“I survived,” Matt said, staring back.
“Is that Cienfuegos lurking in the background? Somebody must have left a screen door open.”
“I love you, too, Doña Esperanza,” said Cienfuegos.
“Well, get me Señor Alacrán or that lump my daughter married, Steven. Whoever’s in charge. We’ve got to unseal the border and allow a peacekeeping mission to enter.”
She doesn’t know, Matt thought. But how could she know that everyone who had attended El Patrón’s funeral was dead, including Esperanza’s husband and her older daughter Emilia? “They—uh, they can’t come,” said Matt, searching for the right words.
“Don’t stall for time,” the little woman spat at him. “You may enjoy swanking it up in your old home, but I have world affairs to consider. Don’t worry, chiquito. You’ll be well cared for.”
“I thought you were going to have me declared the heir,” said Matt, stung at being called a little kid.
“Yes, probably. In due time.” Esperanza waved her hand impatiently. “If you can’t find anyone else, you can rustle up that good-for-nothing husband of mine.”
“You have to tell her,” said Cienfuegos.
“Tell me what?” the woman snapped. “That they don’t want to open the border? Give me a break! Either they let the international peacekeepers in or the whole country will starve to death.”
Everything that Cienfuegos had said about the destruction of Cocaine came back to Matt’s mind. What would happen if he allowed the so-called peacekeepers in? Esperanza didn’t care whether the innocent suffered. She was a fanatic. Somewhere deep inside Matt an old, old voice whispered, I’m like a cat with nine lives. As long as there are mice to catch, I intend to keep hunting.
El Patrón, thought Matt, shocked. It was like the voice he’d heard in the kitchen—an actual person whispering in his ear! It frightened him because it was so real, but also comforted him because in a strange way he had found an ally.
“You don’t need to have me declared the heir,” he said in words he barely recognized as his own. “I am the Lord of Opium, the only Alacrán left.”
Esperanza’s eyes opened wide.
He told her. He described how the eejit children sang the “Humming Chorus” from Madama Butterfly at the funeral. The mourners—though you could hardly call them mournful—had waded through drifts of gold coins as they entered the tomb. El Patrón’s coffin was laid out like the sarcophagus of an Egyptian pharaoh. His likeness as a young man had been painted on the lid. Then Tam Lin brought out a case of wine that had been laid down the year the old man was born, and Steven, Emilia’s husband, had opened the first bottle. It smells like someone opened a window in heaven, he said.
How little he knew! Everyone who drank it went straight to the afterlife, though probably not to heaven. All the drug lords died and their wives, too, including Emilia. The others—the priest, Senator Mendoza, Tam Lin—fell with them.
Matt looked for signs of emotion in Esperanza’s face, but all she did was sigh. “That certainly makes things awkward,” she said.
Awkward? What kind of woman was this who didn’t cry when she heard about the death of her husband and daughter?
“I had hoped to negotiate with one of the older family members,” she continued. “No offense, Matt, but you’re only fourteen years old.”
“I’m more than a hundred,” Matt said. And I am, he thought. I was grown from a strip of El Patrón’s skin.
“Yes, well . . .” For the first time Esperanza looked uncertain. “We don’t really know what happens when clones grow up. We’ve never had one your age. I do know that you’re inexperienced and ill-educated.”
Matt smiled. “El Patrón only had a fourth-grade education, and he founded an empire.”
“¡Por Dios! You sound exactly like him. It’s unnatural!” Esperanza cried. She wiped her forehead with a heavily ringed hand. “The situation is more complicated than you think. Most of the Dope Confederacy was on its way out. The land had been farmed until it was exhausted and then polluted with chemicals. The drug lords rode around in hovercrafts and shot all the wildlife. Glass Eye won’t find it easy to make money out of his new territory, which is why he’s looking toward Opium.”
“He is?” Matt asked sharply.
“El Patrón was a monster, but he had a quality the others lacked. I can’t believe I’m saying something good about him.”
Matt waited as she struggled to control her anger. Through the holoport he could hear doves in a far-off courtyard. When he was recovering in the hospital of Santa Clara, María had pushed his wheelchair into the convent garden. Together they had watched the birds bobbing and cooing in their half-witted way as María threw bread crumbs at them.