THE SECOND MILAGRO (n/a) Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Besides getting your son out of trouble, we still have this

  problem about our contracts, Patricia. What are you going to do about them?” Luis Hernandez spoke without taking his eyes off the silver pendant, admiring it with open, greedy eyes.

  “Luis, you insensitive bastard. Can’t you forget the bottom line for once?” Jim hit his fist against the hard oak table. “Sorry, Patricia,” he added, his face red below thick sandy hair. His eyes blazed like blue flame as he reached for the phone.

  Jim, her staunchest supporter. He had moved easily from Tomas’s right-hand man to her advisor. The token Caucasian on the Board, he liked to say, since all the other members had Hispanic ties. Patricia had been accused of promoting him to a director’s position for this reason. Some even speculated, not too discretely, that his youth and blond good looks were a welcome change for her after Tomas. For that reason or some other one, Jim was not well liked by the others. He was a little rough, but he was faithful to the Moreloses.

  Luis squinted his coal dark eyes. “I’ll bet if we melted that gaudy necklace down, we could have several day’s worth of silver to buy us time on our contracts. I think it’s in the best interests of the company—”

  “A week of mining is not the problem, Señor Luis.” Cortina nodded toward Patricia.

  “How much should I put in the debit column to cover that thing, Patricia?” Luis made a circle with his index finger and thumb and peered through them as if assessing a diamond through a loop. “Five thousand, ten, fifteen?”

  She clutched the pendant tighter, as if to hide it. Damn you, Luis, Patricia thought. She wanted to tell him to get out, to fire him. Before she could say anything, Jim slammed down the telephone and told Luis to shut up.

  “We are not here to discuss a piece of jewelry,” Jim said and pinned Hernandez and Cortina in their chairs with his stare. “You’re in charge of those damn miners in Catorce, Marco. Do you think they’re in on the kidnapping? What do they want?”

  “They will have many demands. It is always hard to get to the leaders in a strike.” Cortina tilted his head. “Señora, you know how it is. I am sorry about Max. Maybe tomorrow—”

  “It’s always mañana to you, ‘Marco Polo’, ain’t it?” Jim shouted.

  “You go there, Señor,” Marco’s voice rose steadily as he spoke. “You will accomplish nothing. Maybe you spend your time with the señoritas again? Or maybe you will not see the miners because you would be scared they eat you alive. Maybe you taste like iguana, or pollo.” He threw his head back and laughed.

  Patricia jumped at the sound. Jim was glaring at Marco, as if ready to pounce on prey. She was letting Jim fight her battle alone.

  Struggling against the deep hole that was swallowing her, she threw words out like lifelines. “The mines. The workers. We have to settle with them.” She stared at Luis, then, Marco. Didn’t they know that the only important thing was Max? If they made the miners happy, Max would be released. She was sure of it. Who else would have taken him? She shoved her chair away from the table, braced her arms against it, and pushed herself up. “Don’t any of you understand? We have to give those people whatever they want. I don’t care what. The silver! The sun! The mines themselves! Just give it to them! Now!”

  The sound of her words bounced off the walls. She tried to compose herself. Strands of chestnut hair had slipped from the silver clasp at the nape of her neck. She brushed them back.

  “I’m going to Mexico myself.” She straightened her shoulders and looked around the room, daring anyone to argue.

  No one said anything. Jim stood and walked around the table to her. “We have to talk,” he said. She turned her back on him, ignored the voices behind her and stared out the window down the lights of a wet and blustery Pennsylvania Avenue toward the nation’s Capitol, glowing in the distance.

  The small statue of Liberty atop the dome was barely visible. Something prophetic, she thought, about a woman over-looking the country’s lawmakers. Something ironic about Liberty being a woman. With all the wealth and power she had, she was far from being free. Her husband’s death had fettered her with responsibility, obligation, and now, danger for their child.

  Jim gripped her elbow. He steered her toward the door. “We may as well go home. All of us. Get some sleep. We’ll meet again tomorrow when we have some news.”

