The Jaguar (29 page)

—If the numbers are different than the ones you told me I’ll execute you.

—Check them over, Captain.

The captain took the notebook and read the numbers and looked at Bradley.

—
Perfecto
. You will now come to Quintana Roo Police headquarters. Where you will be safe. The Campeche State Police will travel here to talk to you about the Zetas.

—Tomorrow is all I have, Captain. I’ve got one day to get her out of Armenta’s compound.

—I am afraid that you will be occupied for tomorrow. If we discover your wife we will detain and return her to the United States as our constitution requires.

—I will donate two hundred thousand dollars to the Army if you’ll let me go.

—Saturnino offered three hundred thousand and I told him to go to hell. I fear not for myself, but for my family.

—Four hundred thousand. Bring your family to California. I’ll get you on with the LASD. Starting pay is around forty thousand a year, plus benefits.

The captain stared down at him while he tore out the sheet with the coordinates on it. Then he smiled bitterly.

—Americanos. You come all the way to the bottom of Mexico to insult me with your bribes?

Bradley awaited the boot.

—Tell me what the cost of my wife is.

—The cost is your business with Benjamin Armenta and the many thousands of men like him.

The captain tossed the notebook back to the soldier and barked an order and marched heavily toward the door. Suddenly Bradley was up and being pushed along behind Cleary and Vega and he knew that sunrise would find him not at the cenote but in a jail in Chetumal, if sunrise found him at all.

E
RIN LABORED THROUGH THE NIGHT
and into morning, fell asleep with the Hummingbird and a notebook beside her on the bed, then awakened after two hours of horrifying dreams.

In one of the dreams Saturnino came into her room while she slept and she understood, in the strange logic of dreams, that if she awakened he would attack her. So she remained still, watching him through her closed eyelids. He had a perfectly V-shaped divot in the center of his hairline where the flashlight had crashed into him. He prowled the room looking for something on the table, then in the desk, his back to her. When he turned and looked at her from across the suite he was a leopard and in his mouth was a baby doll dressed in a blue jumpsuit as an infant boy might be. The leopard looked at her with the doll dangling, then dropped the doll and sprang through the window, silently gliding through the pane without breaking it, and into the dark. The doll ate a box of cereal, then grew roots and turned into a white poinsettia.

She was saved by the knock of Atlas, and she called for him to come in as she wrestled herself up from the nightmare. She was so glad to see him. Her life had come down to this day. Sweet Tuesday, she thought. Please be the day this ends. She cried and hid in the bathroom and checked if the gun was still there and it was. When she came out she asked him for coffee and a light breakfast.

Now she was back in the studio control room, listening to more of the
narcocorridos
in Armenta’s vast collection of CDs. She had not changed her clothes or showered. She could smell herself. Her hair was pulled back in a lank ponytail and her temples were dotted with perspiration in spite of the coolness of the studio.

“I’ll come back for you if you want,” said Owens.

“Thank you. I’m having trouble concentrating.”

“Imagine that. Two hours?”

“Good,” said Erin. “Maybe we could take a walk later, outside. It would help to get some oxygen to my brain.”

Her heart tapped faster and she felt the shortness of breath that always accompanied her fear.

Owens studied her. “When?”

“When everyone rests.”

“Siesta. I’ll make sure that Benjamin is with me.”

“I’m terrified, Owens. What if someone sees me? One of Armenta’s men, or a leper, or a servant? I read Bradley’s note a hundred times. I know it by heart and I know the map by heart. But what if I get lost? One wrong turn. The jungle is dense. What if Bradley’s information is old? What if there’s a trail he didn’t know about and I make a wrong turn?”

“You’ll find the cenote. I know you will.”

“What if he’s not there? What if they arrested him? Or worse?”

“Believe.”

“What if someone is there first? Getting water or taking a bath?”

“Believe, Erin.”

“In what? In who?”

“That’s your choice. I can’t decide for you.”

She almost said that she believed in Bradley, but there was such a hollow ring to the idea that she couldn’t give it words. A short
few days ago, he would have been her answer. Now, no. Ever again?

“Come with me,” said Erin.

“You forget, I can leave here anytime I want.” Owens brought a card key from the pocket of her jeans and gave it to Erin. Erin looked at it for a long beat, her small plastic rectangular savior. Then she dropped it into her boot.

“Won’t Benjamin know where I got it?”

“I stole it from my father.”

“Will Armenta feed him to a leopard when he sees I’m gone?”

“Father Ciel is safe from Benjamin Armenta. Protected by the God whose indulgence he sells.”

“That’s heartbreaking. He’s filth.”

“He is what he is.”

“Owens, why have you helped me?”

Owens gave her a startled look. “Mike says we can only give someone the tools to help themselves.”

“Then thank you for the tools, Owens. For everything.”

