The mask seemed to bob oddly. Another smile?
“But not you, Reynaldo. I don’t scare you. Do I?”
The driver reached to take a drink of his rum, but stopped because he realized his hand would shake if he lifted the glass. He said, “Why should I be scared? In my village, we speak well of you. We hear the rumors”—he shrugged as if unconcerned, but his laughter was strained—“crazy stories. Lies. But we fight for the same cause, so we know you’re a good man.”
In reply to Lourdes’ dubious gesture—the way he tilted his head—the driver spoke a little too loudly when he added, “It’s true. We teach our children that you are a great revolutionary. That they have no reason to fear you.”
“No reason to fear me?”
“As God is my witness! That is what we teach children.”
Signaling the waitress for another drink, Praxcedes said softly, “Talking to God like he’s your pal. That’s brave. They send a hero like you to drive the car.”
Sarcasm? Reynaldo couldn’t be sure.
He was glad when Prax changed the subject, saying, “The boy and his mother live in what used to be a nunnery, Claustro la Concepción. It’s across from the presidential palace, next to the market.”
He was back discussing the kidnapping.
Reynaldo nodded. “I know the market. We sold vegetables at the Mercado Central every Sunday. I know the city as well as any man.”
“Um-huh. Brave and a genius, too.”
That inflection again.
“If you know the city, then you know about the tunnel that connects the convent with the park.”
Reynaldo answered, “A tunnel? A tunnel runs beneath the street from the convent?”
Praxcedes blew a stream of smoke into the older man’s face. “There’s something you don’t know? Then keep your mouth closed while I explain.”
The driver sat motionless, silent, as Prax told him that the convent, where the boy lived, had been built in the 1500s. The tunnel had been built in the 1600s, during the Inquisition.
He said, “The nuns dug the tunnel to save dumb Indios, just like you, who were sentenced to death. I was telling you about my fame? History, that’s how it started.
“During the Inquisition, Spaniards burned Indians at the stake if they wouldn’t turn Catholic. Thousands of them. When the Indios screamed, if they called out to God—like for mercy?—the priests wrote their words on paper. To those assholes, that was a form of conversion. It’s what they wanted.
“I’ve got a laptop computer with a wireless connection,” Lourdes said. “I’m not like the rest of you ignorant hicks. I do research. All the time, I’m learning. The Catholic thing, burning men alive to win a war. When I read it, I thought, Perfect. Even though it was years after what the soldiers did to me.”
Lourdes stopped and stared at his driver. “You’ve probably heard all kinds of stories. About why I look the way I look.”
Reynaldo dipped his head twice, slowly. Yes.
“Later, when we’ve got the boy, if you don’t screw up, maybe I’ll tell you what really happened. The details. Would you like that?”
He watched the driver think about it for several seconds.
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll understand. The church, the government, they’re both the same. Big shots trying to screw you if they can.”
With a whistle of scorn, Prax took a kitchen match, struck it, and leaned close to refire his cigar.
Reynaldo looked long enough to see, floating above the flame, one sleepy gray eye and one lidless blue eye leering out at him from the mask. Prax wore a hooded brown monk’s smock that was common in Central America. The hood was back, so Reynaldo could also see the damage that fire had done to the man’s scalp. The top of his head appeared to be a human skull over which gray skin had been stretched too tight, torn, then patched with melted wax. There were tufts of blond hair growing out of white bone.
When Prax spoke certain words, he lisped, which suggested that his lips and face were also scarred.
When Reynaldo had first received the assignment to drive Incendiario, he’d been excited. He’d hoped, in a perverse way, that he would be among the few to see the great man’s face.
After only a few hours, though, Reynaldo regretted his decision to drive the car.
Prax didn’t behave like a great man. His Spanish was a Yankee’s Spanish, rude and profane. He talked incessantly, always about himself, and he wore his monk’s robe and mask like a costume—even his hand gestures were theatrical.
The exaggerated mannerisms reminded him of something; something he’d seen as a child. At a circus, perhaps?