  She tried to pull away. “I wasn’t ready to close the meeting, Jim. I had—”

  “It’s late and you need rest.” He put his arm around her shoulder, and she let him lead her to the elevator.

  She hardly noticed as they moved through the garage and into his limo. For three days she had been locked in a dark hell that had caved in around her. Now she wanted to claw her way out and didn’t know where to begin. She might bury herself deeper, but she’d have to take that chance. She didn’t resist when Jim took her into his arms, but settled into their warm familiarity. When he shifted her away, she thought they were still in front of the office until she looked past him and saw her house. She had missed the drive down Massachusetts and out to Spring Hill.

  “You can go, Jim. I’ll be okay,” she said at the door. He pushed past her into the living room. She followed him.

  He told her she wasn’t going to Mexico. It was dangerous, he said. The miners had no love for a Morelos. She wouldn’t be safe. He promised that he would leave that night, if possible, and fly to Mexico City to see what else he could learn. He would see her as soon as he returned. She heard only the sounds of his words as she gazed out the window. The rain darkened the shadows outside.

  She didn’t hear the door open and close. Feeling a presence in the room, she turned to say something to Jim, but standing quietly in the doorway was Rachel Davis, her longtime friend, come to stay for the duration.

  Before Patricia could move, Rachel had joined her in front of the window.

  “Watching it rain?” Rachel asked.

  “Yeh, seems to be letting up,” Patricia replied. Her shoulders relaxed a little, making her realize how tense she was.

  “Did I miss anything?” Rachel was all ready for bed, dressed in soft, comfy gown and housecoat, her hair pulled back with a headband. Obviously, she had been at her nightly regime of face cleansing.

  “Just bossy Jim seeing me home,” Patricia answered.

  “That man’s out for more than he deserves. We need to watch him like a hawk.”

  “I know. You tell me that every day,” Patricia retorted, and smiled, easing more tension. How good it felt to spar with her old friend. Rachel’s watching Jim was a two sided joke. A car accident when she was fourteen had left Rachel blind, but she “saw” more than Patricia knew.

  “Want some tea?” Patricia asked, and pushed an intercom button. After she had asked Josephina, her housekeeper, to bring them some tea and some kind of sandwiches, she went upstairs to put on her own nightclothes. When she returned, she and Rachel settled onto the sofa. The two looked like opposites, from Rachel’s homey outfit to Patricia’s silk peignoir, Rachel’s pale hair and eyes to Patricia’s darker features.

  “How’s Annie?” Patricia asked.

  “The university’s making them stay put until the storm’s over. Works for me. She’s safe and I don’t have to tell her about Max. She’ll go berserk, you know.”

  “No, she’s pretty level-headed.”

  “Are we talking about the same girl? My Annie? She loves Max almost as much as I do. All she’ll be is talk though. She’s not one for action.”

  “Guess we better keep it to ourselves, for now then,” Patricia said softly.

  Quiet settled around the two women. Rachel patted Patricia’s hand in a grandmotherly way. Patricia let herself be silently consoled by years of friendship. The two of them had met when they were just fifteen and had bonded immediately. Except for a brief period in their teens they had been inseparable companions. Patricia felt that the best thing life had given her, other than Max, was her devoted friend. A pain in
the butt sometimes, Rachel was always there for her. She had tried to be there for Rachel, but despite her blindness, Rachel usually seemed to need less help than Patricia.

  Rachel had never liked Tomas, didn’t like Jim, either. Patricia was always making bad choices to hear Rachel tell it. Besides Patricia herself, the one thing in Patricia’s life that Rachel did love was Max. She felt as devastated by his disappearance as a mother would. Her own daughter Annie and her husband, Roger, were more than Rachel had ever asked for, but she had a special soft spot for Max.

  When Josephina had brought tea and sandwiches and quietly left, Rachel broke the silence. “He’s okay. You’ll see. The kid’s always been able to take pretty damn good care of himself.”

  When Patricia said nothing, Rachel laughed. “Hey, did you show Luis the pendant yet? I’d like to see the look on his face when you tell him Max made it, not Raul. Nothing like messing up ole Luis’s mind with a new Morelos designer.” Her short laugh fell silent.

