Angels in Heaven

goes to, she’ll plead ignorance again because she is still ignorant, or more
ignorant, or whatever it is.”
    “Perhaps, again ignorant,” Benny
suggested.
    “Perhaps,” I said. “Either way it’s a
dead end for the Mexican fuzz. Of course whatever Ethel is or says they won’t
believe, but by the time they’ve sorted it all out, if they ever do, I’ll be
back sitting in a deck chair in Evonne’s garden watching appreciatively as she
bends over to weed her parsley; Doris’ll be back at her typewriter editing
extracts of her diary for publication in Cosmo-, and you, Benny, ’1I be
back selling used Dodger farm clubs.
    “But let us not forget,” I warned,
“that up till now it’s all been, if not fun, Doris, relatively easy. Tomorrow
we will have two armed men to overcome somehow and incapacitate somehow, an
office to clean up, a getaway to make, a rendezvous with Jorge or one of his
innumerable sons to keep, a drive of several hundred kilometers to suffocate
through, another rendezvous to make in blackest night in anaconda country, a
lot of seasick pills to swallow, and then the hard bit starts.”
    “I’m glad you reminded me,” said Sara
sarcastically. “I wanted to go sightseeing tomorrow to the ruins of Chicken
Little, or whatever it’s called.”
    “Whatever it may be called, it is not
that,” I said.
    “Chichén Itzá it is called,” said
Benny. “Famous for its well.”
    “Jack Benny was even more famous for
his,” I said. “Now if you two are finished skylarking about, let’s go and eat
something and talk over what we have to do before three o’clock tomorrow.”
    On the way out, Fred gave me a wave
and called out, “Buena suerte mañana, señor,” which even I knew means
“Good luck on the morrow, o handsome one.” What I didn’t know was why he said
it.
    “Benny, why did he say that?” I said
as soon as we were out on the street. “Does he know something we don’t know he
knows?”
    “I had a word with him after I saw
the lieutenant off,” Benny said. “To cover the lieutenant’s presence here I
told Frederico he was a buyer for the army and I was trying to sell him
hammocks. A lot of hammocks. I also mentioned he was coming back with a couple of
his associates tomorrow.”
    “That was clever, Benjamin,” I said.
“Well thought and well done. Doris, I think you might deposit that gum
somewhere, chewing gum in public is totally gross, Melvin, and nerdish.”
    Benny took us somewhere. We ate
something thin and brownish green. We talked a lot. Then Benny took himself off
to arrange things with Jorge while Sara and I went shopping for the assortment
of items we’d need the following day—first to a hardware store, then to a
clothing store, then to a pharmacy. I must say it was a relief to go into a
drugstore and for once not head directly for the diarrhea display. Maybe
washing your hands really did help. If Lt. Esparza ever kissed one of mine, I’d
wash it in sheep dip. I don’t know why, but I’ve always had this thing against
truly handsome men. To the superficial, this might seem like mere jealousy.
    That night I dreamed of Evonne. I was
kissing her somewhere moist, like in a steam bath. True, she didn’t look like
my blond bombshell; as a matter of fact, she looked surprisingly like the
beautiful, dark-haired, sloe-eyed receptionist at our hotel, but I knew it was
really Evonne because my lips, which are without hirsute adornment, unlike some
I could mention, are strictly reserved for her.
     
    * * *
     
    Came the dawn, which I was not up to
see.
    Came nine o’clock, which I was.
    Came ten, which found us in the
office. Came eleven and, reluctantly, twelve. I took out the rust-pitted cannon
Benny had borrowed from Jorge’s number three offspring and looked it over with
mistrust for the umpteenth time. It was an ancient, made-in-Spain copy of a
Colt .45. At least the cylinder still spun like it was supposed to. I had
originally hoped that Benny could score us some knockout drops or similar
fast-acting soporific that we could dose the coffee with, but it was not to be,
which I found slightly peculiar in a country where all minor downers like
Libriums were not only available at any pharmacy without prescription but were
handed out free as samples by druggists with every purchase of a family-sized
tube of Ipana.
    It seemed that I was the only one who
was impatient.-; Benny was at his desk engrossed in some chess problem he’d
laid out on his portable set,