The Jaguar (16 page)

Bradley stared down at the maps while Mike made coffee. Bradley could hear the buzz of the grinder downstairs. When Finnegan came back a few minutes later Bradley had found what looked like a very promising place where he could meet Erin near the Castle.

“This, here,” he said, pointing to a small circle with tiny stylized waves sketched within. “It’s a cenote?”

“Yes. Just as I have indicated.”

“Five hundred yards from the compound.”

“I’m confident of that measurement.”

“So the cenote is there. Even if your source material is fifty years old, that cenote will be there.”

“Bradley, the cenote is five centuries old. Fresh water, coming up from the aquifer. Fresh water, sustaining thousands of the Maya in that area, for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

Mike went downstairs to get the coffee and Bradley slowly and carefully composed the letter. It thrilled him and frightened him that their lives now depended on written words. Every movement of the pen seemed freighted with consequence, every word a potential miracle or catastrophe. He had spent years writing poems, trying to get one like Neruda’s but he never even approximated one.

Now he told her, concisely and clearly, where he would be waiting. Using the map, he described the cenote’s exact location so that she could find it without difficulty or doubt. He gave her two consecutive days to be there—day ten, which was the ransom day, and the day preceding it. Wednesday. Tuesday. He would be there, all twenty-four hours of each day. He would be there. It was not a promise or an approximation
but a fact. Not until he had finished did he write two lines to tell her he loved her more than he loved anyone or anything on Earth.
I will come to you, like you asked me to in your song.
He left room for Mike. Then he turned over the swatch of fabric and faithfully re-created Mike’s map of the compound and the surrounding grounds.

When he was finished he checked the map and read the directions over very carefully, then looked up at Mike. “Can we send all three birds? Three messages, three maps, triple our chances?”

“I was about to suggest it.”

“They’ll take what, four days to get there? If they can make it through the hurricane at all?”

“She’s only a category two,” said Finnegan.

“Write your part to Owens.”

He stood and handed the pen to Mike.

When the letters and maps were finished and rolled and fitted into the containers, Bradley held the birds upside down one at a time while Mike fixed the capsules to their legs. He gave each container a little tug when he was finished. The birds felt warm and capable to Bradley and they allowed themselves to be handled. Bradley said a silent prayer for each one, trying to customize it for the individual bird.

“Bradley,” Mike said softly. “You can pray but you will never be answered because God does not listen. He does not control the lives of men. He only influences them through intermediaries. And never because of a prayer.”

“What makes you think I was praying?”

“Thoughts can be loud.”

“More of your bullshit. I’ll pray if I want.”

Just before midnight Mike opened the attic window. The air was heavy but the rain had stopped. Bradley held the warm strong Samson
in his hands and kissed the top his head, then he reached through the window and released him into the night.

In the taxi early that morning Bradley called Hood on the satellite phone and told him that he had found Erin. He described the Castle, the compound, and their larger geographical positioning within the geography of Yucatán. He told Hood the GPS coordinates.

“That tracks,” said Hood. “Armenta is bringing me to Merida—less than two hundred miles from Erin. How many people do you have?”

“Twenty-four. But Charlie, get this—I don’t think I’ll even need them.”

“Talk.”

“I’ve found a way to communicate with her. I’ve told her to go into the jungle the day before the ransom is due. There’s a path and a cenote. All she has to do is get a few seconds to herself. She’s got help. She’s made a friend. Anytime she can make it is okay. We’ll be there all day. Caroline, Cleary, and I will be waiting.”

“She’s got a phone?”

“No phones. Pigeons. Long story.”

“Pigeons?”

Bradley’s heart soared though somewhat drunkenly. He had almost forgotten what hope felt like. “It’s going to work, Charlie. We’re going to pull this off. She’s going to be all right. Have you heard from her? What did she say? Please tell me everything she said. Don’t leave out one word.”

F
ATHER
E
DGAR
C
IEL KEYED HIS
way into Erin’s room that evening and gently pulled the door shut behind him. “You asked to see me.”

