The Jaguar

4

They walked across the courtyard and up the limestone steps to the porch and faced the massive copper entry doors. Heriberto stepped around her to mutter something into a speaker built into the wall. The doors swung slowly in with a low groan and the hiss of grinding sand.

Inside, the air was cool and smelled of stone, a lavender-scented cleanser, and mildew. They stood in a tall atrium and Erin looked up through four or five stories of layered shadows at the distant ceiling. A black woman in a gray dress and a gray turban pushed a mop across the floor tiles, then stopped to watch her. Erin tried to look her in the eye but could not.

Heriberto barked something at the cleaning woman and Erin heard the backslap of his voice carom upward through the air from wall to wall. Heriberto’s sneakers squeaked and Erin’s bare heels clunked softly on the stone floor.

They climbed the stairs, past the parrots and macaws and toucans perched on the banisters, and the small monkeys clinging to the curtain rods high up, eyeing her widely and dropping seed shells, which floated down to the second-story landing. Here another black woman in gray swept the hulls into a long-handled dustpan and still another mopped up after the animals with the lavender concoction.

On the second-floor landing Erin froze when she saw the black jaguar napping on the shadowed tile. She had never seen a black jaguar and never known they got this big. The chain of its steel collar was staked to a ring in the stone wall but it seemed to her that the cat could pull it out.

“Everyone is afraid of him,” said Heriberto.

“Why? Inside, I mean…why keep him inside?”

“It is a decoration. Benjamin loves all of nature. He gives the cats to friends. Some he sells for profit. This one was captured not too far from here. Sometimes it is useful.”

“Useful for what?”

“Up. Climb, please. Apurate!”

But Erin stood still, pulling the serape tight around her, looking at the cat’s black flanks moving in the rhythm of sleep. She saw a litter box the size of a small garden, made of gleaming hardwood and filled with beach sand, waiting back in the shadows. The cat suddenly lifted its big sleek head and looked at her with green eyes, then just as quickly dropped back into sleep.

“We can go,” she said.

They climbed to the fourth floor.

“Why is there no landing for the third floor?”

“Because there is no reason to go there.”

“Two women in white dresses came from the third floor outside.”

“So it is.”

He led her halfway down one of three broad hallways and opened a door with a plastic card as in a hotel. She stepped in and without a word he closed the door behind her and she heard the electric lock buzz and hum and clunk. When she yanked on the lever handle it did not move even a fraction of an inch.

She pounded on the door. “Hey, mister! Hey!” She listened and heard nothing but the clipped echo of her own voice. After a moment she took a deep breath and relaxed her stomach muscles and dropped the serape to the floor. Then she turned to face her new prison.

The room was spacious and richly furnished and Erin sensed it had been cleaned daily for decades if not centuries. It had a shiny dark hardwood floor and white plaster walls with many framed paintings. She looked up at a high copper ceiling with a dark brown patina, the copper sheets held fast by steel rivets that gave the appearance of a knight’s armor. Trapped inside a suit of armor, she thought. She sang a short note and listened to its quick bounce and rapid absorption in the space.

The bed frame was dark hardwood, the bedding high and plump. A handsome leather armchair sat with its back to a window and a hardbound copy of Garcia Marquez’s Of Love and Other Demons propped up on its seat. It was the English translation. There were two hand-carved wardrobes and between them an oval full-length mirror in a swiveling frame. She pulled open one of the wardrobes and found it full of women’s clothes, her size, new, with the tags on. She felt a ripple of invasion down her back and closed the door.

Along one wall were a long table and chairs and on the table was a basket of fruit and bread and bottles of wine and water and juices. She lifted the white envelope that was propped against a wine bottle. Her first name was written across the front of it in crude longhand. Inside was a card with the letters BJCA embossed near the top. More of the longhand: Welcome to my home-Benjamin Juan Carlos Armenta. Another unpleasant ripple went down her back and she dropped the card and envelope to the table.

In the far corner stood a desk and chair. There was a lamp and a DVD player on the desktop, and a yellow legal pad with what looked like an expensive pen lying across the top sheet. She thought of her mother, who had always laid out pads of paper and freshly sharpened pencils on her desk at home, to encourage her to write and draw. Between two gray onyx bookends carved as crocodile heads were a Spanish-English dictionary, Rock ’n Roll in L.A., and three Harlequin bodice-rippers.

The bathroom was large, with a red marble tub and aged copper fixtures that had taken on the same deep patina as the ceiling. She looked at her face in the mirror and saw the exhaustion in it. Find strength. Create strength. Come to me by moonlight, sugar! You’re going to have to do better than that, she thought. A whole lot better.

She sat down heavily on the edge of the tub and reached under her nightgown and slowly worked the derringer away from her upper calf. She felt the air hit the chafed skin and she rubbed the raw and painful indentation the weapon had left. It was one of the hideout options: take it if you need it. Bradley had shown her how to operate the gun but she wasn’t too good. Two big bullets. Loud and lethal. Intended for pocket or purse.

