The Jaguar (25 page)

—Nice to meet you.

—It is my pleasure to meet you, she said.

—I am a fan of your music. I know no English. Can you write some songs in Spanish?

She sensed Armenta’s gaze but refused to return it.

—I have written in Spanish, but not recorded.

—Can you record them for us who do not understand English?

—Do not ask the artist to work, said Armenta. She came here on pleasure, not business. But perhaps she will consider to write in Spanish someday soon.

“Pleasure?”
With this she gave Armenta the most withering look she owned, borne of the Celtic blood and passion that ran through her, a look that Bradley called “The Firing Squad.” It was utterly sincere. She thought, not for the first time in the last few minutes, of the Cowboy Defender taped uncomfortably on her upper left calf. So easily retrieved. So easily operated. Armenta’s moment of surprise would be the last moment of his life. Firing squad is right.

—Or perhaps not, said Armenta. Enjoy the game.

They walked along the stacks of cash. She could see that the bills were all American and the denominations ranged from five dollars to one hundred. Each brick was approximately three inches thick, neat, and bound by three rubber bands, left, right and center. Up this close she could smell the money through the bleach and lemons. Bradley liked the smell of cash and had more than once joked of making a cologne of it. A crazy wave of homesickness broke over her, because these bills had been printed and earned and spent in the place she so badly wanted to return to, and because she might not
see again her deceitful, money-loving husband who so loved the smell of them.

From the periphery of her vision Erin caught the three lepers looking at them. One arranged his balaclava to more completely hide his face. The fútbol announcer spoke in full-auto bursts and the TV crowd roared and the lepers turned back to the action.

“It is difficult to protect money in Mexico,” Armenta said. “For this you need the cooperation of banks and our banks are not trustworthy. In ten years, maybe. Twenty. I have friends in banking and when they become influential, things will change. Grand Cayman, yes, is good now. Switzerland, maybe. It is best to keep the money near you. In the names of others I have purchased land and homes and businesses. Farms and ranches, aircraft and boats. Government employees and many politicians, of course. But mostly, I keep it here. No one here in the Castillo has seen this except for you and the lepers. Everyone else thinks they can get leprosy just by breathing the air of the third floor. Mexicans are very superstitious. I can protect my money in banks, or with guns, or with superstition. So I use the most economical. In this room there are fourteen millions of American dollars. There are exactly eighty million more dollars throughout this level and buried beneath the tiger and lions in the zoo. And millions of pesos, of course, and Colombian currency and yen and euros and English pounds. I have other properties in Mexico with much more money hidden in them. It is best not to have all the eggs in the one basket.”

He studied the stacks of cash for a long moment. “They are not interesting or beautiful to look at.”

“But you’ll skin me alive for a million more?”

He looked at her with strangely distant eyes and she was suddenly frightened even more than before, more than she ever thought she could be. His tone of voice, which had always been resonant and
heartfelt, even when endorsing ugliness and violence, now sounded detached, impersonal, fated. “The million dollars is a gesture of respect from your husband. We are all in this world together and he must know how to cooperate in it. The money is not what I want most. The money represents my power. And yes, I must let Saturnino skin you, as promised to you and your husband, or my power is false and my words are nothing. For the same reason the reporter must be given to the leopards. It is justice as a form of nature.”

“And the pain you cause?”

“I would pray that Charlie Bravo is successful.”

“You would pray, or I should?”

“You must. My prayers would be only an abomination. But I have made peace with this.”

“If you have so much power, fly me home. You don’t need the money from me. The rest of what you say is just macho bullshit.”

He looked at her and a smile brushed his face. “Do you know this courier? Charlie Bravo?”

“No.”

“I suspect that is not his name. I suspect also that he may be an agent of the ATF. I suspect that he might be one of the ATF agents who murdered Gustavo. I have very good sources, all over Mexico.”

Openly suspicious, he studied her reaction. Without taking his eyes off her he pulled a cell phone from his belt. He had to look away to push the buttons. He handed it to her, and she saw the poor resolution picture of Charlie Hood getting into a vehicle in what looked like a parking lot. She recognized the Tijuana Jai Alai Palace in the background. She handed it back to him.

