“No,” she said hurriedly and in some confusion. “He didn’t tell her to go. We were going to send Tommy down, like we have before. But this time Cathy proposed she go. She insisted. She said she’d leave the group if we didn’t let her go.”

“You would have liked to get rid of her, wouldn’t you?” Lupe goaded, crossing her arms smugly across her chest. “You were trying to get him back. Maybe you wanted to get rid of her for good.”

“If I wanted to get him back, I could!” Emma spat, stepping toward Lupe.

I tried to remember the last time I’d seen a really good fight between two women. “Did you give her that fake Guatemalan passport?” I interrupted.

“No! We didn’t know about that until you told us. It’s crazy! Why would she do that? It was to be so easy for her, a U.S. citizen, to go and come back. I still can’t believe she did that.”

“You never knew any Carmen Luzano?” I persisted. “You don’t know where Cathy got that passport?”

“Admit it,” taunted Lupe. “You were trying to get him back.”

There was the crunch of gravel. We all looked up to see Tony Guerrero striding toward us. I didn’t see any other cars. I wondered where he had left his.

“Where did Cathy get the Guatemalan passport?” I called out to him before he had the chance to say anything.

“I don’t know.”

“¡Mentiroso! Stop lying!” Emma screamed at him. “Where else would she have gotten it except from you. The woman could barely speak Spanish.”

Lupe and I gaped at each other in amazement.

“She couldn’t speak Spanish!” exclaimed Lupe.

Emma sneered. “Not good. Pocho Spanish.”

“Not good enough to be mistaken for a Guatemalan?” I asked in disbelief.

“No. She kept studying, but she wasn’t very good. No one could possibly have mistaken her for a Guatemalan,” Emma said. She looked very pleased by this.

“You bastard!” Lupe yelled at Guerrero. “You must have put her up to this. We heard about the tests you had for her.”

I thought Lupe was going to spit at him as he brushed roughly past her and stepped toward me.

“Who was the man following us in the park?” he demanded.

“A Cuban.” So he hadn’t known about Armando Diaz. Didn’t know he had them under surveillance.

Tony Guerrero frowned to cover his uncertainty but couldn’t stop himself from looking around for Emma Garcia. She was the real power in Casa Guatemala.

“¡Un cubano!” Emma shouted at him. “Now what have you got us involved in? Wasn’t it enough that you killed Cathy?”