The King's Gold (4 page)

sory leaving now see u when i get back hope we don’t have to put off weding

u r nuts we r geting maried

My last line
was
actually intended as a tease, since I was so scorchingly in love with Erik Gomara that I would never postpone our nuptials. But before I was able to send off a “JK” Marco interrupted: “Writing about dinner plans again?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry—that was rude of me to just keep you standing there. I was telling Erik about the letter.”

Marco’s mouth twisted. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about him. Erik’s very discreet.” This actually was not true at all. “And he’s really good at code breaking. In fact, I think we should bring him in on this project. He did incredible work the year before last, in the jungle—like we were talking about.”

“Yes, we
were
talking about that, weren’t we? What happened in the jungle?” Marco looked down at the phone in my hand. “Say, that
is
a cunning little device, now that I take a better look at it. May I?”

“Sure.”

Marco took the Nokia from me and threw it over his shoulder.

“Blasej.”

The redheaded man caught it neatly with his right hand. He put it in his pocket, without making eye contact with me.

“My phone,” I said.

“Oh, he’s just checking it out.”

“I need that.”

“You won’t in Italy,” Marco assured me. “Domestic lines don’t work over there.”

“What’s going on? This is weird—”

Before I could object any more, however, Marco startled me by leaning over and breathing in sharply as he sniffed my hair with his slender nose.

I stepped back. “What are you doing?”

“What is that I smell? Perfume?” He sniffed again, beneath my ear. “Hmmmm, beautiful.” And then, in a very low murmur, I heard: “And I thought the de la Rosas stank—”

“What the hell did you just say?”

I skittered quickly away from him and over to the far wall, by the Red Lion’s history section.

“Your perfume, it’s lovely.” He laughed. “As are you, for that matter. It’s really such a surprise.”

I hesitated for a second. He was a
freak.
“I think you should go.”

“
Go?
Why?”

“I heard what you said.”

Marco lowered his eyelids and smiled. “I don’t mean to offend. But…it’s just that the de la Rosas don’t have the best reputation, do they? As we were discussing, there was that very
dirty
business you were involved in a couple of years back, in the jungle. Colonel Moreno, and all that?”

“Like I said before, I’d rather not discuss that subject—”

“What, Colonel Moreno? Yes, it
is
unpleasant. As is the fact that your father bombed that army base in—what?—1993. And murdered Moreno’s nephew.”

“Did you come here tonight to talk about de la Rosa or the Medici?”

“They’re connected, actually.” He grinned.

I gawked at him. “What do you mean? How?”

“Oh, I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Let’s see, where was I? De la Rosa murdered Serjei, and then Colonel Moreno wanted his revenge. Oh, I know—Moreno
was
crazy. A Central American Stalin! Once the war was over, he wanted to breed a society of warrior-aristocrats, and to that end was a fanatic for clan honor, reprisals. Thus he went after you, de la Rosa’s daughter. Agh, the Morenos! Can’t get over their grief. They’re so
emotional.
”

“Emotional?”

Marco did not seem as nearly harmless as he did just a minute before. He no longer seemed like a flighty playboy at all. Rather, he moved stealthily toward me as he talked. “Yes, they can’t seem to get over their sorrow. That’s why he didn’t stop hunting de la Rosa after the bombing—and put out a death warrant on the entire de la Rosa family, in fact. Which is why you had that trouble in the jungle, yes? While you were searching for your father’s grave? But you took care of it. When the army showed up, you defended yourself and your family by killing the colonel.”

I shook my head. “Is that what people are saying? Because I didn’t kill anyone. Moreno ordered Estrada—one of his men, a lieutenant—to shoot us; it was terrible.”

“Yes, it
must
have been. Hideous!”

“But Estrada lost his mind when the colonel told him to do that. He killed Moreno instead. We just…watched.”

“Oh, is that all?” Marco said, in a low, soft voice. “You just stood by, while a man was beaten to death?”

A deep beat of silence passed here.

“And it remains true, doesn’t it,” he went on, “that the de la Rosas are the reasons why the Morenos suffered such unforgivable losses. I mean, if Tomas had been, say, strangled in his cradle—and you had never been born—then today, the Morenos would still be one, big
adorable
family.”

