Plata (5 page)

Chapter 12

It was one of Madison’s treasured days off, and she wanted to make the most of it. She slept with the pillow over her head until almost one o’clock in the afternoon, ignoring the incessant chime of the doorbell,which was always followed by voices and laughter downstairs. Enzo’s house never stopped jumping, even when she needed peace and quiet. But Daniel hadn’t come again, which was fine with her. Madison felt used and a little embarrassed about their encounter, but she didn’t have a lot of energy to wallow over it. After spending most of her waking life engaged in obligatory conversation and forcing on the charm, it was the silence and the solitude she craved the most.

She spent the afternoon in El Péndulo, reading a book in the upstairs café. It was one of the mysterious gift books, an English translation of a French novel by a woman named Delphine de Vigan. All Madison wanted to do was lose herself in the novel and forget everything about her life. She wanted to forget all about the club; the unrelenting music, the dim light, the clients pulling out her chair and kissing her hands, the lustful eyes on her body, the hollow buzz of vodka in her brain. She wanted to forget about Arizona. All she wanted today was to be Madison. The old Madison. She even wore her glasses to the café, along with her faded jeans and her favorite tee shirt. It was the first time she’d been happy in weeks.

Before leaving the house, she’d called her mom’s friend, Lidia, and made up a lie about Enzo getting her well-paid work playing the gringa in Mexican television commercials, and that she’d be home in another month or two. Lidia had sounded surprised, but assured Madison that she’d be looking in on her mother, and asked her to keep in touch. Madison was relieved to hear that her mom was responding well to the medication; it gave her the motivation she needed to push onward toward her goal.

As Madison sipped coffee and read her book, she couldn’t stop thinking about her mother. It didn’t help that it was a novel about a woman struggling to come to terms with her own mother’s mental illness. She found it eerie, as if the gift giver had known her secret life story.

After a while, her eyes hurt and she put the book down to give them a rest. She gasped. Standing at the top of the stairs, staring right at her, was Pierre himself.He was dressed in a dark gray suit, but the jacket was slung over his arm and the tie had been loosened. He looked shockingly tall amidst the shorter-statured men moving up and down the stairs around him.

Suddenly she was embarrassed to be wearing her geeky old glasses. When he approached her table and asked if he could join her, Madison pulled them off. The world instantly blurred into movement and color.

“Put them back on,” Pierre said in a low voice. “Please.”

With an embarrassed smile, Madison slid them back onto her face.Once again she could see Pierre’s steady blue eyes and handsome, sculpted face.

“It’s my day off,” she muttered.

She’d spent so much time fantasizing about meeting him again; but now that it was happening, she had no idea what to say.

“I cannot tell you how much I adore you like this,” he said with a grin. “You look like a real girl. Beautiful, but real.”

She nervously picked up her forgotten coffee cup and took a sip. It had gone stone cold. Pierre glanced at the book in her hands and his face lit up.

“You’re reading de Vigan!”

Madison smiled. “I had a feeling it was you. The books are all wonderful.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”He gave her an impish look. “How do you like the novel?”

“It’s beautiful.”

She held his eyes, captivated by the sexy laugh lines. Her mind flashed back to the heat between them when she’d danced, and felt an irrepressible thrill.

Pierre sighed and collapsed back into his chair. He rubbed his face as if he were exasperated or very tired. His hair was wind swept and a few rogue strands fell across his eyes. He looked at Madison in silence for a long moment.

“You,” he mumbled at last. “I don’t know what to do about you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

He pressed his fingers against his lips and shook his head. Then he dropped his hands into his lap in a gesture of hopelessness.

“I can’t get you out of my head,” he laughed.“What will become of me?”

Madison couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “Because of the dance?”

His eyelids fluttered at the mention of the dance.

“I’m sorry about that.”

She remembered how he’d tried and failed to stop himself from looking at her body, and the memory caused a flash of heat all through her.

“You are?” she said with a smile, surprised at her own coyness.

He blushed and looked down at his hands. “I don’t even know your name. Your real name.”

“Madison.” She jokingly extended a greeting hand across the table.

Pierre took it and pressed it gently against his lips. She felt the raspy beginning of whiskers.

“Enchanté,” he said quietly.

Madison relished the feel of his touch.

“Pierre…?” She kept her voice low to keep others from hearing. “Why on earth would a guy like you be so enamored by a stripper?”

He looked at her with genuine surprise. “First,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘a guy like me’. For all you know I spend all my time in those places.”

“No,” she quipped. “You and I both know that you don’t.”

He smiled. “Second, you are not a stripper.”

She furrowed her brow. “You’ve seen me yourself, Pierre. You know what I do.”

“Only you know why you are working at that place,” he said gently. “But it is certainly not who you are.”

Without warning, Madison felt tears burning in her eyes. She shook her head. “No,” she breathed. “It’s not.”

Pierre looked at her sadly, but without pity. “Come walk with me.”

He stood up and held out his hand. Madison wiped at her eyes with a wan smile. Walking had always been her favorite way to spend time with someone. When she was still in high school, she and her mom would take long, leisurely walks through their neighborhood and along the bike path that paralleled the mountain range. She loved the idea of moving in unison, taking in the same sights, stopping to observe the same things. It was one of her favorite things to do.

Madison took Pierre’s hand and stood up. A waiter came past and Pierre handed him a bill to pay for her coffee. They went downstairs together, and Madison realized that they were turning heads as they went. The handsome couple. Without a word, they drifted into the book section and began scanning the titles on display. It made Madison smile, this nerdy bookishness they shared. Being with him was easy. It felt to her as if they’d known each other forever.

They walked through the Condesa, past restaurants and cafés, talking. It wasn’t like the conversations she’d had with men since starting college. The coy dance.The back and forth. Whoever gives up the most information loses. She hated those games. Instead, Pierre was honest, forthcoming, and amazingly humble.

As they meandered the dusty walkways of the Parque Mexico, he told her about growing up in a poor neighborhood in Paris. He’d loved school, but the kids were so rough he spent more time fighting than studying. To help his family pay rent, he learned to fix bicycles for the neighbors, and later taught himself everything there was to know about motorcycles. He went from having a small shop in his garage where he fixed up motorcycles and sold them, to a multinational motorcycle empire.

“Do you ride?” she asked, trying to picture Pierre dressed in leather and gunning down the highway on a motorcycle. She just couldn’t see it.

“Not for ages,” he said. “When I was a kid I was reckless. Frankly, I am lucky to be here at all. But now…I don’t know. I guess I have lost my taste for it.”

“You play it safe now?” Madison teased.

Pierre stopped. They’d reached the sad little duck pond, which was surrounded with chicken wire. But the sun glinted on the water and the dusty leaves of the ficus trees reflected on its surface. For a moment it looked almost beautiful. He watched it, his eyes squinting against the light.

“I got tired of fast things. Everything fast. Fast bikes. Fast money. Fast women.” He turned to look at Madison with sigh. “When you live like that, you miss everything that matters.”

He brushed a loose strand of hair from her face, his surprisingly calloused fingers grazing the soft skin of her cheek. Even as he felt familiar to her, he was utterly mysterious.And for the first time, she truly felt the years between them. Pierre had already experienced so much. He’d long ago burned through his reckless youth and come out the other side. Now he exuded elegance and restraint, and an intimidating worldliness. She hadn’t even finished her sophomore year in college. Before she could stop herself, she blurted it out.

“Do you think I’m too young for you?”

Pierre laughed, caught off guard. “I have not been so worried about your age. Why do you ask? How old are you?”

She immediately regretted bringing it up. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “Forget it. That was a stupid thing to say.”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked back at the pond. “I must get back to work.”

Madison’s heart sank. She’d gotten flustered and acted like a child, she thought. And now her dream man was getting away. But then Pierre looked at her again, his eyes shining.

“Have dinner with me tonight, Madison.”

The invitation was so unexpected, it took her breath away. She could only manage an eager nod. They were going to have a real date. But when Pierre offered to pick her up, she hesitated. She imagined him running into Enzo’s loud, bawdy friends who would make teasing catcalls and call out vulgar jokes if they suspected she was leaving on a date.

“Can I meet you there?” she asked.

She expected him to ask her why, and was frantically searching for a white lie to tell him. But he simply pulled a pen from his breast pocket and wrote the name and address of a Zona Rosa restaurant and his cell number directly onto the palm of her hand.

