The Jaguar

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “Perfect.”

  “Then they haven’t…”

  “No. She’s being treated well.”

  “Did Saturnino ra—”

  “No!”

  “Where is she, Mike! Where?”

  “She’s being held on one of Armenta’s properties on the Yucatán Peninsula. Somewhere between Polyuc and the Kohunlich ruins, near the Belize and Guatemala borders. On a map it looks small but in reality it’s a lot of jungle. Very dense jungle. We should have a good GPS fix within twenty-four hours.”

  Bradley stopped opposite Finnegan and again leaned forward into the man’s face. “Should or will?”

  “I do what I can do, Bradley. Every vessel has its shape and capacity.” Finnegan took Bradley’s right hand in both of his small, strong own. “Let me be your ally and friend.”

  “What do you want?”

  “For you to have everything on this Earth that you deserve.”

  “She’s all I want. I’ll do anything to get her back.”

  “I understand that.” Finnegan studied him for a long moment and in his eyes Bradley saw both judgment and sympathy. “Then ask me to be your friend. Phrase it any way you like. Make a joke of it if you have to. The words are what matter to me, not your opinion of them. I need to hear them before I can help you.”

  Bradley pulled his hand but Mike held it fast and Bradley felt the surprising strength of him.

  “Speak to me, son of El Famoso.”

  “Don’t start that shit.”

  “That’s a start.”

  Bradley pulled hard again, but Finnegan’s two fierce little hands were stronger than his one, so he twisted it free with a Hapkido move that left him able to break Mike’s elbow. “Okay. Be my friend, Mike. Help me get her back. Or I’ll snap your neck, roast you on a spit, and feed you to my dogs. I have twelve of them.”

  Mike smiled. “What an exceptional proposal of friendship. I accept.”

  Bradley released his arm and sat back down across from him.

  “I’ll also need just a few drops of your blood.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Blood for what?”

  “For everything words can’t cover. It’s a ritual. I’m not sure why, but it works. It really does. You’ll see.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Just old-fashioned.” From somewhere inside his coat Mike produced a dagger and rested it on his palm for Bradley to see. It was short, mostly handle, and Bradley could tell that the metal was black and old. Before stainless steel alloys, he thought. Before carbon and graphite and tungsten. The flatish handle was wrapped in tooled leather held by rounded silver rivets for weight and grip. “Hand out now and palm up. Just a little prick.”

  Bradley looked long at the man, remembering that Mike once told him that he had introduced Bradley’s parents in order to give him a chance at “magnificence.” Mike claimed to be their close friend. And he had told Bradley things about his parents and his ancestors, things that only a very close friend would know. When Bradley had first met Mike three years ago he had sensed a connection but it was a vague sense, and unsteady, a trickle of memory that would flow and evaporate and flow again.

  “How long have you known me, Mike?”

  “Since your first breath. I’ve told you this and more.”

  “And you told me that when I was ready to see I would see.”

  “First you must look.”

  “How long have you known Carlos?”

  “He was eleven. A critical age. Old Felipe brought him to me. I’ve always surrounded myself with people of will and talent. Now, hand out and palm up?”

  “How long did you know my mother?”

  “She was eleven also. It’s the pivotal age in my view.”

  “When I was eleven I had a dream that I was on the Oceanside pier one night, and someone dared me to close my eyes and jump off and I was afraid so I didn’t. The next day I was ashamed because a friend of mine had done it a bunch of times. I hated being a coward. It ate at me. I badgered Mom to take me to the pier that night but I didn’t tell her why. She did. No moon. It was summer but it was cool and every step farther out on that pier I was more and more afraid. Mom carried a big beach towel and my good jacket because I told her I might need them. She wore a red satin blouse and jeans and her hair was full and shiny. I’ll never forget how beautiful she was. I just wore my trunks. I looked down at the faraway water. It was heaving and the yellow pier lights gave it a strange glow. I told her about the dream and the friend. And she said, I’ll meet you on the beach—and don’t be ashamed to take just a tiny peek on the way down, because so long as you know what’s in front of you, you’ll be fine. I said, I love you, Mom. And she said she loved me and I closed my eyes and jumped.”