I had my back to the bookshelf, and my pulse rattled in my throat. Marco stepped very close to me. He was a good foot taller than I am, and he drew so near that I could smell the spice on his skin. I could also see the tears suddenly welling up in his black-shadowed eyes.

My heart began beating irregularly. “Who are you?”

A tear rolled down Marco’s face. He had turned very pale.

“Oh, God.”

“Yes, I suppose I’ve shown my hand, haven’t I?” he asked. “It’s a family trait. I can’t seem to control my grief.”

“What are you—his—the colonel’s—”

“I’m Victor’s only son, Lola.”

The tears fled down his cheeks and, appalled, he wiped them off. The salt water clung to his hands, wet and shining. Flicking his wrist in disgust did not help, and he quickly resolved his conflict by putting his glistening fingers on my face and so anointed me.

“Get away—get out of my place,” I barked.

His hands were on my jaw and my throat, caressing my skin as he rubbed in the tears. “Oh, I will, but with
you,
of course. You little mongrel. You little bitch.” From the trembling of his mouth I saw that he was trying hard to master himself. “You should be happy that I’m inviting you along, Lola. I see now that Soto-Relada was right, about your value. In helping me find this gold. Yours
was
a nice little performance.” He squeaked out, in a tinny voice: “
‘Versipellis, it’s Latin for skin-changer.’
Because if your wits had been a hair duller, then…well, I would have had to leave you in the same condition that you left my father.”

I snatched the letter out of his grasp, kicked him, and ran past him, shrieking.

“Help me! Someone help me!”

But I am no natural sprinter, or fighter. Marco grabbed me brutally around the waist. We went tumbling down to the rugs on the floor, knocking over the table so its sherry bottle poured down in a red, staining splash, like blood. I madly scrambled away, holding up the letter to protect the pages from the wine. Marco snatched hold of my neck and yanked back, hard.

“No!”

“Blasej,” he barked.

The redhead moved forward and with one lunge had me in his huge and bulbous arms. The blond had grown excitable from the violence and breathed hard while looking around for something to trash. He walked over to the bookshelves and began tearing the volumes out, throwing and gruesomely breaking three precious octavos against the walls.

“Don’t hurt the books, you ass!” Marco hissed.

The blond stopped, his arms hanging at his sides, and looked at the redhead.

“Cool out,” Blasej said.

The blond nodded. “Yeah, sorry, boss.”

“Christ. Go get her passport, in her file cabinet—it’s probably in the back room.”

“Okay.”

“Get her up!”

The redhead hauled me to my feet and half-carried, half-dragged me out into the street. It was twilight now, and Sunday. Since bookselling isn’t the most lucrative business, I had stationed the Red Lion in a barely trafficked, low-rent, dead-end road in an “up and coming” business district. This same street was thus empty of any possible good Samaritan as I was tossed into the backseat of a silver four-door Mercedes.

“Help! Help!”

Marco muffled my mouth and sat on me while I struggled.

“Dammit. What a mess.” He surprisingly started to laugh. “Lola. Lo-la. My filthy little floozy. Calm down. It’ll be better that way. Look, I
know
I got upset, and we haven’t really gotten off on the right foot, and I want to snap your neck and everything—and
might
—but if you just listen to me, you’ll be begging to come along on this little vacation.” He turned his head to Blasej. “Or maybe I should just drug her?”

I began to scream inside the car, and as all the windows were rolled up, my shrieks stabbed into our eardrums.

“Ah, ah, help!”

The men covered their ears, yelling, until Marco closed his fingers over my throat.

“Gag—gaaaaa—” I wrenched his arm off me, biting his hand.

“Shit!”

He gave me a good, stunning slap. And then another.

“Go.
Go.
Move!”

I held my burning face in my hands. The car roared off through the darkening streets, as we sped toward the Long Beach Airport.

The streetlights flickered in the windshield as we passed through Long Beach. We reached the airport terminal in twenty minutes. At the car park, an automated machine spit out a ticket; Domenico drove to the very last, nearly empty floor of the complex.

“Let me go.” I still held Antonio Medici’s letter in my grabby hands. “Let me out of here.”

