The Jaguar

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “I would not be likely to kill you.”

  “Not likely.”

  “But what happens is difficult to see before.”

  She considered options. She could not outrun him unless she shot him first. And if she managed this, then what? Try to find the rumored villages and marinas of the east? How far east? Were there trails? Wouldn’t the people there just turn her over to Benjamin? She’d be right back at the Castle to continue where she left off, writing a song to earn another day of life? Would Hood deliver the money? Did he even know where she was? Would Armenta honor his deal with either Hood or herself? Or maybe feed them both to the now-ravenous tigers?

  “I’m going to the marina,” she said. “The only way you can stop me is to shoot me. It was nice seeing you again, Saturnino. Goodbye.”

  He unslung the rifle. “I will not shoot you. But I shall now explode the Cowboy Defender from your hand!”

  He brought the gun to his shoulder and his eye to the rear sight and she saw the barrel roving in a low tight circle. The rifle spat and she heard the bullet whirr past her leg and crack into the jungle behind her.

  “Ohhh,” he groaned. “I have the miss!”

  He fired again and this time she felt the tug of it going through her dress and when she looked down there was a small hole in the cotton not one inch from where her right hand dangled, holding the Cowboy Defender.

  She raised her gun-hand out straight to her side, then lifted it over her head and held it there for just a moment before letting it fall waist high. It was like the routine she did as a high school flag twirler but nobody was shooting at the flags back then. She could see the barrel of Saturnino’s rifle tracking her movements and again it barked sharply and she heard the buzz and sensed the shock of the bullet as it screamed past the back of her hand.

  “You play with me, Erin McKenna!”

  “I do not play with you!”

  She guessed his distance at thirty feet and she remembered more than ten feet away just forget it but she pointed the derringer at him anyway. And she remembered squeeze the trigger, never yank it but she yanked the trigger hard in spite of herself.

  The blast screamed through her ears and her hands jumped into the air. Saturnino flinched and lowered his rifle and looked at her. “You?” he gurgled.

  “Yes, me, Erin McKenna Jones.”

  He raised the rifle but as he tried to set the stock to his cheek he somehow missed, and the barrel circled wildly. A bullet whistled far over her head. His torso swayed and she tried to track it with the barrel of the derringer but she couldn’t get the timing right and keep the little barrel on target. Suddenly, Saturnino rocked back on his heels and his weapon clattered to the rocks. He righted himself clumsily, overcorrecting, then he reached down to pick up the rifle and toppled into the cenote.

  The gun smoke hovered in front of her in the humid air. Her ears rang as they had never rung, not on a stage or in an audience or a studio.

  Saturnino floated facedown and he raised one arm as if to freestyle but the arm fell and smacked the water and did not come up again. He tried his other arm but he wasn’t able to pull it free to begin a stroke. He was close enough to her that she could see the green dye from his hair mixing with the water, and the blood billowing up around his neck, and the dull twinkle of the machete strapped to his shoulder, blade pointing down at the depths into which it was eager to go.

  He stopped moving and she watched him for a minute. Two. The breeze pushed him toward the middle of the pool. The terrible weight of her circumstance came over her at once and she wondered if she could even move. She looked down at the Cowboy Defender, then back at Saturnino. His body bobbed gently and rotated slowly clockwise like a compass needle finding north.

  She summoned her strength and concentration then stumbled across the rock rim of the cenote and knelt. She set down her derringer and picked up Saturnino’s gun. It was very heavy and slick with something and it felt foul against her skin. She had no idea how it worked. After a long struggle she finally got the breech to stay open. When she managed this she tilted it over and got a cartridge to fall out. Tears ran down her face. She picked up the Defender and broke it open and the empty shell unseated itself. She pulled it out and tossed it into the jungle. But when she tried to reload the derringer with the shell from Saturnino’s gun there was no way the much longer rifle cartridge would fit her trusty companion. The tears poured off her cheeks and chin and hit her hands as she fumbled with the guns and ammunition, and she realized how utterly nonsensical she was being, and she knew that she was only doing this desperate exercise so she wouldn’t have to face the choices that she would now have to make. You still have one bullet. The cool place. Go there now.

  She dropped the gun and cartridge and walked a few feet to an ancient rock bench and sat. She straightened her back and unwound the rebozo and wiped her face with it, then dropped it to the slab. A bird twittered and another answered. When she saw that Saturnino had vanished she stood with a gasp then caught herself. She climbed onto the bench seat and stood on her tiptoes. With the sun off the water she could see his body out near the middle, suspended in the clear water a few feet down.

  She sat and stared and took stock. Bradley was gone, perhaps arrested, perhaps worse. He had ordered her to continue walking east toward the lagoons and the ocean if he was not waiting for her at the cenote. She felt betrayed by him but when she pictured him and the memories flashed across her mind’s eye, she missed him terribly too. By now Benjamin Armenta was either aware of her escape, or soon would be. Men would be coming. Hood and the ransom money were God knew where, apparently foiled by the weather. She loved Hood but she felt betrayed by him too. She was hungry and thirsty and her soul was damaged by the killing. She tried to keep these truths from crushing her spirit and her baby. She placed her hands over him and closed her eyes and whispered sweet things to him and she willed her blood to find and fill him with oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen and all those elements and molecules she could never quite understand in chemistry class. Make him strong, she ordered her blood. Give him energy and power and most of all, durability.

  She took the rebozo and walked over to the guns. Ugly things, she thought. But she picked up the Cowboy Defender and closed it tight on its one bullet and slipped it into the pocket of her shorts. Then she rearranged the rebozo to cover her face as much as possible. Sighing, she lifted Saturnino’s heavy assault rifle and pointed the barrel to the ground and pushed the live cartridge back into the breech. She pushed a button and the action closed with a metallic clank and she saw the slide switch with the red showing and she was not positive, but she was pretty sure, the weapon would now fire.

  She picked up the trail on the far side of the cenote and entered the thick jungle. The late afternoon sunlight had waned and the birds and monkeys had started sounding again. She came to a fork and tried to choose the widest, most popular route. She scraped her toe across the untaken path in order to recognize it on her way back should she need to. A good Girl Scout. But why would there be a way back?

  She stepped high over a big root that was a snake and when she put her foot down on the other side of it the serpent coiled and struck. The snake’s teeth caught in the loose weave of her dress and when she broke into a run the snagged snake came bouncing along beside her. It was surprisingly heavy. Its body writhed and struggled and slapped against the pathway. Finally Erin stopped and dropped the rifle and grabbed the animal behind the head with both hands and she wrestled the hissing thing free from the fabric and with a scream flung it into the thicket. She picked up the gun and ran on, looking back every few steps to make sure it wasn’t coming after her.

  The path ended suddenly and absolutely. She stood panting. Before her the trees towered high and choked out the light and the spaces between them were so small she would have to turn sideways and try to squeeze through. Even these openings were owned by vines and branches and flowering tendrils and a leaf-mounted gecko that looked at her unblinkin
gly.

  She heard the voices and the shuffle of bodies from somewhere behind her. Through her frantic gasps she could hear the thump of boots and the jangle of guns and heavy breathing and voices made shrill by the hunt.

  She turned around to face them.

  I cannot let me die. I cannot let you die.

  She flung the rifle into the trees then reached up under the dress and pulled out the derringer and placed it in the crotch of her underpants. It felt genuinely revolting there, a violation. She unwound the rebozo and dropped it to the ground and waited.

  32

  THE WALK BACK TO THE Castle was brief. Some of the men who recaptured her were the same ones who had kidnapped her from home nine days earlier, which led to some muttered recognitions. Heriberto seemed embarrassed. The day after her performance with Los Jaguars, he had sent to her room a shallow bowl of floating gardenia blossoms, very fragrant, with a note in Spanish praising her singing. Erin knew she had gained esteem in his eyes and that it displeased him to force her back into captivity. He patted her for weapons, lightly and respectfully, not touching her most personal places.

  They stopped at the cenote to rest. The men speculated about where Saturnino might be, but they didn’t ask her directly and they didn’t seem to genuinely care. She glanced out to the middle of the pool several times, but she could not see him. She wondered if she should confess, so as not to spoil the water supply. She decided not to. He would float up soon, right? They’d fish him out and in a few days the water would be clean again. Right? Maybe he was down there hot-wiring the Corvette. Maybe he’d never come up.

  A few minutes later the jungle parted and the Castle loomed from the hillside and Erin trudged up the road, across the spacious courtyard to the limestone steps of the great entryway. Heriberto opened one of the iron doors and waited for her. The lepers came and watched her from the third-floor landing, and she saw the black faces of the servants behind the windows, and there were sicarios everywhere, even up on the balconies, dark boys with machine guns loitering half-hidden in the riotous potted flowers.

  Armenta stood waiting for her in the big foyer. He wore slacks and a floral print shirt that was lumpy around the waist with weapons and phones. He was unshaven and unkempt. The bags under his eyes were dark. “Did Saturnino find you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “I saw no one.”

  “I think he was pretending to be loco.”

  “I haven’t seen him since that night.”

  He studied her while he unholstered a phone and listened, grunted, and punched off. “Where did you get the key?”

  “I have no key. The door is broken. It hasn’t been locking on the inside for three days.”

  “It locked for me two hours ago. And Father Ciel says his key was stolen.”

  “You should never have given him a key to my room. You know what he is. You know what he does.”

  He sighed softly and linked his fingers below his waistline, watching her. He nodded and considered. Then he brought a different phone off his belt and worked the numbers without looking at them. A moment later he was cursing fast and soft in Spanish and Erin could see the anger in his face. He told someone to go to hell, then slid the phone closed and put it back in his carrier.

  “I do not see things as you wrote them in ‘City of Gold,’” he said.

  She said nothing for a long moment. Heriberto quickly departed. Beyond Armenta she saw the servants pretending to work, not watching them but listening.

  “I can’t help that,” she said.

  “When I look at myself I see only a will to survive in a world that is cursed. To me, this will you write of is a neutral thing, something any animal has in its possession. It is not dignity. It is not to be judged. You wrote as if there was strength and even a small goodness in me.”

  “I see your world as cursed. But look—you created Gustavo. You made someone beautiful.”

  “Yes. And in your song, Benji grows strong in a cursed world. He is true to his friends and his family. He speaks violence because that is the language of his time and place. All of this means that I am pleased by the song.”

  She nodded and looked down at her shoes. The eyelets and seams were still crusted with jungle sand and there were small green burrs stuck to the laces. The Cowboy Defender was irritating her. “I can do better.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was my first corrido.”

  “It is good.”

  “It’s crude and obvious.”

  He wrinkled his brow and his gaze bore into her.

  “Has the money arrived?” she asked. “Am I free? Have you heard from Charlie Bravo?”

  He shrugged effulgently, then shook his head. “Lo siento.”

  “You’re sorry? Because your son is going to flay me? How do you think I feel?”

  “Charlie Bravo has two more days, yes? The agreed day was tomorrow. And I gave him one more day for the song that you wrote. I do not regret it. But we hear nothing from him. He heats the plaza. He has broken the pledge.”

  “Then I’ll write you another song. A better song. If you’ll give Charlie Bravo one more day.”

  And one more day for Bradley, she thought. Two precious days to find her. Two and a half, counting today! I’ll come to you by moonlight. Like in your song.

  His dark eyes roamed her face. They looked intelligent but wild, like the eyes of the jaguar in the Castle.

  “How badly do you want your money, Mr. Armenta?”

