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Tufts!) kid brother—with his now beardless baby face, round,
innocent eyes, and just the hint of a cowlick in his neatly trimmed
ginger-brown hair—but behind that angelic exterior lurked a soul of the purest
larceny. Not only had Benny never made an honest nickel in his life of guile,
hanky-panky, and knavery, but he loathed the very idea. He told me once he’d
begun his life of artful dodging at the age of two when he found out how to
cheat his sister playing Fish, and he’d never looked back since.
    We were pals, for some strange
reason, me and Benny the Boy; we were close. As an example of the depth of our
friendship, he let a good ten seconds pass before making a crack about my new
glasses, and then all he said was, “Bifocals or regulars?”
    “Here,” I said, tossing him Billy’s
letter. “Read and inwardly digest.”
    He read, while I told him a bit about
Billy and me and dear old Davenport. Being a gentleman, I left out the part
about Marge Freeman’s lingerie. When he was done, he handed the letter back to
me. Then I remarked casually, “Mérida, Mérida. If I remember correctly, did you
not visit that part of the world a couple times last year?”
    “Yep,” said Benny. “And the year
before that.”
    “I don’t believe you ever told me
exactly what it was you were doing down there.”
    “Nope, I never did,” said Benny.
    There followed a long pause.
    “Well, moving right along to greener,
more verdant pastures,” I said, “tell me this. Have you got a lot on right now,
my closemouthed friend?”
    He shrugged. “The usual—this, that,
and the other. You?”
    I shrugged and filled him in on my
meeting with J. J.
    “I do have something that could be
very, very sweet coming up next month,” Benny said. “But that’s next month.”
    I was always interested in hearing
about Benny’s scams, so I asked him, “Like what?”
    “We’re going to sell this high roller
an interest in one of the Dodgers’ farm clubs.”
    “Do you happen to own an interest in
one of the Dodgers’ farm clubs to sell?”
    “Of course not.” He scoffed at the
notion. “That’s what makes it so challenging.”
    “So you could be available for a
little caper?”
    “There’s a good word for busting
someone out of a Mexican jail,” he said. “Caper. I like it. What did you call
World War Two, a tiff? As for being available, Victor, let me put it this
way—when do we start?”
    “We’ve started already,” I said.
“There’s an Aero-Mexico flight number 943 leaving tomorrow at eight-fifty a.m. I made a reservation in your name
just in case. To be precise, in one of your names.”
    “Which one?”
    “The one that’s in that forged
passport of yours.”
    “Forged?” Benny said indignantly. “Forged?”
    “Well, it’s not in your name, is it,”
I said, “unless I’ve been wrong all these years and you really were baptized
Henry Albert Sanderson? What’s the big deal, anyway? You’ve forged everything
else in your life of crime.”
    “That may be true,” Benny said, “but
not that passport. It is possible to legally have more than one name, you know.
Actors do it. Companies do it. Married ladies have a choice of names.
Songwriters, you may like to know, have the right to register two aliases with
whoever it is they register things with. It’s just a question of knowing how to
go about it.”
    “You must tell me sometime,” I said.
    “I’d be delighted,” he said. “If
you’ll tell me what I do when I get to Mérida besides drink a lot of good
beer.”
    “This sort of thing,” I said, passing
him over the lists I’d been making under the heading “MEXICO.”
    “You are going to be a busy boy, I
will tell you that. There is a lot I need to know about and fast.”
    “It’s just a passing thought,” Benny
said, “but why don’t you go?”
    “Because I am extremely noticeable,”
I said, “due to my amazing build and stunning good looks, while you are not
only extremely