The King's Gold (36 page)

I clicked these exclamations off the liquid crystal display window and decided that I would delay my responses to my mother for a while longer yet.

The second set of text messages I could not ignore. I began this series of communications while I was still in the hospital, and the epistles were to and from the fence, Señor Sam Soto-Relada. I had been writing to him in earnest ever since I had discovered who he was. Though I had attempted to read Señor Soto-Relada’s mind-tweaking disclosures to my unhearing friends before, I now judged that discretion would be the better part of sanity. I also will not publish the great bulk of these letters now, as I am ordinarily a woman of delicacy, yet I had been able to find, in my belladonna delirium, sufficient creative inspiration to transform the cell-phone pad digits into a vehicle for the most scorching of profanities.

The last communiqué, his, will suffice: L IM IN CAR 4, it read.

I quietly rose from my seat, taking care to avoid disturbing my family, and slipped through the train cars like a thief.

I read the car numbers posted on the walls; I entered the fourth. I looked down a long row of seats.

To my left there were six men, the first five identically clothed in gray suits, gorgeous Italian ties, suit coats hurled over the seat top as they unanimously attempted to do inchoate forms of business on phones and computers and out of expensive-looking briefcases.

The sixth man had a red cap on his head, a black coat, and a huge rucksack in the empty seat at his side, and was otherwise not like the rest. But he was like me.

I regarded him for some moments in silence before I said, “Hello Señor Soto-Relada.”

He gazed back, kindly. “Or, angel, you could just go ahead and call me—”

I raised my hand. “Don’t say it.”

“Dad,” insisted Tomas de la Rosa.

The green fields whisked by outside the train window as Tomas de la Rosa slipped off his red cap and replaced it with a night-black, piratically tilted Stetson.

I shook my head. “I’d rather call you—”

He grinned wickedly.

“I think you
know
the names I have in mind. And they’re not anagrams.”

(
Sam Soto-Relada =Tomas de la Rosa
)

He crossed his arms behind his head. “You wouldn’t be the first woman to give me a lashing. But I’m still happy to see you didn’t bring Y in here, because then we’d be having ourselves a nice little family reunion that would probably flip this damned train right over. Though you’re more of a handful than I expected. In those little messages of yours? Shoot. You should learn how to watch your temper, Lola. Though I suppose you can’t help yourself, being born half Sanchez and all.”

His ponytail hung blackly shining beyond his shoulders, and I could see the revealed red and cobalt serpents tattooed on his neck. Gold hoop earrings glinted like eclipses against his brick skin; beneath his ink eyes flashed white teeth. He raised his hand—a large, square, neat-fingered hand—and waved it as if he were shooing away a pesky and fang-dripping Rottweiler when he growled out the word
Sanchez
. I remembered when that same hand had lightly gripped my arm like a magician’s, in Siena’s Piazza del Campo. I suddenly remembered, too, the scholarly fop with the silvery spectacles, bronze magnifying glass, and Umberto Eco accent who had skittled around the Palazzo Medici Riccardi’s dining room before magically stealing Marco’s gun like some hybrid of Gandalf and Bugsy Berkeley.

“So that was you in Florence. In the palazzo—”

“Sure it was. Wasn’t going to let that nasty Moreno put a bullet in my honey.”

“Honey” was one of Erik’s names for me. “Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that.”

“Why are you crying?”

“Everything’s
ruined
.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Erik—he—hurt someone!”

“Jesus, stop that. Now.
Get a hold of yourself.
” For a second, he was fierce. “You’re not out of the woods. You don’t know the meaning of ruined. The boy you should be focusing on is Moreno.”

I clenched my jaw and wiped my face. “He’s why you’re here. Marco.”

“You’re why I’m here—”

“Why didn’t he recognize you? At the palazzo? And—was that you in Rome—in the red cap?”

“He didn’t recognize me for the same reason you didn’t. Because I didn’t want him to. I’ll admit I did get a little sloppy in Siena, where you might recall we did our tango and you nearly split my brains open with a candlestick or something.” Here his anger or fear subsided, and the grin slowly returned. “But all was forgiven when I saw how good you are at using your bean. With the wolf mosaic—which I led you to, don’t forget. I’d figured as much after reading the riddle. But dammit, you cracked it, kid, and I wasn’t sure about you then!”

“Wait a minute. Last year—
you’re
the one who found the Queen Jade in the forest—before Mom got there—at the cave—that’s why it was excavated—”

“‘Course it was me. I was
just about
to hoist the old girl out when the army bastards came sniffing around and I had to race away so as to keep my lambchops in working order, if you see what I’m saying. It was nice, though, when I read that your mother showed up later and tidied everything up in there—though I heard she ran into some trouble—”

“Why did you
lie
to everyone?”

“Because I didn’t think a dead man would be a danger to his family. Marco’s clan was going to give Yolanda a visit, just to give me a taste of my own hooch, as we say in the jungle. Then they were going to give you a call. I thought me being buried would satisfy them.”

“It was the wrong move, Tomas.”

