He finished reading and put the journal on the table. She was wearing black jeans and a white shirt, standing there looking at him. It was hard to believe, what he had just read, hard to believe it had happened to this woman. She looked just like a regular person. She said, “Stunned, Detective Paz?”
“It’s a lot to take in. You didn’t write the final chapter.” She noticed he had washed his face and sponged off the worst of the stains on his clothes.
“No. Do you want to hear it? She’ll be half an hour putting on outfits. She’s at the stage where she likes the layered look. She’ll come down with three dresses on, one on top of another.”
“I’m dying to hear it.”
“A figure of speech, I hope,” she said, taking a chair. “Well, it’s briefly told. I fell asleep. Actually I cried myself to sleep, I’m ashamed to say. Then I woke up. Middle of the night. It was a dream, but not a dream, if you know what I mean. I was walking through Danolo, out of Danolo along a trail. Jackals were barking, nightjars were going tok tok tok. There was a fire up ahead. My husband was there, naked, painted, and there was another man, I couldn’t see his face, he was just a kind of shadow in the glow, I could see the flash of his teeth, a necklace of shells around his neck, and the whites of his eyes. I knew it was Durakne Den, the dontzeh witch. Tourma was there, too, naked. She looked like she was asleep. I watched Witt slice her belly open with a little black stone knife and remove the baby. Tourma didn’t even twitch. The baby writhed and gasped; Durakne Den was chanting something in Olo and Witt was chanting too. He … you know what he did?you’ve seen it. He sliced into the baby’s skull and scooped out its brain, like taking the stone out of an avocado. Blood splattered all around. I felt drops strike my face. I was paralyzed, I couldn’t do anything, like in a nightmare. They cut and they ate. I remember staring at him, Witt, and I saw the blood dripping from his mouth. The most horrible part was, he looked happy, really happy, like he was at a good party. He told me what was happening, about the okunikua, about his plans. Suddenly, I was free, I ran, and I heard him laughing. In the morning, at first light, I grabbed everything I could carry, my box and some water and food, loaded it into a pirogue and paddled away.”
She fell silent, shaking her head. He said, “I don’t get this about this ritual, okunikua? He eats pieces of a woman and the baby and what … he gets powers from this?”
“Well, I never got the details, but yeah. In combination with other things he’s done to himself, there are chemicals in the various parts of the victims that have been modified by other chemicals fed to the mother during the ceremony. Not fed, actually, breathed in. It’s like an amplification of what he can already do. Think of the difference between a plain vanilla A-bomb and an H-bomb. It needs four women, though, as I said.”
Paz thought about this for a while. “How come he let you go? There in Africa.”
“I don’t know. Part of the plan, I guess. Who can figure out why the Olo do anything? Why they let Durakne live there. Witt had other things to do. My sense was that the Olo were gathering to somehow block Durakne Den in Danolo, which is why Witt might have had to leave. He came here, where there’s no one to stop him.”
“We’ll stop him,” said Paz, hardly believing it himself. “So how did you get out of there?”
“Oh, that part’s a little vague. The dry season was on by then, the channels were drying into mud, not that I knew what channels to take. And I was hallucinating a lot, and I was sick, really sick. I got completely lost. I ended up stranded on the mud, burning up with fever. Fade to black. The next thing I remember was the hospital in Bamako. They thought I had hepatitis. Apparently, I was found by a Fulani herder driving his herd down to the Niger for the big river crossing, the Diafarabe. He recognized my amulet and figured it would be good juju to rescue me. I guess you must’ve got the rest if you talked to my father. The weirdest thing was that when Witt showed up in my hospital room in New York, I was sort of glad to see him.” She laughed. “That old black magic’s got me in its spell.”
He was about to say something about it being nothing to laugh about, when Luz came tromping down the ladder, wearing a threadbare red velvet dress over a gingham pinafore over yellow pedal pushers and a frilly blouse. Paz stood up and said to the little girl, “Great outfit, kid, let’s go eat.”
“And see the fishies.”
They got into the old Buick and drove north on Douglas. The Grove seemed reasonably quiet; people were staying in. There were few cars; once a police car whipped by, siren whooping, and Paz felt a pang of guilt. He was, officially, off duty, but maybe he was AWOL as well. He had not called in to find out what was going on, or where his partner was. He had run. He had left his partner and run. Of course, the alternative was staying and shooting his partner and a bunch of guys with machine guns, or being shot himself. He told himself that he was in fact where the action on this case really was. If it could be fixed at all, he would either fix it with this crazy woman or die trying.
