“Stay put,” he told Maricruz as he climbed out. “I’ll be right back.”
Inside, he bought an anti-bacterial spray, a box of cotton pads, rolls of gauze, and surgical tape. Returning to the cruiser, he saw that the passenger’s door was open. Maricruz’s legs and feet were sticking out. Angél, crouched on the pavement, was pulling out shards of glass from the soles of Maricruz’s feet with the meticulousness of a nurse.
Bourne kicked the small pile of glass into the gutter, then crouched beside the child. He let her finish plucking the last pieces of glass from Maricruz’s flesh, then began to spray her soles and wipe clean the tiny dozen or so incisions with the cotton balls.
When he started to bind her feet with the gauze, Angél stood up and whispered in Maricruz’s ear.
“In the lot over there,” she said.
As the child crossed the sidewalk, Bourne looked up at her.
Maricruz shrugged. “She has to pee. I couldn’t think of a better place.” She kept her eye on Angél as the child entered the lot.
“Maricruz, have you thought about Angél?”
“She’s all I’ve thought about for the last twenty-four hours.”
“You can’t keep her,” he said. “You can’t take her with you.”
She gave him a penetrating look. “She has no family, no one volunteered to pick her up.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s you who—”
“It doesn’t mean I’m not.”
Finished with her right foot, he started on her left one. He lowered his voice. “Sun was right about one thing: If you intend to return to China it won’t be with her. Ouyang won’t permit it.”
“Jidan will permit me anything.”
“Anything that won’t poleax his political career; you’ve already jeopardized it. Sun was right about that, too.”
“I can’t just leave her,” Maricruz said. “I won’t.”
Finished, he packed up the leftover items and stowed them in the cruiser. “I’m not arguing for that.”
“Out of the question.”
“Maricruz, be reasonable.”
Angél was returning, her large, dark eyes on Maricruz.
“I can’t let her go,” Maricruz said. “No, no, no.”
Bourne drove to the Centro de Coyoacán shopping mall, where he parked at one end of the outdoor lot. Maricruz recited her sizes and, between them, they estimated Angél’s.
“Keep an eye out for more soldiers,” he said. “The city’s crawling with them today.”
He spent twenty minutes or so in and out of four or five shops, making purchases. When he returned to the lot, he was dressed in new clothes from head to foot. He immediately saw that the cruiser they had appropriated was surrounded by a pair of jeeps and half a dozen soldiers. He could see nothing of Maricruz and the child, however.
Cursing under his breath, he started to make a circuit of the lot’s perimeter in the hope of spotting them, but within moments a white SUV pulled up in front of him. The front passenger’s door popped open and Maricruz said, “Get in! Quickly!”
She stepped on the accelerator even before Bourne had pulled the door closed behind him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he said as she exited the lot.
Behind them, the soldiers were beginning to fan out in a tight grid-search pattern.
“No idea.”
“Then stop and let me drive. You and Angél can change in the backseat.”
After several moments of consideration, she turned down a side street and pulled the SUV over to the curb.
Bourne got out, came around, and stopped her before she could get back in the car.
“You see how this can’t go on, Maricruz. You’re putting the child in harm’s way.”
Maricruz’s eyes slid away for a moment. Unconsciously, she gnawed at her lower lip. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“Of course you know,” Bourne said. “It’s in everyone’s best interests—especially hers.”
Her gaze returned to him. “But who—?”
“There’s someone I know—her name is Lolita. She’s young, single, lonely, and loving. We should take Angél to see her.”
Maricruz’s eyes got hard. “Why the hell are you involved in this, anyway?”
“Carlos,” Bourne said, which wasn’t, strictly speaking, a lie. It wasn’t the whole truth, either. But he wasn’t going to tell her he was after her husband.
“Carlos,” she repeated. “Shit.”
“Maricruz, you haven’t answered my question.”
“There’s no good answer.”
“Of course there is. I just gave you one.”
Silence.
“The two of you were almost caught back there. What d’you think the Federales will do to her if they catch her?”
Maricruz shifted her gaze to Angél, sitting patiently in the backseat. “She’s been damaged, Bourne.”
“You had to learn that. Lolita can, as well. She’s got an enormous heart.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Maricruz took a deep breath, let it out. “What if I don’t like her?”
“You will like her.”
“But what if I don’t?”
“You won’t leave the child with someone you don’t like or trust, will you?”
“No,” she said. “I won’t.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to.”
Silence again.
Bourne took out his mobile. “I’m going to tell Lolita we’re coming, and why.”
“A call? I don’t know—”
“You don’t want to spring Angél on her. It wouldn’t be fair to her or to the child.”
Maricruz hesitated, looked at Angél again, an uncertain figure through the smoked glass. Then she nodded.
Bourne called Anunciata.
34
What happened?” Felipe Matamoros said into his mobile phone. He was in his San Luis Potosí hacienda, the urgent call taking time out from working with his cadre of compadres to integrate the local Sinaloa into Los Zetas.
“It’s still such chaos here, five men dead, the police and the Federales swarming like ants,” the female voice on the other end of the call said. “I—I don’t really know.”
