The woman lay on a stretcher. She had an intravenous drip in her arm and thick gel covering her burned skin. Her dark eyes were surrounded by flesh that looked as bruised as the rest of her face and they were clouded with pain. But she was alert and she recognized Nick immediately. “Señor Escobedo, agradece a dios. Esperaba que le encontrara. Esperaba que podría advertirle.”
Calli leaned toward Carmen. “‘Advertirle’? Does that mean warning? Who is she warning?”
Nick touched the woman’s hand gently. “Todo correcto. Usted es seguro ahora,” he assured her.
“Debo decirle lo que él está haciendo a Vistaria. Debo decir le que, y le deba pararlo.”
Carmen whispered back. “She’s warning him, asking him to go back to Vistaria and stop it.”
“Stop what?”
Carmen held up her hand. “Let me listen.”
“As long as you translate for us later,” Calli shot back. “No one else here will do it.”
Carmen looked around the tent. Everyone else crowded around the woman was male. She looked Calli in the eye and nodded. “I will.”
Calli drew Minnie outside.
“You trust her to tell you?” Minnie asked.
“Believe it or not, yes.” Calli looked at her watch. “Eleven a.m. on a Sunday. Mama Roseta is at church.” She grinned. “The kitchen will be empty. You know what I’ve had a huge craving for the last few days?”
“God knows. What?”
“Chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate. As homemade as apple pie.”
“It’s thirty-five degrees Celsius!” Minnie exclaimed.
“So what?” Calli punched her arm. “C’mon. I know where there’s some chocolate stashed.”
* * * * *
Just over ninety minutes later, Carmen’s arrival in the kitchen was again punctuated by the slamming of the fly-wire door at the back entrance. But this time she stood in the doorway sniffing.
“Ohmigod...chocolate chip cookies! Tell me you made chocolate chip cookies.”
“We made chocolate chip cookies.” Calli held up the plate of cookies she had placed on the table between them.
Carmen rushed over, the cat-walk stride noticeably missing. “Oh please, please...?” She held her hand out. “Just one? My roommate in college used to buy them from a homemade cookie store every Saturday morning, fresh out of the oven. I’d never tasted them until then. You can’t get them in Vistaria—not like you get in the States.”
Calli offered her the plate and Carmen took one and bit into it with an expression that was possibly the most truthful one Minnie had ever seen on her face. She looked rapturous.
“There’s hot chocolate too,” Minnie offered. Her offer was reluctant. It surprised her that Carmen had reported back as promised, but her arrival at least deserved an acknowledgment. The hot chocolate was the best she could do.
Carmen peered at it. “Does it have ginger in it?”
“Ugh. No.”
“Pity. Thanks, but no.” She kept nibbling the cookie.
Calli pressed her hands together. “What happened with the woman?” she asked.
Carmen shook her head. “Men,” she said at last around a mouthful of cookie. Minnie realized that even with her mouth stuffed full of food, Carmen looked glamorous. It just wasn’t fair.
The tall girl sat on the table. “They should have had other women there to comfort the poor girl. My God....”
“I’ll mention it to Nick, but there are three full-time registered nurses working there. They’re just not there at the moment.”
Carmen frowned, then her brow cleared. “Right, it’s Sunday, isn’t it?”
“And her story...?” Calli coaxed.
Carmen took another bite, nodding her head. “I have to ask you something,” she said to Calli. “You’re sleeping with Nick, so I figure you know the answer.”
Calli blinked. “Well, if you put it that way...”
Carmen waved her hand impatiently. “Lady, you were plastered across the front page of the Vistarian national newspaper, buck-naked and in his arms. I saw the pictures. So don’t start playing coy, please.”
Minnie hid her smile as Calli’s face turned bright pink right up to her hair line. “You understand I didn’t pose for that picture, right?”
