THE SECOND MILAGRO (n/a) Read online

  She screamed and threw the lever to reverse and crashed across the yard, bouncing over half-buried tires. Her eyes stayed on the naked figure until she shifted into drive and swung the wheel. The car lurched down the rough road.

  Above the sounds of mud clods slinging against metal, she thought she heard Pa scream.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MEXICO September 28

  Slender, leafless willow branches caught her hair and it whipped around like a monstrous spider web. Her arms flailed, tangled in the willow ropes that tied, gagged her. She slipped on a moss-wet rock, stumbled against a pine tree and fell in the cold creek. Her breath heaved ragged, discordant with the murmuring sounds of the drifting water. Hands gripped her ankles and pulled her lower and lower. She screamed and the water swirled the sound.

  Patricia jerked the sheet over her head to block out the cries coming from her nightmare, though it hardly seemed that, since it was so familiar. The cover was stifling. She sat up, clammy and breathless, reaching for air. Her gown clung to her body as she stepped onto the cool terrazzo.

  In the shower, instead of turning the water on to the shower head, she pulled a heavy chain. Cold water poured onto her head. She silently thanked Tomas for not tearing out the old plumbing when he modernized the bath. She stood under the stream until the dream was washed away. As she dressed, the sounds of a rooster crowing, the surf pounding, and someone crying “tortillas” brought her thoughts of Max.

  She sat at her dressing table, putting her hair high on her head against the inevitable heat of the day. The sun had pinked her cheeks already since she arrived, lessening the sallow, haunted look that had become her familiar image since Max’s kidnapping. She dressed in a pair of linen shorts, a halter top and slipped on sandals.

  She began to make plans for the day. Mario was sending over the cousin she hoped to hire to take her to Max. There was no reason why she couldn’t just get into a car and drive herself to Mexico City and on to Matehuala and Real. She had maps. It wasn’t as though they were in some uncharted territory with goat paths for roads. Driving there wasn’t the problem. Finding Max was, and arranging payoffs. That’s why she needed a guide. No sense being foolish, she thought. Head out alone and wind up going in circles on top of some mountain. Thoughts of actually moving in a vehicle in the direction of where Max was being held made her stomach contract, forcing a quick intake of breath.

  The phone rang. “Patricia, what the hell do you think you’re doing, running off without seeing me before you left Mexico City?” Jim shouted at her.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Well?”

  “I didn’t know you were in Mexico City, Jim, and why are you?”

  “You know very well why I’m here,” Jim snapped. “Elena was supposed to tell you. I came right after your meeting. Where did you go?”

  Ignoring his question, she asked, “Did you get anywhere with the Juan Sanchez brothers?”

  “I might have. We’re meeting again in the morning.”

  Her spirits didn’t rise a peso’s worth at that news. “Jim, those men are puppets. If you don’t get to who pulls their strings, you’re wasting your time.”

  “I know what I’m doing, Patricia. You have to go about these things differently down here. You don’t know how these guys operate.”

  “Oh, yes I do. On bribes.”

  Jim was silent a moment, then said, “Not everyone. I have contacts that might help.”

  “I’m wondering if we couldn’t try again to get the police or FBI in, Jim. And the media.” She dropped onto the end of the bed, defeat suddenly creeping around her.

  “We’ve discussed this, Patricia.” He raised his voice. “The police aren’t going to do anything. I talked to the FBI guy again. He’s going over to the Mexican consulate office. I’ll let you know what comes of it. And you know you can’t get the papers down here to run anything the government doesn’t want printed. You push that and it’ll get Max killed for sure. These people don’t want any bad publicity. What can you be thinking?”

  She winced at his words. She knew all the arguments. They had gone over and over them. However rational the reasons not to, she still wanted to shout from the top of the world the injustice of her son’s disappearance. She wanted the FBI, CIA, and whatever other initials there were, to be swarming over the mountains with one purpose in mind—freeing Max. Despite it all, right this minute, she wanted the nightly news programs to be filled with Max’s picture and the story of his coming here to help the miners. She wanted the world to cry out with her to let him go. And she wanted there to be nowhere the kidnappers could hide.

