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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 gri
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 di
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 di
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.
That morning, after peering in some heavily fortified windows, she had abandoned Avenida Presidente Masaryk for her real destination, the Piel Canela boutique, at Oscar Wilde 20. She stopped in front of the window, staring at the butter-soft handbags, gloves, clutches, and belts that reminded her of the beautiful serpents she used to dream about in her youth. Her eyes slowly filled with tears as desire burned in her heart and lungs like the fire from which the phoenix once rose. There, in the center of the window, was the handbag she coveted and, half wrapped around its double strap, the elegant gloves. Both were the color of dulce de leche. Maria-Elena wanted them so badly her throat itched. But she knew she would never buy them. Tears leaked from her eyes, making rivulets down her cheeks. She wept and wept. It was not that she didn’t have enough money. She had been in Maceo Encarnación’s employ long enough, and he had been generous enough with her, that she could afford both items. But she was a girl of the streets; she could no more buy these high-priced items for herself than she would ever leave Maceo Encarnación’s employ, even after what had happened.
The final stop on her early morning excursion had been La Baila, on the Paseo de la Reforma, just four blocks south of Lincoln Park. The beautiful restaurant, lined in colorful Mexican tiles, turned out delicious and authentic food. In fact, over the years, Maria-Elena had been able to inveigle the recipe for the amazing thirty-ingredient mole de Xicofrom the owner-chef.
As the morning was mild, she had sat at an outside table, ignoring the fumes from the hellacious traffic on the Reforma. When Furcal, her favorite waiter, arrived at her table, she ordered her usual, atole, a boiled maize drink, flavored today with nopal, empanadas de plátano rellenos de frijol, and a double espresso cortado.
She had time now all to herself when, for the moment, she was free of obligations to Maceo Encarnación, when her mind could be itself, much as it was each night in the moments between the time she got into bed and the time she fell asleep. Except even then, within Maceo Encarnación’s compound, where his will could stretch out its hand and reach her any time of the day or night, she wasn’t truly free. Not like now, anyway, sitting by herself in a familiar restaurant, the sooty air of the city rushing by her on mysterious errands from the great volcano, Popocatépetl.
A female waiter she didn’t know had smiled warmly at her as she set down Maria-Elena’s atole.
“I hope the drink is to your liking,” she had said.
Maria-Elena, always polite, thanked her, took a sip, then another, deeper one, and nodded, allowing the waitress, whose name was Beatrice, to depart.
She wrapped her hands around the hand-thrown mug. She had time now to consider the implications of what she had read in Anunciata’s diary. Last week she had come across it by accident when she was cleaning her daughter’s room. It had been kicked, no doubt inadvertently, under the bed. Maria-Elena recalled with perfect clarity the moment, holding the book in her palms, when she had become aware that it was a diary. She recalled in vivid detail the fateful moment before she opened the diary, when everything was as it had always been. She almost didn’t open it. In fact, she had bent down to return it, unread, to its place beneath Anunciata’s bed. What would have happened then? Reality would not have been ripped and reshaped.