HE WAS PUT IN A SMALL VILLA WITH A FEW SIDE WINDOWS, a faded potted plant and small velvet Mexican paintings of bullfighting. The shadows of the sun lingered there and then dissipated and went elsewhere. It reminded him of a Robert Mitchum movie somehow. He loosened his tie and opened the second beer he had bought. Then he looked through his pockets for the pills his doctor had given him. He held the bottle out at arm’s length to study what it said, with an inquisitive self-depreciating look. And shrugged.
His breathing was more laboured than it had ever been. But down in Mexico the heat was already oppressive and his chest was sore again. He sniffed and looked through some papers where he had written down the constable’s name, the name of the jail, the name of the town Oathoa; a town of 1,800 people. He was continually losing what he had written down—not like his friend Constable Markus Paul, who seemed to have a wealth of notebooks, filled with information.
John had a few scribbled notes. And the resort brochure. He flipped it over and read it as if he was interested:
LOS MARINAS—a small, private resort tucked away in Oathoa, charming, out of the way and modern—with panoramic views of the Sea of Cortez. Feed the dolphins, visit the principal ruins of the Lost Tribe of the Jaguar. Listen to the music of the mariachi, dine on the beach with tuxedoed waiters. Swim in the sea, walk along our golden sands, explore the jungle, the splendorous Cave of the Crystals. Visit our licensed casino or just relax in your own Jacuzzi.
It said the same in German, Japanese and Spanish.
Lady Mary Cyr had been running from something. He wasn’t sure what. But she had entered Oathoa almost a month ago.
She was called “Lady Mary” because her grandfather Blair Cyr had become Lord of Doak in 1986. He was reviled for taking a lordship, and giving up his Canadian citizenship; she, for calling herself “Lady”—and for fifteen years insisting on it. This imperial strain in her was nonsense and John knew it. Now everyone in her family was pretty well dead, except for Garnet and young Perley (who was in fact forty-six). Not on the other, more important and richer, side—that is, Lady Mary Cyr, for all her wealth, was a poor relative.
She was one of the few family members to attend Blair Cyr’s funeral in 1997. (The idea that he had died in the Bahamas and she had brought his body home sitting up in a private airplane was fodder for jokes by academics in the universities here, and others too, none of whom, as Mary said, would ever themselves give up a seat on a plane.)
By that time (he had lived too long) his empire was taken over by Greg and Donald Warren Cyr, Mary’s other cousins, who she hardly knew. She saw pictures of them in Canadian newsmagazines, being compared to young Kennedys. That might be true, except they were far richer than the Kennedys.
“Where’s my money—I want my money” was one of the headlines in one of the papers that the Cyrs did not control, showing Mary Cyr on a balcony overlooking some ocean. (She was in Brisbane, Australia, at that moment, John discovered later.)
She was on an allowance. She would receive the greater portion of her finances on her birthday this year: that is, in six months as the crow flies. But there was a certain catch—it stipulated this largesse of many millions of dollars be given to a woman who had “retained” herself. This was a strange word, one inserted into the equation by lawyers eight years before, who, abrupt, bright and at times abysmal in their dealings, decided it was a way out for her family. That is, if she was examined—people are always examined—and found to be incompetent—then she had not retained herself; and she would be kept on a sizable allowance.
At that moment, in a jail cell in Mexico, Mary did not know of the word retained or what it would suggest to others.
Had she retained herself? That would depend, John knew now, on him. (John had been informed of this for some reason. He asked in a halting voice—feeling like a snoop—how much this money, her inheritance, was to come to. And the lawyer said: “Perhaps seventy-eight or eighty million.”)
“Who is she?” one of the bony porters at Los Marinas had asked him, an elderly man with emaciated wrists and a boyish, hopeful smile, a smile that lit up his ancient face, as if he was just about to skip school, or at its worst learn an unsavoury secret about a teacher, and who pointed at that day’s paper. “People say she is from the United States.” He smiled as if being from the United States was part of the scandal.
“No, she is from someplace else. How long have you been carrying bags for people?” John asked, pulling out some bills the value of which he did not know, and handing them to him.
“Sixty-four years.” The man’s smile changed to indicate a kind of jubilation at his longevity.
“Did you know her?” John asked.
He nodded.
“And did she do the least thing scandalous?”
The porter shook his head. “But,” he said, “she is the coal lady—so we can’t let her go.”
Mary Cyr did not know this yet—or if she did, she did not let on. She attracted attention even when she was trying not to. And now this attention was the worst of all. It was her great crisis, the public eye. The family had hired a lawyer. A brilliant young lawyer named Xavier Santez. The cynics would say it was just for family honour. No, it was much more. It was in spite of her dishonour. That is, no matter what this present charge was, Mary would say she was guiltless, and just might be guilty.
But if the old porter called her “the coal lady,” everyone in Mexico already knew who she was.