Saffire (13 page)

From all sources…

The cord jerked at my neck. I'd been silent too long.

“Why did he choose you? Surely if you had no intention of helping, you wouldn't have made the trip. What was in the envelope he gave you and why were you sent?”

“The envelope had the coupons I needed to travel the Zone.”

My turn to test him. Did his questioner know enough to know when I was lying?

“Answer the second question. Why were you sent?”

“To help Goethals.”

“See, we are getting somewhere. Who sent you?”

This was a significant question. It was one thing to reveal that Goethals had an unofficial interest in Ezequiel Sandoval, because anyone with intelligence could make the deduction with or without my help. But to identify who had sent me could inflict severe political damage.

“You shouldn't be doing this,” I said. “I'm a Zone policeman. The badge is in my pocket.”

The deep voice hardened. “This is my country, not your—”

The whispering voice cut him off. “Let me handle this. We are making progress. He evades the answer. That tells me of its importance. I suggest we move to the next stage and give him a real taste of pain.”

My brain scrambled for a lie they'd believe. “I know some land speculators. They sent me.”

“Nothing in your background suggests you travel in those circles. With that lie, you have earned the next stage.”

Hands pulled away the shirt as the cord bit against my neck to hold me in place.

I was afraid, not so much for the expected pain, but that I would discover how much of a coward I was. And that the cowardice would outweigh my loyalty to the president.

Then came the sound of singing children. A
throng
of singing children.

“What is this?” the whispering voice hissed.

“Was that question for me?” I asked. “Sounds like children.”

The sting of a blow hit my head. Good. I'd frustrated my questioner. Maybe even angered him.

The singing grew louder until it was just outside the hut. I couldn't recognize the words. It was in Spanish.

“Cover your faces!” the whispered voice commanded. “Shirts over your heads! And flee as best you can. I will not hurt children.”

Maybe a minute passed. With me in blessed solitude, with the approach of more singing and giggling. I tried to picture the situation. If the kidnappers were unwilling to hurt the children, they were gone, and the children were squeezing their way inside.

“Señor Holt,” came a voice from earlier in the evening. “This is an odd situation. I have come to return the favor, have I not?”

Odalis.

I sagged against the pole. Who needed Miskimon?

As I slid down to a sitting position, the burlap was taken off my head. Odalis showed a face of concern. Around the little man with the big mustache, filling the hut, were dozens of children, giggling and pointing.

Behind them stood Raquel Sandoval, arms crossed. I could read no expression on her face.

Odalis nodded. “Saffire told us we would find you here.”

Saffire.

Odalis had a soft touch as he examined my ears. “The bite of the alligator. As we feared. Raquel suggested it would be safer to bring children than soldiers. It took us awhile to gather them.”

I glanced away from Odalis to the back of the hut, but Raquel was gone. “Where is Saffire?”

“She is…” Odalis looked around. Confusion played across his face. “I do not know. She was here. Now she is gone. But that girl is notorious for going her own way, and for her own reasons.”

“I want to thank her.”

I could not see her anywhere.

“Also, you should thank Señorita Sandoval,” Odalis said. “It was her idea. She paid for all the candy it took to get the children together.”

“Then please pass along my thanks to her.”

“Oh no.” Odalis smiled. “You must do that yourself. I think she likes the Señor Vaquero Americano. When I tease her about it, she gets angry with me.”

I
had a towel around my waist, lather on my face, and a razor in my hand when the three quick knocks came at my bathroom door. The bathroom door, not the hallway door. Which meant, of course, that someone had breached the hallway door to enter my room at the National Hotel.

I had booked a suite with a balcony overlooking the tops of palms trees, the stone buildings of the old city, and the blue of the Pacific beyond. I expected the type of privacy that came with a suite like this. A tray with breakfast had already been delivered, and I wasn't expecting a maid.

The massive bathroom was bigger than my entire bedroom back at the ranch, and I glanced around for anything that I could improvise as a weapon, not expecting much luck. I'd tossed my filthy clothes into a pile on the floor. My boots were at the foot of the claw-foot tub, and I had already filled it with water as hot as I'd been able to run from the tap, thinking I'd let it cool while I shaved and then enjoyed the coffee and toast and eggs.

Normally, I wouldn't feel paranoid about an unexpected room guest. That had happened often enough during my exile years, and for the most part, each occasion had been a pleasant surprise. But I was very conscious of how helpless I'd been with a burlap bag over my head and a clip attached to each of my ears. With that still fresh in my mind, I wasn't going to assume the person on the other side of the door meant well. For all I knew, that person was ready to fire a few shots through the door at the sound of my voice if I responded verbally to the knocks.

