Paz got the news in the morning. He came up out of sleep in a hurry and the sort of mild panic we experience when we become aware that someone is watching us as we sleep. Here it was his wife, the normally earlier riser, and she was sitting at the foot of their bed, with theMiami Herald in her hand and a troubled expression on her face, although not exactly the troubled expression she had worn for what Paz felt to be months. Time itself had become funny around the house, it seemed; he thought it might have something to do with having variants of the same dream nearly every night. That could throw your calendar off a little. Lola’s look now was not one of interior pain, as before (with “No, I can’t talk about it” being the response when asked, “What’s wrong?”), but a gentler and more accessible expression, suggesting that the problem was exterior to herself.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Bad news. Or maybe you’ll think it’s good, I don’t know.”
With that she handed the paper to him. TheHerald had run it above the fold, on the right margin: Developer Slain in Coral Gables, was the headline, and the subhead read: Second Killing of a Prominent Cuban-American Businessman Strikes Fear. He read it and felt a strange pang, as if he had been clutching something alive to his vitals without knowing it, and it had just died with a sigh.
He felt her watching him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It must be a shock.”
“A little,” he agreed.
“Any feelings?”
He shrugged. “I guess. Surprising feelings of…not loss, because I never had anything from the guy, but…something. You know I never think about the bastard from one year to the next, and then a couple of weeks ago Major Oliphant drops by the place and asked me do I know him, and as usual I say no, which is the truth, and now this. The only reason he’s my father is because my mother screwed him to get a small-business loan, and we had exactly one conversation my whole life, in which he told me he’d kill me if I ever came around him again. My position was nobody outside the family needs to know any of that shit.”
Paz stared at the paper for a while here, until the black letters in the murder story ceased to have any semantic content. He took a deep breath and let it gush out.
“Did I have some little pathetic hope that he was going to have a change of heart and…and what, take me to a Dolphins game, introduce me to all his pals? Guys, I want you to meet my nigger bastard son, Jimmy Paz. I don’t think so. I don’t know, you read these stories about women, refugees or whatever, they’re carrying this baby in their arms, ducking bullets, starving, bleeding, and then they arrive at the refugee camp and the doctor takes a look and the baby’s been dead for a week. How does she feel? I mean she had to have known it, but she talked herself out of it. And now it hits her. Does that make any sense?”
“Yes, in a strange way. What will you do?”
“I don’t know, Lola. You think I should send a wreath?”
At this sarcasm, she started to rise from the bed, her face closing again, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her back down.
“I’m sorry. It’s a little hard to take first thing in the morning.” He stroked her hand. “More important, when are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do. You’re nervous and crabby-that fight we had, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t just a fight. You come back from work and you’re all glassy-eyed, like you’ve been taking dope.” He paused and craned his neck elaborately, trying to catch her eye. She dropped her head, refusing this. “Areyou taking dope?” he asked.
“Of course not! I’m under a lot of strain. Working neuropsych in an ER is no picnic. I take an occasional Valium.”
This was a lie. Lola has been stuffing herself with buspirone, alprazolam, chlordiazepoxide, diazepam, and halazepam in varying combinations and dosages for weeks, ever since the dreams started, the same dream every night. She’s a psychiatrist, for God’s sake, she knew the signs of incipient breakdown. She also knew that there was no shame involved in mental disease; still shefelt shame at her condition and would not speak about it to her husband. She has mentioned obsessive dreaming to her training therapist. They have talked about it. They have discussed what it means to dream obsessively about your husband giving your child to a jaguar to be carried off and eaten. What does it mean that, in the dream, you wish for it to happen? That your husband is dressed in furry skins and carrying a bow and arrow in one hand, and in the other hand a little model of a jail? You think that he’s a savage perhaps, a little unconscious racism here? Or that you feel trapped in the marriage? A little jail? It’s a common thing. And what about the woman in blue and white who stands behind the husband: your mother, perhaps? And the seven arrows your husband shoots in the dream, do they hit the daughter or the beast? Ambiguous, a source of anxiety, yes? What would it mean if they hit the beast? What do the arrows symbolize? Why seven? It might be sexual, yes, fears of rivalry with the daughter, sexual aggression by the husband against the daughter feared and repressed? What does the jaguar symbolize?
