(Characters: Thomas, Gabriela
Setting: Private dining room, Restaurante Terraza. Lunchtime.)
Thomas: I take it you were held up.
Gabriela: Yes waylaid by certain kissing cousins and their pimp.
Thomas: Did you speak with her.
Gabriela: I got her on the phone before I left to come here.
Thomas: How did she sound.
Gabriela: Distracted a little sad.
Thomas: She always sounds like that.
Gabriela: That’s true.
Thomas: Do you think she’ll cause any trouble.
Gabriela: The more she knows the more urgent it’ll seem so I say keep her in the dark.
Thomas: She’s bound to find out though.
Gabriela: Yeah but even if she finds out in the next ten minutes she’ll know you’ve been lying to her.
Thomas: So I’m already screwed.
Gabriela: Well you’d only be easing your conscience and to no great purpose.
Thomas: I wish this could’ve been avoided.
Gabriela: That’s kind of the point isn’t it.
Thomas: What.
Gabriela: It could have been avoided.
Thomas: But at the time.
Gabriela: If you’d been up front with her from the start all of this could well maybe not been completely different but at least you wouldn’t be worrying about it now.
Thomas: At the time it just seemed too risky.
Gabriela: It seemed that way to you.
Thomas: Do you blame me.
Gabriela: No not really.
Thomas: She will though.
Gabriela: Probably she shouldn’t have to behave like a saint on top of everything else.
Thomas: It’d be nice though.
Gabriela: And it’d have been nice if Valera hadn’t had the phone off the hook just as the boys went through his balcony door.
Thomas: We’ve taken care of that already you know that.
Gabriela: At the cost of one missing yacht and those unfortunate honeymooning tourists.
Thomas: Do you have some imaginary limit you’re afraid we’re about to cross.
Gabriela: I’m afraid we’ve already crossed it our job now is to make sure we’re smarter than the other side.
Thomas: We’re doing all right so far.
Gabriela: Today so far there’s just too many pinkies in the soup and it’s hard to tell which ones to chop off and when to stop once the chopping starts.
Thomas: I’m listening.
Gabriela: That prick Herndon for one.
Thomas: He doesn’t know anything.
Gabriela: No but I’d like to see him out of the way on principle.
Thomas: Are we talking surgery or butchery.
Gabriela: Complete dismantlement.
Thomas: Complete how complete.
Gabriela: Follow the thread of loyalty.
Thomas: Loyalty to who to Herndon.
Gabriela: Eric would have to go after anyone who touches his cousin.
Thomas: Surely Hemmings doesn’t have any illusions about Herndon cousin or no.
Gabriela: No illusions it’s a family thing.
Thomas: You’re talking about wiping Herndon as a way to draw Hemmings out and.
Gabriela: Hypothetically that’s what we’re discussing yes.
Thomas: Hypothetically of course.
Gabriela: We’d have to let Hemmings have someone.
Thomas: Payback or something that looks like payback.
Gabriela: After the first couple are down the actual details will simply not matter it will turn into payback.
Thomas: After Eric then.
Gabriela: Follow the thread.
Thomas: The thread goes up.
Gabriela: And sideways but yes mostly up.
Thomas: Montanero.
Gabriela: Paula Gabriela: Montanero.
Thomas: And.
Gabriela: Urbano.
Thomas: God Paco Urbano.
Gabriela: We’d have to.
Thomas: Still Paco.
Gabriela: And then we could be reasonably sure we were safe.
Thomas: You said sideways who else.
Gabriela: Rios-Nunez.
Thomas: And.
Gabriela: Charpentier’s wife.
Thomas: That’s half a dozen just to get to reasonably safe.
Gabriela: And the same number from the other side.
Thomas: There hasn’t been a war that size in fifty years.
Gabriela: The heat would be heavy for awhile but they couldn’t sustain it.
Thomas: Long enough to do some damage.
Gabriela: No way they haven’t the resources.
Thomas: That still leaves Solange.
Gabriela: Right and she’ll carry on and scream and weep and get herself in the papers and on the nightly news and name names and everyone will sympathize and lend her an ear and make the vaguest of vague promises and eventually she’ll shut up and go away.
Thomas: Maybe.
Gabriela: We have to chance it.
Thomas: And if mine is one of the names she gives up.
Gabriela: Be certain it will be but without mine without the both of us they’ve got nothing.
Thomas: And you’re that dead confident she won’t give you up.
Gabriela: Yes otherwise I wouldn’t even.
Thomas: Is there a choice.
Gabriela: This is all about choice about choosing to be ruthless now before we get desperate and run out of options.
Thomas: I don’t know the desire for revenge makes people crazy makes them do crazy things.
Gabriela: That’s if they have their hearts in it and Solange doesn’t.
Thomas: Solange.
Gabriela: Is a fucking actress right through her bones right down through her bones.
Thomas: We’d be taking a lot away from her a lot of people and a lot of things that she won’t ever get back.
Gabriela: And that’s all the more reason why she won’t let them have me.
Thomas: Do you still love her?
Gabriela: Till the day she dies.