Free The Laughing Falcon by William Deverell Page A

intellectual, debonair, suave — those were the qualities of the scoundrel Esquivel. Jacques must be roughly hewed, a seemingly hopeless cause, turned dissolute by dejection. She wrote down the name, “Jacques Cardinal.”
    Closed until creativity restored
. Decoded, that probably meant he was too sick to work today. A tank who looked like a head-on collision seemed an unlikely choice for male lead, but if she was to confound the sniggering critics of her genre, why should he not be cut of the roughest cloth? She hoped the real Cardinal would not sue her for libel; though from what she had heard of his reputation, he could not claim much of a case.
    Discouraged almost to the point of abandoning her explorations, Fiona summoned the fortitude to enter one last tavern, as usual smelling of must and stale spirits and urine, where she found him leaning against the bar, his only companion a bottle of gin.
    “You’re Jacques Cardinal, aren’t you?”
    “Slack,” he said, slurring the name. “That’s what they call me around here.”
    He did not turn to her, but continued to gaze motionless into his glass. Her impression was of a man defeated by life’s challenges. He was wiry and nearly as tall as she, a mat of dark curls atop his head and a rough scrape of beard darkening his jaw; and he was in a high state of intoxication
.
    “I am told you know the Savegre River.”
    “Only too well.”
    “You have been up to the headwaters. To the mission site.”
    He finally raised his eyes, and regarded her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “I was with your father ten years ago. Yes, we looked for it.”
    “You know who I am, then.”
    “He showed me your picture a thousand times. Proud of you. Must feel good to have pride in something. “A thick, sardonic laugh, and he saluted her in the mirror with his raised glass, then drained it
.
    “Dad used to say there aren’t many geniuses left in the field. He also said you’re one of them.”
    “Forget the Savegre. There’s no point. No point in anything.”
    She slid the bottle from his reaching hand. “How about a walk in the fresh air, Dr. Cardinal?”
    He finally turned toward Fiona, and with one eye closed, because otherwise he seemed unable to focus, he undertook a long examination of her, his declining gaze finally settling upon the long toes protruding from her sandals. As his eye commenced an equally slow return journey he grunted in what Fiona took to be approval. “But I’m still not taking you up the Savegre.”
    “We’ll talk about it.” As she tugged his arm, one of her feet became entangled in a stool; she lost her balance and fell against him in ungainly fashion
.
    He laughed. “Where’d you take your ballet lessons?”
    Close up, he smelled rancid. “I’m putting you under a shower,” she said
.
    “Only if you’ll join me.”
– 2 –
    The barest blush of dawn was in the east, and outside Maggie’s hotel one of the streetlights sputtered, flashing orange, then yellow, on an old dog slumbering on the sidewalk. This was Quepos in the warm, empty hours of night: lag-behind and weary, grumbling in its sleep.
    Maggie looked up the street impatiently. Where was her driver? Ticos may rebel against the governance of time, but the
National Geographic
expects a certain degree of promptness. Maybe the Eco-Rico Lodge had discovered her ruse and cancelled the taxi.
    She gazed up at the reverse-angle Big Dipper, and the eyes of Pablo Esquivel seemed to twinkle at her; but with a pleasant day behind her and an adventure ahead, she found his image easier to bear. Such an engaging man … Had the night been extended, she would have gone to bed with him; she knew that absolutely. In a way, she wished it had happened: for the novel, of course …
She looked up from her book-signing table and again, after so many years, felt herself drawn into those coal-black eyes. “Now you are rich and famous, señorita. See what I have done for you.”
    Finally, a boxy