Nothing, Doctor, they symbolize nothing. That’s what she always says, a failure at her own game when it strikes so close to home. Sometimes a jaguar is only a jaguar. What she has not told the doctor is that her husband has also dreamed of great spotted golden beasts and also her daughter, all dreaming of the same thing, which is impossible, it’s not happening, mere coincidence. If she told him that, they’d look at her sympathetically and put her on theother side of the locked wards. The requirement for absolute materialism is the great unspoken given of her profession; spooks, messages from beyond, visions, are allsymbols of something else, some repression, some trauma in the meat. Not to believe thatis to be crazy.
She knew that her husband did not buy into that at some level, believed that the unseen world might be as real as fire hydrants and mangoes. He denied it in public, but it is why he took the child to that ritual. And the mother-in-law, a true believer, and they would turn her girl against her, and she would be alone…
“Howoccasional is that, Lo?” asked Paz, and unconsciously, a little of the old cop tone insinuated itself into his voice. He heard it, she heard it: it was how you talked to junkies.
“Isaid, I’m fine!” Lola snapped back, with which she shot up from the bed and went into the bathroom. There she looked into the mirror and made a professional assessment. Patient is a thirty-nine-year-old female Caucasian, well nourished but could drop a few pounds, looks like shit, bags under eyes, dry lips, bitten nails, twitches, dull skin. Reports insomnia, stupid fights with husband, night terrors, reduced sexual energy, recurring dreams. History of hypochondria but nothing recent. Patient is, or was, happy with career and relationships, no prior trauma except one voodoo ceremony, one life-saving miracle by a God in which she does not believe, and a few incidences of murderous violence…
She decided to sign up for a CAT scan. Let’s rule out the brain tumor, shall we? Meanwhile, she thought, on with the day. She opened the medicine cabinet and took down a vial of 5 milligram Valium tablets.
In the bedroom, Paz rose and threw on a sweatshirt and jeans. He would make breakfast for Amelia and take her to school and then return to shower and smoke a cigar and have some more coffee, just as if this were an ordinary day. In fact, by the time he completed these routines it would havebecome an ordinary day: again his extraordinary ability to bury unwanted thoughts. Had the drug companies been able to bottle it, Valium and its sisters would have been driven from the market.
Nor did the subject arise again that day or in the ensuing week. Paz watched his wife covertly for more signs of mental distress. He found them in plenty but felt helpless to intervene, having learned over the years how difficult it was to comment effectively on the mental states of one’s wife, if one’s wife was a psychiatrist. He was a patient man, however, patience on the Jobian scale being a requisite for homicide detectives, and so he waited to see what would evolve and paid a lot of attention to his daughter.
A week and a day after the killing of Yoiyo Calderón, after the elaborate funeral (not attended by Paz) and after the murder had vacated the front pages of the paper for others more recent, if less gaudy, Paz was at work at the end of the lunch rush running a wire brush over his grill and thinking that he should take his wife and kid on a vacation this year, take the boat and run down the Inland Waterway to the Keys, stay in a nice marina, let the sun bake all this shit out of the three of them. He began to think about what the best time would be to take this break, maybe have to wait until school break around Christmas, which would leave his mother alone on Christmas, no, couldn’t do that. After Christmas, then. Would Lola go for it?
A tug on his apron, and he started and spun around with a curse in his mouth. He was not wound as tight as his wife yet, but he’d dropped a lot of calm.
“What!” he said, more harshly than he meant, and he saw the child blink and draw back. He knelt and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry, baby. I was just thinking, and you startled me.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Something nice. Going out on the boat down to Islamorada with you and Mommy. A vacation.”
“Could we take Felix and Louis?”
“I don’t think cats like to go on boats. We could send them to the cat vacation hotel, though.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“There is. They can order fried mice from room service and there’s a bar where they eat catnip and get crazy. They’ll love it.”
“Okay, but there’s a lady out in the room who wants to talk to you. She didn’t order anything butcafé con leche and a guava tart.”
Paz thought immediately of Beth Morgensen. What if the woman was getting aggressive and starting to hunt him? It was all he needed just now.
“What does she look like?”
“She has blond hair. I never saw her before, I think. Table ten.”
