Country of the Bad Wolfes

RECKONINGS

It was in the late summer of that fourth year that John Roger received a packet from New Orleans containing records of Trade Wind business in Mexico prior to his employment. Richard’s enclosed note said, “Heres the stuff I promised, sorry it took so long to round it all up but you anyway didnt need it just like you said you didnt to do the good job youve done. Never much cared for working with papers my self. Do with them what you will.” John Roger smiled at the thought that the man surely did keep a promise, no matter how long it might take. He was certain that by this time there could be nothing in the old records of use to him, and he thought of pitching them in the waste can, but it was not in his nature to get rid of any papers he had not at least scanned, so he emptied the packet’s contents onto his desktop and began sorting through them.

Among the papers were the Mexican broker’s annual invoices to the company for the coffee and tobacco he had received from the various haciendas and in turn shipped to the United States. For the past four years John Roger had sent similar invoices to Richard Davison. It was no surprise to see that the amounts of a commodity delivered to the broker by each of the haciendas had varied from one year to the next, some years more, some years less. With one exception. During the years of the broker’s service, the annual delivery of coffee by a hacienda named La Sombra Verde was always the largest of any plantation. And always greater from year to year. It had by far earned more money from the Trade Wind Company than any of the other haciendas. It puzzled John Roger that the name of the company’s most productive plantation for those years was only vaguely familiar to him. He referred to his own invoices and saw that La Sombra Verde had not only produced less coffee in each of the past four years than in any of the previous six, but less by far than all the other plantations. Either the hacienda had undergone a monumental reversal in productivity—coincident with John Roger’s assumption of Trade Wind management in Mexico—or the broker had been inflating its figures. He shuffled through the papers and found the broker’s annual theft records. The amount of coffee reported as stolen from the warehouse, after delivery by the haciendas, had grown greater every year, but always a little greater than the increase in La Sombra Verde’s reported delivery. The broker hadn’t been so foolish as to let the amounts match exactly.

Well now. Richard had been cheated, all right, but not in the way he’d thought. The broker hadn’t been stealing coffee out of the warehouse. He’d been charging the company for coffee that didn’t exist.

Had the owner of the hacienda conspired in the scheme? Every hacendado had to sign the delivery invoice from his own estate. It was not impossible that the broker had substituted forged invoices for the actual, but why do it for the same hacienda every year when it would have been more plausible to forge a different estate’s invoice each time? The only answer was collusion between the broker and La Sombra Verde.

The question now was, So what? Richard had been right in his suspicion of being cheated, but he was also right that they could never prove it. And as Richard had also said, even if the broker had been cheating, it was over with—it had stopped with John Roger’s takeover of the Mexican branch operations—and the company’s only concern should be with the present and the future.

But the swindle was too irksome for John Roger to shrug off. He had heard that the broker, whose name was Guillermo Demarco, was still doing business in Veracruz, but he had never had occasion to meet him. Nor was he acquainted with the patrón of La Sombra Verde, one of only two or three hacendados under contract with the Trade Wind he’d not met, having dealt only with their agents who brought the commodities to port.

The next day, during their weekly lunch date at a zócalo restaurant, he told Patterson all about it. The little Texan didn’t know anything about Guillermo Demarco but said he would make discreet inquiries and let John Roger know what he found out. He did, however, know a good deal about La Sombra Verde. The hacienda was more than 250 years old. It encompassed an area of over forty square miles and its nearest boundary to Veracruz lay about thirty-five miles up the coast. But it was bordered in a very odd fashion, flanking the Río Perdido for a mile to either side at the estate’s widest point and a half mile to either side at its narrowest, all the way from an upland coffee plantation down to the river’s outlet at the Gulf of Mexico. A meandering property that spanned a diverse geography of foothills and pastureland, a portion of rain forest, and a mile of seacoast. The nearest town was Jalapa, ten rugged miles from its westernmost border.

Originally established by a Spanish nobleman named Valledolid near the end of the sixteenth century, La Sombra Verde had by patrimony passed down through generations of eldest sons, all of them forceful men equal to the responsibilities and duties of a patrón. And then a generation ago it was inherited by twenty-one-year-old Martín Valledolid, an impetuous and romantic young man. He had been the patrón for only a year when he fell in desperate love with a beautiful but spiteful girl named Yasmina Montenegro, who took pleasure in toying with his affections. She lived in Veracruz with her widowed father, a former army officer named Claudio Montenegro. She had always been an exasperation to Claudio and he was as eager to marry her off as she was to be married and gone from him, but he had been hoping for a match of some benefit to himself. In Martin Valledolid’s rapture with Yasmina, he recognized a singular opportunity. He denied him the girl’s hand except in wager against the title to La Sombra Verde. Martín refused the proposition twice but was too addled by love to refuse it the third time, and in the presence of a dozen astounded witnesses he lost the hacienda on the turn of a card. His family reviled him for his monumental stupidity. His younger brother attacked him and broke his nose and jaw. After a futile series of legal efforts to retain the property, the family disavowed Martín and resettled in Córdoba.

