Lay Down My Sword and Shield (Hackberry Holland 1)

“All right. Hold the lime in your left hand and put some salt between your thumb and forefinger, then sip it.”

I watched her tilt the glass to her lips and drink it down in two swallows. She choked slightly in the back of her throat and sucked on the lime.

“It’s better the second time,” she said. Her eyes had already gone flat.

“If you like I’ll pour some in the ashtray and touch a match to it, and you’ll get some idea of the raw alcohol content.”

“I don’t think it’s as bad as you say.” She drank out of the Carta Blanca bottle and looked past me into the square.

“I’ve invested a good deal of time in it,” I said.

“It makes you feel quiet inside, doesn’t it?”

“Then it pulls open all kinds of doors you usually keep shut.”

“Why don’t you teach me how to drink it, then?”

I gave the waiter my best American tourist look of irritated impatience, and he nodded in return and went to the kitchen window to hurry the cook.

“Give me another one,” she said.

“You’re not a drinker, Rie. Don’t try to compete with the professionals.”

“Here, I’ve finished the beer and I don’t like it. I want you to show me how to drink tequila.”

“The best way is to fill your glass and pour it in your automobile tank.”

“Hack.”

“No, goddamn it.”

“Maybe we should go. It’s hot, anyway, isn’t it?”

“I don’t like to go out on abortive missions.”

“Yes, you do, even to make one point about your knowledge of drinking.”

“Okay, Rie. You nailed me to the wall with that one.” I filled her shot glass and lit a cigar.

“Do you enjoy being angry?”

“No, but I’ll be damned if I’ll take on my idiot brother’s role with somebody else.”

“I believe you enjoy it when the blood starts beating in your head.”

“I’m all out of fire tonight, babe. My white flag is tacked to the masthead.”

She sipped out of her glass and fixed her flat eyes on my face. I drew in on the cigar and waited for it.

“Was there anything we could have done?”

“No.”

“Anything at all so he wouldn’t have been in that toolshed.”

“It was all done.”

“I visited him the day he was transferred to prison. I watched them take him down the courthouse sidewalk in handcuffs, then I went back on the picket the same afternoon, just like nothing had changed.”