Once again, his face nearly lost its Olmec aplomb. “I know it. All of it for nothing. It’s the son. Marco. He was nice and alcoholic here in Europe till the day he found out his father died. Considering the mess the man left him, you’d think he would have thrown himself a panty raid. But then the boy starts really having fits.
And
feeling the pressure to pay back what I’d done to that worthless cousin of his, honor the name of the aardvark’s ass who sired him, et cetera. There wasn’t anything else for me to do than to come out of hiding, make you valuable to him—”

“As Soto-Relada—”

“Right, posing as a fence, throwing at him that Medici letter I’d busted my tail to get my hands on for fourteen years. Telling him about you and your big brains. How you could help him find the gold. How you were worth more to him healthy—and how if he had at anybody in the family, you wouldn’t lift a finger for him.”

“But you wanted me to know. About you. That’s why you made up the anagram.”

“And gave you about a billion clues when we were talking on the phone, back in Florence—not an easy task, I’ll let you know, as I was spying and scampering after those big goons of Marco’s the whole time, and racing back and forth between you all like a Ping-Pong ball so nobody’d let on to my trick.”

I held my face. “I would
really
like to black out right now—”

“But. Look. What I’m trying to tell you is that it’s better you stay far away from that Marco. That is, after today. And keep Y away from him, too. Also that boyfriend of yours, who looks like he got yanked out of his grave just after he’d got comfortable in it. But I don’t want to talk about the reasons for that.

I can see it just gets you into a tizzy. And you’ve got bigger chickens to fry.”

“Marco. He might have followed us here.”

“Yeah, and it’s no mystery.” Tomas stuck his thumb over his shoulder. “He’s right back there, in car number five. I’m sitting here keeping an eye out”—I glanced to the clear glass window on the sliding door separating the cars—“because he’s crazy. Get me? From what I’ve been able to tell, I think you’re being a
woman
about this, getting fuzzy-brained, thinking maybe he’s not as bad as you think? Nah. He’d hurt you very easily, Lola. Even if right now he seems to be just a little poor puppy dog, lonely as a cloud, all that garbage. Don’t be fooled.”

“I’ll make up my own mind, thanks.”

“I’m serious—be careful. I’ve been watching him. Kid’s beyond help. Went into a bad depression and was close to killing himself a couple of days back. I’m familiar enough with the signs. But he didn’t do it, unfortunately.”

“God.”

“Morenos don’t stay cuddly for too long. Soon as this game plays out, he’ll be another bastard entirely. Which is why I’m going to have to break one of the commandments where he’s concerned.”

“Why are you here?”

“Because I need to make sure you find the gold, without getting garroted in the process.” The wrinkles deepened on his face as an ambiguous expression skated across it. “Which is really just another way of saying I was curious. I wanted to know how you’d do at this game. I needed to see.”

“See what?”

“If what Juana said was right. If it was true about you.”

“If what was true?”

His eyes glittered up at me impatiently. “That you are my daughter.”

A racket of confusion banged and hooted inside me when he said
daughter.
“You think Mom lied to you about that?” I asked hopefully.

“Nah, course not. I mean, if you were
really
mine. You know, a tough nut who hadn’t fallen far from the tree. You think I haven’t romanced my share of ladies who come yelling after me about the numnuts they want me to call ‘son’? Hell, I don’t have time for any of them, and I certainly wouldn’t for some soft-belly from the ’burbs, all sweet and fussy like that boyfriend of Juana’s who went and raised you, no offense. ’Cause a kid like that, well, hell, that wouldn’t work out, would it? I’m not the tender type of
papi,
you see. Better off she and I never met—”

“I’ve heard about you,” I said. “And your
tests
—Yolanda told me. When she was twelve, in the jungle—”

“Why do you think she’s so strong? A woman like that’s the only kind that can survive this ashtray of a planet.”

This subject was dangerous; I switched it. “They say—I read—that you—de la Rosa died here. Venice. The certificate looked real enough.”

Tomas just smiled.

“What you’re doing isn’t
normal
.”

“I know I should have stayed out of sight,” he replied. “Better for Y, better for everyone.
And
it was relaxing, being stone dead, keeping tabs on Yolanda from afar the way the dead do.

I found things very, very, peaceful without being hassled by all these
women
. But the thing is, our family’s always had that problem. What I’m talking about is that curiosity. The wanting to know. The de la Rosas are always poking their noses where they shouldn’t—though I’m sure you’ve already heard the stories. Your mother must have told you about the family...”

I grew very quiet here, but my face betrayed me.

“Or not. I guess she didn’t mention it out of kindness to old Manuel.
Nice
man. But it is a shame, you not knowing about your real kin. It would help you understand why you’re so...strange.”

I found myself holding my breath. “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? What do
I
mean? Look at you. Cut-to-fit, dyed-to-the-bone
de la Rosa
is what you are. Even when you’re bawling and honking and sniffling, darlin’. If you want, I could tell you a little about us. Show you where you got that personality of yours. What you really inherited, besides this letter. Would you like that, pee-wee?”