The Jaguar: A Charlie Hood Novel Part 20

"I've never written a song in three days."

"The studio would be yours."

"The greatest narcocorrido ever written. In three days."

"Yes."

"What if I fail? What if you don't like it?"

"I ask for a work of your heart. Not for the heart itself."

"Or you take my skin."

He nodded as if annoyed. "Maybe you would like to walk from your room to the studio when you desire. Then go back to your room when you desire to go. You would have Owens to be your escort for these small journeys. And perhaps this freedom would help you write."

Erin felt emotions trying to form-hope, joy, grat.i.tude, exultation. But they were only partial, still paralyzed by her fear. One more day to live was one more day to escape. One more day for Bradley to get here, if he was having any trouble at all. Take the day, girl. "You leave me no choice. Yes."

"I am very pleased. We shall now celebrate with a very good dinner. You will tell me about being a girl in Texas. And I will tell you about being a boy in Veracruz. Did you know that Veracruz means true cross? Because Cortez landed there on Good Friday in fifteen-nineteen. Four hundred and ninety-three years ago-the first European city in Mexico. Cortez brought flamenco and folklorico and violins and cellos and guitarons! Or, perhaps these came later. We will talk and talk and talk. Then you will begin the writing."

26.

THE NEXT MORNING HOOD WALKED through the lobby of the Merida Hyatt Regency, then into the growing heat of the city. Twenty-four hours in Merida and nothing, he thought. Didn't Armenta want his cool million? The thought crossed his mind that Armenta may be playing him like a starting pitcher, letting him go as long as he needed before bringing in the closer-the sicarios would just swarm in, take the money and kill him once and for all. He was in the heart of the Gulf Cartel's turf, at Armenta's mercy.

He lost himself in the sidewalk crowd and called up to Luna again. Then he went to the street corner and bought another cup of iced coffee from a vendor and walked back the way he had come, past the lobby, to the next intersection. He stood and watched the cars and trucks go by. He bought a pack of gum off a cart. Merida was a colonial city but the hotel was in the newer financial district. Ivana had trampled the northeast and now the weather was hot and humid. There were still downed trees and power lines and a shortage of fresh water in parts of the city but Merida was back to business so far as Hood could see.

He took his time walking back to the lobby, where he got another newspaper and tried to remain obvious and approachable. He got his boots s.h.i.+ned and ate breakfast in the hotel cafe while he tried to read the paper. The satellite phone buzzed on his hip.

"Has he called? Where are you?" asked Bradley.

"Hold." Hood pocketed the phone and went into the men's room, bolting himself in a private stall at the far end of the row. "Merida. Nothing from Armenta. Silence."

"Wednesday's the payday, Charlie. Day after tomorrow. You can't stall out in Merida."

"I can't just show up at the Castle, either. I'm not supposed to know where she is, remember? He'd kill me on principle, and probably her too. Where are you?"

"Close to her. Two-point-four miles of jungle away. I got in yesterday. I'm a gringo fisherman staying at the Hotel Laguna in Bacalar. Cleary is my fis.h.i.+ng bud and Caroline Vega is his girlfriend. We've got a rental car and a rental motorboat and tackle for tomorrow. For tarpon fis.h.i.+ng off Cayo Lobos, you know? But if Erin can hit her mark, the four of us will be across the Bacalar Lagoon and headed for the airport in Chetumal. We've got Fidel and his men for protection. We'll be in the air about the time Armenta knows she's missing. Now, if something happens to me or she can't get away to find me, that leaves you one day to get the money to him. You're the clean-up hitter, Charlie. If you can't deliver, we'll have to use force."

"Where are Fidel and the men?"

"Camped in the jungle between here and her. We were ambushed in Campeche. Five dead. Nineteen of us left. They've got food, water, guns, and ammo. They're ready if all else fails, Charlie."

"Don't storm the Castle."

"I will if I have to. What else can I do? Tell me."

Hood considered. If something went wrong on Tuesday, and Armenta didn't bring Hood to the Castle with payment on Wednesday, as agreed, what other choice was there? "If it comes to that, you've got two more guns."

Bradley was silent for a beat. "You really do love me, don't you?"

"Call me when you have her and I'll try to get back to the United States with your money. If I don't hear from you or Armenta tomorrow, I'll be at the Hotel Laguna before sunrise, day after. And we'll break her out."

"We've got three chances, Charlie. Only one needs to work."

"I'm hoping for door number one."

"So am I. Erin and I could be on a jet for LAX by tomorrow morning."

"If you are, give her my regards."

"Casita four." Bradley hung up.

