Текст книги "The Bourne Imperative (Крах Борна)"

Автор книги: Eric Van Lustbader

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

She lifted a forefinger. “And make no mistake, going after Maceo Encarnación is walking into tiger territory. There will be no mercy, no second chances, only, if you are lucky, death.” She stubbed out her cigarillo. “ Butif you are verylucky and extremely clever, you may yet walk out of the tiger’s den with what you and I desire.”

17

TULIO VISTOSO ARRIVED in Washington, DC, with anxiety in his mind and murder in his heart.

How difficult was it, he thought, for Florin Popa to keep safe what he, Don Tulio, had so cleverly stolen on the steep, treacherous trail along the Cañon del Sumidero, outside Tuxtla Guttiérez, replacing the real thirty million with what he had been certain were undetectable counterfeit bills? And yet, Popa had failed, and his life was forfeit if he could not placate Don Maceo and his holy, all-powerful buyers within thirty-six hours.

He was still fulminating about the monumental fuck-up when he arrived at the Dockside Marina and saw the Cobalt in slip 31 crawling with cops. And not just cops, he realized with a jolt. Federales. He could smell them a mile away. They moved with a certain measured gait, like dray horses in their traces. He stared, horrified. The boat was well guarded, cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape.

Christ on the cross, what in the name of all that’s holy has happened?Instinctively, he looked around, as if Popa might be lurking somewhere in the vicinity. Where the hell was Popa? Don Tulio wondered with a sinking heart. Had Popa absconded with the thirty million? Don Tulio’s thirty million. This prospect terrified him. Or, worse, did the federaleshave it? Was Popa in their custody? With a trembling hand, he began to fire off a series of text messages to his lieutenants in a frenzied endeavor to recoup the thirty million as quickly as possible.

The Aztec felt like pulling his hair out. His crazed brain kept churning out dire possibilities, but a sliver of civilized veneer stopped him cold. Instead, he turned on his heel and stalked away. He swiped a hand across his forehead. Despite the chill, he was sweating like a pig.

Up ahead, a car pulled into a parking space in the lot and, a moment later, a young man leaped out. He pushed by Don Tulio as he hurried down the gangplank, onto the dock, and out to slip 31. Sensing something unusual, the Aztec turned. Sure enough, the federaleants crawling all over the Recursivebegan kowtowing to the new arrival: el jefe. This interested Don Tulio so, instead of hightailing it, he decided to hang around as unobtrusively as possible. This meant going down the gangplank himself and onto the dock. Choosing a deserted boat as far away as practical from the activity on the Recursive, he climbed aboard and busied himself doing nothing at all while he spied on the new arrival.

Happily for him, the marina’s quiet atmosphere, combined with how the water carried the voices, allowed him to overhear snatches of conversation. In this way, he determined that el jefe’sname was Marks. Turning for a moment, he noted that the vehicle Marks had arrived in was a white Chevy Cruze. He jumped off the boat, then went at an unhurried pace back up the ramp and into the lot, where he jotted down the Cruze’s license plate number. Back on the boat, he returned his attention to Marks himself, his mind already plotting his next several moves.

It had been his experience that meeting with the chief of your enemies was preferable to working your way up the plantain tree. But meeting with federales, especially on their own turf, was a tricky business, one, Don Tulio knew, that needed to be thought out in considerable detail. He also knew that he would get one shot at confronting jefeMarks, so he was obliged to make the best of it. The danger of such a maneuver did not disturb him; he lived with danger every day of his life, had done so from the time he was ten years old and already raging through the streets of Acapulco. He had loved the sea, even before he became a cliff diver, showing off for Gringo money. He jumped from the highest cliff, dove the deepest, stayed down the longest. The churning water was his father and his mother, rocking him into a form of peace he could find nowhere else.

He became king of the divers, taking a cut from all their winnings. That might have continued indefinitely, until the moment a Gringo tourist accused him of fucking his teenage daughter. That the Gringa had initiated the liaison meant nothing in the face of her father’s colossal wealth and the authorities’ desperation to keep Acapulco a world-class tourist destination.

He got out just ahead of the cops, fleeing north, losing himself in the immense urban sprawl of Mexico City. But he never forgot how the Gringo had ruined his life, for he loved the ocean waters, desperately missed his old life. Years passed and a new life began to weave around him. Anarchism first. When he was older, he took out his rage at the institutional corruption with bouts of extreme violence against anyone who held a steady job. Eventually, he got smart and joined a drug cartel, working his way up the power grid by any and all means, which impressed his superiors up until the moment he directed his followers to cut their heads off with machetes.

