by Carmen Amato
He was charming, and Emilia couldn’t help but smile even as she wondered if his attitude would have been different if Kurt had introduced her at the beginning of the evening as Detective Emilia Cruz. Many people had a bad reaction when they found out she was a police officer.
“One of my luckier days,” Kurt said to Serverio.
“And your dinner was satisfactory?”
“Dinner was exceptional, Jorge,” Kurt said. “Both the service and the food.”
“Good, good,” Serverio said. “So now you are in need of some entertainment, no? The Club Soledad has a very nice evening show. I know because they take business away from me.” He checked his watch and smiled. “If you hurry, you can catch it now. Or join me at the Polo Lounge. I always split my evenings between my two restaurants.”
“What do you say, Em?” Kurt asked. “A little music? Or drinks at the Polo Lounge?”
“Maybe just a stroll,” Emilia said.
The two men shook hands again, and Kurt and Emilia walked out.
They were in the old part of Acapulco, a few streets south of the modern downtown area where a white ring of hotels and condos encircled the most picturesque bay in the world. The El Tigre restaurant fronted a small street near the famous Plaza las Glorietas, in which tourists gathered several times a day to watch the famous divers hurl themselves off the cliffs at La Quebrada and plunge into the rock-strewn water below. The building which housed El Tigre had been renovated to accommodate the restaurant. The result was a blend of traditional Spanish architecture and modern glass panels that allowed for a stunning view of the cliffs.
Emilia clutched her Sunday purse with both hands as they slowly walked through El Tigre’s front courtyard. The space was set up as an outdoor bar, the décor leaning heavily on bamboo, fairy lights and palms in giant talavera pots. A soundtrack of popular guitar music was a pleasant accompaniment to the happy chatter of the dozen or so people sitting at the bar. It was November; the dry season had taken hold, and the air was comfortably cool.
They crossed the courtyard, but once down the stone steps that led to the street, Emilia could take the tension no longer. She stopped walking and stood her ground on the uneven sidewalk. “Are we over?” she asked.
“Over?” Kurt echoed. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re restless. You want to get out of Acapulco,” Emilia said. “You said so yourself.”
“I said I’ve been in Acapulco longer than anyplace else.”
The lights of El Tigre’s courtyard were behind them, and Kurt’s face was lost in shadow. The evening traffic was light. A car sped through the intersection half a block away. The growl of its engine faded quickly.
“You also told the manager that the food was excellent,” Emilia said.
“It was excellent,” Kurt said. The quiet confidence that always surrounded him, and which Emilia so admired, was accentuated by the deliberate way he said the three words. “There just wasn’t enough of it. What are you getting at?”
“I live here,” Emilia blurted, like an idiot who didn’t have any experience waiting out witnesses or interrogating a suspect or tricking someone into an admission of guilt. “I’m not going anywhere. So if you’re heading off to Belize, let me know now. I’m an adult, not some estupida chica who needs you to string her—”
A noise like a freight train crashed through her words and an invisible wave walloped the air. Emilia instinctively threw out her hands to break her fall as the sidewalk heaved beneath her feet. Suddenly Kurt’s arm was across her shoulders, pushing her head down and curling her against the pavement. His body shielded hers as heat raged around them and debris rained down. Emilia choked as the air filled with smoke and dust. Bile surged into her throat, tasting unpleasantly of overpriced caviar.
Chapter 2
The silence was deafening.
Emilia put a hand to her nose; it came away bloody. “It’s the restaurant,” Emilia thought she heard Kurt say, but she couldn’t be sure. She raised her head as the pressure of Kurt’s arm slackened. As she sat up, she saw that Kurt was covered in dust and fine shards. Glass stuck to his hair and the woolen fabric of his suit.
A second explosion rocked the ground and again Kurt pressed Emilia down, protecting her with his body. His weight let up a few moments later as dust and ash swirled thickly around them. Emilia righted herself and looked around dizzily. Only yards away, the courtyard of El Tigre was full of smoke. People stumbled down the stone steps, drunk with panic. A window shattered and pieces of masonry fell into the courtyard bar area.
