In Flames Read Online Free

jokes flew as he pranced from table to table. Vinny was a pale mestizo in a country where lighter-skinned mixed-breeds were said to be the aristocrats waiting for a rebel militia hangman and his noose. Vinny spotted me and swooped over to my table, nimbly seizing my hand.
    “
Híjole, güey
. I don’t know you, a newcomer…”
    “How are you, Vinny?”
    “Perfecto, dude. Only watch out for mosquitoes around here. They come big as Schwarzenegger and they sit in beach chairs with their legs crossed just waiting for you, amigo.”
    Some people said Vinny was an asset on the books of our embassy, others claimed he was on rebel insurgent payrolls, a deceptive front man for militants hiding in the eastern mountains. The cynical shrugged and swore he was in the pockets of all sides, otherwise how could he still be alive and go on mouthing off so many truths each morning. Truth could be a death warrant in San Iñigo, and Vinny’s radio program of hilarious insults and delectable gossip (accurate more often than not) was mandatory breakfast listening for the entire island, at least for those who understood the local Spanish dialect. For this as well I had to take the club veterans’ word, since I didn’t catch all the language subtleties yet, not by a long shot. One thing was certain, however: Delgado Vinny wasn’t a member at the Saint Ignatius, though he was often a guest. That evening Ferg might have been looking to plant a puff piece on the radio for the fastest, widest circulation. Or maybe the reverse was true and the ambassador was keen to mine within the club’s privacy Delgado Vinny’s priceless trove of island scandal, treasures too true and valuable, too dangerous to expose on air free for nothing. Vinny luxuriated in the attention he earned as party entertainer, ordering the driest champagne and freshest fish, topped off with a snifter of fifty-year-old rum and an eight-inch Romeo y Julieta Panatella, the fumes trailing him from table to table.
    “Yo, dude, heard this one?” He exhaled a gust away from my face. “Titi fruit monkey walks into a San Iñigo bar with a priest and a rabbi, and the bartender says, What’s this, a joke?” Vinny blew smoke rings. Jet streams. Dreamy clouds promising unimaginable secrets. In his agile fingers an impressive cigar was a magic wand capable of performing miracles, changing lives. “Dude, lemme warn you, the food in this club is deadly. And such measly little portions.” He released a dense cloud as if to camouflage his well-worn material. “You know, amigo, that’s sort of how I feel about life, too. Nothing but misery, loneliness, suffering—then oops, it’s all over too fast and you’re a cold corpse. Here’s to our gracious hosts.” He lifted his glass. “Poor old Ferg, look at that sad sack, he’s at an age now where only women want to sleep with him. Pisses off Elaine whenever I point that out. You know, it’s amazing but I’ve been in prison only once here, aggravated slander I got charged with and I swear that’s like picketing without a permit in this country, they gave me thirty-two years and then let me out after four months. I got lucky, and you know what they say around here, truth can be like a death warrant in San Iñigo. And I suffer from compulsive frankness. Plus I started with the wrong lawyer and there are only two kinds of lawyers in this country, those who know the law—my first lawyer—and those who know the judge. Contagiosos, corrupted, all of them. Three o’clock in the morning they came in my cell—‘You’re a free man, Vinny.’ They kicked me straight out in the road, no time to say goodbye to my cellmates, eight of them in a three-man cell. And the guards took all my books. I’d read those books again and again and used them as pillows, Lee Child was the hardest to fall asleep on, Dan Brown the easiest. And Jonathan Franzen was absolutely impossible to understand, that man must write blindfolded he’s so brilliant. Why