  Jim interrupted her thoughts. “Can I trust you to stay put in Acapulco. I’ll be there day after tomorrow. I have people to see here and leads to run down near Real.”

  She said nothing.

  “Patricia? Can I?”

  “I’ll be here,” she answered, remembering how Miguel had told her the same thing. She would not let either of them, for whatever reasons they had, stop her when she decided to go.

  He must have sensed her insincerity. “Or better still why don’t you go on home, Patricia? There’s nothing else you can do down here. Let me take care of this. I want to take care of you, Sweetheart. I can call the crew; the plane can be ready by the time you get to the airport. Don’t be stubborn, now. I’d never forgive myself for letting you come down here, if anything happened to you.”

  “You didn’t let me, Jim, if I remember correctly.”

  “Well,” he laughed. “You can’t blame a fellow from trying to protect his girl.”

  She was touched by his words. “I know you’re looking out for me, Jim. I do. But I have no intention of going home. Not without Max. Just help me find him, please.”

  In the silence a clock ticked.

  “Okay, Sweetheart. I understand. Just so you won’t be twiddling your thumbs, there is one other thing you might do. I know I didn’t think it was a good idea at first, but I think you ought to try to contact Miguel.”

  She thought she’d heard wrong. Or he must be talking about another Miguel. There must be millions of them. “Miguel?”

  “Yes. Tomas’s brother.”

  “Why do you think I should talk to him?” It was her heart she heard, not a clock.

  “Well, like you said back home, he is Max’s uncle. Whatever differences he and Tomas had, that can’t stand in the way of helping his nephew out of trouble. And, seeing that his sister-in-law doesn’t get into any.”

  She let the phone line twist around her finger, capturing it, turning her skin white. “I did see him,” she said. “Yesterday. After I left the office. He won’t help.” She released the cord, rubbed at marks left by the coils.

  “He probably just told you he wouldn’t to get you to leave Mexico. I’ll talk to him while I’m here.”

  “Leave him out of it, Jim. Miguel’s got his own agenda.”

  “His agenda? Do you mean he’s still working with the miners? I did hear—”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Oh, probably more rumors. About his having an interest in the mines or maybe it was just the miners. I told you he’s the Special Liaison to Labor. If he is involved someway, maybe that’s all the more reason why he should be in a position to help find Max, don’t you think?”

  She couldn’t think at all. Miguel had an interest in the mines? Was he making some legal claim as his brother’s next of kin? Jim wasn’t seeing the picture. If this were true, it was a good reason for Miguel to make sure Max was out of the way for good. And maybe her, too. “If you learn anything, whatever it is, leave word if I’m not here.”

  “What do you mean, if you’re not there? I thought you just said—”

  “I may be out to the market,” she said to ease his suspicions. “Just talk to Rachel, okay?” She hung up and went in search of Mario.

  * * *

  Jim stared at the phone. Rachel. A flush of anger seized him at the thought of what she might be encouraging
Patricia to do. That woman gave him the willies. It wasn’t just her blind eyes that seemed to look right through you. Dammed if she didn’t read your mind half the time. If she’d just stayed home, Patricia would have.

  He swung his long legs onto a white leather couch in the penthouse apartment in the Morelos Building in Mexico City. Relaxing, he sipped El Presidente over ice. He hadn’t told Patricia he was staying here. She hadn’t asked. It had been his for the using while Tomas was alive and afterwards when he made trips here that Patricia wasn’t privy to. No need to start asking permission now.

  He looked around the room at the black and white leather furniture. The stark contrasts were softened by some of Juan Barbosa’s pastel paintings. The whole was spiced by jade, onyz, malachite and gold artifacts from the hands of Aztecs, Mayans, and Olmecs.

