69. Oh, Sister Josephine

Mr D went over to the children, keeping the balloons out of reach whilst doing close-up magic one-handed. I wondered if the coins were doubloons. Five G-Persons came out of the entrance. The two in front were hustling out a couple of guys in gymwear with town-shoes. They looked like they’d done prison time, since the home-made skin art didn’t stop at the neckline. The two agents minding them had plasti-cuffed their hands behind their backs, so they stumbled down the stone steps with only a slight shove. The third arrestee was in a nun’s habit, cuffed in front and had two men either side with one behind. There was no shove in the back. It would have taken a big one. The figure in the habit was about six feet tall and 280 pounds. The beard made them look even more like Bluto had taken orders. The agents and their captives kept moving.

‘Who’s that?’ I said. Necessity lit the last cigarette from the stub of the last but one.

‘Sister Josephine. Those three’re the empty shells. The pea ain’t here yet.’

‘They won’t fool Uriel.’

‘They don’t have to. You’ll see.’

‘How come Uriel hasn’t noticed the Devil in the yard?’

‘You can usually pick someone’s pocket whilst they’re reaching for the brass ring, if the carousel ain’t going too fast.’

What Mother Innovación meant by that, I didn’t know and never would. SSA Washington was still over at the gate, trying to get something out of his earpiece, maybe it was wax. The Feds didn’t go over to him. One knocked at the back of the C-and-C van. Uriel had taken charge of the site. I was sure Washington didn’t like it, but if his comms were out, who was he going to complain to? At that moment I saw Sam Sara come in through the gates. Beelzebuttons gave her a sweeping bow, but she couldn’t accept the flowers as she was carrying coffees and doughnuts. By the time she reached us, Uriel had finished talking to the real Feds, two of whom squashed into one limo with the jailbirds and the rest into another with Sister Josephine, who gave us all a friendly wave out the window.

I checked my watch. It read 09.30. A beat-up Fairline with an ABC logo on the side turned up. Its satellite dish looked like it had been picked-up from a junkyard.

‘Well lookit,’ I said. ‘We got the nationals.’

Mother Innovación laughed, but strangled the cough before it started. ‘We got a sub-contractor, he just ain’t painted the van, but yeah, today might just be syndicated.’

Sam held out coffee and doughnuts toward me and the nun. We both took them. Leaving Sam with a one doughnut bag for herself.

‘Well, the curtain’s up in fifteen,’ the nun said, the powdery sugar highlighting the smoker’s lines on her upper lip. ‘Break a leg, Stanley.’