“What d’you mean you don’t know?” he shouted. “You were her nurse—I’m paying you to know everything that happens to her in the hospital.”
“I told you everything, Señor Matamoros. First a man named Colonel Sun claiming to be from the Chinese embassy got through your guards—”
“Colonel Sun. You’re certain that was his name?”
“Absolutely, señor.”
That means Minister Ouyang has seen fit to stick his piss-yellow nose into my business, Matamoros thought sourly.
“All right. Then what?”
“Then the chaos started,” the nurse said. “Your guard, Tigger, yes? There was shouting from the room, the señora and Colonel Sun were having sharp words, and he rushed in. There was a shot. Then the doctor who had been coming to see the señora entered the room. The other guard—Tigger’s partner—came running down the corridor, gun drawn, and went in. Another shot, then the sound of glass shattering. More shots from outside.”
“And this doctor, you said he went with her?”
“With her and the child, yes.”
“This is what I don’t understand.”
“Well, I’m afraid it gets stranger, señor.” There followed a brief hesitation. “The doctor—Francisco Javier—he doesn’t exist.”
“You mean he’s from another hospital.”
“No. I mean, yes. I found a doctor of that name, but he’s a pediatric surgeon. He was in surgery when I called. He’d been there all day.”
“What?” By this time, Matamoros wanted to punch his way through a wall. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know who this Francisco Javier is, that’s what I’m saying. I think he may have abducted the señora and the child.”
“I don’t give a shit about a child,” Matamoros said, massaging his temples beneath which a vicious pain had begun to form. “The woman—the señora—”
“Is gone,” the nurse said, clearly off her even-keeled game.
“Gone,” Matamoros repeated, as if it were an incantation. “Gone where?”
“No one knows, señor. Just…gone.”
“And Carlos’s two men dead.”
“Yes, señor.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“Plus the Chinese man from the embassy. And outside two soldiers—”
“Stop! My only concern is the woman. She was your charge—in your care.”
“Señor?”
“Expect a visitor.” Matamoros abruptly disconnected.
Turning, he shouted to Juan Ruiz and Diego de la Luna. “Get the plane ready! We need to be in Mexico City as soon as possible.”
Carlos Danda Carlos had awakened that morning from a nightmare of indescribable horror. He could no longer conjure up the details, which only made the lingering emotions all the more anxiety producing. Then the nightmare extended its long black arms into his waking world with the call informing him that two of his guards had been shot dead, two soldiers had also died under more mysterious circumstances, and Maricruz was missing. As if that weren’t enough, a Chinese foreign national—an army colonel, for the love of God!—had also been shot to death in Maricruz’s hospital room.
After fielding an exceptionally unpleasant call from el presidente while he was still in his pajamas—an old habit he refused to let go of—he showered, shaved, dressed, and had his driver take him to the hospital.
He arrived amid a shitstorm of uniformed men, all running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The hospital administration was in an uproar, as was the Chinese ambassador, who was threatening to decamp from Mexico with his entire staff after delivering a guardedly threatening statement to the worldwide press. Within twenty minutes Carlos understood that the international conflagration dwarfed his own concerns regarding Maricruz. He met with the ambassador, who made it clear in no uncertain terms that he needed to find the perpetrator of the colonel’s death, a man who was closely connected with Minister Ouyang Jidan.
Inwardly, Carlos shuddered at the name. He needed Minister Ouyang—and his wife—if he was to continue to line his pockets with the proceeds of the cartels’ drug sales. He needed to find out what Sun had said to Maricruz to make her kill him and his men, for surely she was the one who had pulled the trigger. Who else? He needed to find out where she was and who was with her. After canvassing the floor staff, it seemed clear that she had been in the company of a seven-year-old girl patient and a mysterious man who had palmed himself off as a hospital doctor assigned to her case. Could he have shot Sun?
None of the facts—or partial facts, since the scene was still in chaos—made much sense to him. The only person he knew who had all the answers was Maricruz herself. Where had she gone?
One line of inquiry seemed promising. It appeared the trio had fled the scene in an official cruiser, which had subsequently been discovered abandoned near the shopping mall in Coyoacán. Approximately thirty minutes later a white, late-model SUV was reported stolen out of the same lot. The owner had provided the license plate number to the police. That was less than twenty minutes ago. When Carlos followed up on this, he discovered that a dozen cop cars had been dispatched to scour the streets for the vehicle in question. He ordered the police captain in charge to triple that number.
When the captain asked how he was going to get that many vehicles in so short a time, Carlos shouted, “I don’t care! Pull them out of your ass if you have to! Just get them rolling now!”
He wiped his sweating face down. Then, realizing he had done all he could at the scene, he returned to his waiting car before he had a nervous breakdown. The international element, always a potential menace lurking at the periphery of the plans he had been enacting, had now jumped front and center, threatening to completely derail his career, not to mention his very life. In Mexico people in disgrace fared about as well as prisoners.
“Sir?” his driver said. “Where can I take you?”