From that bloody moment on he had been jefe, consolidating his power with the other cartel heads. He was uncomfortable in society. He had no expertise navigating the capital’s deep and treacherous political waters, so he had forged an alliance with Maceo Encarnación, which had served them both well.

The Aztec made himself busy all over again while he leaned his ear to the prevailing wind and discovered that Popa was dead. JefeMarks had killed him, after which he had inadvertently found the key. The fucking key, Don Tulio thought with a savagery that shook him to his core. He has the fucking key.But then, his mind cooling a single degree, he dredged up this hopeful thought: He has the fucking key, but that doesn’t mean he has the thirty million.Which was followed by a second hopeful thought: If thefederales have the money, why are they searching the boat so frantically?

Fuming, the Aztec finished coiling a rope for the seventeenth time. Noting that the federaleswere breaking up, he went down into the cabin, waiting there patiently while he counted the number of rivets in the deck, perched uncomfortably on a narrow seat. Shadows passed as the federalesleft the Recursiveand went back up the dock to the parking lot. He listened for the car engines starting up. When, like popping corn, they ceased, he knew it was time.

Emerging from the cabin, he looked at the Recursive. It appeared deserted, but he resisted the urge to board it. Even though the clock that now measured his life was ticking mercilessly away, he knew it would be foolish to risk everything by going over there in daylight. Better by far to show patience, to wait for night to fall. He returned to the boat, lay down on the deck, and fell instantly into a deep and untroubled sleep.

Midnight,” Constanza said. “Manny will come and collect you.” After she bade them goodnight, Bourne and Rebeka retired to the two adjoining bedrooms in the guest wing. But almost immediately she appeared on the threshold of his room.

“Are you tired?” Rebeka asked.

Bourne shook his head.

She walked in, went past him, and stood by the window, arms wrapped around herself, staring out at the inner courtyard. Bourne came and stood beside her. They could hear the wind clatter through the palms. By a sliver of moonlight, they watched the rustling of the leaves on the lime tree.

“Jason, do you ever think about death?” When he said nothing, she went on. “I think about it all the time.” She shivered. “Or maybe it’s just this place. Mexico City seems steeped in death. It gives me the creeps.”

She turned to him. “What if we don’t survive tomorrow?”

“We will.”

“But what if we don’t?”

He shrugged.

“Then we die in darkness,” she said, answering her own question. She stirred, then said, “Put your arms around me.” When he did, holding her tight, she said, “Why don’t we feel the way other people feel, deep down, not just on the surface, like water glancing off water? What is the matter with us?”

“We can do what we do,” Bourne said softly, “only because we are what we are.” He looked down at her. “There’s no turning back for us.

There’s only one exit from the life we live, and none of us who are good at what we do want to take it.”

“Do we love what we do so much?”

He was silent. The answer was evident.

He held her that way until, with a discreet knock on the partially open door, Manny announced himself.

His name is unimportant,” Manny said as he drove them through Mexico City’s bright-night streets. “He is known as el Enterrador.” The Undertaker.

“Isn’t that a little over the top?” Rebeka said from the plush backseat of the armored Hummer.

Manny looked at her in the rearview mirror and smiled with his teeth. “Wait till you meet him.”

Flashing lights up ahead revealed a semicircle of cop cars, blazing headlights illuminating six cops using truncheons to beat down on a dozen teenagers armed with switchblades and broken beer bottles.

“Just another night in Mexico City,” Manny said with no apparent irony.

They traveled on, through the Zona Rosa, the Historic Center, seemingly across the entire broad expanse of a city that sprawled, octopus-like, across the mile-high plain toward the great looming volcano, Popocatépetl, brooding like an ancient Aztec god.

They witnessed fires, street gangs stalking one another, they heard raucous Gringo techno and native rancheramusic spilling out of nightclubs, vengeful brawls, the occasional gunshot. They were passed by roaring, souped-up cars driven by drunken kids, with cumbiaor rap blasting from custom speakers, on and on, a nightmare scenario without end.

But at last they reached Villa Gustavo a Madero, and Manny slowed the Hummer, rolling it through darkened, sleeping streets, into the heart of the city within the city. Up ahead, the bonnets of trees, black against the twinkling, indistinct skyline, rose up like a prehistoric world until, through tree-shadowed byways, they reached the very center of the heart: the Cementerio del Tepeyac.

