Dancing with the Tiger Read online

  “Puppet, let’s change the subject. We don’t need to see—”

  Constance returned, passed the newspaper to Harold, who passed it to Anna without looking. It was her, all right. Head scarf, wizened features frozen in rictus. Anna set down her fork. How could anyone eat? Her horror was coupled with a sinful tingle of excitement. There was only one reason to murder Leonora Rodríguez. Somebody had come looking for the mask. Why had she believed Lorenzo Gonzáles? Why did she believe anybody?

  “Constance,” Thomas chastised, shaking his flag like a pompom, “it’s Tortilla Chip Day. Not Day of the Dead.”

  His wife’s pale hair formed a frazzled nimbus. “Go ahead and kill me if you have to, but don’t set me on fire.”

  “Puppet, can we move on to breezier topics? Taxes? Scorpions?”

  Heat rose to Anna’s forehead, her neck. The good news is, the mask in my pack is worth a fortune. The bad news is, someone may kill me to get it. Her flight home left Monday. The trick was to stay alive until then. One of these two men could help her. The married, egomaniacal American collector. Or the moody, womanizing Mexican painter. Some girls had all the luck.

  “Actually,” Constance said, ignoring her husband. “There was a third murder. I almost forgot. An American fellow was cemented into a bathtub.”

  “Oh, come on.” Marge rolled her eyes. “Now you’re making things up.”

  Constance made a Boy Scout pledge. “I squeezed the story out of Soledad, who got it from the housekeeper. Some guy Gonzáles—Thomas knows him, a dealer with a mail-order Ph.D.—comes home and finds a strange man buried alive in his bathtub. Drugs, I suppose, or a shady art deal. I’ve always wanted to find a naked man in my bathtub, though I’d prefer he were alive.” Constance smiled at Thomas, who considered his reflection in his knife. “I am sending the mashed potatoes around again. You know there’s no word in Spanish for ‘leftovers’? It simply doesn’t exist.”

  Thomas leaned into Anna and whispered playfully, a boy with a frog in his pocket. “Buried alive in cement. Hell of a bath.”

  Salvador watched this exchange. Anna blushed. There were times when being an American was the world’s most embarrassing affliction. A million U.S. citizens had relocated to Mexico—all of them looking for something. The most cynical came for the exchange rate. The romantic came for the scenery, the color. Retirees came for the weather. Surfers came for waves. Hippies for weed. Liberals wanted to escape the American capitalist machine. Poets sought a simpler life, a humble dirt road.

  Settling in the prettiest cities and seaside resorts, they re-created the culture they’d left behind while complaining about all the ways Mexico disappointed them: the bad plumbing, the slow Internet, the wait for a phone, the aggressive drivers, the pollution, the toxic water, the firecrackers, the parade of saints’ days, the strikes, the bureaucracy, the corruption, the mañana syndrome, the blind religiosity, the poverty. Aprovechar—an essential Spanish verb with no satisfying English equivalent. “Take advantage of” came close. That’s what expatriates like the Malones did. They came to Mexico to take advantage. So had her father.

  As if he’d read Anna’s mind, Thomas called down the table, “Look at us, greedy Americans. All that fine food and we forgot to say grace. Constance, will you do the honors?”

  His wife flung her cigarette hand. Her charm bracelet jangled: London Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, Chichén Itzá. “You should have thought of that earlier. It’s too late for grace now.”

  The guests had laid down their forks. No one wanted to be the first to resume eating. They reached for their drinks instead.

  Anna excused herself. In the bathroom, she splashed her face with water, wondered whether she was going to vomit. She hoisted the window to let in fresh air. Just how much danger was she in? Pressing her palm to her chest, she slowed her racing heart. Outside, everything was still. The only person in sight was Hugo, on break, smoking by the pool, which, presumably for lack of sufficient chemicals, had turned a faint shade of green.

  Anna went back to the table. Her mind churned useless facts. The average cremated body weighs five pounds. The human brain is often the most active when it’s asleep. A woman’s heart beats faster than a man’s. How was she going to make it until Monday?

  Salvador looked left, then right, waiting for traffic to clear. “I am taking a trip to the Sierra this weekend. Marge, do you know a good hotel in Benito Juárez?”

