Ai! Pedrito!

Chapter 6

Bolo decided it was time for a quick change and slight alteration of his appearance. He tossed aside his taxi-driver’s cap and pulled on a leather aviator’s jacket, becoming a different person entirely. Bolo walked up to the front entrance of the Cantina de Espejos in broad daylight. He was expected here, in this alter ego.

Standing under the painted Bienvenidos welcome sign, he looked up and down the morning street with exaggerated caution, like a juvenile delinquent about to launch into an elaborate prank. Then he squared his shoulders and walked through the front door. His dark hair hung loose and flowing.

Inside, the side walls of the main room were covered with mirrors that jutted out in Vs, multiplying every image, no doubt to increase drunken confusion. At night, when the disco lights flashed, the scene became dazzling and dizzying; the manager’s thinking, apparently, was that many patrons, unable to find their way outside, would simply stay behind and order another drink.

The cantina had few customers this early in the morning—few conscious ones, anyway—and no bartender. One groggy man at a tilted table snapped fully awake for a moment and threw his long knife to impale a black scorpion on the back wall. Then he slumped back across the table, snoring again.

At the rear of the cantina, a curving metal staircase wound up to a second-floor balcony, where a single door marked the room Smith had stumbled into. At the moment, Bolo heard no sound from upstairs, so he assumed the redheaded lieutenant had gone to sleep, as he had expected. Still, he had no time to lose.

Bolo headed toward a curving, knife-scarred bar next to a raised stage; fishnets and chicken wire offered meager protection for the musical act. Under a single white spotlight, the band members fumbled through their morning rehearsal with trumpets, horns, drums and guitars. They wore shabby rhinestone-studded clothes that might have looked fine if the bar’s interior lighting remained dim enough and the customers remained drunk enough. The musicians were out of tune and out of enthusiasm.

A fiery-eyed, dark-haired beauty paced around the stage like a crouching lioness. She was barelegged, her black tight pants cut off high on the thigh above black boots. A broad black belt with a huge silver buckle held a bolero jacket together just barely enough to cover her breasts. She rapped a baton wickedly against the palm of her hand with a painful slapping sound as she glared at the band members.

They played a few more bars, hitting a bad discord. Her temper snapped, and she stamped her foot in rage. “No, no, no! One more wrong note out of you and I’ll have your stinking heads!” she fumed. “Or some other body part.”

The musicians flinched in shock. “Por favor, Yaquita!” the trumpet player said. “We are trying our best—but we learned to play disco, not this kind of music!”

“Disco! You ungrateful dogs—I cannot sing disco!” Yaquita shrieked. “Have you no sense of tradition?”

Bolo stood patiently in the shadows just inside the bar, waiting for Yaquita’s typical outburst to fade. He had expected nothing else from her, and it was good for his plan that her temper was already stoked for the day.

“I want a sad love song, you swine!” Yaquita snapped at the band. “A passionate ballad of a beautiful young woman with a great future, betrayed by the redheaded man to whom she gave her heart. All she wanted in her whole life was to get married, and now she is brokenhearted.” Her face grew stormy. “We’ll now practice my first number. Don’t you dare hit any wrong notes. One, two, three, four!”

Yaquita turned around and closed her eyes. Bolo winced in coiled anticipation as the band began the intro, which was so dolorous it became a parody of the too-too sad, too-too tragic Spanish love ballads he had heard many times during his long task of infiltrating the South American operation of Colonel Enrique and Colonel Ivan.

On stage, Yaquita began to assume the pathos of the song, her gestures utterly extravagant. Her ebony hair whipped about like lashes.

I’ll cut my throat for love of you,

I’ll stab my heart if your love’s not true.

I’ll strangle—

Coming into the lighted area near the stage, Bolo tried to snag her attention. Yaquita broke off and glared down at him. “What the hell do you want, Bolo?”

His face remained bland, unemotional. “An agent has arrived.” He pointed at the balcony room. “Sent by the two colonels.”

