The Jaguar

by T. Jefferson Parker

  He asked Hood and Luna to fill out their own versions of what happened and he gave each of them a Reynosa Policia Municipal form and a ballpoint pen. Hood finished before Luna and he went back to check on the Expedition. A uniformed officer stood with his back to the driver’s door and he stared at Hood. They spoke in Spanish.

  —I’m seeing if my vehicle is safe.

  —It is very safe. I am guarding it.

  —What is your name?

  —Reuben.

  —It has a very loud alarm, Reuben.

  —Yes, I know this model of the Ford.

  Hood looked through a back window and saw the suitcase on the seats. They’ll be looking for this vehicle now, he thought, and they’ve got our Mexican plate numbers. He unlocked the Expedition and opened a back door and yanked the luggage out to the ground where it landed on its side.

  “Your luggage is very safe.”

  “Yes. But I may need a change of clothes.”

  The officer looked questioningly at Hood, but said nothing. Hood rolled the suitcase around to the impound yard and set it down and unsnapped his holster strap and waited. A few minutes later a man in street clothes and a straw cowboy hat walked from the station and got into the purple Durango and drove it out of the yard, through the sally port, then onto the street. Here he parked it and got out and locked it with an electronic key and put the key in his pocket. Hood watched him walk around the corner and out of sight. He waited and watched, then carried the suitcase back inside to the prisoner intake area, where he saw the man in the straw cowboy hat leaning against the bars of the holding tank, talking with the boys inside. One of the boys laughed. The man in the hat glanced over at Hood, then turned back to the inmates.

  Luna had come up behind him. “They’ll be free the moment we leave,” he whispered. “Ruiz is the third police commander in Reynosa in the last two years. The other two were caught running drugs into Texas.”

  “How did these people know where we were and what we have?”

  “In a poor place one million dollars cannot be a secret for very long.”

  Hood patted the suitcase. “It’s pretty much public knowledge now.”

  “It’s good you have it and a gun to guard it with.”

  “We need a different vehicle.”

  “We can do this.”

  Hood drove away from the Reynosa PD and Luna kept a constant eye out behind them. They were almost back to the motel when Hood’s phone buzzed.

  “Drive to Merida. Stay at the Hyatt Regency. You have four days.”

  “Let me talk to her.”

  There was a shuffle and silence, then Erin’s voice.

  “Charlie?”

  “I’m here, Erin. I’m getting closer with the money.”

  “Please get here soon.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right. But I’m afraid. Armenta knows who I am. He knew all along. He claims he loves my music. He wants me to play for him. Where is Bradley? Why isn’t he bringing the money? I’m his wife. I’m not your wife, but you’re risking your life for me. I don’t know how long I’m going to last around here.”

  “We thought this would work best. You’re going to be okay, Erin.”

  The connection went dead.

  16

  “YOU’RE GOING TO LIKE VERACRUZ, Bradley,” said Mike Finnegan. They were walking the malecón at dusk. The sky was too dark for this hour and the wind snapped the Gulf of Mexico waters into whitecaps. Most of the vendors had packed up ahead of the storm and the old boardwalk was empty of tourists and lovers. Finnegan wore red tennis warm-ups and Topsiders and a USS Constitution cap and he toted in each hand a heavy canvas bag.

  “Where is she? You said you’d know by now.”

  Mike stopped and set down a bag and dug a hand into the pocket of his warm-ups. Bradley noted that the contents of each canvas bag were covered by a neatly folded plastic lawn bag. Mike handed him a Villa Rica matchbook. “She is being held in Benjamin Armenta’s Castle in Quintana Roo. The coordinates are written inside.”

  “Castle?”

