The Jaguar

18

Father Edgar Ciel keyed his way into Erin’s room that evening and gently pulled the door shut behind him. “You asked to see me.”

“Yes, thank you. Please come in and sit.”

Ciel was a tall man, though slender, and he crossed the room with an angular grace, watching her closely as he passed her to sit in the old armchair. He wore a priest’s short-sleeve black shirt with the white stiff collar and black jacket, pants and shoes. His crucifix was large and silver. There was no gun on his hip that Erin could see and she wondered if in all of her trauma and exhaustion that first day she had only imagined it. He was pale. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses his eyes were blue and luminous.

“I want you to ask the Catholic Church to intervene on my behalf,” she said.

“The Vatican is a bureaucracy,” he said with a small smile. His voice was soft and clear and unhurried.

“It’s supposed to be the greatest church in the world. How complicated is a kidnapped woman? I am a Catholic and proud of it. I have confessed a million times. Do something, Father. I saw them feed a man to the leopards. The devil walks this castle free and proud. Maybe more than one of them. You have sensed this, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do something.”

Ciel stood and went to the window and looked out. Past him Erin saw the fronds whipping and a dark layer of clouds sitting high in the southeastern sky. “We must deal with practical realities, Mrs. McKenna. We must deal with your problem directly. I have spoken to Benjamin. He says he will not release you until he has received what he wants. He will not say exactly what he wants. To me, he seems to have less interest in the ransom than he did a few days ago.”

“He wants me to sing for him.”

“He is expecting you to sing tonight before the Jaguars. But he assuredly wants more than that.”

“Why does it feel like you’re on his side? Are you? Am I the problem here? A distraction from your fundraising efforts for the Legion of Christ?”

He turned to her and she saw the dampness in his eyes and the quiver of his chin. “I will do anything in my power to make sure you leave this place alive. My church is thousands of miles from here, and my God thousands more. I am working for your freedom. Until you are free I can offer you comfort in the Holy Spirit.”

She remembered Father O’Hora again, from when she was just a girl. He had the same kind eyes as Ciel and the same near hush about him. He had always seemed both faithful and hapless. But he was the man you could trust. He was the man who would do what God would do. God’s agent. Legionnaire for Christ.

She looked into Ciel’s eyes and remembered O’Hora’s eyes at her father’s funeral and they were the same in their deep empathy and powerlessness. She remembered despising that powerlessness then, and sensing for the first time that the affairs of God and men were separate. She remembered comparing her father to Father O’Hora, and deciding that her father had been the better man-at once joyful and profane and intensely emotional-not a man caged by faith and controlled by doubt. And she remembered thinking that God himself would strike her dead at age thirteen for such thoughts.

Ciel beckoned her to him with his pale hands. She went to him and he reached his arms around her. She rested her cheek on his chest just above the crucifix. He felt bony and hard. His heart was beating strong and slow and he smelled of soap and vanilla. “‘Whither has your beloved gone, O fairest among women? Wither has your beloved turned, that we may seek him with you?’”

“I loved the Song of Solomon when I was a girl.”

“‘Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one; for my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night.’”

“Some of it’s kind of graphic, though.”

“Let me be what you need me to be.”

“I haven’t had a good cry in an awful long time,” she said.

“Cry to me, my child. Cry your tears upon me.”

Cry to me, my child, she thought. That’s what I want. She let go.

Seconds after Ciel left, Erin heard a tap on the door and Owens Finnegan’s voice. “I’m coming in.”

“You and everyone else.”

Owens stepped into the room and motioned for Erin to come with her. “I got you a hall pass. You’re free for a few minutes.”

“He’ll kill me,” said Erin.

“He knows I’m here and he thinks he knows what I’m doing. Pronto, girl. Gift horse and all that.”

But Erin didn’t move. It came as a dismal truth to realize that she actually felt safer inside the room than outside it.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Owens.