At the Trail, they had to stop for some time, while emergency equipment, fire trucks, ambulances, buses full of cops went by, sirens and lights. The worst of the trouble seemed to lie east, over by the bay and Brickell Avenue. Paz directed her west.
Jane said, “I assume you’re off duty.”
Paz gave her a quick nervous look. “I guess. I don’t know what good a cop is when the guy who’s doing the bad stuff can’t be collared and locked up. It strikes me that the prudent investigative posture is to stick as close as possible to you.”
“As bait? Or … what?”
He thought for a moment. “Barlow used to say, the difference between a good detective and a no-account one is three things: patience, patience, and patience. I’m waiting. Something’ll turn up.” After a while he added, “Do you think … will Barlow ever come back to, like, normal? Like he was?”
“He might,” she said. “If he has people around him who treat him like he’s the decent guy you say he was, and love him, the grel may fade back. People have what we call ‘nervous breakdowns’ all the time, and recover. And there are more direct methods against them. Were you close to him?”
“Not close, but he was really good to me. I respected him more than any man I ever met.”
“A father figure?”
His face grew stiff. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Is your father here in Miami?”
“No. My mom said he died coming over from Cuba.” His tone did not invite further questions.
They drove in silence to a crowded parking lot off Calle Ocho. Jane looked at the restaurant with interest. It was a large, brightly lit place, with the name splayed in loose blue neon script over faded pink: la guantanamera. Entering, she was hit with the delicious and barely describable perfume of a good restaurant running at full tilt. The place was packed; panic had not cut into business at Guantanamera, or perhaps the rumors of disaster had brought people out to die replete. Paz was obviously well known here, she saw; the maitre d’ at the tiny front desk gave him a big smile, smiled at Jane, too, and at the fascinated yet shrinking Luz. Ignoring the clot of patrons waiting in the little lobby, he immediately led the party to a nice banquette table, right under a huge saltwater fish tank. The child stood on her chair and watched the fish. Paz stood by her and named them as they drifted by: the beaugregory, the moorish idol, the damselfishes in their varieties, the French and regal and queen angelfishes, the neon goby and the rock beauty. She poked the glass and gave them her own private silly names.
“This is great,” Jane said. “She’ll probably crash in two minutes.”
A waitress arrived and gave Paz a gold-toothed smile. “Hey, Jimmy! You’re out front today.”
“Julia, how’s it going?”
“It’s been crazy tonight. She was looking for you.”
“I bet. Why don’t you bring us a couple of special daiquiris and a Shirley Temple for the kid.”
Then he spoke to her in Spanish for a few minutes and she left. Paz said, “You don’t speak Spanish?”
“Hardly a word, I’m ashamed to say. I usually speak French sprinkled with random a ‘s and o ‘s. And I caught ‘daiquiri’ just now. They seem to know you pretty well here.”
“Yeah, well, I’m here a lot.” They watched the fish and Luz for a while. Jane became aware that the music system was playing the same song over and over, with different singers and arrangements.
“That song,” she said, “I know that song. It’s famous. Didn’t Pete Seeger do that way back when?”
He laughed. “Oh, right, the definitive version. Christ, Pete Seeger! Right now this is Abelardon Barroso and la Sensacion. It’s “Guantanamera,” the greatest song ever written. Back before the revolution, Cuban radio used to play it five minutes before the hour, every hour. People used to set their watches by it. There are thousands of versions. But this next track is the original, by Joseito Fernandez. He wrote it sometime in the thirties.” She listened. A rock-solid beat and a man with precise diction and a rough friendly voice, singing from the heart.
“What do the words mean?”
“Oh, they have all kinds of verses. In the old days, Joseito used to make up verses on the news?murders, scandals, famous people.” He sang along softly: ” ‘Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crece la palma, y antes de morime quiero, echar mis versos del alma.’ “
He translated this and she said, “I believe that. I believe you are a sincere man from the land where the palms grow. And maybe you’ll actually get to sing the song of your soul.”
He shrugged. “Who can tell? Anyway, the chorus is always the same: ” Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera… the girl from Guantanamo, the girl from the farm.”
She stared at him. “From the farm?”
“Yeah, a guajira ‘s like a country girl, a hillbilly.”
“And they named this place after the song?”
“Not really.” He laughed, mildly embarrassed. “Okay, I confess?it’s my mother’s place. She’s the guantanamera it’s named after. We always play this CD after midnight, kind of a trademark. The people like it too.”