Carmen smiled a slow, knowing smile. “Honey, I know. But I saw the body language. So don’t pretend you don’t have an intimate relationship with him. He pulled you into that...meeting the other day in the dining room. He doesn’t do anything without reason. So I know he talks to you about stuff that no one else gets to hear. He has to. There is no one else here who can do that for him.”
Minnie blinked, taken aback. Even while Carmen had been flouncing around, trying to irritate the shit out of Nick, she had obviously been watching the people in this house, figuring them out.
So what had happened the other day that had allowed her to tone down the sulky college girl routine and actually sound...intelligent?
Calli was staring at Carmen steadily. “All right,” she said at last. “Try me.”
Carmen smiled. Then Calli’s own mouth curved up into a return smile.
Carmen brushed crumbs off her thighs. “Who the hell is this asshole Zalaya?” she demanded.
* * * * *
“You didn’t tell me!” Calli’s voice was strident. “You didn’t tell any of us.”
Nick pushed his hands into his pockets and leaned his butt against the front of his desk. “You didn’t need to know.”
“Didn’t need to know that some guy over there has a brothel going in the palace to service all the supremo insurrectos? That this Zalaya has his own private bordello attached to his office? The woman out there in the hospital tent says it’s like some sort of Fiesta de la Luna times ten. There’s orgies that would make the Romans blush. Women are being coerced into participating. Men too.”
Nick seemed calm in the face of Calli’s outrage, but Minnie had been around him long enough to know that he thrust his hands into his pockets when he was frustrated...or cornered. Her father was sitting in the chair by the door watching Nick too. It was as if he were waiting for a signal of some sort.
Nick sighed. “Zalaya’s bordello earns him the gratitude and loyalty of all the superior officers. But what he’s really doing is sitting at the center of the most efficient intelligence operation ever devised and controlled by a single man. Virtually no information is escaping the borders—just what we learn from the small handful who have managed to cross the straits.” He shook his head. “It isn’t Serrano we have to defeat to take back Vistaria. It’s Zalaya and his web of intrigue. But he has cast such a wide net that we’re uncertain who we can trust.”
“Even in this house?” Calli asked, appalled.
“Especially in this house. Which is why no one speaks of him and his activities. I gave that order myself.”
“I still don’t understand,” Minnie confessed. “Who is he exactly? We’ve heard the names of all of Serrano’s officers before. All except this Zalaya. Where did he come from? Why haven’t we heard about him from general gossip?”
“Zalaya was in the loyalist army up until two years ago,” Nick said. “He was discharged. Dishonorably. That’s what is known about him. What we’re almost certain of is that Zalaya is now Serrano’s right-hand man. Less certain is just how long he has been Serrano’s best buddy, but we do know that Serrano can’t run his operation without him. Zalaya is a shadow man—he doesn’t take credit or applause like the other officers, which is why you haven’t heard of him until now. But he likes power and knows how to get it. In other words,” Nick finished, “he is my equivalent, but over there.”
Josh stood up. “Serrano is your equivalent,” he said sharply.
Nick shook his head. “No.”
It was clearly the latest round in an already ongoing discussion, for her father blew out his breath. “I can’t say anything in front of your generals, Nicolás, but it’s all family here—or close enough to make no differe
nce. So hear me. You’re the leader of Vistaria whether you like it or not. Every attempt you’ve made to pass the torch has completely failed. There is no one else and you know it.”
Nick rubbed his eyes. “I can’t be the leader,” he said, his voice low.
Carmen nodded. “Nick’s right. If he is the de facto president of Vistaria, then why is the President of the United States ducking a direct conversation with him?”
“Who says he’s ducking a conversation?” Josh shot back.
“Have you spoken with him yet, Nick?” Carmen asked.
“No.”
Carmen smiled. “Have you tried?”
“Sort of. I was told—indirectly, of course—that they’re waiting to see what Mexico does with us.” Nick’s tone was dry.
Carmen looked at Josh. “If Nick was the recognized leader of a nation, the U.S. president could not refuse to speak to him if he requested it.”