“Nope. Sorry. This is the man my life depends upon now?”

“The courier. From your husband. You don’t know him?”

“I’ve never seen him before in my life. Answer me, Señor Armenta: are you going to fly me home?”

“If the money arrives on time I will fly you home. And if it does not, then all is as I promised.”

“If I asked for mercy would you give it to me?”

“I will accept the one million dollars and nothing else.”

Erin felt the gun taped to her leg. So be it, she thought. “I need to use the bathroom.”

“You were in your room only minutes ago.”

“Please?”

“Of course, Mrs. McKenna.”

Armenta walked her to a guest bath down the hall that Nestra had used. Erin turned on the light and locked the door and ran the tap and hiked her left foot onto the marble countertop. She unwrapped the Cowboy Defender and stood and thought: now you have to stand on your own two feet, girl. The gun was small and heavy and the rounded butt fit easily in her hand. She pushed it halfway into a shallow pocket in her dress, draped the shawl to cover it, and pulled it out and worked it back in again and wiggled it back and forth to make sure it would stay put as she walked. If the hammer was caught snug up under the pocket hem then it seemed okay. But what if it cocked itself and went off? She made sure the shawl covered it. Just barely. Where should she aim?
Head if you can, heart if you can’t.

She took a deep breath and knelt down and vomited into the toilet. Then again. She felt sick all the way to her soul. When the retching stopped she wadded the medical tape in a ball and wrapped it in toilet paper and put it in the trashcan. In the mirror she saw her face, pale and glistening, her pupils black pits.

A
RMENTA WAS WAITING FOR HER
when she came out. She forced herself to look at him and noticed that he had tried to comb his hair.

“Come see some of my other accomplishments.” He turned to lead the way and she followed with her hands folded in front of her, inches from the gun, but this was an awkward way to walk and she couldn’t shoot him in the back anyway. You didn’t do that. She had just let her hands swing free to walk naturally when he turned around and looked at her. He had a suspicious expression on his face, but said nothing.

He led her through a spacious kitchen where two white-clad women were preparing a meal. She wondered if, dressed like they were, she could pass as one of them, just long enough to make it from the Castle to the cenote. What if she found one of them on the path? Wouldn’t she have to stop, and speak, then be discovered? Here in the kitchen their faces were almost hidden by their gauzy rebozos but their eyes smiled at Armenta as he paused to lift a pot lid and peruse the simmering chicken. Erin thought she might get sick again so she focused her attention on the chains of garlic cloves that hung in the opening of a pass-through. Garlic, she thought, save me.

She followed him down a short cool hallway to another room. Through the shawl she touched the gun but could not draw it. He
turned on the lights and Erin stepped in. The lights were fluorescent, jittery and sharp, and the smell of marijuana was clear. The room was large but unfurnished except for several large tables that were piled with larger bricks of several colors. Beneath the tables were more stacks. Against the walls still more. These bundles were roughly the size of shoeboxes and they were wrapped in different colors of plastic.

“Are you sick?” he asked.

“I feel good.”

“You are white and perspiring.”

“I am pregnant and feeling it.”

“My wife was sick every day with Saturnino.”

She denied the nausea. “I’m sorry he turned into a monster. No, that’s none of my business. I’m sorry. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“He has visions now. The
curandera
gave him scorpion poison mixed with chocolate and goat’s milk. To make the visions stop.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“Edema of the brain. He ate one entire box of children’s cereal this morning, soaked in tequila.”

“I’m sorry, but…well, I thank you too. For saving me from him.”

He looked at her uncertainly and pointed to a table. “Here, look and see this.”

Erin looked down on a pallet-sized mountain of bundles wrapped in blue plastic with lightning bolts on them. There were bundles in yellow plastic with bumblebee designs and the word “BUZZ” on them. Beside these were blue packs with Homer Simpson’s face and below his face it said, in Spanish, “I’m Getting Smuggled—What of It, Man?” The next bundles were packed in clear plastic and she could see the swirls of green herb compressed within.

