Crawford moved across to pull out a chair across from the woman, feeling her eyes on him, and lowered his tense body onto the green morocco leather. They were all watching him now.
"Would you serve, Wallace?" said Huerta, leaning back in his chair. He surveyed Crawford for a moment. "You know," he said finally, "most people think your motive for killing Otis Rockland was revenge. But somehow, that doesn't satisfy us."
"Doesn't it?" said Crawford.
The woman's laugh was as throaty as her voice. It caused his glance to shift to her face with a jerk. She sat there with that smile, making no effort to explain her amusement. It drew a reasonless anger from him. He gripped his knees with his hands, beneath the linen cloth.
"Did you ever hear the story of Santa Anna's chests, Mr. Crawford?" Merida Lopez asked, finally, a strange, obscure mockery coloring her voice.
"No," answered Crawford stiffly.
She tasted her soup, eyes still on him. "In April of 1826, at the close of the Texas Revolution, General Santa Anna had led his Mexican army halfway across Texas after General Houston's forces, finally catching him at San Jacinto. There were two major political parties in Mexico at that time, the Federalists and the Centralists. The Centralists had been trying for some time to break Santa Anna's growing power in politics. For four or five months they had managed to have the army pay withheld, but Santa Anna finally got a pay train sent from Mexico City. The battle of San Jacinto was in progress when this mule train arrived, and a party of Texans cut it off before it could reach the Mexican army, chasing it westward into the brush somewhere south of the Nueces. The Texans finally caught the Mexicans, and in the battle that followed the greater part of the Mexicans were killed. But the mules had disappeared. They have not been found since."
"Neither has the Lost Nigger Mine, or Steinheimer's millions," said Crawford. "I been listening to windies like that since I was a button."
"Ah, a skeptic." Again that mockery, more palpable this time. She toyed with her soupspoon. The faint movement of her wrist drew his glance, and he found himself wondering how the soft white skin would feel. "And still, Crawford, doesn't it intrigue you?" Her voice penetrated his attention, and he raised his gaze self-consciously. Just her hand. Just the movement of her hand like that. What the hell? "Five months' pay for an army, Crawford. Does a man like you have any conception of that kind of money? Men would kill for it. Even governments. And there is more than just the story. There is what the Mexicans call a derrotero."
She let her eyes lift momentarily from the spoon, but he had kept his face carefully blank. He was beginning to notice her enunciation now. The accent was discernible sometimes. Her careful precision seemed an effort to hide it.