strokes would you like me to give you?”
“Whatever you feel comfortable giving up. You’re my host. I don’t want to make demands of you.”
“You see?” said Madrigal, and he pointed a finger at Sevilla. “That is what I mean.
With that Madrigal left Sevilla with the table of food still spread before him. Sevilla put a piece of toast down and pushed the plate away from him. Arturo and two maids in uniforms came to clear up. “Senor Madrigal asks that you wait for him outside,” Arturo told Sevilla. “He will only be a few minutes.”
Double French doors opened out of the sunroom onto the striped green lawn. Sevilla’s shoes sank deeply into the grass. He smelled water and saw droplets still suspended here and there among the blades. A sharper, chlorinated odor rose from the pool as Sevilla came nearer.
He didn’t hear Sebastian approach. He saw the younger Madrigal’s reflection in the pool. “You surprised me,” Sevilla said.
“It’ll be a little longer,” Sebastian said by way of reply. The sun was higher now and lanced across the lawn. Sebastian took sunglasses from a case attached to his belt and put them on. He was dressed for the game in shorts and a collared pullover. His arms were lean and muscled so that the individual cords in his forearm stood out when he moved his fingers.
They stood together without talking for a while. Finally, Sevilla said, “I hope you know I don’t take seriously the things your father says.”
“Take them seriously if you like. It makes no difference to me.”
“I only mean it’s none of my business.”
“No,” Sebastian said, “it isn’t any of your business. But my father doesn’t have any problem insulting his own son to strangers.”
“Well, I don’t—”
“You don’t need to explain anything,” Sebastian interrupted. “You are my father’s guest and I’ll treat you the way I’m expected to treat you. And then you can go.”
Sevilla tried to read Sebastian’s face, but the man’s eyes were well hidden behind dark lenses. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Do I seem offended?”
“Frankly? Yes.”
“Then perhaps I am. But as I say, it makes no difference. You’ll play your round, my father will invite you to swim and stay for lunch and then you’ll go back to wherever it is you come from.”
“Ciudad de Mexico.”
Sebastian looked at Sevilla. His sunglasses made his face a hollow-eyed skull. “Like I say: wherever you come from.”
NINE
THEY PLAYED AND SEVILLA LOST. HE was paired with a friend of Madrigal’s, an older gentleman who also made his home in Los Campos. As Sebastian predicted there was swimming and drinks and a lunch as lavish as breakfast. The elder Madrigal held forth on the drug wars and the business of the
“When you return to Ciudad Juarez, you must visit again,” Madrigal told Sevilla when they parted. “And if I find myself in Mexico City anytime soon, I may call on you.”
“Yes, you must,” Sevilla lied. “You have been too kind to me, Rafa.”
“It was nothing, Juan.
Sebastian did not bid Sevilla farewell. He vanished after the golf game and did not reappear even for lunch. His father made no comment on his son’s absence and it was just as well; the episode of the morning was still fresh in Sevilla’s mind and he was glad not to have a repeat.
He felt tension slipping away from him with each mile he put between himself and Los Campos. He opened the window to let the clean country air in. Soon he would be in the thick of Juarez where the air was not as dirty as somewhere like Juan Villalobos’ Mexico City, but bad enough. Enterprising youngsters and businessmen didn’t ply the lanes at stoplights offering hits of pure oxygen to drivers mired in traffic, but as the city grew the promise of those days drew closer.
By the time he saw the Hotel Lucerna rising out of the buildings ahead Sevilla felt almost like himself. The golf game had been terrible, but at least he’d known the difference between one club and the next. The swim was cool and relaxing, the drinks not enough to sate a thirst built over several days. Lunch left him feeling bloated and overfull. Madrigal offered a shady place for post-meal rest, but then and now Sevilla could think only of the queen- sized bed in his suite.
He returned the car, paying the bill in cash, and arranged for someone to bring up the golf clubs. He went up on the elevator alone and emerged into a quiet hallway likewise deserted. The suite door had an electronic lock opened with a card key. When the LED above the handle showed green, Sevilla pushed his way inside.
The man yanked him through the door before it was fully open. It banged wide and then slammed shut on pressurized hinges. Sevilla felt his feet leave the floor. He fell hard then and his knee screamed with pain.
When he reached for his gun it wasn’t there, but it hadn’t been there for days. Sevilla was dizzily aware of two men before one kicked him in the head and opened a broad gash over his eye. He went over onto his back as if dead. The suite’s front room went from light to dark and back again.
Someone grabbed a fistful of Sevilla’s hair and lifted his head clear of the parquet floor in the entryway. The picture of Ana and Ofelia was shoved in his face. The glass in the frame was broken, the frame itself twisted out of true. He saw Ana smiling at him through blood.
“Who is this, old man? Your wife? Your kid?”
“Probably his whore,” someone else said, and there was laughter. There were three of them, not two. Sevilla heard the crash of something breaking in the bedroom. All the furniture in the front room was overturned and the stuffing torn out. Even the area rugs had been flipped upside down.
“I—” Sevilla began.
The man smashed Sevilla in the face with the picture glass-first. Bits stung him on the cheek and lip. He was kicked in the side, in the stomach. Lunch roiled up out of him. Sevilla could see only the men’s feet as they moved back and forth; he was not strong enough to look up at their faces.
“Find another family to grift,” said one of the men. He stepped on Sevilla’s hand.
One left. Another rummaged in the bedroom and the bathroom until it was destroyed. The third stood over Sevilla and stomped him whenever the pain tried to pass.
“Stay down there, old man,” he said, and Sevilla did what he was told.
The last two conferred, but Sevilla’s ears were ringing. They took turns kicking him then until there was no part of him that didn’t hurt and no way to see through the curtain of red that obscured his eyes. He was barely aware of them leaving and then was aware of nothing for a long time.
TEN
HE WOKE. “KELLY,” HE BREATHED. His teeth felt loose and he tasted salt and copper.
“It’s Enrique.”
Sevilla was on the flipsided rug. He saw only the ceiling, but the light had changed and he knew it was evening. His body throbbed and his kidneys ached badly enough that he knew he would piss blood when the time came. Enrique touched his face with something cold and wet and smelling of strong liquor.
“There’s no alcohol in the medicine cabinet,” Enrique said.
“Don’t tell… the hotel,” Sevilla replied.
“I haven’t. You’ve been asleep for hours. I almost called an ambulance.”
“Don’t call them, either.”
