“Yeah.” He squeezed past her into the house. When she followed him into the front room she found him dumping the contents of the rucksack on the parson’s table—a jumble of oily blue-black machinery that she belatedly recognized as disassembled guns.

He began to sort things out on the table. There was a flat red steel box; he slid the lid off it and revealed a collection of ramrods, white cloth patches, cans of oil and solvent.

He assembled something out of the parts—it looked like the kind of stutter gun that airborne commandos carried in war movies. Stubby, ugly, wicked. Crobey worked its action with a great deal of sinister clacking.

“I see you’ve been to the arms dealers.”

“One of ’em. If he’s been approached by Rodriguez he’s not admitting it. I’ve got a few more on the list—then we’ll have to widen the net. Caracas, Rio, the Azores.” He gave her a direct glance for the first time. “Glenn Anders is in San Juan.”

“Oh?”

“Flew in last night.”

“How do you know?”

“I haven’t altogether wasted my time since I got here. You’ve got two other people on your payroll besides me and Santana. I slipped them a little something to keep their eyes open—I check in with them now and then.”

“Who are they?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Crobey—”

“Part of the reason they’re willing to deal with me is they know I won’t name them. All right?”

She conceded it. “So Anders is here. Why?”

“I suggest we ask him.”

“We?”

“He wants to meet you. When I was in Mexico City I told him I’d try to set it up.”

“What have you told him?”

“A little bit of the truth. Not too much.” He went back to work on his toys.

She said lamely, “Where’s Santana? Working the farm?”

“No. He’s out looking into the Rodriguez family background.”

“Have we stirred them up at all yet?”

“I’ll ask Anders when I see him.”

“I’m asking you. You’re supposed to be my expert.”

“An expert’s a fellow you hire because he’s the one who knows what experts to call in, and when to call them. Are you going to dispute everything I do? Because if you are I don’t see much point in carrying on. I can’t function if I’m harassed from both sides at once. Do you want me to pack?”

“Don’t throw ultimatums at me,” she said. “I might call your bluff.”

“Then you’re ready to give it up?”

“No. I’ll look for somebody a bit less prickly. You can’t possibly be the only man alive who knew those people in the Bay of Pigs days.”

“Ducks, I don’t think I can be happy here if we have to have this conversation twice a day. It doesn’t give me a sense of job security.”

“Security? You?”

“I’m not talking about the long term. I’m talking about maybe getting the rug pulled out from under me at the wrong moment.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“Ah, ducks, tell me why I should.”

She touched a finger to one of his guns and twirled it on the table, picked a stray hair off her cuff, leaned back, crossed her legs, put an elbow on the table and her chin in her palm, looked him in the eye and said, “Nobody can do that. It’s a trick question and you know it. The only way to find out whether you can trust someone is to trust the person and see what happens.”

“You’re a truly contrary creature.” He stood, pulling the Levi’s down from his crotch.

She watched him limp toward the back door. “Where are you going?”

“To the loo, ducks.”

“Why’ve you started calling me by that awful epithet?”

“Ducks?” In the doorway he turned; the smile was more sardonic than amiable. “When I use it, it’s a term of endearment.” Then he went.

She heard the slap of the privy door and realized she was smiling. She straightened her face. She kept catching herself trying to ingratiate Crobey—it was a warning sign; she had to guard against it. It wasn’t a contest of will or pride; in effect he’d imprisoned her and rendered her ineffectual; if she remained she could only sink into passivity. That wasn’t what she’d come for.

When he came in from the yard he said, “I wasn’t intending to switch cars right away but there was a problem in town—I left it parked while I went to see the man about the guns and when I came back I found it jammed in by two parked cars that hadn’t been there before. One of them had a couple of smokers in it. So I stepped into a hotel and got lost. I phoned the rent-a-car people to go pick it up and we got the Bronco from a pal of Santana’s.”

“Who were the men in the car?”

“Locals. I’ve no idea whose.”

She said, “If someone’s putting pressure on the police to scare you out of Puerto Rico, it shouldn’t be impossible to find out who that is. If the police are impressed by this person or frightened of him, it means they know who he is.”

“I realize that. But I can’t think of any coppers I’d like to talk to right now.”

“Would Anders know?”

“Anders could find out,” he conceded.

“Then let’s arrange to see him.”

Crobey said, “A while ago you were chastising me for consorting with him.”

“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” She smiled. “Besides, I want to give you a fighting chance.”

“Good. I already made a date for tonight: seven-thirty at the Tres Candelas.”

The Tres Candelas struck Anders as a Harry Crobey sort of place. The long dismal narrow room was mostly bar. A row of tiny tables, a back room with half a dozen tables-for-four. There was a Wurlitzer jukebox that might have fascinated a dealer in fifties kitsch.

Anders had his jacket hung over his shoulder by one fingertip and Rosalia held his hand like a teen-ager. The bartender, in soiled apron and halfheartedly trimmed beard, waved them toward the tables in back. No one was back there. Anders seated Rosalia under a cockfight poster and selected a chair from which he could watch the entrance. According to his watch it was 7:05. He was surprised by Crobey’s absence.

Rosalia reached for his wrist and heaved it around to see the face of his watch. “We’re awfully early.”

“Once in my life I want to be somewhere ahead of Harry.”

“He’s got some kind of hex sign on you, hasn’t he.”

“Not really. Sometimes I envy him a little.” He was looking at her breasts, not smiling. “Want to know what I’m thinking?”

“I think I already do,” she said in a mock-cool voice. She had extraordinarily long natural eyelashes and knew how to use them; she batted them at him. Anders made a point of tracing the lines of her body with his eyes. Rosalia began to chuckle. “How’d you ever turn into such a lout?”

Anders shook his head gloomily. “You see it was like this. When I was nine I ran away from home and got picked up by a very smooth hair-tonic salesman who hooked me on smack and used me as a courier until he got run over by a Chinese tank, and then I was all by myself on the streets mugging old ladies until this kindly fat man took me in to his establishment and I worked upstairs there on the line until I got arrested for selling atomic secrets, and after that things just started to go wrong somehow.”

Mirth captivated Rosalia, making her shake. Anders laughed at his own absurdity. Then he looked up in time to see Harry Crobey walk in, escorting a striking woman.

Anders watched the brisk-gaited clipclip of the woman’s good long legs as Crobey limped beside her. She wasn’t especially tall but she managed to carry herself as if she were. The skin of her face was drawn over precisely defined bones—she was at least forty and didn’t attempt to look younger; very little make-up and she’d been out in the humid wind but dishevelment suited her. In a rust-hued skirt and brown satiny blouse she managed to look cool. Her eyes were shaped for scorn and for easy laughter; her hair was reddish but not red and something made him certain she didn’t tint it. She wasn’t pretty in any of the usual ways—the bone ridges were prominent, the nose sharp, the impression one of planes and angles rather than soft curved features—but she was extraordinarily attractive and it was clear by her carriage that she knew it and was assured and confident in herself. Possibly it was a pose but if so it was one she’d had plenty of time to rehearse.