The Jaguar Read online

  In the far corner stood a desk and chair. There was a lamp and a DVD player on the desktop, and a yellow legal pad with what looked like an expensive pen lying across the top sheet. She thought of her mother, who had always laid out pads of paper and freshly sharpened pencils on her desk at home, to encourage her to write and draw. Between two gray onyx bookends carved as crocodile heads were a Spanish-English dictionary, Rock ’n Roll in L.A., and three Harlequin bodice-rippers.

  The bathroom was large, with a red marble tub and aged copper fixtures that had taken on the same deep patina as the ceiling. She looked at her face in the mirror and saw the exhaustion in it. Find strength. Create strength. Come to me by moonlight, sugar! You’re going to have to do better than that, she thought. A whole lot better.

  She sat down heavily on the edge of the tub and reached under her nightgown and slowly worked the derringer away from her upper calf. She felt the air hit the chafed skin and she rubbed the raw and painful indentation the weapon had left. It was one of the hideout options: take it if you need it. Bradley had shown her how to operate the gun but she wasn’t too good. Two big bullets. Loud and lethal. Intended for pocket or purse.

  But fifteen hours ago Erin had had neither pocket nor purse as she heard the men in the next room, their voices urgent. So she used tape from the first-aid kit, and grabbed some fifties off the roll and folded them over twice and taped them along with the gun to her calf. She had barely gotten it all secure when the floor began to move and she grabbed the shotgun off the rack and plopped into the recliner as it swung out. When she looked at the eight armed men who had invaded her home she realized she was at least a captive and likely a corpse and her husband was almost certainly dead and her son would die unborn. She couldn’t remember quite how the shotgun worked and they quickly got it away from her. She had hit at them and burst into tears and clung to the chair arms kicking as they dragged her away.

  Now she stood and without counting the money she slipped it into the stack of fat white bath towels on a shelf. Then she lifted off the lid of the toilet flush box and set the gun underwater, down near the float assembly where it was difficult to see. Bubbles hurried up from the barrel. The water wouldn’t damage the gun or the ammo, Bradley had said. He’d told her that a toilet tank was a good hide for a gun for a few days, even a week or two, if it ever came to that. Just remember to shake the water out of the barrel before you used it. Easy.

  She stepped back into the room and went to the left wardrobe and set the tape carefully in the pocket of a light jacket. Through the glass and the vine-wound bars of one window she could see the balcony with its profusion of pots and flowers, and beyond the blossoms a swath of jungle, and a sliver of white-sand beach and pale-green water. Prisoner of flowers, she thought, prisoner of paradise.

  Propped upright in the corner between two casement windows was a guitar case with its lid open. When she stepped closer Erin saw that it was a Gibson Hummingbird not unlike her own back home. She felt a powerful stab of sorrow and grief as she looked at this beautiful instrument and wondered if she would ever see her Hummingbird again, or her home or husband or even just one thing from her former life.

  From behind her Erin heard the electric buzz, hum, and clunk of the door lock opening and she turned to see a young man step into the room. He was tall and sandy-haired, solidly built, and wore a clean white Guayabera shirt and jeans and polished black cowboy boots. The door closed decisively behind him.

  “I am Saturnino.”

  “Erin.”

  “You are in good condition?”

  “Very good.”

  He smiled at her. He was handsome. “I am the boss of security here. I want to welcome you.”

  “I feel kidnapped, not welcomed.”

  “You are here. Everything here is my duty to protect. I am in command. Only my father is more powerful.”

  He walked close to her and she looked up into his eyes. They were tan, small-pupiled, catlike. She could smell the scent of his body and breath. “You are more beautiful than the many pictures of you I have seen.”

  She stepped around him and hooked the serape off the floor with her bare toe and caught it and wrapped it around her shoulders again.

  “You are amusing,” he said. “You cannot protect yourself. I will take you when I want you.”

  His smile is the devil’s, thought Erin. “I’m Benjamin’s guest.”