Paz washed his hands and face and removed his greasy apron. As always when coming into the dining room after a shift, he paused for a moment to adjust to the shock of moving from the zone of controlled chaos and heat to that of calm, luxury, and cool. He’d never seen the woman at table ten either, but she seemed familiar in an odd way, something about her eyes and the set of her jaw. An old flame? No, he was eidetic on those. Someone from the police? Possibly. He observed her from the cover of the philodendron-draped woven screen that separated the service hallway from the dining room. She was indeed blond, the hair fine and well cut in a businesslike neck-length style, and wore a tan linen suit, also well cut, over a pale lavender blouse. Paz had an eye for clothes and color, and he could tell that those particular shades of tan and lavender were not colors available at Target or on the bargain racks. So, a wealthy woman, late twenties or early thirties, smooth tanned skin, not pretty. Her features were heavy, the nose prominent, the mouth too wide for the face, a fairly masculine face, really, one of those women who turn out looking a little too much like Dad. Her large hazel eyes, set a little aslant, catlike, with thick lashes, were, however, quite fine.
And a Cuban. Paz couldn’t have said exactly what about her appearance marked her as such, but he was sure of it. A nervous Cuban woman: she shifted in her chair several times as he watched and seemed to be looking for someone, or perhaps concerned that someone was looking at her, although the restaurant had emptied out and there were no people in her immediate vicinity. Her long tan fingers tapped on the table, an irregular rhythm that flashed darts of light from ring and bracelet.
Paz walked into the room and quickly to her table.
“I’m Jimmy Paz. You wanted to see me?”
She gave him an assessing look before speaking. She did not return his formal smile. “Yes. Please sit down. Do you know who I am?”
He sat and looked her full in the face for an interval. “No, sorry,” he said at last. “Should I?”
“Not really, I guess. I’m your sister. Half sister, I mean. I’m Victoria Arias Calderón de Pinero.” She extended her hand and Paz shook it dumbly, and then of course the odd familiarity of her face was explained. He shaved one very like it every morning.
“Ok-a-a-y,” he said after a stunned moment. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Pinero?”
“Not Mrs. Pinero, please! Victoria.”
“Oh, that’s nice of you, Sis. I guess I should have said sorry for your loss.”
“It’s your loss, too.”
Without responding to this, he said, “I’m surprised you even know I exist. How did you find out about me?”
“My Aunt Eugenia. She eats here all the time. She’s kind of the family character, the black sheep…”
“Excuse me, I believe I am that.”
He saw a little color appear on her cheeks. “Oh, Christ.” She sighed. “Please don’t make this horrible, although you have every right to, I know. The way my father treated you and your mother was disgraceful. I apologize on behalf of my family.”
“You know, I think I saw you once,” said Paz, ignoring this last. “I was fourteen or so and I just found out where I came from. I biked over to your place in the Gables, and you and another little kid were in the pool. You must’ve been like seven or around there. I stood there and watched you for a long time, until your mother noticed me. Then your father came over and took one look and he knew who I was and he dragged me behind some bushes and beat the shit out of me and told me he’d do worse if I bothered him again, that and wreck my mom’s business. So I guess I’m not interested in the fucking Calderóns or their apologies. Anyway, if that’s all,Victoria…” He pushed his chair back and was about to get up when she said, “Well, whether you like it or not, you’re his son. You have the same sarcastic nastiness, the same brutality and pride. Believe me, I’ve been the favorite target, so I know.”
He stared at her and saw her eyes were brimful of tears, one of which now dripped unregarded down her cheek.His eyes, his daughter’s, too.
He dropped back in his seat and let out a sigh. “All right. Guilty. There was no call to take my sad story out on you. It was decent of you to come see me. So was that all, the apology, or am I mentioned in the will?”
She ignored the sarcasm. “No, and I wasn’t either. Besides a trust to take care of Mom, he left everything to Juan, Jonni we call him.”
“Lucky Jonni. Is he going to be stinking rich?”
“That remains to be seen. My…our father was something of a gambler. He started this project on the Gulf Coast, way bigger than anything we ever did before, something to bring us into the big leagues. He was an admirer of Trump, if that gives you a clue. Anyway, it’s a bet-the-company deal, and everything is mortgaged to the hilt. My brother is a nice kid, but business is not his thing. He just about knows how to sign the back of a check. After the funeral, I managed to convince him to give me an absolute power of attorney in exchange for a substantial increase in his allowance.”
