“Blame my wife,” Frade said. “She’s responsible.”
Duarte’s eyebrows rose in question as he waved Frade into a chair in front of his enormous, ornately carved desk. Enrico took a chair near the door and rested on the floor the butt of the shotgun that he concealed in his top coat.
“Our suits were my father’s,” Clete said. “In what is now my bedroom, he had a closet full of them. Right after Dorotea and I married, I showed them to her and said we really ought to give them to somebody who could use them. Most looked like he’d never worn them. She said she knew just the people who could really use them, so I told her to have at it. Two days later, an Englishman showed up, a tailor—”
“An Englishman or an Anglo-Argentine?”
“I’d guess an Anglo-Argentine. He talks like my father-in-law . . . or you. His name is Halsey.”
“I know him well,” Duarte said. “And let me guess, he stood you on a stool and took out his tape measure and a piece of chalk?”
Clete smiled and nodded. “And now Enrico and I look like advertisements in Esquire. All he had to do was take them in a little for me, and let them out a little for Enrico.”
“Has Claudia seen you wearing one?” Duarte asked.
Clete shook his head.
“Well, be sure to wear one when she invites you to dinner, which will probably be the day after tomorrow. She’ll be pleased.”
“Why, twice? Why will she be pleased, and why is she going to invite me to dinner?”
“She will be pleased because whenever she could drag your father into Halsey’s place of business, she ordered suits for him. Most of which he hung in his closet and he never wore. And Claudia is going to have you to dinner because of what I want to talk to you about now. After which, we’ll walk over to the Jockey Club and have lunch.”
“I just had one of my better ideas,” Clete said. “Why don’t we walk over to the Jockey Club now and talk about whatever you want to talk about while we eat? Enrico and I were up at dawn moving bulls. I’m starved. I was starved before Dorotea came after us and told me you were going to buy us lunch here, and I had to get dressed and in the airplane right now. ”
“You flew in?”
“It’s the only way to travel. I thought I told you that. It took us longer to drive here from El Palomar than it did to fly in from Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo in the Piper Cub.”
“Well, I’m sorry to tell you you’re going to have to live with your starvation a little longer. The rules of the Jockey Club forbid talking business in the dining room.”
“Why?”
“That’s just the way it is, Cletus.”
“If my grandfather and his pals couldn’t talk business in the dining room of the Petroleum Club in Dallas, hardly a hole would’ve been drilled.”
“This is Buenos Aires, Cletus. Try to keep that in mind.”
“Okay. But before we get into what you’re going to try to sell me, which we can’t talk about over lunch, since this is Buenos Aires, what about my airlines idea? Have you given that any solemn thought?”
Duarte, smiling, shook his head.
“What’s funny?”
“You’ll never guess who else has been thinking about an airline for Argentina, ” Duarte said.
“I give up.”
“President Ramírez.”
“And what the hell does that mean? I can’t start one because this is Argentina and the president doesn’t like competition?”
&
nbsp; “Just about the opposite,” Duarte said. “Your Tío Juan Domingo came to see me yesterday. He told me that Ramírez had called him in, said that it was embarrassing for Argentina not to have an airline with modern transport aircraft like Varig. And since he didn’t think the Americans would sell airplanes to Argentina, what about the Germans? And since Perón had such close ties with the Germans, why didn’t Perón look into it?”
"And? ” Frade said, not believing his ears.