  “And there is nothing you can do. Or anyone can do.”

  “I’ll be sure that Mr. Armenta knows that.”

  “He does not control everything, pinche gringa. You are far away from what was real to you. You are nothing in Mexico. Not even a person. You are entirely invisible and entirely alone. You are like the air. You need a strong friend.”

  Saturnino smiled again and came up close to her. When he leaned in to kiss her she slapped him hard across the face. In the silence that followed she watched his rage flash and hover, then slowly retreat.

  There was a knock at the door. Saturnino unleashed a rapid-fire string of Spanish curses, of which Erin understood most.

  “Edgar Ciel,” said the voice behind the door. “In nomine patri et—”

  “Go to hell you filthy goat!” yelled Saturnino. He looked at Erin then swiped his card key and pushed open the door.

  In stepped a tall slender priest and two young novitiates—a boy and a girl. The priest was very pale, with a sharp nose and ears and thinning light-brown hair. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses his eyes were blue and luminous. He looked sixty. The boy and girl looked to be twelve or thirteen and they stood behind him, hands folded before them, looking at the floor. The priest looked at Erin, then turned his gaze to Saturnino. “What are you doing here, my vile child?”

  Saturnino made the sign of a cross with his fingers and held it up to the priest as he circled around him and toward the door. When Saturnino went by he stomped the boy’s foot with his boot and backed out of the room with a nod to Erin. Edgar Ciel pushed the door closed on him. The boy hopped wordlessly on his good foot four times then put the hurt foot back down tentatively.

  “I am Father Edgar Ciel.”

  “I am Erin McKenna.”

  “Did he harm you?”

  “He would have.”

  “Never be alone with him.”

  “He has a key to my room.”

  “I will speak to Benjamin.”

  “Can he control his son?”

  Ciel studied her with his blue eyes. They had a light in them that was cold and possibly wise. Father O’Hora had had that light. “Of course.”

  “Can you do it right now? Talk to Benjamin?”

  Ciel held her gaze and swung open his jacket and pulled a cell phone off his belt at one hip. Erin saw the walnut-handled revolver holstered at the other. She smelled vanilla. He raised the phone to his ear and walked to the window that framed the balcony and the jungle and beach. He turned his back to her and spoke softly in Spanish, then he waited for a while and spoke again.

  “What’s your name?” Erin asked the boy.

  “Henry. Enrique.”

  “And yours?”

  “Constanza.”

  “How do you like the Castle?”

  They shrugged with their hands still folded before them and looked down at the floor. Enrique gingerly lifted his stomped foot, then set it back down.

  “We come here because Benjamin Armenta donated four million dollars to the Legion of Christ last year,” said Ciel. He walked toward her, fastening the phone to his belt again. “He has been donating such amounts for a decade. He convinces his friends to donate too. It’s the largest Catholic league in all of Mexico. Last year we built two more schools in Chiapas State and were able to endow a chair to head the department of cinema in our university in Mexico City.”

  “Does that buy him a place in heaven too?” asked Erin. She saw the pain pass across the face of the priest. In that moment he reminded her again of Father O’Hora back in Austin, the way his emotions were always so ready
and readable. A good and decent man, she thought. He had married two of her brothers and sat with her father for hours at the hospital and finally buried him. “Forgive me. It’s been a long day.”

  He smiled. “Saturnino is not permitted to have a key. It will be taken from him.”

  “Can you make Benjamin let me go?”

  “I will speak to him. I do not control him. But I can watch over you while you’re here. And pray for your safe return.”

  “Why thank you so much, Father. When my husband gives Benjamin the million bucks he wants, maybe Benjamin can give it to you.”

  “Keep your heart pure and your thoughts clean.”

  “I was never a very good Catholic.”

  “Neither was I until the Lord opened my heart.”

  “I can’t believe you and your Lord let these people get away with this.”

  “The world is complicated.”

  “So that makes kidnapping okay?”

  “Benjamin will be here in a moment.”