There was another, smaller great room in this part of the flat and Erin saw the hooded children sitting on the floor by the big TV watching
a Disney video, and the women just now bringing plates of food to the dining table. This room too had a dramatic chandelier and a high ceiling but the paintings were not of saints but of Mayans and jaguars and birds and snakes. They walked past two men playing chess, and in their white hoods and loose white clothing they looked like ghosts or angels but when one of them looked at her, Erin saw that his nose and lips were gone and only some of his bottom teeth remained, staunch as headstones. She felt herself rising as if levitated and she knew she was fainting. One foot in front of the other. I will be there, Bradley. I will be there. Touch the Cowboy Defender. Saint Cowboy Defender.

A young woman came in from one of the hallways that led into the great room. She moved with an easy grace and she wore the white dress of the lepers but not the rebozo. She looked cautiously at Erin, then walked over and sat with the children in front of the TV.

Armenta motioned Erin toward them and led her over. The woman stood as they approached. She was very pretty and her face was pale and smooth and peaceful. Her hair was honey blond, wavy and fine.

“Erin McKenna,” he said. “This is Dulce Kopf.”

“Very nice to meet you,” said Erin.

“I heard your performance from my room. I had the window open to the rain and wind, so I could hear you. I hope you are enjoying your stay.”

“It’s been unusual.”

“I must get back to the children. There is always so much to be done with children.”

“Of course.”

“It’s what Gustavo would have wanted.”

“Oh?”

“We were young then. The Americans killed him without a reason or a word.”

She glided back among the youngsters and took her place among them. Armenta signaled her and they walked down another hallway.

“Does she have leprosy?”

“No. She feels good with them. This I cannot explain. She has not been out of the Castle since Gustavo. Two years. I try to do what she wants.”

“I feel dizzy and bad.”

“We are almost finished.”

By then her sense of direction had failed. She had no idea even of north or south, or which part of the floor they had already seen and which part remained new. The next room was filled with bricks of cocaine and the next with heroin and another with methamphetamine. There was another room they could only walk halfway into because the rest of it was filled with bundles of American cash, floor-to-ceiling, taking over almost the entire space, denying them entry. In each of these rooms guns lay about like housecats, not organized and not stowed in any orderly way, mostly just sprawled on the drugs and cash or propped in corners or laid out on the floor where there was room. Many of them were gold or inset with gold, and some had jewels and mysterious inscriptions, and some had images of Malverde, Patron Saint of Narcos, etched onto the butts or stocks. She was pretty sure she was looking at handguns and combat shotguns and assault rifles, as well as exotic sniper guns and grenade launchers and shoulder-launched rockets. She’d seen them in movies.

Erin stood in the doorway, weak with fear, inhaling a world of cash and drugs and guns. She felt the Cowboy Defender ready in its place but it seemed a hundred miles away.

“And my favorite of all the rooms,” said Armenta, walking quickly down another hallway now, turning to wave her on.

He pushed open a door and found a light and Erin stepped in. At first she thought she’d walked into the New World before Columbus.
The room was crowded with jade statues and masks and mosaics, quartz carvings of gigantic frogs and strange gods, a huge stone crocodile and an enormous limestone shark carved in meticulous detail, and hundreds of pots and calendars and tablets covered with Mayan writing. Wooden carvings of birds and monkeys and fish and turtles hung from the ceiling. But there were also tables heaped with modern brooches and watches and rings and earrings and necklaces, and there were wooden bins of loose emeralds and diamonds and rubies, some still uncut, and strings of pearls draped through the shutter slats, and chains of gold and silver that had fallen from the slats and were now heaped upon the floor like something that housecleaning would have to deal with, and crystal vases of loose cultured pearls and freshwater and small black pearls. On the floor stood small golden humanlike figurines and more circular golden calendars, and there were silver suns the size of dinner plates leaning against the walls, and Erin saw a silver jackal standing nearly life-sized, its open jaws draped with thick golden chains, and she saw a silver coiled cobra with its head raised and its hood flared, and a flock of jeweled silver birds sitting on a rod fixed above one of the windows. Most of the things were New World creations but she recognized pieces that came from Asia and Africa and the Middle East and Europe and Polynesia. Plunder from around the world, she thought, the treasure of everywhere.