  He liked what he saw, but the thought occurred to him that Tomas Morelos had been a greedy bastard. Most of the pieces in the room belonged in a museum somewhere. Maybe he’d donate some of them eventually. Appearances. They were important. Of course, he might have to sell a few more things, if those greedier bastards in Virginia hit him up again. The biggest mistake he had made was getting up-front money from Willie Bates’s “boys” as he called them. What in the hell was he supposed to do? He couldn’t carry out Tomas’s plan on his director’s salary. Someday he knew Patricia would be proud of the way he had carried out Tomas’s wishes and made the fortune that would be his and hers.

  He picked up a clay figure with a large headdress and prominent Mayan nose. Ugly thing, he thought. Looks kind of like Miguel Ramirez. He laughed aloud. So Patricia had already tried to enlist his help. He had expected that she would, and now he knew for sure. Obviously Ramirez had told her nothing, if he knew anything.

  A cloud drifted over his mood. He was riding a filly on the last lap of the race and he felt the reins slipping from his hands. With Max in jeopardy, he had seen his chance to win it all. He thought it’d be simple to negotiate the kid’s release and get Patricia to sign over the mines in return for Max. Of course, she’d be signing them over to a dummy company and he’d have control. He needed the mines, dammit. He needed the money to finish the project in Tlantoloc.

  Things were not going as planned. If he succeeded, he could make Patricia understand why he needed the mines, why he needed to finish Tomas’s plan. But, he would never be able to make her understand if he wasn’t able to get Max home safe. She would never forgive him. He would lose her. He would lose everything.

  He poured himself another whisky. Nearby, on a table was a photo of Tomas and Patricia taken at a Mexican festival. He stared at it. His short, ugly friend looked like a Mexican caricature in wide brim hat and poncho. Patricia was a Spanish princess, dark hair piled high under a black lace mantilla. A fan held coyly to her chin. The contrast between the two was comical. He didn’t laugh. If she could fuck Tomas, then why—He couldn’t quite ask himself the question. She was just being loyal and time would take care of that. A person can be faithful to a corpse just so long. He imagined himself next to her. They would make a striking couple. With his Irish sandy hair and green eyes and her dark looks, they would make a different kind of contrast. No one would laugh at them together. No one would laugh at him ever again.

  He picked up the phone. “Elena? Get me Gabriel Perez on the phone. Chase him down if you have to. I want to talk to him.”

  Several hours later He climbed aboard a Cessna 310 for a flight to Ixtapa. As they approached a small landing field, he could see high rise hotels and condos lining the beaches. Somebody was making a new Acapulco. And a pocketful of money. Here and there were abandoned constructions, concrete honeycombs, monuments to graft. Pockets really got lined on those jobs. “Shares” of a building would be sold while a token construction went up. Once the sales were in, the owners disappeared with the money, only to start their game over somewhere else. He knew how they got away with it. They paid off Perez. He controlled the construction industry in Mexico.

  Jim had paid him plenty himself in the past year. It had cost him everything he owned and all he could borrow, but it would pay off in the end. Tomas had started this project, but it was his now. The largest construction venture any company had tried in Mexico.

  Tomas had been paying officials for years, trying to set everything up. In the meantime the property he owned had been taken over by squatters. It wasn’t easy getting them to leave. He didn’t like remembering about the fire that cleared the land. There wasn’t supposed to have been any explosion. Tomas had said you couldn’t trust these guys down here to do a simple arson job right. Tlantoloc had finally been ready for the bulldozers. Permits had been bought and paid for, most of the money going to Perez, but things had gotten done.

  Then Tomas died and the ball stopped rolling. Morelos Enterprises Construction was dead in the water. The suppliers, the contractors, the tenants, all disappeared. Wouldn’t even return his phone calls.

  Then the pepenadores had moved in. And the garbage trucks. Juan Catera’s bunch. Good God, he called himself the “garbage czar.” Took over land like he owned it. Perez had been working to free it up again for almost a year. But the dam garbage and the vermin that picked it were still on the land. His land!

