Page 122

“Grandfather, this is Willi von Dattenberg, late fregattenkapitän of the submarine service of the Kriegsmarine,” Clete said. “An officer and a gentleman who has never even met Beth. The one trying to take advantage of Beth—actually, when I think about it, it’s the other way around—is Karl Boltitz.”

“Huh,” the old man snorted.

Doña Dorotea and Doña Alicia came into the library.

“Claudia,” Dorotea announced, “says to tell you she’s not going to the Jockey Club if you’re drunk.”

“Can you get that in writing?” Clete asked.

“Cletus, it was your idea to show Willi and Elsa a good time,” Dorotea argued.

“And so it was,” he said, after a moment. “Grandfather, sorry, but that’s your last Sazerac.”

“The hell it is,” the old man said. “But you, my dear, may assure Señora Carzino-Cormano that whenever we get wherever we’re going, Cletus will comport himself as a gentleman.”

“That’ll be a first,” Dorotea said. “But I’ll tell her.”

She and Alicia left the library.

“Where did she say we’re going?” the old man asked.

“To the Jockey Club.”

“Isn’t that way the hell out in San Izzie-something?”

“There’s another one in San Isidro,” Clete said. “The one we’re going to is right across the street.”

[SIX]

The Hipódromo de Palermo was in fact right across Avenida Libertador and they could have walked there in three or four minutes.

But that would be too damn simple, Clete thought, equally annoyed and amused.

What had happened, instead, was that, forty-five minutes later, everyone more or less followed instructions to assemble in the basement. There, under Señora Carzino-Cormano’s strict direction, they were loaded into automobiles according to her sense of protocol.

She put Cletus Marcus Howell and Martha Williamson Howell in the backseat of her Rolls-Royce. Cletus Frade, following her signals, got in the front beside her chauffeur. She installed Peter von Wachtstein and Wilhelm von Dattenberg in the front seat of Clete’s Horch, and Doña Dorotea, Doña Alicia, and Elsa von Wachtstein in the backseat. Beth and Marjorie Howell were seated last, in front of them, on jump seats unfolded from the floor.

Clete’s 1941 Ford station wagon held the bodyguards.

When she was satisfied, she got in the backseat of her Rolls-Royce with the old man. There she stood—looking not unlike General George S. Patton urging his armored columns onward to the Rhine—and signaled to the driver of the station wagon to get the show on the road.

The convoy went up the ramp of the garage, through the enormous gates, and onto Avenida Libertador. Then it went around the block, which was not as simple as that sounded, as the block held both of the Ejército Argentino’s National Polo Fields, the stables to house the horses therefore, and other buildings.

Finally they returned to Avenida Libertador and rolled up to the cast-iron gates of the Jockey Club. The gates opened as they arrived. Once inside the grounds, they drove to the members’ door of the Jockey Club.

The bodyguards got quickly out of the station wagon, half of them eyeing the people on the wide steps warily, and the other half opening the doors of the Horch and the Rolls-Royce.

Everybody went into the Jockey Club and then up a wide flight of stairs to the second-floor foyer, where they were greeted by the maître d’hotel of the dining room.

“Señora Carzino-Cormano, welcome!” he announced. “Your table is of course ready. But perhaps a glass of champagne before you go in?”

“Splendid idea,” Cletus Marcus Howell answered for her. “Never turn down a glass of champagne is my motto.”

She glowered at him.

“I don’t believe I know this gentleman,” the maître d’hotel said.

“Cletus Marcus Howell,” the old man announced. “Of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.” He pointed at Clete. “I’m his grandfather.”