Kurt pulled her to her feet. Heat pulsed at them, roiling through the chute formed by the entrance to the courtyard. Emilia’s ears weren’t working properly. She knew that people were screaming all around them, but the sounds were muffled, as if they were coming at her through thick fabric. She saw Kurt mouth the words “You okay?” and she automatically mouthed back “Yes.”
He pulled her a little farther away from the entrance to the courtyard, her high heels causing her to stumble a little. Kurt stripped off his suit jacket, glass sloughing off the fabric as he dropped it on the ground. “Call for help,” he said.
Emilia nodded before she quite realized his intention, but she got it when he moved away from her. “Wait a minute,” she exclaimed, but the air was full of smoke and the rest of her half-formed words were lost in a fit of coughing.
“Make the call, Em,” Kurt yelled. He ran inside the courtyard of the El Tigre, his white shirt clean, his body tall and powerful in comparison to the people staggering away from the entrance to the restaurant. They were unsteady, bent and retching, sooty from smoke and ash.
Emilia realized she was still clutching her Sunday bag and scrambled inside for her cell phone, her fingers thick and clumsy with stress. The emergency dispatcher on duty was someone with half a brain who swiftly repeated Emilia’s badge number and message and asked a few questions to get an estimate of the number of people who would need emergency medical care. As more people moved away from El Tigre and she saw flames on the roof lick the night sky, Emilia made a second call to Silvio’s cell phone. Despite the late hour, the detective answered on the second ring. He listened to her brief explanation, muttered, “Fuck, I’m there,” and hung up. It was as good a conversation as she’d had with him recently.
Emilia stowed her cell phone and slung her bag over her neck, messenger style. She threaded through the people congregated in front of the restaurant. At least 30 restaurant patrons had made it out and were still in the courtyard; some were sobbing, others talked jerkily about what they’d just been through, and still others looked as if they would soon be in a state of shock. Emilia waded into the bedlam, knowing that people had to be pushed further away. She immediately started pairing the able-bodied with those who needed assistance, directing people to the sidewalk past the El Tigre. Her voice rasped in the smoky air as she shouted to be heard over the crackling of the fire and the bedlam of frightened people and the sounds of braking traffic. The street quickly became clogged as drivers halted to look at the billows of smoke or avoid people stumbling into the street.
As Emilia ushered people away from the restaurant, desperately hoping to hear the siren of the bomberos, she strained in the semi-darkness to recognize faces. A burly man who’d been one of Carlota’s security detail stumbled by. Emilia grabbed his lapel. “Where’s the mayor?” she asked.
He looked at her, wide-eyed and bloody. She saw that his little plastic earpiece had melted, burning into his ear and down the side of his face. The man was in shock and she helped him to lie down. The bartender from the courtyard bar came over to them, and Emilia pointed out the security guard’s wound before stepping away.
A movement by the door caught her eye. Taller than the others, Kurt had his arm around a soot-streaked Carlota, supporting her on one side while one of her security detail held her up on the other. Emilia met them, and they moved beyond the courtyard before easing Carlota to the ground. The mayor’s head wa
s bleeding and she was unconscious. Kurt coughed hard, hands on his knees, then straightened and grabbed Emilia’s shoulder as she bent over the prostrate mayor. “There are more people in there,” he croaked. “Where are the fucking bomberos?”
Before she could answer, he wheeled around and ran back through the courtyard and into the smoke-filled restaurant.
Assistance was coming from people who’d been in the square. Someone knelt by Carlota’s side, and Emilia heard the word “doctor.” An older man, unscathed by smoke, began examining the mayor with obvious professional confidence. Emilia backed away and ran after Kurt, pausing at the glass-strewn but still relatively intact outdoor bar. She found a wet cloth under some metal trays and pressed it against her face as she plunged into the El Tigre.
Inside, the smoke was thick and her eyes stung. The floor was a sea of broken dishes, glass, and more pieces of things that had once been part of her elegant evening. The effort to inhale and call “Kurt!” was like drinking liquid ash.