For his part, Claudio said it seemed only fair to permit Martín to marry Yasmina anyway—though he insisted they would have to make their own way through life—and the young man was overcome with gratitude. The couple rented a house in Veracruz, where Martín secured employment as a customs officer at the port. But they had been wed only six months when he discovered Yasmina’s cuckoldry. When he confronted her, she laughed and admitted to several lovers, whereupon he throttled her and then drowned himself in the harbor. He left a note accusing Claudio of having cheated him out of the hacienda and he put a curse on the place for as long as it was in Montenegro hands. Claudio made a proper show of public mourning for his daughter and son-in-law and said poor Martín had obviously and tragically become deranged. And in private said good riddance to them both and laughed at Martín’s curse.

But no sooner had he gained ownership of La Sombra Verde than its fecund coffee farm, which had always kept the hacienda solvent, was ravaged by a blight that inexplicably exempted every other coffee plantation in the state. In the years since, the farm had never achieved even half of its former yield but had managed to bring in just enough money from year to year to maintain the hacienda’s strained subsistence.

The coffee farm’s setback was in keeping with the Montenegro family’s long history of misfortune. Most of its males died in infancy and its females were disposed to early madness. It was whispered that such propensities were signs of incestuous breeding. A neighboring hacendado named Beltrán did not whisper it softly enough, however, and when Claudio got wind of what he’d said he rode directly to Beltrán’s estate and gave him the choice of a duel or a public admission that he was a liar and a cowardly son of a whore. They met at a riverside meadow at sunrise and fought with pistols at forty paces. Claudio took a minor wound to the hip but his own ball lodged in Beltrán’s gut and the man lay in agony for four days before dying. The episode inspired a greater caution among the local gossip-prone, and from then on, the Montenegros were as zealous in defense of their family honor as any Creole clan of classical lineage.

A few years after Claudio acquired La Sombra Verde, his health went into a swift and mystifying decline and he died of an undiagnosed illness. The hacienda then transferred to his son—and its current patrón—Hernán José Montenegro Velasquez. Like his father before him, Hernán had been an officer in the army, intending to make it his career, but upon inheritance of La Sombra Verde he resigned his commission in order to live the life of a hacendado. Also like his father, he had the temper of a red dog. It was said he had killed seven or eight or nine men in duels, some with sword, some with pistol. Hernán’s only living son, Enrique, now 17, was reputed to be no less of a hothead but something of a dolt.

“It don’t surprise me a bit Hernán would partner with the broker fella in hoodwinking your outfit,” Patterson said. “He’s always in bad need of money, and the way I heard it he aint too particular how he gets it. They say he cheats at cards something awful, same as his old daddy did. Mendoza played cards with Hernán once and said it was one time too many.”

The next afternoon Patterson stopped by the Trade Wind office with the information that Guillermo Demarco, prior to going into business as a broker, had been employed as secretary to Hernán Montenegro.

John Roger deliberated for two days. Then wrote a letter to Montenegro, informing him that due to financial improprieties perpetrated against the Trade Wind Company by La Sombra Verde in concert with the brokerage service of Guillermo Demarco, the company was severing its contract with the hacienda.

He then went to Demarco’s office on the third floor of a commercial building near the harbor. He introduced himself and told Demarco he was there to collect reimbursement for the substantial overpayments he had received from the company through fraudulent means over a period of six years. He handed him their disparate invoices and theft reports and an estimated bill for the total overpayment.

Guillermo Demarco, sitting behind a spacious desk with his back to a large window framing a view of the harbor, smiled as he scanned the papers. He was a small and tidy man, well seasoned in business dispute. He dropped the papers on the desk and pushed them away with a fingertip. Then leaned back in his chair and said John Roger’s so-called evidence of fraud was worthless. Try to make a case in a Mexican court with this and you will be laughed out of the room, he said. Unless you make the judge so angry for wasting his time that he locks you in San Juan de Ulúa.

I might not have much of a legal case, John Roger said, but you and I both know it’s true you cheated the company.

Demarco said truth was a beautiful thing but of little significance in commerce or the law. It pained him that the Trade Wind Company was displeased with his former services, but, be that as it may, there was really nothing they could do about it.

I could pass the word around town of what a cheat you are.

Demarco grinned. Oh dear, he said.

John Roger had not expected to collect on the bill, only to let Demarco know that his fraud had not gone undiscovered and to shame him if he could. But as he now understood, the man was immune to shame. And his smugness was galling.

I guess you’re right, John Roger said. There isn’t much I can do about it legally. But what I most assuredly can do, Mr Demarco, is throw you out that window.

