Angels in Heaven

they’ll say if some government type phones them up and asks them,
‘Oh, by the way, where’s your son these days?’ ”
    I shuddered at the thought.
    “Let us be optimistic,” Dan said.
“Let’s hope they are busy or hungry or lazy or hung over and just get the usual
clearance. Then what they do is issue you temporary traveling papers good for
one one-way ticket back to the land of the free. If you’re broke, which they do
not like, they will finally, reluctantly lend you the fare to the nearest point
of entry in the U.S., if you are unable or won’t wire home to someone f for
money yourself. So better is, what you say is luckily you had just enough fare
money or one credit card stashed away down one sock . ¿Comprende? ”
    I not only said I comprendoed but
that I was grateful for all the survival tips, deeply grateful at that. I only
hoped he knew what the hell he was talking about. Then I asked him the
64-million-peso question: how much?
    He finished up his good housekeeping
chore and put his knife away again.
    “Without going into all the details,”
he said, proceeding like all good salesmen to go into enough of them, “in our
favor is that no one smuggles anything from here to there, it’s always the
other way round, so it’s rare to get stopped, and if we do get stopped, we’re
not smuggling anything anyway, we’re just gringos out for a sail. Also all our
sailing in Mexican waters will be done at night. And if the federales are
together for once and the navy has been warned to look out for dangerous types
like you because your backstop hasn’t worked, then first of all, they have to
catch us in the middle of the night, and by the time they do, the easily
identifiable ones, Victor and Billy, will be safely hidden away under the
bulkheads, where they could look for a month without finding you, and Benny and
Sara won’t look like Benny and Sara anymore, and anyway if they do hear about
you and find us and board us and find the stowaways, we’ll just pay the buggers
off, won’t we?”
    I nodded confidently.
    “On the other hand,” Dan said,
ticking the points off one by one on the fingers of his other hand, “there are
such expenses as diesel fuel, oil, my deck hand—”
    “If you mean Alfredo the invisible,”
I said, “he’s back there trying to find someone to bait his hook for him.”
    “My deck hand, whoever he may be,”
Dan went on smoothly, “food and water, and this and that, and remember, if we
do get caught, I can always plead innocence. What captain asks to see his
passenger’s papers before a little cruise down the coast?”
    “You won’t look so innocent if they
find us hiding in the bulwarks, wherever they are,” I said.
    “There is that,” he admitted. “And
it’s bulkheads. At the least they’ll confiscate my boat, and insurance
companies are notoriously unwilling to pay out if your boat has been
confiscated with just cause.”
    “I bet,” said Sara.
    “So all in all,” said Dan, furrowing
his brow in deep thought, as if he hadn’t already worked out the price per
passenger per nautical mile per hour afloat and per stale sandwich eaten. “So,
all in all ...” And he named a sum that had more zeros in it than Tokyo airport during World War II.
    “How would you like that paid?” I
said. “Gold bullion do?”
    “Dollars, traveler’s, certified
check, even pounds,” he said. “I don’t care. Half when you board, please, half
on arrival.”
    I looked over at Benny, who gave a
noncommittal shrug.
    “You’re a big help,” I said. “OK,
Cap’n, you got a deal.” We shook hands briefly. “Sara, got three grand you can
lend me till a week from Friday?”
    “Sure, in pesos,” she said.
    All that remained was for Dan and me
to agree on where and when. He told me where—if we took the dirt road that goes
to the Ceiba but continued north instead of turning off to the hotel, in about
fifteen minutes we’d get to another turnoff, which we wouldn’t take either, but
we would take the next one and bear left when we got a chance, and it would
take us to the estuary of a small river that was just big enough for Dan to
back his boat into, bulkheads and all. Then he told me when—midnight on Friday.
He asked us for a phone number in Mérida where he could get in touch with us or
get a message from us Thursday or Friday morning to confirm. Benny gave him
Jorge’s.
    “Anything else?” Dan said,
effortlessly getting to his feet with nary a creak from