Best to err on the side of caution, which meant my only weapon was surprise. That wouldn't give me time to dress, although I was tempted to step into my boots. I missed having my hat.

I set my razor down on the edge of the sink, grabbed a second towel from the thick stack on a shelf at the far side of the bathroom, and tiptoed to the door.

I waited for the next knock, hoping for a repeat pattern of three. What I had in mind might work with only one person on the other side. More than that, I didn't have a chance anyway.

At the next knock, I flung the door open and tossed the towel where I guessed the person's face might be. The only reason I didn't open with a punch at stomach level was on the chance it might be a maid.

The towel spread open like a bullfighter's cape, and I charged through the doorway, trying to take advantage of the split second of confusion that the towel might have created, ready to throw the necessary punches.

What I saw, however, was Miskimon, neatly stepping aside to let the towel flap past him onto the hardwood floor.

“Oh my,” Miskimon said, “let me recover from that intense moment of terror.”

I drew a long breath of suppressed anger through my nostrils and held my covering towel at my waist with my left hand. Miskimon shifted his gaze to a scar that ran from my left shoulder diagonally downward until it disappeared on my chest, where hair covered the remainder of its length. Miskimon noticed my awareness of his gaze.

“Sioux warrior,” I said.

“I didn't ask,” Miskimon answered.

I kept a firm grip on my towel at my waist and returned to the bathroom, shutting the door and turning the lock on it, hoping the click was audible to Miskimon.

I returned to my shaving, then paused, razor in hand. I nearly opened the door again to warn Miskimon not to eat any of the breakfast or drink any of my coffee. That's what I would have done if the situation were reversed—helped myself to the food. But I realized Miskimon wouldn't stoop to that kind of juvenile pettiness.

When I finished shaving, I considered whether to try to ease myself into the hot water. It would give me pleasure to make the fastidious man outside wait for as long as I could endure the soak. I'd even make him listen to some bawdy songs while I lathered and splashed.

But a quick dip of my fingers into the bathwater told me I'd have to wait too long for it to cool enough to be bearable. If only I'd been smart enough to bring my breakfast tray into the bathroom. Now my choices were to step outside again or wait until the water cooled.

I looked into the mirror to wipe away all traces of lather, put on a bathrobe, cinched the waistband, and stepped outside.

Miskimon was standing in the center of the suite, hands behind his back, with a military squareness to his shoulders.

“I was afraid you'd still be here.” I moved past Miskimon to the far edge of the suite, where the breakfast tray had been set on a small round dining table. The suite had more area than my ranch house. I'd have to make sure I put that description in my journal for Winona.

The events of the evening before? Definitely not.

I took the coffeepot and poured a cup. I almost offered a cup to Miskimon, but I was too angry at the man.

I walked to the window that overlooked the balcony and sipped my coffee as I stared at the Pacific, my back to my visitor.

He said, “Normally I find it distasteful to mix metaphors.”

What? I turned. The day before, I'd felt tolerant of the prissy man. No longer. “I expect you find most things in this world distasteful.”

Miskimon pointed at the bed and all the new clothes that had been laid out for me. “This makes it obvious that for someone who seems to prefer living like a lone wolf, after a rough night, you certainly know how to land on your feet like an alley cat. You really expect the ICC to pay for all this?”

“I'm in no mood to talk to you, let alone respond to some kind of implied scorn. I presume you have a reason for illegally entering a private room in a private hotel?”

“There is the fact that you have requested that the hotel bill the ICC for all charges, which makes it a room I have full rights to enter.”

“If the ICC doesn't cover the bill, I know a newspaper person who'd find the backstory interesting.”

“You're going to play it that way?”

“Already have. Thought that billing it to you and Goethals would get you here plenty fast. And look, it did.”

“Where were you last night?” Miskimon said.

“More important, where were you?” I had no problem matching his scorn and anger. “The true alley cat here is the one who went slinking away when the real trouble arrived.”

“Hardly. Real trouble is an unarmed man against another with a pistol and yet another with a knife. Let me try to recall if someone like that was there to rescue you last night in such a situation. Give me a moment. Ah. Yes. That would have been me. Keeping in the spirit of metaphors, let's examine if alley cats ever show much gratitude to those who help them.”

“Gratitude? It doesn't take much effort to knock a man out from behind or to hit another man twice when his arms are pinned to the wall. Am I supposed to thank you for that? Or for spying on me?”

