Don Aldo had beckoned a waiter over with a brisk gesture of somebody else's hot-wired platinum debit card, and had a few words with the waiter, in a border Spanish so twisted with criminal argot that even Alex, something of a connoisseur in these matters, couldn't follow it. And then Don Aldo smiled broadly, and he tipped the waiter. Because one of the three strangers was the police commissioner for the state of Sinaloa. And it was none of their business who El General's two good friends were.
Except that one of El General's friends was the very gentleman who had just stepped out of the helicopter. He'd been of no special relevance to Alex at the time, but thanks to that snort of mnemonics, the guy's face and mannerisms had been irrevocably punch-pressed on the surface of Alex's brain. At the very sight of him, that haircut, the sunglasses, the neatly cut safari jacket, Alex had flasbbacked with such intensity that he could actually taste the memory dust on the back of his throat.
"~Qué pasa?" he said.
"How do you do?" said the stranger politely. "I'm Leo Mulcahey, and this is my traveling companion, Mr. Smithers."
"How do you do, Mr. Smithers?" said Alex, sliding instinctively into parody. "How pleasant to see you again."
"Yo," grunted Smithers.
"And you are?" said Mukahey.
Alex looked up at the thin rose-quartz lenses of Mulcahey's shades, and felt instantly, with deep and total conviction, that this encounter was not in the best interests of himself or his friends. The tall, charming, and distinguished Leo Mulcahey was exuding a bone-chilling reek of narc atmosphere. Rangers were bad, bad enough anyway, but the well-groomed spook friend of El General was not the sort of person who should ever be in the camp of the Storm Troupe, for any reason, under any circumstances.
"Mr. Leo Mukahey," Alex said. "Any relation?"
"I'm Jerry's big brother," said Leo Mulcahey, with a gentle smile.
"Must feel pretty special to have a little brother who could break your back like a twig."
Mulcahey twitched. Not a big reaction, but a definite startled twitch. "Is Jerry here? May I speak to Jerry?"
"Sorry to tell you that Jerry's out of camp, he's off doing storm pursuit."
"It was my understanding that Jerry always coordinated the pursuits. That he stayed in camp as the group's... I forget the term."
"Nowcaster. Yeah, that's the usual, all right, but right now Jerry's off chasing spikes somewhere in Oklahoma, so under the circumstances I'm afraid I can't allow you into the camp."
"I see," said Leo.
"What the hick you talkin' about?" said Smithers suddenly. "Kid, we were just in your camp three weeks ago and I been lookin' forward to more o' that jerky."
"No problema," Alex said. "Give me some positioning coords and I'll route you all the jerky you want. Today. No charge."
"Is there someone else we can talk to?" Leo said.
"No," Alex said. Brasseur would temporize. Buzzard would knuckle under. Sam Moncrieff would do whatever seemed best. "No, there isn't."
"Kid, don't be this way," said Smithers. "I'm the heat!"
"You're the heat when you're running with Rangers. You're not the heat when you're running with this guy. If you're cops, show me some ID and a warrant."
"I'm not a police officer, for heaven's sake," Leo said, chidingly. "I happen to be a developmental, economist."
Smithers, surprised, looked at Leo in frank disbelief, then back at Alex again. "Kid, you got some cojones pullin' that city-boy crap out here. Where's your goddamn ID?"
Alex began to sweat. The fear only made him angry. "Look, Smithers, or whatever the hell your real name is, I thought you were a heavier guy than this. How come you're shaking me down for this fucking narc? This guy's not even a cop! How much is he paying you?"
"That's my name!" objected Smithers, wounded. "Nathan R. Smithers."
"I don't understand why this has become so unpleasant," said Leo, reasonably.
"Maybe you ought to give some thought to the way you treated your good friend the general de polida, back in Sinaloa." It was a shot in the dark, a blindly launched harpoon, but it landed hard. Leo reacted with such a start that even Smithers seemed alarmed.
"Sinaloa," Leo mused, recovering himself. He stared down hard at Alex. He was very tall, and though he didn't have the weightlifter beef of his brother Jerry, he looked, in his own smooth way, like a bad man to cross. "Of course," he concluded suddenly. "You must be Alex. Little Alejandro Unger. My goodness."
"I think you'd better leave," said Alex. "You and your kind aren't wanted here."
"You've been here less than a month, Alejandro! And akeady you're carrying on like Jerry's guard dog! It's amazing the loyalty that man inspires."
"Have it your way, Leo," Alex said. "I'll let you in the camp when Jerry says you can come in, how about that?" He suddenly sensed weakness, and pounced. "How about you wait here while I call Jerry up? I can contact Jerry out in the field, easy enough. Let's see what Jerry says about you.
"I have a counterproposal," Leo said. "Why don't I assume that you have no authority whatever? That you're simply inventing all this on the fly, through some silly grudge all your own. That you're an unbalanced, sick, spoiled little rich-boy punk, who's in way over his head, and that we can simply walk right past you."
"You'll have to knock me down first."
"That doesn't look difficult, Alex. You're still emaciated from that black-market shooting parlor in Nuevo Laredo. You look quite ill."
"You're gonna look quite dead, Leo, when the guy who put that laser dot on your forehead pulls the trigger and your brains fly Out."
Leo turned slowly to Smithers. "Mr. Smithers. Do tell. Do i in fact have a laser rifle sighted on my person?"
Smithers shook his head. "Not that I can see. Kid, it is really fuckin' stupid to say something like that to a guy like me."
Alex took his sunglasses off, and then his hat. "Look at me," he told Smithers. "Do I look afraid of you? You think I'm impressed ?~" He turned to Leo. "How about you, Leo? Do I look like I care whether we get in a fistfight right now, and you end up shot? You really wanna hit me, and risk catching a very real bullet, just so you can swan around in some empty paper tents and pull a fast one on your brother when he comes back-probably with all his friends?"
"No," said Leo, decisively. "There's no need at all for any of this foolishness. We don't want Juanita upset, do we? Janey?"
"You stay the hell away from Jane," Alex said, in throttled fury. "Letting that one slip was a real blunder! Get away from me and my sister, and stay away from us, you spook narc son of a bitch. Get out of here now, before you lose it and try something even stupider than showing up here in the first place."
"This is completely pointless," Leo said. "I don't see what you think you've accomplished with this ridiculous junkie's bravado. We can simply return at some later time, when there are some sane people here."
Alex nodded and crossed his arms. "Okay. Yeah. It's pointless. Come back next Christmas, big brother. In the meantime, go away. Now."
Leo and Smithers exchanged glances. Leo shrugged eloquently, his shoulders rising beneath the padding of his spanking-new safari jacket.
Without haste, the two men climbed into the truck. Smithers started the machine, and it turned and left. As it vanished Alex saw Leo lifting a videocam to his face, methodically scanning the camp.
Alex walked slowly back to the command yurt. Buzzard was waiting at the door flap. Sam was still in his nowcaster helmet. There was no sign at all of Joe Brasseur.
"Who were those guys?" Buzzard said.
Alex shrugged. "No problem. I took care of 'em. A coupla wannabes."
CHAPTER 8