pretending to
be a tourist from South Bend and then turn up a few days later as, let us
say—who knows?—a U.S. prison inspector on a goodwill tour.”
    “Tell you one thing,” Benny observed,
looking over the lists. “You were right when you said I was going to be a busy
boy. ‘Hotels. Car rental. P.O. box—mail drop. Airport and access. Official
American agencies in Mérida—consulate? trade mission? Department of
Agriculture? Immigration? Accesses to and from Febrero Segundo. Office
equipment rental. Intercom. U.S. bank? What customs formalities crossing border
both ways? Passport? ID? Temp secretarial service.’ Goodness me.”
    “Wait till you get to page two,” I
said. “And pictures,” I said, “lots of pictures, pictures of everything you can
get, but obviously we do not want you arrested for taking closeups of the locks
on the prison gates.”
    “It might help,” he said. “Then you’d
have someone on the inside.”
    “We already got someone on the
inside,” I said, “remember? Two we don’t need.”
    “Just another passing thought,” Benny
said. “That’s the way they’d do it in the movies.”
    “What I also would like,” I said,
ignoring his foolishness, ‘are your opinions—your hunches, shall we say, as you
Probably won’t have a lot of facts to base them on. Is it Possible to bust
someone out by physically removing them with a helicopter or maybe one of those
cherry-pickers Con Edison men use to change light bulbs way up in the air? How
about bribery? Has anyone escaped before, and how? My feeling is, if we’re
going to get it done quickly without a whole army, we’ll have to set up some
kind of a con, but I could be wrong. It has happened. Maybe a couple of thousand
bucks in the right hands will do it all for us. Billy did say money was no
object.”
    “Yes, I did notice that remark,”
Benny said. He glanced briefly through some of the items on the second page,
then tucked the papers away in his wallet. “I better move it. If I’m flying
tomorrow, I’ve got things that must be done first.”, “Need some money?” I said.
    “Later,” he said.
    “Then happy landings, amigo,” I said.
    “ Hasta la vista ,” he said. He
gave me his boyish grin, then a wave, and headed for the door.
    When he was just about to open it, I
said to him, “Benny, are you sure you don’t want to think it over? It could get
a bit scary down there.”
    “No sweat,” Benny said. “See, I know
a guy who already did what we’re going to do, and we have to be at least as
smart as him.”
    “Benny,” I said. “Come back.”
    He came back.
    “Sit down.”
    He sat down.
    “Tell me about this guy who has
already done what we are going to do,