  Finnegan said nothing for a long moment. Then: “Bradley? Knowing Suzanne as I did, and you as I do, that is a truly moving story. Thank you for it. I wish that she had been better at taking her own advice.”

  Bradley offered Finnegan his free hand, palm up. “This is for Erin.”

  Mike gently took Bradley’s hand and brought it nearer to him. “You are made by history and history is made by you.”

  Bradley felt the quick stab of pain. Mike let go and guided the point into his own free palm and he cupped that hand over Bradley’s so the two bloods met.

  “There,” said Finnegan. “I’ve always wished it would smoke or something. But it does kind of sizzle down deep in the soul, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t feel anything but rage. Do you know rage, Mike? Or are you just a happy simpleton?”

  “Anger. Frustration. Not rage.”

  “Fury.”

  “These are destructive. These are indulgences.”

  “These are what I have now.”

  Bradley watched the blood from Finnegan’s small palm run into his own. He thought of the way his mother had wrapped him in the beach towel and later helped him into his jacket after he’d emerged from the great Pacific, shivering, bone-cold but proud. He thought of Erin on stage the very first time he had laid eyes on her and understood that his life had just changed forever. He tried to picture her exactly right now, held captive by murderers somewhere between Polyuc and the Kohunlich ruins, but this was impossible.

  “It’s not the blood,” said Mike. “It’s the giving of the blood.”

  “Whatever you say.” Bradley snatched the blue handkerchief from the little man’s coat pocket and stood and clenched it in his bleeding hand. He looked down at Mike’s jolly round face, saw the sparkle of mischief in his eyes. “How are we going to find her?”

  “The first part is up to you and it is very important: Charlie Hood can’t know that we’ve talked, or that you’ve seen me, or anything about me. He cannot know about us. Everything that happens from here on will depend on that.”

  “Done. That’s easy. But the Yucatán is still two thousand miles away.”

  “No. It’s just shy of seventeen hundred. So, in anticipation of our new relationship, I took the liberty of consulting with El Tigre. You and your merry outlaws will leave tomorrow in the morning in one of the transport helicopters. Carlos can arrange safe airspace to Veracruz but not farther south.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll find you there.”

  Bradley sat again and poured a shot of smoky brown tequila for Mike and one for himself. He glanced up at the moon and thought a message to Erin and when he was finished he felt exhaustion slam down on him. He drank half of his tequila, then dropped the wadded hankie to the table and looked down at his palm. The slice was short and not deep and it had already stopped bleeding. “You cut my lifeline, Mike.”

  “I love palmistry. It’s as entertaining as major league baseball.”

  “What’s between you and Hood?”

  “That’s even more entertaining.”

  “Do you know his parents?”

  “No. He just came up in the net. But I couldn’t throw
him back. He’s so good. So wholesome. So tempting.”

  “You just accidentally found him?”

  “Through your mother, Suzanne, of course. She was the magnet and Charlie Hood was a small iron shaving.”

  “He’s been looking everywhere for you.”

  “I know. I receive his requests for information about me every week. Sometimes two or three times.”

  “What does he want with you?”

  “I’m not sure. But I’m concerned for him. He seems to have me confused with an Irish priest who helped build a school in Costa Rica. Imagine.”

  “You’re a meddler, Mike.”

  “I’m a lot more than just that!”

  Later Bradley called Hood on the satellite phone. Hood was on his way to Ciudad Juarez, the murder capital of the New World. The ransom money was safe. Bradley said nothing of Mike Finnegan, the object of Hood’s growing obsession. First things first, thought Bradley. Erin first. Nothing else matters.