Reynaldo couldn’t bring the memory to the front of his brain.
In the light of a flaming match, the driver looked at the eyes inside the mask. He was glad the mask separated them.
IN the morning darkness, Praxcedes said to Reynaldo, “The entrance to this thing, this tunnel, it’s too small. My shoulders won’t fit. I can’t believe the stupid bastards didn’t warn me about this!”
Straining, beginning to sweat, Prax whispered to himself in English, “Jesus Christ, you’d have to be a freak show contort to squeeze through this bastard.”
“Con-tort” was carnival slang for contortionist. Prax, whose name had once been Jimmie Gauer, remembered lots of slang. As a child, his family had worked carnivals all summer, then wintered in Florida. They had a trailer there in a tiny carney town.
Sweating, now beginning to panic, Lourdes added, “I get down there, what if it caves in? Then what?”
Reynaldo said, “Well, the General will still pay you your money. If we can find you.”
Lourdes thought, You’ll suffer for that, smart-ass.
It was dark in the park at 2:30 A.M., shadows of trees above. Beyond, the lighted windows of the presidential palace created a citreous checkerboard against a loft of mountain peaks and stars.
They’d found the Mayan stele that marked the entrance, then strained together to lift the stone. Now, stuck in the tunnel’s mouth, Incendiario was balking.
Reynaldo said carefully, “Some people are not comfortable in narrow places. There’s a word for it that I can’t remember. Shall I crawl through and get the boy while you wait here? There is no shame in being frightened.”
Lourdes snapped, “You’re calling me a coward? Screw you. You’ll regret that mouth of yours one day.”
He took a deep breath as if about to submerge, exhaled, and forced his body through the entrance.
Underground, he had to pull his elbows against his ribs and wiggle to turn. He rushed to find his micro light. The tunnel was walled with brick, and smelled of mold and water. The floor was brick and broken stone that was etched with Mayan hieroglyphics a thousand years old: grotesque faces; birds clutching snakes.
Crawling, Prax stopped several times, panting, so much sweat dripping off his face that he removed the mask. He felt as if his lungs might implode.
Finally, he saw frail bands of light ahead. Then he came to a grate that moved easily in his big hands. Prax rolled out into a hallway, stood, and fitted the mask, feeling his lungs expand to normal.
The convent was built of stone, ceilings twenty feet high, religious murals on walls that were poorly illuminated by bare bulbs where torches had once burned. He’d been briefed on the convent, what to avoid. They’d told him that the boy’s room was on the second floor near the staircase. He’d also been told that the guard normally stationed there would leave after midnight, claiming to be ill.
Even so, Prax moved quietly up the steps. His smock was belted at the waist, hood up. He fished his hand into a pocket and removed a knife. He snapped the blade open, then stopped at the top of the stairs.
To his left was a hallway that ended at a set of wooden doors. The boy’s mother, Pilar Fuentes, would be inside, asleep at this hour. A famous lady, and drop-dead gorgeous, too—he’d seen her photo in newspapers. A social hotshit even though she looked pure Mayan, and probably a snob. E
ven in Central America, the rich always were.
Prax considered paying the snob a quick visit. Was tempted to see for himself if she was as beautiful in the flesh. Or perhaps—this idea flashed behind his eyes—perhaps abduct the boy and the mother.
For a moment, that excited him, and he began to think about it; how it might play out.
Why not? He’d soon need a woman. A test subject. Someone to try things with that he’d never been able to pay or force a prostitute to do. Not with his face. Not this old face, anyway.
But a new face . . . ?
For years, he’d wondered what it would be like. Now it was happening. Happening because he was making it happen. When he wasn’t planning, he was on the Internet, researching. Thinking about it so much, that lately it was hard to think about anything else. Dreamt about it.
Pilar Fuentes. Yeah. Take the famous beauty. Surprise the society snob in bed. He could abduct her along with the boy, and then . . . and then . . .
But wait . . .
As the idea unraveled, his excitement drained.
