When they finally stopped shooting the world went silent. Bradley waited awhile, then climbed suckingly from the mud and stooped behind the hood of the Yukon. He kept his gun pointed to the trees but he looked through the window to see Vega and Cleary standing in the port and Fidel behind his open armored door with a riot ten gauge propped against the frame and Omar slumped bloody and still on the back bench.
A compact car came up the highway toward them from the west. Sun-blistered paint, Quintana Roo plates. It slowed when it came near the cart, and the family inside it stared wide-eyed at the armored gunmen who raised their hands for the car to stop. The driver was a middle-aged man who looked terrified, raising his hands as if he were under arrest. Three of Fidel’s men easily turned the wagon upright and rolled it to the side of the road. When one of them waved the little car on, it accelerated noisily but slowly in a cloud of white smoke while the children in the back seat turned and continued to stare.
Moments later the three other SUVs converged on Fidel’s stuck Yukon and pulled it out with their winches. Bradley saw that the armored vehicles were pitted in some places and punctured in others, though less so than the furious sound of the battle had implied. The plastic security windows remained unshattered and the security tires still held air.
He cut the horse loose and it walked slowly off to the side of the road and turned and looked at him. There was no sign of the Mayans.
The men and Vega stood in a loose circle for a moment, blocked from the jungle by their vehicles. An old truck came rumbling down the highway from the other direction and did not slow down. A man whimpered from somewhere off in the rainforest. Eduardo said that El Grande Martin was dead and so were Tito and Raul and Perro Negro and Omar. Fidel said if they’d been wearing their armor as ordered they would be alive, which earned him several hostile looks because three of them, according to Eduardo, had worn their armor. Fidel said they would bury the men properly soon but not now. Caroline Vega had been grazed on the forearm but the wound was not serious. Fidel took a small piece of shrapnel in his cheek.
From the jungle they heard at least two men moaning and Fidel said anyone who wanted to go put them out of their misery was free to do so. The men shrugged disinterestedly and Caroline glanced into the jungle, then at Bradley and shrugged too.
After the men had dispersed for their vehicles Vega pulled the metal from Fidel’s cheek and touched the other side of his face gently with her hand. He put his bandana to it and got into the mud-draped vehicle.
Fidel started up the Yukon. Bradley got in and closed his door and looked at the bullet-marked safety glass. Then he looked at his own mud-drenched front side and he thought that losing just five men here on this highway was an authentic miracle. How many Zetas had they taken down? More than a dozen, certainly. Twenty?
“What will people do when they see our vehicles?” Caroline asked.
“They’ll stay the fuck away from us like they should,” said Bradley.
“And what if we run across soldiers?” said Caroline.
“They don’t occupy the Yucatán,” said Fidel. “They can fight a battle or occupy a village for a few days. They arrive loudly and without surprise. They arrive with great volume and pageantry and media and politicians. But they never stay. We will make the vehicles appear better. I have spray paint and Bondo for the bullet marks.”
“We just killed a whole bunch of men,” she said.
“Zetas,” said Fidel. “We have helped Armenta even though he’s our enemy.”
“I feel lucky,” said Bradley. “I feel the big luck coming.”
It had been a long time since he’d felt the good luck that had so effortlessly accompanied him through the first twenty years of his life. Maybe it’s all changing for the good, he thought. Luck. And that means Erin is okay and I’m going to get her out of here alive and the baby will be born.
Some miles down the road their second SUV took the lead because Eduardo knew the area. Fidel followed him onto a narrow asphalt road, past an eco-lodge and a mini-super. The asphalt soon gave way to the pale white soil of the Yucatán. Deep in the tall twisted ceibas they stopped and dug five graves, taking turns, the labor utterly punishing in the heat and the mosquitoes and the sudden absence of adrenaline. The earth was sandy and loose and the graves soon filled with groundwater and remained shallow and without dignity. The digging went quickly because of the soft ground and the folding camp shovel carried in each SUV for this exact purpose, Bradley guessed. Carrying the bodies to the graves was exhausting and spirit-killing.
An hour later they were back on the road. Bradley looked out the window for new danger. The Love 32, butt retracted for storage and transport, was under his thigh again. He was suddenly spent, every bit of energy gone. Luck and hope were gone, too, two coins lost somewhere back along this road he had taken. He listened to the hum of the engine and the rasp of the tires on the highway. In the cab was only silence and the stink of mud and human fear.
23
ERIN SAT IN THE LEATHER chair facing the window. The post-storm evening was gray and cool and the tattered fronds hissed on the breeze. She wore the white nightgown buttoned to her neck and a pair of heavy white socks that Atlas had smuggled in for her and an embroidered Nahuatl blanket around her shoulders.
Nearly three days had passed since Saturnino’s attack and she still could not get warm or comfortable, or more than a few hours of nightmare-curdled sleep. Her rump was bruised and her back was scraped and she was torn and burning with pain where he had pulled out her hair. Since walking back here that night, wobbling and nearly senseless, supported on either side by Father Ciel and Benjamin Armenta, she had kept rolled-up tissue in her ear canals, hoping to stem the aural memories of the awful event. It worked only partially.