“I do like you in those glasses,” he murmured, his eyes shining. “I like you very much.”

Chapter 13

Madison decided to put in her contact lenses even though Pierre liked her glasses. For all she knew, he was just being nice, and she wanted to look as good as possible. As she showered, she kept trying to imagine him as the crazy younger man he’d told her about. There was something incredibly sexy about a refined and educated man like Pierre having a rough, bad-boy past, riding motorcycles and getting in fights.

She was standing at the mirror in her black silk bra and panties putting on her makeup, when she heard her bedroom door open. Assuming it was Enzo, she muttered, “Doesn’t anybody knock anymore?”

“That might give you time to get dressed,” a deep voice said playfully.

It was not Enzo. Madison spun and discovered Daniel leaning against the closed door, eyeing up every exposed inch of her body. He was dressed in a black tee shirt and jeans that fit him snugly in all the right places. His hair was a gorgeous mess, black tufts every which way in carefully constructed chaos. But this time Madison was immune to his beauty.

He smiled impishly.

“Get the hell out!” she yelled, grabbing a pillow from the bed to cover her half-naked body.

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” he offered smugly. “Or have you forgotten?”

Madison’s cheeks flushed, remembering how she’d literally thrown herself at him. “That doesn’t give you the right to come barging in here!” she yelled. “Get out!”

Daniel smiled and moved in closer.

“You look amazing,” he said, backing her up against a wall, so that the only thing between their bodies was the pillow. Madison felt the cold plaster against her bare skin, and shivered. Then, catching her off guard, Daniel gave the pillow a sudden tug, yanking it from her hands. He tossed it on the bed and pressed against her with his body. She breathed in his cologne, which gave her an unwelcome wave of desire. He leaned in close, his warm breath on her neck.

“Don’t,” Madison whispered.

But Daniel ignored her. He pressed his lips against the tender skin beneath her hair. She stifled a sigh. His hands went to her breasts, rubbing and caressing, his fingers gently pinching her nipples through the silk. He was movie star-sexy, and it was hard not to go weak from his touch. But this time she forced her head to reign over her eager body, and she pushed him away.

“Oh, come on!” he groaned in frustration. “Enough of the game already!”

“It’s no game,” she snapped. “I really want you to leave.”

“You’re just mad that I didn’t call,” he said petulantly. “Now you’re trying to punish me.”

“I’m not mad,” she said. She went to the bed, where her clothes were laid out for her date. “But I’m going out with someone else tonight. And I like him a lot.”

Daniel’s expression hardened. He leaned against the wall and unabashedly adjusted the erection in his pants. Then he put his hands in his pockets and glared at her.

“Oh yeah?” he sneered. “What’s his name?”

“It’s none of your business.”

She pulled on her fitted black pants and pulled on her favorite tight sweater. Then she slipped on her boots and went back to the mirror to finish her makeup. It was clear to her that Daniel didn’t take rejection well. He crossed his arms over his chest and sized her up, as if he were about to rate her on a scale from one to ten.

“Does Mr. Wonderful know you’re a stripper?”

Madison froze. “Excuse me?”

Daniel laughed bitterly. “You thought you could hide it, huh? Oh, well.”

She put on her earrings and brushed her hair as if Daniel’s words meant nothing to her. But inside, a terrible shame had taken over. She wondered with dread if Enzo had spilled the beans at last, unable to keep such juicy gossip to himself. If she couldn’t trust her best friend in the world, who was left?

“Where did you hear that?” she asked nonchalantly.

Daniel grinned, sensing her discomfort. He brushed a speck of lint from his black shirt and sauntered across the room, enjoying himself.

“I was there the other night with friends,” he said. “You were very good. I had half a mind to pay for some dances.” He opened the door and lingered for a moment. “But then I thought, what’s the point if I’ve already had her for free?”

With that he slipped into the hall and closed the door behind him. Madison sat down on the bed, fighting the urge to burst into tears. She hated him for making her feel dirty and cheap. Not wanting to slip into the dark, she forced herself up and stood tall before the mirror.

“Fuck him,” she muttered aloud to her reflection. “He doesn’t know anything about you.”