  “Money? Yes, always the money comes first.”

  “But you want another song.”

  “I want this song too.”

  “Do we have a deal, then? Another song for another day?”

  “Excuse me.” Armenta turned his back to her and yanked one of the phones off his belt and somehow dislodged a pistol that clattered to the floor at his feet. He picked it up and looked at her. Then he straightened and, holding the gun at his side with one hand, brought the cell phone to his ear with the other and launched into a Spanish tirade that Erin could scarcely understand. Traidor! Pinche Carlos Herredia! Exterminar!

  It went on and on. She watched his hair fly and his eyes bulge and the big vein on his neck stand out and she heard the furious rush of words and spittle and his hurried breath.

  She turned her back to him and considered the big iron doors and wondered what it would be like to just walk out through them, free and heading home.

  She only became aware of the silence when he broke it.

  “I am sorry for the activity.”

  “What’s wrong? Why are there gunmen everywhere?”

  “This is not of your business.”

  “Okay, then do we have a deal or don’t we? One more song for one more day.”

  “I agree to this.”

  “Good. I’m tired and dirty and hungry.”

  “We will dine early. At six.”

  “I’d rather eat alone.”

  “You will dine with me. I have much, much more to tell you that will make your writing very easy. About Veracruz when I was a boy. There was a pig that could do advanced mathematics. And a curandera who raised the dead not once but three times. And a two-headed girl who argued with herself. And a moron named Francisco with a very thin head who could crawl through the windows of the prison at Ulúa to find treasure. And my lovely Anya—you should know more about her.”

  “I won’t be good company for dinner. Kind of a big day for me, you know?”

  Armenta waved over one of the female servants and handed her a key card and ordered her in Spanish to accompany Erin to her room and prepare a bath and bring whatever she might want. He stood straight and extended one hand toward the elevator.

  They sat in Armenta’s formal dining room, which faced east and caught a warm breeze off the ocean. Because of the slowness of the elevator and its mystifying arrangement of buttons she had not been able to tell whether they had gotten off on the fourth or fifth floor. She wore a long blu
e dress that covered the derringer lashed to her calf with a bootlace. The dining table was koa wood, long and wide, and Erin realized she could cross her leg under the table and get the gun loose with one hand and without Armenta knowing.

  Through the eastern window she could see part of the loggia and the courtyard below. The sun was setting behind her, but she saw the orange glow on the stone columns and the paver tiles and on the facets of the broad-leafed jungle flora. Shot with gold, she thought. Shot. She saw the surprised look on Saturnino’s war-painted face. She saw his pathetic pawing in the cenote as he tried to swim. She saw his blood rising in the clear water and the green dye melting off his hair.

  A few hours ago, in her room, she had taken the longest, hottest bath of her life and still she felt filthy and stained and she knew that she had been forced to surrender something she would never get back. He had finally raped her after all. She wondered if she could kill his father also. On the same day, even. Why not? She had proven experience. She had done things here she had never imagined and this made her feel unreal and unpredictable even to herself.

  Looking down she could see the sicarios loitering in the courtyard and among the columns of the portico. Things were wrong here. She felt the tension and nerves in the still subtropical air, surely as she had felt them when she marched back here a few hours ago. At first she thought it was because of her escape, or Saturnino’s disappearance. But it wasn’t about either of them, she thought now. Something had happened or might happen. His greatest fear is of being betrayed by his own men. She looked down to the driveway where Heriberto, a rifle slung over his shoulder, stood talking to one of the young gunmen. Just minutes ago, on the way here to the dining room, they had passed two more gunmen in the foyer and one standing midway down a long hallway and another who was likely stationed just out of eyeshot outside the dining room entry. Erin wondered if Armenta was protected by them or surrounded by them.

  He sat at the head of the table with Erin on his right but they were far enough apart to be strangers sharing space in a cafeteria. Overhead the ceiling fans turned at low speed, their blades bending the candle flames.