(eng) Mike Resnick - Lucifer Jones 04 by Hazards

Author:Hazards [Hazards]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Connoisseurs

Some people are connoisseurs of art. Some are connoisseurs of fine wines. More than a few are connoisseurs of exotic women.

Me, I seem to have inadvertently become a connoisseur of jails.

The best grub is in the Cape Town hoosegow. The friendliest jailer was in the Hong Kong lock-up, though there’s a lot to be said for the guards at the Sylvania calaboose. The most comfortable bunk was probably in the jail at San Palmero. The hottest and stuffiest is the Nairobi jail, though the one in Beria, over in Mozambique, runs it a close second. Probably the friendliest crowd to share a cell with was back in Moline, Illinois, though you find the best card games in the Cairo jail and there ain’t no fairer craps game than the one they play in the Madrid lock-up.

Now, when this here story begins, I’d just been introduced to the jail at Bogota, which was on the shore of the Hackensack River in Colombia, though it wasn’t nowhere near the White House and the Congress, which I’m told are also in Colombia, but it must be one of the suburbs because they weren’t within a few thousand miles of Bogota, which was kind of hiding up in the mountains.

I’d wandered north from the Matto Grasso after serving a brief term as King of the Jaguar Men (I think it was forty hours, but it might have been forty-two), and having spent an inordinate amount of time lately with jaguars, anacondas, alligators, and safari ants (who are just like army ants, only smarter), I figgered it was time to replenish my fortune so’s that I could finally get around to building the Tabernacle of Saint Luke, and when I heard that there were emeralds to be found in Colombia, I just naturally migrated up that way.

Truth to tell, I didn’t know much about emeralds, except that they’re mostly green and womenfolk love ’em, and men what love womenfolk and want to impress ’em will spend tons of money for ’em.

Well, I’d only been in Colombia for a couple of days when I realized that there was more to emerald farming than met the eye. By noon of the first day I knew that they didn’t grow wild, and by sundown I’d pretty much determined that they wasn’t to be found in no rivers or streams, not even the Hackensack, which must be a mighty long river since I’d crossed it in New Jersey once when I was taking my rather hurried leave of a house of excellent repute in Passaic. Took another day to learn that they didn’t grow on trees, and when nightfall came I was pretty sure you weren’t likely to trip over ’em in the bush, which is what we adventurous sorts call the wild country, probably because it’s covered with bushes.

Anyway, I figured I’d better hie myself to a city and see if someone could shed any light on where all these here emeralds were hiding, and I got to

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