The Jaguar

27

Bradley sat at a small desk before the window of the casita, cleaning the two Love 32s he had brought south to Mexico. A desk lamp threw good light on the weapons. It was late evening and he had not heard from Hood. He sipped tequila mixed with bottled water. His untouched room-service dinner sat on a stand by the bed. He could feel the adrenaline buzzing through him, low-level stuff waiting to be turned up.

He worked intently but patiently, the guns breaking down and going back together with an efficient simplicity. Their stainless-steel finishes were resisting the tropical moisture well. Erin moved around in his mind, a changeable resident, sometimes her face and sometimes her voice and sometimes a feeling that she was right there in the room watching him, which made his heart ache most. He could feel her anger at him and he knew full well her sense of betrayal. Would he ever be able to explain the secret life that he had been leading? Was there really any explanation for it, except brute, stupid greed and the pleasures of danger and deception? Would she forgive him?

Through the sheer curtain he could see half of the swimming pool, filled by rainwater clear up to the deck but emptied of tourists by Ivana. There were two tall palms that had survived and one that had not, and Bradley could see the sectioned trunk of the palm lying where it had fallen and been cut for burning. Beyond the pool was the Bacalar Lagoon, rippled silver now in the fading light. In the little marina in front of the hotel was a handsome Chris-Craft set up for big game-outriggers and a fighting chair and a large bait tank on the stern. There were three pangas and a catamaran. South of the pool was a windowless white tower with a cross fixed to the wall. Bradley felt watched by this symbol of the God he had prayed to so often in this last week. These prayers felt earnest but he knew that they were not so much devotion as the covering of bets.

He had already wiped down and stashed the Glock.40 caliber he would carry on his hip when he met her tomorrow, and the eight-shot.22 Smith AirLite revolver for his ankle, and one of the two two-shot forty-caliber derringers that had been passed down through generations of Murrietas from Joaquin to his mother and now himself. She had foolishly given the other to Hood. But Bradley would pocket his gun tomorrow somewhere in his pants or jacket. A talisman, but more than only that. It had a grip of black walnut that was deeply oiled and scarred and a barrel pitted by the years and his mother had told him it had killed men.

He reassembled the Love 32s, their parts warmed by his hands, but there was no excitement or comfort for him in the weapons as there once had been. The grand aphrodisiac of living a secret life had dried up with Erin’s kidnapping. The warm gun was now just another tool of folly. Bradley imagined returning home to Valley Center with Erin and burying his arsenal deep and forever, then raising their child and a few more children perhaps, to be productive American citizens, while he worked as a paramedic or a salesman or maybe a cagey independent financial advisor. Erin would write, perform, and become rich and famous. Of course he would also have buried the head of El Famoso, and all of his great ancestor’s belongings, and likely his mother’s revealing journals. How could he not? This daydream lasted a few bucolic seconds, then he abruptly pictured himself slipping off the ranch to rob a fast-food place or a convenience store or perhaps steal a fast car just to drive it for a few days, as his mother used to do. I’m sorry, he thought. I’m sorry I’m who I am.

He took a sip of the tequila and shook his head. There was no escaping himself no matter how hard he tried. He knew that his dream of burying his guns and his past and himself had approximately the same weight as his prayers: both were righteous and good but they were still subordinate to the demands of his unsatisfied young heart.

Before leaving home he had put a picture of Erin in his duffel and now he took it out and propped it up on the desktop and the wall in front of him. It was a candid snapshot he had taken on the front porch of the Valley Center ranch, Erin sitting on a picnic bench with a guitar, looking up at the camera. Her hair was pulled back casually and her eyes were knowing and she had a private, unguarded smile. It was the look he enjoyed most, the look that said: just you and me, baby.

“I’m sorry, Erin,” he said softly. He looked at her picture, genuinely amazed that she had married him and was willing to bear his children. Long ago he had conceded that he’d done nothing to deserve her. Nothing, he thought now. When he spoke, his words sounded lost in the little motel room but somehow they sounded right, too, and necessary. It seemed like forever since he’d told her what was in his heart. Really, had he ever done that?

“Erin, I’m so damned sorry for what I’ve done. I wanted to tell you the truth ever since I’ve known it. A million times. I’ve wanted to tell you about my quirky ancestors. That Mom came from Murrieta, El Famoso. And so I did too. Of course. I wanted to show you his famous head in the famous jar, right there in your beautiful barn in Valley Center. I could have told you that much without doing any harm, I guess. Some people said Murrieta was a cutthroat and some said he was a hero but really, they killed him in eighteen-fifty-three, so how could what happened to him a hundred and fifty-nine years ago matter to us now?