“Do you like what you’ve written so far?”

“Ask me later.”

“Back in L.A.?”

“Deal. In L.A.” Erin stepped forward and hugged Owens. Then she took the woman’s scarred and welted wrists in her hands and looked steadily into her gray eyes. “Sure you don’t want to come with me?”

“I’m where I need to be.”

“What if Benjamin blames you?”

“I know how to lie to him.”

“An hour before siesta come back here. That will give me time to get to my room and get ready and go. And time for you to get back to Benjamin.”

“Before you leave the Castle, Erin, slip the key under the door to my room. Don’t forget. If you are caught with it someone will suffer. Maybe me.”

Erin sat at the mixing board. Concentrate, she thought. Concentrate. But it was almost impossible to compose now. The more the minutes ticked away the less control she had over her own emotions and words and skills. Her mind was beginning to storm. Bradley. The cenote. How to get from her room to the jungle without being seen. What were the chances? Then, the pathways. The trees. Would the trails be clear? Would Bradley be there?

Concentrate. Focus. She listened to Los Jaguars through the Auratones. The Jaguars were terrific, she thought, but she didn’t want to praise violence as they did, and she didn’t want to present Benjamin Armenta as a man created by the violence around him. He was not a product. He was self-driven, self-governed, self-made. If there was one thing she had learned from him over last night’s long dinner, it was that Benjamin Armenta was utterly aware of himself, without delusion and without excuse.

She had a start on a song but that was all—two verses and a chorus and a tenuous melody to hold them.
What if the trails have grown over?
But she was already two long verses into the song and Armenta was still only a boy. How long was this
corrido
going to be?
What if he isn’t there?
Where should I go?
One of her favorite gangster songs was Dylan’s “Joey,” and that went, what, eleven minutes? Thirteen?
What if they follow me, what if Saturnino is feeling strong again?
Worse, she had no bridge in sight and every tempo she tried was wrong. She kept trying to get the odd syncopation that the
corridos
often had, that hurried, sooner-than-expected downbeat that foiled your expectations and made your breath catch and drove the narrative forward musically. Like you’re tripping but you never quite fall, she thought. Without it the song was sounding like a
narcocorrido
written by a
gringa
. I have to do better than that. The greatest
narcocorrido
of all time. Jesus please help me.
What if Atlas wants to talk and I’ve vanished? Will he sound the alarm? What if Ciel tells Armenta his key has been stolen? What if the key doesn’t work?

The notebook was open on the board beside her and she read through what she had written.

The clock on the wood-paneled mixing room wall said 8:25. She took the pen and notebook into the tracking room and moved Armenta’s accordion into one of the instrument booths so she could sit down at the Yamaha. Even the sound of her boot on the floor and the piano cover being slid open resonated in this room like a perfect musical chord. She ran through Joni Mitchell’s “River” to get her heart
and her fingers working together and when she got to the ending quote from “Jingle Bells” it reminded her of Christmas and her home so strongly that tears welled in her eyes and she understood very clearly now how terribly Benjamin Armenta must have missed his home when he’d been exiled in Salvador, so she took up the pen and she listened to the wonderful melody and she tried to keep up with the lines coming into her head:

And then she imagined what it would be like to be kept from your home for not just a few days, as she had been, but for months on end, and to never know if you’d be able to go back there. What passion you would feel, to finally return! She tapped the melody on the piano and heard the instruments join in, the accordion and the bajo sexto
and the guitars. Yes, it was starting to take on the sound of a
corrido
. Danger. Doing things you never thought you could do:

Well, no, thought Erin. Not empty soul. If I write that he’ll skin me for sure.

So she scratched through “empty,” then the rest of the line, but she couldn’t find the right words to replace it. It was a terrible feeling and one that she knew well—the fine and incandescent thing that brought the music to her mind was gone again, vanishing like a far-off filament of lightning.

She took the pen and notebook then walked around the tracking room, past the vocal and instrument booths. She imagined them staffed by professionals who could bring her song to life.
Narcorridos
were almost always sung by men, so who would have the best possible voice for it? Luis Miguel? Jorge Hernandez of Los Tigres? Flaco on accordion, for sure! And Ry Cooder on acoustic and maybe Mike Campbell would play electric, and her all-time rhythm section Sly and Robbie would show up with Sam Clayton for percussion and man, what if we could get Linda and Lila for harmonies, yeah, that’ll be the day Linda Ronstadt and Lila Downs sing backup on one of my songs. But now she could hear them playing and singing anyway. She stood still for a long moment, hearing fully detailed passages of the song, all of the instruments and vocals working perfectly. She
closed her eyes and walked to the rhythm tapping the pen and notebook against her legs. Eyes still closed, she listened and tried not to interrupt in any way, scribbling across the pages and turning them as fast as she could: