T. Parker: The Jaguar

On the first day a pickup truck crawled with the traffic along Zaragoza towing a wheeled cage in which paced a very large Bengal tiger. Children ran along beside the cage and the cat looked unperturbed. In profile its beard made it look like an important older man, Hood thought, wise and formerly great. He felt a shiver of awe rattle through him.

Street vendors approached him every few minutes. At first he politely declined, then he bought three carved wooden bookmarks, a pair of Ray-Ban knockoffs, a bracelet made from shark cartilage, a smart white Panama hat and a miniature armadillo made completely of seashells and sand. Then he girded himself with the shades and hat and greeted the next sellers with curt shakes of his head.

He broke up the tedium of his vigil by drinking lecheros at La Parroquia and making calls on the Holiday Inn land line in the lobby. Beth didn’t answer. Hood’s mother was worried about what to hand out to the neighborhood trick-or-treaters next week; Hood’s father was no better and no worse, just the same memory-sanded shell of a man he’d been for two years. ATF agent Frank Soriana was angry with the Fast and Furious bullshit and couldn’t talk right then. Hood’s departmental captain at LASD said he was tired of sharing Hood with the feds and they could use him back in L.A., and from what he’d heard, the federal Blowdown funding was about to dry up anyway. Come home to Papa, he said. Nice to be wanted, thought Hood.

At the end of that third evening in Veracruz he stepped into the Taberna Roja and took a stool at the bar, ordered a beer, and when Rafael set it down Hood pushed two photographs of Mike Finnegan toward him. One was taken in Costa Rica when Mike had been dressing as a priest and calling himself Father Joe Leftwich. The other was the accidental shot of him at a Dodger game in L.A. Rafael looked at the photos, then at Hood.

— He is Mike Fix. He comes here sometimes. He drinks rum.

— When was the last time you saw him here?

— Maybe nine or ten days. Before the hurricane.

— And before that?

— He has been a tourist here for as long as I have worked here. That is forty-eight years. He comes for one day or one week or two months. He drinks and talks with excitement and sometimes causes arguments and fights with his words. But he is always happy and never angry. He never misses carnaval.

— He looks like the man on your sign.

Hood nodded at the tavern sign behind the bar, but Rafael didn’t turn to look.

— Veracruz has many stories and jokes regarding the similarities. One story is that Mr. Fix used to work here when the tavern first opened. And he carried the drinks as on the sign. But that is absurd of course because the tavern is two hundred and twenty-five years old. There is another story in which Mike Fix is a rich gringo who secretly bought the tavern in the nineteen-sixties because he liked the sign. And that he comes to Veracruz to escape the pressures of his business in the United States. Although if that were true he would drink his rum here without charge. But he always pays and tips very generously. When he is drunk he describes the horrors of Ulua in detail, as if he has seen such things personally. But again, that was hundreds of years ago. Another story is that he is a master spy of the Central Intelligence Agency. Another story is that most of these stories are first told by Mr. Fix himself. This is the one I believe.

Early on his fourth evening Hood was sitting at the cafe, shooing off a vendor when Finnegan came bustling along the far sidewalk toward the tavern.

He was dressed in a wheat-colored suit and a white shirt, with a solid lavender-colored tie and pocket square. His belt and shoes were black and very shiny. His hair was longer now and it stood out in a downy red halo. His sunglasses were current. With him were a tall gaunt priest and two novitiates, a boy and a girl.

Finnegan was half-turned toward the taller man, gesturing intently as he walked. The priest was nodding. The boy and girl walked abreast behind them and they seemed to be more focused on the men in front of them than on the city. Finnegan held open the door of the Taberna Roja for the priest, then followed him inside. The novitiates stood with their backs to the tavern and faced the street, hands folded before them.

Hood ordered another iced coffee and waited. The novitiates spoke occasionally and more patrons went into the tavern. The sidewalks began to fill with people and the streets with cars. Police controlled the traffic. The pigeons, wings raised, skidded through the sky and into the cupolas of the Convento Betelhemitas. The globed boulevard lights came on along the zocalo though the fall evening had still not darkened.

An hour and eight minutes later Finnegan came from the tavern and once again held open the door for the priest. Hood wondered if the priest knew the little man as Mike Finnegan of L.A. or Father Joe Leftwich of Dublin, Ireland, or Mike Fix, mysterious tourist. Or all or none. Maybe this priest was a fake also, he thought. The two men short and tall walked east down Zaragoza and the unacknowledged novitiates fell in behind them. Hood paid and overtipped and eased off his chair and into the foot traffic on the sidewalk.

The entourage headed east along Zaragoza. Hood could see Mike up ahead on the other side of the street, dodging oncoming walkers, sometimes with one foot on the sidewalk and the other off the curb, his short legs working to keep up with the taller man. He kept looking up at the priest. Talking, talking, talking. The young people plodded along behind, scarcely looking around themselves, as if wearing blinders. Just past a small circle they all bore north on Victimas del 25 de Junio. Hood jaywalked through the thick traffic and fell in fifty feet behind them, with a knot of pedestrians, his hat and shades for cover. He felt the sweaty weight and scrape of his holster and.45 at the small of his back, an uncomfortable comfort.

Finnegan went east again on 16 de septiembre then north on M. Doblado. The street was narrow and the buildings were all two stories high, many of them residences, some of them crumbling away. On the upper floors Hood saw window openings with the glass long gone and tropical trees growing through from the inside. The street palms were skinny and their white insecticidal coats were dirty and thin. The streetlights were layered with flyers. Pigeons lined the paneless window frames, fretting and bobbing and fluttering up and back down.

They turned west at the next corner. Hood took his time approaching, saw no street sign. When he stepped into the old cobblestoned alley he saw Finnegan, a hundred feet away already, holding open an ornate wrought-iron gate. A fandango came through an upstairs window opposite the alley. He smelled baking bread. The priest and the novitiates waited. Hood turned away and set his hands on his hips like a puzzled tourist.

A moment later he crossed the alley. There was a panaderia with big windows and he stood looking in for a while at the loaves and rolls and the marked-down pastries from the day. He turned casually and glanced across the alley: all four people had gone through. The gate was black wrought iron, round at the top to fit the archway. No number. The small courtyard was overgrown with ficus and hibiscus with small yellow blooms. Through the foliage Hood saw the crooked graying limestone steps leading up to a wooden front door. The door was closed.

He walked the alley back the direction he’d come, past M. Doblado. He came to a small cafe called El Canario. It was painted a pale lime green and there were larger-than-life canaries rendered upon the wall in bright yellow. They sat on branches with their beaks raised as if in song. Hood took a sidewalk seat where he could see the gate. He drank an horchata and waited and drank another. The waitress was pretty and smiled at him.