I looked around to see a man walking away from his car in the parking garage. As I tried to scream, Marco wrapped himself around my upper body. Almost like a lover, he twined his arms tight about my neck, whispering in a hoarse voice: “Lola, you’ll understand what we’re doing if you just
listen
.”

“I don’t talk to crazy, murdering—”

“Crazy. That’s a little extreme.” He lightly bit my cheek, to further pacify me. “Though, I have been going through
such
a hard time these past two years.”

“Oh, my Lord—”

“Yes, after I flew out from France to Antigua for my father’s funeral I just…drank. Floated around in the pool, chugging brandy, crying about my
papi
. He was
such
a bastard. But I
miss him.
I loved him.” After a long, rough pause, he said in a calmer voice: “Everyone did. They were all—my father’s colleagues—telling me that I couldn’t let his death go unavenged. I was supposed to kill you and your family, understand. All very Greek tragedy. And well within my training, as a long time ago, the colonel taught me how to be an excellent assassin.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Oh, we had some jolly times in the war. But I was so depressed that I halfway didn’t give a fuck if you all rotted or not. Your mother, Juana, your ‘father,’ Manuel…your sister, the unhygienic Yolanda, who’s now living in the
suburbs,
I hear? And your fancy man, Erik. Because I had tried to
run away
from all this—violence. Killing. I went to Amsterdam, Paris, drank absinthe. Not that I exactly kept my hands clean in Europe, but I found that I no longer had my father’s knack for…taking care of problems. Lost the stomach for it.”

“It’s easy, man,” Blasej said. “Try it out on her. She’ll be a pain in the airport—”

“I don’t really think she
wants
to bring me out of retirement.” Marco brought his face closer to mine. “I did make a mistake, showing you who I was. I lost my temper.”

“You’re kidnapping me!”

“What I’m doing with you remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” He tweaked me on the nose, trying to smile. “Because I feel
so
very optimistic about your future. You see, I’m betting on you, Lola. I think you’re going to pay off. And I
am
a gambler, aren’t I, Blasej?”

Blasej threw up his arms. “You always take the table at Carlo, man.”

“Well, we’re back in Monte Carlo tonight. And I think I’ve got a winning hand.”

“You can go f—” I blathered.

“Oh,
shut
up,” he said fiercely. “And let me finish before you lose your ladylike manner. As I was saying, there I was, in Antigua, drunk, depressed—considering a pipe bomb for you or a shotgun for me. It was
very
bad. But then…something happened.”

Marco knocked his head against mine again, waiting for me to guess.

Grudgingly, I rustled the pages in my hand. “You found the letter.”

“Yes. I met Mr. Soto-Relada and well—there it is in your hot little paws. I’ve spent the last year and a half trying to crack it. I did make some progress. But not enough. And that just won’t do. Because I
need to
. My father had a vision for the country, and if there is gold to be found, then, why, I can redeem myself. And finish his work—”

“Your father’s vision,” I spat. “He was a mass murderer. In the war—”

“As could you,” he interrupted.

“As could I, what?”

“Finish
your
father’s work.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you Tomas de la Rosa died in Italy, not Guatemala.”

“Which doesn’t make any sense. Everyone says he was buried in the jungle—”

“Of course it makes sense. Tomas de la Rosa was always a secretive bastard. Montezuma’s gold? What lie wouldn’t he tell for that?”

“I don’t understand.”

“He died researching
this
.” Marco pointed at the letter. “Soto-Relada told me its provenance—which of course made it so interesting to me! I have the documents to prove his prior ownership. And I’ve seen his grave. I know exactly where he died, and how. It’s
very
interesting. Not exactly what you’d expect of a ‘hero’ like old Tom.”

I just looked at him, silent and not breathing.

Marco began to pet my hair. “Look at her face.” He tilted my chin so that Blasej could see me. “Look at that. I told you. She can’t resist it. I
told
you she was bats. All the de la Rosas are!” He lifted the bangs from my forehead. “Yes, that’s why I think that I’ll be able to forego snapping your neck and otherwise mussing your hair, Lola. Because you’re coming. Aren’t you, darling?”

Marco’s teeth were very white as he now truly smiled at me. He leaned away, unlatched his arms, and tugged the letter from my hands. Then he opened the door.