Buena Rosa Chapter Two

Chapter Two

She made Manuel wait in the reception area for close to ten minutes. Katherine Wilde was a very busy woman, and he understood the complexities of her schedule, perhaps better than her own staff did. After all, for a while, they were both heroes. And while Gato Loco might have hung up the mask, Wild Kat was still far from retirement.
And when she wasn’t out fighting crime in thigh-high boots and leather bustier, she was still the head of a large arts foundation. Or was it a company? He was never really sure what they did in the three floors of offices beneath her private workspace. It was something to do with promoting or preserving art. Something to do with art, he was sure. They had a snazzy logo and corporate letterhead, and a lot of money was thrown about with their name attached to it.
Manuel never paid a tremendous amount of attention to it. While they had been dating, it had really been Katherine Wilde – Wild Kat – who fascinated him, not her company. And now he sat in a bamboo paneled reception area watching water drip down a slab of granite on the far wall, and he wondered not only what it was that they did here, but if maybe he should have paid attention to it sooner.
He had been through the room plenty of times. But he had never lingered. Katherine’s touch was all over the place, her own style, her attention to detail. This venture of hers was not a front. It was important to her, perhaps as important being Wild Kat, if not more so.
More importantly, it was a part of her life that he suddenly realized he had neglected. It made him a little sad. And he wondered, just a little, if that was part of why they weren’t spending as much time together.
“Mr. de la Vega? Ms. Wilde will see you now.”
Manuel stood and gave the receptionist with the perfect teeth a distracted smile. He checked his jacket reflexively, then swung his legs out and forward, stumping towards the quiet office beyond.
The floor was carpeted in a layer of Indian rugs that stretched from wall to wall, overlapping in places, in others revealing a polished cedar floor. Traditional block print tapestries hung from the walls between ornamental stone pillars. Rattan sofas with brightly colored cushions lay along each wall of the long room, and a pair of matching chairs sat before the desk. Small palm trees held down the far corner of the room, just past the large cedar desk. Her public face. British born, she kept one foot firmly on the throat of her family’s colonial legacy. It was as if she recognized that she may never outgrow the shadows of her ancestor’s deeds, might never repay the fortune they made from the sweat of British colonialism.
Katherine was waiting for him behind the desk, glasses she didn’t actually need held between deceptively strong fingers as she chewed on one earpiece. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” She stood and greeted him halfway across the room. “I was out of the country for a few weeks and I had some business to get tidied up.”
“Understandable.” Manuel nodded. They greeted each other with a hug and a quick, efficient kiss. He paused, a far off look in his eyes.
“So what did you want to talk to me about?” Katherine took a seat on one of the sofas and after a long second Manuel hobbled over and joined her.
“My cousin is in trouble in Mexico, a town called Buena Rosa. I don’t know the specifics, but I have reason to suspect that it’s bad. Very bad.”
“What can I do to help?”
“I don’t know, actually. I’m beginning to wonder that myself. Part of me thinks that I can handle this as Manuel de la Vega. That’s all I am anyway, right? But a good detective can be the difference that gets her out. Maybe that’s enough.”
“But what if it isn’t?”
“And I think that’s why I’m here. Maybe I was thinking you would tell me this was crazy and that someone else could do it. That someone else can play the hero.” Manuel stared at his hands as the tightened and relaxed on the grips of his forearm crutches. He couldn’t meet her eye. Now that he was here, he wished he hadn’t come, that he had listened to his instinct and not even tried. But it was too late for that. The words were out.
They hadn’t ever talked about it. Not really. Katherine was convinced that if she put the Tesla twins to work on the hardware, if Snowflake did some mechanical work, that someday Gato Loco would ride again. He had always put it off. It was always a discussion for later. And after months of trying to get him back on the horse, she stopped mentioning it. But his retirement, as such, was never officially open topic for discussion.
But there it was. “Someone else can play the hero.” It was acknowledgement, perhaps that he had given up. And it felt right saying it, like he had been holding onto it for months.
Manuel wasn’t a hero. He never wanted to be. Circumstances had pushed him in that direction, and he had never pushed back. And then circumstances blew him the hell up, and he found a reason to push back.
“I can go down and deal with it, maybe.” Katherine said quietly. There was sadness, resignation in her voice that tore him up inside. “Or I could send Archon down. He could probably clear it all up in a matter of hours.”
Manuel said nothing, loosing himself in the pattern of the rug just past his hands. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it; someone to take the problem, the responsibility off his hands? But it all came down to if he could sleep at night knowing that he gave up.
“No, I’ll take care of it. I just wanted to hear someone offer to take it off my hands, to tell me that I couldn’t handle this on my own. I needed to hear how that sounded.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, you know that don’t you?” Katherine smiled at him. Her eyes were misty, like she might start crying without warning. He wondered if his own eyes had the same threat of rain.
“I know. It doesn’t make sense to me either.” Manuel laughed and it surprised him how easily the laugh came. “But I might need backup or some tactical support if you can spare it.”
“Consider it done. I’ll have it in place in Buena Rosa this time tomorrow.”
Manuel pushed himself to his feet, testing his grip on his crutches. “So, just got back in town from a few weeks out of the country? Sounds exciting.”
Katherine stood and her smile was unexpectedly chilly. “I was called to inland China on family business.”
“You’ll have to tell me about it sometime.”
She met his gaze and her eyes said it all. No. She didn’t have to tell him anything. He took the hint.
They shared a long hug. With his face buried in her jasmine scented auburn hair, he began to regret his decision to leave. But it was too late for that. It was too late for a lot of things. “Take care, Kat.”
“You take care too, Gato. Call if you need anything.”
Manuel didn’t take another breath until the elevator doors closed. He didn’t want to be rid of the scent of jasmine.