THE SECOND MILAGRO (n/a) Page 5

  “Wasting my time, Mainland. You’re lucky I’m a patient man.” He stretched his hand out as if checking his nails. The voice, knifeedged and cold, carried the threat the body hid. He didn’t wait to be asked to sit.

  “I thought we had a deal. Why’d you come here? I don’t like it,” Jim said, his jaw set, his spine a steel rod.

  “Hey, Jim-boy, is that a way to treat an old friend?” Willie leaned forward and took a silver paper weight in the shape of a dollar sign from the front of Jim’s desk. “Man, you’ve done okay. Yes sir, must be a lot of this stuff coming your way.”

  Jim suppressed an urge to grab the paper weight from Willie’s hands. “I asked you what you’re doing here, Bates. Our agreement was—”

  “Well, you know how things change. Word is, you might have a problem delivering. There’s a lot riding on you, Mainland, so, I’m just making a friendly call. Don’t get so uptight.” A loud laugh shook the man’s small body like an electric shock.

  Jim didn’t even smile.

  “Okay,” Willie said, putting the silver dollar sign back on the desk, “Business it is. So, let’s talk some Mexican shit. What’s going on south of the border?”

  Jim shifted in his chair and felt his spine ease. So they didn’t know about Max, or Willie wouldn’t be asking. “No problema, amigo. No problema,” he laughed.

  “Well, the boys need some assurance. You see, there’s this man that deals in trash. Cat-something. He’s nosing around and that makes people nervous. Why is that, Jim? What’s a garbage man have to make people afraid?” His thin lip rose on one side.

  “I can’t imagine.” Jim sat motionless.

  “Don’t understand it myself, either. Only thing I know about garbage dumps is they got lots of rats. But, you know, rats kill easy.”

  Willie fixed his dark eyes on Jim as his right hand moved inside his coat. Jim froze. The little man withdrew a package of Camels, tapped one an inch above the others, took it in his mouth and put the pack away. He didn’t light it, just passed it from side to side with his lips as he talked.

  “You and me been along the same road, Jim-boy. We both killed us a few rats, that’s for sure. Why, hell, we grew up on the tracks,” he laughed, then spoke in a more serious tone. “Had drunks for dads and sluts for mamas.”

  Jim rose up in his chair.

  “Well, some were better than others.” Willie grinned. “Whatever they were, they gave us two things, a hard-on for what our birth fucked us out of and the balls to go after it.”

  He glanced at the silver paperweight, then gave Jim a hard stare. “Now that’s where the similarity ends. It’s for sure you don’t know no garbage man. Why, look at that fine suit.” He looked Jim over as if he were a tailor. “Problem is, my boy, you went out and got all the trappings before you got the means. Me, well, as you can see,” he held out the lapel of his cheap coat, “I’m waiting until I can afford to go shopping at Brooks Brothers.”

  Jim stood up, locking his knees to hold them steady. “If that’s all you wanted—”

  “Sure, sure. Busy, important man like you doesn’t have no time for reminiscing. I understand. Sorry to bother you. Guess our information must have been wrong. We’d got the idea that you and this Cat-person had something in common, some deal you were working on. Glad to hear you don’t know nothing about him. It’d be mighty upsetting to the boys to find out you did.” His hand was on the doorknob before he turned to Jim.

  “By the way, almost forgot to tell you, they said they needed a ‘good faith remittance’, I think they called it. A hundred grand by tomorrow midnight. If not, well, you know the consequences. See ya, old friend.”

  A malachite figurine rocked and fell over with the vibration of the door slamming. Jim made no move towards it. He could not have been more still if he’d been dead. Willie’s words wormed through his motionless body.

  Tomas had first introduced Jim to Juan Catera at a meeting in Tlantaloc. A tall, light-haired Mexican dressed like one of Al Capone’s sidekicks, Catera was too slick to look like what he was, a slum lord who controlled the pepenadores, the swarms of garbage pickers who gleaned trash heaps. He was one of the most hated men in Mexico. And one of the most powerful. He was never seen out in the open. That was because he didn’t want to go to jail. Which was where he would be except he was a personal friend of Carlos Gutierez, Mexico City’s Chief of Police. To be compared to Catera by anybody made Jim sweat.

