T. Parker - The Jaguar

“I do not see things as you wrote them in ‘City of Gold,’” he said.

She said nothing for a long moment. Heriberto quickly departed. Beyond Armenta she saw the servants pretending to work, not watching them but listening.

“I can’t help that,” she said.

“When I look at myself I see only a will to survive in a world that is cursed. To me, this will you write of is a neutral thing, something any animal has in its possession. It is not dignity. It is not to be judged. You wrote as if there was strength and even a small goodness in me.”

“I see your world as cursed. But look-you created Gustavo. You made someone beautiful.”

“Yes. And in your song, Benji grows strong in a cursed world. He is true to his friends and his family. He speaks violence because that is the language of his time and place. All of this means that I am pleased by the song.”

She nodded and looked down at her shoes. The eyelets and seams were still crusted with jungle sand and there were small green burrs stuck to the laces. The Cowboy Defender was irritating her. “I can do better.”

“Oh?”

“It was my first corrido .”

“It is good.”

“It’s crude and obvious.”

He wrinkled his brow and his gaze bore into her.

“Has the money arrived?” she asked. “Am I free? Have you heard from Charlie Bravo?”

He shrugged effulgently, then shook his head. “Lo siento.”

“You’re sorry? Because your son is going to flay me? How do you think I feel?”

“Charlie Bravo has two more days, yes? The agreed day was tomorrow. And I gave him one more day for the song that you wrote. I do not regret it. But we hear nothing from him. He heats the plaza. He has broken the pledge.”

“Then I’ll write you another song. A better song. If you’ll give Charlie Bravo one more day.”

And one more day for Bradley, she thought. Two precious days to find her. Two and a half, counting today! I’ll come to you by moonlight. Like in your song.

His dark eyes roamed her face. They looked intelligent but wild, like the eyes of the jaguar in the Castle.

“How badly do you want your money, Mr. Armenta?”

“Money? Yes, always the money comes first.”

“But you want another song.”

“I want this song too.”

“Do we have a deal, then? Another song for another day?”

“Excuse me.” Armenta turned his back to her and yanked one of the phones off his belt and somehow dislodged a pistol that clattered to the floor at his feet. He picked it up and looked at her. Then he straightened and, holding the gun at his side with one hand, brought the cell phone to his ear with the other and launched into a Spanish tirade that Erin could scarcely understand. Traidor! Pinche Carlos Herredia! Exterminar!

It went on and on. She watched his hair fly and his eyes bulge and the big vein on his neck stand out and she heard the furious rush of words and spittle and his hurried breath.

She turned her back to him and considered the big iron doors and wondered what it would be like to just walk out through them, free and heading home.

She only became aware of the silence when he broke it.

“I am sorry for the activity.”

“What’s wrong? Why are there gunmen everywhere?”

“This is not of your business.”

“Okay, then do we have a deal or don’t we? One more song for one more day.”

“I agree to this.”

“Good. I’m tired and dirty and hungry.”

“We will dine early. At six.”

“I’d rather eat alone.”

“You will dine with me. I have much, much more to tell you that will make your writing very easy. About Veracruz when I was a boy. There was a pig that could do advanced mathematics. And a curandera who raised the dead not once but three times. And a two-headed girl who argued with herself. And a moron named Francisco with a very thin head who could crawl through the windows of the prison at Ulua to find treasure. And my lovely Anya-you should know more about her.”

“I won’t be good company for dinner. Kind of a big day for me, you know?”

Armenta waved over one of the female servants and handed her a key card and ordered her in Spanish to accompany Erin to her room and prepare a bath and bring whatever she might want. He stood straight and extended one hand toward the elevator.

They sat in Armenta’s formal dining room, which faced east and caught a warm breeze off the ocean. Because of the slowness of the elevator and its mystifying arrangement of buttons she had not been able to tell whether they had gotten off on the fourth or fifth floor. She wore a long blue dress that covered the derringer lashed to her calf with a bootlace. The dining table was koa wood, long and wide, and Erin realized she could cross her leg under the table and get the gun loose with one hand and without Armenta knowing.

Through the eastern window she could see part of the loggia and the courtyard below. The sun was setting behind her, but she saw the orange glow on the stone columns and the paver tiles and on the facets of the broad-leafed jungle flora. Shot with gold, she thought. Shot. She saw the surprised look on Saturnino’s war-painted face. She saw his pathetic pawing in the cenote as he tried to swim. She saw his blood rising in the clear water and the green dye melting off his hair.

A few hours ago, in her room, she had taken the longest, hottest bath of her life and still she felt filthy and stained and she knew that she had been forced to surrender something she would never get back. He had finally raped her after all. She wondered if she could kill his father also. On the same day, even. Why not? She had proven experience. She had done things here she had never imagined and this made her feel unreal and unpredictable even to herself.

Looking down she could see the sicarios loitering in the courtyard and among the columns of the portico. Things were wrong here. She felt the tension and nerves in the still subtropical air, surely as she had felt them when she marched back here a few hours ago. At first she thought it was because of her escape, or Saturnino’s disappearance. But it wasn’t about either of them, she thought now. Something had happened or might happen. His greatest fear is of being betrayed by his own men. She looked down to the driveway where Heriberto, a rifle slung over his shoulder, stood talking to one of the young gunmen. Just minutes ago, on the way here to the dining room, they had passed two more gunmen in the foyer and one standing midway down a long hallway and another who was likely stationed just out of eyeshot outside the dining room entry. Erin wondered if Armenta was protected by them or surrounded by them.

He sat at the head of the table with Erin on his right but they were far enough apart to be strangers sharing space in a cafeteria. Overhead the ceiling fans turned at low speed, their blades bending the candle flames.

Armenta had shaved and his hair had been cut and styled. He wore an expensive looking black silk suit and a white jacquard shirt with small black hummingbirds flying through the weave. The tailored clothing hid his bulk and the haircut revealed a strong neck and a face of intensity and intelligence. She saw Saturnino’s handsome roughness and she pictured his face on the night he attacked her, coming into view on the window of the Cadillac as it shut on her.

A servant opened a French Pouilly-Fuisse and set the cork before Erin, who knew nothing of French wines but smelled it and nodded and tasted the wine. It was cool and light and it offered pleasure, which collided with her fear for Bradley and her worry over Hood and her anger over the killing she had done.

“I’d drink this whole bottle if I wasn’t pregnant,” she said. “And being held captive by a cartel kingpin. I could use a night of forgetting about all this. Maybe a lifetime.”