The Jaguar ch-5

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “I can see it. But it seems like forever ago.”

  “Life is slow, then sudden, isn’t it?”

  “It can turn on a dime.”

  Erin looked out at the steep green hills that seemed to quarantine the Castle from the rest of the world. The thicket growing on the hillside vibrated in the growing breeze. “Are you here because you want to be or because you have to be?”

  Owens looked at her. Her eyes changed with the light, and now in the storm-threatened evening they had the color and shine of a newly minted nickel. “I am free to go and do what I want. That’s the first agreement I make with anyone.” She held her wrists out for Erin to see. “This made me free. It was supposed to make me not at all, but it made me free instead.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I couldn’t find anything to live for.”

  “Not even for the next day or the sunset or to hear a beautiful song one more time? Not one friend you wanted to see again?”

  “No, Erin. Not even those. Mike found me. It took him some time, but he made me not want to do it again.”

  “Then what do you live for now?”

  Owens looked out at the compound. “This world is enough.”

  “I never believed you were his daughter.”

  “I’m not. It’s a thin story but most people don’t see through it because they don’t want to.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Owens Finnegan is nice, don’t you think?”

  “Why not just tell the truth about yourself?”

  “Because the truth is harder to understand than a father and a daughter.”

  “Are you lovers?”

  “Oh, no. But I do love him. You can sure be direct when you want to, girl.”

  “Mom was that way. Partners, then?”

  “Sometimes. We help each other.”

  “Do what?”

  “I can act. I have a gift for it, and ambitions. I have had roles. He supports me.”

  “What’s your part of the partnership?”

  “I help him in different ways. Some are very small, such as making a phone call to pass information. Some are much bigger, such as influencing someone to do a certain thing. I don’t always know why. I persuade men easily. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing, in terms of consequence.”

  Erin tried to make clear sense of this, but she couldn’t. “What are you to Armenta? How long have you been here?”

  Owens looked at her, then away, and Erin thought she saw a slight blush come to her face. “I’ve been here often enough for the house birds to learn my name.”

  “Why did you and Mike come after Bradley? You got to know him for your own reasons. I could tell. You befriended me in order to get close to him.”

  Owens gave her a hard look. “Mike knew Suzanne. And he wants Bradley to do well in life. He’s very loyal to the people he befriends, especially to their spouses and children.”

  A quick shot of alarm went through her and was gone. She wanted to tell the Finnegans to stay away and never come to another one of her shows. But she realized that they now held the only line of communication she had with Bradley and with the world. A small capsule. A piece of cloth. A bird.

  She watched the men winching up the big canvas tent. A moment later a large colorful tour bus climbed toward them from the direction of the guard gate. It was painted a shiny yellow and an enormous black jaguar was depicted along its flank, stretching from the nose to the end of the bus. It was not snarling but it looked alert. There were white jungle flowers and toucans and leafing vines and below the cat were the words Los Jaguars del Veracruz.

  “They’re really here,” said Erin.

  “Erin, I want to ask you to perform tonight. It means more to Benjamin than you can know. And by now you understand that he becomes very angry when he doesn’t get what he wants.”

  “Like that little disagreement with the reporter.”

  “And others.”

  “Jesus Christ, Owens. What is wrong here? What is wrong with you people?”

  “Can I tell him you will perform?”

  Erin held the woman’s flat gray gaze. For the child that grows inside you. “Fine.”

  She watched the Jaguars of Veracruz getting off the bus now, walking slowly and stretching and looking up at the looming green hills and the Castle towering high against them. They were two sets of brothers, she knew, uneducated, raised from poverty to international stardom by blending the varied styles of music they grew up with.

  Heriberto came hustling from the Castle and hugged a short stout man who walked ahead of the other four. Caesar Llanes, she knew, the front man, singer and accordionist supremo. He seemed to sense her watching him and he looked up at her and tiredly raised a hand in greeting. Erin was embarrassed but waved back.

