Satan’s Lambs by Lynn Hightower

that.”
    The waitress came back smiling. She laid out two thick white napkins and two spotted forks, then unloaded the banana peppers and the beers. Thin slices of lime rested on the tops of the beer bottles.
    â€œOwen says to give you this and say hi.” She pulled a whole lime from her apron pocket and laid it down on the table.
    Lena grinned. They ordered large pork barbecue sandwiches and a double order of onion rings.
    Mendez picked up the lime and squeezed it gently. “So what did you do, Lena? How’d you get rid of the boyfriend?”
    â€œDid some checking down at the courthouse, and found out he had a wife and two kids in Tennessee. I just wrote the wife and gave her the jerk’s address—plus where he was working. All of a sudden he packs up and disappears.”
    Mendez dipped a banana pepper in the red cocktail sauce that came in a small plastic cup.
    â€œHard on the kid.”
    Lena squeezed lime into her beer bottle, then licked the juice off the glass rim. She studied the boar’s head that was nailed over the cash register. Mendez ate another banana pepper. Lena looked out the window.
    They’d had dinner together once before, after Whitney died. Lena tried to remember why they’d wound up eating together, but those memories, so soon after Whitney’s death, ran together in her mind.
    â€œYou ever going to finish grad school?” Mendez asked her.
    â€œI’m a PI, Mendez.”
    â€œYou should have stuck with economics. Why don’t you go back?”
    â€œToo late, and I don’t want to. That’s a whole other world.”
    The sandwiches arrived, hot and soggy. Lena picked hers up, letting the sauce drip between her fingers. Mendez ate his with a fork.
    â€œWhat did you get your degree in, Mendez?”
    He cut a neat square off his sandwich. “Law enforcement.”
    Lena ate the edge off her pickle. “Figures.”
    â€œDo you always eat the pickle first?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDo you always eat the pickle first?”
    â€œYou know what, Mendez? I know you said we’d talk after we ate, but we’re down to pickles here. I want to know what you think, and what you know.”
    He chewed thoughtfully.
    â€œI’m listening here.”
    â€œWhen I was a cop down in Florida, I was married. My wife was—”
    â€œMendez.”
    â€œPatience, Lena. My wife was Cuban.”
    Lena leaned back in her seat. “I didn’t know you were divorced.”
    â€œI’m not.”
    Lena felt a flutter of disappointment. She checked his left hand. No wedding ring. As far as she knew, there’d never been a wedding ring.
    Mendez wiped his fingers on his napkin and took a sip of beer. “My wife spent most of her childhood in Grappa—it’s a small Florida town. Very small. She was … unsophisticated. Religious. A practicing Santera.”
    â€œSantera?”
    â€œYou know much about Santeria?”
    â€œI thought it was … I guess not.”
    â€œYou thought what?”
    â€œVoodoo stuff.”
    He nodded. “A common misconception in this part of the country.”
    â€œThe redneck South.”
    â€œThere are strong ties to Haiti, and to Africa. What you call voodoo stuff. It’s also strongly influenced by Catholicism. Saints and the Ten Commandments. And it has its dark side—as does any religion.”
    â€œI could tell you things about Southern Baptists.”
    The corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile.
    â€œThe thing about being a cop in Florida … Religion is very mixed up in the drug trade. The dark side of Santeria—Palo Mayombe—can accommodate any profession. It’s a good religion for criminals. You take a player who believes —who prays to his god for the latest drug deal to go down smoothly—that’s dangerous. Gives him a sense of safety, invincibility, that makes him lethal to deal with. He won’t put his knife