Dancing with the Tiger (30 page)

To Anna's relief, Marge and Harold were ensconced on the patio when she and Salvador arrived at the Malones' at seven. Harold sat stiff in a rocker. Marge, surrounded by clusters of honeysuckle, resembled a grotesque version of a Botero painting.
Mother-in-Law on Swing
. If the collector had a massacre planned, surely he wouldn't invite spectators from Shaker Heights. Even now, Anna was wowed by the flowerbeds, the looming palms, the hysterical cactus. The only discordant note was the swimming pool, thick with pond scum.

The foursome traded air kisses before sitting down. The Malones had gotten a phone call, Marge explained, they would be down in a minute. Anna took a seat facing the chapel. At any moment, the looter would tap through the chapel floor. Salvador, the adorable fraud, set about making loud small talk: the sculpture exhibit downtown, the
police chief murdered in Acapulco, the dryness of the croissants at La Parisienne. He compensated for nervousness by appearing extravagantly casual, leaning back in his chair, laughing too loud. Harold complained about his Internet service, then moved on to another annoyance: The teachers were striking again. Protesters had set fire to a bus on the
periférico
, blocking traffic for blocks.

“We got in before the worst of it,” he said. “But really, sometimes you might as well walk.”

Anna fired off a text to the looter.
Leave early. Traffic.

“Sorry we're late.” Constance breezed across the terrace in flowing cotton pants and an embroidered tunic. Scarf at the throat. She smoothed cream into her chapped knuckles. Thomas followed her out. Freshly shaven, he wore black pants, a purple shirt, each sleeve fixed with a silver button. He resembled a stick of black licorice.

“Hello, wonderful guests.”

Anna hadn't seen Thomas since the VIP Hotel, and had expected a tacit apology, a flicker of embarrassment or shame, but he circled the group, doling out pleasantries, as if nothing had happened. Anna touched her sore cheek. The funk of mescal rose in her throat. She reminded herself why she'd come.
The chapel. The chapel.

“Thomas bought a new mask,” Constance gushed. “He's floating around the house like Tinker Bell.”

No, that's not why. He's happy to have the death mask. He's happy to have gotten away with murder.

Thomas rubbed his hands together. “Now who would like an Expatriate? It's my newest cocktail.”

Marge frowned. “What's in it?”

“House secret. My most lethal concoction. Guaranteed to ensure an early and peaceful retirement.”

“Sign me up,” Marge said. Salvador and Harold nodded.

“Anna?” Thomas considered her for the first time. His lips tensed. He had to wonder if she'd keep their secret. He had to be nervous, if he was human at all. Anna considered his hateful chin, his deep-set eyes. She wanted a drink. A kamikaze. A B-52. Mescal from the basement.

“I probably shouldn't,” she said. “A nasty virus attacked me Sunday night.”

“Something is going around,” Thomas agreed. “It knocks you flat, but most people recover.”

“Stronger than before,” Anna agreed, touching her cheek.

He turned, went inside. Anna felt her strength drained. She wanted to go home. She wanted her mother. Conversation simmered around her. Salvador found her eyes, offered a supportive nod. Thomas reappeared. The Expatriate was the color of poppies. Anna savored its sweet release. She checked her watch. 7:23.

“Thomas,” said Marge, her mouth flattening into a hyphen. “The show opens in two weeks. Enough suspense. It's time to share a few masks.”

Thomas shook his head playfully. “You'll just have to wait.”

Marge yanked her skirt, searching for a little give. She turned to Constance. “He's getting obsessive, if you ask me.”

“Thomas has been obsessed for years, but you can't do anything of quality without being obsessed. Otherwise, you are a dabbler.”

Harold perked up, hands fluttering. “My Spanish dabbling has been so rewarding.”

Anna looked at Salvador with an
I can't believe this
eyebrow. Salvador patted the air,
Paciencia, mi amor, con tiempo todo se arregla
. In time, everything will work out.

Soledad announced dinner was served, and they walked inside to
find a Hoosier picnic. Potato salad. Steak. Salad. Watermelon. Rolls. Anna had no appetite. She finished her drink. Soledad stood at the sink, washing her hands. Did she know Thomas had shot Hugo? If so, why was she still here? Where
was
Hugo?