  A few minutes later she and Owens stood in front of the big pigeon coop and Erin watched the handsome birds strut and flutter and look back at her with their oddly optimistic expressions. Do you think my letter made it to Bradley?” asked Erin.

  “It must have. You’ll hear back from him in two days.”

  “What about the storm?”

  “These are strong flyers.”

  “But in a hurricane?”

  “Believe.”

  “Does Armenta trust you?”

  “He doesn’t trust anyone. Not even Saturnino.”

  “But he gave you a key and he knows we’re out here.”

  “He knows you can’t go far. If you ran away his men would find you in minutes. The jungle is thick and full of snakes and scorpions and jaguars. And no one can hide their footprints on a sandy beach. But don’t run off, Erin. I enjoy your company very much. And Benjamin expects me to keep an eye on you tonight. Don’t make me look bad.”

  Owens winked at her and Erin said nothing. The pigeons cooed and shuffled as if they shared her bewilderment at her circumstance.

  “I saw Edgar Ciel leave your room not long ago. I don’t know if you find him holy or not, but do be very careful of him. Even with a woman your age he’s capable of things that would surprise you. Saturnino will try to take your body but Ciel will use it for more than that.”

  “I’m at the end of my understanding, Owens.”

  Owens stared out toward the courtyard and Erin saw the distance register in her gaze. “He’s been fathering children all over Mexico for twenty years. Twenty-one mothers, and still counting. The mothers are always beautiful and often poor. He supports them through the Legion. Handsomely. If the mother is too young to raise his child properly, they grow up in the expensive boarding schools he builds for the rich. My school was in Monterey. I had a terrific Catholic education. I can prove his paternity with one drop of my blood and he knows it. Mike and my lawyers have samples too, and documentation of where they came from. Ciel knows this also. So I have some influence over what he does. He fears and loathes me. I fear and loathe him.”

  “He carries a gun.”

  “He used it on my mother. Only the barrel, not the bullets. She was a novitiate like most of the other women he seduces. She was thirteen and angry at him for what he did to her. Her name is Felicita and she lives in L.A. He takes especially good care of her. She lives in a Santa Monica condo and drives fast convertibles. She has psychological and alcohol problems. I see her often when I’m home.”

  “Ciel seduces those faithful girls who follow him around?”

  Owens nodded and looked out toward the stage. “But mostly the boys. Especially the boys. There are rumors of pictures and video.”

  “I didn’t know they made monsters like that.”

  Owens unfastened her gaze and looked at Erin with a combination of pity and shame. “They’re rare.”

  In spite of the heat Erin felt the chill run from her scalp to her feet. The heat seemed to weigh one thousand pounds upon her but the madness she felt in this place was heavier by far and it seemed to multiply by the hour.

  19

  At sunset Erin took the stage car
rying the Hummingbird. She felt awkward and empty and alone. The crowd broke into applause as she walked into the beams of the spotlights and squinted out at them. She introduced herself and began a song off the last Erin and the Inmates CD and was surprised to hear a few Spanish-accented voices singing along.

  The night was hot and humid. Her legs had gone weak and her heart beat dizzyingly fast and her eyes kept falling on the gunmen. She closed her eyes while she sang. Let me in, she thought. Please. And halfway through the song the music invited her in and she went. From there she looked out at the crowd and she saw Armenta in his black silk shirt and Owens in a brief floral dress and Saturnino and Ciel and the hundreds of others all looking up at her and she knew that music was more durable than they were and that long after they were all dead this song would still be played by the living.

  When she was done the applause was genuine and for the first time in days she began to feel the comfort and joy of the lives inside her, her own and his. What would she name him? She looked down at the stage floor and at the beautiful boots she had found in the wardrobe in exactly her size, and she waited for the clapping to end. Someone called out a Lila Downs title and by luck it was a ranchera she had long loved and translated into English for her own enjoyment and she sang it in that language now and after a few moments of terrible silence the audience understood what she was doing and they shouted out wildly their appreciation. It was an upbeat song so people clapped to the rhythm.

