Night of the Jaguar jp-3

by Michael Gruber

  “Please what?” said Kevin.

  “Nothing,” she said and realized she had spoken aloud. She felt so sorry for him now. He had nothing, really, but his stupid revolution, and sex, and his attitude. She felt a wave of compassion and understood at some level below words that this was what Professor Cooksey felt for her. She had learned it from him. And maybe if she stayed with Kevin she could work the same sort of transformation. Maybe she owed it to him, because for sure she never would have ended up in this place had it not been for Kevin dragging her into it. She rose and faced him and put on a smile, only half faked. “So,” she said, “if we’re going, let’s go.”

  Ten

  This isn’t the way to the beach,” Jenny said.

  “Yeah, I know, I just want to cruise by this place in the Gables for a second.”

  She didn’t ask why, nor was she hurt or disappointed, as she might have been a few weeks ago. Kevin always had something else going on when he was with her, and whereas before she had taken this as a personal slight, now she saw it as a taxonomic indicator of the genus Kevin, as:

  always has another deal going on when with girlfriend….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….Kevin sp.

  never has another deal going on when with girlfriend….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….……see 14

  Jennifer had never got to that part of the taxonomic key but thought it would be nice to find one of those someday, a true 14, or whatever. She knew they existed, because Cooksey was one. Out of habit, she half blamed herself. Had she been more interesting, she might have occasioned more interest. She looked out past Kevin at the house he seemed to be more interested in than in her. It looked vaguely familiar, a big two-story Gables mansion, glowing pale pink in the moonlight, but she was not inspired to ask what was so special about it. Instead she was thinking about Cooksey and Cooksey’s dead wife, about what his conversation had suggested regarding the nature of their relationship. She wondered if it were true, that people could love each other that much, or if it was just a fantasy that Cooksey had concocted, like the fantasies of love on TV or in the movies. She had certainly never seen such a love in real life, and she now understood that what she thought she’d felt for Kevin was as unsubstantial as the images on a flickering screen. How strange to have thoughts like this, she thought, wrenching and horrible in a way but also how totally cool, almost like she was in charge of her own life, like it had a steering wheel.

  Prudencio Rivera Martinez is parked in a Dodge Voyager with two of his men at the end of the street. He is half asleep but rouses whenever a car drives by. This is not a frequent occurrence, for Cortillo Avenue in the Gables is short and untraveled, except by those who live in the great homes that line it and those who had business there: guests, servants, contractors. None of the other houses on the street were guarded like the Calderon house. Instead, they had ridiculous little signs warning that if anyone did anything bad, someone would call the police. Martinez understood that things were run differently in America than in Cali, where he came from. In Cali, homes like this would have three-meter walls around them topped with razor wire or broken glass, and each would have a crew of guards on duty and there would be armored limousines and outriders whenever the family emerged.

  He was not a thoughtful man as a rule, but he couldn’t help wondering what a couple of gangs of Colombians could do to such a street. It would be like scooping up a plate of beans, that easy. For this reason, he didn’t think he would have much trouble if this little problem of Hurtado’s was being caused by Americans. He personally agreed with his boss that it was a Colombian operation. He had seen the police photographs of Fuentes, supplied by Mr. Calderon from a source within the Miami cops, and he thought it looked like something a Colombian would do: an odd kind of patriotic pride. He himself knew people who liked to spray blood around like that. The eating part he wasn’t so sure about, although he had heard rumors from the south, where a civil war had been going on for half a century, about guys in the jungle who ate enemies. He himself was a more fastidious killer, specializing most recently in car bombs. He had people he used when wetter things were required, and he had brought several along on this job, in case of need.

  Now the sound of a vehicle again brings Martinez up out of his doze to full alertness. A brightly painted van passes slowly by his window. The glass in his van is heavily tinted, but even so he can make out leaves, parrots, monkeys in the design, and some words in English he doesn’t quite get. But he can see the license plate as it rolls by and he records it in a little notebook. That is something he does on jobs like this, writing down license numbers. Obviously, if anyone is going to try something, especially if Colombian, they will use false plates, but still it is a good practice. The painted van slows to a stop before the Calderon house, pauses for a moment, and then moves slowly on. Martinez punches a button on his cell phone. It is answered immediately and he says, “Find out who that is.”

  “Pick them up?” asks the voice in the phone.

  “No, just follow them. I want to know who they are and where they come from.” He disconnects the circuit. At the far end of the street, another Dodge van with dark windows moves away from the curb and follows the painted VW around the corner.

  Kevin and Jennifer drove across Rickenbacker Causeway to Virginia Beach, a relatively undeveloped strip of public land north of Bear Cut. Kevin took a terry cloth blanket and half of a bottle of Rupert’s wine out of the car, and they both walked out of the little parking lot away from the causeway down toward where the mangroves started. Kevin spread the blanket in a little sandy cove covered with the needles of the overhanging Australian pines. It was dark here, the strong moonlight blocked by the overhanging boughs, and cool. It had been a cool day, and the biting insects were hardly active. Jennifer knew why Kevin had chosen a dark spot. She walked on crunching hard sand toward the water.