“So you’re the big boss now.”
“On paper. As you can imagine, Dad didn’t staff his company with men who enjoy taking orders from a woman.” She paused and performed a motion, perhaps unconscious, that Paz had seen innumerable times during his tenure with the cops, a slight flicking of the eyes toward the side, a stiffening of the body, and then a glance in the opposite direction. It meant a dangerous secret was about to emerge.
“There’s something else,” she said. “Why I came. I realize it’s ridiculous, I mean, after everything that’s happened, why should you care? But I had to try; honestly, I have nowhere else to go.”
“I’m listening.”
“All right,” she said, and told him the story, some of which he already knew from other sources: the Consuela partnership, the death of Fuentes, the vandalism in the night, the peculiar nature of the guards in her house, and the details of what had happened the night Calderón had died. And the matter of the funny money in JXF Calderón Inc.’s balance sheet.
“That’s an interesting story,” said Paz when she’d finished.
“Yeah, but the problem is how to interpret it. The police think Dad was involved with gangsters. They think he was borrowing money from them, maybe all of them were, all the Consuela partners. They think it’s one of those situations where first they lend money and then they take over the businesses, and if the owners resist, they kill them.”
“And you agree with that? You think that’s what happened to Fuentes and your father? Sorry, our father. You think dear old dad was mobbed up?”
“Maybe. I know the men at my house weren’t Cubans.”
“How do you know that?”
“They had foul mouths, cursing all the time, and they didn’t usejoder forfuck. They usedtirar.”
“That’s Colombian.”
“I know. I think they were all Colombians. Detective Finnegan thinks it was either a hit by a rival gang or that the men at my house weren’t guarding us from someone else, they were holding us hostage, and for some reason they decided to kill Dad.”
“This is Matt Finnegan at MDPD?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“Yeah, a little. A good cop. How does he explain the dead guard?”
“Not very well. Either the other gang got him or Dad got him. But Dad’s gun was never fired. And there’s the giant-cat business.”
At this Paz felt the hairs prickle on his arms, on the back of his neck. He suppressed an actual shiver. “The giant cat.”
“Yes. There were cat prints in the study where he was killed and on the walk outside. And claw marks on the wall under the window. It’s nonsense, of course.”
“Of course. I take it you’re sticking with the gangster theory.”
“I don’t know. Yes, I think Dad was connecting with some bad characters, but…I saw what they did to him. What was the point of all that…carnage? It had to be something more personal, something we’re not understanding.”
“For example…”
“I don’t know!”This was delivered in a suppressed shriek. Victoria closed her eyes and a shiver ran through her upper body. “I’m sorry. This whole thing…I’m hanging on by my fingernails here. But the thing is, if it’s a mob killing, then the police aren’t going to do anything. Whoever did it is in Colombia by now. And if it’s not, if it was personal or, I don’t know, some horrible maniac, then they won’t find him either, because they’re not looking in that direction. I mean, they’ll try, God knows, two important Cuban businessmen killed, I imagine they’ll pull out all the stops, but, well, I have to spend all my time and energy holding the business together. The idea that JXFC is in with gangsters is going to send all our creditors running. The only thing that will stabilize things is if the killers are found and all this goes away. That’s why I came to see you.”
These words and their implication struck Paz like a slap on the ear. He stared at her. “Wait, you wantme to find these guys?”
“Yes.”
“Because what, I’m theson? I have to avenge my father?”
“Yes. I don’t care what he did to you, how he treated you,un padre es un padre para siempre.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” cried Paz, who had heard a similar sentiment expressed in the same language many many times, with the substitution of the female parent as subject. “First of all, I’m not a cop anymore. Second of all, what gives you the idea that I’d be any better at it than Matt Finnegan with all the resources of the police behind him?”
“You’ll have a personal interest. And you’re better than they are. You caught the Voodoo Killer. That’s when I found out who you were. I was just a kid, watching the news with my Aunt Eugenia, the story about when you caught him. Every Cuban in town was watching because of what he did to that Vargas girl. I mean, weknew them, that whole family. And you came on and said something, and my aunt said, Do you know who that is? And then she told me, and said that I should never let my dad know that I knew. After that I looked up stories about you in the papers in the library. And I was proud that you were my brother.”
