Queen Of The South Part 12

They entered the store. It was elegant, and the sales staff wore uniforms- short navy-blue skirts and dark stockings. To Teresa they looked like executives in some gringo movie. All tall and svelte, with exquisite makeup-like models, or stewardesses. And very, very accommodating. I'd never be able to get a job here, she thought. Chale, Chale, what f.u.c.king money will do. what f.u.c.king money will do.

"The ideal thing," said Patty, "is to come to stores like this one, that have good clothes from several labels. Keep coming back, get some confidence. A relationship with a salesgirl is important-they know you, know your likes and dislikes, what looks good on you. They call you, tell you such-and-such just came in. They take care of you, my love-they spoil you."

Accessories were upstairs: Italian and Spanish leather, belts, bags, glorious shoes by famous designers. This place, thought Teresa, is better than Sercha's in Culiacan, where the narcos' wives and girlfriends went twice a year, at the end of each harvest up in the sierra-chattering like parrots, with their jewelry, their dyed hair, and their wads of U.S. dollars. She'd shopped there herself, back when she was with Guero Davila. But the things she was buying now made her feel insecure. Maybe because she wasn't sure they were really her: her: she'd traveled a long way, a she'd traveled a long way, a really really long way, and it was another woman who now looked out at her from the mirrors in these expensive shops. long way, and it was another woman who now looked out at her from the mirrors in these expensive shops.

"And shoes are absolutely fundamental," Patty was saying. "More than purses. Remember that no matter how well dressed you are, bad shoes make you look like a bag lady. Men can get away with bad shoes-like those hideous loafers with no socks that everybody started copying from f.u.c.king Julio Iglesias. But for us girls, it's, like, shocking. Unpardonable."

They wandered through displays of perfumes and makeup, sniffing and trying everything on Teresa's skin before they went off for prawns and mussels at El Tintero, on the beach at El Palo.

"You Latin American girls," Patty said, "love strong perfumes. Try to tone it down, eh? Makeup, too. When you're young, makeup makes you look older. And when you're old, it makes you look like an undertaker's model...." They both laughed uproariously at that. "You've got big, dark eyes, beautiful eyes, and when you wear your hair with that part down the middle and all pulled back tight, very picturesque, like a real Mexican peasant, you look dynamite."

She said this as she gazed deep into Teresa's eyes, while the waiters moved back and forth through the tables set out in the sun with plates of fried eggs, sardines, potatoes alioli, calamari fritti. There was nothing superior or patronizing in her tone, just as when Teresa had arrived at El Puerto de Santa Maria and Patty had guided her through prison customs. Do this, don't do that. But now Teresa sensed something different: an ironic twist to Patty's mouth, in the wrinkles around her eyes when she smiled. You know what I'm wondering, thought Teresa-you can almost hear my thoughts. Why me, when I don't give you what you'd really like to have? My position is simple: I allowed myself to be lured in by the money, and I'm loyal because I owe you a lot. But that wasn't what you were looking for. So the question is, Why don't you lie to me and betray me and forget me? Or why not yet? yet?

"Clothes," Patty was going on, her expression unchanged, "have to fit the occasion. It's always unsettling when you're having lunch and a woman comes in with a shawl, or you're having dinner and she comes in wearing a miniskirt. That shows lack of judgment, or upbringing. She doesn't know what's right, what the rules are, so she wears what looks to her like the most elegant thing she has, or the most expensive. That's what tells you she's nouveau."

Patty's smart, Teresa told herself. Much smarter than I am, and she's had everything. She even had a dream; when she was behind bars, it kept her alive. But it'd be nice to know what keeps her alive now. Apart from drinking like she drinks, and those girlfriends of hers from time to time, and snorting like there's no tomorrow, and telling me all the things we're going to do when we're multimillionaires. I wonder. But I probably ought to stop wondering so much.

"I'm nouveau," Teresa said.

It sounded almost like a question. She'd never used that word, or heard it, or read it in books, but she intuited what it meant. Patty laughed out loud.

"Ha! Of course you are. In a way, sure. But you don't have to advertise it. Soon you won't be, don't worry."

