There’s that goddamned other shoe I’ve been worried about dropping.
How am I going to get to be with Elsa now?
“Do you think that’s likely? Clete getting shot?” Cronley asked.
“If the civil war they were worried about got started, I’d say the odds are fifty-fifty,” von Wachtstein said.
“So why the hell are we going to Buenos Aires before we find out what’s going on?” Jimmy asked.
Von Wachtstein chuckled.
“One day, my young friend, you may fall in love. And when you are in love you go to where your beloved is, even if that might get you shot. My wife and son are in Buenos Aires. Understand?”
[THREE]
4730 Avenida Libertador General San Martín
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1235 19 October 1945
“I think,” Doña Dorotea Mallín de Frade said, tapping her fingers on a photograph that took up a third of the front page of La Nacíon, “that I’ll see if I can’t get La Nacíon to make me a large print of that. I’ll frame it.”
The photo was of the vice president of the Argentine Republic, el Coronel Juan D. Perón, standing on the balcony of the Casa Rosada and addressing a crowd La Nacíon estimated at “more than 325,000 persons.” On his immediate right was Señorita Evita Duarte, who was beaming. Standing to his immediate left was Don Cletus Frade, his arms folded across his chest, wearing an I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here look on his face.
“Whatever for?” Doña Claudia Carzino-Cormano asked.
“It’s an historic moment,” Dorotea said.
“Indeed it is,” Clete said. “But we’re not going to frame a photograph of it.”
“I was kidding, my darling.”
“What we are going to do is have an oil portrait made from it. At least two meters tall. We’ll hang it in the foyer. And before it, on a small table, there will be votive candles for the faithful to prayerfully light.”
Marjorie Howell giggled.
“Don’t let Father Whatsisname hear you say that, Clete,” she said.
“Father Welner’s in the picture,” Clete said. “Behind Evita. He’ll love it. We’ll have the artist paint one of those glowing circles around his head.”
Dorotea laughed.
“Why not?” she asked. “Over time it will become as well known as da Vinci’s The Last Supper.”
“I think we are confusing poor Elsa,” Claudia said.
“I never know when you’re serious,” Elsa von Wachtstein said.
She was sitting next to Willi von Dattenberg, who agreed.
“Either do I,” he said. “The Argentine sense of humor . . .”
“Cletus is half-American,” Claudia said.
“Only half, unfortunately,” Cletus Marcus Howell said.
“Don’t start up, Grandfather,” Clete said.