Josh spread his hands. “Then elect him, appoint him. Do what it takes. You, Carmen and Nick’s boardroom of officers out there are the people who have that power.”
“You don’t understand, Josh,” Nick spoke in the same tired voice. “I’m not legitimate.”
“Huh?” Josh blinked.
Carmen, with the legally trained mind, answered for him. “Nick cannot be president of Vistaria. He’s only half Vistarian. He cannot lead.”
Minnie jumped on that one. “Who says?” She was outraged by such prejudice. It was ridiculous.
“It is the law,” Carmen said.
“What law? Where?”
Nick tried to appease. “Carmen just graduated from Harvard Law School, Minnie. She knows what she’s talking about. This has long been established in our country. Your own president must also have been born in the United States, yes?”
Minnie focused on Nick’s phrasing. “Long been established” had a lot of meanings. She faced Carmen squarely. “Is there a law? Is it written down anywhere that Nick can’t be a leader because his mother was Irish?”
Carmen bit her lip, staring at her. Finally, she grimaced. “No.”
“Any case law?” Josh asked, stepping to the other side of Carmen. Minnie appreciated his support. She wouldn’t have thought to clarify between case law and statutes.
Carmen was getting edgy. Her hip bone thrust forward and she crossed her arms. After a very long pause she said, “No.”
Minnie turned to Nick. “So there’s no real reason you can’t be the president. You just don’t want to be a leader. You’re too used to being the Red Leopard who skulks in the background, manipulating but never visibly taking the power. I guess, in that regard, you want to be Zalaya’s equal.”
Nick opened his mouth then closed it.
Minnie didn’t wait for him to figure out his next protest. “Out of everyone in this room, it’s you who can pull victory out of this chaos because you know what needs to be done and you can do it. Why won’t you do it, Nick? What’s stopping you?”
“Right now? Right at this very moment?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Well, arranging a wedding for one.” He held his hand out to Calli and she took it, a soft smile on her face. “Calli has consented to marry me as soon as I can arrange it. You’ll forgive me if I off-load the concerns of a country for forty-eight hours?”
Carmen straightened up, almost snapping to attention. “Forty-eight hours?” she cried. “How can I get a proper dress in forty-eight hours? How can Calli? Have you no idea at all about the scale of a thing like a wedding? You have to give us a week at least, Nick!”
“And why haven’t you asked anyone else to help?” Josh asked, moving closer to the pair.
Minnie found herself slowly edged to the side of the room as the four of them gathered together, talking over the top of one another excitedly.
But she couldn’t rejoice. Not just yet. For Nick had deliberately dropped the news of the wedding into the conversation to distract everyone. He confirmed it by looking her way a moment or two later. He didn’t say anything but his smile faded, until Josh clapped him on the shoulder and forced his attention back to talk of the wedding.
Minnie clutched her middle with both arms, feeling a chill despite the mid-afternoon heat.
Nick wasn’t ready to face Serrano. He wasn’t in a position to take on Zalaya.
That meant the only person left who could help Duardo was her.
Chapter Eight
Joshua looked around the big room. It was a private room in one of the best restaurants in Acapulco, tucked away in Acapulco Viejo, the ancient heart of the city. Two hundred or so guests were dancing and drinking after a stupendous wedding supper.
Josh was surprised to realize how many of the people he knew or recognized. Many of them were refugee Vistarians from Nick’s household. Some of the people in the room, however, were quite famous. He had watched their movies, seen their television reports or read their books...or seen their affairs splashed across the news. Others were more low-key but from the way they moved and mingled, the way they held themselves, Joshua judged they carried power of a different sort. Yet famous or not, none of them held center stage this night. Nick had seen to that.
Joshua smiled to himself as he recalled his fierce satisfaction as he walked his niece up the center aisle of Acapulco’s historic old cathedral. Two days to arrange a wedding...he had cheerfully cooperated with Nicolás Escobedo’s unwavering expectations. Nick’s demands had generated hysteria but despite the chaos, Joshua had worked his ass off because in his gut he had known this marriage was right. It was fitting.