“Does she really come from a farm?”
“Oh, yeah, from back in the mountains north of Guantanamo. When I was a kid, I was always hearing what they didn’t have on the goddamn farm. What, you want sneakers! I was seventeen before I saw my first pair of shoes. What, you want a car! I was twenty-two before I even rode in a car, and that was a truck.”
“Well, she seems to be doing okay now. This place …”
“Oh, yeah, now. But they never get over it. My mom left in ‘72. Came over on a couple of doors lashed to four inner tubes. She could always cook, so she got restaurant work. She slept on a mattress in the stockroom to save money. Then I was born, and she got one of those little food trucks, going around to all the construction sites, feeding the Cubano working humps their rice and beans and media noche and the coffee and cakes. I was up there in the front seat until I started school. And she hung on to every goddamn penny and opened her first real place, a counter-and-four-tables joint on Flagler. Comidas criollas. And then this one here, fifteen or so years ago. An American success story.” She could see his face get tight as he said this, tight behind the bright, faintly mocking smile. She controlled her own excitement. “And your dad? What was he like?”
His face shut down completely. “I told you?died before I was born. Crossing over.”
The waitress returned with the drinks and a straw basket full of warm platano chips and a pottery bowl of mojo criollo.
“I ordered for us. You don’t mind?” She smiled, shrugged, and took a plantain chip and dipped it in the sauce. She ate and sighed, closing her eyes. She took another. And another.
He watched her eat and drink. In five minutes she had consumed half the basket and finished the daiquiri. Paz polished off the rest of the chips, except for the half-dozen or so the child took. He ordered another round. “You’re hungry.”
“Oh, yes, ” she said, her eyes lit with a crazy light.
Then came a plate of frituras de cangrejo and bowls of cold sopa de aguacate, and then a beefsteak palomilla, with mounds of curly fried potatoes, with plates of black beans and rice on the side. The child ate the fries and some rice and beans, whined briefly, and fell asleep on the banquette, with her head on Jane’s lap. Jane ate most of the fries and most of the rice and beans. Paz looked on admiringly. “You’re a good eater.”
“It’s good food. I haven’t had a square meal in two and a half years. Actually, the fact is, I shouldn’t be hungry at all. I’ve been on uppers for the last twenty-four hours or so. I should take some more, but I can’t bear to. This is so pleasant. Thank you.”
” De nada. Why are you taking uppers, if I may inquire?”
“You may. It’s so I don’t fall asleep until all this is over. He can get to me if I’m dreaming, in a way that could put me in his power more or less permanently.”
“I thought you said he couldn’t get to you. You had … you know, those charms, or whatever.”
“Yes, in the m’fa.” She waved a hand. “This world. But in sleep we open a door to m’doli, a world between the real world and the world of the spirits. Spirits can visit us there, that’s what a lot of dreams are, and it’s also the arena where magic takes place?a borderland. I have to meet him in m’doli, but awake.”
“And how do we do that?”
“More drugs. I have some of the stuff made up. But as I told you, I need allies.”
“Yeah, that’s what I don’t get …” He broke off and stared.
A striking figure was wending her way through the dining room, a mahogany-colored woman dressed all in yellow silk, with a fresh white gardenia placed in the coils of black hair piled on her head. She stopped at several tables and exchanged a few friendly words with the customers. Then she arrived at their table. Paz stood up, embraced the woman lightly, kissed her cheek.
“How are you, Mami?”
“I’m fine. I’m working myself to death in the kitchen of my restaurant because I have a son who doesn’t care about me, but otherwise I’m just fine. Who is this woman?”
“Someone from my work. She’s an important witness. Shall I introduce you?”
“If you like.”
Paz stepped back and switched to English. “Mother, this is Jane Doe. Jane, my mother, Margarita Cajol y Paz.”
Jane rose, nodded, extended her hand, looked into the woman’s face. There was no doubt about it. She felt a warm tingling in her hand; the woman must have felt it, too, because she pulled her own hand abruptly away. The expression on Margarita Paz’s face changed from its habitual cast of superior dissatisfaction to amazement, and then to something much like fear. Paz watched this with interest, having never observed this particular face-show before. He was about to prime the conversation to discern its cause, when his mother made a hurried excuse in Spanish and bustled off.
Seated again, Paz asked, “What do you think that was all about? Usually she hangs around and gets your pedigree and when we’re going to get married.”
“Perhaps she knew I wasn’t good enough for you in one glance. How long has your mother been involved in Santeria?”