“Of course,” Rebeka said to relieve the almost unbearable tension, “where else would el Enterradorhang out but in a cemetery.”

However, it wasn’t to one of the crypts that Manny took them, but to the Basilica de Guadelupe. He had no difficulty unlocking the door to the basilica and ushering them inside.

The incredibly intricate and exquisitely painted interior was ablaze, the gilt chandeliers illuminating the host of cherubs that spilled across the domed ceiling. Manny remained just inside the doorway while gesturing them down the central aisle. Long before they reached the draped altar, however, a figure appeared: a man with a pointed beard and mustache. His black eyes seemed to penetrate their clothes, their very skin, as if peering into the heart of them.

He possessed the pallor and demeanor of a ghost, speaking so softly Bourne and Rebeka were obliged to lean forward to hear him. “You come from Constanza Camargo.” It was not a question. “Follow me.”

As he turned to go, he pushed up the wide sleeves of his ecclesiastical robe, revealing forearms knotted with muscle and ropy veins, crawling with tattoos of coffins and tombstones, beautiful and horrific.

It was almost 4 am by the time the Aztec awoke, according to his unerring internal clock. He was hungry. No matter. There were thirty million reasons to ignore the gnawing in his stomach. Finding a rubberized waterproof flashlight, he took it topside.

Outside, Washington glittered, seeming far away across the water. Don Tulio looked across to where the Recursivelay tied up at slip 31. No one was visible. In fact, the entire marina appeared deserted. Still, the Aztec stood on the boat, aurally cataloguing the night noises—the slap of the wavelets against hulls, the creaking of masts, the pinging of rigging against those masts—these were all the normal sounds of a marina. Don Tulio listened beyond those for any anomalous sounds—the soft tread of feet, the low sound of voices, anything that would indicate the presence of human beings.

Finding none, he was at last satisfied. He climbed onto the dock, first looking to the darkened harbormaster’s hut, then swiftly and silently made his way to slip 31, stepping, at last, aboard the Recursive.

He went immediately to the second bumper on the starboard side and felt under it with his fingers. The nylon rope was still there! Heart pounding, he pulled in the rope, hand over hand. The weight felt just as it should; with every foot he reeled in, he became more and more certain that his thirty million was safe and secure at the nether end of the rope.

But when he had pulled it all in and switched on the flashlight, what he saw tied to the end was a lead weight.

“Looking for this?”

Don Tulio whirled, saw jefeMarks holding up the watertight satchel, deflated, empty, the thirty million and his life gone. Engulfed by the final wave of his murderous rage, he leaped at his tormentor, heard the explosion rocket through his ear, felt the bullet enter, then exit his left biceps. He kept going, a full-on bull-rush that took both Marks and him over the railing, both plunging down, the chill black water robbing them both of breath.

Chinatown? Really?” Charles Thorne sat down at the Formica table opposite the tall, slender man, dressed in one of those shiny Chinese suits that imitated the American style, but none too well.

“Try the moo goo gai pan,” Li Wan said, gesturing with his chopsticks. “It’s really rather good.”

“Christ, it’s four in the morning,” Thorne said with a sour face. There was no point in asking Li how he managed to get a restaurant to stay open for him in the waning hours of the night when nothing, not even the cats, was roaming Chinatown’s streets. “Besides, it’s not really a Chinese dish.”

Li Wan shrugged his coat-hanger shoulders. “When in America.”

Thorne shook his head as he unwrapped his chopsticks and dug in.

“I suppose you were expecting beef sinew and fish maw,” Li said with a visible shudder.

“My friend, you’ve spent too much time in America.”

“I was bornin America, Charles.”

Thorne lapped a slick of MSG off his chopsticks. “Exactly my point. You need a vacation. Back to the homeland.”

“Not myhomeland. I was born and raised right here in DC.”

Li, a prominent intellectual rights lawyer, had graduated from Georgetown University, which made him wholly homegrown. Still, Thorne couldn’t help needling him; it was part of their relationship.

Thorne frowned. Despite what Li had said, he didn’t like the moo goo gai pan at all. “As an outsider, you’re privy to an awful lot of their secrets.”

“Who said I’m an outsider?”

Thorne regarded him thoughtfully before hailing a passing waiter, who stopped and stood before him with the air of someone who, despite the hour, had many things better to do. Picking up the greasestained plastic menu, Thorne ordered General Tso’s chicken. “Extra crispy,” he said, though it’s doubtful the waiter heard him or, if he did, cared, until Li spoke to him in the withering Cantonese only a Mandarin could manage. Off the waiter went, as if Li had lit his tail on fire.

