T. Parker - The Jaguar

“Did I do a good drawing of your map?”

She searched for the owner of the voice and it took her a moment to find him. Saturnino stood in the jungle, dressed in camouflage, his face painted like foliage. He stepped into a small clearing and she saw that he had a machete slung over one shoulder and an assault rifle over the other and a proud smile on his face, teeth yellow and lips red against the face paint.

Erin’s world went electric green-the man she was looking at, the trees behind him, the sky behind the trees. All a green mirage, luminescent and flickering like neon losing its charge. She thought she was going to faint. “I knew you’d been in my room.”

“As head of security. Yes, of course.”

“Where is he?”

“He is not here. Sadly.”

“Did you kill him?”

“He did not arrive. I waited and watched. Hour after hour. I brought food and water and cocaine for alertness and rum for to be relaxed. There are rumors of a battle with the Zetas and an arrest by the Army. Gringos are said to be involved. But there are rumors of everything in Mexico. Your husband has failed you again, and this is factual. That’s why I am very happy to be seeing you.”

Saturnino had powdered his hair green, as well as the bandage at the hairline of his forehead. His blue eyes shone brightly against the makeup. With the weapons and war paint Saturnino looked like some Pacific fighter left behind in World War II, she thought, or an actor in an action movie.

“They said you were damaged,” she said. “They said you were behaving strangely and sleeping all the time and speaking some language no one knew but you. They said you didn’t recognize anyone.”

“But they are superstitious, Mexicans. The flashlight knocked me out. Yes. The craneo is somewhat broken. It still hurts. I hear voices when there are not people. I hear music when there is no music. I have seen eight ghosts, one bruja and one chupacabra . But I still have my very intelligent brain.”

“Oh.”

Saturnino brushed through the trees and walked around another then onto the wide rock rim of the cenote where Erin stood. She was bad at judging distance but he did not raise his voice when he spoke and she heard him clearly in the jungle stillness.

“You don’t look so much like a leper. They wear sandals not the athletic shoes. They look at the ground and walk slow. You are very much more beautiful. The map I found easy. The bed is a popular hiding place. I took a picture of the map and put the map under the bed. So you would not alarm. Then I drew the map on the paper.”

“You’re a clever one.”

“This is a joke of me?”

“Nothing in the world about you is funny, Saturnino.”

“What is that in your hand?”

“The map.”

“No. The shining gun. What is this gun?”

“It’s the Cowboy Defender.”

“Cowboy Defender! Is very deadly?”

“So they say.”

“Do you know how to shoot it?”

“I fired it at a paper target.”

“Does it recoil very much?”

“Really jumps.”

“The bullets are what design?”

“Beats me. Big slow ones, Brad said.”

“Where did you hide it?”

“In the toilet box.”

“I did not look there. But the ammunition is now made bad from the water.”

“No. The water will not hurt the ammunition.”

“But you do not know this.”

“I’m taking it on faith.”

“Yes? Faith?”

Erin dropped the sheet of paper but kept looking at Saturnino. The gun was heavy. But the sputtering green world of a few moments ago had gone away, and although her knees felt rusted shut her vision was good again and she reminded herself of the cool place inside and tried to find it and go there.

“Are you going to apologize for what you did to me?”

“I wish to complete what I began.”

“I thought so.”

“You are much of what I have been thinking. And you are in the dreams and the visions I have when I am not sleeping.”

“Lucky me.”

He looked at her, puzzled.

“Are you going to kill me when you’re done? Or just beat me up and rape me and walk away?”

“I would not be likely to kill you.”

“Not likely.”

“But what happens is difficult to see before.”

She considered options. She could not outrun him unless she shot him first. And if she managed this, then what? Try to find the rumored villages and marinas of the east? How far east? Were there trails? Wouldn’t the people there just turn her over to Benjamin? She’d be right back at the Castle to continue where she left off, writing a song to earn another day of life? Would Hood deliver the money? Did he even know where she was? Would Armenta honor his deal with either Hood or herself? Or maybe feed them both to the now-ravenous tigers?

“I’m going to the marina,” she said. “The only way you can stop me is to shoot me. It was nice seeing you again, Saturnino. Goodbye.”

He unslung the rifle. “I will not shoot you. But I shall now explode the Cowboy Defender from your hand!”

He brought the gun to his shoulder and his eye to the rear sight and she saw the barrel roving in a low tight circle. The rifle spat and she heard the bullet whirr past her leg and crack into the jungle behind her.

“Ohhh,” he groaned. “I have the miss!”

He fired again and this time she felt the tug of it going through her dress and when she looked down there was a small hole in the cotton not one inch from where her right hand dangled, holding the Cowboy Defender.

She raised her gun-hand out straight to her side, then lifted it over her head and held it there for just a moment before letting it fall waist high. It was like the routine she did as a high school flag twirler but nobody was shooting at the flags back then. She could see the barrel of Saturnino’s rifle tracking her movements and again it barked sharply and she heard the buzz and sensed the shock of the bullet as it screamed past the back of her hand.

“You play with me, Erin McKenna!”

“I do not play with you!”

She guessed his distance at thirty feet and she remembered more than ten feet away just forget it but she pointed the derringer at him anyway. And she remembered squeeze the trigger, never yank it but she yanked the trigger hard in spite of herself.

The blast screamed through her ears and her hands jumped into the air. Saturnino flinched and lowered his rifle and looked at her. “You?” he gurgled.

“Yes, me, Erin McKenna Jones.”

He raised the rifle but as he tried to set the stock to his cheek he somehow missed, and the barrel circled wildly. A bullet whistled far over her head. His torso swayed and she tried to track it with the barrel of the derringer but she couldn’t get the timing right and keep the little barrel on target. Suddenly, Saturnino rocked back on his heels and his weapon clattered to the rocks. He righted himself clumsily, overcorrecting, then he reached down to pick up the rifle and toppled into the cenote.

The gun smoke hovered in front of her in the humid air. Her ears rang as they had never rung, not on a stage or in an audience or a studio.

Saturnino floated facedown and he raised one arm as if to freestyle but the arm fell and smacked the water and did not come up again. He tried his other arm but he wasn’t able to pull it free to begin a stroke. He was close enough to her that she could see the green dye from his hair mixing with the water, and the blood billowing up around his neck, and the dull twinkle of the machete strapped to his shoulder, blade pointing down at the depths into which it was eager to go.

He stopped moving and she watched him for a minute. Two. The breeze pushed him toward the middle of the pool. The terrible weight of her circumstance came over her at once and she wondered if she could even move. She looked down at the Cowboy Defender, then back at Saturnino. His body bobbed gently and rotated slowly clockwise like a compass needle finding north.