  “Where’re you going?” he called.

  “To the water. I want a moon bath.”

  This girl she once knew, Rosalind, had told her that the rays of the moon were healthy for women, that they strengthened the subtle energies and prevented menstrual cramps. Jenny recalled a tiny little straw-haired girl with lots of face piercings and dark bracelet tattoos, into crystals and astrology, too. She had done a horoscope for Jenny on a piece of notebook paper, sun and moon in Cancer, Scorpio rising, and Rosalind had explained what it all meant, you are probably attracted to the sea. Your home environment is very important to you, and you like to make it cozy. You may be very touchy emotionally, and need to hide in your shell sometimes. You are a strong defender of family and tradition. Although your temperament is changeable, people will come to you readily for nurturing and care. You look to your mother for protection and nurturing. That last part was a little off, also the touchy emotionally, but maybe what she was feeling now was some of that kicking in. Or maybe it was all bullshit, like Kevin said.

  She slid out of her sandals and waded into the water. It was warmer than the air and had the feel of light oil. The creamy moon rode high, silvering every wavelet. She stood immersed to her knees and let the rays sink into her skin, and wished greatly that it was not all bullshit. She heard the squeak of steps in the sand. Kevin, coming for a little of her famous and astrally correct nurturing and care. “Hey…,” he said.

  Without thinking, Jenny stepped back on the sand and in an instant was free of her T-shirt and shorts; then she dived into the reflected moon. The water was shallow here, less than five feet. She shot down to the sand and coasted just above the bottom. It was perfectly black, disappointing because she wanted it to be moonlit under the water, magical and strange, and she wondered briefly why it was not. She would ask Cooksey. She could hold her breath for a long time now because of all her practice in the fish pool, and she did, suspended in the utter dark.

  There was a splash, heard faintly, and a disturbance in the water, a pressure of something moving. Did sharks come at night? she wondere
d, and felt a little tug of fear and self-contempt. Yet another thing she didn’t know. She kicked off from the sand and shot to the surface. But it was only Kevin, sputtering and thrashing a dozen yards away.

  “God, Jenny, I thought something happened to you!”

  “I’m fine. Were you going to rescue me?”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, laughing, “my action-hero phase.” He drifted over and embraced her, squeezing her breasts against his chest, kissing her neck. This was a little new, she thought, it wasn’t only that he wanted sex. He almost always wanted sex, and just now, as a matter of fact, so did she. But even when they had first hooked up, it hadn’t had this feel to it, like he was afraid she was going away and wanted to be extra loving. If true, if she wasn’t just imagining it, then why did he act so shitty when they were going to make her leave the property? He had his hand inside the waistband of her panties now, the longest finger searching downward like a killifish after a crumb. She thrust away from him and paddled away on her back.

  On the dry sand she stripped her clinging panties off and pulled shorts and T-shirt on, and found her sandals. She trotted to the blanket and used it to dry her face and hair. Kevin came trailing along, with a confused look on his face, which he was trying to hide behind his usual lopsided smile. She folded the blanket. “Let’s go in the van,” she said.

  In the mangrove thicket, Santiago Iglesias put down his eight-by-ten night glasses and said to his companion, Dario Rascon, “Looks like the show is over. Let’s go back to the van.”

  Rascon said, “That’s some piece of ass. I’d like to fuck that bitch. I’d like to fuck that bitch right up her white ass. You know something? I never fucked a redhead pussy before. How about that? I just thought of that when I was watching her flash her cunt at us. Not a real one, anyway. You want to know what I think? We should toss the little maricon in the woods and fuck her into the ground.” Here he made a sucking noise with his mouth and manipulated his genitals, indicating a high level of sexual interest.

  “He told us to see where they go,” said Iglesias. “You want to explain to him why you thought a piece of ass was more important than doing what the man said, go ahead. I wish you the best of luck.”

  “?No me friegues, pendejo!Give me ten minutes with that cunt and we’ll know not only where she comes from but what she had for breakfast last Tuesday.”

  “That’s a good plan, and I can see you understand the situation a lot better than Prudencio does.”

  “He just wants the information, man. I bring it in, he won’t do shit to me.”

  “If not, could I have your boots?” Instinctively Rascon looked down at his boots, which were crocodile, elaborately tooled, and tipped with silver caps. Then he snarled,“?Chingate!” and stomped away, followed by the softly giggling Iglesias.

  They sat in their van. Rascon wanted to turn the radio on and roll up the windows against the occasional mosquito, but Iglesias said no, partly to annoy the other man and show who was in charge, and partly because he wanted to see what the Americans were going to do. He had a good idea of what, but he wanted to observe it. The two Americans entered the van via the side door. Iglesias saw the van settle on its springs. After a few minutes the body of the VW began to rock rhythmically. Its windows were all open, and shortly thereafter the slight breeze brought to the two watchers the sound of heavy breathing and then a series of short cries, like that of a small bird, rising in register, and then a distinctively male groan.

  “She’s getting it now, the little whore,” said Rascon sourly. “I’m getting sore balls listening to that shit.” He massaged these.

  “If you’re going to jerk off, go outside,” said Iglesias.