After pouring them both chrysanthemum tea, Li said, “Really, Charles, after all these years it would behoove you to learn Cantonese as well as Mandarin.”

“What? So I can intimidate waiters in Chinatown? That’s all it’s good for these days.”

Li regarded him again with his patented inscrutable look.

“You do that deliberately,” Thorne complained. “You know that, don’t you? I’m on to you.”

The waiter set down a platter of General Tso’s chicken, and, after giving Li a questioning look and receiving an answering nod, beat a hasty retreat.

“Is it extra crispy?” Li said.

“You know it is,” Thorne replied, piling some into his bowl of rice.

The two men ate in companionable silence amid the sizzle and steam of the open kitchen behind them. The usual bustle, shouting, and shoving, however, were missing. The unaccustomed hush lent the place a forlorn air.

At last, when the first frenzy of shoving the food into his mouth had abated, Charles said, “I’ve known you a long time, Li, but I still can’t figure how an outsider like you is trusted with—”

“Hush, Charles.”

Their waiter, wiping his hands on his filthy apron, walked past them to the men’s room.

Li pointed at Thorne’s dish. “There really was a General Tso, you know. Zuo Zongtang. Qing Dynasty. Died in 1885. From Hunan. Odd since the dish is mainly sweet, not spicy like most Hunan dishes. It’s not indigenous to Changsha, the capital of Hunan, nor Xiangyin, the general’s home town. So what is its origin? There’s speculation that the name of the dish was originally zongtangchicken.”

“Meaning ‘ancestral meeting hall.’”

Li nodded. “In that event, nothing to do with the good general.” He swirled some tea around his mouth and swallowed. “Of course, the Taiwanese have claimed they created the dish.” Li put down his chopsticks. “The point being, Charles, that no one knows these things– no one can.”

“Are you saying that it’s impossible to know how you became such a trusted guardian of—”

“Listen to me,” Li said, abruptly and finally. “I’m saying that in Chinese culture there are many reasons for many things, most of them too complicated to comprehend fully.”

“Try me,” Thorne said with a mouthful of food.

“I can’t go into my lineage. It would make your eyes pop and your head spin. Suffice it to say, I am among the elite residing outside of Beijing. As to your suggestion of returning to the motherland, I’m far too valuable to the powers that be precisely where I am.”

“‘The powers that be.’” Thorne flashed a lopsided grin. “One of those opaque, distinctly Chinese phrases.”

“As they say,” Li said, returning the lopsided grin like a forehand over the net, “Beijing is composed of equal parts quicksand and cement.”

“What do ‘the powers that be’ think of your bedding Natasha Illion?” Li and Illion, a supermodel of Israeli background, had been a breathless item for over a year, something of a record for that rareified, hothouse species.

Li, silent on the subject of his inamorata, watched Thorne return to his eating, waiting a decent amount of time before he said, “I understand you have a bit of an issue.”

At that, Thorne’s chopsticks froze halfway to his mouth. He covered his consternation by making a show of putting them down slowly and carefully. “Exactly what have you heard, Li?”

“Exactly what you have. You and the rest of the senior staff at Politics As Usualare about to be investigated for illegal voicemail hacking.” He cocked his head. “Tell me, does the illustrious Senator Ann Ring know?”

“If she did,” Thorne said acidly, “she’d be jumping out of her skin.” He shook his head. “The investigation has not yet begun.”

“For the time being.”

“She must, on no account, find out. It will be the end.”

“Yes, the end of your gravy train. How many millions is your wife worth?”

Thorne regarded him bleakly.

“But the senator will find out the moment the investigation begins, if she hasn’t already.”

“She hasn’t, believe me.”

“Tick-tock, Charles.”

Thorne winced inwardly. “I need help.”

“Yes, Charles,” Li Wan said, “you most certainly do.”

El Enterradorled them to the back of the apse, down a short, dimly lit corridor, into the rectory, which smelled of incense, polished wood, and man-sweat. Beneath an enormous figure of Christ on the Cross were laid out the architectural plans for Maceo Encarnación’s villa on Castelar Street.

“Are you sure this is where our man is going to be?” Bourne had asked Constanza Camargo earlier in the evening.

“If, as you say, he was flown here to Mexico City,” she had replied, “this is the reason why.”

El Enterradortook them floor by floor, room by room, through the house. “Two floors,” came his papery whisper, “plus, most importantly, a basement.” He told them why.