“Yes, thank you. Please come in and sit.”

Ciel was a tall man, though slender, and he crossed the room with an angular grace, watching her closely as he passed her to sit in the old armchair. He wore a priest’s short-sleeve black shirt with the white stiff collar and black jacket, pants and shoes. His crucifix was large and silver. There was no gun on his hip that Erin could see and she wondered if in all of her trauma and exhaustion that first day she had only imagined it. He was pale. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses his eyes were blue and luminous.

“I want you to ask the Catholic Church to intervene on my behalf,” she said.

“The Vatican is a bureaucracy,” he said with a small smile. His voice was soft and clear and unhurried.

“It’s supposed to be the greatest church in the world. How complicated is a kidnapped woman? I am a Catholic and proud of it. I have confessed a million times.
Do something, Father. I saw them feed a man to the leopards. The devil walks this castle free and proud. Maybe more than one of them. You have sensed this, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do something.”

Ciel stood and went to the window and looked out. Past him Erin saw the fronds whipping and a dark layer of clouds sitting high in the southeastern sky. “We must deal with practical realities, Mrs. McKenna. We must deal with your problem directly. I have spoken to Benjamin. He says he will not release you until he has received what he wants. He will not say exactly what he wants. To me, he seems to have less interest in the ransom than he did a few days ago.”

“He wants me to sing for him.”

“He is expecting you to sing tonight before the Jaguars. But he assuredly wants more than that.”

“Why does it feel like you’re on his side? Are you? Am I the problem here? A distraction from your fundraising efforts for the Legion of Christ?”

He turned to her and she saw the dampness in his eyes and the quiver of his chin. “I will do anything in my power to make sure you leave this place alive. My church is thousands of miles from here, and my God thousands more. I am working for your freedom. Until you are free I can offer you comfort in the Holy Spirit.”

She remembered Father O’Hora again, from when she was just a girl. He had the same kind eyes as Ciel and the same near hush about him. He had always seemed both faithful and hapless. But he was the man you could trust. He was the man who would do what God would do. God’s agent. Legionnaire for Christ.

She looked into Ciel’s eyes and remembered O’Hora’s eyes at her father’s funeral and they were the same in their deep empathy and powerlessness. She remembered despising that powerlessness then, and sensing for the first time that the affairs of God and men were separate. She remembered comparing her father to Father O’Hora, and deciding that her father had been the better man—at once joyful and profane and intensely emotional—not a man caged by faith and
controlled by doubt. And she remembered thinking that God himself would strike her dead at age thirteen for such thoughts.

Ciel beckoned her to him with his pale hands. She went to him and he reached his arms around her. She rested her cheek on his chest just above the crucifix. He felt bony and hard. His heart was beating strong and slow and he smelled of soap and vanilla. “‘Whither has your beloved gone, O fairest among women? Wither has your beloved turned, that we may seek him with you?’”

“I loved the Song of Solomon when I was a girl.”

“‘Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one; for my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night.’”

“Some of it’s kind of graphic, though.”

“Let me be what you need me to be.”

“I haven’t had a good cry in an awful long time,” she said.

“Cry to me, my child. Cry your tears upon me.”

Cry to me, my child, she thought. That’s what I want. She let go.

Seconds after Ciel left, Erin heard a tap on the door and Owens Finnegan’s voice. “I’m coming in.”

“You and everyone else.”

Owens stepped into the room and motioned for Erin to come with her. “I got you a hall pass. You’re free for a few minutes.”

“He’ll kill me,” said Erin.

“He knows I’m here and he thinks he knows what I’m doing. Pronto, girl. Gift horse and all that.”

But Erin didn’t move. It came as a dismal truth to realize that she actually felt safer inside the room than outside it.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Owens.