“Well, I’ll tell you how it matters now. History doesn’t repeat. It extends. I got his blood and his DNA and somehow his spirit or soul or whatever you want to call it. Not so much into my brothers. But it was heavy in Mom. She didn’t know what to tell me about myself and what to let me discover on my own. Should she keep me from knowing my own past? What do you do with something powerful but secret? She died not knowing what to do with it. I’ve got her journals. She wrote a lot. They sound like her, blunt and brave and half-crazy sometimes. Parts would make you laugh, and parts would make the hair on your arms stand up. Tough Suzanne Jones. Smart and selfish Suzanne Jones. Award-winning eighth grade history teacher Suzanne Jones. She was proud of that-Los Angeles Unified School District Middle School Teacher of the Year. Imagine. But Erin, guess what? She was also an outlaw, an armed robber, a car thief, a shoplifter, an occasional con. She was horny as a mink, vain as a starlet, and a terrible, terrible cook. Made some good coin, though, bought Valley Center with it, gave a lot to charity. Though to be honest, Erin, she spent most of it on herself and her lovers and us boys. I’ve wanted to show you those journals a million times, but…

“But. If I told you all that, then I’d pretty much have to show you the vault under the barn floor and the money and loot that I have stored up there. I stole every bit of it, just like Mom stole most of what she had. Now, I told you that I earned some money by delivering cash across the border a few times. Well, Erin, I actually did that a lot more than a few times-and I delivered cash and guns and ammunition and hot cars and anything else that would bring a price. I stole a yacht once and paid some guys to sail it down. I stole a trash truck from the city of Escondido and sold it to drug traffickers in Tijuana-they moved tons and tons of dope in that thing, hid all under a layer of garbage. If I showed you the vault under the barn, you’d understand what I’m all about. You’d understand that I have a badge and a gun but I’m not always a cop. Not even when I’m on duty. I don’t wear my badge and gun to protect and serve the people. I wear them to protect and serve myself. I am ashamed now and I understand that my shame matters very little if at all.

“So, why couldn’t I ever tell you? I always came back to the same reasons. You wouldn’t love me. You’d walk. And maybe the worst, and this will make you laugh: You would think less of me. Isn’t that funny, really? I was afraid that you’d think less of me. Less of your hero, Bradley. In your eyes I would fall. Because you know what, Erin? I exist only in your eyes. I am only what you see. I chose you for this. To dream me. You are my dreamer and I don’t want you to wake up. Does that make me less real? Or more? I can’t change what you are to me. And if I could, I wouldn’t.

“Anyway, it’s all in a long letter under your pillow back home. The combination for the vault is in it, and instructions on how you find the vault entrance in the first place. You’ll love the way I have it hidden under the Ping Pong table. If I make it home with you, I’ll probably snatch up that letter before you see it. But if I don’t make it home, then you’ll read it and you’ll finally see me for everything I was. Don’t feel complicit. None of it was your fault. You were deceived. So don’t cover yourself up as you march out of Eden. Chin up. Use your new truth and the money and the treasure to make a new life for you and our child. I am so blessed in having known you and in having known this world with you in it. I hope you find someone to love who is worthy of you.”

He took another drink and finished reassembling the machine pistols then placed them in the center drawer of the hotel desk, with the restaurant menu and a list of services and some pamphlets on Mayan ruin tours and sport fishing. The snapshot slid down and he set it up against the wall again.

He looked out at the departing evening as a Mexican Army half-track clanked into the parking area and came to a stop. It was olive green and Bradley could see the Army emblems on the side. The engine was running but no one got out. A moment later a second vehicle pulled up beside it, a Humvee, dull and dusty, followed by another.

Bradley turned off the desk lamp and slipped into the bathroom. He climbed onto the rim of the toilet bowl to look out the small window near the ceiling. He guessed his shoulders could fit through. Close. But a Mexican Army jeep was parked there and he could see the exhaust lifting behind it in the humid air and the faint play of light off the guns and faces of the men in the front seats.

He went back to the desk and sat in the near darkness. He felt his heart pounding and the painful lump in his throat and a hot anger break over him. All the way to Bacalar for this? For this? He took one of the Love 32s from the drawer and set it on the desk and laid a newspaper over it. He rose quietly and put the second machine pistol on the bed and tossed a bath towel on top.

He sat back against the headboard of the bed and put up his feet and brought the gun and towel close. He switched on the bed stand lamp and called Caroline Vega on the satellite phone. Her room was behind his and up on the third level.

“Army troops are all over us,” he said. “You and Jack take the jungle tour. Now. Get to the cenote before sunrise and wait for Erin. Take the boat to Chetumal and take the first flight to the U.S. you can get. I’ll see you in L.A.”

“How many?”

“Four units at least.”

“Are you sure we can’t talk to them? Three American sheriff’s deputies might mean something to them, Bradley.”

“Shit is what we’d mean to them, Caroline. Get to the jungle now. You’ve got the GPS, so use it. That’s an order. This is where you earn your paycheck, my friend.”