“The roof is made of traditional unglazed Mexican tiles. Very sturdy. There are two exit doors on the ground floor—front and back. None on the second floor, save the windows. And as for the basement—” his long, stiletto-like forefinger showed them on the plan.

Then he lifted the top sheet, exposing another. “Those were the original plans. Here are the modifications Maceo Encarnación made when he moved in.” His forefinger stabbed out again. “You see, here—and here—and again here.” His black-ice eyes cut to them for an instant. “Good for you, possibly. Possibly not. That is not my business. I told Constanza Camargo that I would get you in. The rest is up to you.”

He stood up, his cowl throwing an oblique shadow across the modified plan. “Afterward, if you are successful, if you manage to escape, you will not come here, nor will you go to Constanza Camargo’s home.”

“We discussed with her what would happen,” Rebeka said, “after.”

“Did you?” Clearly, el Enterrador’s interest was piqued. “Well, well.”

“She must like us.”

El Enterradornodded. “I believe she does.”

“How do you know Señora Camargo?” Rebeka asked.

El Enterradorflashed them an evil smile. “We met in heaven,” he whispered, “or in hell.”

“That’s hardly helpful,” Rebeka said.

“We are in Mexico, Señorita. Here there are volcanos, serpents, madness, gods, sacred places. Mexico City is one such. It is built upon the navel of the Aztec world. Here, heaven and hell meet.”

“Let’s get on with it,” Bourne said, “shall we?”

The evil smile returned to the false priest’s lips. “An unbeliever.”

“I’m a believer in doing,” Bourne said, “not talking.”

El Enterradornodded. “Fair enough, but...” He handed a small object to Bourne. It was a tiny replica of a human skull, studded with crystals. “Keep this safe,” he said. “It is protection.”

“Against what?” Bourne asked.

“Maceo Encarnación.”

At that moment, Bourne recalled what Constanza Camargo had said: “ I underestimated Maceo Encarnación’s power. He is protected by an almost mystical power, as if by gods.”

“Thank you,” he said.

El Enterradorinclined his head, obviously pleased.

Rebeka said, “Are we to stay here?”

“No. You will be transported to the mortuary, where you will stay until the call comes.”

“The call will come to this particular mortuary?” Bourne said. “This one and no other.”

Bourne nodded, accepting el Enterrador’s word.

They were led out of the rectory, through a small, unobtrusive door, out into the churchyard beyond which stretched the vast cemetery, a city unto itself. There was a hearse awaiting them, its engine purring richly.

El Enterradoropened the wide rear door, and they climbed in. “ Vaya con Dios, mis hijos,” he said in a pious voice, and made the sign of the cross. Then he slammed the door shut, and the hearse rolled out of the churchyard, away from the basilica, making its funereal way through the blackened byways of Cementerio del Tepeyac, heading deeper and deeper into the mystical heart of the city.

18

PETER, DOWN IN the depths, felt the chill of death. Hands were at his throat.

He kicked out, but the water, seeming thick as sludge, defeated his attack. Bringing his hands up under those at his throat, he exploded them outward the moment they made contact. The pressure came off, but the two of them were still sinking down.

He scissored his legs, arrowing upward, but hands caught at him, dragging him back. Didn’t this man need to breathe as badly as he did, weren’t his lungs aching, his head pounding, his heart thumping painfully in his chest?

Peter could not see his antagonist, had never seen him, in fact. The moment his flashlight picked him out on the boat, he was blinded by the man’s own flashlight. Then came the attack, and both of them went into the water.

Down and down.

Peter felt the cold sucking the strength out of him. His limbs felt like lead weights. Then there was an arm around his throat, a choke hold, which he could not tolerate. Feeling for the man’s face, he jammed a thumb into one eye, pushing and pushing with all the strength left in him, and though the water impeded him, he had enough leverage that the choke hold vanished.

Peter spun to confront his attacker face-to-face. No light in the darkness. He had no idea how deep they had drifted, only that there was less than a minute before his lungs ran out of oxygen.

He rose, feathering his lower legs, then, instead of an ineffective kick, shoved the heel of his shoe into his attacker’s face. Instantly, then, he scissored his legs again, reaching upward with his arms, his first priority now to get to the surface.

With that goal fixed firmly in mind, he kicked harder than ever. It seemed an eternity, during which he might have blacked out for seconds at a time, reality drooling by in discrete segments, connected by nothingness, as if his mind had completely fled his body. But, at last, he saw wavering above him the shadow of illumination—the opposite of a shadow, casting itself on what, as he neared, he realized was the skin of the water.

