T. Parker: The Jaguar

An hour later, just before eight, a black SUV pulled up near the gate. It was new and gleaming and the windows were blacked out and the header growled softly as the engine idled. Hood saw the novitiates step into the alley, followed by the gaunt priest. The girl got in, then the boy, the priest, and Mike. Hood watched the short leg and shiny little shoe pull inside, then the door clunk shut.

Hood ordered a beer and a shrimp cocktail. An hour and a half later he walked back toward his hotel.

For the next two days this pattern repeated: Finnegan and his guests arrived at Taberna Roja in the early evening. They left a little over one hour later and walked back to the alley off of M. Doblado. On the first of these two days Owens Finnegan was with them. She wore loose, unflattering clothes and she stayed close to Mike, holding his arm in a familial way, ignoring the priest and novitiates as if they offended her. On the second day she was gone.

Hood varied his surveillance as best he could and only once did Finnegan appear to look at him at all. This was on Tuesday, the second evening, on Victimas del 25 de Junio. The look was brief and from some distance, and Hood had his hat down low and his sunglasses on. A few minutes later Finnegan and the others went through the gate and Hood sat at El Canario and talked to Josie for one hour, looking past her down the alley with a rudeness he could not avoid. The black SUV arrived at its usual time and Mike and his friends boarded. When it grumbled away down the alley Hood changed from horchata to beer and asked for another shrimp cocktail.

— Josie, do you know a good locksmith?

— I know one who is fast and cheap. I used him a year ago.

The next day when Finnegan and priest entered the Taberna Roja, Hood called Roberto Acuna, the locksmith, and explained that he’d somehow lost his keys and was now locked out of his own home. He said that Josie at El Canario had recommended him highly and he wondered if Roberto was available immediately, because he had an event to attend at the Naval Museum. Hood said he was already a little late. He described the alley off of M. Doblado, which Roberto was familiar with.

Twenty minutes later Roberto opened the gate with a universal key. They stepped into the courtyard and walked past the blooming hibiscus and the ficus and palms and climbed the rock steps. The big battered wooden door to the apartment proved more difficult but after a minute of patient exploration and repetition the door swung open.

Hood stepped inside and saw the hat rack in the foyer and he set his Panama on it with the others. The foyer light was on.

— Thank you. How much?

— Two hundred pesos.

— Here. And a few extra for you.

— Thank you. Do you want a receipt?

— No. I don’t need one.

— Where did you lose the keys?

— If I knew they wouldn’t be lost.

— This is very true! I can cut you new keys in just a few minutes. In case you don’t find the old ones. And if you don’t, perhaps it would be wise to have new locks.

— I have spare keys here at home. And I’m in quite a hurry. The event at the Naval Museum.

Roberto looked past Hood into the apartment. He picked up his toolbox and Hood shook his hand and shut the door and checked his watch: half an hour.

He stepped into the main room. The floor tiles were worn and the area rugs were old and the tall windows stood open. Iron grates protected the windows from entry and the heavy faded drapes shifted slightly in the breeze. The ceiling was highand a fan moved slowly. On the walls were paintings, dark and important looking, of naval battles between sailing ships. There was a painting of the Taberna Roja. They were unsigned. An easel stood before one of the windows, a vertical canvas balanced upright. It was an unfinished view of Veracruz through that same window and its grate, with a broad thin swatch of the Gulf of Mexico in the background, and it made Hood feel imprisoned. Double louvered doors opened on a balcony and through the slats he saw the air-conditioning unit and the rain-stained stanchions of the parapet and the wrought-iron spikes arranged in a sunburst pattern to keep intruders out. The room smelled of standing saltwater and rock.

The kitchen was small and neat and sparsely equipped. In the small refrigerator he saw tortillas and fruit juices, eggs and paper-wrapped wares from a carniceria, and an open pack of peanut-butter creme cookies. On the counter was a somewhat dated cordless phone, no answering machine.

The hardwood flooring of the hallway creaked. He looked into a bedroom on the left. It was simply furnished with a twin bed and chest of drawers, a wash basin with a mirror. A world map was tacked to one wall but that was the only decoration. The bed was unmade, with two pillows and the sheets thrown back. A tripod stood in the middle of the room, legs fully extended. There was nothing attached to it. He checked his watch.

The bedroom on the right was the master. Hood walked in and caught the scent of aftershave or cologne, faint and musky. The room was spacious and the shutters were closed and when Hood flipped the switch the lights fluttered on, but they were dim and weak against the evening. He saw the neatly made twin bed and the three stacks of books beside it and the nightstand with more books and a reading light. Hood glanced at the titles and recognized only some of the languages. The bath was small and beautifully tiled. The sink was a hollow oval carved from marble and set upon a limestone counter. Beside it stood a hair brush and a can of shave cream and a swank three-bladed razor and in a tall mug leaned an upright toothbrush. Hood broke off some toilet paper and wiped the razor cartridge and the toothbrush, then folded the paper on itself and pushed it into a pocket. In the wastebasket by the toilet he found a length of dental floss and this he looped into a neat coil and wrapped in toilet paper then put into his pocket also. He looked at his watch: twenty-six minutes to go.

The hallway ended at a stairway leading up. Hood climbed lightly on the stone until he was standing in the open doorway of a large half-story. He smelled the dank stink of birds and heard cooing and across the room saw the tall coop that stretched along one entire wall. The high casement windows over the birds were open for sunshine and ventilation and the waning daylight caught the dust motes. The pigeons studied Hood in their bewildered, one-eye-at-a-time manner. One of them sat atop the coop and Hood saw the canister affixed to its leg.

Three of the walls were lined with bookshelves heavy with volumes. The walls above the shelves were hung with swords and lances, clubs, battle knives, primitive firearms and instruments of torture. There were rusted rings bolted to the wall, laced with chains and shackles.

In one corner was a leather chair and ottoman with a reading lamp on a stand beside them. In the middle of the room stood a banquet-sized rough-hewn table with a laptop computer closed down and material strewn over every other available inch: printed papers, sketches, stacks of yellow legal pads, magazines, compact discs, magnifiers, stacks of maps, cans filled with pencils and pens and scissors. And of course more books in English and Spanish and other languages unrecognized by Hood.

Under the table there were half a dozen wooden orange crates with their trademark colorful labels. Some of the crates housed more weapons and dire instruments, and these looked more Mesoamerican than European-made mostly of stone and wood. Other crates contained yellowed rolls of paper, and others what looked like notebooks and scrapbooks.

He looked down at an old wooden chair on ivory casters and saw that the casters had ground a long shallow trough around the table. It was easy to picture Mike sitting there, rolling about from task to task, now to the computer, now around to the sketch of, well, what exactly was it a sketch of?