And Erin followed her out. She had never felt stranger or more displaced than she did walking through the Castle as a free woman, even momentarily. The monkeys watched her from the curtain rods and a large red macaw on the landing rail called Finnegan! Finnegan! as Owens strode boldly along in front of her, black hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a simple black tank and jeans and sandals. She spoke briefly to the servants in perfect Spanish and they smiled at her and stared at Erin. Erin could see the scars that ringed the woman’s wrists beneath her colorful woven bracelets and for the first time she was not disturbed by them. She wondered if she should have brought the Cowboy Defender.

They took the stairs down to the ground level and walked away from the zoo and into the commons where workmen were erecting a big white tent for the party and the early delivery trucks and vans were arriving with food and drinks and barbecues fashioned from fifty-five-gallon drums. The stage was almost complete and the roadies were muscling the monitors into place and a team of boys lugged in armloads of folding chairs and argued about their placement. Men with weapons slung over their shoulders stood in a loose perimeter watching intently. Others with long-handled mirrors inspected the delivery vehicles for bombs. Erin and Owens stood in the shade and watched.

“Benjamin’s parties remind me of your wedding,” said Owens.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“They’re all about the music. You’ll be surprised by the people who come tonight.”

Erin thought back to her wedding day. Hard to believe it was two years ago, but she could picture it in fine detail-a carnival of live music and dancing and feasting and absinthe and joyously dubious behavior; no children at this event. At Bradley’s insistence they’d even rented a bullring and bulls to ride, and they weren’t beaten-down animals at all but the real thing and Bradley had nearly killed himself trying to ride one and later someone let them out of their pen to roam the party at will and they’d ended up in the pond to beat the heat. All of her friends and family were there and Bradley was handsome as a man could be and she wore the special dress and looking at herself one last time in the mirror as her maids fussed over her she had conceded that she was, at this one moment, beautiful in the world. She thought of Bradley now and her heart went cold.

“I can see it. But it seems like forever ago.”

“Life is slow, then sudden, isn’t it?”

“It can turn on a dime.”

Erin looked out at the steep green hills that seemed to quarantine the Castle from the rest of the world. The thicket growing on the hillside vibrated in the growing breeze. “Are you here because you want to be or because you have to be?”

Owens looked at her. Her eyes changed with the light, and now in the storm-threatened evening they had the color and shine of a newly minted nickel. “I am free to go and do what I want. That’s the first agreement I make with anyone.” She held her wrists out for Erin to see. “This made me free. It was supposed to make me not at all, but it made me free instead.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I couldn’t find anything to live for.”

“Not even for the next day or the sunset or to hear a beautiful song one more time? Not one friend you wanted to see again?”

“No, Erin. Not even those. Mike found me. It took him some time, but he made me not want to do it again.”

“Then what do you live for now?”

Owens looked out at the compound. “This world is enough.”

“I never believed you were his daughter.”

“I’m not. It’s a thin story but most people don’t see through it because they don’t want to.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Owens Finnegan is nice, don’t you think?”

“Why not just tell the truth about yourself?”

“Because the truth is harder to understand than a father and a daughter.”

“Are you lovers?”

“Oh, no. But I do love him. You can sure be direct when you want to, girl.”

“Mom was that way. Partners, then?”

“Sometimes. We help each other.”

“Do what?”

“I can act. I have a gift for it, and ambitions. I have had roles. He supports me.”

“What’s your part of the partnership?”

“I help him in different ways. Some are very small, such as making a phone call to pass information. Some are much bigger, such as influencing someone to do a certain thing. I don’t always know why. I persuade men easily. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing, in terms of consequence.”

Erin tried to make clear sense of this, but she couldn’t. “What are you to Armenta? How long have you been here?”

Owens looked at her, then away, and Erin thought she saw a slight blush come to her face. “I’ve been here often enough for the house birds to learn my name.”

“Why did you and Mike come after Bradley? You got to know him for your own reasons. I could tell. You befriended me in order to get close to him.”

Owens gave her a hard look. “Mike knew Suzanne. And he wants Bradley to do well in life. He’s very loyal to the people he befriends, especially to their spouses and children.”

A quick shot of alarm went through her and was gone. She wanted to tell the Finnegans to stay away and never come to another one of her shows. But she realized that they now held the only line of communication she had with Bradley and with the world. A small capsule. A piece of cloth. A bird.

