The two turned to Merrill. They hefted him under the arms and dragged him to the open trunk. At least it looked clean inside. The moustached man said something he thought was funny but the other man didn’t laugh. They pushed Merrill into the trunk and slammed the lid.

Pitch black. Merrill heard the front doors close and the engine turn over. The car moved forward. The radio came on, a female singer whose voice was familiar even if her words were not. Gloria Estefan. Merrill tried to straighten out, then roll over. Physically, he was feeling better with every breath, but the trunk was feeling more and more like a tomb. What was he going to do for Amy from here? He couldn’t even clear his head enough to think.

The radio stopped. Faintly Merrill could hear the voice of one of the men. The man paused, then spoke again. A telephone call. Merrill didn’t understand the language and the hum of the running gear blurred the intonations of his voice, but Merrill thought he was listening to a man trying with difficulty to understand something new. Silence. The other man spoke. A long moment of quiet. He spoke again. Whatever had been said to the other, he had to hear from himself.

“Si. Ah, si. Si.”

He liked what he was hearing. What he said next made both men laugh. The car slowed and turned. Backed up. Went forward again. A broken U-turn. They were going the other way — back to Cartagena? What the hell was going on? Merrill was going to have to start thinking. He was going to have to do something.

Chino was on the telephone talking to Gregory about someone named Rosario. Amy took the time to try to regroup. They were back in the bar, just the two of them now, his jacket over the back of one of the stools, Amy at the end of the bar where she had sat earlier. A fresh, full bowl of the chips had been brought in while they had been away.

She was deciding that she couldn’t go back to acting afraid after already having seemed so responsive to him. She didn’t want to go farther with the responsiveness act, either. And now that that moment was past, she didn’t really want to think about it, thank you very much.