Relic of Time (8 page)

“I didn't. I called your cell phone number.”

“Where did you get that?”

A pause. “George.”

“So how would you know where I answered my cell phone?”

He laughed, and she remembered his face, his eyes, his teeth. He seemed summed up by his accidents. No, that wasn't fair. In his way, Miguel was as much a zealot as George. She couldn't believe that George would give him her number. She had seen his reaction to Miguel's performance when the founder of Justicia y Paz came on to her at the house. She told Miguel so.

“I couldn't lie to you.”

“Good.”

“Lowry gave me your number.”

Lowry! How had he gotten hold of it? Clare was certain she had never given it to the cook at the Catholic Worker house in Palo Alto. She could hardly accuse Arroyo of lying. But he had already admitted to lying once. Someone, obviously Lowry, must have told him that she was no longer working with George.

“Why should we get together?”

“I need your advice.”

Who can resist such a claim? His statement put her on a pedestal of authority, someone who could give sage advice, someone he needed. And so she agreed to meet him in Pinata.

“I could come there.”

“I'll meet you.”

Imagine inviting Miguel Arroyo into her father's home. Don Ibanez looked with utter contempt on Justicia y Paz, considering it a mere instrument of Miguel Arroyo's ambition. What hurt the most was that Don Ibanez had known Miguel's grandfather.

“A saint, Clare,” her father had whispered, “and I mean that. When he was in a room it was charged with his presence. He made a holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament every day. His charities were enormous. He swore the beneficiaries to silence, but, like those cured by Christ who were enjoined to keep their cure silent, they had to make it known.”

Whenever Miguel and Justicia y Paz came up, her father lifted his eyes to heaven and wondered what the saintly grandfather would think of such nonsense.

Miguel was waiting for her on the walk in front of a Mexican restaurant, surrounded by a half dozen admirers. They stepped back when Clare came up, recognizing her as her father's daughter. On their faces she could see the wonderment that Clare Ibanez was meeting with Miguel Arroyo. Miguel took her arm and led her down the walk.

“How can I meet with your father?”

She stopped and stared at him and got the thousand-watt smile in answer.

“No, not to ask for your hand.”

How could she not laugh? Had George ever made her laugh? Had she ever seen George laugh? The smile was turned off.

“It's about Our Lady of Guadalupe. Let's go over there.”

There was a park of sorts between the divided lanes of the street; palm trees curved from the ground, and the bench looked about to be overtaken by the lush growth around it. It was on that bench that she heard an astounding story.

She mustn't ask how he knew, he said, after telling her that what he was about to say was utterly confidential.

“I know who stole the sacred image from the shrine in Mexico City.” Having said that, he fell silent, letting the words work their effect on her.

“You must tell the police.”

He shook his head. “Then those who have it would destroy it.”

“Why?!”

“Anyone who would steal such a thing would not hesitate to destroy it. I have to tell this to your father. He will know what to do.”

“He would tell you to tell the police.”

“I don't think so.” He paused. “But, if he does, that is what I will do.”

Much of what he told her was lies, she knew, and they were ineffectual lies. Well, not entirely. She drove him home in her car, leaving his van in Pinata. She drove in silence, with Miguel beside her, his elbow out the open window. When she went through the gate, which opened at her signal, he took in his elbow and raised the window, as if to get a better look at the place. He hopped out and his eyes widened under raised brows as he looked beyond the house where the replica of the basilica was visible.

“My God,” he said in a low voice. “I want to see it.”

They crossed the lawn and then the simulated plaza and into the circular church. Miguel stopped, his eyes drawn to the picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe above the altar. Then he drifted forward as if mesmerized. He showed no surprise to find that her father had not installed a moving walkway beneath the picture, like the one in Mexico City. But everything else was just like Mexico City.

He whispered, “What is the scale?”

“Everything here is one-seventh the size of its original.”

“And the picture?”

“Oh no, that's the exact size of the miraculous one.”

He nodded. Then he crossed himself, kissed his knuckle, and bowed his head. He was still silently praying when her father came in.

Don Ibanez stopped, letting the door close behind him. Miguel, hearing the door, straightened and then Clare led him to her father.

“Father, this is Miguel Arroyo.”

Her father seemed to recognize Miguel but he called on generations of aristocratic restraint. He bowed. Miguel began to put forth his hand, thought better of it, and returned her father's bow.

“Senor Arroyo wants to speak to you, Father,” she whispered. “I'll leave you alone.”

Outside she walked slowly away, but the door of the little basilica did not open again behind her. Well, that was the perfect place for Miguel to give her father his astounding news.

The door of the basilica was still closed when she got to her car. She drove it around to the front; she would have to take Miguel back to Pinata when the discussion was over.

