It felt substantial, promising everything that its language professed. He scanned the title page, noticed the official seal embossed in the lower corner: an eagle, a clutch of arrows in one talon, the familiar Latin inscribed across the ribbon in its hooked beak. That’s what it was, he decided, rubbing the cover sheet between his thumb and forefinger: money. The document felt like money in his hands. “Articles Pursuant to the Orderly Transition of Power,” he said, reading some of the typescript aloud. Besides Coco, who sat in a distant corner, apparently intent upon a tiny television wired into his ear, there were two men in the office with him. One was one of the agricultural officials who had met with him at the restaurant in Belle Vista. The other was a heavyset man whose status had not been clearly defined. Torreno noticed, however, that the man he knew was clearly deferential to the stranger. “Show him the paperwork, Claude,” the big man had said, with scarcely a pleasantry beforehand, and Claude had practically torn the snaps off his briefcase to get the document out.
