The Third Rule Of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (25 page)

Horse and rider, led by Gloria Teresa’s attendant, made their way up the wide wooden thoroughfare and into the tent, their entrance marred only by the steed’s decision to lift his tail midway for a quick dump, thus confirming my opinion of his kind.

I stuck close to my adopted family, who moved inside with the rest of the crowd and positioned themselves at one end of the tent. We held our collective breath as Gloria Teresa slid off the horse and into the arms of her escort. He staggered slightly but successfully deposited her onto the ground, to huge applause. I ducked behind the crowd, trying to keep a low profile.

More guests pushed inside and pooled around a large dance floor, in front of the dais where the band had set up. A gigantic, three-tiered cake, decorated with frothy flowers and glittering candies, took up most of a table next to the dais. Set beside it, under a glass dome, was a slightly disturbing porcelain doll with frozen eyes, black sausage curls, and a diamond tiara, dressed in a white gown identical to Gloria Teresa’s and looking eerily like her.

I scanned the room. Goodhue, Chuy Dos, and the couple I assumed were the girl’s parents were downing shots of tequila at a bar in one corner. The bandleader again tapped on her mike.

“Señoras y señores, a special treat by Gloria Teresa, and her
chambelanes!”
The drummer rolled out a fanfare of sorts, and all the escorts moved to the middle of the dance floor, arranged themselves in a circle, and dropped to one knee, their heads bowed. Gloria Teresa waited until the guitars started up, then made her way to their center of the circle, measuring her steps to match the three-four time. The choreographed number that followed was part waltz, part theater, with random curtsies and bows thrown in for good measure, as Gloria Teresa spun from boy to boy. After a few minutes, the other girls joined in, but Gloria Teresa was the star of this show. She was a surprisingly graceful dancer, and her eyes sparkled. She finished with a final deep curtsey, to thunderous applause. Her companions left and the woman in green approached her daughter with a pair of white satin high heels.

“Let’s all welcome Gloria Teresa’s beautiful mama!”

The crowd burst into warm applause. Clancy and I had guessed right.

Next to the tall, elegant sea goddess, Gloria Teresa quickly regressed into an awkward child. As she struggled with her voluminous skirt, a slight frown creased her mother’s brow.

I willed her to succeed.
You can do it, Gloria Teresa. I know you can.

Finally, she managed to kick off her ballet flats and slip into the heels.

“And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for!” the band leader announced. “Señorita Gloria Teresa and her papa will perform their father-daughter waltz.”

The man with the blood-red rose in his lapel strode across the dance floor smiling and took his daughter in his arms. I tried to push a little closer, but no one was budging. I craned my head to get a better look, but I could only catch glimpses of father and daughter as they spun around the dance floor in tight, careful circles.

My heart opened, warming at the sight of this twirling pair, and a second girl, a nine-year-old redhead, hurtled her way into my consciousness, propelled by trust and roller blades. I remembered, too, the light that blazed in Bill’s face whenever his twins, Lola and Maude, ran into the room.

Maybe if I had a daughter, I’d be okay as a father.

The couple circled closer, and I registered two very different smiles, one sweet, one slashed by a brutal scar. My heart chilled unexpectedly.

I know this man
, I thought.

He maneuvered his daughter to a spot near where I stood and for a split second, looked directly at me. I took an awkward step backward—and felt the hard muzzle of a gun pressing between my shoulder blades.

“Do not make a sound, señor,” I heard, as strong hands gripped my arms. There were two of them. They steered me outside, the gun barrel incentive enough not to cause a fuss. The sky was now dark and peppered with stars. Some of the party guests had already made their way onto the roller coaster, and ecstatic shrieks erupted overhead. A sharp
pop
, like the report of a revolver, made my heart stop, until I heard three more and placed the sound. A partygoer was exploding balloons with darts at one of the game booths.

I craned my neck around and saw that I was in the meaty grip of Chuy Dos’s two enforcers. There was no sign of Clancy as they dragged me down a set of steep wooden steps to the beach, then pulled me underneath the pier. The dank air smelled of dead fish and urine. The ocean was maybe five yards away, and inky waves slapped at the peeling wooden pylons.