For almost three days she slept and roamed the room, the eyes looking back at her from the mirrors dull with fear. The life growing inside her was plainly afraid too—thrashing and kicking violently for minutes, then utterly still and possibly lifeless for hours. She kept waiting for the catastrophic evidence to appear, for that feeling of intimate death to come over her, as it had come before. Then she slept and slept more.
Erin looked at her body in profile several times a day and she could see it clearly now, and she knew they must see it too, and she didn’t know why it seemed so important that they not know. Would they not skin a pregnant woman? What would that matter? Maybe Saturnino would delight in it more. Did he have special skinning tools? Did they soak you in brine like a turkey? Would he rape her first? Of course he would. That was what savages did. She pulled the blanket tighter. She adjusted the earplugs. Please don’t let go, little man, she thought. I’ll take care of you. Her hands trembled and her feet were cold as a statue’s and when the tears started up she slapped her face hard to make them stop but they did not.
When she couldn’t sleep she picked up the García Marquez book and continued where she had left off. Anything to escape those thoughts. The book was perfect for that, as intoxicating as anything she had ever experienced. She lost herself in the story of Sierva María de Todos los Ángeles, bitten by the dog and waiting for the symptoms of rabies to strike her. But Erin couldn’t see how the story could end happily, because rabies was always fatal back in the strange and superstitious Caribbean world of the eighteenth century. She liked the crazy colonial viceroys and Inquisitors and the decaying nobility and pirates, but the canopy of viral doom overhanging the tale wouldn’t allow her to truly enjoy it. The priest was going to be disgraced by his love for her and Servia María was going to die. Horribly. In her dreams Erin grew the same hair that Servia María grew after her death—sixty feet of splendid copper-colored waves. Had Armenta left the book here as a message? Then why this book, of the hundreds of thousands of them on Earth? And what was the damned message, anyway?
Later Atlas set the serving tray on the table and put out a glass of red wine and a plate of cheeses and fruit. He set a small package beside the food. He looked at her gr
avely as he worked the plastic wrap off the plate.
“Were you here when I performed?” she asked.
“Was I where?”
“Here. In my room.”
“No. I was there when you sang. You were fabulous.”
“When I got back I thought someone had been in here.”
“Maybe you were mistaked. You must have been extremely…infeliz.”
“Unhappy? Yes, I was.”
“Benjamin will be here in one hour for you,” he said in his sweet high voice. “He would like you to be nicely dressed for dinner and have the Hummingbird in its case.”
“I’ll dress how I want to dress.”
“Yes.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. McKenna.”
“I hate this fucking place.”
“You will be free in three days. It is planned. The money will arrive and you will be released. I’m not supposed to know this but I do. The servants all know, but some don’t believe. They are betting on what will be the outcome. And Benjamin has ordered that the tigers not be fed. It is not difficult to add together what this means.”
Erin eyed him over the blanket. “If you know so much, then where is Charlie Bravo? Is he close to us? Did he make it through the hurricane?”
“This I do not know. Charlie Bravo brings the money?”
“He’d better bring the money or Saturnino will skin me alive.”
“Saturnino will burn in hell.”
“He looked pretty bad off the other night.”
Atlas didn’t answer for a long moment. “Saturnino does not recognize his father. Or others. He has not spoken one word of Spanish but he now speaks some language no one knows but him. He sleeps greatly. He wakes up for a few minutes and he stares at people without comprehension and he eats. They say he eats gigantic amounts. Then he prays in the language that no one knows. Then he falls back asleep for hours and hours more.”
“Something tells me he’ll steer out of it. Has he skinned many people?”
Atlas did not look up to face her.
“Oh, God,” she said.
“Would you like a Bible to read?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“It is a dependable comfort.”
“A friend of mine had a seizure at the Guadalajara airport. She was coming home from a vacation in Zihuatanejo. In the hospital they did a scan and when the doctor came in to tell her the results he said he was not sure how to interpret the scan. He told my friend to have a more advanced test when she got home to the United States. And he gave her a Bible in English, with a page marked and a passage underlined about how you can face death with God and He will be your comfort. And this terrified her worse than anything she had ever read. I do not want a Bible.”
“But the Bible also says you can face life with God and He will be your guide. And I thought you might do this because…”
“Because what?”
She caught him looking at her reflection in the full-length mirror.
“Because you have two lives that need to be guided.”
She looked away from the mirror to the mournful gray sky outside. She wanted to cry and she wanted to kill Saturnino. Maybe Armenta too. It feels like my skin is off already, she thought. They can all get to me but I can’t get away. They all know me but I don’t know them. They all see the baby growing inside me but I see nothing in them but this hell on Earth.
“I don’t want a Bible.”
“I brought you one anyway.”
“What’s in that package you put on the table?”
“A gift from Owens. I deliver it only. I don’t know what it is.”