There was something dark in Patty's gestures, Teresa decided. Something that seemed to pain her and amuse her at the same time. Maybe, Teresa suddenly thought, it's just life.

"Anyway," Patty added, "if you make a mistake, the last rule is to pull it off with as much dignity as you can. After all, everyone makes mistakes once in a while." She was still staring at Teresa. "With clothes, I mean."

More Teresas kept popping up during this time-strangers, unfamiliar women who had always been there, though she hadn't known it. And some new ones appeared in the gray dawns and silences. She discovered them with curiosity-sometimes, with surprise.

That Gibraltar attorney, Eddie Alvarez, the one who'd been managing Santiago Fisterra's money and then hardly showed up to defend Teresa, he'd met one of those women.

Eddie was not a brave man. His dealings with the rough part of the business were what one would call peripheral-he preferred not to see or know about certain things. Ignorance, he'd said during our conversation at the Rock Hotel, is the mother of great wisdom and no little health. Which is why when he came home and turned on the stairway light and found Teresa Mendoza sitting on the stairs he jumped so hard that he dropped all the papers he was carrying.

"Jesus f.u.c.king Christ," he said.

Then he stood there speechless, leaning against the wall with the papers all over the floor-no intention of picking them up, no intention of doing anything except letting his heart stop thumping like a jackhammer in his chest. Meanwhile, Teresa, still sitting on the stairs, informed him slowly and in detail of the reason for her visit. She did it in her soft Mexican accent and with that air of a shy girl who seemed to have stumbled into all this by accident. No reproaches, no questions about the investments in paintings or the vanished money. Not a word about the year and a half in prison, or how the lawyer had washed his hands of her defense.

"At night, things always seem more serious," was all she said at first. "Things leave an impression, I suppose. Which is why I'm here, Eddie. To leave an impression on you."

The light on the stairway was on a timer; every ninety seconds or so it turned off. Teresa, from her seat on the stairs, would reach up and turn it on again, and the lawyer's face would look yellow, his eyes behind his gla.s.ses would have a frightened intensity, and the gla.s.ses themselves would be sliding down his greasy, sweaty nose.

"I want to leave an impression on you," she repeated, sure that the lawyer had been pretty impressed for a week now, ever since the newspapers had published a story on the murder of Sergeant Ivan Velasco, who had been stabbed six times in the parking lot of a disco as he headed, at four in the morning, drunk of course, for his brand-new Mercedes. By a drug addict, or a mugger prowling the parking lot. A robbery, that was all-watch, wallet, etc. But what made an impression on Eddie Alvarez was that the death of Sergeant Velasco had occurred exactly six days after another close acquaintance of his, Antonio Martinez Romero, alias Antonio Canabota, had been found strangled in a pension pension in Torremolinos, facedown and naked except for his socks, hands tied behind his back, apparently by a gay hustler who had approached Canabota in the street about an hour before his demise. And putting two and two together would, in this case, be enough to leave an impression on anyone, a.s.suming that "anyone" had enough memory- which Eddie Alvarez certainly did-to recall the role those two individuals had played in the Punta Castor affair. in Torremolinos, facedown and naked except for his socks, hands tied behind his back, apparently by a gay hustler who had approached Canabota in the street about an hour before his demise. And putting two and two together would, in this case, be enough to leave an impression on anyone, a.s.suming that "anyone" had enough memory- which Eddie Alvarez certainly did-to recall the role those two individuals had played in the Punta Castor affair.

"I swear, Teresa, I had nothing to do with it."

"With what?"

"You know. With anything."

Teresa bowed her head-she was still sitting on the stairs-considering the matter. The fact was, she knew that very well. Which was why she was there, instead of getting a friend of a friend to send a friend, as she'd done in the cases of Sergeant Velasco of the Guardia Civil and the hombre de confianza. hombre de confianza. For some time now, she and Oleg Yasikov had been doing each other little favors-you scratch my back, I scratch yours-and the Russian had people, drug addicts and muggers included, with picturesque abilities. For some time now, she and Oleg Yasikov had been doing each other little favors-you scratch my back, I scratch yours-and the Russian had people, drug addicts and muggers included, with picturesque abilities.

Then, evidently having thought it over, Teresa lifted her head. "I need your services, Eddie."

