forever in the midst of the looting, murder and deceit of the Second World War. Seeing it now only made her throat tighten. Was there any part of Mama’s life that wasn’t tainted by her lies and secrets?
Never mind the dang painting. The night had been full of its own drama.
Pagan slapped her gloves onto the side table. “You totally should have come with us to the party. You would’ve enjoyed it.”
“And I told you I have to study.”
“I know, I know. I’m still getting used to this whole ‘taking school seriously’ thing. And guess what? Devin Black came to see me at the party tonight,” Pagan said.
“He’s like the Shadow,” Mercedes said, referring to her favorite crime fighter with psychic powers who posed around town as a wealthy playboy. She had never met Devin, but Pagan had told her everything that had happened in Berlin back in August. “You think he came here afterward to loiter in your bushes?”
Pagan snorted. “Can you imagine him in his thousand-dollar suit, crouched behind a cactus with binoculars? It wouldn’t be him personally, but it could’ve been someone from the CIA. They’ve been keeping tabs on me because they want me to do them a favor.”
Mercedes smiled one of her rare smiles. “What if a government spook staking out your house ran into one of my old friends casing the joint?”
“A convention of ne’er-do-wells that would put Frank Sinatra’s party to shame. All in our backyard.”
She started to tell Mercedes everything that happened that night, so they broke out the Oreos and milk. “Tell me everything about the party,” Mercedes said, dunking her cookie. “What was Nancy Sinatra wearing?”
Pagan gave her the details, dwelling on the things she knew Mercedes would like most—the tension between Frank and Dean Martin over Angie Dickinson, Tony Curtis trying hard not to stare at Juliet Prowse’s legs, Jack Lemmon’s gentlemanly manners.
Mercedes watched Pagan’s face as she talked about Devin and sometimes frowned down at her own strong fingers, the nails clean, unpolished, short but not too short, lying relaxed on the polished wood of the table.
“They could dangle your mother’s file in front of you for years to keep you on their string,” she said. “The file might not exist. Devin himself told you not to trust them.”
“I don’t trust them. But I know Mama was up to no good,” Pagan said. “She was helping this Dr. Someone, or Rolf Von Albrecht, or whatever his name was. Mama’s gone, but he might be down in Argentina, doing more bad things. If the CIA doesn’t give me what I want, at least maybe I can help stop him, bring him to justice.”
Mercedes said nothing, her eyelids at half-mast as she stared at Pagan.
“What?” said Pagan.
“You were eight years old when this German man visited your house,” she said. “You were twelve when your mama took her life. A little girl.”
“I know,” said Pagan. “But I’m not little anymore, and if I can make a difference now...”
“If you can right your mama’s wrong, you mean.”
“She was my mother!” Anger at her friend surged through her. How could she try to take away Pagan’s strong connection to her mother, good or bad? “Everything she did had a big effect on me! And if she was a bad person...” She stopped, not knowing where that sentence was going.
Mercedes leaned forward, dark eyes ferociously intent. She tapped her index finger on the table with every word as she said, “What she did is not your responsibility.”
A surge of emotion flooded up from Pagan’s chest. Her eyes filled with tears. “But what if Mama died because of me?”
Mercedes did not relent. She shook her head. “That woman had all kinds of things going on, way over your head. You could be risking your life here—again. Why are you doing that?”
Pagan got up and grabbed a kitchen towel, wiping her eyes. The cloth came away streaked black with mascara and eyeliner. “I don’t know, M. But even if I never find out why Mama killed herself, I want to help them get this guy. My mother aided in a Nazi escape. Isn’t that reason enough? Right now I’m the only one left alive who might be able to identify him.”
“Okay,” Mercedes said. “Let’s call it patriotism and justice for now and see what happens. But I’m going with you.”
Pagan’s mouth dropped open. “But school—that’s really important to you. I wouldn’t want you to miss...”
Mercedes considered this. “Okay, I’ll go for the first week, as long as I can get the reading assignments in advance.”
The corners of Pagan’s mouth turned up into a huge grin and she darted across the room to throw her arms around Mercedes’s neck.
For once, Mercedes didn’t grumble and pull away. She patted Pagan’s arm awkwardly. “Guess that’s okay with you.”
Pagan laughed and stepped back. “It’s great with me! I promise I won’t suck you into it too much. No violence.”
“We should review the self-defense moves I taught you back in reform school. And when we get back here, we should get a dog.”
“A big dog.” Pagan looked out the kitchen window at the backyard and switched off the lights. “And maybe some electric fencing, snares and booby traps.”
Thump!
Pagan jumped two feet in the air as something slammed into the front door of the house. Mercedes frowned. “They wouldn’t be stupid enough to come back.”
They walked side by side down the hallway to the foyer. Mercedes sidled up to the side window and peered through the curtains. “A man’s walking back down the driveway. Nobody I know. And there’s nobody else.”
“Well, then, what...?” Pagan unlocked the door and tugged it open a few inches.
A large brown envelope flopped down from where it had been leaning against the door. In black marker someone had printed Pagan Jones on it.
Pagan stooped to pick it up, pulling up the flap.
About a hundred pages of three-hole paper slid out, bound together with metal fasteners in the top and bottom holes.
The print on the front page said Two to Tango. A Universal Pictures Production.
Pagan laughed. “It’s the script for the Buenos Aires movie.”
“It better be good,” said Mercedes, and locked the door.
Hollywood, California
December 16, 1961
SEGUIDILLAS
Tiny, quick steps, usually seen in orillero style tango.
The script had been written by monkeys pulling random phrases out of a hat full of Hollywood clichés. After reading a few pages, Pagan had trouble forcing her eyes over the hammy dialogue and overwrought scene direction.
The plot was something she’d seen a thousand times—a girl on the cusp of womanhood from the US goes to exotic Buenos Aires on vacation, where she can’t decide between the two men vying for her affections. One was a tall handsome blond American—kind, but a little boring. The other was a darkly handsome Argentinean gaucho, their version of a cowboy, whose seductive tangos and moonlit serenades on his Spanish guitar were too much for the naive girl to resist.
Ten pages in, Pagan knew her character ended up with the American boy. It was too obvious that the “exotic” man was up to no good, and that his dangerous foreign ways and wandering hands would send the silly American girl scurrying back to the