Hood put the phone in his pocket and walked back to his table. He glanced at the newspaper on the table before him, asked for another cup of coffee. The waiter brought the coffee and the check without Hood having to ask for it, which was unusual in Mexico. A muscular man in running sweats walked casually into the room, carrying a leather messenger's pouch. He came toward him and Hood wondered if his luck had just changed.

The young man glanced at Hood through dark gla.s.ses, reached into the bag, drew a cell phone and plopped into a seat with his back to Hood, signaling the waiter with sharp waves of his arm. Suddenly, as if he felt Hood's eyes on him, the man wheeled and pulled off his gla.s.ses.

"Can I help you?"

"Sorry. I mistook you for someone else."

"Mexico is no place for mistakes."

Hood paid and browsed the gift shop and the newsstand. He bought Beth Petty a small stone replica of a Mayan temple. She was a collector of rocks and fossils and she would appreciate it. He had the clerk wrap the box in s.h.i.+pping paper and he walked it to the nearest post office and mailed it to her.

He strolled the neighborhood, napped upstairs, read, and watched TV and played peso poker with Luna and waited.

Late that evening as the darkness weighed down on the eastern sky Hood felt it descend on his heart as well and he began to believe that Erin McKenna had only two more days of life on Earth.

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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 rea.s.sembled 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 a.r.s.enal 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 d.a.m.ned 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 h.o.r.n.y 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 rea.s.sembling 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 fis.h.i.+ng. 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."

"s.h.i.+t 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."

28.

HE HUNG UP, WATCHING THROUGH the window as all three of the Army vehicles turned and drove slowly across the lot toward him. They pulled up side by side facing his casita and their headlights cut through the sheer curtain and filled the room in overlapping girders of light. Outside he saw the shapes of men in the beams, three moving toward his door as the engines idled and the lights shone.

He heard the k.n.o.b turn, then the door flew open and the three armored men flooded in, helmets strapped tight and machine guns ready. He raised his hands and stood beside the bed and the first man clunked forward and spun him against the wall and ran one hand up and down his body. Bradley could feel the barrel of a handgun against the back of his neck.

-I am a United States law enforcement officer. I am on vacation in Mexico. My badge and identification are in my pocket.

-What is your business in Quintana Roo?

-Tarpon. I have the boat and the tackle rented for tomorrow. From Oscar at the Marina. It wasn't cheap.

The soldier pulled the badge holder and then the wallet from Bradley's pants pockets and tossed them on the bed beside the towel. Then he spun Bradley around to face them.

The captain was short and thick-necked and there was a scar on one eyebrow where the hair no longer grew. He picked up the wallet and compared Bradley's picture to his face, then tossed the wallet to the bed. He examined the badge and dropped it onto the towel that covered the gun. He watched the way the badge holder struck the towel then he pulled away the towel and picked up the machine pistol.

-For the tarpon?

Bradley understood the two possibilities here. One was that these men were legitimate Army soldiers. If so, they were in compet.i.tion with the Mexican Navy and their actions would be something between aggressive and merciless. He, Caroline, and Cleary would be questioned and informally deported and his guns and cash would be confiscated. This was the greater likelihood. The other was that they were controlled and paid by Armenta, to keep himself, his products, and his routes protected. If so, then they would take everything the Americans had and disappear all three of them.

He realized that if he tried to pick a truth and was wrong, it would all be over quickly. He looked at the captain's scar and he studied the anger in his eyes and decided.

-Not for the tarpon. For protection from the cartels.

-You cannot bring such a weapon into Mexico.

-Maybe the Army should have them. How many good soldiers have been murdered in Mexico since the war on drugs?

The captain stared morosely at Bradley. Then he turned and barked something at the man behind him, who quickly left the room.

Bradley heard the voices and scuffling outside. In the headlights he saw a group of four men pus.h.i.+ng Cleary and Vega along in front of them. Cleary's face streamed blood s.h.i.+ny in the light and Vega's head was down like someone trying to avoid a camera. Another soldier held open the back door of one of the SUVs and they shoved Cleary inside. Vega stepped in after him and the man slammed the door shut, then looked inside as if they might have gotten away already.

The man who had frisked Bradley now came from the bathroom holding Bradley's expense wad of roughly forty-nine thousand dollars and his Glock and the AirLite. All of this he dropped to the bed.

-You killed sixteen Zetas in Campeche yesterday, on the highway.

-We were attacked.

-Where are all of your friends?

-Merida.

-Who are they?

-They are Americans. There are ten of them. We work with Baja state police and Baja Sur and others in the north. Our bosses have talked with Calderon himself.

-I have heard of this weapon you have. It is used by Carlos Herredia and his North Baja Cartel.

-It's a very good weapon. Read what it says on the slide.