It wasn’t workable—even though it would be a sweet way to screw over the jerk who was the woman’s ex-husband, Jorge Balserio.
Prax despised authority, felt it in his belly, and General Balserio was as arrogant as anyone he’d ever met. The man was his employer—which was another good reason to snatch her, because Balserio still paid him like he was some Indio peon heel, even though the government was this close to falling.
Incendiario deserved a fair chunk of the credit for that.
Taking the kid was supposed to be the final straw.
So it was tempting to take her, keep her all for himself.
But sometimes, Prax knew, it just wasn’t smart to screw with the locals.
TO the right of the stairs was a second set of doors. On the doors were tacked clippings from magazines: baseball stars, a map of the moon, and a photograph of a great white shark. The shark was leaping out of the water toward a skin diver perched on the skid of a helicopter.
There was also a plastic sign in Spanish that read, NO GIRLS! TRESPASSERS WILL BE VIOLATED!
The boy’s room.
Smart-ass rich punk.
Lourdes wondered how smart-assed the kid would be once his arms and mouth were taped.
He touched the wrought-iron latch. It was locked, which was no surprise. The guard had told them that there was only one key.
“He’s methodical,” the guard had said. “So organized. He’s more like a grown man.”
From a pocket, Prax took a miniature blowtorch nozzle and threaded it to a 7-ounce propane tank. Assembled, it was the shape and size of a handgun. He opened the valve, lighted the torch, enjoying it, that sound, the pressurized hiss.
He lowered his black glasses and adjusted the flame until it was orange-blue, shaped like a scalpel. Then he moved the flame over the deadbolt, up and down, for less than a minute before the bolt gave way.
Prax pushed the door open and stepped into the boy’s room.
It was a large room, with windows that opened onto a courtyard and fountains below. The room was illuminated with bluish light that came from a half-dozen glass aquaria that held coral and fish.
The largest tank was in the center. Clown-colored fish swam among aerator bubbles, while beneath them, what Prax recognized as a moray eel watched open-mouthed, its eyes reptilian. The moray was big, as thick as his wrist.
The boy was in bed beneath the open windows. He appeared as a charcoal shape.
The blowtorch hissing, Prax walked toward the bed, but stopped when he heard the boy ask in Spanish, “Hey—who are you? What’s burning?”
It was an adolescent voice, but deep.
Prax had spent lots of private time in front of a mirror. He had the hood pulled over his head, mask fixed, looking just the way he wanted—spooky. He answered, “Shut your fucking mouth. Don’t say another word, or I’ll set your bed on fire.”
That was something he’d learned: Scare them fast. When you take down a mark, shock them quick, let them know who’s boss.
But the kid didn’t scare easy. He was sitting, rubbing his eyes with his fists. “Hey—you get the hell out of my room. If I call the guards, they’ll shoot. That’s if you’re lucky.”
The boy’s self-confidence, his calm, were infuriating.
Prax hissed back, “You little punk, you’re leaving with me,” as he lifted the torch so that the kid could see his mask. He stood there letting the boy look at him, feeling the boy’s eyes and the heat of the flame on his face. Then slowly, very slowly, he pulled the mask down just low enough so that the burn scars on his forehead and his lidless eye were visible.
He heard the boy’s quick intake of breath. Heard the boy whisper, “Jesus Christ, it’s . . . You’re real?”
Prax answered, “Oh, yeah. Every fucking story you’ve ever heard. I’m real.”
Oh, man, he liked that. Loved the timing of it, the kid’s reaction, and the way he’d listened, frozen, as Prax spoke his best line, laid out the words just right. Now, readjusting his mask, he motioned with the blowtorch. “Get your clothes on. Do what I say, you won’t get hurt. Move.”
When the boy didn’t budge, he turned, walked across to the aquarium, and plunged the nozzle into the water. A portable torch burns at more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and within seconds, the fish and large moray began to contort in the super-heated bubbles.
“Stop! Quit it.”
“Your voice. Too loud.”
“You’re killing them.”