  Ciel removed the card key from his pocket with a guilty smile. He swiped it through the lock, then ushered out his two charges and let the door swing shut behind him. Erin listened to the buzz and the clunk of the deadbolt thrown home.

  She already hated those sounds.

  He was not what Erin was expecting. Into the room pushed a large and disheveled man with a head of wild gray-black hair and a hang-dog expression on his face. He wore a Cerveza Pacifico T-shirt and shorts and he was barefoot. He had a beer belly and stooped slightly, as if it were pulling him over. His complexion was pale for a Mexican and he had at least a two-day growth of whiskers. His eyes were black and shiny. She guessed him to be fifty years old.

  He stopped and stared directly at her face. “Do you have everything that you need?”

  “Everything but safety and freedom.”

  “That is up to your husband. He has ten days.”

  “Saturnino has a key to my room.”

  Armenta pulled two card keys from a pocket in his shorts, fanned them for her like playing cards in his thick fingers. “No more.”

  “How could you threaten to skin me alive?”

  Armenta looked at her matter-of-factly and said nothing for a moment. “They tell me you are Erin of Erin and the Inmates. I believe I heard you on the radio.”

  “It’ll just be the Inmates if you do what you’ve threatened to do.”

  Armenta raised a hand and waved it gently, as if shooing away a slow fly. “I love music of all kinds. We have performances here. I record music also. Many important people come here to listen and dance. Do you know the Jaguars of Veracruz?”

  “Everyone knows the Jaguars of Veracruz.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “I saw them in Los Angeles. Fantastic show. They played so long the fire department made them quit.”

  “They will be here this week. To perform.”

  “And do you skin them alive if they don’t bring you millions of dollars?”

  He smiled at her bleakly. “I grew up with them. I have been cruel in my life but I have never lacked compassion. I am strongly loyal.”

  “Your son threatened me.”

  “I will discipline him. Sometimes he has large ideas that are bad ideas. You don’t worry.”

  “When I looked in his eyes I saw that he could do bad things and enjoy them.”

  Armenta nodded slightly. “This is his way. He will not hurt you while you are here.”

  “You seem like a good man. Let me go. Fly me home. I’ll mail you the million cash if you really need it all that badly.”

  He studied her again and she studied him back. His hair stood out from his head, an unbrushed nest. His face was morose and his eyes looked exhausted and suspicious and piggish. She wondered if his paleness was from prison or illness or just from being inside all the time.

  “Your husband has taken hundreds of thousands of my dollars in the last year. He has taken many pounds of my best products. He has cost me thirty men to be deported or prosecuted. He has allowed the murders of another nine of my men to go without any authentic investigation. Nine! He himself killed two more last night.”

  “You have taken the wrong man’s wife. Bradley is a sheriff’s deputy and you invaded our home.”

  “He has been paid large money for doing some things and not doing other things.”

  “His salary is not large.”

  “But he is also employed by the North Baja Cartel of Carlos Herredia. You maybe do not know this. Maybe you spend your time making music. As you should. But there are many secrets in a marriage, some small and some not small. Maybe you are not welcome to this type of information. Maybe he does not want you to know where your fortune comes from.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “What you believe does not change the measure of things. Your husband is more than a thorn in my paw. He must surrender L.A. to me. Surrender it absolutely. Business is the thing we all do. Statements are to be made and answered. This is my example. A man must attend to the small things so that the larger things will occur properly.”

  “Fly me home and you’ll get what you want from my husband. All of it. I promise.”

  Armenta beheld her and Erin looked back. His sad hound eyes appeared clear and calm, resigned to things she did not know, and apologetic for things she did not want to know. “I will fly you home when I get what I want from you.”

  5

  LOS ANGELES SHERIFF’S DEPUTY CHARLIE HOOD watched Bradley’s Cayenne bounce up the dirt road toward his house. He’s early, thought Hood, not surprised. Bradley had sounded intensely worried on the phone, though vague. He had never asked Hood for help in anything until now.

