T. Parker - The Jaguar

Erin looked at them: they were already loud and plenty cheerful, middle-aged men, most of them with their wives. Most wore Guayabera shirts and slacks. They were laughing and knocking back their drinks.

“Then over on the other side of the bar, that table is all chiefs of police. Almost all. There are some captains and commanders also.”

These men looked rougher and less festive to Erin’s eye. They observed from behind sunglasses even now at night, and were easy to picture in uniform. Some of them wore business shirts and sports coats in spite of the heat and humidity. They looked uncomfortable and impatient for the music to continue.

The congressmen were dapper in the tropical weight suits, and their wives quite beautiful in pearls and jewelry. The governor’s companion was a young gringa from Tustin who loved Erin and the Inmates and had seen Erin perform in L.A. The woman seemed unsurprised that Erin would be here as a guest of one of the most wanted men in Mexico.

“Where are the Inmates?”

“They stayed home.”

“I love Mexico. I feel so much more free down here.”

They got margaritas at one of the bars and Erin asked for hers light on the tequila but she saw the bartender pour in two shots anyway. Onstage the roadies were testing out the mikes and monitors and tuning the stringed instruments. Erin saw the gleaming yellow-and-black accordion sitting on its stand.

“Over there are the media people,” said Owens. “Some are newspaper or magazine publishers. The fat guy’s a famous DJ. The guy in the cream suit is an anchor for a popular news show. The woman with him is one of the show’s reporters. Felix, from the other night, he worked for their competition. So you can guess why they’re here.”

“Because they ignore Benjamin.”

“And you won’t see a camera between them. It’s the new face of journalism, narco style. It’s the policy of the whole network now. They leave the Gulf Cartel unnamed. But they will mention the Zetas, who are enemies of Benjamin. However, Felix’s network will sometimes mention the Gulf Cartel, as we saw. But they never cover the Zetas. The power of the cartels is everywhere. Mike says it’s vertical-from the bottom to the top. He says the reason why the Gulf Cartel takes less federal heat than the other cartels is because Benjamin and the president know the same people.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Is it?”

Erin sipped more of the drink. It was the first alcohol she’d had in two months and the powerful tequila went quickly to her head. She watched Edgar Ciel and his retinue of young novices making their way along the edge of the canopy. There were four of them now, two boys and two girls. Ciel stopped at a group of the wealthy and it parted for him and the women kissed his hand and the men bowed.

“Why do you put yourself in the middle of all this?”

“Mike asked me to come here.”

“To become Armenta’s mistress and confidante.”

“It’s the confidante that Mike wants.”

“But why? What does he care what happens down here?”

“He cares what happens everywhere, Erin. You’ve seen how curious he is about everything. And everyone. In the years I’ve known him I’ve yet to find something or someone he isn’t interested in. He makes friends in minutes and keeps them for life. He gets so wrapped in people and their worlds that he can go a week without sleep, helping out one friend, then going on to help out another, and not show any effects from it. He reads books in a dozen languages. He gives them to universities and libraries when he’s done. Hundreds of them every year. He never forgets, even the smallest things stay with him, and he can call up a memory in high, high resolution.”

Erin could hear the admiration in Owens’s voice. She saw the dilation of her pupils-pride in Mike, she thought. Her boss, father, brother, friend. Her reason to live. And to sleep with a narcotics trafficker and murderer.

“So, that’s why I’m here in the middle of all this,” said Owens. “I know it can seem cruel and barbaric sometimes. That’s what I thought at first. But Mike’s world is full of people and music and art and history and incredible energy.”

“Mike’s world? Not Benjamin’s?”

“It’s the same, Erin. Mike has known Benjamin since he was born. Did you know that Benjamin was named Mexico’s third richest man by Forbes magazine? That he donates scores of millions of dollars a year to the Legion of Christ? That his great-grandfather fought with Zapata?”

“I know he threw an innocent man to the leopards. I know he plans to skin me alive if he doesn’t get my husband’s money in four days. So how can his alleged greatness mean anything to me? I’m supposed to be impressed by him because Forbes magazine is?”

“You’re an artist so you see things differently. You have to simplify things into songs. So the things you can’t simplify you don’t see. You make beauty, Erin. What you do is important. But it’s not the world. It’s only part of the world. What you see here is another part of it, in all its glory and its pain.”

“I’ll stick with music.”

“You have no choice. You were born to it. Mike said some people are born prone to do certain things and I believe him. He said that you are one of the great surprises of his life. He searched out Suzanne Jones. He found Bradley. And he found you too. He says that truly great men and women are not often found together. That’s why we’re helping you communicate.”

“What if Benjamin knew?”

Owens gave her a gray-eyed stare and ran a fingernail across her throat.

As if on cue Armenta turned to look at them. Erin saw the happy smile come to his face when he looked at Owens, and when he looked at Erin she saw it grow stronger. He raised his hand to his mouth and kissed the air like a chef pleased with a sauce. Saturnino looked at her too, with a smile of a different nature, one that momentarily gutted her courage and made her look away in anger and shame. She wished she had the Cowboy Defender taped to her leg but she did not. It had come to seem increasingly useless.

The Jaguars of Veracruz took the stage at ten o’clock, by which time Erin had seen scores of gallons of alcohol consumed by the crowd of roughly one thousand people. The air hung heavy and sweet with mota smoked mostly from joints but there were pipes and bongs and huge Jamaican-style spliffs being shared too, and beautiful dinner plates piled high with fluffy cocaine being passed around from guest to guest, and they used everything from rolled currency to fingernails to bread knives in order to shovel the stuff home before the plate was passed along or set down and forgotten or spilled and refilled by whomever from a shiny new galvanized thirty-gallon trash can next to the beer kegs.

The Jaguars wore their trademark black satin suits with orange piping and elaborate multicolored embroidery on the shoulders. Their shirts were black. Erin felt swept up in their energy as they took their positions and instruments. She clapped hard but could barely hear her own hands within the riotous tumult of the crowd. When the music started the crowd let out a huge round of applause, then quickly quieted to hear the story.

Story, thought Erin. The Jaguars always tell stories. Tell me a story that will take me away from here. That’s what you’re doing for everyone else.

She closed her eyes for a moment and listened to the music. The Jaguars were led by Caesar Llanes, who had a frontal, penetrating voice and a strong vibrato that he used to sustain his notes. She had seen the Jaguars perform live but she was struck anew not only by their taut, bright musicianship, but by the emotional level that Caesar brought to each song. He made the words sound so important not by hiking up his voice but by taking it down just a little, making it sound almost factual to better serve the story. The songs were mainly up-tempo, but on the less urgent ones Caesar would roam the stage randomly, delivering the lines as if he were just now making them up. Really, she thought, he does very little. And makes it count for so much. The beautiful black-and-yellow accordion swung in for a fill between the verses and Erin caught herself smiling.