  Patricia’s fingers closed around the pendant hanging from her neck as if protecting it from scrutiny. She had not been able to take it off in days.

  After a few minutes of listening to the rain beat against the windows, Rachel tried again. “No word from the police?”

  Finally, Patricia began to talk. “Jim has been calling them regularly, but they still think Max is just a runaway. They’re not going to do anything. Too much else on their minds, I guess. They won’t even listen to me. And who could blame them?” Patricia practically jumped from the couch and strode across the room. “He IS a runaway. A delinquent. A smart-assed brat who’s gotten himself in trouble!” She turned her head away and her shoulders shook as if she were throwing off some coat or sweater that had grown heavy.

  Rachel stood, zeroed in on Patricia, then embraced her. “He’s also ungrateful and inconsiderate,” she said. “And when he comes trudging home, dirty, spent and apologetic, you can ground him until he starts drawing Social Security.”

  Patricia’s tears were too close to the surface. She slumped back onto the couch, pressing her fists into her stomach. “Crazy kid. Why couldn’t he listen to me? What did he think he could do down there? He’s just a child.” Her voice broke, her eyes ached. “Surely they won’t hurt him.”

  Through her sobs she heard Rachel sit back down. Her friend would wait until the tears were gone. Longer ago than either remembered they had made a pact never to encourage bouts of self-pity. Rachel’s blindness was like some secret power that she protected, and Patricia guarded every sorrow in her life with the same fierceness.

  When all the sobs were quieted, Patricia laid her head in Rachel’s lap and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER THREE

  September 25

  Patricia wandered through her empty house. Josephina had taken Rachel home. She only lived a mile away and would be back before she was needed. The telephone sat as a silent effigy to Patricia’s misery.

  She watched television for a while, but the miseries caused by the hurricane increased her own.

  In the late afternoon rain shadowed the windows like a veil. The air smelled musty. She refused all calls unless it was Jim. He had not called. The clock on the mantle ticked.

  She balanced on the edge of a Queen Anne chair and leaned toward the cold grates of her library fireplace. She had forced herself to dress in simple slacks and blouse, her long hair pulled up and clamped high on her head. She drew the line at makeup. What did she care.

  She studied the deeply carved black marble surrounding soot covered firebricks and brass andirons. When she searched the shadows, a dark hole stretched before her. She could see Max’s face in the blackness. A sudden draft forced acrid fumes down the chimney. She clutched her shaking arms and shivered.

  Was Max shackled to some chain in the depths of a Mexican mountain, hungry and thirsty? Why had they taken him? She should be the one imprisoned. If anyone was responsible, she was. Certainly not Max.

  Tears blurred the fire-charred bricks. Her shoulders sagged as if they were holding up the beams of the darkened hole where she envisioned Max. Her body buckled and trembled in a rush of sobs. Her pain seemed more acute as the day wore on, and she waited impatiently for news.

  Eventually, Josephina returned with stories of trees down and damaged roofs. She babbled on about how lucky they were. Patricia tried to agree. Josephina prepared a dinner Patricia couldn’t eat. Rachel called and Annie was home for the evening, so she would see her tomorrow. Patricia was glad to be alone. She had to figure out what she would do if Jim wasn’t successful.

  Late in the night, a bell chimed, then the front door opened with a blast of wind against the wall.

  Jim was back. Patricia had been lying on the couch, but she met him halfway across the room.

  “What did you learn?” she asked, her fingers against her lips. She tried to read his thoughts.

  He shook rain from his hair, like an overgrown puppy, then put a hand to his scruffy, sandy beard as if extracting an answer from it.

  “That’s the craziest damn bunch of locos down there. Nobody knows nothing.” He stood with his back to the cold fireplace, hands behind him.

  “What do you mean? Max?” She whispered his name.

  Jim moved to face her and then put his arms around her tightly. She held her breath, afraid of his words. He whispered in her ear, “As far as I could learn, the little shit’s alive.”

