“Where are Fidel and the men?”
“Camped in the jungle between here and her. We were ambushed in Campeche. Five dead. Nineteen of us left. They’ve got food, water, guns, and ammo. They’re ready if all else fails, Charlie.”
“Don’t storm the Castle.”
“I will if I have to. What else can I do? Tell me.”
Hood considered. If something went wrong on Tuesday, and Armenta didn’t bring Hood to the Castle with payment on Wednesday, as agreed, what other choice was there? “If it comes to that, you’ve got two more guns.”
Bradley was silent for a beat. “You really do love me, don’t you?”
“Call me when you have her and I’ll try to get back to the United States with your money. If I don’t hear from you or Armenta tomorrow, I’ll be at the Hotel Laguna before sunrise, day after. And we’ll break her out.”
“We’ve got three chances, Charlie. Only one needs to work.”
“I’m hoping for door number one.”
“So am I. Erin and I could be on a jet for LAX by tomorrow morning.”
“If you are, give her my regards.”
“Casita four.” Bradley hung up.
Hood put the phone in his pocket and walked back to his table. He glanced at the newspaper on the table before him, asked for another cup of coffee. The waiter brought the coffee and the check without Hood having to ask for it, which was unusual in Mexico. A muscular man in running sweats walked casually into the room, carrying a leather messenger’s pouch. He came toward him and Hood wondered if his luck had just changed.
The young man glanced at Hood through dark glasses, reached into the bag, drew a cell phone and plopped into a seat with his back to Hood, signaling the waiter with sharp waves of his arm. Suddenly, as if he felt Hood’s eyes on him, the man wheeled and pulled off his glasses.
“Can I help you?”
“Sorry. I mistook you for someone else.”
“Mexico is no place for mistakes.”
Hood paid and browsed the gift shop and the newsstand. He bought Beth Petty a small stone replica of a Mayan temple. She was a collector of rocks and fossils and she would appreciate it. He had the clerk wrap the box in shipping paper and he walked it to the nearest post office and mailed it to her.
He strolled the neighborhood, napped upstairs, read, and watched TV and played peso poker with Luna and waited.
Late that evening as the darkness weighed down on the eastern sky Hood felt it descend on his heart as well and he began to believe that Erin McKenna had only two more days of life on Earth.
27
Bradley sat at a small desk before the window of the casita, cleaning the two Love 32s he had brought south to Mexico. A desk lamp threw good light on the weapons. It was late evening and he had not heard from Hood. He sipped tequila mixed with bottled water. His untouched room-service dinner sat on a stand by the bed. He could feel the adrenaline buzzing through him, low-level stuff waiting to be turned up.
He worked intently but patiently, the guns breaking down and going back together with an efficient simplicity. Their stainless-steel finishes were resisting the tropical moisture well. Erin moved around in his mind, a changeable resident, sometimes her face and sometimes her voice and sometimes a feeling that she was right there in the room watching him, which made his heart ache most. He could feel her anger at him and he knew full well her sense of betrayal. Would he ever be able to explain the secret life that he had been leading? Was there really any explanation for it, except brute, stupid greed and the pleasures of danger and deception? Would she forgive him?
Through the sheer curtain he could see half of the swimming pool, filled by rainwater clear up to the deck but emptied of tourists by Ivana. There were two tall palms that had survived and one that had not, and Bradley could see the sectioned trunk of the palm lying where it had fallen and been cut for burning. Beyond the pool was the Bacalar Lagoon, rippled silver now in the fading light. In the little marina in front of the hotel was a handsome Chris-Craft set up for big game-outriggers and a fighting chair and a large bait tank on the stern. There were three pangas and a catamaran. South of the pool was a windowless white tower with a cross fixed to the wall. Bradley felt watched by this symbol of the God he had prayed to so often in this last week. These prayers felt earnest but he knew that they were not so much devotion as the covering of bets.
He had already wiped down and stashed the Glock.40 caliber he would carry on his hip when he met her tomorrow, and the eight-shot.22 Smith AirLite revolver for his ankle, and one of the two two-shot forty-caliber derringers that had been passed down through generations of Murrietas from Joaquin to his mother and now himself. She had foolishly given the other to Hood. But Bradley would pocket his gun tomorrow somewhere in his pants or jacket. A talisman, but more than only that. It had a grip of black walnut that was deeply oiled and scarred and a barrel pitted by the years and his mother had told him it had killed men.
He reassembled the Love 32s, their parts warmed by his hands, but there was no excitement or comfort for him in the weapons as there once had been. The grand aphrodisiac of living a secret life had dried up with Erin’s kidnapping. The warm gun was now just another tool of folly. Bradley imagined returning home to Valley Center with Erin and burying his arsenal deep and forever, then raising their child and a few more children perhaps, to be productive American citizens, while he worked as a paramedic or a salesman or maybe a cagey independent financial advisor. Erin would write, perform, and become rich and famous. Of course he would also have buried the head of El Famoso, and all of his great ancestor’s belongings, and likely his mother’s revealing journals. How could he not? This daydream lasted a few bucolic seconds, then he abruptly pictured himself slipping off the ranch to rob a fast-food place or a convenience store or perhaps steal a fast car just to drive it for a few days, as his mother used to do. I’m sorry, he thought. I’m sorry I’m who I am.
He took a sip of the tequila and shook his head. There was no escaping himself no matter how hard he tried. He knew that his dream of burying his guns and his past and himself had approximately the same weight as his prayers: both were righteous and good but they were still subordinate to the demands of his unsatisfied young heart.
Before leaving home he had put a picture of Erin in his duffel and now he took it out and propped it up on the desktop and the wall in front of him. It was a candid snapshot he had taken on the front porch of the Valley Center ranch, Erin sitting on a picnic bench with a guitar, looking up at the camera. Her hair was pulled back casually and her eyes were knowing and she had a private, unguarded smile. It was the look he enjoyed most, the look that said: just you and me, baby.
“I’m sorry, Erin,” he said softly. He looked at her picture, genuinely amazed that she had married him and was willing to bear his children. Long ago he had conceded that he’d done nothing to deserve her. Nothing, he thought now. When he spoke, his words sounded lost in the little motel room but somehow they sounded right, too, and necessary. It seemed like forever since he’d told her what was in his heart. Really, had he ever done that?
“Erin, I’m so damned sorry for what I’ve done. I wanted to tell you the truth ever since I’ve known it. A million times. I’ve wanted to tell you about my quirky ancestors. That Mom came from Murrieta, El Famoso. And so I did too. Of course. I wanted to show you his famous head in the famous jar, right there in your beautiful barn in Valley Center. I could have told you that much without doing any harm, I guess. Some people said Murrieta was a cutthroat and some said he was a hero but really, they killed him in eighteen-fifty-three, so how could what happened to him a hundred and fifty-nine years ago matter to us now?