A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [129]
The daughters were animated and seemingly at ease with themselves and strangers.
It all broke up the snarling, leathery image of Red Peterson. And Greta? What the hell! A six-foot Swedish lady comes to Vegas to find herself a Red Peterson. He pampered her, and she knew what to do in return.
Not a bad life, winters in Mexico and high-roller trips to Vegas or a New York or Paris spree.
Red’s hand slipped between his wife’s legs.
“I’ll let you two talk,” Greta said. “I’ll have dinner served on the veranda.”
“Sure, Swede,” Red said, “and maybe you’ll join us for dessert.” He patted her backside as she arose. “The donkey is going to ride tonight.”
Now, not to get it mixed up, Maud thought, is Red making a pass at me by getting a rise out of me? Maud realized that Red had held her hand just a little too long and tried to get a peek up her leg in the Wagoneer. That should have delighted ’most any sixty-year-old divorced grandmother, except that Red was threatening.
“This cognac is magnificent,” Maud commented.
“Ought to be, it cost enough. You’d think it was biblical.”
Red had started life as a son of a Gulf shrimper and went the daring way by taking his best shot at the oil fields of Tyler. In the fifties and sixties it was strike and boom, boom, and bust. He went through three fortunes, and he sang the wildcatter’s song of big winner to broken-hearted loser.
Red smelled a coming collapse of the oil fields early in the sixties and sold off his equipment and leases.
What hot spot remained for an old wildcatter? Mexico for a time. Venezuela for a time. Hell, these countries had so many crooks in office, the guy out in the field didn’t have a chance.
Immigrant smuggling from Mexico showed promise. He knew every bend in the Rio Grande. It led to drug smuggling.
During the Clinton years the North American Free Trade Association reversed the established pattern of traffic at the borders. In the old days Mexican vegetables and fruits and cheap goods had flowed to America. Now America was exporting heavily to Mexico.
American weapons, in eighteen-wheelers, lay under the false bottoms. The trucks went through without sincere inspection.
Once on the Mexican side, a few friends had to be taken care of, and passage was open to Central America.
An incredible dinner on the veranda followed, but the air turned cold instantly when the sun dropped, and they retired to Red’s office, a tucked-in little room to remind him of the bitter past, complete with rolltop desk and big pictures of oil men and oil strikes. Red had been a wiry and handsome young man in those days.
“Got any more of that thousand-year-old cognac?”
They sparred until Greta led Joan and Tammy in to say good night. Maud thought Greta a tiny bit condescending, indicating a feline bent. Or was it that Red went for all women, despite age and configuration?
Promised once more the donkey would ride, Greta departed.
“Well, now, Miss Maud, what brings you to the fleshpots of New Mexico? I’ve been trying to reach The Combine for more goddamn years than I’d like to think.”
“It’s a closed club, Red. We reached you because we feel we can deal with each other now.”
“What kind of deal?”
“There have been virtually no Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms stings since Thornton Tomtree has been in office.”
“Yeah, he sure likes unimpeded commerce.”
“Red, we’ve been looking into your operation since some of our top agents started disappearing in Colon.”
“I heard about it; cut to the chase, Miss Maud.”
“Smugglers’ routes have changed. Contraband moves north and south. Vancouver is practically an oriental city. Once an eighteen-wheeler gets into the States, the way is through Route 99, inland California. You’ve put a lock on the border and through Mexico. It’s not friendly to us anymore.”
“You’d think The Combine would be happy enough supplying the new NATO armies.”
“We’re all greed heads in a greed head business,” she said.
“I like that, Miss Maud. I’d like to be on a slow boat to China with a load of weapons heading to Colon