“I come in peace,” I told them. Thug One’s response was to shove me against a wooden pillar, while Thug Two patted me down. He pulled out my phone and slung it sideways into the shallow seawater.

“Really? My iPhone?”

Next, he removed my shoes and socks, and tossed them into the oily scum. Now I was out about $700.

“Tell Carnaté I expect reimbursement,” I told them. They exchanged a startled glance. So I had guessed right—not that being right helped me any. Thug One bound my wrists behind my back with nylon rope, then moved a couple of steps away and took off his suit jacket. His avid smile was just enough warning. I braced myself.

They proceeded to take turns landing blows, as peals of delight rained down on us from the gyrating rides overhead. After what felt like hours of assault but was probably only minutes, to my relief a phone buzzed. Thug One answered it, listened, then muttered something in Spanish to Thug Two. By now, my lip had swollen to twice its normal size, and my left ear felt like it was made of sea sponge.

The thugs grabbed me by the shoulders. Powerless, I felt like a terrified toddler locked in a nightmare between a pair of giant kidnappers—only this nightmare was real. As they dragged me out from under the pier, my bare heels dug parallel trenches in the sand. I hung like dead weight between the two men. I wasn’t going to make things easy for them, not after they’d roughed me up and tossed my shoes and phone.

They strong-armed me across the damp, packed sand to a beach cabaña close to the shore. The rest of the beach was deserted. They shoved me inside the cabaña, and suddenly I was face to face with Carnaté, reclining like a Roman emperor on a striped canvas chaise lounge that took up half the room. He had discarded his tux and tie and exchanged his starched white shirt for a short-sleeved Hawaiian one, black with hot-pink flamingos. He still wore dark glasses, though night had long since fallen. Two battery-operated lanterns cast sharp shadows across his face. An open bottle of chilled Pacifico beer was sweating beads of condensation on a white plastic side table. I couldn’t blame it. Next to the bottle lay an ominous companion: a Glock 17, its barrel snugly fitted with a silencer.

Carnaté waved an arm toward the only other piece of furniture, a low, blue canvas beach chair, its seat slung like a hammock between wooden arms.

“Sit,” he ordered.

I lowered myself awkwardly onto the chair, my knees almost touching my chin. I winced; my bruises were beginning to sing to me. I peered up at Carnaté, again feeling like a small child trapped in a world of big people. I was unarmed, trussed up, and aching from top to bottom. But I still had all my teeth—and I could still do battle with my mind.

I chuckled.

“You find this situation funny?” he snapped.

“It’s the look,” I said. I cocked my head. “I can’t decide if you’re reaching for Caligula or surfer-dude.”

He said nothing, but a ripple of irritation passed across his face. Score one for me.

He pointed to the beer. “
Cerveza?
”

I shook my head. “None for me thanks, but please help yourself. With a wife like that, you need to keep up your strength.”

Another ripple of anger. I changed tactics. I wanted to keep him off balance but not push him to the point where he reached for that gun.

“So, I take it you like meat?”

This time, Carnaté merely seemed startled. “Meat?” he said.

“Yeah. Your name’s Carnaté, right?”

He burst out laughing, and just as I realized I had made a huge mistake, he pulled off his dark glasses.

My world imploded.

The lighter hair, the scar, even the slimmer body—they were all decoys, and they had done their job well. But the flat, cold eyes? Those I would know anywhere.
You can’t be here. You’re dead.
In my dream, I had been addressing my father. But sometimes even lucid dreams get confused. Chaco Morales,
El Gato
of the nine lives, had made expert use of chemicals and a plastic surgeon’s knife to buy himself at least one more.

“Carnaté,” I repeated, realizing. “Incarnated.”

“Yes,” he said. “Or in my case, reincarnated.” He spread his arms. “I came back, amigo.”

I took a deep breath, thoughts darting around my skull like frantic moths looking for a way out.

“You didn’t think I’d miss my own daughter’s
quince anño
, did you?” he said. “What kind of father would that make me?”

I stayed quiet, as I tried to work myself free of the bind I was in, mentally as well as physically.

“I saw you at the back of the church,” Chaco went on. “Goodhue said you wouldn’t show up, that you were following another lead entirely, but I knew better.”

“The police know I’m here,” I lied.