  12

  HOOD CROSSED THE BORDER INTO Ciudad Juarez just after dawn Tuesday. He looked up at the mountains above the city and saw the huge sign declaring in Spanish, “The Bible Is the Truth. Read It.” The morning was cool and the light was soft. The city looked peaceful enough at this hour but Hood knew its tremendous violence.

  He checked into the Lucerna and was told his room was ready. The lobby stood empty except for two men in short-sleeved white shirts and sunglasses who watched him from the far side and were gone by the time Hood was given his room key.

  Dazed by the long drive he wheeled his luggage and the small duffel to the elevator bank where the two men intercepted him. One of them reached inside Hood’s sport coat and confiscated the Springfield .45 from his hip rig, then started back toward the lobby. The other nodded to Hood to follow.

  At their direction Hood loaded his luggage and Bradley’s money into the back of a battered black Escalade with smoked windows parked curbside. He sat in the second row of leather seats. The passenger was in his late thirties, he guessed, short in the legs, thick in the neck like a bull, with the diffident air of a gunman. The driver was very big and young and looked intently through the windshield.

  They drove the Juarez streets in silence for a few minutes. Hood had never been in the city before. It was said to have the highest murder rate of any city on Earth, including second-place Caracas and third-place New Orleans. The Zetas and the Gulf Cartel had littered the streets with two thousand bodies in the past year alone.

  Hood also knew that four hundred others, young women, maquiladora workers mostly, had been raped, mutilated, and murdered in a decade, virtually none of the crimes solved, their bones salting the surrounding desert in shallow graves. Hundreds more of the young women were missing. The murders were the work of at least several men, it was agreed, perhaps working in concert but perhaps not. Violent monsters, certainly. Gangsters and maybe police too. Hundreds of killings and no arrests had been made. And of course the city was dying along with its people. Hood had read Mexican media reports estimating that five hundred thousand citizens—roughly one-third of the population—had left Juarez because of the violence. One hundred sixteen thousand homes had been abandoned. Ten thousand businesses had folded. All blown away by a wind that smelled of human bodies baking in the sun. The living couldn’t take it anymore.

  Hood looked out the smoked windows at the neighborhood around them—small concrete houses, recently built but now abandoned, covered with graffiti, their windows broken and boarded, no cars on the street, no signs of life, just trash and brown dirt yards.

  “Do you know our city?” asked the driver. “This is the Rivera Bravo zone. Once the government said it was a model for the future. Now see it. It is new and almost dead. Anyone who can afford to leave Juarez is doing so. It is having less and less people.”

  The passenger gave the driver a long look.

  “Where are we going?” asked Hood.

  “You have nothing to fear,” said the driver. He raised his big face to the rearview.

  “I have the money. I can show it to you and you can save the cost of gasoline.”

  “Mr. Bravo, we wanted to talk to you,” said the driver. “We wanted you to see our city. There is much history here, much of it bad. But it is not as terrible as everyone in the United States believes. If Calderón can weaken the cartels before he runs out of political support, Juarez will return to normal.”

  The bull-like man in the passenger seat turned and looked at Hood through his sunglasses. He looked familiar. “Sgt. Rescendez of the Tijuana city police is a man I know,” he said. “He told me he recognized you from Mulege.”

  “I was not in Mulege,” said Hood.

  “He said you were one of the Americans who rescued the ATF agent, Holdstock.”

  “No. He is mistaken.”

  “He has always been an observant man. Let’s say he is correct. Then you know that Benjamin Armenta still wants to punish Holdstock and ATF for killing his son.”

  “I only know of that story from the media,” Hood lied again. “Armenta has punished the man enough. Did you see his family on TV? The newspapers said the shooting was accidental. That Holdstock wasn’t even aiming at Armenta’s son.”

  The bull nodded. “That may be true. But if Benjamin Armenta believes that you are an ATF agent in Mexico, he will take the money and kill you.”

  “I’m not an ATF agent. But I think he might kill me anyway. And I don’t know where your friend gets his alleged information about me.”

  “He was one of Luna’s men. He helped to rescue the agent Holdstock.”