But fifteen hours ago Erin had had neither pocket nor purse as she heard the men in the next room, their voices urgent. So she used tape from the first-aid kit, and grabbed some fifties off the roll and folded them over twice and taped them along with the gun to her calf. She had barely gotten it all secure when the floor began to move and she grabbed the shotgun off the rack and plopped into the recliner as it swung out. When she looked at the eight armed men who had invaded her home she realized she was at least a captive and likely a corpse and her husband was almost certainly dead and her son would die unborn. She couldn’t remember quite how the shotgun worked and they quickly got it away from her. She had hit at them and burst into tears and clung to the chair arms kicking as they dragged her away.

Now she stood and without counting the money she slipped it into the stack of fat white bath towels on a shelf. Then she lifted off the lid of the toilet flush box and set the gun underwater, down near the float assembly where it was difficult to see. Bubbles hurried up from the barrel. The water wouldn’t damage the gun or the ammo, Bradley had said. He’d told her that a toilet tank was a good hide for a gun for a few days, even a week or two, if it ever came to that. Just remember to shake the water out of the barrel before you used it. Easy.

She stepped back into the room and went to the left wardrobe and set the tape carefully in the pocket of a light jacket. Through the glass and the vine-wound bars of one window she could see the balcony with its profusion of pots and flowers, and beyond the blossoms a swath of jungle, and a sliver of white-sand beach and pale-green water. Prisoner of flowers, she thought, prisoner of paradise.

Propped upright in the corner between two casement windows was a guitar case with its lid open. When she stepped closer Erin saw that it was a Gibson Hummingbird not unlike her own back home. She felt a powerful stab of sorrow and grief as she looked at this beautiful instrument and wondered if she would ever see her Hummingbird again, or her home or husband or even just one thing from her former life.

From behind her Erin heard the electric buzz, hum, and clunk of the door lock opening and she turned to see a young man step into the room. He was tall and sandy-haired, solidly built, and wore a clean white Guayabera shirt and jeans and polished black cowboy boots. The door closed decisively behind him.

“I am Saturnino.”

“Erin.”

“You are in good condition?”

“Very good.”

He smiled at her. He was handsome. “I am the boss of security here. I want to welcome you.”

“I feel kidnapped, not welcomed.”

“You are here. Everything here is my duty to protect. I am in command. Only my father is more powerful.”

He walked close to her and she looked up into his eyes. They were tan, small-pupiled, catlike. She could smell the scent of his body and breath. “You are more beautiful than the many pictures of you I have seen.”

She stepped around him and hooked the serape off the floor with her bare toe and caught it and wrapped it around her shoulders again.

“You are amusing,” he said. “You cannot protect yourself. I will take you when I want you.”

His smile is the devil’s, thought Erin. “I’m Benjamin’s guest.”

“And there is nothing you can do. Or anyone can do.”

“I’ll be sure that Mr. Armenta knows that.”

“He does not control everything, pinche gringa. You are far away from what was real to you. You are nothing in Mexico. Not even a person. You are entirely invisible and entirely alone. You are like the air. You need a strong friend.”

Saturnino smiled again and came up close to her. When he leaned in to kiss her she slapped him hard across the face. In the silence that followed she watched his rage flash and hover, then slowly retreat.

There was a knock at the door. Saturnino unleashed a rapid-fire string of Spanish curses, of which Erin understood most.

“Edgar Ciel,” said the voice behind the door. “In nomine patri et-”

“Go to hell you filthy goat!” yelled Saturnino. He looked at Erin then swiped his card key and pushed open the door.

In stepped a tall slender priest and two young novitiates-a boy and a girl. The priest was very pale, with a sharp nose and ears and thinning light-brown hair. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses his eyes were blue and luminous. He looked sixty. The boy and girl looked to be twelve or thirteen and they stood behind him, hands folded before them, looking at the floor. The priest looked at Erin, then turned his gaze to Saturnino. “What are you doing here, my vile child?”

Saturnino made the sign of a cross with his fingers and held it up to the priest as he circled around him and toward the door. When Saturnino went by he stomped the boy’s foot with his boot and backed out of the room with a nod to Erin. Edgar Ciel pushed the door closed on him. The boy hopped wordlessly on his good foot four times then put the hurt foot back down tentatively.

“I am Father Edgar Ciel.”

“I am Erin McKenna.”

“Did he harm you?”

“He would have.”

“Never be alone with him.”

“He has a key to my room.”

“I will speak to Benjamin.”

“Can he control his son?”

Ciel studied her with his blue eyes. They had a light in them that was cold and possibly wise. Father O’Hora had had that light. “Of course.”

“Can you do it right now? Talk to Benjamin?”

Ciel held her gaze and swung open his jacket and pulled a cell phone off his belt at one hip. Erin saw the walnut-handled revolver holstered at the other. She smelled vanilla. He raised the phone to his ear and walked to the window that framed the balcony and the jungle and beach. He turned his back to her and spoke softly in Spanish, then he waited for a while and spoke again.

“What’s your name?” Erin asked the boy.

“Henry. Enrique.”

“And yours?”

“Constanza.”

“How do you like the Castle?”

