The Jaguar (24 page)

“You can’t beat the 251.”

He took down one of the ELAM 251s and closed the closet door. He went back and took up the Hummingbird case and walked into the tracking room.

Through the window she watched him take the mic to the vocal booth and set the guitar outside an instrument booth. He waved her in. She stepped into the shimmering aural brightness of the tuned room. She could tell that this space had been designed to use the reflections and peaks of sound to best effect. She suspected that even a spoken voice would sound beautiful here and she could not restrain herself.

“I have to hear this room,” she said. Her words came out with dimension and specificity. Uncluttered, she thought. Bottom, top, middle. No noise. Then the room closed around them and they were gone.

“You must hear it with music.”

“It’s as good as the rooms in L.A.”

“I have stood in the Boston Symphony Hall.”

“My old church in Austin had really good acoustics.”

“I designed this room myself. I used mathematics and a computer program that is a room peak calculator. You cannot have a tracking room that peaks or builds up in the frequency. These result in key and pitch and this you do not want. What is incorrect must be tuned out and what is ideal must remain. There are materials and designs that are to reflect. And some that are to diffuse and some to absorb. But the goal is not to create death.”

“I think you mean deadness.”

“Yes, deadness. You want the correct reflections. And the correct
sonics. You must approximate…deadness. But not to create deadness total.”

She went to the Yamaha and brushed the keyboard lid with her fingers but did not lift it. An elaborate and beautiful accordion sat on the bench, gleaming ivory-and-black enamel with mother-of-pearl and gold inlays, and black straps of intricately tooled leather.

“Play only one note,” said Armenta.

She lifted the lid and struck middle C and listened to the note shimmer, then sustain and fade.

“I want you to write a song about me,” said Armenta. “I want you to describe the life of poverty that becomes wealth. By using the bravery and the hard work.”

“A
narcocorrido
.”

“The greatest
narcocorrido
ever written,
Veracruzana style
!”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Are you serious?
Why?
”

“Yes. Serious in this.”

“I’ve been kidnapped by you and half raped by your son. My husband has been beaten and you’re stealing a lot of our money. I’m pregnant and I’m terrified of you people. All of you. I won’t write for you. Terror does not write songs.”

He looked at her morosely. He walked to the accordion and laid a hand on it. “We make music to defeat terror.”

“We make music to express joy.”

“A life without joy needs music also.”

“I’m sorry for your life but I won’t write a song about it.”

“But I am not sorry. I do not regret. I want my life to be told. I want them to know who I was. And what this time was. And this place.”

“I won’t write for you.” She heard her words held fast by the fine
acoustics of the tracking room, and she heard the fear and anger in them.

“You have strong convictions and these I understand,” he said softly.

“I’m glad you understand.”

He eyed her with a cagey expression. “The studio would of course be yours if you wanted it. You can compose in your room or here. You may use the Hummingbird or the piano or both of them. You are to choose. I have pens and paper. Do you like the sheets with the staffs for composing? I have several small digital and tape recorders. If you would like a different guitar, you tell me what it is. I have some very old Martins that have magical properties, and some nice Gretsch hollow-bodies, and some exquisite Kirk Sand guitars from California. I have expensive five-string electrics for the open tunings of Keith, and I have a genuine Monteleone arch-top guitar. They would be very honored to be played. You know how they enjoy it. How only then are they alive. Perhaps you would be more happy here in the studio. It reminds you of other studios and the pleasures of music. It does not remind you of being a prisoner.”

“You don’t understand. You pretend to, but you refuse to, and this is an insult.”

“I understand but I try to persuade.”

“You can’t persuade me to write about you.”

“I will continue to try. For you to write about me you must be…
encantada.
”

“Enchanted? You do not enchant me. I’m the opposite of enchanted by you.”

“Not by me. By my accomplishments. You must have a great
impression
by them.”

“I am not impressed by hell.”

“Hell?”

“You. Saturnino. This whole place.”

