Plunder of the Sun by David Dodge

Author:David Dodge
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781626816039
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2015-01-22T16:00:00+00:00

10

She was still laughing when the clerk, seeing my expression, handed me a short, typewritten note. It said, in Spanish, “Please deliver to the bearer the article you keep for me in the safe,” and was signed with my name. The signature looked like mine.

The clerk said, “I hope nothing is wrong, señor. I compared the signatures carefully before I surrendered the envelope.”

I began to function again—not much, but enough to talk. I said, “Who brought the note?”

“A muchacho of the street.”

Julie’s laughter was getting hysterical. I walked into the cantina and sat down opposite her. The laughter shut off like a stream of water.

“I’ve been waiting for hours to see your face when you heard that it was gone.” She licked her lips like an animal. “Oh, it was good! It was wonderful!”

She began to laugh again.

I let her have it out while I examined the signature of the note. From the slight unsteadiness of the pen scratches that should have been sharp and firm, and the thinness of the paper, I could see that it was a tracing. But it was smaller than my normal signature. It hadn’t been taken from the hotel register. I thought back, trying to remember what else I had signed—the book at the pensión, a form at the Banco del Credito, a traveler’s check…

Naharro!

Naharro, his liverish eyelids drooping, his bald head wagging in admiration, chuckling over the gringo’s cleverness while I wrote my name three times for him in the cramped space left for my countersignature on the traveler’s checks, and then sat around for an hour drinking his anís while he made use of them!

I put my hand over my eyes and tried to think, while Julie’s laughter went on and on and on. She was the only one who could have known that I had something in the safe. She had seen me put it there, the first night. But she didn’t know Naharro, and she didn’t know what I had. There had to be an intermediary, a connection of the two points somewhere. Jeff—or Raul and Ana Luz. Jeff was the only one of the three who knew Naharro—as far as I knew. There was a lot I didn’t know.

The traveler’s checks, then. Naharro had known I was carrying them before he laid his trap. Either Jeff or Raul could have told him, because they had both seen me try to cash one in the poker game aboard the Talca. But Jeff was a lone wolf, and it had been Raul who was buying Julie’s limonadas that morning.

I said, “You told Raul.”

She nodded. Her eyes sparkled. She was cold sober, and so pleased with her nastiness that she was bubbling to tell me everything, to twist the knife for all it was worth.

“He asked me why I hated you. He told me how you had hit him. He hates you, too, and his cousin hates you. Everyone hates you.” The words came out in an eager rush. “They wanted to get something you had stolen from them.

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