He frowned. “Who said she was involved in Santeria? She hates that stuff.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. She’s a straight-up Catholic. I had a girlfriend once, in high school, gave me one of those little statues. My mom found it, and chewed me out, and trashed it. Why did you think she was into it? Because she’s a black Cuban?”
A challenging tone here. “No, not that at all. As it happens, I saw her at Pedro Ortiz’s ile a couple of nights ago.”
“That’s impossible.”
The waitress dropped off a tray of guava tarts and Cuban cookies, a couple of Cuban coffees, and two brandies.
Jane said, “I saw her. Your mother. Not only was she there, but she was an oriate, a ‘made’ woman. You know what hacer el santo means, don’t you? I saw her mounted by Yemaya. No, don’t shake your head. Listen! I want you to listen to something.”
She recited, almost chanting, “He-went-into-the-river-and-killed-the-crocodile was the one who cast Ifa for ‘Is it profitable to take a caravan to the north?’ Ifa says it is foolish to leave the farm before the rains. Witches are coming to carry off the eldest child. She said her strength was no match for evil-doing. He said seek the son with no fathers. He said the woman will leave her farm and help. He said the bird with yellow feathers is of use. Four are necessary for the sacrifice: two black pigeons, two white pigeons, and thirty-two cowries.”
“What’s that, a poem?”
“In a way. It’s a divination verse. Ifa gave it to me when I asked him what I should do about my husband. I already made the sacrifice. Three allies are named. I have a yellow chick at home. I just met a woman who left a farm, and is made to Yemaya, the sea goddess. My husband is terrified of the water. Now, tell me about your father.”
“This is crazy.” He tried to smile, but it jelled on his face.
“It’s true. Tell me about your father!” He was shaking his head, mulish. She slammed the table with her hand, making the crockery tinkle, and drawing looks from nearby tables. She hissed, “Do you want to stop him or not? Tell me!”
And, surprising himself, for he had never told anyone, he told her. “I was fourteen, we lived above the restaurant on Flagler. She sent me down to the office to get the ledger. She was doing some accounts. Being a nosy kid, I paged through it and I noticed that besides the regular payments for rent and utilities and purveyors, there was a monthly four-hundred-dollar payment to a guy named Juan Javier Calderone. Yoiyo Calderone. You know who he is?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You were Cuban you’d know. He’s a political guy, his father was a real old-time Batistiano big shot. From Guantanamo, as a matter of fact. A homey. Came over with a shitload of money right after the revolution. My mom’d never mentioned she knew him, so I asked her. Nothing. A loan. Mind your own business! She wouldn’t look me in the eye, and believe me, my mom loves to look me in the eye. So I knew something was off.” He drank some brandy. There was clammy sweat on his forehead; he didn’t look at her, but past her, at the bright fishes in their tank.
“Anyway, I didn’t let it go. I looked up Calderone’s address, and one Saturday I took my bike over to his house. A big white mansion on Alhambra in the Gables, tile roof, a big lawn with a big tall flame tree in the middle. A crew was working on the grounds, real dark guys, just like in the old country. There was an iron gate on the driveway that was open because of the gardeners, and I walked up the driveway and through another gate and there I was on their back patio. A big pool, cabanas, everything perfect. There were two kids in the pool, a boy and a girl. The girl was blond. I stood there staring like a jerk. The two of them were sitting in deck chairs, Calderone and his wife. She was younger than him, and blond, with blue eyes. And then the woman gets up and notices me. She asks me what I want, and I say I want to see Juan Javier Calderone. He gets up and comes over, asks me what I want, and I say I’m Jimmy Paz, I’m the son of Margarita Paz. Okay, I could see he was my father, I could see it in his face, and I could see he could see it in mine, that it was true. Then this look comes over his face like he just stepped in dog shit, and he puts his arm around my shoulders and he goes, Oh, really? Come along here and we’ll talk. And we go through the little gate to the driveway, and when no one can see us, he whips his arm around my throat, he’s choking me, and he drags me behind some big bushes. He goes, Did she send you? Did that chingada whore send you? I couldn’t answer. He goes, ‘Listen to me, you little nigger bastard, if you ever come here again, or if your chingada mother ever tries to contact me again, the two of you will end up in the bay. Do you understand? And make sure that every goddamn penny gets paid back or I’ll take your fucking nigger slophouse back and kick you out on the street like you deserve.’ Then he pops me a couple of good ones on the ear and kicks my ass out the gate.” Here a long sigh, some silence, and then he said, “Shit, Jane, you ate all the torticas.”