“No, they don’t,” he said. He picked up the Glock and fondled it, like a favorite toy. My throat closed. Then he put the gun back down again. “Let’s talk, shall we?”

I finally hit on a ploy—pathetic, but better than nothing.

“In that case, I think I will have that beer,” I said. “But you’re going to have to free my hands, unless you want to feed me my bottle like a baby.”

Chaco rolled to his feet easily and stepped outside. I heard voices. So the two gorillas were still there, keeping watch. Too bad. I struggled to sit up but couldn’t maneuver out of the chair. Thug Two followed Chaco back inside. He was holding an opened switchblade.

He crossed to my chair and tipped me forward in a rough embrace, as he reached around behind me to slice through the nylon rope binding my wrists. My nostrils filled with his rancid body odor, a mixture of stale garlic and stupidity. As the blood rushed into my numb hands, multiple pricks of pain caused my fingers to flex. Thug Two grunted and pushed me back into the chair, then nodded to Chaco and returned to his post outside.

Chaco handed me a beer from a cooler next to his chaise lounge. I struggled forward to take the bottle, my hands still tingling.

I nodded toward the Glock. “Hasn’t anybody told you that silencers are against the law?”

His turn to chuckle. “When they kill me, I don’t think it will be for owning a silencer.”

“When?”

“Do you know the life expectancy of a man in my line of business?” he said. “The surgeon did well to make me look so young, but I recently passed the age of forty-five. In narco-syears, that makes me at least a hundred and fifty.”

He took a deep pull of beer. I did the same, taking a moment to enjoy the yeasty burst of what might turn out to be my last one ever.

“Interesting you can recognize that truth,” I said. In spite of myself, I’ve always been fascinated by the inner workings of a genius, evil or not. And whatever else Chaco was, he was brilliant in his chosen field.

“The bargain is implicit,” he explained. “We live the life of myths and legends—in my country, ballads are written, films are made about men like me—but our time on this earth is short and always, always terminates in prison or the grave. As for me, when it comes to that, I will make sure to die a spectacular death, out in the open, rather than behind bars, like an animal.”

“Death by cop, in a hail of bullets,” I said.

He eyed me. “Something like that.” His smile was more like a grimace, sinister and cruel, or maybe that was the scar talking. “For one such as me, there is no other way to live but this—close to the flame that eventually must destroy me. In that sense, you and I are alike. Otherwise, you would not be sitting here across from me, inviting death.”

A swell of cheers reached our cabaña, as the band returned to the dais and began a new set. This mariachi song was more old-school. Chaco tapped one hand on his thigh, keeping time.

“I’d offer to do a hat dance with you,” I said, “but I lack rhythm.”

Chaco laughed again. “See, this is why I like you. Everyone else is always so afraid to joke with me.” He finished off his beer and pulled a new one from the cooler. “Another for you?”

I shook my head. He saluted me with the bottle before drinking deeply. I felt like I had entered a fourth dimension of reality. I was sitting in a cabaña on a beach in Santa Monica, California, sharing beer and conversation with one of the FBI’s most wanted men—a cartel kingpin, a titan in the global drug market, whose annual earnings probably figured in the billions, counted out in laundered dollars and paid in buckets of blood. In Mexico alone, Chaco and his equals had claimed more than 50,000 lives just in the past five or six years, not to mention the damage caused to their customers here in the United States. Yet nothing seemed to slow them down. I faced a monster not only surviving the global recession but thriving during it, by being both ruthless and nimble.

A man everyone assumed was dead.

Well, if I was going to die at the end of this conversation, at least I would die better informed. One thing I knew for sure—men like Chaco did not succeed in a vacuum. The Buddha says the root of all suffering is our innate desire to avoid pain and cling to happiness. As long as that desire exists, ambitious people will make money fulfilling it.

As if reading my mind, Chaco said, “This country you live in is insatiable. More, more, more, always more. Do you know how much I spent on Gloria Teresa’s fiesta? Almost two hundred thousand dollars!” He shrugged. “Do you think it is accidental that the world’s biggest provider of drugs and the world’s hungriest consumers just happen to share borders? Porfirio Diaz, my country’s president in the last century, had it right: ‘
Pobre Mexico
—’
”
He caught himself and switched to English. “‘Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.’”