  It was obvious that Willie hadn’t believed he didn’t know Catera, but he didn’t think that was what Willie would report. A warning. That was what Willie was giving him. Maybe it was because of old times.

  Just like Willie said, they had been born on the back edges of life, but Jim thought himself luckier than most. At least where his old man was concerned. A hard worker, he had called himself a gardener. What he did was haul horse manure in an old pickup from Middleburg farms to ritzy D.C. homes, spreading it by the shovelful onto grass carpets and into flower beds. Jim could still smell the odor that permeated his young life. Willie was dead-on about the mother. When she came home, which was seldom, she smelled worse than the stuff his father hauled. Jim had hated her, wished her dead, until one day she was. His old man cried and carried on like the Virgin Mary had passed away. That night Jim found his father hanging from a rope in the garage.

  With no one to care, Jim, at sixteen, made a life on the streets of D.C. It didn’t take long for him to get into trouble with the law. He had been in and out of jail for a year when he was caught stealing from the silver shop owned by Tomas Morelos. Tomas pressed charges. Jim was tried as an adult, and when the eighteen-month sentence at Lorton Correctional Institution ended, Morelos was there to pick Jim up, in a limousine.

  At first, Jim used his tough guy attitude that he had perfected in prison, threatening to wait for the right time and place to get back at the man who had sent him there. Morelos let the boy wail and fume, curse and threaten him. He just smiled. When they reached the Morelos house, Jim was stunned into silence. He never knew such beautiful things existed that he was now being allowed to see and touch. He ran his fingers through thick rugs, caressed a silver candelabra, smoothed the delicate fabric of the sofa.

  “You have an appreciation for fine things,” Tomas said.

  Wary, Jim eyed the door, half expecting a policeman to enter and accuse him of some trumped up charge. He moved to a window and looked out at the street, ready to bolt.

  “Relax. I have invited you to my home for a purpose. Sit down. We will have a drink.”

  A black man entered carrying two bottles of beer and two glasses of wine on a silver tray. Jim reached for the beer, changed his mind, took the cut crystal with the pale yellow liquid. He had tasted wine before. Sweet, cheap stuff his mother brought home. Somehow he knew this would taste different. The smile on Tomas’ face said he had made the right choice.

  The game of choices went on through an evening meal that Jim would savor in his mind for weeks. He was being tested. For what, he didn’t know, or care. At the moment, he only wanted to win, whatever it meant.

  Later, Tomas directed him to his office. Around the room in glass cases were strange statues, some of silver, others of gold.

  “Let me ask you, Jim Mainland, if you could have any object in any case in this room, which would it be?” Tomas smiled and motioned for the young man to look more closely. Somehow Jim knew this was the final test. The important one. After looking over all the pieces, he stood in front of one that was green and gold, ugly, but old, not shiny or decorative like the others. He lingered just long enough.

  “Good,” Tomas said. “A pre-Columbian worth $800,000 at auction.” He took a key from his pocket and opened the case. He held the ancient art work for a moment, then handed it to Jim.

  Prison-hardened hands shook as Jim caressed the clay form. His heart beat was a jungle drum as he listened to Tomas’s tale of how and when the article was found, unearthed and added to the Morelos’s collection. Gently, Jim replaced the
artifact in the glass case. Tomas locked it. Jim stared at the object, so near, yet now, so untouchable. His gaze roamed the room at all the finery of a life he’d never have. Anger rose inside him. At the fates for giving him so little. At this man for showing him what he’d missed.

  “What th’ hell you want from me, Morelos?”

  “I am offering you a job. Two years ago, you stole from me, but you did not take something easily melted down. You took one of the most exclusive pieces. I knew then I could teach you someday to understand why you took what you did.”

  “If you knew that, why’d you let me rot in that hellhole for almost two years?” Jim clenched his fists.

  “Think of it as education,” Tomas said. “You had to grow up. Learn how not to get caught. I trust your ‘classmates’ taught you a few things?” He smiled, “You want the job or not?”

