What bothered him was that he’d allowed two titty blondes to cold-cock him and deprive him of an even greater profit. He would have to get that money back somehow.
What he didn’t know was that his $1,900,000 had already been wire-transferred to Iran—where it would buy even more money at a huge discount.
THE REDHEADED PILOT had told them the man’s name was Randolph Biggs and had said he lived in Eagle Branch, Texas. She’d given them a fairly good description, too: a tall, broad-shouldered man with thick black hair and a black mustache. She had told them he was a Texas Ranger, but they couldn’t go ask aboutthat, eh,amigo? And besides they felt she was either lying or had been lied to. How could a Texas Ranger be involved in a scheme flying dope out of Guenerando, Mexico?
Eagle Branch was just across the Rio Grande from Piedras Rosas, Mexico—where, legend held, a former U.S. Marine had broken an American drug-prisoner out of jail there, oh, twenty, thirty years ago. Legends die hard. The people in Eagle Branch still talked about the daring escape. To them, it had become almost mythic. They insisted that the escaped prisoner’s girlfriend had lived and taught school right there in Eagle Branch. Who knew? It could be true. The people in Piedras Rosas were indifferent to the story. They wouldn’t have cared if a whole Marinebattalion had freed the entire prison population. They were of a mind to believe that the corrupt guards at the local jail, if paid enoughmordida, would let everybody go free, anyway. Most of the people in Piedras Rosas were more intent on crossing the river and making their way north, where Wiggy the Lid was selling cocaine to dealers lower down the chain of command who would eventually step on the drug and sell it to Mexican immigrants without green cards living in shitty neighborhoods where they pined for the good old days in Piedras Rosas.
Both Francisco Octavio Ortiz and Cesar Villada possessed green cards and were therefore free to come and go as they pleased, taking trips hither and yon in pursuit of their chosen occupation, which was earning—if that was the word—millions of dollars smuggling drugs up from Colombia and selling them to assorted gringos from across the border. On the seventh day of December this year, they had turned over to a pretty redheaded pilot one hundred keys of very high quality cocaine they’d purchased from the Cali cartel, a notorious association of traffickers operating out of Colombia’s third-largest city. She had given them in return $1,700,000 in hundred-dollar bills, which they’d counted to ascertain the proper value and then—generously, they felt—had skimmed ten thousand dollars off the top, to give to her as a gratuity.
They had smiled all around.
Gracias, gracias, muchas gracias.
Now, in this little border town of what they estimated to be fifteen, twenty thousand people, they were looking for a man named Randolph Biggs, who had given the lady the money she’d subsequently passed on to them.
They didn’t mind losing the ten thousand, which, after all, had been offered of their own free will, in gratitude, as an act of South of the Border generosity.
What annoyed them was thatall the money was counterfeit.
7 .
THE RESTAURANT SPECIALIZED in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine. Here, in the virtual shadow of the mosque near the ramp approach to the River Dix Drive, one could feast upon delicious dishes from Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, the United Arab Republic. The restaurant was smoke-filled even at lunch time, when it was packed with men and women—but mostly men—on breaks and longing for the taste and the aroma of the food and drink they had enjoyed in Damascus or Baghdad, Beirut or Teheran. The entertainment, even during the lunch hour, helped to remind them of their homelands, but it was the fare that drew them here, exquisite to the taste and to memories too long submerged in an accursed foreign land.
Mahmoud Gharib looked the most benign of the three men sitting at the little round table near the small stage where a Raqs Sharqui belly dancer gyrated to a recorded mix of electronic instruments and violins. Resembling a chubby cheerful standup comic from the good old days before comedians turned lean, mean, and obscene, he sported a tiny mustache somewhat uptilted at the tips, giving him the appearance of a man who was perpetually smiling. His complexion was the color of bread lightly toasted, his eyes the color of the very dark brown Turkish coffee they brewed here. His comrades knew him as Mahmoud. The dispatcher at the cab company for which he worked called him Moe, which Mahmoud knew was a Jewish name, and therefore a hundredfold more offensive. He looked plump and jolly and content. He was the most dangerous of the three men.
The men were talking about the proper way to prepare a fish dish that was enormously popular throughout the Middle East. Jassim, the smallest of the men, was saying that the secret was in refrigerating the fish for an hour before it was cooked. Akbar, who worked for a sporting goods store on the South Side, told him that refrigeration had nothing to do with it, he had eaten the fish in poor little villages where no one had evenheard of ice. Jassim insisted it was the refrigeration. You had to keep the fish on ice for an hour before placing it in the skillet, skin side down, and cooking it. It was the refrigeration, he said, that caused the skin to crisp so swiftly and effectively. Mahmoud said that was nonsense.
“The fish is inconsequential to the dish,” he said, waving his hand in a manner that defined leadership and dismissed argumentation. The gesture seemed exceptionally grandiose in light of the comic little mustache under his nose. “You can use any kind of white-fleshed fish,” he said. “So long as you wash it clean and season it with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, you can let it stand outside while you make the sauce. I’m not saying forever. It is dangerous to let any fish stand forever. But it’s the sauce and the nuts that give the dish its succulent flavor.”
“The onions,” Akbar agreed.
“The caramelized onions, yes,” Jassim said, nodding.
“But especially the pine nuts,” Mahmoud said, again superseding all discussion. “Swiftly fried in oil, browned to a pale golden perfection, and thenshowered on the fish.”
“On a bed of rice,” Akbar said.
“On a bed of rice,” Mahmoud said, and kissed his fingertips.
It was odd that the men were discussing fish because at the moment they were eating pancakes stuffed with cheese. In Morocco, where they were cooked on one side only and served with only a warm honey-butter sauce, these little semolina-yeast crepes were traditionally served on the feast ofaid el seghir, toward the end of the Islamic month of fasting called Ramadan. Here in this restaurant, the pancakes were prepared in the Lebanese manner, stuffed with ricotta and shreds of mozzarella, broiled on both sides to a succulent crispness, and then drizzled with a syrup made of sugar, lemon juice, orange blossom honey, and orange flower water. The men ate ravenously. Jassim licked his lips. Mahmoud found this disgusting, but he made no comment.
A dark-eyed, dark-haired waitress brought them thick black coffee. The belly dancer was wearing a beaded bra and matching belt, a sequined skirt over a body stocking. Her veil work was hardly Egyptian. To Mahmoud, it looked more like the modified strip tease one would find in the so-called American Nightclub style. The girl was wearing finger cymbals, although they had for the most part gone out of style in Egypt. She was more adept at twirling her veil and snapping her hips than she was at playing the cymbals.