The DEA agent said, "I heard you say you were coming by here tonight, so I thought we'd surprise you." He took the empty seat across from Duarte and offered Lina the one next to him.

Alice cleared her throat and Duarte said, "I'm sorry, Alice, this is Félix and Lina."

They all smiled and nodded. Then a young man spoke into a portable microphone making an announcement about some special event. Both of the women turned in their seats to see and hear him. Duarte leaned into Félix and whispered, "What are you doing? I thought you hated her."

"I hate the FBI. Look at her. Pussy is pussy." He gave one of his little cackles.

Then Duarte was faced with small talk as the announcement ended and the women turned to face them again.

Alice said, "Are you both with the DEA?"

Lina quickly replied, "No, I'm an FBI agent from Washington."

Alice's look at Duarte said it all. His evening was about to end.

7

SOON AFTERWARD, DUARTE PULLED HIS PERSONAL VEHICLE, A three-year-old Toyota Tacoma pickup truck, next to his brother's new Porsche. Sometimes it seemed crowded here when his ATF Taurus and the other two cars were crammed into the limited space behind his parents' house, but tonight he hardly noticed or cared. He had tried to speak to Alice to explain, but short of grabbing her arm and forcing her to listen to him, he didn't see how he could have stopped her as she muttered some excuse about a previous commitment and left the restaurant.

He slipped out of the truck and looked up at his apartment. All the lights were on, so he figured Frank was working at the kitchen table. Duarte trudged over to his parents' rear kitchen door, already smelling the spices his mother had no doubt worked so carefully into whatever she had made for them. He hoped Frank had eaten already or was too absorbed with his work to come down yet.

As soon as he was in the kitchen, he heard his brother.

"There he is now. For a rocket, you don't seem to move that fast. You're late."

"Sorry," muttered Duarte.

His mother stepped into the kitchen and kissed him on the cheek like she had every single time he had walked in the house since he was a toddler. At fifty-six, his mother was still a beautiful woman, though over the years she had put on a few pounds, mainly as a result of her own skill in the kitchen.

"Where's your guest?" she asked.

"Another commitment. Sorry, Ma. I'll eat enough for both of us."

Frank called from the table, "What happened? Did…"

He was cut off by his brother's glare. Even Frank knew not to push Duarte when he gave a look like that.

His mother said, "No matter, your father and I waited for you. Frankie has work to do, so I let him go ahead and eat."

Duarte plopped into the same chair in which he had sat for nearly thirty years. He looked up to see his father's boney hand on the banister as he came down from his study, which had been his and Frank's room before the elder Duarte had converted it, now that they had moved to the garage.

"Hey, Pop," called both brothers in unison.

César Duarte nodded, having felt he knew enough about the world after watching the NBC news and fifteen minutes of the Jim Lehrer report.

He sat at the end of the table, lowering his narrow body into the chair like a king presiding over his court.

Duarte's mother had the table set, and in a flash put a bowl of steaming shredded beef in the center to go with the rice and plantains that were already sitting there. No one dared ask her if they could help. His mother insisted on preparing the food and setting the table herself, even though he had been taught it was rude not to assist-one of the many confusing lessons he had been taught growing up in a household from Paraguay.

They ate in relative silence as Frank explained to everyone how hard he had worked to sue some ill-prepared small businessman and how the judge was likely to commend him in open court for his efforts.

César Duarte waited the proscribed amount of time before he looked at his younger son and asked, "Did you do good work today?"

"Yes, sir."

"What're you working on, Alex?"

Duarte shrugged, his mind elsewhere.

"Nothing new? I thought you and your friend from the DEA were on something big?"

"We are. I'm sorry, Pop. I'm a little distracted."

Frank chimed in with a grin, "Yeah, Pop. He's got women problems."

Duarte knew the idiot would blab sooner or later, and they were no longer kids, so he couldn't just smack him. But he wanted to.

His mother said, "Alex, you can tell us what's wrong?"

"Nothin', Ma, really. I thought I might bring a young lady by for dinner, that's all."

His mother smiled and sucked in air like she had just witnessed a miracle.

Frank said, "C'mon, Ma. It's not like he's gay. He was bound to meet a woman sooner or later."

Duarte said, "I'll bring her by, Ma."

"When?"

"As soon as I can."

She seemed satisfied with that answer.

His father came to the rescue. "What about the case?"

Duarte relaxed a little and said, "Looks good. Félix is going to take the informant down to Panama and meet the main violator. I'm going to go to New Orleans and wait for the load. Should be interesting."

César Duarte smiled and said, "That sounds like a good day's work." His highest compliment.

The Panamanian looked out the bay window of his modest home, enjoying the vista of the mountains in the distance and the winding river that ran behind the house. It was all a sham, of course, so he could stay under everyone's radar. The house was large, but not a mansion. The wide area behind him looked like another parcel but was, in fact, owned by one of his corporations, so he knew no one would ever build a house on the surrounding forty-two acres. The small guesthouse at the front of his property housed security people in case he ever did have problems, but he didn't think he needed to worry. This house, his front, the quiet neighborhood so close to the capital, no one was smart enough ever to put it all together.

His name, for instance: Ortíz. It had no meaning to anyone but him. Unlike with the Americans, who always gave their military operations or government agents code names that gave away the secret. He had taken his new name from a housekeeper his father had employed during his formative years. She had been his only warm, human contact as a child. His father had been consumed with his government position as a trade negotiator, and the only conversations they had shared had focused on his father's anger for the way the United States dealt with her friends to the south. His father had been so busy he had not even attended Ortíz's graduation from the University of Panama.

His mother's death in childbirth had also added to his father's resentment.

As a result, from the age of seven, he'd started to cling to the lovely María Ortíz. She had seen him to school and fed him a snack every afternoon. The broad-shouldered woman with the ample breasts had never talked about her own life growing up, but he had had the sense this was the first time she had not worried about where her next meal was coming from, and she had doted on him.

When he had turned thirteen, he started to notice that the housekeeper was what many would consider a "handsome woman." He started to learn that the changes in his body were often directly related to María. He wanted to ask her what was happening to him, so one evening, while his father was staying overnight in the capital, he asked María questions a young teenager might have. The thirty-eight-year-old woman decided it might be better to demonstrate some of the interactions between men and women rather than explain them.