The Matador's Crown. Alex Archer

      Prologue

      The woman walking thirty strides ahead of him moved like a flamenco dancer. Powerful, forceful, yet graceful. She reminded him of Ava, the dancer in the club where he played guitar.

      Ava barely acknowledged his existence and frequently complained he did not keep proper compas, marking the beat, which spoiled her dance and made her look bad in front of the audience. As a guitarist, he was attuned to the dancer and singer, but his concentration tended to waver around Ava.

      He’d thought her just another dancer when he’d taken the job at the Gato Negra club. But there was a shadow inside Ava and he felt its presence every time she took the stage. Darkness emerged in her footwork, in the aggressive expressions that contorted her face and the fierce control with which she captured the audience nightly.

      So he did not hurry his pace to catch up with this other woman. Best to admire from afar.

      With the guitar he’d made from German spruce and Spanish cypress strapped across his back, Diego Montera carried the cumbersome wooden crate at stomach level. He had to deliver it at midnight. In a cotton bag tied to his belt loop, he had a change of clothing and enough euros to cover a meal. He also carried the small bronze artifact he had to deliver the following morning. He had seen that much—that it was bronze—as his employer had wrapped it and handed it to him. What was in the crate, he didn’t know. It wasn’t much heavier than his guitar.

      His employer had rented him a room in the Hotel Blanca tonight for the first delivery. It was not as if he could complete the transaction on the street, in the open. Or at his home where Diego’s mother would question a stranger’s visit. The buyer preferred a private meeting, valued his privacy.

      Diego was excited about tonight. That his employer had trusted him with two jobs within a day of each other meant he was moving up, earning respect. If both exchanges went well, perhaps he’d earn a position as a regular liaison. A guitarist’s wages were nothing to write home about, and he still lived with his mother, who complained when he didn’t help clean around the house. A guitarist shouldn’t do manual labor such as fixing the plumbing! Diego wanted his own apartment so he could entertain friends and bring home women without the curse of his mother’s condemning eye.

      Even though he had no information about who would arrive to pick up the wooden crate and its contents tonight, Diego felt confident the meeting would go well. The money would be transferred electronically through a secure service. Then Diego got paid in cash. He knew to go online and verify that his employer had received the transfer before handing over the item. He had one of those fancy cell phones with the internet browser in his jeans pocket. The device, a hand-me-down, had received a pounding from one of Diego’s brothers and was on its last legs.

      Tomorrow morning’s handoff would be at a public place—a city fountain—not far from the Museum of Cádiz. What he did when he was not playing in the club wasn’t legal, but it paid too well to pass up. He hadn’t learned the name of the outfit he worked for, but it probably didn’t have one. Most of the deals, if not all, were made under the table.

      His mother would never look him in the eye again if she knew who he was involved with. But if Diego wanted to finally attract the eye of Ava, the beautiful flamenco dancer, he had to have money.

      Hours earlier, the sun had set in fiery amber ripples on the horizon over the sea. A sharp slice of moonlight glimmered on the waters close to shore. The streets were busy at all hours in Cádiz. The city offered so much to experience in food, music and festivity. And with the bullfights on the mainland in Jerez, Cádiz celebrated with all-night dancing in the streets.

      Diego turned a corner into an empty street. Though he’d been a Cádiz resident all his life, the sudden street-to-street changes from festive to silent startled him. He was tired, but the coffee he’d slammed down before leaving the club after tonight’s performance had given him a jolt.

      Exiting the momentary solace, he crossed a main street peopled with tourists in jeans, sandals and baseball caps, and entered the Hotel Blanca’s whitewashed stucco facade. Diego smiled at the squat matron behind the front desk who wore black edged with touches of white lace. She was someone’s grandma, surely, and her jet eyes brightened at the sight of him. Yet as he approached, she blew him a kiss that seemed more flirtatious than motherly.

      He was always startled to notice a woman’s reaction to his appearance. His mother had called him ma bonita, “my pretty,” but his three brothers had pounded him regularly because of his looks...and possibly because of their mother’s affection for him. And because he had no inclinations toward the bullfight. In a family of toreros dating back three generations, Diego had opted to study music.

      His hotel room was on the second floor, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, several blocks from the avenue Compo del Sur that fronted the beach. Setting the crate on the small, wobbly table near the bed and untying the cotton bag, he let it slide down to his feet and land on the floor. Sitting on the narrow bed, he pulled the guitar around from his back. Quickly, he loosened the E, A and D strings, and drew them out from the wooden tuning pegs so they sprang like whiskers from the bridge. He slipped his hand inside the guitar’s sound hole.

      The small statue had fallen out of the cloth bag and felt cold against his palm as he carefully eased it, and the duct tape he’d used to secure it, from inside the guitar. He shouldn’t have taken it out until morning, but he couldn’t play with it inside the instrument, so he set the shiny piece aside next to the wooden crate. Maybe it wasn’t bronze. Maybe it was gold. He was no expert on metals.

      He considered what he could buy if he kept the statue for himself. A lot. But if he didn’t deliver it tomorrow morning, he knew he wouldn’t see tomorrow evening.

      Now all he had to do was wait for the first meeting—at midnight. An appropriately menacing time to meet a stranger.

      Diego passed the hours strumming his guitar.

      * * *

      AS MIDNIGHT TOLLED, the door to Diego’s hotel room creaked open. Diego abruptly stood as a tall stranger in a long black leather coat stepped in. He wore sunglasses and a dark fedora, the crown of it circled with a red ribbon. The brim was tipped low over his eyes. Cordoba leather shoes caught Diego’s eye. Very expensive. His father had once owned a pair.

      He flexed his fingers. He couldn’t recall leaving the door open, but he hadn’t locked it.

      “You Diego Montera?” the stranger asked in a low tone.

      A dreadful chill froze Diego at the end of the bed, his guitar held ready as if it was a weapon.

      “Yes. Are you the liaison for—”

      “Yes, the liaison. You have it?”

      “Yes. Ah! I need to check a message first.” He eyed the corner of the battered cell phone on the floor, which lay half out of the cotton bag. “Verify the transaction before we do this.”

      The other man tipped his sunglasses down and looked over the rim at Diego. “You’ve not done this before, have you, Señor Montera?”

      Diego rubbed his sweating palms down the sides of his jeans. He didn’t like that his employer had given his full name to the client. “What makes you think that?”

      The thin man smirked as he approached the crate. “Do what you must. All my accounts are in order. Is it in here?”

      “Yes.” Diego opened up the cell phone and turned it on. The thing was four years old, taped across the cover and slower than an adagio. He waited for the screen to boot up.

      The liaison didn’t seem to notice him. He paused