“Odalis at least did his best to protect the girl. Saffire. The one who worships you. Try to recall the girl. You simply disappeared and let the police arrest both of them.”

I went back to the coffeepot because that would keep me from trying to strangle Miskimon. I spoke as I walked, making an effort to sound casual. “That just shows the extent of your commitment to any real fight. Had you stuck around, you would have learned a little more.”

“Where were you throughout the night? Were you able to put the revolver to good use?”

I poured coffee. The roast of the beans was excellent. I should have expected that. I was surrounded by lush plantations. Whatever coffee made it to the desolation of the Dakotas certainly wasn't like this.

“The revolver,” Miskimon said. “Is it in the bathroom?”

“You searched my suite. Then concluded I didn't have it in the bathroom. Not many gunfights where I'm from involve cowboys throwing towels at each other.”

“Where did you leave it?”

“You know it's in Culebra, in the valise that I gave you for safekeeping.” I paused. “The valise
is
safe? Tell me you didn't find a way to be incompetent about that too. It is safe, right?”

“In the Zone, at least away from the construction sites, safety is not an issue. I meant the revolver that was used to threaten you last night before—”

“—before you so boldly snuck up behind a man and dropped him with a mighty blow from a wine bottle? No, I don't have that revolver.”

“It might have told us something about the person who sent those two.”

I took a few steps toward him. “I had a lot of time last night to wonder about that. Time to wonder why you'd decided not to bother to watch my back after my arrest. I wondered why, right after the fight, you were so quick to ask if anyone knew those men.”

“They first punched Odalis. Not you.”

“So you're trying to get answers because you were there last night to protect him? Strange coincidence, then, that I was in the same place as Odalis.”

Miskimon pulled out a handkerchief and removed his glasses and polished them.

As he put the glasses back on with his customary flick, I said, “If you want to know about my night, how about you tell me first how and why you disappeared. It would have been helpful for you to stick around after sending me out with questions about Ezequiel Sandoval. Questions that I'm guessing you expected would put my head into the jaws of a lion.”

Miskimon gave me a long, long stare. Then he stepped closer and made no secret that he was examining my face. We were barely two feet apart. I lifted my coffee cup and slurped, guessing that it would irritate the man. His eyes moved to my ears. I resisted the urge to rub the small fresh scabs on my ear lobes.

Miskimon stepped back. “So. You met the lion.”

“Not a lion, but
the
lion? I'm not in a mood to answer where I was last night. Whatever you know about all this is a lot more than I know. And you knew a lot more than I did when you put me on the train yesterday afternoon.”

“What happened last night? This is important.”

“I went for a long leisurely stroll. I composed poetry. Studied the stars. What did you do when the National Police arrived right after the fight?”

“Avoiding arrest took no effort, as you might guess. All it took to blend in was wearing that hideous coat. I threw it under a table. It was no sacrifice to lose it as I went out of the bathroom window.”

“Difficult, isn't it, being a slave to fashion? Where I come from, other things are more important. Like sticking with a fight when your partner is in trouble. Not that you and I are, or ever will be, partners.”

Miskimon seemed oddly subdued. “I didn't want to get arrested. It would have been politically embarrassing, and it would have led to questions that would have reflected badly on Colonel Goethals.”

If Miskimon's anger toward me was lessening, the opposite was happening with mine toward him. I set my cup down on the table to keep from striking out at the man. “If only I could come up with an animal metaphor capable of conveying the scorn your excuse deserves. No wait. Give me a moment. Ah. Yes. I'll give you a hint. It has no legs and it slithers. Let's go with that animal metaphor.”

I wanted Miskimon to lash back. I wanted a roaring shouting match. The night before, I'd humiliated myself with my fear.

I'd discovered I was a lesser man than I believed myself to be.

“I'm sorry,” Miskimon said. “Sorry to you. Last night at the Coconut when the National Police arrived, as I weighed those factors, I also made the evaluation that if I was arrested with you, then I wouldn't be in a position to bail you out of the jail. I thought you would be safe in jail, like Odalis was with Saffire. While I was there within the half hour, I wasn't allowed to reach a judge until early morning to bail them out. The rest of the night, I spent looking for you. I apologize I wasn't there to prevent whatever happened to you.”

So he accepted that I had a right to be angry. Normally, that would have appeased me. But I still wanted that shouting match. “Convenient that you couldn't find me then. Yet now, when the most danger you face is tripping on a carpet, you magically appear? Hang on, I have the answer. Because the ICC is concerned about a hotel bill.”