Read Candy Kid for Free Online

perfection. Tempting Adam and Beach, each of whom succumbed to his palate. His stomach was too nervous to eat half what he was ordering. He hadn’t expected it to be this way and he tried to tell himself, This is nonsense. A simple little favor for a sweet blond number. But the abracadabra failed to take. Because he had knowledge of the evil which seeped like dirty mist through the city.
    The Senora’s cafe was as good as he’d remembered, the flower murals as exciting, the girls as pretty—they’d be Herrera granddaughters not daughters now. There were twin guitarists who were hot enough for the Mocambo or the Starlight Room. There was everything, including a white suit, to give to a man a feeling that he was a man of culture, even of elegance, not a nursemaid to cows. The only thing wrong was the feel of an envelope in his right-hand pocket.
    The time to go was after the enchiladas and before the chicken mole. There’d be a wait in service, Senora Herrera was too intelligent to pull away an empty plate and plunk down a full one without affording one a respite in which to savor and digest the preceding dish. Or to tempt the taste buds anew with exquisite sips of wine. His leaving was made easy. Adam had wandered to the Carlsbad table. Beach had his eye on a dame who might be with her father if it wasn’t her husband. Jose sauntered toward the cigarette trays by the outer door. He was unobserved; he had only to open the door and walk out. Yet he lingered there with no stomach for this errand. He half determined to return to the table and tell the others he was stepping out on a bit of business. In order that if he weren’t back soon enough, they’d come looking for him.
    He was deterred only because he knew Beach would be sure it was a rendezvous with the blonde and insist on sharing. He’d like Beach along, together they could make an amusing adventure out of this, the way it had begun. But Beach had been trained for four years in power tactics, smash, thunder, annihilate. He didn’t know how to walk softly, speak gently, for a more permanent end result. As for taking big Adam along, that would make a coward of Jose. He was no coward. He might not be brave, but his trouble was his own.
    His hand had curved on the latch, when behind his shoulder the question was asked in heavy accent, “You wish to buy the cigarette?”
    If he hadn’t been jumpy, he wouldn’t have darted around at her. He’d have realized it was a girl speaking quite harmlessly. But he’d walked past the cigarette trays; it was evident that he wasn’t waiting to buy cigarettes, but was a man bent on leaving the cafe. And he was jumpy.
    She was so small she could have bumped her forehead against the top button of his jacket. He had thought that all the Herrera granddaughters, who flirted their bright full peasant skirts from table to table, were indistinguishable one from the other. He had captured in his mind their round pretty faces and round fringed eyes of chocolate brown, their shining hair which rippled like clean black water below their shoulders, and the coffee-and-cream, plump shoulders rising above the bright embroidery of Mexican blouses. He had captured in his ears the laughter of their rich, red lips.
    This one was a maverick. Her face was small and square, her lozenge eyes black as stones. Her hair was straight and stiff, banged above her straight black brows, hanging behind her ears, chopped off halfway down her back. Her ears were small and square like her face, thin Mexican silver earrings pierced them, a tiny silver heart dangling from each ring. She was thin, undeveloped as a child, she was the youngest of the girls here. And she wasn’t a Herrera.
    It could have been that the Senora had given the cigarettes into her care; it could have been that she thought he was stepping out to buy some on the Avenida, being neglected here. But she didn’t move over to the tray to supply him, she stood there in front of him, silent, like