That he would come to feel this way was the shocking part of the whole affair. Joshua had held a prejudice against the bastard Escobedo, for any man who used power for his own ends had always roused Joshua’s ire. But in the last few weeks—since Nick had knocked on the front door of their apartment in Vistaria and pushed his way inside—Joshua’s prejudice had been turned on its head. The drive in the man, the determination and passion he had for his country and his people, had surprised Joshua. At first he thought it merely lip-service paid to disguise a deeper self-interest, but he’d had his mind changed.
Mostly, the change had come from watching Nick deal with Mexican and American officials—ambassadors, heads of government—and the handful of Vistarian officials and generals who had made it out of the chaos.
Joshua lifted his glass in a silent and solo toast to a long and happy marriage, feeling a bittersweet satisfaction.
* * * * *
Minnie’s dance partner was one of Nick’s younger officers. Like most Vistarians he was a good dancer, but she was incredibly grateful when the music halted and the perspiring band bowed to the dancers and slipped off stage for a necessary break.
The captain returned her politely to the head table. He was pleasant enough and very proud of his new dress uniform.
That was partly the reason for the ache in her chest, Minnie knew. The elegant dress uniforms reminded her strongly of Duardo and their first official date. That date had also been the first time they had made love.
Her father was still sitting at the table as she sat down and she saw his gaze linger on the oldest person at the table. She was one of the two guests who were the reason for all the paparazzi outside the restaurant and the church.
Minnie had been astonished to learn that Karen Lord was Carmen’s grandmother. Minnie’s father had been a silent but dedicated fan of Karen Lord from a very young age. The self-contained blonde actress had been the adored darling of sophisticated American moviegoers in the fifties. She had starred in classy European films and the few times she had come home to work she had swept the Oscars. Even now she was still a glamorous, energetic woman.
She was accompanied by her son, Adán Caballero, Carmen’s uncle. Although Karen Lord attracted the adoration of the crowd, Adán was the reason for the hysteria. As a major Hollywood star, he was recognized the world over. He was also a stellar performer in the booming Mexican movie and television industry and
beloved in his birth country too.
Unlike his mother, Adán stayed in the United States, appearing in big, sweeping epics and adventures and also on the lists of the best-dressed, best-paid and best-looking men in Hollywood, year after year.
Even though the wedding supper was held in a private room at the back of the restaurant, the sound of the fans still gathering in the street outside could be heard now that the band had stopped playing. Interspersed with the murmur was female screaming.
Carmen lifted a single smooth brow. “I see you’ve still got what it takes, Uncle Danny.”
Adán, on the verge of seating himself, cocked his head, listening, and winced. He straightened, walked around the table and dropped to his knee next to Calli’s chair and picked up her hand.
“Forgive me, signora. If I had been able to sneak in the back door and save you this ghastly demonstration, I would have, but there was no time.”
Calli gave him a small smile. “How do you live with it day in and day out? Doesn’t it drive you crazy?”
“There are tricks and dodges. Dozens of them,” Adán said soberly. “I would be pleased to teach them to you.”
“Me? I’ll never need them.” Calli gave a laugh. “But thank you.”
Adán leaned sideways to look at Nick, who wasn’t laughing at his joke. “You didn’t let her read the fine print did you, Nicky?”
“I think we’re still in the middle of writing it.” Nick laid his hand on Calli’s where it rested on the table. “Nothing can be assumed these days. Who knows what the future will bring?”
“You’re too much the fatalistic Vistarian for your own good,” Adán shot back. “You should follow the fine American credo. Expect the best, prepare for the worst.” He smiled at Calli. “For you, la dama fuerte, that means learning to live with adoration, just as I do. For it will become part of your life whether you like it or not.” His smile faded. “You are a most beautiful lady and when Nicolás becomes their leader, Vistarians will quickly take you into their hearts.”
Black Heart Page 9