He regarded her with a long stare. She saw no guile in it and no anger, but something stonier and less negotiable. Will? Nature? Character? Then he looked down at the accordion and touched it thoughtfully.

“Then this I will do. Enchant and impress. You will now please come with me.”

He nodded and motioned her back into the control room with some urgency. She walked out of the tracking room and turned when he had closed the heavy door behind him.

“Where?”

“I want you to see my accomplishments. The third floor.”

“That’s where the lepers live.”

“They appreciate my accomplishments. That is why they live there.”

“Accomplishments? I don’t understand.”

“What I have achieved.”

“They must be special if the elevator doesn’t even stop there. And if there’s no landing on the inside stairway.”

His look contained small amounts of joy and conspiracy. “So we take the elevator to the ground floor and we use the outside stairs, yes okay?”

T
HE OUTSIDE AIR WAS WEIGHTED
and cool but the breeze felt good against her skin. She hadn’t been outside since the attack, nearly three days ago. She saw no remnants of the Thursday night party, nothing of the stage or canopy, not a beer can or a roach or a cigarette butt. Small songbirds splashed in a pool of rainwater and a pig lay on its side in a wallow of hurricane mud. She glanced off toward the clearing where the vehicles had been parked that night and where no policeman or politician or reporter would help her. She saw Saturnino’s face on the rising glass of the SUV and felt a cold front shudder down her body.

The stairway to the third story began in a small walled-off patio. The entrance to the patio was through a white plaster archway featuring an elaborate gate made of stainless steel. In the middle of the gate a steel sun either rose or set, the slats of its light fanning up and out to the edges of the frame.

“At first the gate, it was made of black iron. They did not like it. They wanted the hope of light, not the darkness they live in. So I had this made. It reflects sunlight even on a day of clouds. It turns moonlight into sunlight.”

“Are they contagious?”

“They are treated by a very good doctor. He is here once a week. They are not contagious. But do not go close to them.”

“Why?”

“It is offensive to them. They are proud. They do not want to be near us. It is not true that pieces of their bodies fall off. That is a popular myth. But sometimes there are amputations.”

Armenta opened the gate with a conventional key, not a plastic card. He slowly pulled it open, the hinges creaking and the stainless steel sun flashing dully in the low light of evening. He waited.

She entered the patio and stood on the cobalt blue tiles and looked at the clean white plaster of the archway, and at the steps leading up to the third floor. The steps were limestone, thick and wide, the slabs fitting together so tightly that the entire stairway appeared to have been chiseled from one piece of stone. They looked like they had been worn smooth by the centuries and would be worn smoother by many more.

“The stairway once was part of a Mayan ruin near Kohunlich,” said Armenta. “It is believed to have been an observatory. The man who built this castle discovered it buried in the jungle. He had the stairway collected and reassembled here. It was built in approximately twelve hundred, A.D.”

“Interesting history,” she said.

“We are interesting history also. That is why I want you to put us in music. So we will be remembered.”

“I will not write music about you.”

“Would you write music about hating me?”

“Hate can’t write music.”

“Fearing me?”

“Fear can’t write music either.”

“You are wrong. Music is our protest against hate and fear. You must protest. You must write music about the horrors you have endured here in what you call hell. How else will the world know?”

“Your words only make sense on the outside.”

“Will you write music about Felix and the leopards? Who will remember him if you don’t?”

“Stop. You’re just adding confusion to savagery.”

He looked at her evenly, nodding. He shut the gate and the lock clicked into place. He pointed to the west-facing wall and Erin saw the scores of small dark geckos. They looked like commas but they moved every few seconds as they took the mosquitoes.

Erin climbed the steps behind Armenta. They stood at an arched wooden door with wrought-iron straps and a speakeasy with its bars festooned with fanciful copper butterflies. “They will only open the door for the doctors, nurses, one teacher, and for me. No one else.”

“Can they go to other floors?”

“They do not use other floors.”

“Are they allowed?”