The gla.s.ses slid down his nose again.

"My services?"

"Papers, banks, corporations. That sort of thing."

Then Teresa laid it out for him. And when she did-easiest thing in the world, Eddie, just a few corporations and bank accounts, and you as the front man-she thought how ironic it was, how Santiago would have laughed at all this. She also thought about herself as she talked, as though she were able to split into two separate women: one practical, telling Eddie Alvarez the reason for her visit-and also the reason he was still alive-and the other one weighing everything with a remarkable absence of pa.s.sion, from outside or from a distance, through the strange gaze that she was casting on herself, feeling neither anger nor desire for revenge. The same woman who'd put out a contract on Velasco and Canabota, not to settle scores, but rather-as Eddie Alvarez would have put it, and in fact later did-out of a sense of symmetry.

Things should be what they were-accounts balanced and closets in order. And Patty was mistaken. It was not always the Yves Saint Laurent dresses that left the biggest impression on men.

You'll have to kill," Oleg Yasikov had said. "Sooner or later." He had said this to her one day when they were walking along the beach in Marbella, below the waterfront promenade, in front of one of Oleg's restaurants, the Tsarevich-deep down, Yasikov was a sentimental guy-near the kiosk where Teresa had worked when she got out of prison.

"Not at first, of course," the Russian said. "Or with your own hands. Nyet. Nyet. Unless you're very pa.s.sionate or very stupid. Not if you stay outside, just looking in. But you will have to do it if you go to the essence of things. If you are consistent and are lucky, and you last. Decisions. Little by little. You will be going into unknown territory, an obscure place. Yes." Yasikov said all this with his head down and his hands in his pockets, looking at the sand before his expensive shoes-Patty would have approved, Teresa imagined. Alongside his six feet, three inches and his broad shoulders in a silk shirt a bit less sober than his shoes, Teresa looked smaller and frailer than she was. She wore a short skirt over her dark legs and bare feet, and the wind blew her hair into her face as she listened attentively. Unless you're very pa.s.sionate or very stupid. Not if you stay outside, just looking in. But you will have to do it if you go to the essence of things. If you are consistent and are lucky, and you last. Decisions. Little by little. You will be going into unknown territory, an obscure place. Yes." Yasikov said all this with his head down and his hands in his pockets, looking at the sand before his expensive shoes-Patty would have approved, Teresa imagined. Alongside his six feet, three inches and his broad shoulders in a silk shirt a bit less sober than his shoes, Teresa looked smaller and frailer than she was. She wore a short skirt over her dark legs and bare feet, and the wind blew her hair into her face as she listened attentively.

"Making your decisions," Yasikov was saying, pausing, placing his words carefully one after another. "Right ones. Wrong ones. Sooner or later the job will include taking a life. If you're smart, having someone else take it. In this business, Tesa"-he always called her that, as he seemed unable to p.r.o.nounce her whole name-"you can't get along with everybody. Or make everybody happy. No. Friends are friends until they aren't anymore. And then you have to act quickly. But there is a problem. Discovering the right moment. Exactly when they stop being friends.

"There is one necessary skill. Yes. In this business." Yasikov pointed two fingers at his eyes. "Looking at a man and instantly knowing two things. First, how much he's going to sell himself for. And second, when you're going to have to kill him."

Early that year they outgrew Eddie Alvarez. Transer Naga and its front corporations-headquartered in the lawyer's office on Line Wall Road-were doing all too well, and the enterprise needed a larger, more complex infrastructure than the one created by Eddie. Four Phantoms based at Sheppard's marina and two under the cover of a sportfishing operation in Estepona, maintenance, payments to pilots and "collaborators"- including half a dozen police officers and Civil Guardsmen-were not terribly complicated, but the clientele was expanding, the money was flowing in, and there were frequent international payments, so Teresa realized that more complex investment and money-laundering techniques had to be used. They needed a specialist who knew how to navigate the legal loopholes with maximum profit and minimum risk. And I've got the man, said Patty. You know him.

