Dead Men Don't Lie. Jackson Cain

      Chapter 16

      Decked out in a white silk dressing gown, the Señorita Dolorosa lounged in her bed, sipping Madeira. For two centuries, that wine—vinho da roda, as the wine had been called in the Portuguese Madeira Islands, which had produced it—was highly sought after worldwide, particularly in the United States. There, the Founding Fathers had drunk it day and night. Luckily for the Señorita, Mexico’s former dictator, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, had been especially fond of Madeira. In fact, he had purchased several dozen Madeira “pipes”—the massive 112-gallon casks, in which the brandy-fortified, famously long-lived wine was shipped. Mexico’s rulers and wealthy elite had been partaking of those “pipes” ever since. Maximilian had been especially enamored of the wine.

      From the Señorita’s perspective, Santa Anna’s importation of it had been especially fortuitous. In 1851, a grape blight had destroyed Portugal’s Madeira Island vineyards. Consequently, only two or three dozen of the “pipes” remained in all of North America. Several years ago, the Señorita had bought them all up—or in some cases forcibly commandeered them. She kept them safely locked away in her hacienda’s wine cellar. She had now convinced herself that she owned and was consuming the world’s last casks of the wine. That knowledge vastly increased her enjoyment of the wine, and she shared it with no one, not even Díaz, and least of all with her court ladies.

      In fact, they were now circled around the Señorita, watching her enjoy her wine. Keeping the Señorita happy was always wise, since the penalties for not amusing her were . . . unendurable. The beautiful, dark-haired Rosalita had recently fallen out of favor and she was now desperate to redeem herself in the Señorita’s eyes. Dressed in a sheer black nightgown, Rosalita was smiling and waving enthusiastically at the Señorita, hoping to get her permission to speak. Finally, the Señorita called on her.

      “My Lady,” Rosalita said, “I’ve heard that you lived in America for several years and that you learned to speak English in that country. Could you tell us about your experiences there?”

      They knew that their Lady enjoyed reflecting on her life, particularly on her past triumphs and accomplishments:

      “When I was twelve, my father did business with the governor of Sinaloa. The man was named after the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés, who first subjugated and sacked Méjico. The governor’s full name was thus Hernán Cortés Castenado. Like his namesake, he was obsessed with conquering a kingdom and carving out an empire. My father was an arms merchant who had supplied him with guns and ammunition during his early years. Both had prospered through their association, and my family was wealthy—one of the wealthiest in Mexico.

      “As a child I noticed that Castenado was fond of me. He was always making me sit on his lap, even when it was no longer appropriate. When he became the governor of Sinaloa and was now all-powerful, he ordered my father to hand me over to him. I was only thirteen, and my father hated ‘abuso sexual’ [child molestation] with special vehemence. His own mother had been raped when she was thirteen, and my father, Fernando, had been the illegitimate issue of that assault. He knew that the governor had no intention of marrying me. He simply wanted to take me by force. When the novelty wore off, he would then discard me, which had been his practice with every other mujer joven [young woman].

      “When my father refused to hand me over, the governor had his rurales abduct and torture him. He told him if he didn’t sell me to him he’d frame us on charges of sedition, then convict and imprison us. He also said he’d have me anyway, that he was too powerful to resist or deny. He then sent my father home to sign the papers and to deliver me to the governor the next day. Instead my father put me on a night train to El Paso, Texas, where a fellow arms dealer would raise me en secreto as his daughter.

      “When the Sinaloa governor learned I was gone, he put my father through hell in an attempt to learn my whereabouts. My father died on ‘the Parrot’s Perch,’ one of the most agonizing of all the tortures.”

      Their Lady paused, while her court ladies stared at her in stunned silence. This was one story they had never heard before.

      “What happened next?” Roberta finally asked.

      “I grew up in El Paso. I was not particularly grateful or obedient. In fact, I was wild, headstrong, even resentful of my adopted parents. Sneaking away at night, I’d run the streets with the tough Mexican gangs. My foster father tried to reason with me, and when reason failed, he took a razor strap to me, which only incited me to further rebellion.

      “And all the while, the Sinaloa governor, Hernán Cortés Castenado, never forgot me. He circulated wanted posters with my photo on them, offering a reward for my apprehension. He claimed I was a killer and a thief. He sent bounty hunters looking for me, several of which came as far as El Paso.

      “I did not care. I was rowdy, angry, and promiscuous even then. Finally, my foster father had had enough. He sold me to the governor for the reward. That night I arrived at the palace, the governor had the court ladies bathe and scrub me till I was raw, then deliver me to his bed. He never knew that on El Paso’s mean streets, I’d been having sex since age thirteen. Instead he thought he was getting a seventeen-year-old virgin. I played along with the lie, sharing his bed and biding my time.

      “During those years, I studied the power structure in Sinaloa. The most powerful man was with the commanding general. Our leaders have always ruled through violence and terror—going back to the Aztecs and beyond—and the commanding general was the one who put down our people’s periodic rebellions and who defeated our enemies abroad. His military strength far transcended that of the governor.

      “By this time my reputation as the most passionately beautiful woman in all of Sinaloa—in all of Mexico really—had spread, and I was increasingly popular with the masses, far more than our governor was.

      “I was, the governor told me, muy magnífica in bed. When I saw my chance, I poisoned his ugly shrew of a wife, and by then he was so smitten with me that he took my hand in marriage. However, I now needed him por nada, so I seduced the commanding general, Ramon Osorio. I gradually planted the notion in his head that if my husband, the governor, were eliminated, he and I could take over the throne. Since women could not legally rule Sinaloa, I’d bring the governor’s son—my idiot stepson, Eduardo—in as figurehead. He was a coward, a moron, and I could make him do anything. Ramon and I could easily intimidate, subjugate, and then circumvent him. As for Ramon, he would have riches beyond dreams of avarice and el poder de los dioses [the power of the gods]. Delusions of grandeur aggravated by his delirious desire for me caused him to suggest that I poison my newlywed husband, Sinaloa’s governor, Hernán Cortés Castenado.

      “I did so happily and became the de facto governor of Sinaloa. By then, however, I’d met a rising star in the mejicano army, a young general named Porfirio Díaz, and we’d secretly joined forces. We decided that since Ramon was blocking Díaz’s final rise to power, that I should get rid of him. So one afternoon, when Ramon and I were out by ourselves, having a picnic in the desert, I injected him in the neck with diamondback venom. His demise was inconceivably painful. To make matters worse, the whole time he was dying, I knelt over him till we were nose to nose. Gazing into his eyes, I gave him my widest, most loving smile, all the while stroking his cheek, kissing his lips, and whispering, ‘There, there. There,