Paper Moon (11 page)

Dancers? Blaine turned, surprised to see that a group of brightly feathered and leathered Indians with bells and rattles had managed to sneak up on him. “No problem. I use one like this for work projects.” He waited until the trio paid one of the dancers to pose with them. Nothing came free here.

“Christie?” He thought that was the daughter's name. “Can you move closer to your mom?” Finally he had the two blondes in the picture. “Did anyone ever tell you that you two look more like sisters than mother and daughter?” he observed as they came into focus.

“My real mom is in California,” Christie said without embarrassment. “This mom got stuck with me when she married my dad.”

Her stepmother gave the girl a quick hug and laughed. “Yeah.

We've tried everything to get rid of her, but she keeps finding us.”

Blaine captured the glowing bond between the stepmother and stepdaughter with the push of a button. Maybe Caroline was right about taking the experience home with her. Postcards didn't have loved ones in them.

“That's a keeper,” Ron Butler said, taking the camera back.

“Thanks.”

“
Now
can Pegeen and I go shopping?” Christie linked her arm with her stepmother.

Ron mimicked Hector with a wave of his hand.
“Vámonos,
vámonos
. Me, I'm going to get one of those snow cones before you two break my piggy bank.”

“That extra suitcase will come in handy after we empty the goodies at the orphanage,” Dana remarked to an equally package-laden Caroline as they approached the bench where Randy and Blaine were engaged in conversation. “Till then, there's Randy.”

“Hey, honey,” she called to her husband, “will you carry this for me?”

Randy met her halfway, grunting for effect as he took the bag, but his grin belied any real grudge.

“You gals realize those fake straw bags with
Mexico
on them are probably made in China,” Blaine pointed out.

Caroline rallied to the wry observation. “Maybe so, but it's where I bought them that counts to me.”

“Would you like me to carry yours?” Blaine offered.

“No thanks, I'm used to being the pack mule.” Then she mustered a gracious smile. “Although, you could take Karen's.” She handed over a bright woolen blanket rolled up in a used plastic supermarket bag, but Blaine looked past her, distracted.

“The girls are over by the snow cone vendor,” she said, anticipating his question. “They'll be along in a minute.”

“Aren't those some of the kids from the nightclub?” Taking his daughter's purchase under his arm, Blaine bristled with paternal wariness.

Caroline turned. Sure enough, there was the exchange student whom Karen had introduced to them the night before and his Mexican companions, including the one with the spiked red hair and enough studs to bear a resemblance to a ballroom globe when he moved in the bright sun.

Caroline shuddered as Spike let Annie taste his snow cone. She'd warned her daughter against the water, but not against the natives.

From the flirty look Annie gave the young man, germs were the last thing on her innocent mind.

Just as Caroline started forward, the boys were drawn away by an authoritative figure waving a small Mexican flag over his head.

The youths fell in with a group of tourists, ranging from babies in strollers to straw-hatted senior citizens, and walked toward a tour bus parked at the end of the square. A few minutes later, Annie and Karen ambled over with bright red snow cones.

“Isn't it too cool?” Karen raved. “The guys we met are taking a bus tour to Acapulco this week too.”

Leaving Blaine to his own concerns, Caroline pulled Annie aside. “Sweetie, you don't drink after strangers . . . or anyone, for that matter.”

Annie was indignant. “Mom, Manny hadn't taken a bite yet. I just wanted to see if I should get the rainbow flavors or stick with my black cherry standby.”

“Hey, isn't it time to head for the National Palace?” Kurt called out, bringing up the rear of the snow cone aficionados.

As they moved en masse toward the designated meeting place, Blaine reached down and coaxed the straw bag out of Caroline's hand. At her surprised look, he gave her a rakish grin. “My mother would never forgive me if I allowed a pretty lady to carry packages while I had a free hand.”

With her heart curling up and purring in her chest, she mumbled a “thank-you” and concentrated on walking straight ahead before she was tempted to brush kittylike against her companion to coax more such attention. Behind them, a diesel engine roared and popped, but Caroline hardly flinched. Siding with logic, she battled to stop the continuous loop of Blaine's smile and the word
pretty
that held the audience of her senses captive.

Gears groaned as the tourist bus nudged its way into the mainstream of traffic.

“I tell you, man, you have brushed that
señorita
off her feet, no?”

Javier said with that silly grin on his face.

John Scott Chandler's gaze followed Karen Madison's group across the plaza. He hadn't found another candidate to move the package. He'd tried, but the young women who came in after the club turned to the older clientele weren't interested.

“It does look that way,
amigo
. If anything goes wrong, Jorge will have my hide drying on the wall of his hacienda before the sun sets on the news.”

