Sitting next to her at a discreet distance, he felt an invisible yet tangible force flow through the space between them. It plucked at his sleeve, tugged at him to draw nearer. He resisted, his memory retrieving the scolding voice of Sister Josefina, his eighth-grade teacher. That time during first Friday Mass when she’d caught him passing a heart-shaped mint, inscribed with the question “How’s Chances?” to a girl he was in love with … what was her name? Sandy. Sandy Cahill. “Here, in God’s house? You’re a bad boy, Timothy Riordan. Bad, bad, bad.” A good thing Pamela was gay; it provided a restraint where his own will might fail, as it had once, though it wasn’t raw lust pulling him toward her here in God’s house: a yearning, rather, to touch and be touched by her, the hunger for human affection that, his confessor in Rome had told him, a priest could curb through a deeper intimacy with God. The implication being that his hadn’t been deep enough.
Pamela began to make notes, then paused to gaze at the painting. An unusual depiction of the Madonna, she said. Nothing like the ones you saw in Europe—the dark complexion, the straight black hair.
“It’s a mestiza girl,” he explained. “This one’s a copy of the original in the basilica in Mexico City.”
He told Pamela about the legend: how in the early days of the Spanish conquest, a maiden appeared to an Aztec Indian named Juan Diego on a hill outside the city. The apparition identified herself as the Mother of God and asked for a church to be built there in her honor. Juan reported his vision to the archbishop, who instructed him to return to the hill and ask the maiden for a sign to prove she was who she claimed to be. Request granted: she miraculously cured Juan’s uncle of a disease and caused flowers to grow on a hillside where none had grown before. Flowers not native to Mexico, Castilian roses. Juan gathered them up in his cloak and returned to the archbishop. When he opened his cloak, the blossoms fell to the floor, forming an image of the Virgin.
“That Indian and the archbishop must have been eating mushrooms that hadn’t grown there before,” Pamela quipped, then brought two fingers to her lips. “Oops! Sorry. Maybe you believe that story?”
“My parishioners do. Ninety-five percent of Mexicans do. The Virgin of Guadalupe is a kind of cult in this country. She’s a national icon.”
“So even if you don’t believe it, you’d better pretend you do?”
This struck him as another “oops,” but she did not apologize for it.
“How did you come to be a priest? Just curious. You don’t seem like the type.”
“I wasn’t aware that there was a type.”
“Maybe not.”
“I’ll tell you on the condition that you tell me why you became an artist.”
“Fair enough.”
“A long story,” he said. “I’ll abridge it. I dropped out of Notre Dame in the middle of my sophomore year. I was restless, and I hit the road. Three months later, I fetched up in Mexico, a town not far from where we’re sitting, Yécora. Dead broke and half-starved. The local priest found me asleep in the church. He fed me, gave me a job washing dishes, sweeping floors, helping him out with one thing or another. He was a remarkable guy, Father Batista, a Franciscan. He was always fighting with the municipal government for his parishioners. Not a fist-pumping sort of fighter. He was the most serene man I’ve ever known. If there was work to be done, he’d pitch right in. Sometimes I’d work alongside him, and we’d be fixing a corral or nursing a sick burro and he’d be discussing Augustine’s commentaries on Scripture or Aquinas’s philosophy, like we were in a seminar room.
“The time I remember most clearly, because it made all the difference in my life, was when he got word that a crippled old man way off in the Sierra Madre wanted to take Communion. The only way into his village was on foot or on muleback. No mule to be had, so Father Batista walked. He was older than I am now. It was late winter, March, and a cold rain was falling. He left at daybreak, didn’t get back till after sunset, drenched, shivering, beat to the bone. I asked him why he’d gone through all that just to give one old man Communion, and he said he’d done it for selfish reasons, meaning that it made him happy. ‘Please explain,’ I said, and he answered, ‘The greatest happiness is to serve those whom no one else will serve.’
“I left a few days later, flipped a bus to the border with the money he paid me. I kept thinking about him and what he’d said, and sometime during that ride, I heard a voice inside my head telling me that I had to become like him. It was in my head but not my voice. And that was when I knew. Your turn.”