She blushed. “I’m sorry. It’s automatic. They were so good.”
“I know they’re good, Jane. That’s why you should’ve saved some for me. Jeez, I’m telling you about the worst day of my life, and you take advantage to hog all the torticas.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, and he saw that she was not talking about the cookies. After a while he added, “I went back and laid all this on my mother, and she gave me another beating, the last one I ever got from her. I ran away. I split that night, and hiked up Dixie Highway, hitched a couple of rides. I slept on the beach at Hallandale for two nights, and the next day the cops grabbed me up. They shipped me home, and it was ‘Did you finish your homework?’ She never mentioned Yoiyo again, or what happened after. Meanwhile, it didn’t take a detective to figure it out. She wanted to get a catering truck, and like a peasant, she went to the local big man, Calderone, the Guantanamero. She needed eight K to get the truck and a stake to start a business. She was nineteen. And how does a beautiful black woman get eight grand from Senor Calderone? I mean what does she use for fucking collateral? He probably did her right on the couch in his office, or bent her over his great big desk. And the result was me.” He laughed. “My sad story.”
“It is a sad story. I figured it was something like that. And of all the cops in Miami, it’s you that picks up this case, that shows up at my place. This is how it happens, the way you get allies.”
He wiped his face with his napkin, and reassembled his personality behind its cover. “Right. Me and my mother and a chicken are going to help you fight our invisible man. Looney Tunes.”
“Yes, be cynical,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “It’s been a couple of hours, and your mind is reconstructing the consensual reality. All that, the things you saw and did, they couldn’t have really happened, the murder at that hotel, and arresting Witt, and the cops shooting one another, and Barlow turning into someone else, and craziness spreading through the city. Get a good night’s sleep and it’s back to normal. But it won’t be. The only way back to normal is through the magic.”
“So what do we have to do? Sit in a circle and chant and kill a pigeon?”
“It will become clear to you what you have to do in the event. Mainly, I’ll be more or less out of it for what could be a long time. You need to take care of me?I mean this body?and take care of Luz.”
“And the chicken. Don’t forget the chicken. What’s the chicken going to do? Peck at his nose?”
She turned her eyes away from him, as if embarrassed. He felt ashamed, in fact, although he was not certain of what. He said, “Jane … be serious now: can you imagine me trying to explain all this to my mother?”
“You won’t have to explain it to your mother,” she said. “She’ll come to my house, at the right time.”
“Really? And how are you going to arrange that?”
“Because it’s the place to be. It’s the Super Bowl. Your mother’s a player in this, an oriate. She wants to help. You’re not a player, so you have to decide on some other basis whether you are going to fulfill Ifa’s oracle or not. It’ll start tomorrow night, I’m guessing. If he’s writing now, he’ll write all night and crash about dawn, and he’ll wake up around three or four, get a big breakfast, revise the stuff he wrote the previous night and be ready to step out around seven.”
“He’s writing? He’s cutting up women and doing God knows what all around the city, and then he goes home and writes?”
She looked surprised at the question. “Well, yes. He’s a writer. The other stuff is just for background and experience. It’s Captain Dinwiddie. He’s writing an epic poem of that name about the black experience. You read it all in the journal, didn’t you? That’s why he went to Africa in the first place. But he was blocked for the conclusion. I mean, where’s the payback, for slavery and the ghettos and segregation and all that? It’s an artistic imbalance. Lucifer has to be flung from heaven. Faust has to beat the devil. And Africa has to triumph over Cracker Nation. Originally he just thought he would simply make it up, but that was before he became a witch. Now he’s writing nonfiction, so to speak.”
“That’s crazy!”
“You keep saying that. It’s not helpful. My friend Marcel used to say that sometimes life serves up situations that only crazy actions can resolve. This is obviously one of them, and …”
She stiffened. A look of pain came over her face. He heard a long hiss of breath through her teeth.
“What’s wrong? Jane?”
“I … was wrong. Here. He’s here.” Her voice was low, strangled.
“Where?” Paz looked wildly around the restaurant. Sweat burst out on his forehead. There was something funny now about all the patrons. They weren’t eating and chatting and laughing, as they usually did. They were staring at Paz and Jane, and there was something odd about their faces, they seemed peculiarly flat and brutal, the flesh sagging like candle wax. They had too many teeth.
Jane was groaning something. There was a crash from the kitchen, and shouting. Someone screamed; it went on and on. Jane was trying to say something. Her eyes bulged with the effort. Paz bent closer.
