Fernando turned to see who’d tapped him, though he’d half-guessed already. It was the beautiful girl from the dance floor. Up close, she looked every bit as lovely as she smelled. Her eyes were blue and electric, her rosy lips framed in the most luscious pout. She was slender yet shapely. Cream-complected.

She wore a shimmering blue sheath of a dress that looked like one good tug would do it. Over her bare shoulder, she tossed back her long dark shining sheet of hair. Hands on her hips, she

It was quieter and less crowded up on this second floor, if only by a little. Taking a quick look around, Fernando gestured to Tito and Pepe.

“Go find us a table. I’ll get us some drinks.”

Nodding to him, the two took off. Shed of them for the moment, Fernando made his way over to the bar. As he did, he scoped out the scene.

There was a small group of girl friends dancing together. It was the usual type of such a grouping—one very good-looking girl who was the center of attention of the cluster,

Fernando could hear the din of the dance music before they stepped one foot inside El Mar.

Blue strobe lights streamed through the smoky interior. Their watery beams cast a deathly pallor over the club goers who milled about in straggling bands. Staggering, jostling and shambling, they swayed to the music or from drunkenness or both. Zombielike in their bearing. Glassy-eyed in their looks. Grotesque in their idleness and inane thronging.

Garish flashes of bared flesh and flung limbs seared through

The city of Saguero wasn’t much of one. Only in comparison to a place like Cortez. It was simply more crowded, somewhat less crumbling and sad. It was dingy and shabby. A mean-looking town. Dogs and derelicts scuttled about the streets, weaving among the working-class folk who trudged on by foot or sullenly biked, or puttered past in their varicolored jalopies, which belched black smoke against the advancing dark.

It was about nine in the evening when Fernando and the others arrived in what appeared

Following Chico’s lead again, Fernando and his friends crossed over to the buckling garage. For all that it was open at both ends, the garage was a big, dim, musty space, cluttered up wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with almost as much junk as the yard outside.

Rap music pounded from huge speakers at the far end, rattling the scrap metal and glass. The air reeked of rust and old grease. So too did Chico’s thug of an older brother, who emerged scowling from underneath the low red truck, which

Fernando regarded this kindly matron as she regarded him in turn—Chico’s mother, his own mother’s cousin. Looking at Emmanuella, Fernando saw no resemblance whatsoever between her and Carmencita, except perhaps for an utter absence of pretension, which would have endeared her to him even were she no relation of his own.

Fernando curved a smile down at her. Her eyes went wide as he did so, as though she’d seen a ghost. A work-tumbled hand fluttered to her breast.

“My,” Emmanuella said