She crossed her legs primly and, throwing an arm across the back of the pew, swiveled in her seat to face him directly. “Kind of the same thing.”
“What is?”
“Art is a calling. I didn’t hear voices or anything like that, but I didn’t have a choice. I don’t do what I do because I want to. I have to. Maybe I could have been a suburban hobbyist, you know, turning out passable stuff in a studio my investment-banker hubster built for me, showing at local galleries, drinking bad sauvignon blanc from plastic cups; maybe I would have done that if I hadn’t been bi. But I was, I am…” She hesitated, then added, with a certain emphasis: “Bipolar, that is.”
Riordan’s cheeks warmed. Had it shown on his face, and had she noticed it? The little thrill of interest—no, of hope mixed with dread—that had flickered through him because, for an instant, he’d thought she’d meant bisexual?
“It set me apart,” she continued. “Yeah, that’s a cliché, too—that the artist has to be an outsider looking in, but she does.”
Composing himself, he said, “I wouldn’t have thought it. You seem so … is it reserved? Not that. Self-possessed.”
“I’m not off-the-wall bipolar. The diagnosis was hypomanic. My ups don’t reach the peaks, so my downs don’t hit rock bottom, and lithium takes care of the rest. I know I started this, but let’s stop before we get into too-much-information territory.”
“I’ll second that.”
She resumed her note-taking. One list of the work that needed doing, she said, another of the necessary materials: ammonium caseinate, dehydrated mortar, retouching paints.
“Do I take it, then, that I can count on you?” he asked.
“No promises.”
CHAPTER TEN
Returning to the parish office, an image of Pamela shimmering in his mind, he heard his conscience ventriloquize Sister Josefina: You are a bad priest, Timothy Riordan. Bad, bad, bad. Forget a deeper intimacy with God, he thought. Dad had it right: death alone is the way off the streetcar named desire.
Entering the office, he was startled to find the cop, the self-styled Professor, seated there. He had Riordan’s Latin grammar open on a laptop covering his knees.
“Buenos días, Padre Tim,” he said, his pale, piercing eyes beaming out from cavernous sockets. He was again in plain clothes, except for a windbreaker bearing the Federal Police logo, a seven-pointed star. And the gun, a black semiauto in a black ballistic-cloth holster. “I saw this on your shelf,” he went on, in English, tapping the book. “Thought I’d brush up on my declensions and conjugations.”
“This isn’t a public library,” Riordan said, flushed with indignation. “How did you get in here? What are you doing here? What do you want?”
“Are you curious or pissed off?”
“Both, and it’s not fifty-fifty.”
“I’ll take your questions in order.” The Professor noticed Riordan frowning at the pistol and zipped up the windbreaker to cover it. That was civil of him. “I got in here because your man let me in.”
“Domingo?”
“He’s one of the reasons I’m here. He and his brother have asked for police protection. It seems they’re not confident that Señor Díaz’s neighborhood watch is up to the job.”
Riordan sat behind his desk. It gave him the illusion that he would be in control of whatever came next.
“It also seems that the Brotherhood isn’t ready to write off San Patricio,” the Professor continued. “We t
hink they’re going to try to regain control here. The Quirogas got a phone call the other night. They are supposed to start paying a cuota again,” he elaborated. “Domingo’s brother was the one who came to us.”
“Adan,” Riordan said. “An older brother.”
“He was scared shitless, which I’d say is an appropriate response, but he wasn’t ready to roll over. An installment was due early this morning, while the bakers were baking. You guys can bust the collectors when they show up, Adan told us. So we did. Two of them, young guys from right here in town. I wouldn’t be surprised if you gave them Communion last Sunday.” He said this jovially. “We’re having conversations with them at the base. They’re plankton, but they might lead us on up the food chain to the barracudas. Don’t ask who they are. You’ve got your secrets, we’ve got ours.”
A little gas bubble formed in Riordan’s gut and bobbed into his throat. “Where is Domingo now?”
