The Shooters (Presidential Agent 4)

"If we are going to work together, Colonel, we are going to have to tell each other the truth."

The last three words of the sentence came out: udder da trute.

Castillo couldn't restrain a smile.

"You find that amusing?" Duffy asked.

"Colonel Munz didn't tell me you were from Brooklyn, Comandante."

"I don't understand."

"You have a Brooklyn accent, Comandante."

Duffy, visibly annoyed, looked at Munz.

Munz gestured that he didn't understand, and then turned to Castillo and said, "I don't understand either, Karl."

"Okay," Delchamps said, "Cultural History 101. Pay attention, there will be a pop quiz. Sometime around the time of the potato famine in Ireland, the Catholic Church sent a large number of priests-from Kilkenny, I think, but don't hold me to that-to minister to Irish Catholic immigrants in the New World. Many of them went to Brooklyn, and many to New Orleans. Their flocks picked up their accent. Now that I've heard Comandante Duffy speak, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some of them were sent down here, too."

Now Duffy smiled.

"On the other hand," Duffy said to Castillo, "you sound like a Porteno, Colonel. What did Holy Mother Church in Argentina do, send Porteno priests to New York?"

Castillo laughed.

"Actually, I'm a Texican," Castillo said.

"A what?"

"A Texican. One whose family came from Mexico a very long time ago, before Texas was a state. My family's from San Antonio."

"I am a great admirer of the Texas Rangers," Duffy said.

"I have two ancestors who were Texas Rangers, a long time ago."

"Sometimes we think of the colonel as the Lone Ranger," Delchamps said. "Can I ask what a Porteno is?"

"Somebody from Buenos Aires," Alex Darby offered, "who speaks with sort of a special cant."

"And a hijos de puta?" Delchamps pursued.

"Argentina is a society where people like narcos are held in scorn by men," Darby said, chuckling. "Hijos de puta is a pejorative."

"I believe you would say 'sonsofbitches,'" Duffy said.

"What did you have in mind, Comandante," Castillo asked, "when you said, 'If we are going to work together'?"

"Well, Jose and I had a very nice luncheon in the port restaurant in Montevideo. Do you know it?"

Castillo shook his head.

"You'll have to try it sometime. It's really excellent, if you like meat prepared on a parrilla. It's right across from the Buquebus terminal."

"Can we get to the point of this?" Castillo asked.

"During which," Duffy went on, nodding, "Ordonez told me, in confidence, of course, that what really happened at Estancia Shangri-La had nothing to do with narcos."

"Would you believe me if I told you I never heard of Estancia Shangri-La?"