She knew him by sight. The first formal meeting took place in an apartment in Sotogrande. Teresa, Patty, and Eddie went, and there they met with Teo Aljarafe-Spanish, thirty-five years old, an expert in tax law and financial planning. Teresa remembered him immediately when Patty introduced them in the bar at the Hotel Coral Beach. She'd noticed him at the party at the O'Farrell estate in Jerez: tall, dark, thin, handsome. The thick black hair combed back, a little long at the neck, framing a bony face with that large aquiline nose she had remarked on. A very cla.s.sic look, Teresa decided. The way you always imagined Spaniards to be, before you met them-thin and elegant, with that air of n.o.bility that they almost never actually had.

Now the four of them were sitting around a sequoia table with an antique coffee service, a trolley of liquor and gla.s.ses under the window that opened onto the terrace, offering a panoramic view of the harbor with its yachts and sailboats, the sea, and a long stretch of the coast, all the way down to the distant beaches of La Linea and the gray ma.s.s of Gibraltar. It was a small apartment with no telephone, no neighbors on either side, and one reached it directly from the garage by private elevator; Patty had bought it-from her own family-in the name of Transer Naga and furnished it as a place to hold meetings: good lighting, an expensive modern painting on one wall, a white plastic board with red, black, and blue erasable markers. Twice a week, and always immediately before any meeting held there, an electronic-security specialist recommended by Oleg Yasikov swept the room for bugs.

"The practical part is nothing," Teo was saying. "Justifying income and lifestyle: bars, discos, restaurants, laundries. What Yasikov does, what lots of people do, and what we'll be doing. n.o.body keeps track of the number of drinks or paellas you serve. So it's time to open a serious line that goes in that direction. Interconnected or independent investments and corporations that justify every gallon of gas in your car. Lots of invoices, lots of paper. Treasury won't ha.s.sle us if we pay enough taxes and everything's straight on Spanish soil, unless there are judicial actions already under way."

"The old principle," said Patty. "Don't s.h.i.t where you live."

Elegant, distracted, her blond hair cut almost to the scalp, she was smoking cigarette after cigarette; she would nod, look around as though she were no more than a visitor. She was acting as if this was just some entertaining adventure. Another in a series.

"Exactly." Teo nodded. "And if I have carte blanche, I'll design the structure and present it to you all laid out, and I'll fit in what you already have set up. Between Malaga and Gibraltar, there are plenty of places and opportunities. And the rest is easy: once the train is loaded with all the various corporations' a.s.sets, we'll create another holding company to pay out dividends and you two will remain insolvent. Easy."

He had hung his jacket over the back of his chair and unb.u.t.toned his cuffs and rolled them up over his forearms, although the knot in his tie was still impeccably tight. He spoke slowly, clearly, with a sober voice that Teresa found soothing. Competent and smart, Patty had once summarized him: from a good Jerez family, married to a girl with money, two young daughters. "He travels a lot to London and New York and Panama and places like that. Financial consultant to very high-level firms. My dearly departed idiot ex had some sort of business with him, but Teo was always much the more intelligent of the two. He gives his advice, collects his fee, and stands back, far in the background. A top-drawer mercenary, if you know what I mean. And he never gets involved in the dirty work, as far as I can tell. I've known him since I was a girl. He f.u.c.ked me once, too, when we were younger. No big deal in bed. Quick. Self-centered. But back then I was no big deal, either."

"As for the serious matters, things get a bit more complex," Teo continued. "I'm talking about real money, the kind that never pa.s.ses through Spanish soil. And I'd suggest forgetting about Gibraltar. It's a water hole in the jungle. Everybody has an account there."

"But it works," said Eddie Alvarez.

He seemed uncomfortable. Jealousy, maybe, thought Teresa, who was observing the two men closely. Eddie had done good work for Transer Naga, but his skills were limited. Everyone knew that. The Gibraltar attorney considered the Jerez financial advisor a dangerous compet.i.tor. And he was right.

"It works now." Teo gave Eddie the kind of sympathetic look you'd give a handicapped person whose wheelchair you're about to push down the stairs. "I'm not talking about what's been done thus far. But Gibraltar's full of amateurs gossiping in the corner bar, and a secret stays secret for about twenty-four hours.... Plus, for every three good citizens, one is bribable. And that goes in both directions: we can bribe them, but so can the police. ... It's okay if you're fooling around with a few kilos, or tobacco, but we're talking about large quant.i.ties of important material. So Gibraltar's not the place."

