During this Romero was fingering his glass and talking with Brett. Brett was talking French and he was talking Spanish and a little English, and laughing.

Bill was filling the glasses.

“Tell him Brett wants to come into⁠—”

“Oh, pipe down, Mike, for Christ’s sake!”

Romero looked up smiling. “Pipe down! I know that,” he said.

Just then Montoya came into the room. He started to smile at me, then he saw Pedro Romero with a big glass of cognac in his hand, sitting laughing between me and a woman with bare shoulders, at a table full of drunks. He did not even nod.