  “?Pela las nalgas!”

  “When we get back, you can ask Torres for a piece of his fine white ass.”

  “?Callate, cabron!”snapped Rascon. “You’ll see, I’m going to fuck that girl before we’re done here.”

  “Again I wish you the best of luck, my friend,” said Iglesias. “In the meanwhile…?Ay, cono! Listen, they’re going at it again!”

  Prudencio Martinez thinks for a moment and then reaches into the backseat and shoves the man sleeping there into wakefulness.

  “What’s up?” says the man in the backseat. His name is Rafael Alonzo Torres. He is slim and young, the youngest of the men Martinez has brought with him, a hungry and aggressive kid from the Cali slaughterhouse district, blessed with a mild-looking angel face. He reminds Martinez of himself twenty years ago. Martinez says, “You slept enough. Go into the house. Sit in the chair I showed you. And stay awake.”

  The youth yawns and stretches. He says, “What about Garcia and Ochoa?”

  “Garcia’s in the kitchen and Ochoa’s watching the back. I want you on the bedroom floor.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “No, it’s quiet, but we had a car drive by I didn’t like.”

  “A car?”

  Martinez gives him a look. “Hey, cabron, just go! And Raphael: make sure your phone is on.”

  Torres leaves the van and goes to the back of the house. He taps on the door, and Benigno Garcia lets him in. They exchange a few words. Garcia goes back to watching the maid’s television in the kitchen. Torres walks through the hallway to the main foyer and up the stairs to the second floor. There are four bedrooms on this floor, each with a bath, and there is also the room at the rear of the house that Mr. Calderon uses as a study or home office. Torres sits in a chair between the door to this room and the one to the master bedroom. The chair is uncomfortable, and he curses softly as he sits in it, but he doesn’t really mind. This is a very easy job compared to some he has been on. And he can sleep anywhere.

  Unlike his client. Yoiyo Calderon is sleepless tonight, as he has been for more nights than he can remember. Weeks at least, maybe months. No, he thinks, it started around the time Fuentes died, or maybe a little after, when the Puxto deal began to go sour. He attributes this insomnia to stress, although he is scrupulous about following all the stress-reduction hints in the business and fitness magazines he reads. These helpful sources do not discuss nightmares, however. Successful take-charge American businessmen do not mention their dreams, or even acknowledge that they have dreams, except in the figurative sense of projecting a scheme for increasing material wealth.

  Calderon is an educated man, and he is familiar with the ideas underlying Freudian psychotherapy. Dreams, especially repetitive dreams, have some deep meaning, are the signals indicating the repression of an unacceptable desire. He has looked into this on his own, for his daughter has all those how-to-feel-good-about-yourself books, and he has sneaked looks, but they seem like a lot of crap to him. He has never had the slightest problem feeling good about himself. He considered that the Yoiyo Calderon who existed up until a month or so ago was as fine a man as could be found anywhere in Miami-good-looking, decisive, sexually potent, rich, getting richer, a decent husband and father, generous to his various mistresses, a man of his word when dealing with equals, philanthropic to a fault, well respected in the community-and not about to see a goddamned headshrinker either, that was out, although he had asked his family doctor for some Xanax as a stress reliever. Half a milligram before retiring is the dose recommended on the vial, but tonight he has loaded himself with three milligrams in the hope that this will stop the dream.

  It is always the same one. In it, he is somewhere in the tropics, dressed in explorer garb. It’s hot and dark and he’s at a table. A line of natives in fancy regalia stretches out into the dark, and one by one they sell him all their ornaments, which he pays for with bits of paper he tears off a pad and writes banal phrases on, like those found in fortune cookies. New friends will help you. You are greatly admired. He is happy to be getting rich in this way and has convinced himself, in the logic of dreams, that the natives are better off with his scraps of paper than they are with their gold jewelry and plumes. As he works, he becomes conscious of a noise, soft at first, but growing louder, like somethi
ng breathing, in and out, like the purring of an immense cat, a cat the size of a hill. Then there are no more natives and he is alone with the noise. And now the fear starts, and he feels an urgent need to get away. He shoves his swag into a sack and leaves the hut. He is on a muddy jungle trail in the dark. All around him is the sound.

  Ararah. Ararararh.

  Now he can hear the thud of the monstrous paws, close behind him in the dark, getting closer. He runs, clutching his sack. He feels its hot breath on the back of his neck. He can’t possibly escape, his limbs are caught in some sticky mud, and now he screams. He is crawling now in the slow paralysis of nightmare. He turns and looks up and sees its golden eyes, its jaws…

  And he is awake, sweating, cursing; and when he looks at the clock it is always around three in the morning and he can’t return to sleep, the night is ruined for him again. But tonight there is no dream of jungles. Tonight he falls into blackness and awakes on the daybed in his study. He has taken to sleeping there to avoid the shame of his nightmares, the screaming and thrashing. The blinds are closed and the room is very dark. The only light comes from the digital clock on his desk, green numbers telling him it is 3:06. It is cool in the room, and at first he thinks someone has switched on the air-conditioning, because there is a rumble in his ears. No, not a mechanical sound.