It was like handing candy to a baby. Karen had dropped the card in her bag of souvenirs while they waited in line at the Ice Man vending truck. After a quick look to see if Big Daddy was around— he couldn't shake the feeling that the man was onto him—John gave her another chaste peck on the cheek in front of the twerp with the crush on her.

Javier grinned.
“Mi tío
, he has his ways.”

Like a hundred ways to eat beans.
And if Javier kept eating pizza with the same enthusiasm, he would soon be just as round as his uncle. Today, he slurped down a grape snow cone. The ice in the cone that John finished before boarding the bus had given him a headache. At least that was how he reasoned this latest one away.

Lately, everything upset him. And Javier, with his delusions of being as big as his uncle, now gnawed on John's last frayed nerve.

Reaching into his shirt pocket, John retrieved the aspirin tin he always kept on hand. Popping a pill into his mouth, he chased it down with the warm bottled water he'd brought on the bus that morning. If only he'd known of Javier's gift for understatement before becoming involved with the Rocha family.

“Why so glum,
hermano
?” The young man beside him kicked back the reclining seat and folded his hands behind his head. There was a purple stain on his white polo shirt. “We get an expense-paid trip to Acapulco and the charms of the
señoritas
until they fly off to see our letters posted in the good U.S. of A.”

As if Javier could pick up a female American mark. He was a real ladykiller all right, if boring them to death counted. Guys, on the other hand—like John—didn't care about his Pillsbury doughboy face and short, stocky build, giving his good old
chico
personality a chance to make the pitch. That he bought the beer didn't hurt any.

“This is it, man. I have my degree, and I am back home soon as this one is over.”

It had all started with the same line John used with this latest wide-eyed dupe. No one could depend on the
Servicio Postal de
Mexicano
. It made perfect sense to help a new buddy get a letter to his
Tía
Rosa by carrying the letter-sized packet to the U.S. to mail.

“I will miss you,
hermano
.” Javier checked the bag of pizza pretzel treats he'd polished off before leaving the bus, to be certain there were none left. “We have had some good times, eh?”

John nodded in silence. It had been a game at first. He had a way with girls, and it fed a malnourished part of his ego to manipulate them so easily. Sometimes the contraband was rare stamps, sometimes jewels, always small and always costly.

And the quick, easy money enabled him to live a high life in an apartment with Javier off university grounds. It wasn't as though they were dealing drugs or doing something really sinister. What harm was it to steal from some old rich collector, who many times didn't even miss the valuable until well after it had been lifted and sold on the black market? No one got hurt—as long as things went as planned.

Javier clapped his hand on John's arm. “Good times, no?”

“Yeah, good times.” John put his fingers to his head and leaned against the pillow rest. “Too good, especially last night.”

“
José Cuervo is not so much your amigo today, eh?”

With no prospects to replace Karen Madison as their unwitting courier, tequila proved a temporary salve for his conscience. But today it was back, pounding his brain from all sides.

“My head feels like a piñata about to burst.”

John hardly heard Javier's “You need to eat more regular, man.”

Conscience and worse—the memory of the one time something had gone wrong. All the front men—students who handed off the goods to the unsuspecting couriers—had been forced to watch Jorge Rocha and his sidekick, Argon, take turns beating a guy who'd tried skipping with some goods and fencing them on his own. After Jorge and company left, John called the attention of some passersby to the victim in the alley, who in turn used their cell phones to summon an ambulance. John had faded into the crowd, letting the callers answer the police questions.

“Candy?”

Jerked from the nightmare in broad daylight, John opened his eyes to see the punk with the red Mohawk and enough studs to outfit a motorcycle gang holding an open box of multicolored treats. Javier helped himself to a handful. John shook his head.

“No thanks, dude.”

God help him, this was it for him. Karen Madison was his last mark.

CHAPTER
8

“Weren't those murals incredible?” Caroline speared a forkful of the lime-basted, grilled chicken salad served on a shell at the open-air café. Diego Rivera's sprawling portrayal of Mexican history at the National Palace had so drawn her in that she'd not even noticed it was after noon, but her stomach had. It grumbled the entire walk from the heavily guarded government building to Chapultepec Park, where the group was to lunch and visit the Museum of Anthropology.

“I bought a book on the murals for the school library,” she said, catching Blaine the postcard pusher's eye for approval, “but even those pictures don't do them justice.”

“Yeah, it was like a painted time machine,” Karen piped up after swallowing a mouthful of food. Most of the students had settled for the tried-and-true
la hamburguesa y las papas fritas
—burger and fries.

Across the park, a large group of tourists looked up in the air where an acrobatic troupe in black and red climbed a tall pole with apparent ease. At the top was some sort of metal frame or ring that reminded her of a playground merry-go-round—with no bottom.