They shrugged with their hands still folded before them and looked down at the floor. Enrique gingerly lifted his stomped foot, then set it back down.

“We come here because Benjamin Armenta donated four million dollars to the Legion of Christ last year,” said Ciel. He walked toward her, fastening the phone to his belt again. “He has been donating such amounts for a decade. He convinces his friends to donate too. It’s the largest Catholic league in all of Mexico. Last year we built two more schools in Chiapas State and were able to endow a chair to head the department of cinema in our university in Mexico City.”

“Does that buy him a place in heaven too?” asked Erin. She saw the pain pass across the face of the priest. In that moment he reminded her again of Father O’Hora back in Austin, the way his emotions were always so ready and readable. A good and decent man, she thought. He had married two of her brothers and sat with her father for hours at the hospital and finally buried him. “Forgive me. It’s been a long day.”

He smiled. “Saturnino is not permitted to have a key. It will be taken from him.”

“Can you make Benjamin let me go?”

“I will speak to him. I do not control him. But I can watch over you while you’re here. And pray for your safe return.”

“Why thank you so much, Father. When my husband gives Benjamin the million bucks he wants, maybe Benjamin can give it to you.”

“Keep your heart pure and your thoughts clean.”

“I was never a very good Catholic.”

“Neither was I until the Lord opened my heart.”

“I can’t believe you and your Lord let these people get away with this.”

“The world is complicated.”

“So that makes kidnapping okay?”

“Benjamin will be here in a moment.”

Ciel removed the card key from his pocket with a guilty smile. He swiped it through the lock, then ushered out his two charges and let the door swing shut behind him. Erin listened to the buzz and the clunk of the deadbolt thrown home.

She already hated those sounds.

He was not what Erin was expecting. Into the room pushed a large and disheveled man with a head of wild gray-black hair and a hang-dog expression on his face. He wore a Cerveza Pacifico T-shirt and shorts and he was barefoot. He had a beer belly and stooped slightly, as if it were pulling him over. His complexion was pale for a Mexican and he had at least a two-day growth of whiskers. His eyes were black and shiny. She guessed him to be fifty years old.

He stopped and stared directly at her face. “Do you have everything that you need?”

“Everything but safety and freedom.”

“That is up to your husband. He has ten days.”

“Saturnino has a key to my room.”

Armenta pulled two card keys from a pocket in his shorts, fanned them for her like playing cards in his thick fingers. “No more.”

“How could you threaten to skin me alive?”

Armenta looked at her matter-of-factly and said nothing for a moment. “They tell me you are Erin of Erin and the Inmates. I believe I heard you on the radio.”

“It’ll just be the Inmates if you do what you’ve threatened to do.”

Armenta raised a hand and waved it gently, as if shooing away a slow fly. “I love music of all kinds. We have performances here. I record music also. Many important people come here to listen and dance. Do you know the Jaguars of Veracruz?”

“Everyone knows the Jaguars of Veracruz.”

“Do you like them?”

“I saw them in Los Angeles. Fantastic show. They played so long the fire department made them quit.”

“They will be here this week. To perform.”

“And do you skin them alive if they don’t bring you millions of dollars?”

He smiled at her bleakly. “I grew up with them. I have been cruel in my life but I have never lacked compassion. I am strongly loyal.”

“Your son threatened me.”

“I will discipline him. Sometimes he has large ideas that are bad ideas. You don’t worry.”

“When I looked in his eyes I saw that he could do bad things and enjoy them.”

Armenta nodded slightly. “This is his way. He will not hurt you while you are here.”

“You seem like a good man. Let me go. Fly me home. I’ll mail you the million cash if you really need it all that badly.”

He studied her again and she studied him back. His hair stood out from his head, an unbrushed nest. His face was morose and his eyes looked exhausted and suspicious and piggish. She wondered if his paleness was from prison or illness or just from being inside all the time.

“Your husband has taken hundreds of thousands of my dollars in the last year. He has taken many pounds of my best products. He has cost me thirty men to be deported or prosecuted. He has allowed the murders of another nine of my men to go without any authentic investigation. Nine! He himself killed two more last night.”

“You have taken the wrong man’s wife. Bradley is a sheriff’s deputy and you invaded our home.”

“He has been paid large money for doing some things and not doing other things.”

“His salary is not large.”

“But he is also employed by the North Baja Cartel of Carlos Herredia. You maybe do not know this. Maybe you spend your time making music. As you should. But there are many secrets in a marriage, some small and some not small. Maybe you are not welcome to this type of information. Maybe he does not want you to know where your fortune comes from.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What you believe does not change the measure of things. Your husband is more than a thorn in my paw. He must surrender L.A. to me. Surrender it absolutely. Business is the thing we all do. Statements are to be made and answered. This is my example. A man must attend to the small things so that the larger things will occur properly.”

“Fly me home and you’ll get what you want from my husband. All of it. I promise.”

Armenta beheld her and Erin looked back. His sad hound eyes appeared clear and calm, resigned to things she did not know, and apologetic for things she did not want to know. “I will fly you home when I get what I want from you.”