Angels in Heaven

Then
Benny drove us back through the entrance tunnel, where he had to get out and
open the trunk to show it wasn’t crammed with escaping prisoners, and we were
out of Febrero Segundo and on our way back to Mérida for a swim and a shower
and a beer and a meal and the passing parade and sheets and TV and a lot of
other items that were still but a dream or a memory to the occupant of Febrero
Segundo’s cell 199, the last one on the left on the first floor of A wing.
    After a minute I asked Benny if he
would mind stopping for a bit on the top of the same hill where we had pulled
over on the way to the prison; he said he didn’t mind at all. So he pulled
over, and we both got out, took a few deep breaths, and looked back at the
jail.
    “I didn’t even recognize him at
first,” I said. “I knew it was going to be him, but I thought for a minute
they’d made a mistake.”
    “I know,” said Benny.
    “Benny, we have to do something—and
fast.”
    “We will, we will,” my friend said.
“There is always a way.”
    “Yeah, sure,” I said. “And while
we’re talking about ways, how the hell did you get us in to see him?”
    Benny rubbed his thumb and fingers
together in that universal gesture that means payola, baksheesh, bribery, la
mordida —in other words, money changing hands.
    “No!” I said.
    “Sí,” he said. “I’m not sure if the lieutenant and
all those guards and clerks are in the regular army or a separate prison
service, like in some countries, but there is no way they can be getting rich.”
    “That’s for sure,” I said. “Did you
see where they went for lunch?”
    “So I tactfully got you out of the
way,” Benny said, stretching mightily, “as such behavior might be considered
unseemly coming from a man in your exalted position, slipped him a C-note,
probably a month’s salary, and suddenly all doors were opened.”
    “I’m glad someone in this country
takes bribes,” I said. “I was seriously beginning to worry.”
     
     
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    I climbed back into the car, in the
front seat beside Benny this time, and we continued on into town pretty much in
silence. I don’t know how Benjamin passed the time, perhaps trying to recall
all the various aliases he’d used during his disgraceful existence or the
location of all his bank accounts, but what V. (for Victor) Daniel was doing
was thinking, and I’d seen enough during our visit to Febrero Segundo to
provide me with reasons aplenty for thinking. Maybe the Two Stooges plus Bat
Girl really could spring Billy relatively quickly and relatively
bloodlessly—and in particular blood-lessly when it came to our own precious
vital fluids.
    Benny and I did converse enough on
the drive back to agree on a couple of items, one being that there now seemed
to be little purpose in involving the prison commandante if we didn’t
absolutely have to, since we already had a certain lady-killing lieutenant on
the hook and on the take. We also agreed on what our (but mostly Benny’s) next
move should be, one that could only be done the following day, if at all. So
that meant one more noche in old Mérida before we moved on to the move
after our next move—call it our second move, if you like—heading south and trying
to track down Big Jeff and his pal Cap’n Dan.
    That eve the three of us ate at the
French restaurant Benny had mentioned a few days back; and while I was daintily
slurping down the first course, potage St. Germain (soup made out of
yesterday’s leftover vegetables), I let Doris in on where we were going next
day and told her as much as I knew about Big Jeff and his successful jailbreak.
While I was finishing off the last of my sole amandine (fish with nuts), Benny
fell into conversation with a loud-voiced, florid Canadian gent from Winnipeg who was seated with his little woman at the next table. He was attired in an
eye-catching all-madras outfit; she in a plastic traveling trouser suit. It
soon appeared that he had had a most successful day souvenir shopping and had
managed with his bargaining skills to browbeat some hapless hammock vendor down
from sixty bucks to forty-five bucks per hammock. Benny, being a kindly sort,
congratulated him warmly and didn’t bother mentioning that at his pal Jorge’s
the price to one and all would have been about ten bucks each. After supper
Benny had a surprise for us—he took us to a steam bath he’d discovered on his
last trip.
    The baths were at the Colón, a
stately old