28

Rico to the Rescue

The gaggle of policemen in front of the Colonial should have alerted Rico that something was wrong, but he was a man on a mission. He leaped out of the station cab before it came to a stop. His plan was to sneak up on Grace, corral her with his arms, and plant a kiss of such ardor that a team of strong men would be required to pull him away from her.

Lyda screamed at the sight of him. “Thank God, you’re here!”

She threw her arms around his waist, leaned her head against his chest, and started sobbing. The maids ran from every corner of the hotel. They all cried and talked at once and he couldn’t make sense of any of it. Attentive guests clustered in the doorways.

“Where’s Grace?”

Annie was the only coherent one. “We don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“She’s disappeared.” Lyda retreated behind the front desk and blew her nose on a bandana that was thoroughly damp already.

“When?”

“Five days ago. She told me she was going to the market to talk to José and she never came back. We’ve looked everywhere for her.”

“Have you seen José?”

“No.”

“Has anyone gone to San Miguel to ask him about her?”

“Rubio says his men searched the village. He says that José and his family have gone. No one knows where.”

Rico was starting to get a very bad feeling, lodged like a sharp stick just under his heart. “What does Socorro say?”

“She doesn’t know anything,” said Annie. “She’s terrified that something terrible has happened to her family and to Grace.”

“What about the police?”

Lyda waved the bandana, as if to dismiss the police. “They’ve asked all over town. No one knows anything.”

Someone knows something, Rico thought. But he won’t be fool enough to admit it to the police.

“Jake assigned two of his company’s Pinks to work on it.” Lyda seemed to think that was a good idea, but Rico knew better.

The men of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency specialized in putting down labor unrest. Under Porfirio Díaz’s regime American companies had hired them to do plenty of that and their methods were brutal. It had earned them the hatred of the common folk in Mexico. They would have less success than the police at getting information.

“What was Grace wearing?”

“Her white sailor blouse and long blue twill skirt, the canvas duster, and her new straw hat with the red band.”

Women’s preoccupation with clothes had always seemed silly to Rico, but he was grateful for it now. The average man would not have noticed what Grace wore, much less remembered it days later.

“Did she carry anything with her?”

Lyda thought for a moment. “An umbrella, a dark blue one. It rained later that day.”

Rico wanted to go straight to the market and start demanding answers, but he knew better than to question people while wearing the uniform of an officer in the federal army. He borrowed a plain brown suit and vest and scuffed brown shoes from a comrade staying at the Colonial. Even dressed as a dry-goods clerk he received only wary shakes of the head from the market’s shoppers and sellers alike.

He walked to the plaza and caught the eye of Chucho, his favorite bootblack. Chucho always had a big smile for Rico because he tipped generously and his shoes never needed much work to make them gleam. If he was surprised to see the captain literally down-at-heels his round, good-natured face betrayed no hint of surprise or judgment.

Chucho was a thorough professional. For ten centavos he would deliver fifty cents worth of dash and patter while he worked his magic on Rico’s borrowed footwear. Like all the boys shining shoes or selling chicle gum on the plaza, Chucho would know the comings, the goings, and the gossip within a ten-block radius.

He unloaded his tin of brown polish and his rags from his box. Then he set the box where Rico could prop his foot up on the wooden handle. He dug the polish out with his fingers and worked it into the leather. While the right shoe was drying, he started on the left. The grand finale was the buffing. Chucho snapped the rag with a syncopated rhythm, his elbows pumping hard enough to run a small turbine.

As he was repacking his equipment Rico leaned down and held a peso so only he could see it.

“Did you see the English woman from the Colonial here last Tuesday?”

“Yes, Captain.” Chucho grinned up at him. “She hired a coche and driver.”

“Which driver?”

“The one they call Chivo.” He pointed his chin at a thick-set man smoking a cigar on a bench nearby.

Rico handed the boy the peso and twenty centavos instead of ten. Then he strolled over to sit next to Chivo. He extended his long legs in front of him and tilted his fedora forward so he could interlock his fingers at the base of his skull. He leaned back onto his palms as though relaxing in the sunshine.

He glanced over at the taxi driver, whose melon-shaped head was wreathed in cigar smoke. In a conversational tone Rico said, “Where did you take the Englishwoman last Tuesday?”

Chivo’s heavily lidded eyes went goggly, as though a snake had just crawled up his baggy pant leg.

“I didn’t see any Englishwoman last Tuesday.”

Rico’s silence held more menace than threats.

“I swear on my mother’s grave.” Chivo obviously wanted to run, and he just as obviously knew it would be futile.

“Tell me where you took her or I will break every one of your fingers. And then I will seriously hurt you.”

Rico waited while Chivo tried to think of a plausible lie. His intellect wasn’t up to the challenge. “She wanted to go to San Miguel.”

“Why didn’t you bring her back?”

That had to be the question the driver dreaded most. That was why he had claimed ignorance when the police questioned him. Why had he abandoned the gringa?

“I had to stay with the coche. When she didn’t return I went looking for her, but she had disappeared. The rebels must have kidnapped her.”

“And you couldn’t find her?”

“No, señor. She had vanished.”

Rico assumed he was lying about going to look for her, but he asked anyway. “What did the people of San Miguel tell you when you went looking for her?” He could imagine the gears of prevarication spinning between Chivo’s ears like wheels in deep mud.

“They said the rebels kidnapped her so they could demand a ransom.”

Rico stood up. He grabbed Chivo by the front of his shirt and lifted him half off the seat.

“If anything bad has happened to her, you will pay. There is no place on earth you can go where I won’t find you.”

He threw him down with such force the bench tipped over backward, taking Chivo with it in a tangle of hairy arms and ankles.

 

Rico was a shaken man when he left the ruins of San Miguel. Maybe Rubio would know what had happened here. The general harbored the delusion that Grace was his dear friend. Had he ordered his men to destroy the place in retaliation for her disappearance?

Rico led Grullo slowly down the steep path from the village, searching the bushes for any trace of her. He found the umbrella in a tall clump of grass near the road. Swinging between hope and despair he mounted and rode in expanding circles, looking for other evidence. The straw boater lay in plain sight beside a trail leading up into rough country. Last night’s rain had washed away all tracks, but Rico could guess what had happened.

He scanned the surrounding mountains. He would ask to be reassigned to Rubio’s command here in Morelos. If necessary, he would ask his grandfather to use his influence to make the transfer happen.

He would find Grace. If Zapata’s people had harmed her he would not rest until he had killed them all.