  Finnegan picked up the bag and they continued down the malecón. “There’s no really good word for it. It’s too rustic to be called a palace or a mansion. Too large to be called a home. Too homey to be called a fortress or citadel or bastion. It was always called the Castle. It was built in the nineteen-twenties by a daft banker who was passionate about Meso-American native artifacts. A gringo, though his wife was a Chinese woman. Interesting pair. When they died the place was sacked by vandals and sat in ruin for decades. Armenta bought it five years ago, through intermediaries, paid more cash than it was really worth so that certain questions could go unasked. It sits squarely in a federally protected archaeological preserve not open to the public. Federal soldiers man the gates and no one can enter the reserve, except for Armenta’s chosen few. He pays handsomely for this protection. The reserve itself is managed by a private Catholic league called the Sons of Jesus, heavily endowed by Armenta through Father Edgar Ciel. The Castle is said to be either four or five levels and is of course believed to be haunted.”

  “Why of course?”

  “The Caribbean imagination favors such constructs. A different world down there.” Finnegan smiled and tilted back his head and drew a deep breath. “Veracruz smells of centuries, and centuries fire the imagination. But to get to the point, Armenta’s Castle is home to a couple of dozen or so of his friends and family. Armed men guard the compound in eight-hour shifts. The off-duty guards live in a garrison back in the jungle. They rotate in and out, always fresh and well rested. Ten armed guards patrol the Castle and its immediate grounds. Then there are three gate guards staggered down the road. Three guards each. And four more men who prowl the perimeter of the property. There is only one road in. The property is not fenced. The jungle is extremely dense and some of it is precipitous. Often, when Armenta is especially fearful for his life, he will increase the number of guards or rearrange them according to his latest intelligence and fears. His eldest son is the head of security. His name is Saturnino.”

  The name sent a shiver up Bradley’s back. Saturnino. He thought of Fidel’s wife and two children and of Erin, now in Saturnino’s hands. Killer. Rapist. Skinner.

  Bradley read the coordinates off the matchbook and committed them to memory. “There are twenty-four of us. We’d be up against at least twenty-three armed men who know the Castle and the jungle around it.”

  “Don’t forget to count Armenta himself, and his personal bodyguards, his son, and their closest associates. Figure ten more men, conservatively.”

  “How did you get this information?”

  “Contacts.”

  “Can we get word to her?”

  “Possibly.”

  They continued up the boardwalk. Bradley looked across the harbor to Fort San Juan de Ulúa. Even at this distance and in the failing light it looked unassailable. He imagined Armenta’s Castle and it too looked unassailable with its armed patrols and Erin being held God only knew where.

  “The Spanish built it to guard against pirates,” said Finnegan. “That was in fifteen-eighty-two. Veracruz had already been here over sixty years, if you can believe that. Cortez himself founded it, the first settlement on the American mainland. Sorry if I sound like a seventh-grade history teacher but I love this city—the Maya and the slave trade and the pirates and the drastic attitudes of the Spanish conquerors. What a rich, mad blend. Coming here suggests so much to me.”

  “Can we get word to Erin or not?”

  “What word would it be?”

  “Can she get out and come to us, or do we need to blast her out?”

  “You can’t blast her out. The chances of her being hit by a bullet are far too great. We can’t let her or your son or you, Bradley, expire in such a small and pointless way.”

  “That’s why we need a way to communicate. What if she can slip away? I don’t know—through a window or a door when the guard takes a break. Or, maybe you
r contact can create a diversion or knock somebody cold for a few minutes so Erin can get out.”

  “Yes, good. Now, during the nineteenth century, Fort San Juan de Ulúa was a military prison. Some of the dungeons have walls twenty-four-feet thick in places. Imagine the hopelessness! They had nicknames for the hottest and darkest of them—‘Purgatory,’ and ‘Hell’ and other rather unimaginative names like that.”

  “Surprise is what we have, Mike. We can surprise them but we can’t overwhelm them.”

  Finnegan stopped and looked up at Bradley. “It’s all you have.”

  They found the Taberna Roja near the port on a cramped eighteenth-century side street intersecting Zaragoza. The weather-beaten wooden sign hanging out front featured a plump man in sandals and a poncho running with a grin on his face and a tray of booze bottles held high overhead. Inside it was cool and damp but very crowded and thick with smoke. Bradley saw that several arguments in several languages were taking place throughout the dark, high-ceilinged room. The patrons were almost all men, stevedores and sailors and perhaps fishermen. He and Mike took a small high table in the back. A moment later one of the barkeeps arrived with a bottle of rum and a dish filled with lime and lemon wedges and bucket of ice and two lowball glasses on a tray.

