ANGELA WAS IN THE HOTEL room, her shoes kicked off, lying on the bed and drinking a Scotch.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I got held up.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” he said. He took her drink and swallowed it in a long gulp.
“Hey!”
“Sorry. I was thirsty.”
She went to the phone. “I’ll call for more. Maybe they’ll send up a better-looking bellboy. The last one was ugly. Lucky for you.”
“No,” Ross said, putting the phone down. “We’re going out now.”
“Lunch?”
“No. Bookstore.”
“Bookstore? What for?”
“I have to do a little research.”
The concierge directed them to a large, cosmopolitan shop in the center of town.
“What kind of book do you want?” Angela said.
“A book about Mexico.”
“Why Mexico?”
“Curiosity.”
He asked a salesman for a copy in English of Prescott’s The Conquest of Mexico. The salesman was a flirty Spaniard in very tight pants.
“We have only the abridged version,” he said.
“I’ll take it.”
It turned out to be a cheap, dusty copy with small print, yellowing pages, and a ten-dollar price tag. Ross paid it, and they went out and caught a taxi.
“You seem awfully curious,” Angela said. “Ten dollars.”
“I am.”
“Is this a sudden urge? Or do you often get these fits of academic interest?”
“Sudden,” Ross said. “Very sudden.”
He directed the cab driver to a restaurant, then sat back. He thumbed through the index.
“Cortez, Cortez … here we are. Marriage of Cortez.”
Angela frowned. “Marriage of Cortez?”
“That’s right”
He turned to the correct page, and squinted to read the small print. It was a very short section, no more than three paragraphs.
“I don’t get it,” he said when he finished. He closed the book.
Angela waited.
“All it says is that when Cortez returned from Mexico, he wanted to be governor of the new country, but that Charles V denied it. Charles wanted him to win more battles for him. Cortez stayed in Spain for a while and courted Dona Juana de Zuniga, who was very beautiful”
“Naturally.”
“Naturally. He married her.”
“Naturally.”
“Yes. And it says here—” he opened the book again, “that she was daughter of the second count of Aguilar, and niece of the duke of Bejar, and was of the House of Arellano, of the royal lineage of Navarre.”
He stopped. Those were the names Karin had been looking up in the genealogy books. Those same names.
Angela said, “Something wrong?”
“No, no. Just thinking.”
“Relatives of yours?”
Ross laughed. “Hardly,” he said.
Angela sighed. “Well, that’s all fine for Cortez, but why did you want to know so badly?”
“Damned if I know,” Ross said. He scratched his head. “Wait a minute. This book is abridged. Maybe there’s something else, in the full-length version.”
“Something else?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Ross admitted.
The taxi pulled up at the restaurant.
“So much for research,” Ross said.
“I’m starved,” Angela said.
Over lunch, Angela said, “What will we do tomorrow?”
“Well, there’s something I haven’t told you.”
She frowned. “Yes?”
“I have a meeting.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“More about this autopsy business?”
He shook his head. “This is respectable. The American Society of Radiologists.”
“You’re kidding,” she said.
“I’m registering,” he said.
“I’m stuck with an establishment creep,” she said.
“That’s right,” he said.
“Zero cool,” she said, “and no points for me.”
“Well, perhaps one or two,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Come to think of it.”