  Patricia knew nothing about the deal. Tomas didn’t want her to, and it had been easy to keep it that way. Besides, Jim knew he had done all the work. He ought to be the one in charge, not her. It was not a business for a woman. He’d surprise her with it someday. A wedding present.

  Perez had tried to contact Patricia, but another bribe had stopped him. Since then, Jim didn’t know if he was paying bribes to get the land away from the garbage people or blackmail to keep Patricia from knowing about it. If he could just pull this off to get the mines.

  It had been like a kick in the teeth when Juan Sanchez and his bunch had told him that the miners were only talking to Perez. How Perez wormed his way in with the miners he didn’t know. It scared him. He could see the finish line up ahead, but he had a feeling Perez was trying to snatch his filly out from under him. He wasn’t sure what he was going to have to do to get this project completed, but damned if he wasn’t going to have a showdown with Gabriel Perez. This was going to be more than a friendly invitation down to the beach.

  A young man named Raul was waiting with a car when he got off the plane. It was a twenty minute drive to his destination. The sleepy village of Zihautenejo. Nestled into a small bay, a travel brochure picture of fishing boats and native houses, pristine beaches and swaying palms.

  Jim took in the perfection of the scene, then blinked in disbelief at an enormous columned structure dominating the far side of the bay. He pointed to it and Raul smiled. “Es el Parthenon.”

  “The Parthenon? Well, either I’ve been transported to Athens or Señor Perez has built himself a real mansion on the hilltop. Some of it with my money.” He spoke in English doubting that Raul understood him.

  “Si, es el Partenon,” the young man repeated.

  The grounds began several blocks below the mansion. Manicured lawns outlined by hibiscus hedges. Royal palms, their white trunks gleaming. And statues everywhere.

  Looks like Michelangelo’s discount house, Jim thought. It certainly wasn’t to his tastes. Modern architecture with its sleek lines was so much cleaner, uncomplicated. All these dadoos, as his pop used to call them, reminded him of the junk his mother used to bring home at times when she’d been off with some man.

  Huge wrought iron gates were slowly opened by two young men and they drove up the final stretch of driveway. Jim tried to calculate how many tons of concrete it took to cover the winding road they had traveled from the village below. He couldn’t begin to estimate the cost of the marble portico where they entered the house.

  A man in white coat and pants led him into a mirror-walled room of immense proportions. Dark, heavy Spanish furniture cast shadows on the marble floor. They walked out into the mid-afternoon sun to a large patio surrounding a glistening pool. Giggles came
from several bikini-clad girls leaning against a mahogany bar.

  “Señor Jim, over here,” someone called.

  On a corner of the balcony overlooking the bay sat three men dressed in swim trunks and open shirts. One was Gabriel Perez. A short man, bald and round, dressed in a green shirt and looking like an olive, Jim thought. Two of the others he knew only by sight. The man called the “garbage czar” with his hair slicked back in 1920’s gangster style, another “pretty-boy Floyd.” And the Chief of Police of Mexico City. The Chief rose to meet him. Large and tall for a Mexican, Carlos Guterriz, looked like a prize fighter from the projects.

  “Welcome to my home, Señor Mainland,” Guterriz said.

  Jim was speechless. The house was not Perez’s. It was the lion’s den. His neck hairs bristled. He finally spoke, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “Quite a place you have here, Chief. Glad to see police work pays so well in Mexico.”

  Two men Jim had not seen walked up behind him. The Chief said something hastily in Spanish. They moved away.

  Guterriz picked up his beer and in unison the three men said, “Salud! A tradition as ancient as the brew they drank. Yet, somehow, Jim felt he had just been hailed a marked man.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Miguel did not go to Cuernavaca after Patricia left his office. He brooded for hours. Gena was sure he was ill when she returned from siesta.

  “Señor. You say you go home today. Carmina cook for you. She wait for you. Will Daniel be there? My English is better, you—, right?” She grinned, hand over mouth.

  He looked at her, but said nothing. He wondered what this interest in Daniel meant. She left him, shaking her head.