Читать книгу Dead Men Don't Lie - Jackson Cain - Страница 33

Chapter 20

The Señorita Dolorosa entered the palace antechamber, where she was to meet her stepson, Eduardo, and El Presidente de Méjico Porfirio Díaz. She was the first one there, and took a moment to study the room. The walls and ceiling were almost blindingly white—in fact, every wall inside and outside the vast palace seemed to sparkle. She’d ordered her workers to grind the gypsum, which blanketed the edges of so many of the region’s riverbeds, to a fine powder. After mixing it with water, they then gessoed the adobe walls of all her buildings, whitewashing them to a dazzling alabaster.

The sala was also filled with polychromatic light, which flowed through a dozen leaded, stained glass windows. At least six feet high, four feet wide, and five feet off the floor, the multicolored panes cast iridescent designs on the walls, ceiling, and polished hardwood floors.

She casually reviewed the room’s layout. She wanted everything right for El Presidente. In the palace, even the antechambers were grand halls—this one had eight chairs spread throughout the middle of the room in the shape of an octagan. Their arms, legs, and tall narrow backs were made of exquisitely carved teak and upholstered with rich Moroccan leather. In between the chairs were small round tables of the finest teak. Underneath all of the tables were varguenos. These ancient chests contained seemingly countless drawers—some with secret compartments—tastefully inlaid with ivory, gold, and silver. To one side was a vast fieldstone fireplace almost forty feet across. Above its granite hearth thick, soot-blackened fire tools hung from its huge maw. Off to the side was a long, narrow teak table set with silver goblets and decanters. She knew from past experience the decanters would be filled with fine wines, cognacs, and champagnes. Still no one except the Señorita was allowed to sample her private stock of Madeira.

Catching her reflection in a gilt-framed wall mirror, she paused to observe her short, close-fitting tunic of scarlet silk. A black tasseled cord tightly cinched her waist. Today, she favored black stockings and black shoes with three-inch heels.

El Presidente Porfirio Díaz entered next. A stocky man with a square frame and a huge head, he sported one of those heavy, downward-turning Mexican mustaches. He wore gray trousers, a matching military shirt and jacket, heavy brown boots, and a big holstered .45 caliber Remington on his hip. Crossing the room, he took the Señorita in his arms and attempted to kiss her on the mouth, a maneuver she artfully parried.

“Ah, my guapolita [little cutie], you look ravishing as ever.”

“And you, my oso mucho malo [big bad bear], you look mean enough to murder God.”

“Only because you mock my love.”

It was a game they played. It delighted El Presidente no end and bored Dolorosa to distraction.

“I almost forgot how much I missed you,” he said.

Again, he tried to take her in his arms.

Again, she decorously deflected his advances.

“My moronic stepson is late again,” she pointed out.

She walked over to the table and filled a goblet to the brim with her scrupulously hoarded Madeira.

“I need something to get me through this hideous meeting,” she said with a painful grimace.

“He’ll be here soon.”

As if on cue, her stepson walked through the door.

“Ah, your sainted stepson honors us with his presence,” Díaz said with a transparently fulsome smile.

“Dishonors us, you mean,” the Señorita said.

“How is our wicked araña [spider] today? Still spinning her murderous webs?”

“¿Araña? What do you know, Porfirio? El Idioto learned a new word. Could it be he’s trying to read books again? His lips and fingers must get awfully tired trying to follow all those words.”

El Presidente gave them a broad smile, put an arm around each of them, and pulled them both together. “Come, children, can’t we all be friends—one big happy family?”

“I have no friends,” the Señorita Dolorosa said curtly, extricating herself from his arm, “least of all with abyectos retardos like El Imbecilio here. Anyway you said we were here on business.”

“Just so. Let us sit.”

The dictator got himself a large crystal goblet of Napoleon 1811 Grande Reserve cognac, and they each took one of the straight-backed chairs.

“We are preparing a new offensive against Sonora,” Díaz said. “We will combine both our Sinaloan and Chihuahuan forces and crush them in an overpowering frontal attack. I thought you might be interested in haranguing our multitudes the night before our assault—something to raise their morale. You know they do love and revere their Señorita.”

“You mean fear and loathe her,” Eduardo said.

“Nonetheless, many will die that morning, and afterward we shall be doubling their taxes. There will be serious unrest . . . even after our inevitable, overwhelming victory.”

“Of course, any unrest will be forcefully, terminally... put down,” the Señorita said, yawning.

“Of course. That is why God gave you so many slave-labor ranchos and prison mines,” Díaz said. “You are in constant need of replacement prison labor, and our political opponents supply us with endless quantities of such fodder. It is my honor to hand them over to you. Still our people will not be pleased with all the death, destruction, and destitution that the coming conflict will force upon them.”

“And I’m supposed to care, why?” the Señorita said.

“Because you do not want pandemic revolution and ubiquitous uprisings such as the French endured in the late eighteenth century,” Díaz said. “Violent anarchy racked that nation for a dozen years afterward and cost their leaders and many of their aristocrats—people such as us—their heads. And anyway what do you have to lose except a few minutes of your time? Who knows? If you lift their spirits and let them know what our men are fighting and dying for, you won’t turn them into cheerful givers, but perhaps they won’t shoot your tax collectors on sight.”

“Last year we did have a rather bloody revolt on our hands,” Eduardo said.

“We taxed them into a truly terrifying famine,” the Señorita noted with a pleasant smile.

“And this year we plan to tax them even more severely,” El Presidente said.

“Bueno, ” the Señorita said softly.

“I will harangue the multitude if my stepmother can’t do it,” Eduardo said.

El Presidente and the Señorita looked at him and . . . laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Eduardo said. “I’m their governor, not you, Stepmother!”

Now the room rocked with their raucous guffaws.

“The last time you ‘harangued the multitude,’” the Señorita Dolorosa said, “half the crowd walked away in less than five minutes.”

“They thought it was about to rain,” Eduardo explained.

“It was a clear, warm, cloudless day,” the Señorita said.

“The other half stayed because they were entranced,” Eduardo said.

“The other half couldn’t leave because they’d fallen asleep,” the Señorita said.

“My dear Eduardo,” Díaz said, struggling to promote a truly charming smile, “you aren’t the most animated speaker I’ve ever seen.”

“What he’s saying, El Dopo, is that you’re a stupendous. . . bore!!!”

Eduardo stood and stamped out of the antechamber.

“You think inviting him here was a mistake?” Díaz said.

“He is the governor,” the Señorita Dolorosa said, “if in name only, and he had to know the offensive is coming. Now tell me about it.”

“Our intelligence says that they have acquired and are learning to master heavy artillery. They’ve been tough enough without it, and I fear if they ever do master those big guns, we’ll never defeat them.”

“They are rumored to have workable Gatlings as well.”

“We hear that rumor before every one of our wars with them,” Díaz said. “As you know, however, their highly inferior black powder clogs and jams their firing mechanisms with their residue. Their Gatlings have always been useless after the first thirty or forty shots.”

“Where do you plan to hit them?” the Señorita asked.

“There’s only one strategy and one front that will allow us to destroy Sonora for once and for all: a full-frontal assault on their main fort.”

“To move that many men and that much matériel will not go unnoticed,” the Señorita said. “They will have time to dig breastworks and trenches.”

“We’ll have a fight on our hands, true, but we can and should prevail. If we don’t delay.”

“How soon can we launch such an attack?” the Señorita asked.

“In two months,” Díaz said.

“I’ll prepare my speech.”

“You write such stirring speeches, My Lady.”

“I am gifted,” she shamelessly conceded.