CHAPTER 33
“The thing about drunks like me,” Carl Orndecker was saying, “is that everybody says how we shouldn’t drink at all because we aren’t able to stop after just one or two social drinks. That’s not really the problem. Speaking strictly for myself, I guess I should say, the problems usually start to arrive after I don’t stop drinking after one or two days!” With that, he tossed back the shot of tequila he’d been holding in one hand and then let out a loud laugh as he lowered the emptied glass.
Next to Carl, leaning on the battered old bar of the nameless Mexville cantina just across the border from the south end of Wagon Wheel, Martin Goodwin listened and looked on with a guardedly dubious expression. Other voices and bursts of loud laughter filled the smoky, crowded cantina and drifted out into the dusty nighttime street. Off in one corner a mariachi band was playing poorly but loudly and with much energy. The mood throughout seemed lighthearted and happy.
Only Goodwin appeared a bit reserved, not quite caught up in the merry atmosphere although the plump, pretty brown-skinned young woman keeping herself plastered to his right arm certainly was doing her best to put him in a better mood. Her low-cut, off-the-shoulder blouse was showing a voluptuous amount of cleavage and the warmth of her large, cushiony breasts rubbing against his arm made it clear they were quite unrestrained under the thin fabric of the blouse.
“You look decidedly skeptical, Goodwin, about my well-researched discourse on the subject of drinking,” Carl said. “Are you yourself such an expert on the subject that you can debate my observations? Or is it the opposite? Are you so ill exposed to the subject matter that you haven’t the basis for a firm opinion one way or the other?”
Goodwin replied, “If you mean have I done my own share of drinking, the answer is yes. I’m hardly a teetotaler.”
“You couldn’t prove it by me. Not so far, at least,” Carl said as he refilled his glass. “This will be my third, You haven’t finished your first. Tequila not to your taste? You want to get warmed up with some wine? Maybe some beer?”
“The tequila’s fine,” Goodwin said. “It’s just that I usually don’t approach my drinking like a race to see how fast I can get smashed.”
Carl laughed again. “Well, I do. And my tolerance to the damn devil’s brew is so high I have the luxury—or curse, if you will—of being able to run for a very long time before I reach the point of getting, in your words, smashed. Isn’t that right, darling?” He turned to the brown-skinned lovely on his left arm, a close twin to the girl with Goodwin and equally free with her display of cleavage, and planted a hungry wet kiss on her lushly accommodating lips.
When the kiss ended, the young woman threw her head back, tossing her long hair, and laughed gleefully. “No smashed for Mucho Carl—never for a long time!”
When the two men first entered the establishment, the two cantina girls had appeared immediately. Carl had introduced them as Conchita and Rosalita. Goodwin couldn’t keep straight which was which, but it didn’t really matter. Carl himself generally referred to them simply as his chiquitas most of the time.
When they gushed all over him, calling him Mucho Carl, he’d had to explain somewhat sheepishly that this pertained to how much he could drink and how often he elected to take one—or sometimes both—of his chiquitas to a private room.
Turning from the kiss back to his tequila, Carl promptly knocked back the glass he had just refilled. Goodwin joined in, then seized the bottle and began to refill both glasses.
Carl leaned closer and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “If we’re going to make this work, damn it, you’re going to have to do your part to sell it. Don’t worry about me. I’m in control and I’ll stay that way. But they’re used to seeing me act in a certain manner and I’ve got to stick with that or the whole thing will fall flat. You’re the water dowser who’s been poking your stick all over town up north, and now you’re down here to have some fun because you got plenty of Don Pedro’s money to spend. Start acting like it!”
As soon as Goodwin had their glasses filled, he and Carl held them up and clicked them together.
“Viva Don Pedro!” Goodwin proclaimed before tossing his back.
Carl followed suit, hesitating slightly because he was caught off guard by the suddenness with which Goodwin had brought out the use of Don Pedro’s name. On second thought, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. Why waste time about it?
“You got that right, buddy,” he said, grabbing the bottle to pour their next refill. “Since the old don is paying you so handsomely to work your water magic for him, you’re damn right we’ll raise a glass to him. Hell, he’s footing the bill, right? Viva Don Pedro, indeed!”
Toward the middle of the room, two narrow-faced, dark-complexioned men sat over their own bottle of tequila and quickly caught the mention of Don Pedro’s name. They exchanged thoughtful glances through the smoke that curled up from the dark cigarillos hanging from the corners of their mouths.
Over the course of the next two or three hours they heard the loud gringos speak the name of Don Pedro several more times . . . as did numerous others within the boisterous little cantina.