Eddie pushed up his gla.s.ses. "I don't agree," he protested.

"I don't care." Teo's voice turned harder. "I'm not here to discuss smuggling cigarettes."

"I'm-" Eddie began. He placed his hands on the table, turning first to Teresa and then to Patty, seeking their support.

"A small-time shyster," Teo interrupted, finishing his sentence for him. He spoke the words softly, his face expressionless. Dispa.s.sionate. A doctor telling a patient there's a shadow on his X ray.

"I won't allow you-"

"Shut up, Eddie," said Teresa.

Eddie Alvarez' mouth froze. A kicked dog looking around disconcertedly. The loose tie and wrinkled jacket accentuated his slovenliness. I've got to watch that flank, Teresa told herself, glancing at him again while she heard Patty laugh. A kicked dog can be dangerous. She made a note in the little book she carried in her head. Eddie Alvarez: Consider situation later. There were ways to ensure loyalty despite a grudge. There was always a way to win a person over.

"Go on, Teo."

And Teo went on.

"The best thing is to set up corporations and do your financial business with foreign banks that are outside the oversight and control of the European Union: the Channel Islands, Asia, the Caribbean. The problem is that a lot of money comes from suspicious or criminal activities, and you have to allay official suspicion through a series of legal covers that no one will ask questions about.

"Otherwise the procedure is simple: delivery of merchandise is timed to coincide exactly with the transfer of the fee, by what's called a SWIFT transfer, an irrevocable bank order issued by the sending bank."

Eddie Alvarez, still chewing his own bone, returned to the conversation: "I did what was asked of me."

"Of course, Eddie," said Teo. She liked that smile of his, Teresa discovered. A balanced, practical smile: When the opposition is down, you don't kick him. "n.o.body is saying you didn't do your job well. But it's time for you to relax, take some time off. Without neglecting your commitments, of course."

He was looking at Eddie, not at Teresa or Patty, who was still more or less on the fringes, with an expression that said she was enjoying this show immensely. "Your commitments, Eddie." That was the second lesson. A warning. And that guy knows his stuff, thought Teresa. He knows about kicked dogs, because he's no doubt kicked his share of them. All with soft words, every hair in place. The attorney seemed to get the message, because he collapsed almost physically. Out of the corner of her eye, Teresa sensed the uneasy look he gave her. Scared s.h.i.tless. Just like at the door of his apartment house, with the papers all over the floor.

"What do you recommend?" Teresa asked Teo.

He made a gesture that took in the entire table, as though it were all there, in plain sight, among the coffee cups or in the black leather portfolio he had open in front of him, its pages blank, a gold fountain pen on top. His hands were dark, well cared for, manicured, with black hairs peeking out from under the rolled-up cuffs. Teresa wondered how old he'd been when he and Patty slept together. Eighteen, twenty. Two daughters, her friend had said. A wife with money, and two daughters. No question he was still sleeping with other women, too.

"Switzerland is too serious," Teo said. "It requires too many bonds and guarantees and confirmations. The Channel Islands are all right, and there are subsidiaries of Spanish banks that are based in London rather than Madrid, and that therefore demand financial opacity. But they're too close, too obvious, and if the European Union decides to pressure them someday, and England decides to tighten the screws, Gibraltar and the Channels will be vulnerable."

Despite everything, Eddie had not given up. Maybe it was patriotism. "That's what you say," he put in, and then muttered something unintelligible.

This time Teresa didn't say anything. She just kept looking at Teo, waiting for his reaction. He touched his chin, pensive. He sat like that for a second, his eyes down, and then looked up, straight at Eddie.

"Don't f.u.c.k with me, Eddie. Okay?" He had picked up the fountain pen, and after taking off the cap he drew a line of blue ink across the white page of his notebook, a line so perfectly straight and horizontal that he might have been using a ruler. "This is serious business, not running Winstons across the line." He looked at Patty and then at Teresa, the pen suspended over the paper, and at the end of the line he drew an arrow pointing to Eddie's heart. "Does he really have to be here for this conversation?"