  “Welcome, Mr. Fix. How are you?”

  “Perfecto, Pao. Perfectly perfect now that I’m here!”

  Pao spooned the ice into the glasses and opened the bottle and set it beside the fruit dish. “Salud.”

  Mike smiled and Pao nodded curtly, then disappeared back into the noisy throng at the bar.

  “Fix?”

  “I like it,” said Mike. “Uncommon and descriptive. In Spanish I’d be Reparar.”

  Bradley shook his head and smiled. Whenever he thought he’d had enough of the little man, Mike would do something amusing. He wondered if that was how Mike had gotten through his life.

  Now Mike lifted one of the heavy book bags to his lap and dug out three volumes and put them on the table. “People tell me all the time that I’m old-fashioned.”

  “You told me that yourself when you knifed me.”

  “But try downloading these to your reader!”

  Bradley looked at the covers of the tattered old books but he couldn’t read a single word of the titles.

  “Taki-Taki, Papiamento, Quiché,” said Mike. “Ancient languages, poorly understood. These are academic attempts. There’s a dealer here in Veracruz, one of the Naval Museum curators. He must be two hundred years old. I don’t know how he finds this stuff or who buys it except for me.”

  “Explain something,” said Bradley. “Ever since you cut me, the skin won’t heal. But it doesn’t hurt and it’s not inflamed. Did you dip your knife in venom or the plague or something?” He held out his hand and lifted the bandage and Finnegan studied the open gouge.

  “This is just a common topical infection, Bradley. Any over-the-counter remedy will defeat it.”

  “I’ve been using one.”

  “Maybe try another.”

  “How’s yours?”

  “Oh, I’m a tough old guy.” Mike unfurled his hand and looked down into it and Bradley saw the faint pink line of the cut healed over with new flesh. “But here, this is what I wanted to show you.”

  Mike set the books back into the bag, then pulled out a thin leather folder and handed it to Bradley.

  He opened it and looked down at a drawing. It looked like a landscape architect’s site plan, an aerial view with buildings represented by rectangles and trees by circles and elevations by shaded cross-hatching.

  “Armenta’s Castle,” said Bradley, his breath catching. “Where did you get this?”

  “Some of the source material came from the state of Quintana Roo. I can assure you it wasn’t easy to get. American bureaucracy is nothing compared to Mexican bureaucracy. In Mexico, the government is very deep but also very spotty. For instance, things suddenly disappear or are suddenly found or suddenly change. The person of authority on one day is not in authority on another. It can take as many as five people to do something as simple as collecting a completed form, filling out a receipt, and handing the receipt to the applicant. Luckily I was able to find the original construction drawings in a dusty museum collection in San Francisco. And able to cobble this together for you.”

  “Is it accurate?”

  “Of course it’s accurate. I wouldn’t risk the life of Erin McKenna on a slipshod rendering. The map below it is an area view, putting the castle in a larger context.”

  Bradley studied both of the maps. “Where is the electronic security, the alarms and sensors?”

  “None. Low tech. Macho. Men with guns.”

  “Telephone land lines?”

  “Armenta removed them.” Mike poured the rum over the ice. In the dark tavern light it came from the bottle like gold. “No land lines. He installed cell signal scramblers that cover the whole compound and half of the federal reserve. He relies on satellite phones but he only allows his most trusted men to carry them. Armenta’s men confiscate all electronic devices belonging to guests, returning them only when the guests depart. He has no alarms or electronic security, none of the things that you fruitlessly employed against the men who now have Erin.”

  “How do you know what I employed? You’ve never even been to my home.”

