Giving the impression of lazy indifference but ready to bolt on a dime.

One of the laborers stood off to the side, welding torch idle in his hand, helmet tilted back. To Cooper the guy looked Guatemalan, but he wasn’t sure whether his idea of Guatemalan was accurate.

Borrego waved to the man with a kind of cocksure effusiveness that immediately dispelled the air of skeptic tension from the army of ex-cons. By the time he shook hands with the Guatemalan, everybody seemed comfortable in his own skin again, and the pace and noise had kicked up a notch. Cooper and Madrid followed Borrego over but held back, close enough to listen but not to participate.

As Borrego shook with him, the Guatemalan covered his face with his off hand and sneezed. He wiped his nose with the back of his wrist, which caused Cooper to notice the red chafing around his nostrils.

“Mierda,” the Guatemalan said. The conversation, which Cooper understood perfectly well, continued in Spanish. “Sorry-been sick as a dog.”

“Yeah? We’ll get you some vitamins, you want,” Borrego said. “I’ve got a guy in the city’ll take care of you, vitamin pouches that’ll turn you around in a day.”

“No gracias,” the Guatemalan said. He held up his hand. “I’m getting better. Can’t say the same for the others.”

“No?” Cooper appreciated the way Borrego held a conversation, speaking as though he got what the man was saying when he clearly had no idea what the guy was talking about.

The Guatemalan lowered his voice and Cooper pretty much had to read his lips to understand his next words.

“It’s the curse,” he said. “The goddamn curse.”

Borrego laughed. “Come on,” he said.

The Guatemalan wasn’t quite shaking, but he definitely had the look of a cornered mouse. Seemed to Cooper Borrego wasn’t the cat he was scared of-Borrego was everybody’s buddy, including the Guatemalan’s.

“That where your pals are-out sick?” Borrego said.

“Sick?” The Guatemalan chirped out a nervous laugh. “Shit, Oso-they’re dead.”

Cooper felt a gut-twinge as his concentration locked in. He assumed Borrego was experiencing a similar pinch.

“How?”

“I’m telling you, Oso, it’s the curse. You know-the kind they tell you about in museums? Strange shit taking out anybody fool enough to raid an ancient king’s tomb. That’s what we got, getting those artifacts we sold to you. Fuck! I’ve been in bed for a week. And I’m the lucky one.”

Cooper heard Borrego say, “So they were sick, like you.”

“They were sick all right. And they caught it from that fucking town. The caves. That isn’t how they died, though. Not all three.”

“No?”

“It was bad luck. Kind of bad luck you get from a tomb-robber’s curse. Radame was shot, got killed by a stray bullet in Dangriga. Eduardo too. They were together. Caught in the middle of some gang shit-”

“I get it,” Borrego said, and turned his body slightly to look over at Cooper. Cooper raised his eyebrows and shook his head half a shake.

“All right,” the Guatemalan said, “but you wanna know how Chávez bit it? Got hit by a fucking bus, that’s how. Fucking school bus, and there weren’t even any kids in the thing. Dumb luck. Bad luck. The fucking curse. I’m lucky I survived so far.”

“Could be just that,” Borrego said. “Dumb luck.”

“Could be, but lemme tell you-I don’t care. I’m out. Retired.” He motioned with his left hand to the welding torch in his right. “You see this? This is what I do, and this is what I’m going to keep on doing. This or something like it. Nothing like the other shit. Not anymore.”

Borrego clamped a paw on the Guatemalan’s shoulder. The guy flinched but didn’t bolt, Cooper thinking maybe because he couldn’t with Borrego’s grip planting him in place.

“I can understand how you’d feel that way,” Borrego said. “And since you’re now out of the business, I’d like to ask you something I don’t normally ask.”

“Hey,” the guy said, “whatever you want.”

“I want you to tell me where you got it,” Borrego said.

“You mean the shit that came with the curse?”

“Yeah,” Borrego said. “The shit that came with the curse.”

“Hell, I’ll tell you exactly where it is. I kept the map in my bag ’cause I figured there’d be more. You know, that we didn’t get it all, ’cause nobody’s been up there. Not before we went and probably not after. So I was thinking, before the curse got us, I’d be going back. Not now, though. Fuck!”

His last F-bomb came out a little loud-a few of the ex-cons flicked their eyes in Borrego’s direction to check whether anything was developing.

The Guatemalan lowered his head.

“I should have known,” he said, more quietly.

“Should have known what?” Borrego said.

“Should have known we’d all get the curse.”

Cooper could see Borrego’s face since he’d turned his body earlier in the conversation. He watched as the Polar Bear narrowed his eyes.

“Why,” he said.

“Because everybody else had the fucking curse,” the Guatemalan said, “that’s why.”

“Everybody else where?”

“In the place where we found it.”

“Who?” Borrego asked.

“All of them,” the Guatemalan said. “Could have been a thousand years ago-I don’t know. I just know they were dead. Every one of them.”

Borrego said nothing. Madrid said nothing. Cooper continued to say nothing. From behind one of the mostly painted cars Cooper saw the figure of the heavy-jowled guy with the pitted-out T-shirt appear. It was unclear how he’d come into the building, but Cooper supposed it didn’t particularly matter. He wasn’t there to ambush them-he was there to pressure the Guatemalan to get his ass back to work. The Guatemalan felt the man’s presence and swiveled his head to take in the sight of his super.

“You want me to get you the map, then?” he said to Borrego.

“Be great,” the Polar Bear said, and lifted his paw from the Guatemalan’s shoulder.

When the Guatemalan returned from his locker with the rumpled piece of paper, Borrego took it, but not before handing the cornered mouse a chunk of bills, the denominations of which Cooper couldn’t quite read. Then the man moved off and blended back into the shop.

Without any visible prompt from Borrego, Madrid strode purposefully to the heavy-jowled super, handed the man another chunky wad of bills, then came back and led them out through the blue curtain.

When they were situated in the Land Rover, Borrego leaned forward in his throne and clamped down on Cooper’s shoulder with that big fat paw of his.

“Don’t know about you, amigo,” he said, “but with all this talk of curses, I’ve got myself worked up into a four-pound-lobster kind of mood.”

33

The Guatemalan’s map suggested a route that, on paper and highway alike, may well have been the most convoluted possible means of approach on their destination. Nonetheless this was the route they took-nearly six hundred winding miles, some of the way paved but most not, the first four hours spent worming their way out of Belize, the remaining twelve dedicated to working their way around, then up, what Cooper decided had to be one of the more treacherous mountain ranges north of the Andes.

“They’re good,” was all Borrego had told him in answer to Cooper’s objection to the length-and path-of the line drawn on the map. “They know what they’re doing.”

“The dead tomb diggers, you mean?” Cooper said.

“Yes,” Borrego said.

“You say so,” Cooper said.

Around sunset, they hit a rebel checkpoint.

It had been eight hours since they cleared the Guatemala border crossing. That had been fluid-show your passports, hand over some cash, and away you go, Borrego explaining nobody was looking to keep people out of Guatemala, since anybody who came in was usually a tourist ready to spend some money. Check out the Mayan ruins, drop some coin on a guide or two-there existed no reason for the authorities to concern themselves with the pesky issue of border control, at least on the immigration front.