As he broke the surface, strong arms reached down, powerful hands gripped him—his men, alerted by the shot he had fired, must have been searching for him from the moment they boarded the Recursive.

He heard grunts above him, lifted his head to see two or three faces, among them Sam Anderson, his deputy, picked out in the glare of the spotlights. He squinted, half-blinded by the spots, like a creature from the depths. He heard Anderson turn and call for the spots to be angled slightly away, and was grateful when his men promptly complied.

That was when he felt something pinion his legs, then an immense weight pulling him inexorably back down into the water. Dimly, as he shouted, he wondered how his assailant could manage to stay underwater so long and still have the strength to try to pull him under.

Above his head, he heard shouts of consternation, above all, Anderson’s firm voice, calmly calling out orders. As the men redoubled their grip on him, Anderson rose, and, drawing his sidearm, fired it into the water near Peter.

When the fourth bullet streaked into the water, Peter felt the weight come off, and his men drew him up, back over the railing and onto the deck of the Recursive. Immediately, they wrapped him in blankets. Red lights spattered the deck and cowling in rhythmic bursts. Peter saw that one of the revolving lights belonged to an ambulance. A pair of burly EMT paramedics lifted him onto a gurney.

“Anderson,” he said in a voice that sounded unsteady even to his ears, “get these people off me. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Sorry, boss, but we’ve got to get you checked out.”

The gurney was lifted off the boat onto the dock. Peter discovered he was strapped down and helpless. Anderson trotted at his side. They rolled him up the dock to the parking lot where the ambulance waited.

“That fucker’s still down there. We have to ID him. Call out the divers.”

“Already done, boss.” Anderson grinned. “In the meantime, we have spotlights on three Coast Guard boats scanning the harbor.”

Just before the paramedics loaded him into the back of the ambulance, Anderson placed his mobile onto his chest, and said, “While you were getting wet, you got a priority call from SecDef.” Hendricks.

The paramedics were already taking his vitals.

“The moment I get out of restraints,” Peter said with no little sarcasm. Then: “Anderson, find this fucker.”

“You got it, boss.”

The door slammed shut and the ambulance took off. Anderson retraced his step to slip 31 and got back to work. The boss said to find the fucker, and that’s precisely what he was going to do.

Early that morning, Maria-Elena had driven out of the heavily protected compound on Castelar Street, heading, as she always did, to her favorite markets to shop for that night’s dinner.

She was a creature of habit. She had worked for only one person in her life. Maceo Encarnación had taken her off the streets of Puebla when she was fourteen, a terribly thin, undernourished girl, and introduced her to his household. As it happened, she had a natural gift for preparing food—all that was needed was a bit of polishing from the then cook. From the moment Maria-Elena cooked her first dinner in his house, she had become an immediate favorite of Maceo Encarnación. He elevated her above others on his staff who had been with him longer, which, of course, caused friction.

Later, looking back on it from her lofty perch, Maria-Elena realized that the temporary chaos her rise had caused among the staff had been deliberate. It was a form of harrowing, Maceo Encarnación seeking to root out the malcontents and troublemakers before anything untoward happened. With their firing, the household returned to a peacefulness deeper than it had experienced before. Maria-Elena was certain Maceo Encarnación was a genius at handling people, not only his staff. Her keen eye observed how he dealt with his guests– how he engaged some, flattered others, humiliated still others, and proposed ultimatums, either by guile or directly, depending on the guest’s personality—to get what he wanted out of them.

In the end, it was the same with me, she had thought as she shopped for fresh fruit, vegetables, chilies, meat, chocolate, and fish. She knew all the vendors, and they, in turn, knew her, mindful of who she worked for. Needless to say, she received the best of everything, all at prices significantly under those they proposed to their other customers. From time to time, they gave Maria-Elena little treats for herself and for her daughter, Anunciata. After all, she was important in their world, and, besides, in her early forties, she was still a beautiful and desirable woman, though she didn’t consider herself beautiful, not like Anunciata. Anyway, she desired no man at all.

After shopping, she always walked a bit down Avenida Presidente Masaryk, where Maceo Encarnación shopped at all the chic, highend designer boutiques. Seventeen years ago, just after Anunciata had been born, while she still lay in the hospital, Maceo Encarnación had arrived with a jeweled Bulgari bracelet for her. For weeks afterward, she was terrified to try it on, though she fondled it every day and slept with it on her pillow every night.