She watched the men winching up the big canvas tent. A moment later a large colorful tour bus climbed toward them from the direction of the guard gate. It was painted a shiny yellow and an enormous black jaguar was depicted along its flank, stretching from the nose to the end of the bus. It was not snarling but it looked alert. There were white jungle flowers and toucans and leafing vines and below the cat were the words Los Jaguars del Veracruz.

“They’re really here,” said Erin.

“Erin, I want to ask you to perform tonight. It means more to Benjamin than you can know. And by now you understand that he becomes very angry when he doesn’t get what he wants.”

“Like that little disagreement with the reporter.”

“And others.”

“Jesus Christ, Owens. What is wrong here? What is wrong with you people?”

“Can I tell him you will perform?”

Erin held the woman’s flat gray gaze. For the child that grows inside you. “Fine.”

She watched the Jaguars of Veracruz getting off the bus now, walking slowly and stretching and looking up at the looming green hills and the Castle towering high against them. They were two sets of brothers, she knew, uneducated, raised from poverty to international stardom by blending the varied styles of music they grew up with.

Heriberto came hustling from the Castle and hugged a short stout man who walked ahead of the other four. Caesar Llanes, she knew, the front man, singer and accordionist supremo. He seemed to sense her watching him and he looked up at her and tiredly raised a hand in greeting. Erin was embarrassed but waved back.

A few minutes later she and Owens stood in front of the big pigeon coop and Erin watched the handsome birds strut and flutter and look back at her with their oddly optimistic expressions. Do you think my letter made it to Bradley?” asked Erin.

“It must have. You’ll hear back from him in two days.”

“What about the storm?”

“These are strong flyers.”

“But in a hurricane?”

“Believe.”

“Does Armenta trust you?”

“He doesn’t trust anyone. Not even Saturnino.”

“But he gave you a key and he knows we’re out here.”

“He knows you can’t go far. If you ran away his men would find you in minutes. The jungle is thick and full of snakes and scorpions and jaguars. And no one can hide their footprints on a sandy beach. But don’t run off, Erin. I enjoy your company very much. And Benjamin expects me to keep an eye on you tonight. Don’t make me look bad.”

Owens winked at her and Erin said nothing. The pigeons cooed and shuffled as if they shared her bewilderment at her circumstance.

“I saw Edgar Ciel leave your room not long ago. I don’t know if you find him holy or not, but do be very careful of him. Even with a woman your age he’s capable of things that would surprise you. Saturnino will try to take your body but Ciel will use it for more than that.”

“I’m at the end of my understanding, Owens.”

Owens stared out toward the courtyard and Erin saw the distance register in her gaze. “He’s been fathering children all over Mexico for twenty years. Twenty-one mothers, and still counting. The mothers are always beautiful and often poor. He supports them through the Legion. Handsomely. If the mother is too young to raise his child properly, they grow up in the expensive boarding schools he builds for the rich. My school was in Monterey. I had a terrific Catholic education. I can prove his paternity with one drop of my blood and he knows it. Mike and my lawyers have samples too, and documentation of where they came from. Ciel knows this also. So I have some influence over what he does. He fears and loathes me. I fear and loathe him.”

“He carries a gun.”

“He used it on my mother. Only the barrel, not the bullets. She was a novitiate like most of the other women he seduces. She was thirteen and angry at him for what he did to her. Her name is Felicita and she lives in L.A. He takes especially good care of her. She lives in a Santa Monica condo and drives fast convertibles. She has psychological and alcohol problems. I see her often when I’m home.”

“Ciel seduces those faithful girls who follow him around?”

Owens nodded and looked out toward the stage. “But mostly the boys. Especially the boys. There are rumors of pictures and video.”

“I didn’t know they made monsters like that.”

Owens unfastened her gaze and looked at Erin with a combination of pity and shame. “They’re rare.”

In spite of the heat Erin felt the chill run from her scalp to her feet. The heat seemed to weigh one thousand pounds upon her but the madness she felt in this place was heavier by far and it seemed to multiply by the hour.