Emilia heard a cough and plowed on in that direction, her eyes watering so badly she could hardly see as she fumbled her way through a tangle of tables and chairs. She slipped on broken china and linen tablecloths and chunks of tattered brocade wallpaper. She met Kurt coming forward; with one arm he was holding up someone Emilia identified as another member of Carlota’s security team. Kurt held a napkin over his face with his free hand. When he took it away to speak, his face was so dirty as to be almost unrecognizable. “Somebody else is back there,” Kurt said.
The security man’s head lolled; he was almost unconscious. “Get him out of here,” Kurt said. He made to transfer the man to Emilia’s grasp when an explosion rocked the place and Emilia fell heavily, crashing into a broken table. The decorative stonework remains of the alcove where Carlota and Obregon had been sitting crumbled down around her. As she fought to get to her feet, disoriented by the swirling smoke and dust, the back wall of the restaurant collapsed with a cascading thunder of falling concrete. A fist of murderous heat again sent Emilia sprawling. The cloth pressed against her face clogged with dust and she gasped painfully to find some oxygen.
She heard coughing nearby and reached out. Her hand touched glass and fabric and she realized that a man was buried in the rubble, caught awkwardly under a heavy wooden table. Small tongues of fire danced in the fissures where the tabletop had split, fueled by a burning tablecloth clinging to one end. Barely able to see, Emilia clawed at the jagged mess with her free hand, frantic Kurt was the man trapped under the table. Heat battered her and Emilia fought panic, but it was a losing battle.
But Kurt was next to her, on his knees. He’d lost the napkin and held his shirttail to his face. The security guard was still with him, now at least alert enough to be pulling a jacket lapel across his own face. “There’s somebody stuck under the table,” Emilia gasped.
The air sizzled. Fire leaped from the burning cloth and streaked across the cracked surface of the table. Kurt whipped off his shirt, wound it around his hands, and wrenched the table upwards. Emilia pulled the heavy body free, and together she and Kurt hauled the unconscious man upright. Kurt gasped, obviously finding it difficult to breathe without the protection of anything covering his mouth and nose. He pantomimed heading for the entrance and hefted the unconscious man over his shoulder.
With the bar napkin still pressed against her mouth, Emilia grabbed the security guard with her free arm and forced him through the smoke, blundering in the direction she hoped was the entrance. Kurt followed her trail, carrying the other man like a sack of onions while coughing with a guttural choking sound that was as terrifying as the fire.
It was a journey through the mouth of hell. The elegant restaurant had turned into a maze of blinding smoke, full of things that shifted and snapped in the scorching heat. Emilia’s eyes streamed and she could hardly see as she stumbled forward, letting go of the security guard to shove aside the blurry remains of chairs, potted plants, and chunks of wall. Fire raced them across the restaurant, spreading forward from the rear of the place, hopping from table to table, feeding greedily on tablecloths, curtains, and wallpaper.
Someone pulled Emilia through the entrance and across the courtyard to fresher air. With difficulty, she recognized another member of the mayor’s security team. Someone else helped Kurt, taking the unconscious man from him. Kurt doubled over, coughing. His undershirt was streaked gray, his hair was coated with dust and soot, and his bare arms were scratched and filthy. Emilia dropped her napkin and held him steady as he hacked up black phlegm and spat it out.
Kurt wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood up. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m okay,” Emilia said. She gulped lovely clean Pacific Ocean air. As her teeth started to chatter, she looked around at the people lying on the ground or huddled together on the side of the street.
Carlota was conscious, sitting by the side of the security officer whose earpiece had melted, flanked by two other guards who looked dazed but still ambulatory, including the man Emilia had just helped out. Six had come into El Tigre with the mayor.
The doctor who’d helped Carlota was now attending to the man Kurt had rescued from under the table. With a jolt, Emilia recognized the rescued man as Obregon.