Atlas popped the cotton napkin and folded it into his trademark scallop before setting it at her place. From the serving tray he took the Bible and set this beside the napkin. Then he took the tray in one hand and walked over to Erin. He held out his other hand in a fist and she put down the book and held out her open hand.
He dropped something small and light into her palm, then he bowed slightly, smiled shyly and left the room.
She knew what it was without looking. She could feel the encapsulated drama of it, right there in the palm of her hand: the winds of Ivana and her pestilential rains, the softness of the bird’s feathers as he labored through the heavens on nothing but his own slight wings, the movement of Bradley’s pen across the fabric.
She opened the tiny canister and worked out the patch and read the words. Read it once. Twice. Three, four, five times. Got it, she thought. Yes, I know how to find that place. I think I do.
She placed it between her mattress and the box springs, deep toward the center of the bed, undetectable and difficult to find unless you knew right where to look.
She stood, short of breath. He’ll be here the day after tomorrow, she thought. Tuesday! One day before Charlie brings the money. Blessed Tuesday. Fat Tuesday. I’ll be at the cenote. We’ll get there. The baby and I will get there and we will be waiting for you.
The day after tomorrow!
She went to the table and opened the package. It was a plastic shopping bag with the name and logo of a Chetumal market on it, its handles tied neatly into a bow. Inside she found a freshly laundered white dress and one of the sheer white rebozos the lepers wore.
She walked behind Armenta down the hallway toward the elevator. She wore a long dress and a light shawl over her shoulders and the dress rubbed on her abraded back but at least her legs were free. She had taped the Cowboy Defender to her upper calf and she knew without a doubt that she could use it. Violence has set me free to use violence, she thought, like this country, like the world.
Armenta carried the Hummingbird in its case. She could smell the soap and shampoo on him. He wore a black-and-white paneled bowling shirt and raw silk trousers and the broad mesh of his huaraches shone with polish. The satellite phone and others hung from his belt. His face was cleanly shaven though the lines in it were deep and dark as always. He had attempted to tame his hair, which showed some comb tracks and patches of aromatic product, but was still a thatch. They rode the elevator looking straight ahead in silence.
He opened the door of the recording studio and stepped in ahead of her and turned on the lights. Erin walked in and felt the cool and the heavy hush that lightened her heart a small degree.
Armenta leaned the guitar case against one of the gear racks and waved her to follow. At the far wall he opened a closet door. Erin saw the mikes hanging on their dowels.
“Here,” he said. “Look at the selection in the mic locker.”
She looked down at the Neumanns and AKGs and Sennheisers. She was a longtime fan of the cheap Shure 58 for stage, but there was no such budget equipment here.
“Which microphone do you like?” he asked.
“I don’t need a microphone,” she said.
“If you record with me.”
“I won’t record with you.”
“But if you did record with me, which mic would it be?”
“You can’t beat the 251.”
He took down one of the ELAM 251s and closed the closet door. He went back and took up the Hummingbird case and walked into the tracking room.
Through the window she watched him take the mic to the vocal booth and set the guitar outside an instrument booth. He waved her in. She stepped into the shimmering aural brightness of the tuned room. She could tell that this space had been designed to use the reflections and peaks of sound to best effect. She suspected that even a spoken voice would sound beautiful here and she could not restrain herself.
“I have to hear this room,” she said. Her words came out with dimension and specificity. Uncluttered, she thought. Bottom, top, middle. No noise. Then the room closed around them and they were gone.
“You must hear it with music.”
“It’s as good as the rooms in L.A.”
“I have stood in the Boston Symphony Hall.”
“My old church in Austin had really good acous
tics.”
“I designed this room myself. I used mathematics and a computer program that is a room peak calculator. You cannot have a tracking room that peaks or builds up in the frequency. These result in key and pitch and this you do not want. What is incorrect must be tuned out and what is ideal must remain. There are materials and designs that are to reflect. And some that are to diffuse and some to absorb. But the goal is not to create death.”
“I think you mean deadness.”
“Yes, deadness. You want the correct reflections. And the correct sonics. You must approximate…deadness. But not to create deadness total.”
She went to the Yamaha and brushed the keyboard lid with her fingers but did not lift it. An elaborate and beautiful accordion sat on the bench, gleaming ivory-and-black enamel with mother-of-pearl and gold inlays, and black straps of intricately tooled leather.
“Play only one note,” said Armenta.
She lifted the lid and struck middle C and listened to the note shimmer, then sustain and fade.
“I want you to write a song about me,” said Armenta. “I want you to describe the life of poverty that becomes wealth. By using the bravery and the hard work.”
“A narcocorrido.”
“The greatest narcocorrido ever written, Veracruzana style!”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Are you serious? Why?”
“Yes. Serious in this.”
“I’ve been kidnapped by you and half raped by your son. My husband has been beaten and you’re stealing a lot of our money. I’m pregnant and I’m terrified of you people. All of you. I won’t write for you. Terror does not write songs.”
The Jaguar Page 18