Patty looked at Teresa, her eyebrows arched exaggeratedly. Teresa was looking at Teo. No one was looking at Eddie.

"No," Teresa said. "He doesn't."

"Ah. Good. Because we need to discuss some technical details."

Teresa turned to Eddie. He was taking off his gla.s.ses to wipe the nosepieces with a Kleenex, as though in the last few minutes they had been slipping more often than usual. He also wiped the bridge of his nose. His nearsightedness accentuated the bewilderment and fear in his eyes. He looked as pathetic and helpless as a duck soaked in crude oil on the ocean sh.o.r.e.

"Go downstairs and have a beer, Eddie. We'll see you later," said Teresa.

He hesitated, then put on his gla.s.ses as he clumsily got up. The sad imitation of a humiliated man. It was obvious that he was trying to think of something to say before he left, and that nothing occurred to him. He opened his mouth, closed it. Finally he left, in silence: a duck leaving black footprints, chuff chuff chuff chuff chuff chuff with a face that looked like he was going to throw up before he made it outside. with a face that looked like he was going to throw up before he made it outside.

Teo drew a second blue line in his notebook, under the first, and just as straight.

"I would go to Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, the Caribbean, or Panama," he said. "Several of my representatives operate with Grand Cayman, and they're very satisfied: six hundred and eighty banks on a tiny island two hours by plane from Miami. No tellers, virtual money, no taxes, confidentiality a sacred trust. They're only obliged to report transactions when there's proof of direct links to known criminal activity.... But since they have no legal requirements for a customer's identification, establishing those links is not possible."

Now he was looking at the two women, and three out of four times it was at Teresa. I wonder, she thought, what the Lieutenant's told him about me. Where everybody stands. She also wondered whether she was dressed appropriately: a loose ribbed sweater, jeans, sandals. For a moment she envied the mauve and gray Valentino outfit that Patty was wearing as naturally as a second skin. Elegant b.i.t.c.h.

Teo went on explaining his plan: A couple of non-resident corporations located abroad, covered by law firms with adequate bank accounts, to start with. And so as not to put all their eggs in one basket, transfer select amounts of money, laundered through a series of secure circuits, to fiduciary deposits and serious bank accounts in Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland. Dormant accounts, he insisted, that were not to be touched, as insurance for the long term. They could also invest their money in corporations that dealt in trusts, real estate, tides, things like that. Clean money-spotless, in fact- in case someday the Caribbean infrastructure had to be dynamited or everything else had to be blown to bits.

"Do you agree with all this?"

"It sounds like the right thing," Teresa replied.

"It is. The advantage is that now there's a lot of movement between Spanish banks and the Caymans, and we can get lost in all the wire traffic for the first deposits. I have a good contact in George Town: Mansue Johnson and Sons. Banking consultants, financial advisors, and attorneys. They do complete tailor-made packages."

"Isn't that going a little far, making everything way too complicated?" asked Patty. She had been smoking one cigarette after another, the b.u.t.ts acc.u.mulating in the saucer of her coffee cup.

Teo put the pen down on the notebook page. He shrugged. "That depends on your plans for the future. What Eddie did for you works for the current state of your business: it's that simple. But if things start picking up, you really need to prepare a structure that can handle any expansion, without rushing it and without improvisation."

"How long would it take you to have everything ready to go?" Teresa asked.

Teo smiled the same smile as before: restrained, a bit vague, very different from the smiles of other men she remembered. And she still liked it, or maybe it was that now she liked that kind of smile because it didn't mean anything. Simple, clean, automatic. More a polite gesture than anything else, like the gleam on a polished table or the shine on a new car. There was nothing compromising behind it: not sympathy, or dreams, or weakness, or obsessions. There was no intention to deceive, no attempt to convince or seduce; it was there only because it was linked to the character, inculcated in him through upbringing, the way his manners and the well-tied knot in his tie had been. He smiled the way he drew those ruler-straight lines on the blank pages of his notebook, and that was rea.s.suring to Teresa. By this time she had read, and remembered, and she could look at a person and see many things. This man's smile was one of those that put everything in its proper place. I don't know whether it'll happen with him, she told herself-I really don't know if I'll ever screw another man. But if I do, it'll be a man who smiles like that.