“Two of my men gave him a ride home.”
“I was with him an hour ago. He never said a word about this.”
“Why would he? Not the kind of thing you want to spread around. But I thought I’d let you know, since he’s your employee.”
“He’s not an employee. He volunteers. Not that that makes any difference. You said police protection, Pro … Is there something I can call you besides ‘Professor’?”
“Try Inspector. Inspector Grigorio Bonham. We’ll have two officers watching Domingo’s and Adan’s houses twenty-four/seven, two more at the bakery, and we’ve beefed up security in the plaza to keep an eye on your church, since he works here part of the time.”
“What did the caller say? Did he make threats?”
“A threat would have been superfluous,” said Inspector Bonham. He clasped his hands behind his head and stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles, his trouser cuffs riding up to show costly, ostrich-skin cowboy boots with quilled toes. His relaxed pose and vigilant stare brought to mind a well-trained rottweiler at rest. Under different circumstances, he would have made Riordan nervous; but in a bad neighborhood, it was good to have an attack dog in your yard.
“I’m very fond of Domingo. If anything happened to him … Is there anything I can do to—”
“Nothing that we’re not doing. You might want to encourage your parishioners to cooperate with us. If they know something, say something. Anonymity guaranteed.”
“An apology from the captain might put them in a more cooperative mood.”
“Forget that, but he might be in a better mood himself because he has to be,” Bonham said. “The orders to disarm the autodefensas have been rescinded. The government figures disarming them would be more trouble than it’s worth, so the neighborhood watchmen here and everywhere get to keep their flintlocks. And we—the army and the police—have been urged to cooperate with them. I doubt Valencia is going to be Díaz’s best friend, but”—Bonham drew himself out of his slouch—“it’s what you suggested, so congratulate yourself, Padre Tim. You were ahead of the curve.”
Riordan noted the phrase: ahead of the curve. “How long did you say you lived in the States?”
“I didn’t say.”
“You can’t blame me for being inquisitive. Your English, your last name.”
“My father was a Brit, not American. A mining engineer. My mother was a third-rate Mexican actress, crazy enough to think she was a star. I got American citizenship for doing four years in the U.S. Army. The Eighty-second Airborne. We were in the Panama operation to nab Noriega in eighty-nine. My first drug bust.”
“So you’re a dual citizen?”
“Triple. I’ve got a British passport. Stifle your inquisitiveness. You’re already well out of the need-to-know box.”
“Are we done, then?”
“No.”
Bonham got to his feet with a languorous movement, laid the laptop on the desk, then moved around it to stand behind Riordan. Leaning over his shoulder, he turned the computer on, tapped the keyboard. A still image filled a YouTube window. He clicked to full-screen display. Wearing a baseball cap, a man seated at a cluttered table was looking right into the video camera through the slits in the balaclava concealing his face. Centered on a wall behind him was La Fraternidad’s emblem: the robed bones of Holy Death clutching an AK-47, her hooded skull grinning. Posters of Che Guevara and Emiliano Zapata flanked her, Guevara on her right, Zapata on her left.
Bonham clicked Play.
“Good day, brothers and sisters, from the comandancia of the Brotherhood,” the masked figure began. “This will be the first in a series of video communiqués we will issue from time to time…” He went on for four minutes, thirty-seven seconds in a muffled voice as robotic as a recorded announcement in a train station. Then the screen faded to black.
Riordan stared at it, fascinated and appalled. “What … what is this?”
“Looks like the Brotherhood is opening a media campaign. Next thing they’ll have a Facebook page. I thought you’d appreciate his religious sentiments. ‘Who is without God is lost,’” said Bonham, positioning himself with his hands on the back of the chair, as if he meant to wheel Riordan across the room—or give him a shove.
“That was him? Salazar?”
“Yes. I recognize the voice.”
“You would think a cartel boss would be embarrassed to call himself ‘the Butterfly.’”
“He does because he was one thing that became another thing.”
“I am mystified.”