But not proud enough to look me up until you needed something, thought Paz, but said, “The answer is no. I’m sorry, I’d like to help you out, but I…I’m just not set up for something like that. I’m a guy runs a restaurant, for crying out loud…”
He noticed that Victoria was no longer staring at him but at a point beyond his shoulder. He turned and saw his daughter standing there, regarding them both with interest.
Victoria said, “Hi, what’s your name?”
Amelia stepped closer and looked down at her silver name tag, holding it a little away from her dress.
“Amelia? That’s a pretty name. I’m happy to finally meet you. I’m your Aunt Victoria. Your half aunt.”
“Where’s the other half?” asked Amelia after some consideration. She was not entirely sure what an aunt was. She had an uncle, her mother’s brother, she knew, who lived in New York and who went through aunts at a rapid clip. She had friends who had aunts, though, invariably associated with birthday and Christmas presents (“my Aunt Julie gave me this”), to which Amelia had not until now had any response. A half aunt, she supposed, was better than no aunt at all.
“There’s no other half. It’s just an expression,” said Victoria.
“Uh-huh, but if you gave me a Christmas present it would be thewhole present, wouldn’t it?”
“Amelia, don’t hustle,” said Paz. “And I think you need to go help Brenda fold napkins.”
“Daddy, I will, but I’m talking to myaunt now. Would it?”
Victoria said, “Yes, it would. What were you thinking of?”
“I don’t know yet, because I just got you. Is that a make-believe diamond bracelet or a really real one?”
“It’s really real. Would you like to try it on?”
“Yeah!” Pause. “I mean yes, please.”
Some preening occurred, the child lifting the glittering thing up to see it catch and throw back the lights of the room. Paz watched this with confused and painful emotions, thinking about blood and the way it told.
Amelia handed the diamonds back with obvious reluctance. Victoria asked, “How old are you now?”
“Almost seven.”
“Well, then, in eight years you will have yourquinceañero, and I’ll give you this bracelet as a gift, how would you like that.”
Amelia gaped. “For real?”
“Yes. But now your father and I have grown-up things to talk about, and you have work to do. It was very nice meeting you. Now run along.”
To Paz’s surprise she did just that.
“She’s adorable,” said Victoria.
“If you like the type,” said Paz. “I hope you were serious about the bracelet. She doesn’t forget.”
“I was. I should have done this years ago, finding you, but I was shit scared of Dad. Embarrassing, but true. Again, I’m sorry.”
“Hey, I knew about you, too, and I didn’t make a move, and I didn’t even have your excuse.”
They regarded each other silently for a moment, a silence she broke with “So, Jimmy, what’s the story? Are you going to be a belated big brother and help me out?”
“Can I think about it? It’s going to be a major wrench for me, and other people are involved.”
“Sure,” she said, “I understand.” She slipped a card from her purse and handed it over. It was a JXF Calderón Inc. card and it had Victoria A. Calderón listed as CEO.
“CEO, huh? You’re a fast worker, Sis.”
“I am. I have to be. And not to pressure you, but this, what I asked, has to be quick, too, or there’s no point.” She rose from her chair, and he rose, and she kissed him on the cheek and walked out of the restaurant.
The mother was waiting for him in the kitchen.
“What did she want?” was the first question.
“Mamí, how do you even know who that was?”
“Don’t be stupid, Iago, of course I know who that was. I ask you again, what did she want?”
“She wanted me to find out who killed Yoiyo Calderón. Since you ask.”
“And will you?”
Paz threw up his hand dramatically. “Mamí, what are you talking about? I’m running a restaurant here, I got no resources, I’m not a cop anymore…it’s ridiculous. Not to mention I hated the guy.”
“He was your father. You have an obligation.”
“An obli…this is coming fromyou, after the way he treated us?”
“It doesn’t matter what he was or what he did. He gave you life. He’s part of you. You should do what you can. And also, my son, I run this restaurant, not you.”
“Thank you, Mamí, I almost forgot. And you forgot to say ‘a father is always a father.’”