  They made two left turns, reversing direction.

  “Well, he’s working for Armenta now,” said Hood.

  “There have been thousands of police officers fired across Mexico,” said the driver. “Thousands more have quit under suspicion and even more because of fear. There are few livings to be made here by police. So they go where the jobs are. North, or to the narcotrafficantes. Rescendez was once a good man. See? He still offers us information we can use. For money, however.”

  Hood considered this. What could be a more dire ailment for a nation than an inability to retain decent law enforcement?

  “You are a friend of Bradley Jones?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he do to Benjamin Armenta to deserve this?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hood. “He’s an American cop. He makes a fair salary.”

  “Yet Armenta sends men to the Estados Unidos in order to kidnap his wife? And he wants one million dollars to free her? This makes not enough sense.”

  “Who are you? How do you know this?”

  “This area is called the Campestre,” said the driver. “You see the mansions? This was our most expensive district. There were country clubs. Now you see these houses are for sale and for lease. They are falling apart. Nobody wants to live here. Too many murders. Too many beheadings. See the boulders in the driveways? The owners placed them there to slow the vehicles, to make kidnappings and carjacking and assassinations more difficult. It did not work. So, the prosperous people, they sell. They’re in El Paso now, and Dallas and even in California.”

  A truth began to dawn on Hood, or at least he thought it did. He looked out at the derelict mansions of Campestre. Most of the wrought-iron security gates had been carried off by thieves and the streetlights had been yanked for their copper. The long driveways they once protected were choked with leaves and fallen branches and trash. A pack of dogs rooted through the garbage.

  Soon they were outside of the city, traveling into the steep desert mountains to the south, the big “The Bible Is the Truth” sign towering above them. The road turned to dirt, then it cut along flush against the mountain. Soon Hood was looking down on Juarez from hundreds of feet above and he could see the slow brown Rio Grande and El Paso beyond it and he thought: If I’m wrong about this I’m a dead man.

  They stopped and the driver shut off the engine. Then he partially turned his bulk to fa
ce Hood and show his badge holder. “We are Special Investigations, Juarez Police Department,” he said. “We are the most assaulted police force in the world. There is almost nowhere in the city where it is safe to work or even be seen.”

  The passenger took off his sunglasses and turned to face Hood.

  “You are a Luna,” said Hood.

  “Yes. I am Valente Luna and he is Julio Santo. You are Charlie Hood. Raydel was my brother and he spoke respectfully of you. Like him I have sworn to remove the plague from my country. Raydel died for your friend Holdstock. Now you will take us to Benjamin Armenta, Mr. Hood, and Raydel’s death will have meaning.”

  Hood looked from Luna’s badge into his fierce black eyes. He remembered Raydel’s similar eyes, the goodness and will and bravery in them. Hood had heard Raydel Luna say one of the most beautiful things he had ever heard said, then he had helplessly watched the man die. Since that moment Luna had earned full citizenship in Hood’s dreams and seeing now that some of Raydel was still alive in his brother made Hood’s heart glad.

  “Right on,” he said. “Now maybe you should get me back to the Lucerna before the Gulf people see me talking to you.”

  The driver started up the SUV.

  “Our informants told us where you would be and what you were carrying in the luggage,” said Luna. “We assume that they have sold this information to others as well. Information is cheap of course, and can be sold many times. So in Mexico everyone soon knows everything. Armenta has thousands of enemies who would love to find you. We expect the next part of your journey to be fraught with possible danger.”

  He offered Hood his pistol, handle first.

  An hour later Hood answered the knock on his hotel room door. Two men in dark suits and open-collared dress shirts walked past him into the room without invitation or greeting. Hood saw the Mayan blood in them, in the broad cheeks and slightly almond-shaped eyes, the ample ears and compact bodies. Their eyes were quick and hostile. When the hotel door swung shut the heavier man went straight to the suitcase standing upright against the wall. He swung it up and onto the bed and held out a hand to Hood.