“Wait!” Constance cried as Harold reached for his fork. “A toast to Thomas.” The collector peered over his shoulder, pretending her praise had been directed to a better man standing behind him. “Who, after more than a decade of collecting, will soon display the finest collection of Mexican masks in the world.”

Thomas tapped his fork against his glass and stood. Anna cringed. He was going to make a speech. She steadied herself, tipsy already. She pressed out the creases in her black dress, trying to clear her head. They had a job to do. The mask. The chapel.

“Friends, I'm honored. When I began collecting ten years ago, I had no idea how fascinating the enterprise would be. Masks convey a part of the human spirit that cannot easily be put into words. The mask peels back our daily façade and reveals the tragedy of the human condition.”

Anna slipped the phone out of her purse. 7:55. No text. She ticked through all the ways things could have gone wrong.
The tunnel had collapsed. The mask wasn't in the chapel. The looter had stolen the mask and bolted for Colorado. The looter was shooting heroin and didn't remember his own name.
Salvador was leaning back on two chair legs. Soledad was making a racket with the pots.

“A man in a mask is above the law. He makes his own rules, his own moral code. He is free to transgress, anonymous, unknown. Be someone else. Be yourself. Be God. This, my friends, is freedom. Jesus died for our sins. Masks live for our fears.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar
Wilde died for his beliefs, savaged by Victorian society that could not stomach a man who—”

Salvador dropped his chair with a smack. Thomas surveyed his guests' bewildered faces, cleared his throat. “You don't want to hear all this. We have this fine potato salad—”

“Show us something,” Marge hollered, sounding a bit drunk.

“Well”—Thomas shook his head, relenting—“I will show you one mask, my newest. The Wild Woman. She's out in the chapel. Eat, everyone. It'll just take a minute.”

Anna jumped up. “Let me go with you.”

“Stay put. No need for help.”

Salvador tried. “I would like to see your place out there.”

Thomas held up a hand. “I've got it.”

8:05. No text. The screen door slammed.

“
Finally
, we're going to see something,” Marge said. “I was beginning to wonder if his collection was pure fantasy.”

“Thomas never makes anything up,” Constance said. “It's one of his best qualities.”

Anna sent a frantic text.
Hes coming.

Salvador raked his hair, started humming. Soledad put milk on the stove.

Marge's face puckered. “But what's all this business about Jesus? If you ask me, he's gone over the deep end.”

Constance did a yogi impression, turning her wrists skyward. “It's his new spiritual practice.”

“Spiritual practice,” Marge said mockingly, “like yoga practice. You don't need to practice what you believe, you only need to practice what you
don't
believe until you
do
believe it, and then you don't have to
practice
anymore.”

Constance shook her head. “I've had too many Expatriates to follow that. Here's my problem with religion: If God exists, why doesn't He take responsibility? Give us a miracle now and then. A little good PR. Something to hang on to. If you're God, be God.”

“Sounds like a bumper sticker,” Harold said dryly.

Anna clutched her phone in both hands. She listened past the voices to the wind, trying to feel the ground move, the reverberation of broken tile.

“What I'm saying is,” Constance said, “God needs to man up.”

Thomas strolled into the kitchen. He did not look like a man who had just shot a meth addict in his chapel. He handed Marge a mask, a bearded woman.

Marge howled. “She's hiiiiiideous. Is that pigskin? I would never keep such a thing in my house. It probably has fleas.”

“It's not in our house,” Constance corrected. “It's in our chapel.”

Marge whooped. “What kind of religion are you practicing out there? Voodoo?”

“Excuse me,” Anna said. “I need to use the ladies' room.” She circled the table. Salvador grabbed her hand. She mouthed,
Stay here
, then went down the hallway into the vestibule, snatched her backpack, slipped out a side door, and sprinted across the lawn. The grass was wet. The moon was full. The trees buzzed in the dark. Her friend was lost underground. She'd check the tunnel opening and—she stopped short. Fortune had smiled down on her.

The chapel door was ajar.

