T. Parker - The Jaguar

She took a deep breath and knelt down and vomited into the toilet. Then again. She felt sick all the way to her soul. When the retching stopped she wadded the medical tape in a ball and wrapped it in toilet paper and put it in the trashcan. In the mirror she saw her face, pale and glistening, her pupils black pits.

Armenta was waiting for her when she came out. She forced herself to look at him and noticed that he had tried to comb his hair.

“Come see some of my other accomplishments.” He turned to lead the way and she followed with her hands folded in front of her, inches from the gun, but this was an awkward way to walk and she couldn’t shoot him in the back anyway. You didn’t do that. She had just let her hands swing free to walk naturally when he turned around and looked at her. He had a suspicious expression on his face, but said nothing.

He led her through a spacious kitchen where two white-clad women were preparing a meal. She wondered if, dressed like they were, she could pass as one of them, just long enough to make it from the Castle to the cenote. What if she found one of them on the path? Wouldn’t she have to stop, and speak, then be discovered? Here in the kitchen their faces were almost hidden by their gauzy rebozos but their eyes smiled at Armenta as he paused to lift a pot lid and peruse the simmering chicken. Erin thought she might get sick again so she focused her attention on the chains of garlic cloves that hung in the opening of a pass-through. Garlic, she thought, save me.

She followed him down a short cool hallway to another room. Through the shawl she touched the gun but could not draw it. He turned on the lights and Erin stepped in. The lights were fluorescent, jittery and sharp, and the smell of marijuana was clear. The room was large but unfurnished except for several large tables that were piled with larger bricks of several colors. Beneath the tables were more stacks. Against the walls still more. These bundles were roughly the size of shoeboxes and they were wrapped in different colors of plastic.

“Are you sick?” he asked.

“I feel good.”

“You are white and perspiring.”

“I am pregnant and feeling it.”

“My wife was sick every day with Saturnino.”

She denied the nausea. “I’m sorry he turned into a monster. No, that’s none of my business. I’m sorry. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“He has visions now. The curandera gave him scorpion poison mixed with chocolate and goat’s milk. To make the visions stop.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“Edema of the brain. He ate one entire box of children’s cereal this morning, soaked in tequila.”

“I’m sorry, but…well, I thank you too. For saving me from him.”

He looked at her uncertainly and pointed to a table. “Here, look and see this.”

Erin looked down on a pallet-sized mountain of bundles wrapped in blue plastic with lightning bolts on them. There were bundles in yellow plastic with bumblebee designs and the word “BUZZ” on them. Beside these were blue packs with Homer Simpson’s face and below his face it said, in Spanish, “I’m Getting Smuggled-What of It, Man?” The next bundles were packed in clear plastic and she could see the swirls of green herb compressed within.

There was another, smaller great room in this part of the flat and Erin saw the hooded children sitting on the floor by the big TV watching a Disney video, and the women just now bringing plates of food to the dining table. This room too had a dramatic chandelier and a high ceiling but the paintings were not of saints but of Mayans and jaguars and birds and snakes. They walked past two men playing chess, and in their white hoods and loose white clothing they looked like ghosts or angels but when one of them looked at her, Erin saw that his nose and lips were gone and only some of his bottom teeth remained, staunch as headstones. She felt herself rising as if levitated and she knew she was fainting. One foot in front of the other. I will be there, Bradley. I will be there. Touch the Cowboy Defender. Saint Cowboy Defender.

A young woman came in from one of the hallways that led into the great room. She moved with an easy grace and she wore the white dress of the lepers but not the rebozo. She looked cautiously at Erin, then walked over and sat with the children in front of the TV.

Armenta motioned Erin toward them and led her over. The woman stood as they approached. She was very pretty and her face was pale and smooth and peaceful. Her hair was honey blond, wavy and fine.

“Erin McKenna,” he said. “This is Dulce Kopf.”

“Very nice to meet you,” said Erin.

“I heard your performance from my room. I had the window open to the rain and wind, so I could hear you. I hope you are enjoying your stay.”

“It’s been unusual.”

“I must get back to the children. There is always so much to be done with children.”

“Of course.”

“It’s what Gustavo would have wanted.”

“Oh?”

“We were young then. The Americans killed him without a reason or a word.”

She glided back among the youngsters and took her place among them. Armenta signaled her and they walked down another hallway.

“Does she have leprosy?”

“No. She feels good with them. This I cannot explain. She has not been out of the Castle since Gustavo. Two years. I try to do what she wants.”

“I feel dizzy and bad.”

“We are almost finished.”

By then her sense of direction had failed. She had no idea even of north or south, or which part of the floor they had already seen and which part remained new. The next room was filled with bricks of cocaine and the next with heroin and another with methamphetamine. There was another room they could only walk halfway into because the rest of it was filled with bundles of American cash, floor-to-ceiling, taking over almost the entire space, denying them entry. In each of these rooms guns lay about like housecats, not organized and not stowed in any orderly way, mostly just sprawled on the drugs and cash or propped in corners or laid out on the floor where there was room. Many of them were gold or inset with gold, and some had jewels and mysterious inscriptions, and some had images of Malverde, Patron Saint of Narcos, etched onto the butts or stocks. She was pretty sure she was looking at handguns and combat shotguns and assault rifles, as well as exotic sniper guns and grenade launchers and shoulder-launched rockets. She’d seen them in movies.

Erin stood in the doorway, weak with fear, inhaling a world of cash and drugs and guns. She felt the Cowboy Defender ready in its place but it seemed a hundred miles away.

“And my favorite of all the rooms,” said Armenta, walking quickly down another hallway now, turning to wave her on.

He pushed open a door and found a light and Erin stepped in. At first she thought she’d walked into the New World before Columbus. The room was crowded with jade statues and masks and mosaics, quartz carvings of gigantic frogs and strange gods, a huge stone crocodile and an enormous limestone shark carved in meticulous detail, and hundreds of pots and calendars and tablets covered with Mayan writing. Wooden carvings of birds and monkeys and fish and turtles hung from the ceiling. But there were also tables heaped with modern brooches and watches and rings and earrings and necklaces, and there were wooden bins of loose emeralds and diamonds and rubies, some still uncut, and strings of pearls draped through the shutter slats, and chains of gold and silver that had fallen from the slats and were now heaped upon the floor like something that housecleaning would have to deal with, and crystal vases of loose cultured pearls and freshwater and small black pearls. On the floor stood small golden humanlike figurines and more circular golden calendars, and there were silver suns the size of dinner plates leaning against the walls, and Erin saw a silver jackal standing nearly life-sized, its open jaws draped with thick golden chains, and she saw a silver coiled cobra with its head raised and its hood flared, and a flock of jeweled silver birds sitting on a rod fixed above one of the windows. Most of the things were New World creations but she recognized pieces that came from Asia and Africa and the Middle East and Europe and Polynesia. Plunder from around the world, she thought, the treasure of everywhere.