He surprised himself no less than he did Demarco. He’d made the threat with an easy confidence that he could make good on it—and with the unmistakable implication that he was leaning toward doing so.

The broker straightened in his chair and cleared his throat. But Mr Wolfe, he said, even if you were not joking, what could you gain from such a barbarity except many years in prison?

Maybe some personal satisfaction, John Roger said. And stood up. Demarco shoved back from the desk and sprang to his feet, eyes wide. Then realized he had put himself even closer to the window, and he sidled hurriedly over to the wall.

“Don’t soil your pants, you low son of a bitch. You’re not worth the trouble of killing.”

“Como?” said Demarco, who did not speak English.

“Chinga tu madre, pendejo,” John Roger said. His ready ear had familiarized him with the profanities of the street, and while he had always shied from such coarseness in English, in Spanish it came without qualm. He gathered up the papers and plucked out the bill and laid it back on Demarco’s desk. Then left.

He was awed by the discovery he’d made about himself—his readiness to throw a man from a window—and yet also felt uneasy about it. It was disquieting to think there might be even other facets of himself with which he was unfamiliar.

When he told Patterson of his meeting with Demarco, the little man laughed and said, “Hellfire, I’da paid money to see his face when you threatened to pitch him. Bedamn, son, if you aint got a proper share of grit. You sure your people aint from Texas?”

A week later, a lawyer representing La Sombra Verde showed up at the office to warn him that Don Hernán Montenegro would sue for violation of contract unless the Trade Wind Company continued to buy his coffee. John Roger dared him to do it. If Montenegro should sue him, he said, he would in turn sue Montenegro for defrauding the Trade Wind in collusion with the brokerage of Guillermo Demarco. The lawyer, whose name was Herrera, scoffed that such a charge could never be legally proven.

John Roger said maybe not, but the accusation would anyway be of great interest to the newspapers and the printers of broadsides. As everyone knew, even an accusation unsustained in court could do public injury to a reputation.

Herrera’s face was stiff with contempt. Only a man without honor would do such a thing, he said.

Nevertheless, John Roger said.

You disappoint me, sir.

How sad, John Roger said. Listen, Mr Herrera, I suggest it would be in the best interest of everyone concerned to forgo the unpleasantness of public allegations and courtroom procedures and simply agree to the termination of the contract.

Herrera said he would have to discuss it with Don Hernán, though it might be some time before he could meet with him, as the don had left for Mexico City just two days prior on urgent business that could detain him for some time.

John Roger said he understood perfectly. And that he hoped it was understood equally well that he would under no condition, including legal threat, do further business with La Sombra Verde.

He wrote to Richard to tell him of his rescission of the Montenegro contract and the reason for it and said he hoped Richard was not offended that he had done it without first consulting with him. Richard responded that he was glad John Roger had figured out the swindle, even though it had come to an end four years ago, and he agreed with the decision to cut ties with Montenegro. “And don’t fret about making a decision on your own,” Richard wrote. “I told you when I hired you Johnny, in Mexico you’re the Trade Wind.”

Nearly two months after Herrera’s visit, John Roger had not heard from the man again but had learned that La Sombra Verde had begun selling its coffee to another export firm. He therefore concluded that there would be no legal action against the Trade Wind and that the entire matter was done with.

The following month, on the Day of the Dead, they hosted a lively party celebrating John Samuel’s fourth birthday. After the festivities were done and the guests had gone home and Elizabeth Anne had sung the boy to sleep, as John Roger was discussing with her whether they should buy the house they had been renting for almost five years or look for one with a view of the sea, there was a pounding of the street door’s iron knocker.

John Roger went to an open window and in the light of the patio lanterns saw lame Beto the handyman come out of his carriage-house quarters in his nightshirt and hobble toward the gate. It was a rarity for anyone to call uninvited at such a late hour for any reason other than an emergency. Beto opened the little peep window on the door and was loud about asking who was there. John Roger felt Elizabeth Anne come up beside him. The voice outside the gate was indistinct, and then Beto said, Yes, of course, of course, one moment. Then turned and saw John Roger at the window and called out that Don Hernán Montenegro Velásquez wished to speak with the master of the house.

John Roger felt a feathery stir in his stomach, gone before he could identify it. He reproached himself for the erroneous assumption that Montenegro had let the issue drop. Still, the cheek of the man! To come knocking at this hour. He was about to have Beto send him away with instruction to call at the office, but then thought no, if the business could be settled for good and all right now, so much the better.

“Déjalo pasar,” he said.

Beto lifted the wooden crossbar and drew back the iron bolt latch and pulled open the door. Elizabeth Anne asked John Roger who it was. Her voice composed but her eyes intense. “Someone I must talk with,” he said. He told her to stay inside while he met with the visitor in the patio. As he went out the door in his shirtsleeves he heard her hurrying up the stairs.