At this the mother fixed him with her famous stare, a psychic bazooka that ordinarily would have stripped thirty years off his age and made him mumble and shuffle away. Not this time. Paz was angry now. He was being manipulated into doing something he didn’t want to do, that he didn’t really think could be done, that was going to end badly in some way. Worse, he was getting a shot at detective work again, it was being laid in his lap, and he didn’t know if he could still do it, without a badge in his pocket and a gun on his belt, and also he knew (now the lid was sliding off) that he still lusted after it, that he was designed by nature to do that kind of work, that he was notreally content to grill meats rather than suspects forever, that he had talked himself into a life that was in some deep way utterly false. So he met the stare, focusing his anger on his mother, and they locked eyes for what seemed like minutes.
And now Paz was appalled to see a tear, slow and fat as glycerin, roll out of his mother’s eye and descend her brown cheek; and then another and a small freshet of them fell. Paz gaped, for he had never in his life seen his mother cry; it was as if she had sprouted a third eye. And her face seemed to have lost its carved-in-mahogany look and become sad and vulnerable. Paz felt a pang of disorienting terror, as he might have in an earthquake, seeing ripples on the solid earth.
“What? What is it?” he asked helplessly, and here she shook her head slowly from side to side, and said in a slow sad voice, creaky with strain, “No, I can’t tell you. I can’t make you. It’s much too late. Here you have to go alone and do what you have to do.” She pulled a fresh hand towel from the pile on the counter and wiped her eyes, then behind this scrim re-formed her face into the accustomed mask of command. “You’ll let me know. It will take some time to replace you on the early shift.” With that she turned and left the kitchen, leaving Paz wondering if he had imagined it all.
But the hand towel was there on the counter where she had flung it. He picked it up and found it was still damp with her tears.
Now Amelia appeared, dressed in her shorts and T-shirt, holding her hostess gown carefully on its hanger. He inspected her with care. “I hopeyou’re still the same,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing, sweetie. You about ready to go?”
“Uh-huh, but, Daddy, could we stop at the market and get more little Fritos?”
“More Fritos? I just got you a ten-pack the other day. What’re you, feeding the whole school?”
The child rotated her sneaker toe in a tiny circle and looked into the middle distance. “No, but it’s nice to share snacks. Miss Milliken says.”
“Oh, well,” said Paz in delight at constancy. “If MissMilliken says, then Fritos will flow forth in a never-ending stream.”
“Is all you eat Fritos?” the girl asks. They are high in the tree. It is recess time at Providence Day School. The voices of children at play float up through the rustling leaves.
Moie licks his fingers and impales the little bag on a twig. “No, I eat other things.”
“Where, in a restaurant?”
“No, Jaguar gives them,” replies Moie. His Spanish is coming back a little, he finds, in these short conversations with the girl, although he does not trust the language to express anything complex. This is disturbing, not to be able to speak to others freely, far more than he thought it would be. Father Perrin had been correct: he could not really speak the language of thewai’ichuranan, and Jaguar has sent this child to help him. It was not shameful to make an error before a girl, especially one who would probably not live for much longer. Another reason why Jaguar has sent her.
Or so Moie supposes; it is still unclear. He rummages in his net bag and takes out a clay flask. The girl says, “Are you going to change into a monster now?”
“Not now,” says Moie.
“How come?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“I do not. How come you live in this tree?”
Moie regards the child with a fierce expression, but she meets his eye without a blink. Over her left shoulder he sees her death hanging, well separated and glowing like a small star. He thinks of the wordinteresting, which he has learned from Father Tim, a word the Runiya lack. It describes a hunger Moie has not known existed, but, like pisco for some men, it is hard to give up once tasted. This girl is interesting, and not only because Jaguar has sent her to him.
“How come?” she asks again.
“I will tell you,” says Moie. “First, before anything, there was Sky and Earth. Each was separate from the other and they didn’t know each other’s language, not at all, so they were very sad. They had no one to talk to! But from their sadness there came Rain, who knew the language of both of them. And they were happy for a while. But then Sky wanted Rain to be his wife, and she agreed. This made Earth jealous, because he also loved Rain and he wanted her to be his wife. So they fought a war. Sky sent lightning to strike Earth, and Earth sent fires and smokes from inside him to choke Sky. Then Rain said Stop, stop, I will marry both of you. First I will be with Sky, then I will drop and be with Earth, then I will rise again to Sky. So they went on and on. Rain had many children. She had Sun and Moon. She had River. She was pleased that there were more things in the world, so she went to her husbands and said, It’s good to have many things. You must make things, too. So they did. Sky made stars and birds. Earth made plants and trees, and worms and insects and the swift animals. Earth was proud of these things and he boasted of them to River. River said, If you mate with me, we will make something even greater than these things. Earth said, If we did that, your mother, Rain, would be jealous. But River said she didn’t care about that and smiled over her shoulder at Earth. So he mated with her. So in time out of her womb came Caiman.”
