T. Parker - The Jaguar

Finnegan said nothing for a long moment. Then: “Bradley? Knowing Suzanne as I did, and you as I do, that is a truly moving story. Thank you for it. I wish that she had been better at taking her own advice.”

Bradley offered Finnegan his free hand, palm up. “This is for Erin.”

Mike gently took Bradley’s hand and brought it nearer to him. “You are made by history and history is made by you.”

Bradley felt the quick stab of pain. Mike let go and guided the point into his own free palm and he cupped that hand over Bradley’s so the two bloods met.

“There,” said Finnegan. “I’ve always wished it would smoke or something. But it does kind of sizzle down deep in the soul, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t feel anything but rage. Do you know rage, Mike? Or are you just a happy simpleton?”

“Anger. Frustration. Not rage.”

“Fury.”

“These are destructive. These are indulgences.”

“These are what I have now.”

Bradley watched the blood from Finnegan’s small palm run into his own. He thought of the way his mother had wrapped him in the beach towel and later helped him into his jacket after he’d emerged from the great Pacific, shivering, bone-cold but proud. He thought of Erin on stage the very first time he had laid eyes on her and understood that his life had just changed forever. He tried to picture her exactly right now, held captive by murderers somewhere between Polyuc and the Kohunlich ruins, but this was impossible.

“It’s not the blood,” said Mike. “It’s the giving of the blood.”

“Whatever you say.” Bradley snatched the blue handkerchief from the little man’s coat pocket and stood and clenched it in his bleeding hand. He looked down at Mike’s jolly round face, saw the sparkle of mischief in his eyes. “How are we going to find her?”

“The first part is up to you and it is very important: Charlie Hood can’t know that we’ve talked, or that you’ve seen me, or anything about me. He cannot know about us. Everything that happens from here on will depend on that.”

“Done. That’s easy. But the Yucatan is still two thousand miles away.”

“No. It’s just shy of seventeen hundred. So, in anticipation of our new relationship, I took the liberty of consulting with El Tigre. You and your merry outlaws will leave tomorrow in the morning in one of the transport helicopters. Carlos can arrange safe airspace to Veracruz but not farther south.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll find you there.”

Bradley sat again and poured a shot of smoky brown tequila for Mike and one for himself. He glanced up at the moon and thought a message to Erin and when he was finished he felt exhaustion slam down on him. He drank half of his tequila, then dropped the wadded hankie to the table and looked down at his palm. The slice was short and not deep and it had already stopped bleeding. “You cut my lifeline, Mike.”

“I love palmistry. It’s as entertaining as major league baseball.”

“What’s between you and Hood?”

“That’s even more entertaining.”

“Do you know his parents?”

“No. He just came up in the net. But I couldn’t throw him back. He’s so good. So wholesome. So tempting.”

“You just accidentally found him?”

“Through your mother, Suzanne, of course. She was the magnet and Charlie Hood was a small iron shaving.”

“He’s been looking everywhere for you.”

“I know. I receive his requests for information about me every week. Sometimes two or three times.”

“What does he want with you?”

“I’m not sure. But I’m concerned for him. He seems to have me confused with an Irish priest who helped build a school in Costa Rica. Imagine.”

“You’re a meddler, Mike.”

“I’m a lot more than just that!”

Later Bradley called Hood on the satellite phone. Hood was on his way to Ciudad Juarez, the murder capital of the New World. The ransom money was safe. Bradley said nothing of Mike Finnegan, the object of Hood’s growing obsession. First things first, thought Bradley. Erin first. Nothing else matters.

Hood crossed the border into Ciudad Juarez just after dawn Tuesday. He looked up at the mountains above the city and saw the huge sign declaring in Spanish, “The Bible Is the Truth. Read It.” The morning was cool and the light was soft. The city looked peaceful enough at this hour but Hood knew its tremendous violence.

He checked into the Lucerna and was told his room was ready. The lobby stood empty except for two men in short-sleeved white shirts and sunglasses who watched him from the far side and were gone by the time Hood was given his room key.

Dazed by the long drive he wheeled his luggage and the small duffel to the elevator bank where the two men intercepted him. One of them reached inside Hood’s sport coat and confiscated the Springfield.45 from his hip rig, then started back toward the lobby. The other nodded to Hood to follow.

At their direction Hood loaded his luggage and Bradley’s money into the back of a battered black Escalade with smoked windows parked curbside. He sat in the second row of leather seats. The passenger was in his late thirties, he guessed, short in the legs, thick in the neck like a bull, with the diffident air of a gunman. The driver was very big and young and looked intently through the windshield.

They drove the Juarez streets in silence for a few minutes. Hood had never been in the city before. It was said to have the highest murder rate of any city on Earth, including second-place Caracas and third-place New Orleans. The Zetas and the Gulf Cartel had littered the streets with two thousand bodies in the past year alone.

Hood also knew that four hundred others, young women, maquiladora workers mostly, had been raped, mutilated, and murdered in a decade, virtually none of the crimes solved, their bones salting the surrounding desert in shallow graves. Hundreds more of the young women were missing. The murders were the work of at least several men, it was agreed, perhaps working in concert but perhaps not. Violent monsters, certainly. Gangsters and maybe police too. Hundreds of killings and no arrests had been made. And of course the city was dying along with its people. Hood had read Mexican media reports estimating that five hundred thousand citizens-roughly one-third of the population-had left Juarez because of the violence. One hundred sixteen thousand homes had been abandoned. Ten thousand businesses had folded. All blown away by a wind that smelled of human bodies baking in the sun. The living couldn’t take it anymore.

Hood looked out the smoked windows at the neighborhood around them-small concrete houses, recently built but now abandoned, covered with graffiti, their windows broken and boarded, no cars on the street, no signs of life, just trash and brown dirt yards.

“Do you know our city?” asked the driver. “This is the Rivera Bravo zone. Once the government said it was a model for the future. Now see it. It is new and almost dead. Anyone who can afford to leave Juarez is doing so. It is having less and less people.”

The passenger gave the driver a long look.

“Where are we going?” asked Hood.

“You have nothing to fear,” said the driver. He raised his big face to the rearview.

“I have the money. I can show it to you and you can save the cost of gasoline.”

“Mr. Bravo, we wanted to talk to you,” said the driver. “We wanted you to see our city. There is much history here, much of it bad. But it is not as terrible as everyone in the United States believes. If Calderon can weaken the cartels before he runs out of political support, Juarez will return to normal.”

The bull-like man in the passenger seat turned and looked at Hood through his sunglasses. He looked familiar. “Sgt. Rescendez of the Tijuana city police is a man I know,” he said. “He told me he recognized you from Mulege.”