I have to pull myself together, Carlos thought. This situation might be a major fuckup, but use what little you have been given to grab the tiger’s tail and shake it until its teeth rattle.
“To Coyoacán.”
“Yessir!”
As the driver rolled out onto the street, Carlos made the first of many calls coordinating his people in a dragnet around the district of Coyoacán.
Bourne drove the SUV down Caballo Calco, but did not stop at No. 23. Instead he circled the block several times, checking to see if the immediate environment held any dangers. Then, two blocks away, he pulled into a parking spot, climbed out, and exchanged the SUV’s plates with a vehicle’s at the end of the block. As he pulled out, a cop cruiser turned the block, moving in the slow, deliberate manner of a shark approaching a reef filled with fish.
“Down!” he ordered, and Maricruz slid low in her seat while Angél crouched on the floor. For a seven-year-old, she was remarkably adept at hiding herself, possibly the only positive consequence of her terrifying experience.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “The cops are only coming close enough to read our plate. They’ll soon see we’re not who they’re looking for.”
Moments later, proving his comment prophetic, the cruiser peeled off, making a right as they passed an intersection. Maricruz pulled herself up to a sitting position.
“If I had any doubts about what you’re proposing, they’re gone now,” she said in a low voice she hoped wouldn’t travel to the backseat. “I can’t keep putting her in danger.”
Bourne nodded.
“You’ll make the introductions, yes?” Maricruz seemed nervous, suddenly unsure of herself, in need of assistance, clearly an odd state for her to be in.
“There’s no need,” Bourne said. “My time is better served finding us a new vehicle. This white SUV is too conspicuous.”
“But I don’t know anything about her.”
“Then you’ll be on equal ground. Now, go on. She’s in apartment eleven. It’s on the second floor.”
Maricruz, in the Mexican-style clothes he had bought for her, opened the door and slid out. She was about to take Angél in her arms, but at the last minute thought better of it. Instead, she took her hand, so that the girl, in her pale yellow dress and patent-leather Mary Janes, walked beside her. A mother and daughter like any others one might see in Coyoacán, heading down the sidewalk. They entered number 23.
Bourne watched them until they were swallowed up by the building. Then he wiped down the interior of the SUV and exited. Unscrewing the license plates, he slid them through the bars of a nearby sewer grate and went in search of a vehicle that would better suit their needs.
35
Anunciata opened the door and was stunned to see her father’s features repurposed in a beautiful female face.
“Hola,” the woman said with her father’s smile. She held out her hand. “My name is Maricruz.” When Anunciata, somewhat in a daze, took her hand, she said, “And you must be Lolita.”
“That’s right.” Anunciata produced a smile that flickered like a candle in the wind.
Maricruz moved the child in front of her, hands lightly on her shoulders the better to steer her. “And this is Angél. Her parents are dead—murdered—and her family—”
“I understand. Would you like to come in?”
The child pushed back against Maricruz’s legs as Maricruz attempted to move across the threshold.
Anunciata crouched down so that her eyes were on Angél’s level. “Well, you don’t have to.” She spoke directly to the child. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” Her smile brightened, steadied, as if a light switch had been thrown. “Tell me, are you good at keeping secrets?”
After a brief hesitation, Angél nodded.
“I thought
so. You have a face that can hold secrets.” She cocked her head. “Did you know that?”
The girl, her growing interest beginning to overcome her shyness, shook her head.
“Well, you do. And not many people do. Because of that, I’d like to tell you a secret—if that’s okay with you.”
Angél responded slowly, still shy: She nodded.
“So this is a sad story, Angél, but you of all people will understand. My parents are also dead. They were also murdered. I have no family. So that makes us—I don’t know—birds of a feather. And if you like, we can flock together.”
Perhaps it was the rhyme, or it might have been the image of herself as a bird. In any event, the child began to laugh.
“I like birds, but I really like coyotes,” she said softly.
“Then coyotes we will be,” Anunciata said
As Angél clapped her hands, Maricruz pushed her gently forward. Anunciata rose and stepped back, allowing them to enter her apartment.
Outside, Bourne was trolling for an old, beat-up vehicle to snatch when he became aware of two patrol cars rolling toward him from either side. He was one street over from Caballo Calco, moving in and out of the shadows thrown by the building facades. He needed to be mindful of being spotted, knowing that every cop car must have a photo of him taped to its dashboard.
As the cruisers moved closer, he turned into a building entrance, opened the door, and stepped into the darkened vestibule. A young boy was squatting by the bottom of the staircase, bouncing a filthy rubber ball off the lowest tread, catching it, and throwing it again in a repetitive motion that was almost mesmeric.
The boy, paying him no mind, continued with his solitary game. Bourne turned, peering out the thick cut-glass panels of the front door. He could see the nose of one of the cruisers, which had pulled over and was now stopped. Soon enough, several uniforms came into view. They seemed in no hurry to get anywhere. Rather, they lit up cigarettes and began to smoke. They seemed to be taking turns telling jokes. Every once in a while, they’d break out into laughter for no good reason Bourne could discern.