Hector blinked. “Where is the plant? Uhh… Why, I had it in my- dang. It’s in my car.”

Flores smiled- but something about the smile was wrong. Hector noticed a new, disagreeable, almost malicious look on the drug-lord’s round, slick face. It was gone in a microsecond and Hector wondered if he had imagined it.

“Hmm. Well… how interesting! How interesting indeed. Can you get it? I mean, can you bring it? Here?” Flores nearly chortled with a hidden, even greedy joy.

“Uh…” Hector quickly looked to Dante, who shrugged almost imperceptibly. “Sure, I guess? I’ll get it,” Hector continued as he turned to face Flores.

***

It was now evening, and during the past few hours, Hector had hiked down the mountain to his still-waiting car, drove back up, unloaded his few personal belongings and baggage, and pored over the blue fern with Flores and Dante. The sun was receding quickly below the Occidental mountains and the drug-dealers were all on edge. The recent police raid had cast everyone into a glum, tense mood and there were whispers of planned attack on the compound. Hector didn’t want to stay at the mountain stronghold for very long- if everything went as planned, he would leave in a week.

“Hector.” Flores’ voice brought Hector out of thought yet again.

“Yes? What is it?” The two men were alone in the upstairs room- Dante had been patrolling the compound for an hour.

“How… How much would you want for that fern?”

Hector gaped. How much would I want?!? I- I-

“I don’t know. I never thought about… selling it? I don’t think I want to. Not right now, at least.” He looked hard at Flores. Where did that come from? Why is he asking?

Flores met Hector’s gaze and nodded. “I expected as much. Maybe… we can… come to an agreement? Hector. Imagine. You know how rich I am, eh? Will you take… 500 thousand pesos?”

Hector shook his head. “No thanks, I’m fine.” Five hundred thousand pesos- about the price of a brand-new car- was nothing for a plant that could keep you from dying. It was obvious that Flores was starting low on purpose. Hector had expected him to.

“A million? Eh? Heck, why not more? I’ll give more. Two million? Come on, you know, I am being generous, Hector!”

“Flores, I’m sorry, but right now, I just don’t want to sell it. Maybe some other time, okay?”

Flores deflated. “Fine. That’s alright. It’s yours anyways, eh? Just… keep the idea in your head.” He tapped his temple suggestively. “I am always open to a deal. Imagine, Hector, a very… powerful… man like me, but undying. The police could do nothing. We’d have a drug empire spanning all of Mexico, possibly the whole world! Hector. Imagine if this plant… was available to every drug dealer in Mexico! We would be unstoppable.”

“And if the police got ahold of it? What if they injected officers with the drug?” Hector didn’t like where Flores was going. He didn’t want to let anyone have the fern just yet, and something about Flores’ attitude put him off. There was a hungry gleam in the rotund little man’s gimlet eyes that made Hector nervous.

“Ah, but they wouldn’t. We could… safeguard it? Only give it to the most trustworthy… eh?”

Hector was unsure, to say the least, about Flores’ new plan. This is ridiculous. His voice became as diamonds.

“Whatever. You can’t build something like that overnight. For now, I’m not selling the fern. And that is my last word.”

Flores put his hands up in defense. “Alright, amigo, just… think about it for a while.”

And with that, he stood up, swiped at his greasy black hair, which clung to his bronze forehead like- well, like greasy hair- and waddled out of the room. As he left, the gold chain hanging out of his back pocket jangled ominously. The moon, viewed through the room’s ancient and disused windows, looked like a large, luminous Swiss cheese wheel that had gained the power of flight. The whole scene had an edgy air of impending doom about it that Hector couldn’t place.

I had better get to bed. Everything will be alright in the morning.

Of course, when someone thinks that in a book, and the book is at least half decent, they are generally very wrong.