  After the song she drank water from a cup sitting on her amp and this brought a rowdy ripple from the audience, who assumed it was something strong. She made a joke in Spanish about sounding better to herself with each drink and someone yelled a reply and this went back and forth for a moment as the man was clearly drunk but good humored. She looked into the lights and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and suddenly a boy raced onstage with a white hand towel and presented it to her with a short bow, which of course drew more applause.

  After her set and while the Jaguars’ crew prepared for their show Owens walked Erin through the crowd, introducing her to the dignitaries. Erin felt tired but relieved. She had done all right. Her son was active inside now, as if he was relieved too.

  She met two congressmen and their wives, a governor and lieutenant governor, a dozen mayors and at least as many mayoral candidates, all of whom would win their elections next July, Owens said.

  “Every one of them? How can you know that?” asked Erin.

  “Well, maybe not all of them,” said Owens. “Some will be assassinated by Benjamin’s enemies. But the ones who survive will win. They have no opponents running against them.”

  “Because they’ve been threatened?”

  “Or worse. Mayors are important to the cartels, even the mayor of a small town. Because the mayors control the local police. The local police are usually poorly trained and poorly paid. And for a lot of Mexico, there is no other level of law enforcement. The states are stretched thin, and they distrust the locals. The federal troops and police are under the control of the president and they’re deeply suspicious of the state police. And of course everybody hates the federals, especially other federals. The Navy and Army are famous for their mutual enmity. So what you have is distrust and noncooperation and deception and outright competition between dozens of agencies and departments. Benjamin spends millions of dollars on elections. He needs mayors who are either sympathetic or at least willing to leave him alone. The best mayors are the ones who throw the support of their police to Benjamin. There’s a gaggle of mayors and soon-to-be mayors right over there, at the table by the beer kegs.”

  Erin looked at them: they were already loud and plenty cheerful, middle-aged men, most of them with their wives. Most wore Guayabera shirts and slacks. They were laughing and knocking back their drinks.

  “Then over on the other side of the bar, that table is all chiefs of police. Almost all. There are some captains and commanders also.”

  These men looked rougher and less festive to Erin’s eye. They observed from behind sunglasses even now at night, and were easy to picture in uniform. Some of them wore business shirts and sports coats in spite of the heat and humidity. They looked uncomfortable and impatient for the music to continue.

  The congressmen were dapper in the tropical weight suits, and their wives quite beautiful in pearls and jewelry. The governor’s companion was a young gringa from Tustin who loved Erin and the Inmates and had seen Erin perform in L.A. The woman seemed unsurprised that Erin would be here as a guest of one of the most wanted men in Mexico.

  “Where are the Inmates?”

  “They stayed home.”

  “I love Mexico. I feel so much more free down here.”

  They got margaritas at one of the bars and Erin asked for hers light on the tequila but she saw the bartender pour in two shots anyway. Onstage the roadies were testing out the mikes and monitors and tuning the stringed instruments. Erin saw the gleaming yellow-and-black accordion sitting on its stand.

  “Over there are the media people,” said Owens. “Some are newspaper or magazine publishers. The fat guy’s a famous DJ. The guy in the cream suit is an anchor for a popular news show. The woman with him is one of the show’s reporters. Felix, from the other night, he worked for their competition. So you can guess why they’re here.”

  “Because they ignore Benjamin.”

  “And you won’t see a camera between them. It’s the new face of journalism, narco style. It’s the policy of the whole network now. They leave the Gulf Cartel unnamed. But they will mention the Zetas, who are enemies of Benjamin. However, Felix’s network will sometimes mention the Gulf Cartel, as we saw. But they never cover the Zetas. The power of the cartels is everywhere. Mike says it’s vertical-from the bottom to the top. He says the reason why the Gulf Cartel takes less federal heat than the other cartels is because Benjamin and the president know the same people.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Is it?”