Yaquita nodded to Bolo, then turned to snap at the band. “That’s all for me this morning. But you keep practicing so that you aren’t such a miserable disappointment to my singing voice!”

Moving like a cat, Yaquita stalked offstage. She trotted up the curving steps and entered the single upstairs room without knocking. Business was business.

* * *

Still in the khaki safari outfit he had taken from the tan suitcase, Smith lay back on the bed, once again marveling at Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, the greatest naval battle in history. It was a peaceful moment, resting and reading, just the sort of vacation he liked.

He looked up as the door opened, startled. A beautiful woman slipped inside and closed the door, her back to him so that he could see only her shapely waist and bottom, her long black hair. He raised a finger, embarrassed, just about to excuse himself, when she turned.

The moment she saw Smith, her dark eyes flared with shock. She went rigid for a moment, then exploded in fury. “Ai! Pedrito!” she spat, full of venomous rage. She extended her fingers with long red nails like claws to gouge his eyes out.

Though he didn’t understand her sudden anger, Smith recognized danger when he saw it. His eyes flew wide, and he held up his hands. “But I’m not Pedrito,” he said hastily. That was the same name the portly man at the airport lounge had called him. “You’ve made a mistake.”

As Smith scrambled off the bed, rolling in the opposite direction and thumping on the floor, Yaquita grew more furious. “Dog! Oh, how you lie!” She grabbed a small souvenir plate from the nearest knickknack shelf. “You always lie, Pedrito! Snake!”

“Uh, please don’t—” Smith said.

She hurled the plate at him with the skill of a circus knife thrower. He ducked as the object shattered against the brass bedstead. Stinging shrapnel struck his cheek. She grabbed a jug from the shelf and threw it as well.

“Ape! You said you were going to marry me, just like in a storybook!” She threw another ornamental plate. “And all you do is run around with other women!” She threw a cluster of castanets that flew at him like chattery teeth. “Armadillo! Llama dung! Wart-hog spittle!”

Smith hunched low, slinking away from the bed, his arms up to defend himself. This vacation was getting worse and worse. “Wait, wait—can’t we talk about this? Can I buy you a drink or something?”

“Drink? Goat—all you ever do is drink!” Yaquita said. Her lips curled away from fine white teeth. A brightly painted porcelain bell shattered on the wall beside Smith. He could see no place to run.

Yaquita grabbed a china doll off the shelf. “Pig! Aardvark! You borrow money you don’t pay back! Cockroach!” Smith ducked as she hurled the doll; broken ceramic arms and legs and little black shoes showered around him.

“Hamster!” Yaquita said. “Sewer rat! You gamble everything away!”

She yanked down a cluster of gourds and they rattled as they sailed through the air. Smith couldn’t squeeze a single word into the conversation. He didn’t drink, didn’t gamble … she certainly had him confused with someone else.

“Jackass! Wildebeest! I wouldn’t take care of you if you were the last man on the earth!” She grabbed up a big vase. “Or even on the moon!”

Smith backed up to the wall, just under the shelf that held the beaten brass pitcher. Yaquita hurled the vase.

“Monster! Jellyfish! Verminous worm!”

The vase shattered against the brass pitcher, knocking it sideways. Smith just had time to look up and see the brass object falling, then it struck him hard on the head. The befuddled lieutenant slid down the debris-spattered wall. His head lolled sideways.

Yaquita truculently advanced two steps to glare down at him, hands on her rounded hips. She marched into the bathroom, grabbed the wicked-looking straight razor and came back, holding it out as she contemplated his crotch, weighing her options. Finally, she snorted at Smith’s prone form. “Humph!”

Satisfied that he would be unconscious for some time, Yaquita grabbed a trench coat from the closet, her closet. How dare he sneak into her room, sleep on her bed! She would have plenty of time to deal with him later.

“Somebody in authority is going to hear about this!” And she decided to go straight to the top.