“Ernesto Salazar is an alias. Real name: Julián Menéndez. Julián was a pioneer in using new media in the trade. Back in oh-one, oh-two, he produced snuff videos for his mother. Mom’s sicarios executing people, with snappy narco-corridos for background music. A bright guy. Has a business degree from the University of Texas.”
“You seem to have gotten ahead of yourself,” Riordan said. “And please sit down where I can see you.”
Bonham spun around the desk and dropped back into his chair.
“Yvonne Menéndez was la jefa of the old Agua Prieta Cartel,” he said. “Half Irish-American, half Mexican, and all bad, a mega-bitch. Next to her, Lady Macbeth looked like Little Bo Peep. Murdered her husband, with her son’s help, so they could take over. Ten years ago, we raided her ranch to free three Americans she’d kidnapped. She killed one of them, and then I killed her. We smashed her operations, but Julián got away. Did I mention that Julián is also a dual citizen? Mom was an American. He changed his appearance—dyed his hair, some minor plastic surgery—and sneaked into the U.S. under a false name and with forged documents to prove that Julián Menéndez was now Ernesto Salazar.”
Riordan raised a hand to signal for an intermission and said he was having trouble absorbing all this history.
“Are you? Well, there’s more,” the inspector said. “He got religion, became a born-again Christian, and joined a congregation in El Paso run by a nutball, James Showalter—Pastor Jim, they called him. Kind of a Christian jihadist. Preached a gun-totin’ brand of Christianity. Torched abortion clinics, that sort of thing. Julián a.k.a. Ernesto became one of his apostles. Few years went by, he came back to Mexico. He’d learned a big lesson from his mentor: religion inspires loyalty and imposes discipline. And he used it to stitch the pieces of Mom’s organization back together. Then he went to war with Joaquín Carrasco. You know that name, don’t you?”
“He’s a folk hero around here,” Riordan said, nodding. “Or was.”
“Joaquín was Mama Menéndez’s nemesis. She was at war with him back in the day. Her devoted son wants to finish what she started, and he’s almost there.”
“You said you killed her…?”
“When I was as close to her as I am to you,” Bonham replied with a cordiality that didn’t go with the statement.
“And there’s a reason you’ve told me all this?”
“Partly for background purposes.”
“And partly what else?”
Bonham steepled his hands under his chin. “You heard wh
at he said at the end of the video: ‘We of the Brotherhood also promise justice, and we keep our promises.’”
“Something is going to happen,” Riordan said, another acidic bubble shooting into his craw. He wasn’t thinking about Pamela now. He could scarcely remember what they’d said to each other, as if this conversation had recorded over that one.
“The question being what’s going to happen,” said Bonham. “What goes for your parishioners goes for you. If you know something, say something.”
The steeple rocked forward, and with the dry sniper’s squint behind them, Riordan imagined the joined fingers as a multibarreled gun aimed at him.
“I’m sure Salazar or whatever his name is won’t be contacting me,” he said.
“You get out into the boondocks. The Brotherhood’s turf. All those villages in the Sierra Madre…”
“From time to time, yes.”
“So does your doctor friend.”
It would be foolish, he understood, to ask how the inspector knew that he and Lisette were friends.
“You might hear something. Or see something. Or she might mention something to you,” Bonham continued. “I don’t care if it’s gossip, a rumor, second- or thirdhand, you let me know.” He plucked a card from his wallet, wrote on it, and placed it on the desk. Hesitant to pick it up, as if that alone would commit him, Riordan merely glanced at it. A minimalist card if he ever saw one, offering only Bonham’s name and the phone numbers he’d written below it.
“Call me on any one of those, with this,” he said, producing a flip phone, which he set down next to the card.
“I have one,” Riordan said. “An iPhone.”
“Use this one. It’s a burner, virtually untraceable.”
“A what?”
“Burner. A prepaid phone with encryption.”
“Aren’t you being a tad melodramatic?”
“Careful is what I’m being. Call me. Any little scrap you might come across.”
“Outside the confessional,” Riordan said firmly as he thought, This is preposterous. “I want to make sure we’re clear about that.”
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