T. Parker: The Jaguar

“I am Father Edgar Ciel.”

“I am Erin McKenna.”

“Did he harm you?”

“He would have.”

“Never be alone with him.”

“He has a key to my room.”

“I will speak to Benjamin.”

“Can he control his son?”

Ciel studied her with his blue eyes. They had a light in them that was cold and possibly wise. Father O’Hora had had that light. “Of course.”

“Can you do it right now? Talk to Benjamin?”

Ciel held her gaze and swung open his jacket and pulled a cell phone off his belt at one hip. Erin saw the walnut-handled revolver holstered at the other. She smelled vanilla. He raised the phone to his ear and walked to the window that framed the balcony and the jungle and beach. He turned his back to her and spoke softly in Spanish, then he waited for a while and spoke again.

“What’s your name?” Erin asked the boy.

“Henry. Enrique.”

“And yours?”

“Constanza.”

“How do you like the Castle?”

They shrugged with their hands still folded before them and looked down at the floor. Enrique gingerly lifted his stomped foot, then set it back down.

“We come here because Benjamin Armenta donated four million dollars to the Legion of Christ last year,” said Ciel. He walked toward her, fastening the phone to his belt again. “He has been donating such amounts for a decade. He convinces his friends to donate too. It’s the largest Catholic league in all of Mexico. Last year we built two more schools in Chiapas State and were able to endow a chair to head the department of cinema in our university in Mexico City.”

“Does that buy him a place in heaven too?” asked Erin. She saw the pain pass across the face of the priest. In that moment he reminded her again of Father O’Hora back in Austin, the way his emotions were always so ready and readable. A good and decent man, she thought. He had married two of her brothers and sat with her father for hours at the hospital and finally buried him. “Forgive me. It’s been a long day.”

He smiled. “Saturnino is not permitted to have a key. It will be taken from him.”

“Can you make Benjamin let me go?”

“I will speak to him. I do not control him. But I can watch over you while you’re here. And pray for your safe return.”

“Why thank you so much, Father. When my husband gives Benjamin the million bucks he wants, maybe Benjamin can give it to you.”

“Keep your heart pure and your thoughts clean.”

“I was never a very good Catholic.”

“Neither was I until the Lord opened my heart.”

“I can’t believe you and your Lord let these people get away with this.”

“The world is complicated.”

“So that makes kidnapping okay?”

“Benjamin will be here in a moment.”

Ciel removed the card key from his pocket with a guilty smile. He swiped it through the lock, then ushered out his two charges and let the door swing shut behind him. Erin listened to the buzz and the clunk of the deadbolt thrown home.

She already hated those sounds.

He was not what Erin was expecting. Into the room pushed a large and disheveled man with a head of wild gray-black hair and a hang-dog expression on his face. He wore a Cerveza Pacifico T-shirt and shorts and he was barefoot. He had a beer belly and stooped slightly, as if it were pulling him over. His complexion was pale for a Mexican and he had at least a two-day growth of whiskers. His eyes were black and shiny. She guessed him to be fifty years old.

He stopped and stared directly at her face. “Do you have everything that you need?”

“Everything but safety and freedom.”

“That is up to your husband. He has ten days.”

“Saturnino has a key to my room.”

Armenta pulled two card keys from a pocket in his shorts, fanned them for her like playing cards in his thick fingers. “No more.”

“How could you threaten to skin me alive?”

Armenta looked at her matter-of-factly and said nothing for a moment. “They tell me you are Erin of Erin and the Inmates. I believe I heard you on the radio.”

“It’ll just be the Inmates if you do what you’ve threatened to do.”

Armenta raised a hand and waved it gently, as if shooing away a slow fly. “I love music of all kinds. We have performances here. I record music also. Many important people come here to listen and dance. Do you know the Jaguars of Veracruz?”

“Everyone knows the Jaguars of Veracruz.”

“Do you like them?”

“I saw them in Los Angeles. Fantastic show. They played so long the fire department made them quit.”

“They will be here this week. To perform.”

“And do you skin them alive if they don’t bring you millions of dollars?”

He smiled at her bleakly. “I grew up with them. I have been cruel in my life but I have never lacked compassion. I am strongly loyal.”

“Your son threatened me.”

“I will discipline him. Sometimes he has large ideas that are bad ideas. You don’t worry.”

“When I looked in his eyes I saw that he could do bad things and enjoy them.”

Armenta nodded slightly. “This is his way. He will not hurt you while you are here.”

“You seem like a good man. Let me go. Fly me home. I’ll mail you the million cash if you really need it all that badly.”

He studied her again and she studied him back. His hair stood out from his head, an unbrushed nest. His face was morose and his eyes looked exhausted and suspicious and piggish. She wondered if his paleness was from prison or illness or just from being inside all the time.

“Your husband has taken hundreds of thousands of my dollars in the last year. He has taken many pounds of my best products. He has cost me thirty men to be deported or prosecuted. He has allowed the murders of another nine of my men to go without any authentic investigation. Nine! He himself killed two more last night.”

“You have taken the wrong man’s wife. Bradley is a sheriff’s deputy and you invaded our home.”

“He has been paid large money for doing some things and not doing other things.”

“His salary is not large.”

“But he is also employed by the North Baja Cartel of Carlos Herredia. You maybe do not know this. Maybe you spend your time making music. As you should. But there are many secrets in a marriage, some small and some not small. Maybe you are not welcome to this type of information. Maybe he does not want you to know where your fortune comes from.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What you believe does not change the measure of things. Your husband is more than a thorn in my paw. He must surrender L.A. to me. Surrender it absolutely. Business is the thing we all do. Statements are to be made and answered. This is my example. A man must attend to the small things so that the larger things will occur properly.”

“Fly me home and you’ll get what you want from my husband. All of it. I promise.”

Armenta beheld her and Erin looked back. His sad hound eyes appeared clear and calm, resigned to things she did not know, and apologetic for things she did not want to know. “I will fly you home when I get what I want from you.”

Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy Charlie Hood watched Bradley’s Cayenne bounce up the dirt road toward his house. He’s early, thought Hood, not surprised. Bradley had sounded intensely worried on the phone, though vague. He had never asked Hood for help in anything until now.

It was evening here in Buenavista but still 102 degrees, according to the thermometer in the shade of Hood’s patio. Buenavista straddled the border and was often the hottest place in the nation. Hood was attached to an ATF task force working the Iron River-the gun trade-between the United States and Mexico, and he had moved here from L.A. to be near the action. Hood liked action and the idea that he was needed and that what he did mattered. He was thirty-three, tall and lanky, with a forthright face and strong eyes.