  Erin sipped more of the drink. It was the first alcohol she’d had in two months and the powerful tequila went quickly to her head. She watched Edgar Ciel and his retinue of young novices making their way along the edge of the canopy. There were four of them now, two boys and two girls. Ciel stopped at a group of the wealthy and it parted for him and the women kissed his hand and the men bowed.

  “Why do you put yourself in the middle of all this?”

  “Mike asked me to come here.”

  “To become Armenta’s mistress and confidante.”

  “It’s the confidante that Mike wants.”

  “But why? What does he care what happens down here?”

  “He cares what happens everywhere, Erin. You’ve seen how curious he is about everything. And everyone. In the years I’ve known him I’ve yet to find something or someone he isn’t interested in. He makes friends in minutes and keeps them for life. He gets so wrapped in people and their worlds that he can go a week without sleep, helping out one friend, then going on to help out another, and not show any effects from it. He reads books in a dozen languages. He gives them to universities and libraries when he’s done. Hundreds of them every year. He never forgets, even the smallest things stay with him, and he can call up a memory in high, high resolution.”

  Erin could hear the admiration in Owens’s voice. She saw the dilation of her pupils-pride in Mike, she thought. Her boss, father, brother, friend. Her reason to live. And to sleep with a narcotics trafficker and murderer.

  “So, that’s why I’m here in the middle of all this,” said Owens. “I know it can seem cruel and barbaric sometimes. That’s what I thought at first. But Mike’s world is full of people and music and art and history and incredible energy.”

  “Mike’s world? Not Benjamin’s?”

  “It’s the same, Erin. Mike has known Benjamin since he was born. Did you know that Benjamin was named Mexico’s third richest man by Forbes magazine? That he donates scores of millions of dollars a year to the Legion
of Christ? That his great-grandfather fought with Zapata?”

  “I know he threw an innocent man to the leopards. I know he plans to skin me alive if he doesn’t get my husband’s money in four days. So how can his alleged greatness mean anything to me? I’m supposed to be impressed by him because Forbes magazine is?”

  “You’re an artist so you see things differently. You have to simplify things into songs. So the things you can’t simplify you don’t see. You make beauty, Erin. What you do is important. But it’s not the world. It’s only part of the world. What you see here is another part of it, in all its glory and its pain.”

  “I’ll stick with music.”

  “You have no choice. You were born to it. Mike said some people are born prone to do certain things and I believe him. He said that you are one of the great surprises of his life. He searched out Suzanne Jones. He found Bradley. And he found you too. He says that truly great men and women are not often found together. That’s why we’re helping you communicate.”

  “What if Benjamin knew?”

  Owens gave her a gray-eyed stare and ran a fingernail across her throat.

  As if on cue Armenta turned to look at them. Erin saw the happy smile come to his face when he looked at Owens, and when he looked at Erin she saw it grow stronger. He raised his hand to his mouth and kissed the air like a chef pleased with a sauce. Saturnino looked at her too, with a smile of a different nature, one that momentarily gutted her courage and made her look away in anger and shame. She wished she had the Cowboy Defender taped to her leg but she did not. It had come to seem increasingly useless.

  The Jaguars of Veracruz took the stage at ten o’clock, by which time Erin had seen scores of gallons of alcohol consumed by the crowd of roughly one thousand people. The air hung heavy and sweet with mota smoked mostly from joints but there were pipes and bongs and huge Jamaican-style spliffs being shared too, and beautiful dinner plates piled high with fluffy cocaine being passed around from guest to guest, and they used everything from rolled currency to fingernails to bread knives in order to shovel the stuff home before the plate was passed along or set down and forgotten or spilled and refilled by whomever from a shiny new galvanized thirty-gallon trash can next to the beer kegs.