“What’s that?”
Moie makes spectacles of his fingers and gnashes his teeth and writhes his body until she understands he is talking about a crocodile, like the one inPeter Pan.
“River told Caiman that he could only eat the creatures that put their feet to the water, but he was a wicked child and would not listen. At that time there were no fishes. He left the water and chased the deer and tapirs and ate them, and ate trees and all plants, and the beetles and ants.”
“Crocodiles can’t eat trees.”
“Things were different in those days. Do you want to hear this story or not?”
“I do, but I mostly want to hear the part about why you live in our tree.”
“It will come where it comes in the story-” Moie begins, but he is interrupted by a shout from below: “Amelia Paz, are you up in that tree again?” It is Miss Milliken, sounding upset. Amelia slides from the hammock and stands on a broad, nearly horizontal limb. “I have to go now. Will you tell me the rest of the story later?”
“It may happen that I will,” says Moie. She smiles at him and disappears amid the leaves below.
Prudencio Rivera Martínez, on what he had good reason to fear might be his final day on earth, waited outside the security barrier for the arrival of the early direct Delta flight from Dallas-Fort Worth. Gabriel Hurtado never entered the United States via an international flight. Instead, he flew to Mexico City, where his organization picked him up and drove him to the border at Ciudad Juarez. There, with the aid of excellent forged Mexican papers, he crossed the border as a businessman of that nation, untroubled among the thirty thousand vehicles that drove north into El Paso on that day and every day. Hurtado’s attitude toward the United States of America was amused contempt, rather like that of a peasant for a particularly stupid, if vitally necessary, burro. The Americans had been trying to catch him for years, and yet he never had any difficulty entering the country in this way, or staying for as long as he pleased. His only complaint about U.S. homeland security was that the border controls were so porous that amateurs were encouraged to enter the drug business in numbers, driving down the price of his product. From El Paso they had taken the highway to Dallas, whence he and his companion had enjoyed a restful first-class flight to Miami.
Martínez saw the men emerge from the gate, Hurtado and a man name Ramon Palacios, although this name was infrequently used. At the sight of this second man, Martínez felt some relief, because his presence meant that Hurtado was taking this crazy business seriously, that he thought their adversary was significant, and that therefore Martínez was not entirely to blame for the Calderón fiasco. The two men were both middle-sized and stocky, perhaps a little smaller than middle-sized, smaller than Martínez anyway, and dressed in similar pale sports jackets, open-collared pastel shirts, dark trousers, and shined slip-on shoes with brass fittings. Both had fat dark mustaches and dark hair combed back, although that of Hurtado was starting to recede. People said that Hurtado kept the man around because they looked alike, so that an assassin might become confused. Martínez thought this was a foolish opinion, since you would necessarily have to kill both of them together. Killing only one would do you no good, and Martínez thought also that if he had one shot at the pair he would hit Palacios before Hurtado, because while Hurtado was a dangerous enemy, you would have to be totally crazy to want El Silencio after you with a grudge.
Hurtado gave him a severe smile and a formal embrace, El Silencio offered an uninterested nod and continued his examination of the surroundings. Because of airport security, he was unarmed and therefore uneasy. They went to baggage claim in silence, and after the usual wait, the bodyguard picked out two small leather bags and an aluminum attaché case, ignoring Martínez’s offer of help. At the curb waited a black Lincoln Navigator with tinted windows, bought for cash two days previously. Hurtado always rode in Navigators at home, and Martínez wanted him to be comfortable. They entered the vehicle, the boss and his man in the rear and Martínez in the front seat. Hurtado greeted Santiago Iglesias, who was driving. The man knew the name and face of every man who worked for him and a good deal about their personal lives as well-for example, where their families could be found. It was one of the reasons he had lasted so long in the business, that and El Silencio. As they pulled away from the curb, Martínez heard the click of a lock opening behind him and various other metallic sounds. El Silencio was arming himself.
