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MARCHING POWDER

material came by courier. I bought a cheap room in one of the other sections and converted it into a kind of church. I didn't really know what a Mormon church should look like, but I laid out lots of candles, bought some cheap furniture, set the bibles out and sent Joe a photo to show that I was as good as my word. The leftover money I kept for myself.

Quite frankly, Father Thomas was a complete failure. No one ever set foot in my Mormon church apart from me, and I never managed to convert anyone to the religion. Not a single person. I handed out free cups of hot chocolate, but everyone just drank them then left. Even those inmates who weren't strict Catholics were strongly against Mormonism.

'That's a gringo religion. They just want to take all your money,' they warned me.

'That's not true at all,' I argued back. 'I don't have any money for them to take.'

But even when I explained that it was the other way around and that they were paying me and maybe others could get some commission too, it was impossible to persuade anyone to so much as consider becoming a Mormon. No one was interested at all. I felt bad, so when Fat Joe and his colleagues rang for progress reports every few weeks, I lied to them about how things were going. I told them that my following was growing rapidly and they should send me more money.

If they ever made the trip back down to San Pedro to check up on my religious leadership, I had paid about ten of my friends to go along with the story that they were devout Mormons who came to my little church regularly. And the other fifty followers I had converted? Well, they'd finished their sentences and been released, hadn't they? They were now out in the wide world converting other people who were in need.