Hazards
“Most people are friendly and trusting folks, they’re approachable even when you don’t speak the lingo, and they all love an honest game of chance. They also tend to get ornery as all get-out when you trifle with the laws of statistical probability by gently inserting an extra couple of aces into the game, which I did about ten minutes after stepping off the boat from Spain, and they tend to have the same disheartening way of demonstrating their displeasure.Which is how I wound up in the calaboose in Ferdinand, the capital city of San Palmero. Over the years I had become quite a connoisseur of jails. This one didn’t have the quality of cuisine I found in the jails of Europe, but on the other hand it wasn’t anywhere near as crowded as the jails in China or as run-down and badly in need of repair as the jails of Mozambique and South Africa. The guards weren’t bad sorts, and as they happily confided, they belonged to the one sector of a sluggish economy that had always boasted full employ...ment during the reigns of the last few rulers.It was on my third morning there, while I was still awaiting a hearing before the local magistrate (which the guards assured me might well take place in something less than five years, especially — and here they kind of reached into their pockets and jingled their coins — if I could find some way to encourage them to bring my situation to his attention), when I suddenly got a roommate.He was tall and lean and kind of swarthy, with a bushy black moustache, and he looked like he’d been roughly handled along the way.“Good morning, Señor,”MoreLess
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