‘Who’s the kid?’ Yara asked.
‘Chuy Velasquez. He’s one of us,’ said the other man. ‘We had car trouble and he volunteered to drive us.’
‘It’s an honor . . .’ Chuy began, but the big man shushed him.
Yara asked Jefe if she should have Chuy wait outside. Jefe bit off another mouthful of chicken.
The intercom squawked. ‘Yara?’
‘He’s thinking it over,’ she said to the men outside.
‘This is intolerable,’ Jefe said without emotion, as if the intolerable were merely a fact of his existence. ‘Ask them what they wish to discuss.’
Yara did as instructed and the big man said, ‘We’re having difficulty with Ortega. We could use force, and we will should it become necessary, but that will complicate our future dealings with him. The shipment is due in tomorrow and I didn’t want to move without consulting you.’
Jefe made a hissing nose and pointed at the door leading to the stairs. ‘Wait for me there.’
‘Both of us?’ Yara asked.
‘Just him.’ He glanced over his shoulder at Snow. ‘You don’t mind, do you? Private business.’
The stairwell was unheated and, after hovering for ten or fifteen minutes, unable to hear what was going on in the dining room, feeling the bite of the chill, Snow ascended the stairs. His spirits had been lifted by his banishment – it stood to reason that since Jefe did not want him to hear private matters discussed, this could be interpreted as a sign that Snow’s survival was guaranteed. For a while, anyway. If Jefe wasn’t merely being cautious. If his actions were governed by a logical scheme approximating reason, which of course they were not. By the time Snow had climbed four flights of stairs, his natural pessimism had been restored. Preoccupied with worry, he pushed through the door at the top of the stairway and went several paces onward before he understood that he had penetrated to the heart of Jefe’s complex and perhaps to the essence of his dragon-soul.
He stood in the depths of an enormous, well-lit shaft, one wide enough to encompass three or four good-sized barns, a structure whose terminus, he realized, had to be the white, windowless building surmounting the hill. The top of the shaft, five or six hundred feet above, was the blue of a deep autumn sky and spread across the walls were photomurals of the four framed prints in the dining room: cloudy, pristine Himalayas pierced by diamond rays of sun; tiers of parchment-colored, painterly clouds edged with peach and golden-white, complexities of dust and light that called to mind an elaborate music; a Turner-esque chaos of smoky stuff drenched in red and gold, yielding a brassy radiance redolent of a war in heaven; pale billows of cloud shading to indigo, some of them resembling figures and faces that were nearly recognizable, like the ghosts of Great Identities dissolving into dusk. Hundreds, maybe thousands of fine-linked silver chains strung ten feet apart were suspended from the ceiling, stretched taut, running the length of the shaft and vanishing into curved tracks on the concrete floor. Snow made to slide one of the chains along its track, but it wouldn’t budge. He thought there must be some controlling mechanism and, as he searched for it, he spotted a discoloration on the floor out among the chains. On closer inspection it appeared to be a dried-up pool of blood. Feeling like a child alone in a forest of skinny silver trees that offered neither shade nor protection, he hurried back down the stairs and sat on the bottom step, trying to equate the grandeur and strangeness of the shaft with the vicious killer in the next room, imagining that if a dragon-become-a-man had the slightest refinement it would have something to do with the sky . . . and yet it was difficult to believe a minimal creature such as Jefe deriving pleasure from anything apart from the exercise of power. Worn down by stress, he gave up analyzing the situation and rested his head on his forearms, his mind drumming with a single dread thought.
A half-hour later, more or less, Yara invited him back into the dining room. Flanked by his two friends, the big man stood partway out the tunnel door – he had a thick, glossy head of hair and a mustache trimmed to a straight line above an arrogant mouth. Belly flab overlapped his belt. His image on the TV had been too grainy to identify, but Snow knew him now: Enrique Bazan. He’d run into him once or twice at the school. Hoping that Bazan would not remember those meetings, Snow took a seat next to Yara and gave no sign of recognition, but Bazan said in a demanding tone, ‘What’s this prick doing here?’
‘Mister Snow is a guest.’ Standing between the table and Bazan, Jefe glanced back and forth between the two men, his face sharp with interest. ‘Do you know each other?’
With bad grace, Bazan said, ‘He’s my son’s teacher.’
Jefe’s eyes swerved to Snow. ‘Small world, eh?’
‘I used to be your son’s teacher,’ said Snow. ‘I resigned from the school some time ago.’
‘Is that so?’ Bazan’s voice surged in volume. ‘Then why does Luisa talk about you all the time? Tell me that!’
Yara said, ‘Don’t you have business elsewhere, Enrique?’
‘Indeed,’ said Jefe. ‘I suggest we leave this for another day.’
Bazan’s face grew flushed. ‘Fuck that! I want to ask him some questions.’
The elder of his companions, a man cut from similar cloth, same mustache, same belly flab, but shorter and with a receding hairline, moved in front of Bazan, or else he might have come at Snow.
‘The son-of-a-bitch has been fucking my wife!’ Bazan tried to throw the smaller man aside, but Chuy helped restrain him.
‘Is this true?’ Jefe’s enjoyment of the moment was evident in his tone of prim amusement. ‘Have you been trifling with Luisa’s affections?’
‘Hell, no!’ Snow made as if to stand, willing to let his anger rip after so long an enforced repression, but Yara dug her nails into his arm.
Bazan shook his head furiously, like a bull swarmed by bees. ‘What the fuck is he doing here?’
‘I was hiking in the hills,’ said Snow. ‘Jefe asked me to stay. As for your wife, I’ve never had so much as a cup of coffee with her.’
‘Calm yourself, Enrique.’ Jefe joined the two men who had Bazan backed against the wall. ‘Whoever’s been at your wife, I’m certain you’ll get to the bottom of it.’
‘It’s him! I can tell by the way she talks about him!’
‘That’s your proof ? Luisa talks about him? It’s hardly convincing.’
‘Man, I’ve been married to her fat ass for eleven years! I know the signs!’
‘It doesn’t matter who’s been staining your bed sheets,’ Jefe said. ‘The real crime has nothing to do with your wife. Right, Chuy?’
Jefe patted Chuy on the back, shifted a hand to the nape of his neck, and Chuy, responding to this amiable gesture, looked to him over his shoulder, a smile aborning on his face . . . and then the smile, before it had fully established itself, dissolved into an expression of befuddlement, and thereafter into one of shock and pain. His right leg began to shake. Spittle flew from his lips.
‘The real crime is you bringing someone here who wasn’t invited,’ Jefe said to Bazan. ‘Someone I don’t know.’
Chuy clawed feebly at Jefe’s hand and loosed a warbling note that thinned into a keening. His shoes were not planted on the floor, but drifted across the carpet, their toes grazing the burgundy nap.
‘Jefe, don’t do this.’ Bazan eased away from him. ‘He’s a good kid.’
Chuy’s shoulders hitched violently, his arms went rigid, held out to the sides like a marionette whose elbow-strings had been yanked.
Yara heaved up from her chair. ‘The boy’s done nothing. Let him go!’
Startled, Jefe turned on her, rag-dolling Chuy.
‘No one’s harmed you.’ She pried at Jefe’s fingers, trying to loosen his grip. ‘He did you a favor by driving them. Or would you prefer to have been kept in the dark about Ortega? Let him go. Let Enrique get on with his business.’