There were two of them. Of similar height and leanness, wearing expensive dark suits and cavalier hats. One carried a bundle shaped like a bedroll. They watched his approach as Beto shouldered the door closed behind them. “Bienvenidos, caballeros,” John Roger said. “Yo soy el dueño, Juan Wolfe, a su servicio.”

He was near enough now to see their similarity of features behind the pointed Spanish beards and to know them for father and son. The elder’s aspect evinced a mix of curiosity and resolve, the younger’s was bright and excited as a pup’s.

Hernán Montenegro introduced himself and then Enrique, and then got directly to the point. Mr Wolfe had offended Montenegro honor. First in the letter terminating the contract between the Trade Wind and La Sombra Verde, and then twice more in direct assertions—to Guillermo Demarco and to Stephano Herrera, the attorney representing the Montenegro interests. I have been detained in Mexico City these past months, Montenegro said, else I would have answered these insults before now. His tone was of cool indignation and his bearing assured, but his Spanish lacked the Castilian inflections pervasive among the hacendados of John Roger’s acquaintance.

I beg to differ, sir, John Roger said. I committed no offense against your name. You slighted yourself when you conspired with Demarco to cheat my employer.

Montenegro’s face tightened. “Y otra insulta más,” he said. Then looked at Beto and said, “Quítate.” The handyman gave John Roger an apologetic look, then turned and hurried off to shut himself in the carriage house.

The hacendado nodded at his son. The young man squatted and lay the bundle on the cobbles and unrolled it to reveal two caplock pistols and a pair of unsheathed cavalry sabers. Then stood up and grinned at John Roger.

I demand satisfaction, Hernán Montenegro said, removing his jacket and handing it to his son. Pistols or blades. The choice is yours. He handed the boy his hat.

John Roger’s eyes went from the man to the weapons and back up to the man. He smiled and felt inane for it. And then again felt the flutter in his belly. And this time knew it for fear. This is absurd, he said.

Pistols or blades, sir, Montenegro said.

No, John Roger said. No, of course not. I’m not going to fight a . . . a duel with you. Especially not in—

Montenegro’s backhand slap knocked him rearward in a half turn. Its stinging surprise gave immediate way to fury and he whirled back around with his fists raised but the man had already snatched up both sabers and held one with its point only inches from John Roger’s throat. He had to be fifty years old but was quick as a cat.

As you have declined the prerogative to choose, Montenegro said, I pick the sword. It allows for a more personal engagement, don’t you agree?

He stepped back and lobbed the other saber at John Roger, who fumbled the catch and had to grab the sword blade with both hands, cutting his left palm.

The son sniggered. Montenegro smiled and said, Even before we begin I have drawn first blood. He told John Roger not to be concerned about Enrique, whose only warrant was to serve as his second. Or to bear away my body, should I not prevail, he said with a smile. Enrique grinned.

Listen, John Roger said, listen. This is ridiculous. Let’s be reasonable. There are courtrooms, for God’s sake. There are laws for—

“En garde!”

John Roger instinctively brought up his sword and the hacendado touched his own blade to it—and then attacked with a clear intention of making short work of him. But John Roger nimbly skipped rearward, parrying the thrusts, and Montenegro paused to stare at him in smiling surprise. And went at him again.

And now John Roger knew the fearsome difference between a college sporting contest and a mortal combat. He retreated around and around the fountain, keeping close to it in order to deny Montenegro a wider latitude of attack, fending against the man’s furious onslaught. Their wavering shadows moved along the walls and over the cobbles to no sound save the ringing of blades and shufflings of feet, the heaves of their breath. After ten minutes that John Roger would have guessed at an hour, they were gasping and soaked in sweat. Both of them now gripping their saber with two hands, John Roger’s bloody palm still the only wound in evidence.

Then he stumbled on a cobble and went sprawling—and received a grazing slash to the head as he rolled away from Montenegro and rose onto one knee. He caught a burning blow high on his shielding arm in the same instant that he swung his own blade sidearm and he felt its edge slice into Montenegro’s leg, and the man let a yelping curse. Then was again on his feet and again giving ground as he warded Montenegro’s resumed offensive. Both men now trailing blood as they circled the fountain. John Roger’s left arm dangling useless. Montenegro limping after him, disposed of all finesse and hacking two-handed with the saber as if pursuing him through jungle. John Roger was only dimly aware of the pain of his wounds, his sword now heavy as stone and one eye blurred with blood from his gashed scalp. Yet he sensed Montenegro’s desperation to end the fight before the failing leg quit him, and he readied himself for the rash move he knew was coming.