"How soon can you give me the money to start? After that, a month, maximum, and the papers will be ready for you to sign. We can have the right people come here, or we can all go to a neutral site. An hour of signatures and paperwork, and it'll be done.... I also have to know who's in charge of everything."

He waited for a reply. He had said this in a light, offhanded way. A detail of no great importance. But he was still waiting, and he was looking at each of them in turn.

"Both of us," said Teresa. "We're in this together."

Teo took a second or two to answer. "I understand. But we need a single signature. The one who'll be sending the faxes or making the telephone calls. There are things that I can do, of course. That I'll have have to do, if you give me a limited power of attorney. But one of you has to make the fast decisions." to do, if you give me a limited power of attorney. But one of you has to make the fast decisions."

Lieutenant O'Farrell's cynical laughter broke the silence. The f.u.c.king laugh of an ex-combatant who wipes her a.s.s with the flag.

"That's her." She pointed at Teresa with her cigarette. "Somebody'll have to get up early every morning, and I don't get up till noon."

Miss American Express. Teresa asked herself why Patty decided to play it this way, and since when. Where she was pushing her, and why. Teo sat back in his chair. Now his eyes moved back and forth between the two women.

"It is my responsibility to tell you that you'll be leaving everything in her hands," he finally said to Patty.

"Sure."

"All right." Teo studied Teresa. "That's it, then."

He was no longer smiling, and his expression seemed to indicate he was appraising the situation. He's asking himself the same questions about Patty, Teresa told herself. About our relationship. Calculating the pros and cons. To what degree I represent profits. Or problems. To what degree she does.

At that, she began to sense many of the things that were going to happen.

Patty gave them a good, long look when they left the meeting, and the look continued as the three of them went downstairs in the elevator and then strolled along the docks of the harbor, tidying up the last details. They picked Eddie Alvarez up at the door of the Ke bar, where he resembled someone who'd just been the victim of a mugging and was expecting another, the ghost of Punta Castor and perhaps the memory of Sergeant Velasco and Canabota making his throat tight. Patty seemed pensive, her eyes squinting, marked with wrinkles, with a touch of interest or amus.e.m.e.nt, or both- amused interest, interested amus.e.m.e.nt-bubbling inside her, somewhere in that strange head. It was as though she were smiling without smiling, mocking Teresa, and perhaps herself, a little, laughing at everything and everybody. She had been watching them with that strange expression when they left the apartment in Sotogrande, as if she had just planted pot up in the sierra and were waiting for the perfect moment to harvest it-and she continued watching them during the conversation with Teo along the docks, and then for weeks and months afterward, when Teresa and Teo Aljarafe began to grow close. And once in a while Teresa got a whiff of that and was about to confront Patty, say, Quihubo aqui, camalita, Quihubo aqui, camalita, what's up, what's up, cabrona, cabrona, spit it out. spit it out.

But then Patty would smile in a different way, more open, like, Wlw, me? Wlw, me? and light a cigarette, sip at her drink, pick at her food, do a line of c.o.ke. Or she'd start talking about something with that frivolousness she wielded so perfectly-frivolousness that Teresa had figured out wasn't frivolousness at all-or anything like sincerity, either. Or Patty might go back, for a time, to being what she'd been in the beginning: the distinguished, cruel, cutting, quick Lieutenant O'Farrell, the comrade from back when, whose dark side you might occasionally glimpse. and light a cigarette, sip at her drink, pick at her food, do a line of c.o.ke. Or she'd start talking about something with that frivolousness she wielded so perfectly-frivolousness that Teresa had figured out wasn't frivolousness at all-or anything like sincerity, either. Or Patty might go back, for a time, to being what she'd been in the beginning: the distinguished, cruel, cutting, quick Lieutenant O'Farrell, the comrade from back when, whose dark side you might occasionally glimpse.

Afterward, Teresa even came to wonder to what extent Patty had sacrificed herself to fate, like a woman accepting the tarot cards that she herself turns up. To what degree had Patty foreseen, or even fostered, many of the things that eventually occurred between the two of them, Teresa and Teo Aljarafe? And thus, in a way, among the three of them.