  Mike gave him a crafty smile. “I’m trying to teach you something here. The things you thought would protect you—whatever they may be—did not protect you. Oh, good ideas, yes. Terrific technology. But technology is still very fragile and finicky. It’s the simple things that really register, really work, and always have. The finger on the trigger. The well-timed question. Twenty-fifteen eyesight. Thirty pieces of silver or a million in cash.”

  “Hand-drawn maps.”

  “Exactly.”

  Bradley held up the maps and even in the poor light he could see the smudges left by Finnegan’s fingers and the shine of the graphite on the paper. Then he set the papers back in the folder. “Did you make copies?”

  “Not prudent. Each is one of a kind. They are yours.”

  Bradley slowly shuffled them, staring at the close-up, then the establishing shot, one after the other.

  “What we need is a way to talk to her, Mike. If we can talk, we can make a plan. Without a plan, it’s just bullets and blood.”

  “I’m working on this. Believe me, I am working on it.”

  They clinked glasses and drank. Bradley was not a rum man but it was sweet and whole and the lemon finished it cleanly.

  “Bradley, have you by any chance mentioned our friendship to Charlie Hood?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “That is not what I asked.”

  “I said I wouldn’t. I haven’t and I won’t.” Bradley tucked the leather folder onto his lap and lifted his glass to Finnegan.

  An hour later the bottle was half gone and Finnegan had joined a pack of stevedores up by the bar. He was shouting out something about all the gold still left here in Veracruz and why the lazy people on this part of Earth had failed to extract it. Someone laughed and pushed him and Mike laughed and drove a finger into the man’s chest and rocked him back. Then he was up at the counter buying drinks and when Bradley looked above the tavern mirror at the same Taberna Roja sign that hung outside, he saw that the jolly man with the booze on his tray looked a bit like Mike. Red cheeks and curly red hair. El Rojo. Bradley shook his head and added a handful of ice to his glass and set the leather folder on the table before him and looked again at the maps of where Erin was being held. This is what connects me to you, he thought: a map drawn by a man I hardly know and barely trust.

  Looking down at the maps he thought that the jungle might be an ally rather than an enemy. Yes, Armenta and his people knew the jungle, but if it was as dense and steep as Mike had said, then it could hide things even from those who knew it. Bradley thought that they could get close to the Castle without being seen. Yes, through the unfenced jungle. With a finger he
traced the road coming in, then tapped the triangle representing the guardhouse. Using his pocketknife he estimated the distance from the garrison in the jungle to the Castle proper to be half a mile, based on Mike’s scale. If we were quiet, he thought, and Erin could meet us, we could steal her away before anyone knew she was gone. Silence. Cunning. The Caribbean Sea was less than half a mile east. Laguna Guerrero a third of a mile to the west. Trails. There must be at least game trails. Or, water. Come from the water and leave by water. Chetumal was close enough if they could get a decent boat. Chetumal also had an airport. Bacalar was near the lagoon, and very near the highway leading northwest to Merida. Merida: crowds, a consulate, an airport, safety. The same for Cancún. He sipped the rum without taking his eyes from the maps.

  Or we can think about using the road, he thought. Be simple and pure and audacious. Surely, if the Castle was locked in the middle of jungle, then it required occasional deliveries of goods and services. Food? Propane? Water? Building materials? Landscape and pool maintenance? Painting? Mosquito abatement? He thought: If I could talk to her she could tell me who comes and goes. If she could get free for just a minute, for just a few seconds, I could get her on her way home before Armenta knew a thing. If…

  He looked at Finnegan, now pushing drinks down the bar toward two men who appeared ready to fight. In his red warm-ups and deck shoes and Navy cap, shouting, his face flushed and his eyes asparkle with whatever high emotions now ran through him, Mike looked ridiculous. But even wearing an expensive-looking suit, as he had worn the other night at El Dorado, Mike still looked ridiculous, thought Bradley, and he wondered if Mike’s strenuous efforts to know things and to influence people and to seem important were all attempts to cover this. The little-dog complex. Owens had said that Mike was insane and Bradley had never doubted it. And what did it say about himself that Mike was his greatest ally in this, the most weighted journey of his life?