And it came. Montenegro bellowed and rushed at him with a manic sidelong slash of his sword meant to wound some part of him, any part, and create an opening for a thrust. John Roger dropped to a crouch and the blade flicked his hair as it whisked over his head and he thrust his own sword blade up into the man’s lower belly and felt the point glance off the spine and pass through.

John Roger fell on his rump, still gripping the sword on which Montenegro, huge-eyed with disbelief, was impaled in an arrested stoop with six inches of blade jutting from his back. Then blood spouted from the man’s mouth to sop John Roger’s sleeve and his saber clattered onto the cobbles and his eyes lost their light like blown candles. He toppled sideways and the force of his weight twisted the sword from John Roger’s grasp.

Enrique screamed.

John Roger, braced on his elbow, turned and saw the boy raising a pistol at him. Saw him cock the hammer.

There was a gunblast—and Enrique’s head jerked sideways and his hat flew off together with fragments of bloody skull and his pistol discharged into the rim of the fountain and the ball ricocheted into the night as he collapsed in a lifeless heap.

John Roger looked up to the balcony to see Elizabeth Anne standing there, the smoking Dragoon gripped in both hands. And he keeled into unconsciousness.

He woke in his bed. The window ashen with imminent dawn. His head and arm ponderous with bandages and pulsing with pain.

Elizabeth Anne dozed in a chair at his side. He stared at her and she came awake. He smiled. “Hello, darling. It appears I’m still among the quick.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she leaned forward and placed her cheek on his chest with her face turned away from him and he felt the soft heaves of her weeping. He caressed her shoulder. “I’m all right, Lizzie.” And then believed he understood her true distress and said, “I know. I know how you must feel. It was an awful thing to have to do, but if you hadn’t shot—”

“No!” she cried, turning her head to look at him. “That’s not—oh, God, no, don’t you see? If I hadn’t been so damned afraid I—”

“Shush, darling, it’s all right, it’s—”

“No, no it’s not all right! What a worthless . . . ninny I was. I knew something wasn’t right, I knew it by your face and your voice. I’d never known you to look that way. I ran upstairs without even knowing why and then I just . . . stood there for the longest time, not knowing what to do or think or anything. And then I heard the swords—I heard them, Johnny, and I was terrified. And that’s when I thought to get the gun. But dear Jesus I couldn’t find it. I was crying and throwing everything out of the wardrobe and the trunk and I was furious that I couldn’t find it and that I had to keep wiping my eyes and. . . .” She paused for breath and better control of her voice. “And then there it was. And I grabbed it and ran to the balcony and I saw . . . oh God, I saw the blood on your face, all the dark blood, and then you ducked down and he was bending over you and I couldn’t see what was happening and you were so close together I was afraid of shooting you, but then he fell over and I knew he was dead, the way he fell, I knew it, but then that other one screamed and I saw his gun and I didn’t even think, I just . . . did it.”

“It was some shot, Lizzie.”

“But don’t you see! If I hadn’t been so afraid and crying like such a child I could have found the gun immediately and I could have shot them both before you were wounded. But I was so afraid and you’re hurt because of it and you might have been. . . .” She put her head on his chest, facing away so he couldn’t see her tears.

He stroked her hair. And couldn’t suppress his small laugh.

She turned to him in red-eyed confusion. “What?”

“You’re not at fault for my wounds, Lizzie. And they will heal.”

“I am at fault! As soon as. . . . why are you smiling?”

“Because of my extreme good fortune in a wife. Or maybe I’m delirious. A kiss might help to restore my wit.”

She gaped. Then smiled too, and being careful of his wounds, kissed him.

The light at the window paled as she laved his face with a damp cloth and told how she’d sent Beto as fast as he could hobble to fetch Nurse Beckett and Chief Mendoza and Charles Patterson. She put John Samuel in the care of a maid who took him to her room to sleep, and with the help of Josefina—who had witnessed the fight from the little window of her quarters—she stanched the bleeding from John Roger’s arm. She was alarmed by his head wound but Josefina assured her it was not really very bad, that scalp cuts always bled profusely and often looked worse than they were. Then Nurse Beckett arrived with a surgeon she’d roused and the doctor applied a tourniquet to the wounded arm and the four of them carried John Roger to his bed. The surgeon was still suturing his wounds with Josefina’s assistance when Captain Mendoza arrived at the courtyard gate with two subordinates, and as Elizabeth Anne went out to speak with him, Patterson showed up. Their immediate concern was John Roger’s condition and they were relieved when she told them the surgeon’s optimistic prognosis. Both police captain and consul seemed less troubled by the fact of the dead Montenegros than impressed by the state of them. When she explained that she’d shot one of them from the balcony, they gave her odd looks, as if suddenly unsure who she was—and then both men smiled and Mendoza told her she had done very well.

Mendoza deemed both killings clear cases of self-defense and then searched the dead men and laughed at his good luck in finding just enough money on them to cover the cost of his investigation. He sent for some men who came with a burro cart and he had them help Beto wash the blood from the patio stones before they bore away the bodies. Patterson offered to assign one of his best clerks to the Trade Wind office to take care of business during John Roger’s recuperation, and Elizabeth Anne gratefully accepted. “I hope you approve,” she said to John Roger. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You did . . . very well.” He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, then shut his eyes and was asleep again.

During the next three days he grew feverish and the wounded arm became so darkly and malodorously swollen that the surgeon saw no alternative but to amputate just below the shoulder.

It was an exemplary surgery. There was but minor infection and the fever soon gave way. In a week he was up and about the house, though yet in much pain, and began to learn the ways of a one-armed man.

In the first few days he tended to lean slightly sideways to offset a real or imagined sense of imbalance. He was mystified by the itching in a limb no longer extant. When the bandage came off his head, he fretted that the hair might not grow back where the surgeon had sewn the wound, but the doctor assured him the hair around the scar would grow out and cover it. Elizabeth Anne sewed the left arms of all his shirts and coats in a high fold. Dressing himself was not so hard, though she had to fasten his cuff button and knot his ties. When she first cut his meat for him at the table he made a joke about his need of John Samuel’s former highchair. He would permit such assistance from her only when they ate by themselves at home. In days to come when they dined in public or among friends, he would eat nothing other than what he could manage with spoon or fork. It vexed him that he would no longer be able to do such things as load a gun or handle a rifle, saddle his own horse or properly pack his calabash. But he could still shoot a pistol and could mount up and ride and could light his own cigars. He could still shave himself but not as closely. He could still do most of the things he’d always enjoyed, albeit many of them required modification of technique, from the way he held a book or a dance partner to the way he rode a horse to the way he and Elizabeth Anne made love. Some of the standard positions were lost to them, some were not, and their experimentation with new configurations was nothing less than joy.

He was still in convalescence when Guillermo Demarco came calling. Elizabeth Anne led the broker into the drawing room, where John Roger greeted him with no more than a silent nod. They sat on facing armchairs and Demarco placed a valise on the low table between them and got directly to the point. He had made a careful review of his records and found that John Roger—whom he addressed throughout this meeting as Don Juan—had been right. There had been bookkeeping errors in his invoices to the Trade Wind Company. The mistakes of an incompetent clerk in his employ, who Don Juan could be sure had been both excoriated and dismissed. Demarco opened the valise and withdrew a small cloth sack and untied it and emptied a chittering rush of gold coins onto the table. He said there were five other such sacks in the valise for a total worth equal to the amount of the Trade Wind’s bill of restitution plus five percent annual interest on that amount for six years. He hoped Don Juan found it satisfactory. John Roger said it seemed fair enough to him.

Yes, very well, yes, the broker said. But made no move to go. He wanted something more but did not know how to say it. John Roger guessed what it was. Proof of having settled the matter. Don’t forget to have me sign a receipt, Mr Demarco, he said. You and I know a receipt is unnecessary between men of honor, but business has its rules, after all. Records are important.

Demarco’s relief was evident. Yes, yes, he said, thank you for reminding me. A mere formality, of course, but, as you say. . . . His gesture bespoke the bothersome nature of such mundane detail. He withdrew the prepared paper from his coat and spread it on the table. John Roger signed it and Demarco put it back in his coat and then consulted his fob watch and expressed surprise at the hour. He apologized for his rudeness in departing in such haste, but he was late for an appointment and he anyway knew Don Juan was a busy man. Please don’t get up, he said—though John Roger had made no move to rise—I can make my way out. And then was gone. In the entirety of the visit, he had met John Roger’s eyes only in the briefest glances and had not once looked at his empty sleeve.

At dinner that evening, as she cut his beefsteak, Elizabeth Anne asked, “What did that oily little man want with you?”

“To clear up an overdue account.”

She gave him an arch look. “I believe you have acquired a rather formidable reputation, Mr Wolfe. He was terrified of you.”

He returned her look in kind. “How do you know it was I he was terrified of, Mrs Wolfe? I’m sure I’m not the only one in this house who has acquired something of a formidable reputation.”

She blushed through her smile and stoppered his chuckle with a piece of beef on the end of her fork.

He wrote to Richard Davison to tell him what happened and assure him the office was in good hands, and concluded with the news of Demarco’s reimbursement. The sum was sizable and he asked Richard if he wanted him to send it to New Orleans via the consulate’s courier service. In his answering letter, Richard wrote, “Dont think about getting back to work till youre all healed up good. Are you getting proper doctoring? They say theres American doctors to be found in Mexico City. Im truly heartsore about your arm Johnny but my hats off to you for making the son of a bitch pay the full freight. And sounds to me like you mightve scared Demarco enough to make him partly honest. Keep the money he gave you son, youve earned it.”