  “I could knock you in the head, man, take what I want and you’d never find me. And you talking jobs. Doing what? Shining your shoes?”

  “That and anything else I tell you to do. In return you’ll learn everything you need to know to possess your own collection someday.” He held out his hand in the direction of the glass cases.

  Jim wanted to kill him. He thought of all the abuse he had suffered in prison. A “new piece of meat,” they had called him. This man standing in front of him, offering him a job, was responsible for that.

  Then Jim made a decision that would take him into a world as tough and ruthless as any prison. Over the years he had done anything and everything Tomas had asked, and the man had taught him a great deal.

  Now, the promises Tomas had made were within his reach. All the years of doing Morelos’s dirty work was about to pay off. If he could just get everything to fall into place.

  He left his office and went straight to Patricia’s. With a key hidden beneath a false drawer in the desk, he unlocked one of the cabinets and took a small gold ceremonial necklace. He admired it for a moment, sighed and dropped it into his pocket. It should bring about a hundred grand, from the right buyer.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In the Benito Juarez Airport, Patricia hardly noticed the officials who smiled at her and stamped her passport. One of the airport workers collected her suitcase and headed for a side door in the terminal. She followed, ignoring the offers of ayuda from the boys who dogged the tourists. A dark gray Fleetwood limousine was parked in a special area near the building. A young man in a gray uniform was putting her bag in the trunk.

  “Señora Morelos.” He hurried to meet her. “ ¿Como esta?” “Very well, Jaime. And yourself?”

  “Very good, Señora. Do you go to the office or the hotel?” “The office.”

  Patricia watched arriving and departing passengers exchange taxis

  as Jaime drove away from the airport through zona rosa. They drove past museums, palaces, and Alameda Park where she and Max had spent many afternoons while Tomas worked. The monument to the Aztec Chiefs came into view, and she thought her heart would break as she remembered the stories Max used to make up about a chief named Maxatec. When she cleared her eyes, Chapultepec Park lay just ahead. She could see Max at five scurrying from statue to statue in the Anthropology Museum, asking if he looked like this Mayan or that one, fascinated with the history of his father’s people.

  She pushed her fist against the empty feeling in her stomach. She was closer to Max, now. Could almost feel his presence. She tried to concentrate on why she was here and not let herself succumb to the endless visions of her son that could play through her head for hours like a video. Every night instead of sleep, reel after reel of a little boy, bright-eyed at Christmas, sand-covered at the beach, cuddled between stuffed bears, filled her head. She tried to make him grow in her thoughts, to see him as a young man, as he now was. Only the little boy possessed the screen. She had to think of him as a man. Capable. Strong. Able to survive hardships.

  She needed it for herself, too. Seeing Max as a teenager made her see herself as she was, a thirty-nine year old woman. A successful, powerful business owner. Not a poor, dirty little girl waiting for handouts. Not someone afraid to stand up for herself or for her child. She would need all the self-assurance she could scrape together to face the officials she would meet. And if it became necessary for her to see Miguel Ramirez, she would do it, despite what that encounter might cost her.

  At the Diana Monument Circle, traffic was snarled, people streaming into the street stared, trying to penetrate the limo’s smoky windows. A young man walked up to the glass nearest her and cupped his eyes with his hands. His face only inches away was mesmerizing. The dark curly hair, the eyes set slightly too far apart. The soft moustache framing his full lips. The light shaded by his hand gave him a brooding, familiar look. Not that he was anyone she knew. It was just the nearness of his face. The similar features. Her thoughts of Miguel.

  As the car pulled away, she tried to shake the image. The face seemed to filter through the window into the car, changing as it emerged. The hair shorter. The chin more prominent. The eyes darker, more provoking. The features of another young man from another time. In her imagination he sat beside her; the metamorphosis complete.

  She felt the heat of a hand placed long ago on her thigh. Like a branding iron burning her skin. She rubbed her palm across the leg of her pants pushing at a phantom pain. Fighting the rush of warmth and memory, she looked out the windows. The quick succession of shop fronts, pedestrians and passing cars could not hold her attention. They blurred until what she saw through the window changed to trees and shifting moonlight along the Potomac River.