Sirens sounded and suddenly the bomberos were there, creating their own orderly chaos as the fire trucks maneuvered in the narrow street. People were shepherded into the square as hoses uncoiled and streams of water attacked the smoking restaurant. Emilia saw Silvio stride through the crowd, leather jacket swinging open to reveal his shoulder holster and gun, his badge on a lanyard around his neck. The combination of size, badge, and gun got him noticed, as it always did. Emilia hugged herself as she watched him use his authority to good effect, getting the scene organized and the emergency vehicles up on the sidewalk.
As emergency personnel started examining people and leading burn victims into the ambulances, Emilia slumped to the curb. Her hands and legs were a mess of cuts and dirt, a burn across the heel of her left hand was an angry red weal that would soon be a painful blister, and blood dripped from her nose. The dress was a total loss, as were her shoes. Kurt looked worse, but at least he’d stopped coughing.
Thirty minutes later, Silvio caught up with her and Kurt as they sat in the back of an ambulance breathing through oxygen masks.
“Cruz.” The senior detective was a dense, hardbodied man in his early forties with hooded eyes, a perpetual scowl, and a gray crew cut. A blunt nose and scar tissue around his eyes betrayed an earlier heavyweight boxing career. “What the fuck were you doing here?”
Emilia pulled off the oxygen mask. The burn on her hand was encased in salve and a thick bandage. Her teeth had stopped chattering, but exhaustion slid over her shaky body like a warm blanket, and she knew it was an aftereffect of shock. “I’m fine, thanks for asking.” She touched Kurt’s arm. “Detective Franco Silvio, meet Kurt Rucker. Kurt runs the Palacio Réal.”
Kurt discarded his mask as well. The hand he put out was streaked with blood.
Silvio shook it anyway. “I heard about you,” he said to Kurt. “They said you got the mayor out. And the union guy. Obregon.”
“Is Carlota all right?” Kurt asked, his voice still raspy.
“Looked okay to me, but they were taking her up to Santa Lucia,” Silvio said, naming the city’s most modern hospital. “Obregon, too.”
Emilia put the mask over her mouth again and sucked in oxygen in an effort to stay awake. Usually, Silvio’s presence was enough to keep her alert and annoyed, but tonight the competence and authority that the big detective conveyed was almost comforting.
“How many dead?” Kurt asked.
“Eight,” Silvio said. “Three officers detailed to the mayor’s security. Five restaurant employees.”
“Madre de Dios.” Guilt competed with the exhaustion encroaching on Emilia’s ability to function. Could she have gotten someone else out alive?
Kurt coughed. “Do they know what s
tarted the fire?”
Silvio shook his head. “You were here,” he said leadingly.
“Something exploded a minute or two after we walked out.” Kurt stood up. His beautiful wool suit pants were ruined. “Something big. Maybe a big propane tank for the stove. Could be faulty wiring, bad gas connection. Something like that. Second explosion right after. A third a couple of minutes later. But smaller, not like the first two.”
“Fire department will look into it,” Silvio said. “Somebody will probably want to—”
“I need to get out of here,” Emilia interrupted.
“You feel well enough?” Kurt asked. “Maybe we should let them take you to the hospital, get you checked out.”
“I want to go home,” Emilia said, knowing she was moving rapidly from exhaustion to simple survival mode.
“Okay.” Kurt helped her out of the back of the ambulance, shouldering aside the attendant. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”
“No, I just want to go home,” Emilia said.
“All right,” Kurt said. He bent over and coughed, his chest rattling. “I’ll take you home.”
From the depths of utter fatigue, Emilia realized how exhausted Kurt must be as well. “Silvio can take me,” she said. “You should go to the hospital.”
“I’m okay.”
Emilia struggled to stay upright. “Go home and get some rest.”
“Her car’s at the Palacio Réal,” Kurt said to Silvio.
“I’ll send a couple of uniforms to pick it up,” Emilia heard Silvio say.
Kurt walked her to Silvio’s unmarked police sedan as the firefighters packed up and prepared to leave the burned husk that had once been the exclusive El Tigre restaurant. Silvio bleeped open the door and Kurt helped Emilia into the passenger seat. “I’m proud of you, Em. You’re fearless,” Kurt said. He kissed her forehead. “Get some rest. We’ll talk later.”