Glancing at her phone,she saw that it was late. She grabbed her coat and purse, and dashed out the door. There was no time to call one of the club taxis she knew. With relief, she found loads of cabs stuck in traffic on Monterrey Street. She raised her hand and headed for the first one to flash its lights.

As soon as she climbed into the taxi, she could feel the driver eye her up.

“Where to, gorgeous?” he asked, looking at her in his rearview mirror. He was a stout man in his 30s, with brown pigment splotches all over his face. His hair was stiff with gel; his shirt stained with grease.

Madison glanced at the laminated license with the driver’s name and photo, which was displayed on the window. It was supposed to distinguish a legal taxi from a pirate one. It said: Jose Hernandez, and included an unsmiling photo of the driver.

She gave him the intersection in the Zona Rosa and settled into her seat. They maneuvered slowly through the usual bottlenecked traffic, the chaotic ballet of cars, bikes, rickshaws, and the occasional man-powered hauling wagon. At one intersection, a hoard of children descended upon the idling cars, washer fluid and squeegees at the ready. Without making eye contact with the boy outside his window, the driver wagged his finger “no.” The boy squirted fluid all over the windshield anyway.

“Chingados,” the driver muttered under his breath, digging for a coin in his pocket.

The boy frantically cleaned the glass, trying to finish before the light turned green. Madison watched him without realizing that she was holding her breath, routing for him to make it. At last, he shook the excess liquid from his squeegee and approached the window. The driver rolled it down and handed the boy a coin. Enzo had once told Madison that the boys carry rocks in their pockets for breaking the windows of drivers who won’t pay. He said he’d found out the hard way.

Even when the light changed, there was too much traffic to move. Vendors wandered through the stuck cars, selling candy and pencils and flowers. Suddenly, the driver hooked down a side street and accelerated.

“I know a better way to go,” he said.

Madison studied his face in the mirror, and she thought she saw his expression harden. He pulled up and down the quiet streets of the Roma Sur until she no longer recognized the neighborhood.

“This doesn’t look right to me,” she said. Her body felt cold, and her stomach went tight as a fist.

The driver didn’t respond. He made a hard right into an alley and turned off the engine. A tattered white box van was also parked there, silent in the darkness.

“What the fuck!” Madison yelled, adrenaline rocketing through her.

Before she could even move, a man approached from the shadows and let himself into the cab. He had a moustache and a fat belly. When he saw Madison in the back, he grinned with crooked, yellow teeth.

“Good evening, princess,” he chortled, giving the driver a look of approval.

The man demanded her phone and all of her rings, even though they were mostly worthless. When he saw the gold chain her father had given her for high school graduation, he poked a grubby finger at her neck.

“Take it off.”

Madison hesitated. “Please,” she said, her voice breaking. “My dad gave this to me and…”

The man didn’t wait for her to finish. He yanked the chain hard, and Madison could feel the sharp pinch at the back of her neck as it snapped. He tossed everything into a bag and handed it to the driver. Then he shoved his hand between her legs and made a hideous sucking sound.

“Come on, blondie,” he growled. “Hurry up!”

He pulled her out of the back of the cab and grabbed her roughly around the waist, pinning her arms to her body. Madison realized with dread that he was dragging her toward the van.

“Motherfucker!” she screamed, kicking and straining hard until she’d broken free of his grip.

She lashed out and cracked the man in the mouth with the heel of her palm. His head snapped back and he blinked at her, surprised. But before she could run, he grabbed a fistful of her coat and yanked her back into his grasp.

“Just for that, I’m not going to be nice!” he hissed, reaching under his tee shirt and pulling a knife from his waistband. He shoved the tip under her chin, grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. She could feel the metal digging into her skin and the trickle of damp blood down her throat.

In that moment, Madison understood what it meant to be paralyzed with fear. Her legs went stiff and numb, and she couldn’t move her arms. Like a lot of people, Madison had always assumed that she’d be fierce in a situation like that; that she’d fight and scream and bite and claw. But now that it was happening, it was all she could do to simply breathe.

“Don’t take too long,” the driver called. “I want a turn with her, too, and I have to get the car back soon.”