And Erin followed her out. She had never felt stranger or more displaced
than she did walking through the Castle as a free woman, even momentarily. The monkeys watched her from the curtain rods and a large red macaw on the landing rail called
Finnegan! Finnegan!
as Owens strode boldly along in front of her, black hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a simple black tank and jeans and sandals. She spoke briefly to the servants in perfect Spanish and they smiled at her and stared at Erin. Erin could see the scars that ringed the woman’s wrists beneath her colorful woven bracelets and for the first time she was not disturbed by them. She wondered if she should have brought the Cowboy Defender.

They took the stairs down to the ground level and walked away from the zoo and into the commons where workmen were erecting a big white tent for the party and the early delivery trucks and vans were arriving with food and drinks and barbecues fashioned from fifty-five-gallon drums. The stage was almost complete and the roadies were muscling the monitors into place and a team of boys lugged in armloads of folding chairs and argued about their placement. Men with weapons slung over their shoulders stood in a loose perimeter watching intently. Others with long-handled mirrors inspected the delivery vehicles for bombs. Erin and Owens stood in the shade and watched.

“Benjamin’s parties remind me of your wedding,” said Owens.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“They’re all about the music. You’ll be surprised by the people who come tonight.”

Erin thought back to her wedding day. Hard to believe it was two years ago, but she could picture it in fine detail—a carnival of live music and dancing and feasting and absinthe and joyously dubious behavior; no children at this event. At Bradley’s insistence they’d even rented a bullring and bulls to ride, and they weren’t beaten-down animals at all but the real thing and Bradley had nearly killed himself trying to ride one and later someone let them out of their pen to roam the party at will and they’d ended up in the pond to beat the heat. All
of her friends and family were there and Bradley was handsome as a man could be and she wore the special dress and looking at herself one last time in the mirror as her maids fussed over her she had conceded that she was, at this one moment, beautiful in the world. She thought of Bradley now and her heart went cold.

“I can see it. But it seems like forever ago.”

“Life is slow, then sudden, isn’t it?”

“It can turn on a dime.”

Erin looked out at the steep green hills that seemed to quarantine the Castle from the rest of the world. The thicket growing on the hillside vibrated in the growing breeze. “Are you here because you want to be or because you have to be?”

Owens looked at her. Her eyes changed with the light, and now in the storm-threatened evening they had the color and shine of a newly minted nickel. “I am free to go and do what I want. That’s the first agreement I make with anyone.” She held her wrists out for Erin to see. “This made me free. It was supposed to make me not at all, but it made me free instead.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I couldn’t find anything to live for.”

“Not even for the next day or the sunset or to hear a beautiful song one more time? Not one friend you wanted to see again?”

“No, Erin. Not even those. Mike found me. It took him some time, but he made me not want to do it again.”

“Then what do you live for now?”

Owens looked out at the compound. “This world is enough.”

“I never believed you were his daughter.”

“I’m not. It’s a thin story but most people don’t see through it because they don’t want to.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Owens Finnegan is nice, don’t you think?”

“Why not just tell the truth about yourself?”

“Because the truth is harder to understand than a father and a daughter.”

“Are you lovers?”

“Oh, no. But I do love him. You can sure be direct when you want to, girl.”

“Mom was that way. Partners, then?”

“Sometimes. We help each other.”

“Do what?”

“I can act. I have a gift for it, and ambitions. I have had roles. He supports me.”

“What’s your part of the partnership?”

“I help him in different ways. Some are very small, such as making a phone call to pass information. Some are much bigger, such as influencing someone to do a certain thing. I don’t always know why. I persuade men easily. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing, in terms of consequence.”

Erin tried to make clear sense of this, but she couldn’t. “What are you to Armenta? How long have you been here?”

Owens looked at her, then away, and Erin thought she saw a slight blush come to her face. “I’ve been here often enough for the house birds to learn my name.”

“Why did you and Mike come after Bradley? You got to know him for your own reasons. I could tell. You befriended me in order to get close to him.”

Owens gave her a hard look. “Mike knew Suzanne. And he wants Bradley to do well in life. He’s very loyal to the people he befriends, especially to their spouses and children.”