He had agreed with Elizabeth Anne that to tell her family the truth about his arm would only stoke their perpetual fear for her safety in Mexico. She hated to lie but hated even more to increase her family’s worry. So she had written that John Roger had lost an arm in a carriage accident but was adjusting well and in good spirits. Mrs Bartlett wrote back—it was always she who wrote the letters, never Sebastian, never Jimmy—that they were all of them dismayed to learn of John Roger’s severe mishap and wished him a sound recovery. But she could not refrain from adding that she had never known anyone to lose an arm in a carriage accident in New England.

He returned to work in early January. The clerk Patterson had assigned to the office was a stocky twenty-year-old Charlestonian named Amos Bentley, moon-faced and sandy-haired, who had been grateful for the chance to do something other than sit around the consulate in wait of new files to shuffle. He welcomed John Roger back and complimented him on his scrupulous recordkeeping, which had made a simple task of serving as his surrogate. They reviewed the deliveries and shipments that had taken place in John Roger’s absence, then the correspondence received and sent. John Roger commended Bentley’s precise bookkeeping and the cogency of his prose. His dulcet Carolina accent imbued even his perfect Spanish, as John Roger heard when the young man read to him some key sections of the correspondence. Amos had greatly enjoyed dealing with the transport agents and the shipping officers, most of them earthier types than he was used to. He found the import-export trade enticing, in a way even adventurous, and was sorry to be going back to the dull duty of a consular assistant.

John Roger had been back to work only a few days and was attending to paperwork in the office when Patterson showed up unexpected and accompanied by a woman dressed in black and carrying a small portfolio. A large, rough-looking man in an ill-fitting suit started to come in with them but the woman gestured to him and he nodded and went back out into the hall and closed the door behind him.

In formal Spanish Patterson apologized to John Roger for the unannounced intrusion but said the concern was most important. John Roger had stood up when the woman entered, and he somehow knew who she was even before Patterson presented her as “la señora Consuelo Albéniz de Montenegro.”

“Encantado, señora,” John Roger said. And at once felt witless for conveying gladness to meet a woman he’d made a widow. He invited them to be seated and Patterson held a chair for her in front of the desk, then sat himself at a small remove and told John Roger that Mrs Albéniz, as she preferred to be called, had come to him at the consulate seeking to know where she might find Mr Wolfe. She explained to me her purpose in wishing to meet with you, Patterson said, and has asked that I be present during the proceedings, if you have no objection. I am to serve as, ah—he looked at Mrs Albéniz—an official witness?

“Solamente con el permiso del Señor Wolfe,” Mrs Albéniz said.

“Como no,” John Roger said. Whatever madam wishes.

Thank you, the woman said. Her gaze direct but difficult to read. She was visibly much younger than the man to whom she’d been married and clearly not the mother of Enrique. And pretty, irrespective of the small pink scar on her chin and a pale one of older vintage under her left eye.

She gestured at John Roger’s coat sleeve, folded double and pinned up, and said, I wish you to know that am very sorry for your terrible injury.

And I am very sorry for . . . about your husband, John Roger said. Please believe me, madam, it was not my preference to fight. He gave me no choice.

I do believe you, Mr Wolfe. My husband had no interest in anyone’s preferences but his own. And please believe me when I say you have caused me no grief. The black dress is but a necessary convention. My marriage to Hernán Montenegro was arranged by my father when I was fourteen, in settlement of some bargain between them. Our family’s social standing was superior to that of the Montenegros, but my father and my husband were men of the same character and I had no love for either of them. Nor did my husband love me, I assure you. He had been wed twice before and fathered God knows how many children, but neither wife survived, and by some bad joke of God the only male child who did was Enrique, who was as stupid as he was cruel. Hernán married me solely in hope of siring a worthier heir. I hope I do not offend you with my frankness.

You have no cause to make apology, madam, John Roger said. Please speak as frankly as you wish.

You are kind, she said. I have a daughter, Esmeralda, soon to be seven years old. She is the sole happiness of my marriage. I gave birth twice more, a son each time, but neither one lived even two months. May God forgive me, and you will think I am heartless, but I did not mourn their deaths. I feared they would have become their father. Or mine. I must again risk offending you, Mr Wolfe, in view of your severe suffering, but I am glad you had no choice except to fight, because the outcome of that fight has liberated me from Hernán Montenegro. And from his equal brute of a son. One reason I am here is to thank you.

I appreciate your sentiments, madam, John Roger said, but please understand that it gave me no pleasure to . . . I mean, I had no intention to, ah. . . .

I understand, she said. Although, if I have been correctly told, it is Mrs Wolfe who rid the world of Enrique.

Well, yes, that’s true. But, ah. . . .

I am told she also had no choice.

No. She didn’t.

