Free The Queen of the South by Arturo Pérez-Reverte Page B

talking to herself. "'Take him the book,' he said, 'and trade it for your life.'"
    "Your man liked his little jokes."
    "I don't know about that. But I know what he told me."
    It sounded more like a complaint than a plea. A sincere and very bitter complaint. Or a reproach. She was silent for a moment, and then she raised her face, like the weary prisoner waiting to hear the sentence. Don Epifanio was standing before her; he seemed even bigger and more heavyset than ever. His fingertips were drumming on Güero's notebook.
    "Teresita ..."
    "Si, senor."
    He kept drumming. She saw him look at the saint's portrait, at the bodyguard at the door, and then at her. Then his eyes fell again on the pistol. "You swear you didn't read anything?" "I swear to you."
    A silence. Long, she thought, like dying. She heard the wicks of the candles at the altar sputtering.
    "You've got just one chance," he said at last.
    Teresa clung to those words, her mind as keen as though she'd just done a line of coke. The other woman faded into the shadows. "One's enough," she said.
    "Have you got a passport?"
    "Yes, with a U.S. visa."
    "And money?"
    "Twenty thousand dollars and a few pesos " She opened the gym bag at her feet to show him, hopefully. "And a ten- or twelve-ounce bag of snow."
    "Leave that. It's dangerous to travel with it Do you drive?"
    "No." She had stood and was looking straight at him, following his every word. Concentrating on staying alive. "I don't even have a license."
    "I doubt you'd be able to get across anyway. They'd pick up your trail at the border, and you wouldn't be safe even among the gringos.... The best thing is to get away tonight. I can loan you the car with a driver you can
    Trust - I can do that, and have him drive you to Mexico City. Straight to
    the airport, and there you catch the first plane out."
    "To where?"
    "Anywhere. If you want to go to Spain, I've got friends there. People that owe me favors ... If you call me tomorrow morning before you get on the plane, I'll give you a name and telephone number. After that, you're on your own."
    "There's no other way?"
    "Heh." The laugh was mirthless, flat. "It's this way or no way. You get led by the rope or it hangs you."
    Teresa looked around the chapel, gazing into the shadows. She was absolutely alone. Nobody made decisions for her now. But she was still alive.
    "I have to go." Don Epifanio was growing impatient. "Decide."
    "I've already decided. I'll do whatever you say."
    "All right." Don Epifanio watched as she put the safety on and stuck the pistol into the waist of her jeans, between the denim and her skin, and then covered it with her jacket. "... And remember one thing—you won't be safe over there, either. You understand?... I've got friends, but these people do, too. Try to bury yourself deep enough so they don't find you."
    Teresa nodded again. She'd pulled the coke out of the gym bag, and she set it on the altar, under the statue of Malverde. She lighted another candle. Santa Virgencita, she prayed a moment in silence. Santo Patron. God bless my journey and allow my return. She crossed herself almost furtively.
    "I'm truly sorry about Güero," don Epifanio said behind her. "He was a good man."
    Teresa had turned to hear this. Now she was so lucid and cool she could feel the dryness of her throat and the blood running very slowly through her veins, heartbeat by heartbeat. She threw the gym bag over her shoulder, smiling for the first time all day—a smile that registered on her lips as a nervous impulse, unexpected. And that smile, or whatever it was, must have been a strange one, because don Epifanio's expression changed—that smile gave him something to think about. Teresita Mendoza. Chale. Güero's morra. A narco's old lady. A girl like so many others—quieter, even, than most, not too bright, not too pretty. And yet that smile made him study her thoughtfully, cautiously, with a great deal of attention, as though suddenly a stranger stood before