  The past became the present. Miguel was twenty-one and she was twenty.

  A cool June night in Virginia. A welcome breeze blowing through open car windows. Miguel smiling at her. Touching her hair, her lips, her cheeks, her eyes with a piercing, seeking gaze. He, leaning against the door of the back seat. She, curled in his arms. They had been there together before, groping, doing little, wanting more. This night, an unnamed, unmarked threshold had been crossed, and she had been afraid.

  His kisses stroked the contours of her face, neck and shoulders. She loved him. That would overcome her fear, she told herself. His hand moved along her thigh until it touched the lace of her panties. She stiffened her legs. “I love you,” he whispered. She looked away from the dark eyes that searched the meaning of her hesitation.

  Slowly, his hand retreated to the buttons of her blouse. This she had allowed before. The blouse, the bra. His fingers slid along the band of her skirt. The button. The zipper. She was naked except for a half-slip and panties. She was cold. He tried to separate her legs. She held herself rigid above the stiff, ribbed seat beneath her. He rubbed her thighs through the silky material until they parted. Again he whispered, “I love you.” She tasted the salt of her tears.

  When she was fully undressed, she tried to slow his eagerness to explore her body. Tried to stall the moment. As she felt her resistance dissolve, as the moment they had waited for happened, she was truly convinced that her love would overcome everything. That his love would make him understand. That he wouldn’t question. That he wouldn’t care that she wasn’t a virgin.

  Feather touches, kneading hands, hungry kisses, probing tongues. Fireflies of memories filled the air in the limousine. Hiding in the dark was the truth. Love had not been enough, if it had been love. Miguel had questioned her lack of innocence, as if she had betrayed him. In time, betrayal became less important. His torture and her torment became the question, “Who?” Angry voices, accusations, denials chased away the fireflies.

  The image of the young man was gone.

  “Señora, you want I should wait?” Jaime was standing by the open back door. Behind him was the gleaming steel and glass Morelos Building. The eight story structure designed by Paolo Munez looked like a giant bar of silver.

  Patricia gathered her purse and briefcase with shaking hands and got out of the limo. “No, Jaime. Just drop my suitcase off at the Nikko and I’ll walk over later
.”

  A gray-haired man in a silver uniform rushed through the main lobby door. “Señora, Señora, mucho gusto deverte.” He took her hand and pumped it as he grinned and jabbered in Spanish. “It’s good to see you, too, Enrique. And your espousa?”

  “Beatrice is good, much good, Señora.” He straightened his shoulders and stretched his frame. “Mi hija, Elena, te esparar en su oficina.” He looked upward toward her office, then opened the massive glass door to the lobby. The sea green terrazzo floor gleamed like a mirror. Near the entrance sat a huge, deeply carved concierge desk. The dark massive wood sank into the cool colors of an Aubusson rug, like a ship riding the sea. She stood near a threestory palm in the Atrium and waited for the elevator.

  She confronted her image on all sides in the small mirrored enclosure. Not one, but hundreds of her stared back, lined up in the silver backed glass. She looked less haggard than she had before deciding to come to Mexico. Dressed in sky blue pants, jacket and white silk blouse, she actually looked cool and calm despite how she felt. Makeup hid the circles ringing her eyes and her dark hair was shiny, if severe in its bun. Max liked her hair free, flowing. When she found him, she’d never wear her hair in a bun again.

  As the elevator ascended and each button on the panel lit, she could picture what was on that floor. The latest equipment, research departments, silver design shops, elegant offices. She had studied every aspect of the Morelos silver business for almost twenty years. There was no part of it she wasn’t familiar with, except one. The mines. Why had she never been there? To Real de Catorce. Others had the responsibility of the raw ore, but that was no excuse. If she had visited there, knew the people . . .

  “God, please don’t let Max pay for my ignorance,” she whispered as the doors opened.

  “Buenos tardes, Señora.” Elena was waiting as her father had said, a cup of coffee in one hand, pad and pen in the other.

  “My goodness, Elena. Your father must have buzzed you. Or have you been holding this all day?” She smiled at Elena’s glowing face, took the coffee, sipped it. “No, hot as always. Gracias.”