It was so unlike Thomas. A rare misstep. Now that she'd had a bit of luck, Anna didn't trust it. She moved cautiously toward the chapel. Hand on the door, she hesitated, fear overwhelming her. Murmurs from the party filtered down the long lawn. She breathed in hard,
mustering her courage. Of course she would go inside. She was a girl who climbed trees.

The door flattened the weeds enough to let her slip in. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she saw that Thomas had lied again.

His chapel was not a storage room for art, but a congregation of ghouls.

Masks, dozens of masks, lined the wooden pews. Masks of jackals, wolves, and tigers hung from the walls, mouths frothing. Every inch of space was covered. Startled Moors squeezed next to ashen Christians. Toothless geezers leered at beauty-marked whores. Creepy wooden figures the size of children, some missing forearms or feet or hair, crowded the aisles, their chipped eyes begging for rescue or deliverance. A headless woman supplicated. Amputees wept. On the ceiling, bones were glued in decorative patterns, medallions and flowers, light as lace. On the altar, a long table lined with twelve skulls, fists of stale bread and chalices, forming a Last Supper of the dead. Presiding over this macabre centerpiece was a life-size skeleton in a wedding dress and flowered garland. In one bony hand she held a scepter and, in her outstretched palm, the death mask of Montezuma.

Santa Muerte was Thomas Malone's new religion.

Take the mask and run.

Anna staggered forward past glass eyes, painted eyes, empty sockets. No sign of the looter; the floor was pristine. A video camera was perched on a tripod. A security camera? Or was Thomas Malone another inspired director? Anna stopped. Another surprise. Grasshopper masks. A dozen identical to the one she and her father had featured in their book lay in a pile. Nearby, long sheets of silver metal leaned against a wall with half-finished Centurion masks. It all made sense now. Constance was not Thomas Malone's sole source of income.
He was manufacturing bogus masks, fobbing them off on trusting collectors, like her father.
Daniel, I see a real opportunity here, a find.
The men's friendship had been a ruse, a con job. The crafty opportunist dances circles around the well-funded drunk.

Take the mask and run.

The Angel of Death was even more unnerving up close, not some cheap replica, but a model that med students would use, anatomically correct, each bone fastened with wire or nylon string.
The human skeleton has 206 bones.
A fact Anna had checked, remembered.
The only bone not attached to another bone is the hyoid, which facilitates speech.
Each truth reassured her. Science was a safe refuge in this cauldron of perverse religion, just as religion was a safe refuge when science— Anna froze. The bride's garland, she recognized it. Dried flowers spun around a blue silk scarf. Holly's tiara from the photograph. Thomas had pinched it for his sick memento mori. Anna touched the skeleton's arm. It was smooth, almost waxy. She tapped it with her knuckle, felt herself go weak. Real bones. The remains of some poor woman from Juárez, no doubt, the creation of a covert Santa Muerte factory. Even in death, Thomas Malone procured the rare and remarkable. Even in death, the collector put his own desires above another person's soul. Anna steadied herself against the table, silence loud in her ears.
This was somebody's child.
She focused on the turquoise mask, whose lopsided expression seemed more kindly than usual.
Take me and run.

Anna lifted the mask, expecting alarms to ring, but the only sound was her own jagged breath. Fumbling, she wrapped the mask in her sweater, stuffed it in her pack, turned to leave. Her legs and lips had swelled. Objects swayed and dulled. She felt drugged. It didn't seem possible that a house filled with people she knew lay beyond the chapel door.

“C'mon, Morocco, Honduras. Keep me company.”

Thomas.

Anna slid under a pew, making herself small and quiet. What would Thomas do if he caught her? Shoot her. Laugh it off. Claim the chapel was an art installation, and they could both pretend to believe his lie, pretend this wasn't fetishism, the occult. The chapel door opened. A dull light went on. Anna's heart was a crow, flapping, cawing, out of her chest. Fear played visual tricks. Everything shattered into multiple images. The pews, the cracks in the tiles, the dust. Already, she was willing to surrender.
Let the worst happen now.
His orange aftershave met her nose. Anna prayed to the only dead person who loved her. And she thought:
Fish never close their eyes.

“Where shall we put you, my lovely? A woman as grand as you needs an escort. Sit next to the mendicant.”