“What’s the situation, Martínez?” Hurtado asked, switching without preamble from his joking with Iglesias. No joking with Martínez; he was not yet entirely off the hook.
“I have two men in each of the two houses, and two vans on the street in front of each one. I also have a man at the ferry terminal in a car. It’s an island, and that’s the only way on or off.”
“No boat?”
“We need a boat?”
“Pendejo,of course we need a boat. Both homes were vandalized, and whoever did it didn’t come on the ferry. Therefore, they have a boat. Also, we’re based on an island, so we need a boat. Get one-no, two-and people to handle them, and make them fast ones. How are the clients?”
“They’re shitting themselves since Calderón got it. No trouble there. They’re like lambs.”
“Police?”
“Thumbs up their ass. They’ve been around to both the Garza and the Ibanez place. We get tipped off and disappear while they come around. Not a problem.”
“Yes, that’s what you said before Calderón got it. You know why I’m not more pissed off at you for fucking this up, Martínez?”
Martínez admitted he didn’t know.
“Because this saves us some trouble. Calderón would have had to go in any case. He knew things that the others didn’t and was starting to be a pain in the ass. So, if he leaves the scene a little early, it’s not a problem for me, and also, as you say, the others are in line. The only one we absolutely need at this point is Ibanez, to handle the logs and so forth. So, as far as JXFC is concerned, I assume the son took over.”
“No, the daughter, is what I understand. The son is some kind ofmaricón. He’s in New York. The daughter is running the company.”
“Good. I’m starting to feel better already. She won’t be a problem when the time comes. Now, what about these twofregados in the painted van?”
“Not yet. The plates came up empty. There’s no such number.”
“Fake plates? That’s interesting. That suggests a serious organization.”
From the front seat, Iglesias said, “They were funny plates. The numbers weren’t orange like the ones on this car and there was no palm tree.”
“They were out-of-state plates,” said Hurtado half to himself. He was not particularly angry. There was no reason that a gang of Calichuteros should know that in America license plates varied from state to state. He explained this to his men.
“And it saidyova on the top,” added Iglesias.
“Yova?” said Hurtado. “What does this mean,yova?”
“I don’t know, boss, that’s what it said, in big letters and there were clouds and some buildings on it, too, no palms. I-O-W-A,yova.”
“Ah, yes, I see,” said Hurtado. “This is the name of a state far away, and obviously it would do no good to run the plates there because it wouldn’t give us an address in Miami. I think these people are very clever, for Americans.”
“You’re sure they’re Americans, boss?” asked Martínez.
“They’reusing Americans, and there isn’t a sniff at home of anyone working against us in this operation. Or so my friend here assures me.”
He meant El Silencio. Martínez thought that if El Silencio had been unleashed on the Colombian underworld with orders to find out if anyone was interested in the Puxto operation or was playing games in Miami, and hadn’t found anything, then it was fairly certain that nothing was going on. Using the rearview mirror he stole a look at the man. If half what they said about him was true, he ought to have horns and fangs and a tail, but he looked undistinguished, an ordinary Latin American fellow, except for the heavy scarring on his throat. The legend was that when he was ten someone had been killed in front of the miserable little shop his family ran in Cali and, as usual, the killers had taken out all the potential witnesses, his whole family: mother, brother, three sisters. Or others said that the family had been running some racket and became too greedy and got wiped as a lesson. But without doubt the family had been killed and someone had cut the boy’s throat, failing to kill him but damaging his voice box, so that he could only make a croaking whisper, and also without doubt at the age of fifteen he had found the man responsible for the murders and kidnapped him and kept him alive for six days and delivered him back to the place whence he came, still alive, but in a condition that shocked even the criminals of Cali. Thus he was brought to the attention of Gabriel Hurtado.
“What do you think about this cat business?” asked Martínez, to change the subject.
“A tactic to frighten us,” said Hurtado dismissively. “They must think we’re ignorant peasants frightened by magical animals. This suggests the Russians. Or Haitians. In any case, thesechingadas are definitely the kind who won’t leave it alone, and so they’ll try for these other twopendejos we have and then we’ll havethem. Isn’t that right, Ramon?”
El Silencio nodded, but naturally he said nothing at all.