  Marge licked the underside of her spoon. “We always stay at the Refugio Galeano. Not fancy but functional. They have cabins with glass roofs so you can lie in bed and look up at the stars.”

  “You going alone?” Constance asked.

  “Unless I could persuade Anna to come with me. Have you seen the Sierra? I could introduce you to some carvers . . .”

  Anna had never met a man who blew so hot and cold.

  Thomas mumbled to her, “I know a sweet old lady who sells Indian rugs.” Then louder, “I wouldn’t recommend the Sierra. No masks worth—”

  Harold chimed in, “The mountain air is very good for clearing the sinuses—”

  “So you won’t need the car after all,” Constance said, as though things had been decided.

  “Thanks for the invitation,” Anna said to Salvador. Aloof. Noncommittal. “Let me think about it.”

  “Anna, why don’t you come with me to the basement,” Thomas said. “I need more mescal. I want to show you the wine cellar.”

  Four faces turned to Anna.

  “The cellar?” she said.

  “I know you appreciate a good mescal. I have quite a collection.”

  Anna looked at Salvador, hoping he’d object, but he was gazing out the screen door to the patio. “Sounds like a real opportunity,” he said.

  “Go on,” Constance said bitterly, her face a trampled rose garden. “It will only take a minute.”

  Salvador muttered, “Maybe less.”

  A flurry of twigs and leaves fell past the window. The bottom half of a man was visible on a ladder. Hugo was cleaning the gutters.

  “Maybe another time. I really should be going.” Anna checked her watch, though she had nowhere to be.

  A single drop of sweat rolled down Thomas’s temple. “Puppet, I heard rumors about apple pie. Let’s move outside and watch you shoot the neighbor’s dog.”

  Debris tumbled past the window like dirty rain.

  “Fetch my gun, darling.” Constance’s wineglass was full again. “I’ll give you a lesson.”

  “Little did I know I’d married Annie Oakley,” Thomas joked to his guests.

  Constance snapped. “I am tired of cleaning up shit I didn’t make.”

  “Ask Hugo.”

  “The Mexicans, yes. They solve all our problems.”

  Harold lifted his glass, before he realized it was empty. Marge fished a postcard from a ceramic bowl in the center of the table. “What’s this mask, Thomas? This yours?”

  Thomas grimaced. “The latest missive from Reyes, the neighborhood drug lord. Claims he’s acquired Montezuma’s death mask.”

  Marge looked put out. “The Montezuma?”

  Salvador wadded up his napkin. “If someone found Montezuma’s death mask, it went straight to the black market, like everything else.”

  Thomas spoke to Marge. “Every collector working Latin America has been looking for this mask for decades. Reyes, Ramsey. Everyone.”

  Anna took a sudden interest in her water glass. How had Reyes gotten a photo of the mask? Nothing made sense.

  Thomas fingered the postcard’s edge. “Imagine. The greatest pre-Columbian discovery of our lifetimes is in the hands of a monster.”

  Anna swallowed.

  “I guess Reyes wins your little mask bet, your face-off,” Marge said, sounding pleased at her pun. “Drug lords always win, I’m afraid.”

  Thomas smiled. “Reyes wins until
somebody kills him.”

  Dirt fell from the gutters. The peacocks squawked. Soledad’s milk bubbled on the stove. Anna handed the postcard to Salvador, who inspected the postmark. As they stood to say good-bye, he slipped the card into his pocket.

  —

  Salvador offered her a ride home on his motorcycle. He gave her his helmet, instructed her to keep one hand on the grip, the other on him. Slowly, he built up speed. Her thighs gripped his. Her helmet bumped his head. It felt as if they had become one person. She didn’t want to stop riding, but in a few minutes he rolled up to the Puesta del Sol.

  “You have my number, if you change your mind.” He surveyed the lobby, sickly blue in the light. “I worry about you, staying here. My aunt was robbed once.”

  “The gay clerk has a baseball bat and knows how to use it.”

  “I don’t know why you spend time with them.”

  “Rafi?”

  “The Malones.”

  “Then why did you go?”

