T. Parker - The Jaguar

“Jesus Christ, Owens. What is wrong here? What is wrong with you people?”

“Can I tell him you will perform?”

Erin held the woman’s flat gray gaze. For the child that grows inside you. “Fine.”

She watched the Jaguars of Veracruz getting off the bus now, walking slowly and stretching and looking up at the looming green hills and the Castle towering high against them. They were two sets of brothers, she knew, uneducated, raised from poverty to international stardom by blending the varied styles of music they grew up with.

Heriberto came hustling from the Castle and hugged a short stout man who walked ahead of the other four. Caesar Llanes, she knew, the front man, singer and accordionist supremo . He seemed to sense her watching him and he looked up at her and tiredly raised a hand in greeting. Erin was embarrassed but waved back.

A few minutes later she and Owens stood in front of the big pigeon coop and Erin watched the handsome birds strut and flutter and look back at her with their oddly optimistic expressions. Do you think my letter made it to Bradley?” asked Erin.

“It must have. You’ll hear back from him in two days.”

“What about the storm?”

“These are strong flyers.”

“But in a hurricane?”

“Believe.”

“Does Armenta trust you?”

“He doesn’t trust anyone. Not even Saturnino.”

“But he gave you a key and he knows we’re out here.”

“He knows you can’t go far. If you ran away his men would find you in minutes. The jungle is thick and full of snakes and scorpions and jaguars. And no one can hide their footprints on a sandy beach. But don’t run off, Erin. I enjoy your company very much. And Benjamin expects me to keep an eye on you tonight. Don’t make me look bad.”

Owens winked at her and Erin said nothing. The pigeons cooed and shuffled as if they shared her bewilderment at her circumstance.

“I saw Edgar Ciel leave your room not long ago. I don’t know if you find him holy or not, but do be very careful of him. Even with a woman your age he’s capable of things that would surprise you. Saturnino will try to take your body but Ciel will use it for more than that.”

“I’m at the end of my understanding, Owens.”

Owens stared out toward the courtyard and Erin saw the distance register in her gaze. “He’s been fathering children all over Mexico for twenty years. Twenty-one mothers, and still counting. The mothers are always beautiful and often poor. He supports them through the Legion. Handsomely. If the mother is too young to raise his child properly, they grow up in the expensive boarding schools he builds for the rich. My school was in Monterey. I had a terrific Catholic education. I can prove his paternity with one drop of my blood and he knows it. Mike and my lawyers have samples too, and documentation of where they came from. Ciel knows this also. So I have some influence over what he does. He fears and loathes me. I fear and loathe him.”

“He carries a gun.”

“He used it on my mother. Only the barrel, not the bullets. She was a novitiate like most of the other women he seduces. She was thirteen and angry at him for what he did to her. Her name is Felicita and she lives in L.A. He takes especially good care of her. She lives in a Santa Monica condo and drives fast convertibles. She has psychological and alcohol problems. I see her often when I’m home.”

“Ciel seduces those faithful girls who follow him around?”

Owens nodded and looked out toward the stage. “But mostly the boys. Especially the boys. There are rumors of pictures and video.”

“I didn’t know they made monsters like that.”

Owens unfastened her gaze and looked at Erin with a combination of pity and shame. “They’re rare.”

In spite of the heat Erin felt the chill run from her scalp to her feet. The heat seemed to weigh one thousand pounds upon her but the madness she felt in this place was heavier by far and it seemed to multiply by the hour.

At sunset Erin took the stage carrying the Hummingbird. She felt awkward and empty and alone. The crowd broke into applause as she walked into the beams of the spotlights and squinted out at them. She introduced herself and began a song off the last Erin and the Inmates CD and was surprised to hear a few Spanish-accented voices singing along.

The night was hot and humid. Her legs had gone weak and her heart beat dizzyingly fast and her eyes kept falling on the gunmen. She closed her eyes while she sang. Let me in, she thought. Please. And halfway through the song the music invited her in and she went. From there she looked out at the crowd and she saw Armenta in his black silk shirt and Owens in a brief floral dress and Saturnino and Ciel and the hundreds of others all looking up at her and she knew that music was more durable than they were and that long after they were all dead this song would still be played by the living.

When she was done the applause was genuine and for the first time in days she began to feel the comfort and joy of the lives inside her, her own and his. What would she name him? She looked down at the stage floor and at the beautiful boots she had found in the wardrobe in exactly her size, and she waited for the clapping to end. Someone called out a Lila Downs title and by luck it was a ranchera she had long loved and translated into English for her own enjoyment and she sang it in that language now and after a few moments of terrible silence the audience understood what she was doing and they shouted out wildly their appreciation. It was an upbeat song so people clapped to the rhythm.

After the song she drank water from a cup sitting on her amp and this brought a rowdy ripple from the audience, who assumed it was something strong. She made a joke in Spanish about sounding better to herself with each drink and someone yelled a reply and this went back and forth for a moment as the man was clearly drunk but good humored. She looked into the lights and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and suddenly a boy raced onstage with a white hand towel and presented it to her with a short bow, which of course drew more applause.

After her set and while the Jaguars’ crew prepared for their show Owens walked Erin through the crowd, introducing her to the dignitaries. Erin felt tired but relieved. She had done all right. Her son was active inside now, as if he was relieved too.

She met two congressmen and their wives, a governor and lieutenant governor, a dozen mayors and at least as many mayoral candidates, all of whom would win their elections next July, Owens said.

“Every one of them? How can you know that?” asked Erin.

“Well, maybe not all of them,” said Owens. “Some will be assassinated by Benjamin’s enemies. But the ones who survive will win. They have no opponents running against them.”

“Because they’ve been threatened?”

“Or worse. Mayors are important to the cartels, even the mayor of a small town. Because the mayors control the local police. The local police are usually poorly trained and poorly paid. And for a lot of Mexico, there is no other level of law enforcement. The states are stretched thin, and they distrust the locals. The federal troops and police are under the control of the president and they’re deeply suspicious of the state police. And of course everybody hates the federals, especially other federals. The Navy and Army are famous for their mutual enmity. So what you have is distrust and noncooperation and deception and outright competition between dozens of agencies and departments. Benjamin spends millions of dollars on elections. He needs mayors who are either sympathetic or at least willing to leave him alone. The best mayors are the ones who throw the support of their police to Benjamin. There’s a gaggle of mayors and soon-to-be mayors right over there, at the table by the beer kegs.”