“I’ll stop when you move.”
“Go to hell. I won’t.”
Stubborn little son-of-a-bitch.
Looking at the kid, trying to read him, Prax said, “You do what I tell you to do, or . . . my partners are in your mother’s room right now. I’ll call them, they’ll bring her in here, and I’ll use this on your mother. How’d you like that? I’ll burn her fucking face right off.”
“You leave my mother alone!”
That did it. Prax Lourdes could hear it in the boy’s voice. From now on, anything he wanted, anything, all he had to do was threaten to have someone harm the woman.
The torch was still in the water. He watch the moray writhe on the bottom. Then the clown-colored fish began to explode into fleshy clouds as their air bladders ruptured.
“Get your clothes on. You’d better hurry.”
The boy leaped out of bed and found the reading lamp: Big kid with blond hair, shoulders like they were built from planks, square jaw, and pale eyes. He wore boxer underwear, his abdominal muscles symmetrical.
“I’m hurrying. Enough.”
He didn’t sound so self-assured now.
Prax lifted the torch from the tank and closed the valve as he watched the boy dress. He was already dreading the trip back through the tunnel, having to squeeze through that darkness.
To take his mind off it, he settled his attention on the boy, concentrating on the boy’s face, the way it was constructed. Along with all his Internet research on plastic surgery, it was something else he’d been doing lately: studying the facial makeup of other men—particularly young men.
There were interesting, subtle differences.
Staring at the boy, Prax was startled to realize that the kid was handsome; had a face that was nicely proportioned. Maybe even beautifully proportioned. Which shouldn’t have been a surprise, considering his famous mother.
Jesus, to have that face, his soft skin.
Prax Lourdes was torn.
The most innovative reconstructive surgeon in America was Dr. Valerie Santos. She wasn’t like that strung-out Mexican quack he’d been using.
Yeah, Dr. Valerie. That’s what the press called her. Cool lady who went by her first name. All those awards, her photo in People, and a great web page where someone answered e-mails from potential patients who had questions.
He’d already received several detailed replies.
Fake profiles, that’s the way he was playing the Inte
rnet con. His most ingenious was posing as a teenage South American burn victim who was working on a film script.
Dr. Santos and Prax were destined. He knew it the instant he read about her, because of where she did her magic: Tampa General Burn Unit, right across the bay from the little carney trailer park where he still remembered spending winters as a boy.
Lourdes loved the idea of cornering the big-shot lady doctor, referencing one of her e-mails, then pointing to the kid’s face and telling her, “Harvest that.”
There was something else, however, he’d been coveting: the chance to light the boy’s clothes on fire.
What a rush that would be, watching this pretty child run.
ONE
THE morning that Pilar Santana Fuentes arrived at Dinkin’s Bay and told me that our son had been kidnapped, I was in waist-deep water, a couple hundred yards down the mangrove shore from my rickety stilt house, wrestling with a sixty-pound tarpon.
I heard a woman’s voice calling in Spanish, “Marion? Marion! I thought you were expecting me.”
She sounded irritated. Demanding. Which didn’t fit with my image of who Pilar is, or was in terms of her normal behavior, but I let it go.
She’d telephoned from Central America. So, yes, I’d been expecting her. Even so, I was unprepared for the thumping heart and twittering, nervous jolt I got when I saw her. Nervous, because I believed her to be my long-lost love.
I like interesting-looking women, and women who are interesting. I have zero interest in the Hollywood concept of beauty unless humor, character, and intellect are added to the mix. Those are the sexiest of qualities. I try to maintain those standards, all the while understanding that I am not the most attractive of men at first glance. Maybe not even at third or fourth glance.
I like women as people. That is a grounding common denominator.
Pilar undoubtedly has all the feminine qualities that attract males of our species. Her body is so achingly, obviously female that the first time I saw her, I felt an actual sensation of physical pain. At the time, she was married. I suspect I felt pain because I believed that I had no chance of winning her as a lover.
Tampa Burn Page 2