  “To see you.”

  This stopped her. She looked down the street. Pink buildings. Iron balconies. Cobblestones. Bougainvillea. Some days, some nights, Anna was sure no country was as lovely as Mexico. Salvador was lovely, too. Complicated.

  “Come with me tomorrow.” He said this twice.

  “I can’t, but thank you.”

  Resigned, he hugged her and started his bike, then drove off with a wave. She watched him take the corner, confident she would never see him again.

  She crossed the patio. Something was hanging on her door. A hat. How odd. No, not a hat. A mask. A carved wooden mask of a woman. Arched eyebrows. Full lips. Anna would have called her pretty if not for the bullet holes piercing each temple. Painted blood dripped from the wounds. A note had been jammed in her mouth. Anna translated.

  Put the mask in the box on the northwest corner of El Llano Park and no harm will come to you.

  —The Tiger

  Anna whipped around, took a hard look at everything. The dark trees ruffled and swayed.

  thirteen THE LOOTER

  The guest room was actually an outbuilding that doubled as laundry room and bunkhouse. Washing sink. Clothesline. Bed shoved against the wall. The girl looked proud and apologetic as the looter tested the mattress, though he was taking the room no matter what.

  Outside, the aunt, a boxy woman with a safety-pinned skirt, hunched on a stool, sifting through dry beans. Her hands were bear paws. He wondered what women like that thought about. Did they ever want sex? What if he snuck up to her in the middle of the night? Maybe she would bless him like a prodigal son.

  “Gracias,” the looter said to the girl.

  The girl smiled back, relieved that the room met his standards.

  “Éste es mi primer viaje a Oaxaca,” he said. “Would you show me the city? Or do you have a map?”

  The girl blushed. “We don’t have a map, but I could show you the bus that goes to the center.”

  The looter pretended to need help getting up. She took his hand.

  For the first time, it occurred to him that she might have a boyfriend or husband. He braced himself to see some macho swagger across the yard. She must have sensed his unease, because when she let his hand go she said, “Just me and my aunt live here. I will tell her that you will take the room. How long will you be staying?”

  The looter produced three hundred pesos, enough for ten nights. The girl closed the bills in her hand, went out to the patio, whispered to her aunt. The two women giggled. The girl picked up her needlepoint. A white cat circled her, bending its tail.

  The looter lit a joint, blew the sweet smoke out the far window. The pot was Pico’s best stuff, and right away, he was parched. It was only the second joint he’d smoked since the accident—that was how he had come to think of it—that Mari hadn’t lit for him. He missed Mari, but was glad to have the girl. He liked having a woman close by. Women brought him luck. You didn’t have to fuck them all. That’s where he’d been wrong. Your first instinct didn’t have to be the one you followed.

  What would the mask say about that? Being a death mask, he’d probably advise banging the girl now because life was short and once the baby came her crotch would be trashed, but when the looter pictured the blue mask, the shattered face surprised him: Be kind, motherfucker, it said. For once in your life, be kind.

  —

  He rode downtown with the girl, bumping about in the hulking bus, their hips touching. Sunny day. No surprise there. They traveled into the city’s colonial heart with its candy-colored buildings and umbrellaed cafés, shops selling black clay angels and Guatemalan worry dolls. Gua-te-ma-la. That dream felt as distant as childhood.

  The looter was feeling good. Stoned, but not paranoid. Reyes didn’t ride public transportation, so even if the drug lord had come to Oaxaca for some assassin downtime, there was zero chance of seeing his hideous face. The looter had his Spanish up and running—past, present, even future.

  “When’s the baby coming?” He had to talk loud over the bus’s whining gears.

  “One month.”

  “Is it a boy?”

  “No lo sé.” The girl shrugged, laughing now, the happiest he’d seen her, like maybe she was ready to talk about the baby instead of pretending it wasn’t there. She had changed clothes for the trip downtown. Her dress was the color of watermelon, cheap and cheerful as a Popsicle. Her breasts were hidden but still there.

  “You look pretty in your dress.” He was practicing nice.