The hacienda, shaded by the many trees around it and thanks to its thick walls, was cool on even so hot a day as this. The windows in the rooms were pulled open and curtains moved slowly in a slight breeze. Ten minutes went by, and then another ten. What advice would her father give Miguel?

Half an hour later, Clare was surprised to see her father's car go down the drive. Her father was at the wheel, Miguel a passenger.

“Why did you never marry?” Lulu asked.

“Word got out.”

She laughed, making her breasts bounce. Neal Admirari was still trying to figure out where this was going. Wherever that was, neither of them seemed to be in any hurry to find out. They were now called the Devoted Duet by their colleagues.

“And I can't even sing.”

They bounced then, too. Lulu and he were certainly devoted to sipping single-malt scotch, no ice, no water, and keeping apart from the others. The media moved like a nomadic band, taking their cue from the television crews, assuming that whoever sent them elsewhere knew what they were doing. Now they were in Phoenix, where the sound of rifle fire and mortars were audible. They were drinking too much. So Neal suggested they go to San Diego.

“What on earth for?”

“I want to show you where I went through boot camp.”

“Neal, I can't afford it. I am not on an expense account.”

“You paid your own way here?”

“Well, after all, I knew you'd be here.”

Once, not many years ago, he had proposed marriage, and learned that there was the impediment of a husband. He had advised her to get an annulment, but a pall had descended upon them. They drifted apart. It was difficult to believe, when he was with her, that she had been married twice, the first finally annulled, the second ended by death, just months ago. Third time lucky? Lulu still looked virginal. He had never forgiven himself for taking her to bed where, afterward, he found out about that first husband. He had felt that he was corrupting her. They were both Catholic journalists then. “What is a Catholic journalist?” “A Roman reporter.” She had even laughed at that. Well, it was good exercise for her breasts.

“I'll buy your ticket.”

“You will not!”

“I don't mean buy. I'll use some of my miles. They keep accumulating.”

“That's different.”

“From what?”

“Being a kept woman.”

Was she a keeper? They flew to San Diego, where he booked them into a hotel, separate rooms.

“Now I'll call a priest.”

“What's wrong?”

“I thought I'd get a blessing on our love.”

She looked at him in silence, trying to figure out what he meant.

“His name is Horvath. We were in the seminary together. He's in the chancery and will know how to fix it.”

More silence. She drew her lower lip between her teeth. Her eyes left his, then came back.

“You're serious.”

“I am. What do you say?”

Her smile grew gradually on her plush lips and then her teeth appeared. “I do.”

And she did, some hours later, in a side chapel of the cathedral, Horvath presiding. The justification was that this was an emergency.

“What emergency?” Horvath was an older version of his youthful self, the spiky hair graying, the fat nose keeping his eyes apart.

“She is a proximate occasion of sin.”

“Neal!”

Horvath seemed embarrassed. What did he think people got married for? But Neal was glad to see that his old classmate was an untroubled celibate.

Their honeymoon trip was a visit to the Marine Corps base, where he talked their way past the guard, and then led her out onto the mile-long parade ground. They looked back at the seemingly single building that formed a bracket around the parade ground.

“It was still camouflaged when I was here.”

He waited for a tug of nostalgia, but it did not come. He had been just a kid when he went through, eight weeks of hell, but proud as punch when his platoon marched past the platform full of brass, a marine at last.

Back at the hotel, he canceled her room, and they moved into his but immediately decided to go downstairs and drink. Single malt.

“We should ask for married malt.”

Not much of a bounce out of that one. Were they sipping Dutch courage? After an hour he suggested they go up.

“'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.”

“If I had any breasts, they would bounce.”

He explained it to her in the elevator. They were already pressing against one another. They undressed each other on the way to the bed and it was everything it should have been. Afterward, she lay naked in his arms and the silence was golden. When his arm started to go to sleep, he untangled.

“I think I'll douche.”

She looked alarmed.

“It's French for shower.”

“I've never had a French shower.”

They had it together.

He called room service and ordered their dinner, which they ate wearing only the terry-cloth robes they found in the closet. They took turns glancing at the bed. After round two, he turned on the television, which was how they learned of the kidnapping of Don Ibanez.

CHAPTER TWO

Ignatius Hannan had made few friends among his fellow electronic billionaires, but then there only were a few who survived the almost daily revolutions that rendered yesterday's epic breakthrough obsolete early this morning. It was no industry for observers. The few at the top were at least as inventive and resilient as anyone they hired. Still, Hannan did not find his peers congenial, and doubtless vice versa. They were, after all, competitors, and they had all been personally narrowed by their abstract imaginations. When they turned to philanthropy other differences emerged. Bill Gates promoted contraception, Hannan the Catholic Church, the former with accompanying press releases, Hannan sub rosa, as he had learned to say. But Don Ibanez had become as close a friend as Hannan had.