  She pushed him back and smiled. “You’re sure?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  She threw her arms around him and held on. “Oh, Max,” she cried against Jim’s shoulder. When she finally released him, Jim turned and struck the mantle, shaking Chinese vases and picture frames.

  “I can’t wait to get ahold of that kid. I’ll dust his britches, if it’s the last thing I do.” Jim’s face had become stern and hard. He paced the room.

  “Worry you like this. He deserves a beating, you ask me.” He stopped midstep, his words hanging in the air as his face reddened from his thin blond hair through to his beard. “Aw, shit. You know what I mean. He’s okay. Sure he is. Those people got better sense than to hurt him. Why, you know how he always falls on his feet. Remember when—” He was reaching for her, but she walked away.

  “Who were you able to see?” Her voice was stronger. Suddenly, Jim’s irreverence for Max’s plight unnerved her. She crossed her arms, as if they could prop her up. Just hearing Max was alive gave her strength, but she wasn’t sure she could stand to hear what else Jim might say. She stopped in front of a collection of crystal decanters and half made a motion to Jim to help himself.

  “Everybody. Nobody. Seems the miners that escaped the cave-in were the first ones causing the ruckus. With eight of their buddies buried in the mine, they refused to go back in. They’re the ones called the strike. I talked to some of them and they swore they had nothing to do with Max’s disappearance. Claim it was a bunch of renegades that’s always causing trouble. No accounts that want to take back the mines for themselves. They think the silver in it belongs to them, not to the crillos or gringos. Never mind not one of them has a peso to his name to operate the mines. That don’t seem to occur to them.”

  He poured himself a tall drink and asked if she wanted one. She shook her head.

  “Did you get to talk to any of the, the renegades?”

  “Hell, no. They don’t talk to nobody. I don’t think they even know what they want, or they’d be talking their heads off. I couldn’t get near Real. They got the place cut off.”

  “Who did you see in Mexico City?”

  “Officials, unofficials. You know how they are. Always putting on a front. But with the peso taking a dive like a crooked boxer, all they’re really interested in is the dollar and getting bailed out. Now if you want to spend a couple zillion dollars to fatten some pockets, they’ll have the kid out of those hills in a limo before you can say corruption. That’s my take on it.” Shaking his head, he rummaged through his beard.

  “That would be
fine if I knew who to give the money to,” she countered. “And to find that out, I’m going to Mexico myself.”

  Jim shot up from the couch. He had looked tired a moment before, but now determination stiffened every muscle. “Patricia, be reasonable. There’s no one you can get to that I haven’t already seen. It’s not safe. You know it.”

  She stared at him defiantly. “Tomorrow, Jim. I want to go tomorrow. I won’t wait any longer. You understand?”

  He paced the room, refilled his drink and argued each point over and over again. She stood her ground.

  Finally, he asked with resignation, “Is there something you have in mind that I haven’t thought of?”

  He handed her a small glass of brandy as if a peace offering. She downed half of it, then said hesitantly, “There is one possibility. What about Miguel Ramirez?”

  “Ramirez? You mean Tomas’s brother?” He drew his lips in, making beard and moustache one, a face he often made.

  “Step-brother. Doesn’t he have something to do with the Labor Department?” She concentrated her thoughts on sipping the brandy slowly, trying to quiet her heart that had begun a marathon at the sound of Miguel’s name.

  “Well, the answer to that is yes and no. I gather he’s kind of a renegade. Always out for the poor and against the wealthy. His title is Deputy Interior Minister. But who the hell knows what that means in Mexico? I gather he makes whatever he wants to his business. The government has to deal with him when there’s a strike, but they’d rather not. Probably cause most of them are rich. He’s a Mexican Robin Hood. Probably the reason Tomas hated him so much.”

  “You didn’t try to contact him when you were in Mexico?”

  “No. I recall someone said he was in Real. Don’t know what help he’d be, anyway. Considering how he and Tomas wasn’t on the best of terms, I don’t figure he’d care one way or the other about his nephew. Besides, he’d be on the miners side for sure. He’s been working for labor in one way or another since Echeverria was President.”