  She thanked him with a shy smile. The other passengers sat sullen and slumped. Guys who had to work and weren’t happy about it. She was the best thing on the bus by far. It was good to have her full attention. He wondered if she smelled sweet, but all he could smell was coconut from the sunblock he’d slathered over his new baby skin.

  “Where do you want to go?” she asked.

  “I need to find someone, actually something. That’s why I came to Oaxaca.”

  The girl looked confused. “What do you want to find?”

  “A present for a friend.”

  She brightened at this idea. “We can go shopping at the market. I could help you pick something out.”

  “This is a special thing. Someone has it and I have to pick it up.”

  “Who has it?”

  “I’m not sure. Could be a couple different people.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  The girl looked at him, and then way beyond that. “I will help you,” she said, committing to each word. “We will figure it out together.”

  He shook his head, amazed. She was more than he deserved, but he wasn’t going to argue. “I can tell you’re going to bring me luck,” he said.

  The bus stopped to let off passengers. The looter said, “Tell me your name.”

  fourteen THE DRUG LORD

  “Mi nombre es Óscar Reyes Carrillo, and I am making this videotape because people may hear stories about me when I am dead and I want them to know the truth. The doctor says I have cancer and do not have long to live. There is also the possibility I will be shot. I sit here before you, stripped down to my calzoncillos to show you I have nothing to hide.

  “I was born in Juárez, the oldest of six children. My father worked construction and odd jobs. We often went to bed hungry, but Mother took us to church every Sunday in clean clothes. People have heard the story of the poor Mexican child so many times it has lost the power to stir pity. I am nothing to you. I am nothing to anyone but myself.

  “When I learned to drive, I took trucks loaded with marijuana over the border. The drugs were hidden under crates of fresh fruit. The border guards let us through for a fee. The cartel paid fifty dollars a trip. I gave my mother half the money. When she asked where it came from, I told her I had a job. This was the truth. The rest of the money I spent on expensive sneake
rs and on girls at nightclubs so they would let me touch their pussies. I was an adolescent drug dealer who thought he was a man.

  “At eighteen, I enrolled in the police academy. The cartels have infiltrated the system to the maximum degree. Recruits are plied with money, drugs, and women, so when they graduate, they are too spoiled to work a normal job. At the academy, young men learned marksmanship, surveillance, security, and interrogation, torture. The best graduates work for the narcos. If they prove disloyal, arrogant, or incompetent, they are shot.

  “For years, I was a paid assassin. At first, I was paid three thousand dollars a hit, but my fee grew to five times that. Sometimes we were instructed to hold or torture captives while we waited for ransom. There are many ways to hurt a man. We’d hook cables to a captive’s big toe and turn on the electric current. We’d wrap people in sheets laced with gasoline and light them on fire. We pulled out fingernails. The suffering is immense. I prefer not to torture women, but sometimes those were the orders. It helps to be high. It’s like watching a movie. There is no guilt.

  “When we received the ransom money, we shot the prisoners and dumped the bodies or placed them in a specific location to send a message. Facedown. Faceup. Finger in the mouth or anus. Every gesture had meaning. It is better to cut people after they are dead so they bleed less. Gangs used to not kill women or children, but people no longer adhere to those niceties. I would go on drug binges and would not sleep for days. I was too high to regret what I was doing. This is not an excuse but an explanation. Maybe the drugs gave me cancer. Or maybe it was the pressure of the life I was leading. Or maybe God is punishing me. A hundred? Two hundred? I do not remember how many people I have killed. I do not take drugs anymore. They are a young man’s game.

  “Maybe I sound like an animal. I am not. I am a patrón. This is a term of respect. Every patrón works for the patrón above him. I collect art and direct the antiquities trade for southern Mexico. My patrón does not understand this sideline, but he does not stop me. People call me van Gogh, not because of my ear, but because I know about art. I dropped out of school in eighth grade, but I have taught myself art history. Mostly, I look at a painting, or whatever, and decide if I want it. I can’t describe what I like about a piece. I just do or don’t. Like a woman. I have stuff in storage that would make museums drool. I could be a decent painter. If I painted my life, no one would believe it. My childhood was beautiful in its own way because we had so little. Children and chickens, sticks and stones. We played narcos against narcos in the dust.