  It was evening here in Buenavista but still 102 degrees, according to the thermometer in the shade of Hood’s patio. Buenavista straddled the border and was often the hottest place in the nation. Hood was attached to an ATF task force working the Iron River—the gun trade—between the United States and Mexico, and he had moved here from L.A. to be near the action. Hood liked action and the idea that he was needed and that what he did mattered. He was thirty-three, tall and lanky, with a forthright face and strong eyes.

  His rented home sat in the steep hills outside of town and from the eastern patio where he now stood he could see the little city huddled below, with its odd amalgamation of old and new: the ornate dome and cross of St. Cecilia’s, the zocalo, the narrow cobblestoned streets of the old town. And around them, like the growth rings in a tree trunk: the Rite Aid and the Blockbuster and the Ralph’s and fast food places on the U.S. side and the Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart and the stretch of maquiladoras and new apartments on the Mexican side. Hood could also see the new twenty-foot steel border wall. This had recently replaced the old chain-link fence, a porous formality along which Mexicans and Americans used to meet friends and family, trade news, exchange minor goods. Beyond the new wall were sharp mountains to the south and west.

  They sat inside with the air conditioner blasting. Bradley declined a beer. He had two butterfly bandages across gashes in his forehead. His eyes were rimmed in red and their hollows were dark and he had not shaved. He paced back and forth in front of the cavernous black fireplace, Hood watching him from an old sofa. Hood’s dog Daisy lay on the paver tiles at his feet, her snout on the cool tile, her dark brown eyes tracking their visitor. She was black and slender with a white blaze on her chest, and had the high-standing, flap-topped ears common to the border dogs from which she had come.

  Bradley told Hood the story of Erin’s kidnapping. Hood’s heart fell but he listened without interrupting. Erin had long been one of his favorite people and Hood had long believed that she would suffer someday at the hands of her husband.

  When Bradley was finished he came to the couch and sat and buried his head in his hands.

  “Can you get the money?”

  “I’ve got the money.”

  “A million cash?”

  “Mom left us plenty. I invested it in g
old before the crash.”

  “A million cash?”

  Bradley looked at Hood as if at an annoying child but said nothing.

  “You’re not going to talk to our people, or the FBI?”

  Again that look from Bradley. “They can’t help officially. You have to know that, Charlie. All they can do is get her killed. The more noise we make the faster she’ll die.”

  “They’re some of the best law-enforcement people in the world.”

  “Gringo law enforcement means nothing in Mexico. The government doesn’t want us, and the cartels hate us. We’re ants. You should know that better than anyone, after what happened to you with the Zetas.”

  That last word sent a breeze of nerves across Hood’s scalp. The Zetas were military defectors, special forces men who had thrown in with the cartels and then become their own cartel. Hood had seen their violence, their beheadings, and their torture in Mexico and in the United States. “Calderón’s government helped us get Jimmy back.”

  “Yeah, after he was tortured and broken. Jimmy was federal. Erin’s a singer. How much help are they going to give her, Charlie?”

  “So you’re going to run that million dollars to the Jai Alai Palace in Tijuana tomorrow afternoon at three, and wait for a call from a guy named Gonzalvo?”

  “Those are the orders.”

  “Then what?”

  Bradley looked over at Hood. “When I show the money I get to hear her on the phone. Proof of life. Then I wait for the next order.”

  “When do you deliver the cash?”

  “Ten days. I told you.”

  “After they run you all over Mexico.”

  “Probably.”

  “I hate your chances,” said Hood. “But you don’t seem to. Why?”

  “I have a plan.”

  “Explain it.”

  “I’ve been working narcotics for almost a year now, right? Jack Cleary is my boss and he’s smart and tough and he’s taught me a lot. We’ve got friends in Mexico. Counterparts. They’re smart and tough too. They’ll help, but not through official channels. And I’m going to use my ten days and these guys to find her because you know what? There’s a good chance that the minute Armenta gets the money he’ll kill her anyway.”