She heard the voices and the shuffle of bodies from somewhere behind her. Through her frantic gasps she could hear the thump of boots and the jangle of guns and heavy breathing and voices made shrill by the hunt.
She turned around to face them.
I cannot let me die. I cannot let you die.
She flung the rifle into the trees then reached up under the dress and pulled out the derringer and placed it in the crotch of her underpants. It felt genuinely revolting there, a violation. She unwound the rebozo and dropped it to the ground and waited.
32
The walk back to the Castle was brief. Some of the men who recaptured her were the same ones who had kidnapped her from home nine days earlier, which led to some muttered recognitions. Heriberto seemed embarrassed. The day after her performance with Los Jaguars, he had sent to her room a shallow bowl of floating gardenia blossoms, very fragrant, with a note in Spanish praising her singing. Erin knew she had gained esteem in his eyes and that it displeased him to force her back into captivity. He patted her for weapons, lightly and respectfully, not touching her most personal places.
They stopped at the cenote to rest. The men speculated about where Saturnino might be, but they didn’t ask her directly and they didn’t seem to genuinely care. She glanced out to the middle of the pool several times, but she could not see him. She wondered if she should confess, so as not to spoil the water supply. She decided not to. He would float up soon, right? They’d fish him out and in a few days the water would be clean again. Right? Maybe he was down there hot-wiring the Corvette. Maybe he’d never come up.
A few minutes later the jungle parted and the Castle loomed from the hillside and Erin trudged up the road, across the spacious courtyard to the limestone steps of the great entryway. Heriberto opened one of the iron doors and waited for her. The lepers came and watched her from the third-floor landing, and she saw the black faces of the servants behind the windows, and there were sicarios everywhere, even up on the balconies, dark boys with machine guns loitering half-hidden in the riotous potted flowers.
Armenta stood waiting for her in the big foyer. He wore slacks and a floral print shirt that was lumpy around the waist with weapons and phones. He was unshaven and unkempt. The bags under his eyes were dark. “Did Saturnino find you?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you see him?”
“I saw no one.”
“I think he was pretending to be loco.”
“I haven’t seen him since that night.”
He studied her while he unholstered a phone and listened, grunted, and punched off. “Where did you get the key?”
“I have no key. The door is broken. It hasn’t been locking on the inside for three days.”
“It locked for me two hours ago. And Father Ciel says his key was stolen.”
“You should never have given him a key to my room. You know what he is. You know what he does.”
He sighed softly and linked his fingers below his waistline, watching her. He nodded and considered. Then he brought a different phone off his belt and worked the numbers without looking at them. A moment later he was cursing fast and soft in Spanish and Erin could see the anger in his face. He told someone to go to hell, then slid the phone closed and put it back in his carrier.
“I do not see things as you wrote them in ‘City of Gold,’” he said.
She said nothing for a long moment. Heriberto quickly departed. Beyond Armenta she saw the servants pretending to work, not watching them but listening.
“I can’t help that,” she said.
“When I look at myself I see only a will to survive in a world that is cursed. To me, this will you write of is a neutral thing, something any animal has in its possession. It is not dignity. It is not to be judged. You wrote as if there was strength and even a small goodness in me.”
“I see your world as cursed. But look-you created Gustavo. You made someone beautiful.”
“Yes. And in your song, Benji grows strong in a cursed world. He is true to his friends and his family. He speaks violence because that is the language of his time and place. All of this means that I am pleased by the song.”
She nodded and looked down at her shoes. The eyelets and seams were still crusted with jungle sand and there were small green burrs stuck to the laces. The Cowboy Defender was irritating her. “I can do better.”
“Oh?”
“It was my first corrido.”
“It is good.”
“It’s crude and obvious.”
He wrinkled his brow and his gaze bore into her.
“Has the money arrived?” she asked. “Am I free? Have you heard from Charlie Bravo?”
He shrugged effulgently, then shook his head. “Lo siento.”
“You’re sorry? Because your son is going to flay me? How do you think I feel?”
“Charlie Bravo has two more days, yes? The agreed day was tomorrow. And I gave him one more day for the song that you wrote. I do not regret it. But we hear nothing from him. He heats the plaza. He has broken the pledge.”
“Then I’ll write you another song. A better song. If you’ll give Charlie Bravo one more day.”
And one more day for Bradley, she thought. Two precious days to find her. Two and a half, counting today! I’ll come to you by moonlight. Like in your song.
His dark eyes roamed her face. They looked intelligent but wild, like the eyes of the jaguar in the Castle.
“How badly do you want your money, Mr. Armenta?”
“Money? Yes, always the money comes first.”
“But you want another song.”
“I want this song too.”
“Do we have a deal, then? Another song for another day?”
“Excuse me.” Armenta turned his back to her and yanked one of the phones off his belt and somehow dislodged a pistol that clattered to the floor at his feet. He picked it up and looked at her. Then he straightened and, holding the gun at his side with one hand, brought the cell phone to his ear with the other and launched into a Spanish tirade that Erin could scarcely understand. Traidor! Pinche Carlos Herredia! Exterminar!
It went on and on. She watched his hair fly and his eyes bulge and the big vein on his neck stand out and she heard the furious rush of words and spittle and his hurried breath.
She turned her back to him and considered the big iron doors and wondered what it would be like to just walk out through them, free and heading home.
She only became aware of the silence when he broke it.
“I am sorry for the activity.”
“What’s wrong? Why are there gunmen everywhere?”
“This is not of your business.”
“Okay, then do we have a deal or don’t we? One more song for one more day.”
“I agree to this.”
“Good. I’m tired and dirty and hungry.”
“We will dine early. At six.”
“I’d rather eat alone.”
“You will dine with me. I have much, much more to tell you that will make your writing very easy. About Veracruz when I was a boy. There was a pig that could do advanced mathematics. And a curandera who raised the dead not once but three times. And a two-headed girl who argued with herself. And a moron named Francisco with a very thin head who could crawl through the windows of the prison at Ulua to find treasure. And my lovely Anya-you should know more about her.”
“I won’t be good company for dinner. Kind of a big day for me, you know?”
Armenta waved over one of the female servants and handed her a key card and ordered her in Spanish to accompany Erin to her room and prepare a bath and bring whatever she might want. He stood straight and extended one hand toward the elevator.
They sat in Armenta’s formal dining room, which faced east and caught a warm breeze off the ocean. Because of the slowness of the elevator and its mystifying arrangement of buttons she had not been able to tell whether they had gotten off on the fourth or fifth floor. She wore a long blue dress that covered the derringer lashed to her calf with a bootlace. The dining table was koa wood, long and wide, and Erin realized she could cross her leg under the table and get the gun loose with one hand and without Armenta knowing.