“Have you seen them on other floors?”

Armenta knocked. A long moment later the panel behind the butterflies slid open and Erin could see the twinkle of eyes watching them from the darkness inside.

—Benjamin. Give us a few moments.

—You have all the time you need. We will wait.

The panel slid shut.

“They need to prepare for us. The temperature will be cold for you. Because they wear the long clothes. They do not like having their faces and bodies visible to themselves or other people.”

“Why do they wear only white?”

“Black made them look like demons.”

A long minute later a latch bolt slid from its strike plate, then a deadbolt, and another. The door opened and Erin was standing face-to-face with a woman wearing a loose white dress, her face hidden beneath a gauzy white rebozo. Recessed in the folds was a healthy
looking young face but the hand that held open the door had only a gnarled foreshortened stump of thumb.

Armenta spoke in rapid Spanish.

—Good evening, Nestra. This woman is my guest. I want to show her some of my accomplishments.

—We’re always happy to see you, Benjamin. We heard that Erin McKenna would be coming and now, look, it is true.

She smiled and told Erin how much she had enjoyed her songs with Los Jaguars and of course the ones she performed solo also.

Erin thanked her in Spanish and the woman held open the door and stepped back to let them in.

The foyer was cool and penumbral, with the late evening light slanting in from a high casement window. The floor was of ceramic tile, white-blossomed roses on blue backgrounds. The woman shut the door behind them, turned the latch bolt and slid the two deadbolts back into place.

Erin could smell faint bleach and lemons. The acoustics eddied sharply here, suggesting high ceilings and open rooms beyond. They went down a hallway lit by electric sconces. Nestra walked ahead of them, then turned to Armenta and nodded and pushed through a wooden door. Erin could see past her to a short hall that opened to a spacious room with walls made of dull green bricks. The door closed and Nestra was gone.

“Thirteen adults and eight children live here,” said Armenta. “A teacher for the children comes. The doctors and nurses. When I was hidden by the lepers they kept me for one week. The only safe way for me to leave was by the ocean. I was placed on a banana boat returning to Salvador with a load of corn and oranges. I slept on deck and was bitten by a bat, but I did not get sick. An eyelash viper hidden in the bananas bit me on the finger, but I did not die. I had pain. The water made me sick. I stayed in Salvador for almost a year. Eleven months, thirteen days.
You never forget such things. Anya. I thought only of her, but I did what I had to do to survive. I had no children then. I made friends there and these friends had hundreds of American guns left over from their civil war. The military was disbanded out of fear they would try to rule the country. Thousands of guns. And these, of course, were badly needed in Mexico. In those days there was no Gulf Cartel. We were young and we had very little money. But I was able to buy the guns on credit from my friends. Because of trust. I repaid them very generously.”

“Rags to riches.”

“Rags? I don’t understand.”

“From poverty to riches.”

“That should be part of what you write about me.”

“Except that I won’t.”

“No. Sadly.” He ran a hand through his tangle of gray-black hair and looked at her with that beaten expression. But she caught the mischief in his eyes and she wanted to strike him.

They stepped into the great room. It had the high ceiling that Erin had sensed from the foyer, and a large open fireplace filled not with flames but with a display of cut tropical flowers. An enormous chandelier with electric candles hung from the center of a domed ceiling ringed with life-sized paintings of the Saints, each peering down from his or her own bower.

Erin felt observed. She saw that two of the walls were made of the same unattractive dull green bricks she’d seen in Nestra’s suite and she realized they were not walls at all but bundles of cash stacked against the walls. Ten feet high, she guessed. Twelve?

Next to the fireplace was a very large-screen television playing Mexican fútbol. There were three men watching the game and when they sensed that visitors had entered the room they pulled their white balaclavas over their heads then turned to look at them. They rose crookedly and bowed to Armenta and he to them.

—How are our Red Wolves doing?

—It is tied at two, answered one of them.

—Please relax. I will be showing Mrs. McKenna some of what I have collected.