“Tío Juan? This Argentine colonel?” Hughes asked, and when Clete nodded, added, “Why would he do that?”
“It’s a long way up here from down there,” Clete said. “I thought of a lot of possibilities.”
There was a knock at the door and a new voice called, “Room service.”
This time there were two “waiters” who entered the room. They could have passed as brothers of the first “waiter.” They were pushing a food cart and a smaller cart holding an assortment of bottles, an ice bucket, an array of glasses, and a martini shaker.
Clete lifted one of the chrome domes over a plate and saw that it covered a hot turkey sandwich, which explained the very quick service.
“Everybody gets the same thing?” he asked.
Hughes nodded.
“That should be interesting,” Clete said. “They don’t have turkeys in Argentina. . . . Or cranberry sauce.”
“I didn’t think about that,” Graham said.
“Not a problem. If they’re as hungry as I am, it won’t make any difference.”
And then Clete’s brain went off on a tangent:
Maybe I could raise turkeys on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.
They’re probably no harder to raise than chickens.
Build some pens.
Hell, let ’em run loose.
They hunt wild turkey in Alabama.
That might be fun.
Hell, why not get some pheasants, too?
What about foxes? Do we have foxes down there, some other predator that would eat my turkeys and pheasants?
What the hell am I doing?
Am I that tired, that my brain goes off the track?
Or is it shutting down?
“Are you going to eat that, Clete?” Howard Hughes inquired. “Or just stand there holding that chrome thing and looking at it?”
“I think I just fell asleep standing up.”
“You want to just forget talking, Clete?” Graham asked.
“Let’s see what a healthy jolt of Jack Daniel’s does for me,” Clete said, and reached for the bottle and a glass, then poured three fingers of whiskey.
Hughes jerked his thumb at the waiters, signaling them to leave. Both said, “Yes, Mr. Hughes.”
When they had left the room Clete said, making it a question: “You seem to be pretty well known around here, Howard.”
Hughes shrugged but didn’t reply.
“You were saying Colonel Perón wanted you to see those maps?” Graham said.