She must be an exceptional woman.

She is, yes.

The fact remains, I have been liberated by your hand and hers. Partially liberated, I should say, because my emancipation is incomplete. That is the other reason I am here.

John Roger cut a look at Patterson, who smiled tightly and lifted a finger to indicate that he should simply listen.

There are no Montenegro men left alive, Mr Wolfe, Mrs Albéniz said, and I have inherited a hacienda on which I have no wish to live. The only family left to me is a widowed sister in Cuernavaca. I have decided to sell La Sombra Verde and buy a house in Cuernavaca large enough for her and my daughter and myself.

The sale of the estate should certainly make you financially comfortable, John Roger said. I am pleased for you.

Thank you, she said. But though I have my faults, greed is not one of them. I need only enough money to purchase a house and to maintain us in comfort. I have asked appraisals from three different advisors and they are in close agreement as to the worth of La Sombra Verde. I believe Mr Patterson is also not without knowledge about these things. She turned to Patterson and stated a sum. To John Roger’s ears an immense sum.

I’m no assayer, Patterson said, but that sounds right.

The accountants with whom I consulted, Mrs Albéniz continued, have assured me that twenty percent of that amount would be more than adequate to provide for me and my sister for the rest of our lives. For my daughter, as well, if she should choose never to marry. The accountants believe I intend to invest the difference, and I did not disabuse them. The point, Mr Wolfe, is that I have thought about this quite carefully, and as I have no other means to repay you for the severe mutilation inflicted on you by my husband, I wish to offer you La Sombra Verde for twenty percent of its worth. You could then, if you so wish, sell it in turn and gain a very large profit. I know of course that no amount of money can make amends for—

Forgive me, madam, John Roger said. You are under no obligation to recompense me for anything.

I am not here to argue the point, Mr Wolfe. Mr Patterson told me you might be reluctant to accept my offer for fear of taking advantage, but I shall be very offended if you should turn it down. Besides, my motives are not entirely benevolent. While I certainly believe you should be compensated by Hernán Montenegro’s estate, I have another reason for selling it to you for less than its full worth. Can you guess that reason?

They held stares for a moment, and then he said, Your husband would not like it.

She smiled. You understand everything. Nothing would enrage the man more. It pleases me to believe that even in hell he will learn of it and it will add to his misery.

Forgive my intrusion, madam, Patterson said, and turned to John Roger and said in English, “No offense, Johnny, but if it’s a question of money, I can see to it that in less than an hour you have a loan of as much as—”

I have the money, John Roger said.

“Que bueno,” the woman said. She leaned forward and placed the portfolio on the desk and opened it to reveal a small sheaf of legal documents. My attorneys have seen to the necessary paperwork, she said. It has all been certified and requires only our own signatures and that of Mr Patterson as witness before it is registered and becomes official.

John Roger looked at Patterson. “It’s not right, Charley. She’s giving it away.”

“Como?” said Mrs Albéniz.

Maybe you want to talk it over with Lizzie, Patterson said.

“Leezee?” the woman said.

My wife.

You wish to ask for the opinion of your wife?

No. I don’t have to.

I did not think so. It is the same with the men of this country.

That was not my meaning, John Roger said. My wife’s opinion is of importance to me. I simply meant that I know what she will say. Because we have discussed our, ah, aspirations for the future, you see.

How extraordinary, the woman said. So tell me. What will she say?

John Roger cut a look at Patterson, looked back at the woman, cleared his throat. Yes. She will say yes.

Mrs Albéniz smiled. So we are agreed?

For thirty percent of the property’s worth, John Rodger said.

The woman looked quizzical. Your wife will say for thirty percent?

No, I’m saying for thirty percent.

You are saying. . .? Mr Wolfe, I do not know very much about business, but I know it is contrary to basic principle for a buyer to offer more than a seller asks.

Thirty percent. Agreed?

No, she said. She looked at Patterson and made a small gesture of perplexity.

I would be stealing it at thirty percent, John Roger said to her.

For the love of God, she said, you are stealing nothing. It is my price.”

Thirty percent is—

“Ay, pero que terco!” Twenty-five percent, Mr Wolfe, and that is all. Not one penny more. Now please, sir, let us end this silliness.

He studied her face. She raised her brow in question. He smiled.

She smiled back. “Ah pues, estamos de acuerdo, no? We have, ah . . . como se dice? . . . make the busyness?”

Yes.

He dispatched the news to Richard, who congratulated him for his good fortune but opposed his resignation from the company. He persuaded John Roger to stay on in the Trade Wind’s employ as head bookkeeper, a duty he could fulfill from the hacienda. Twice a month Richard would send him the company’s most recent paperwork for final accounting. The records would be relayed by Amos Bentley, whom, on John Roger’s recommendation, Richard hired to manage the company’s Mexican office.