But before the mustached man could respond, something cracked him on the head from behind, sending both he and Madison sprawling to the ground. The man’s knife skittered across the blacktop. Madison looked up, her heart pounding wildly, gasping for air.

It was Ramon, the drug trafficker from the club. He stood perfectly still, the streetlight shining on his black nylon windbreaker; his eyes cold as steel. In his hands was the biggest assault rifle Madison had ever seen. He calmly lifted it and aimed it at the man on the ground. Without looking at Madison, he gestured with his head.

“Arizona, move out of the way.”

With great effort, she forced her legs to move, clambering to her feet and edging out of range. She was overwhelmed with feelings of terror, relief, confusion, gratitude; a cascade of emotions that brought forth a flood of tears. The man lay unconscious on the ground, his head bleeding from where he was cold cocked with the rifle.

Ramon moved with eerie calm toward the driver, who stood paralyzed by the open door of the cab. He made a whimpering sound and held up his hands. He pleaded for his life, his jaw trembling so violently Madison could hardly make out his Spanish. But Ramon’s expression was unchanged.Inscrutable. He held up the gun and took aim, his finger steady on the trigger. It was actually happening. Madison was going to witness a classic Mexico City murder.

She covered her eyes and braced herself for the rain of bone shard, tissue, and blood. She imagined Pierre sitting in the restaurant, waiting; his beautiful blue eyes on the door. The thought of his eyes calmed her, and she tried to focus on them alone. When no blast came, she peeked through her fingers. Ramon stood watching, gun at the ready, as the whimpering man dragged his unconscious friend through the doors of the box van. The keys were on the ground, and Ramon stooped to grab them without taking his eyes off the men.

Once they were inside the van, Ramon approached the door and said something in a low voice that Madison couldn’t hear. Then he lowered the assault rifle and held it in his left hand. His right hand dipped inside his coat and retrieved a small handgun, which he pointed at the men inside. There was a series of cracks in the silence, followed by cries of agony. Ramon walked slowly around the van, shooting out the tires. He shot up the taxi’s tires as well, and then blew out all the windows.

“Come on,” he said to Madison. “My car’s around the corner.”

He held out his hand to help her up. Her fingers shook and felt clammy against the rough warmth of his skin. He led her out of the alley to a large black SUV with tinted windows, double-parked in the middle of the quiet residential street. She looked around, trying to get her bearings, but she had no idea where she was. The houses were small, low slung hovels made of concrete and cinder block; the windows covered in chicken wire. There was no sign of life anywhere.

“Did you kill them?” Madison asked quietly as they pulled down the narrow street. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

“Nah,” he said, as relaxed if they were discussing a soccer game. “Just shot the bastards in the legs. Fucking street vermin.”

Madison was silent. How could Ramon turn up out of nowhere? She couldn’t understand it. But he didn’t offer an explanation. He just hummed along with the American pop music on the stereo and navigated his way through the impoverished streets until they were back on a main thoroughfare. Madison touched the tender place under her chin where the man had held the tip of the knife, and then saw the blood on her fingers.

After a while, she began to recognize a few things, and she realized that they were close to the Zona Rosa. As they drew nearer, she realized that Ramon was taking her to the club. Maybe he had assumed she was on her way to work. He pulled up at the edge of the pedestrian mall where The Gentlemen’s Club was located.

“I’d come with you,” he grumbled, “but I’ve got some shit to take care of. If I have time, I’ll stop by later.”

Madison stared out the windshield, where a group of well-dressed young people crossed the street in a clump. They were all laughing. Madison’s stomach was sour and she couldn’t tell if she was blazing hot or freezing cold. Finally, she looked at Ramon.

“You’ve been following me.”

He chewed his lip and looked straight ahead, saying nothing. A car honked impatiently behind him, and Ramon glared at the rearview mirror. Madison watched his eyes as they narrowed, his brow low, and there was something very dark there. He was a sociopath, she thought. A drug trafficking sociopath. And he was stalking her.

“Go on,” he said impatiently. “Like I said, I got shit to do.”

She nodded and, without another word, climbed out of the SUV and closed the door.

The car behind Ramon honked again. Without missing a beat, he threw open his door and stormed up to the car. Madison hurried down the street in the direction of the club, not wanting to see the confrontation.