Candy Kid Read Online Free Page B

he meant. “Mil gracias.”
    “Es nada.”
    He leaned himself against the closed door. Now he had to face the gang. They were waiting all right, ready to jump him.
    Adam jumped first. “Now, what’s that all about?”
    “It couldn’t be a blonde?” Lou queried dryly.
    “A blonde?” Beach sparkled.
    “You mean he hasn’t told you about her?”
    Adam growled, “Not one lousy word.”
    “A bastard,” said Beach softly. “So that’s why we’re staying all night in El Paso.”
    “Slow up,” Jose advised. How much to tell them—and in that instant, he resolved to tell them nothing. If this was a shady deal, he wasn’t going to have them involved in it. If it weren’t, the story would be better when it was embellished by further developments. “What Pablo and I were discussing, amigos, had nothing to do with any female.” He reached. “It had to do with his domb primo, Jaime. And if you doubt me, ask Pablo.”
    “After you’ve got him on your side,” Beach complained. “What’s with the blonde?”
    Jose reclined in a chair. “She is so beautiful,” he embroidered, “she is like the morning star caught in the leaves of a tall aspen.” The more he said of her, the more they would believe there was nothing to this but Jose trying to pick up another dame. “She is a knockout, a dream a man dreams around a lonely campfire when the cows are bawling. The tawdry rhymes of a jukebox love song become honest because the heart yearns for her beauty….”
    Adam grunted. Insultingly.
    “Who is she?” Beach demanded. “Where can I find her?”
    “One, I don’t know. Two, lay off, she’s a lady. I’ve never met her, all I did was ask Lou who she was because she caught my eye.”
    “Lou?” Beach queried.
    “What difference does it make to you, love?” Lou asked lazily. “Jose saw her first.”
    “I have no loyalty.”
    “All of you hombres ought to get married. You’d stop thinking girls were trees or cows bawling, you’d know they were women.” Lou didn’t look at Adam.
    Adam said, “If I ever meet one who can cook better than I do, I’ll remember what you said. Until then I’ll be a no good like the Aragon boys, ogling blondes.”
    It was all nice and normal, just like old times. Just as if Jose’s blonde were an ordinary doll, not one mixed up with an inquisitive man in a seersucker suit.
II
    Jose refused to trust his pristine white linen to Adam’s truck.
    “All right,” Adam grudged. “We’ll take Lou’s car. But if you guys aren’t ready to come back after dinner, you’ll have to ride the trolley. I’m not going to hang around Juarez all night.”
    It would have been funny, he was always the one who delayed the crowd, he knew everyone from Chihuahua to Mesa Verde. But nothing was funny now. Not even the gags about Jose’s first communion suit; Beach with an out-of-joint nose because there wasn’t time to get his whites pressed once he found out what Jose was up to.
    Nothing was funny because of a slip of paper in an envelope. On the paper was penned a name, Senor Praxiteles; an address, Calle de la Burrita. The envelope was in Jose’s white pocket, where his right hand could brush casually against it. On the front of the envelope was his name, Jose Aragon.
    He’d never met Praxiteles, Senor el Greco, but he’d heard enough to recognize the old man if they met in the dark. And he didn’t want to meet him in the dark. He didn’t want to go on with this. He was retired from violence, he was a part-time peaceful ranchero of Socorro county and the rest of the time a gay caballero of the royal city of Santa Fe.
    He didn’t believe that the name Jose Aragon would have a special pertinence for Senor el Greco. But he couldn’t be sure. Because the web in which Praxiteles sat like an evil black spider had tendrils on every border all over the world. You could never be sure how much the wily spiders knew about those who had tried to sweep out their murky corners.
    But he was done