“What? What is it? What’s happening?”
“Escape by water … get over water,” she managed to say. “Take her!”
Paz felt dull and heavy. He had drunk too much, he thought. He really should call it a night, walk on home and crawl into bed. He got up. Jane looked like a corpse. Everyone in the place looked like a corpse. He started to leave.
His mother came across the dining room, like a golden galleon under full sail. Light seemed to pour off her; her face was bright and covered with fine sweat. It looked inhuman, like the oiled wood of a statue.
“Son, son, take them to the boat, take them both to the boat! Do it now!” She reached up over his head and dropped something on a leather thong around his neck. Paz stared at her stupidly. “You know about the boat?”
She struck him on the face. It sounded like a gunshot. “Jesus Maria, will you go!” she cried.
Paz was in the kitchen, hot, bright, full of noise. Cesar the chef was huddled in the corner, weeping. The scullion was smashing plates, throwing them one by one against the wall. Then Paz was in the alley behind the restaurant. He couldn’t walk very well, he discovered, because he had more than the usual number of legs. No, that was because he was supporting Jane Doe on his hip, with his arm around her. Deadweight, and moaning. He hated Jane Doe, he wanted to throw her in the Dumpster. There was a weight pulling on the other arm, some kind of horrible hairy animal, clutching at him, it was going to suck his blood … no, that was the child, he had to do something with the child, something to do with water. Throw her in the water? That didn’t seem right. The leather thong was cutting into his neck. He stumbled in another direction. The pressure let up. That was good. He saw Jane’s car far away. The leather thong wanted him to go to the car.
He was in the car. It was moving and he appeared to be driving it. He wasn’t sure whether he really knew how to drive a car. It seemed huge, like an ocean liner. He turned left on Twelfth Avenue. There were dead bodies in the gutters and burning cars all around. He would be dead soon if he didn’t stop driving and leave this car. What he needed was bed. Thong was choking him. Stop the car get rid of the thong. He slowed, pulled toward the curb.
Jane Doe punched him in the mouth. The blow came from nowhere: one second she was slumped against the car door, the next she was on him, punching, scratching at his face. He braked to a stop and fought her off. She connected with his nose. The shock of pain. Suddenly his head was clear. He concentrated on the pain. He thought the pain was wonderful, compared to what had been going on in his head before. He grabbed the wheel and tromped on the gas pedal. They roared north. Jane Doe stopped hitting him.
They were on the boat. He had trouble untying the lines because the lines had turned into fat snakes. His hands wouldn’t grab them. He reached back to his hip and punched himself in the jaw. It really hurt and his head cleared enough to let him do simple acts. He threw off the lines, jumped onto the boat, and started the motor. As soon as black water separated them from the bulkhead he felt a little better, and the further they traveled down the Miami River the more normal he felt. Something had gone wrong at the restaurant, but he couldn’t quite recall what it was. He noticed that there was something around his neck, a finely woven rectangular straw bag on a leather thong. Where had he got that? And why was there blood all over it, and down his shirt? And why did his nose and jaw hurt? And what was he doing on a moonlight cruise with Jane Doe and her kid?
But by the time they passed under the Brickell Avenue Bridge a good deal of it had come back to him, like recalling a dream you had last night in the middle of the workday, or a dejr vu. The air smelled of smoke, like burning garbage; he could hear distant sirens.
The cabin hatch opened and Jane came out. She stood beside him, her arms crossed, her fine pale hair whipped by the wind of their passage. They broke out into Biscayne Bay, and when they passed the marker, Paz pushed the throttle forward. The boat stood up on its counter and roared into the night.
“This is nice,” said Jane. “I haven’t been on the water in a while. Where are we going?”
“I thought Bear Cut. It’s a little channel across the bay. We can drop anchor there and figure out what we’re going to do.” She nodded. The boat was bouncing on a light chop, but she wasn’t holding on, just swaying easily with the motion.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Considering, yes I am. Did I punch you?”
“Yeah. A right to the nose, I think. A nice shot.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not a problem. It was probably the thing to do, to be honest. I punched myself, too.” He cleared his throat. “Are you going to tell me what went on back there?”
“He probably sent one of his creatures around with a dose of something mind-altering, untargeted except for me. Mass confusion and madness. He wanted me to come to him.”
“My mom didn’t seem too affected.”
“No, she’s under Yemaya’s protection. And she gave you a … I don’t know what they call it in Santeria, but in Olo it’s ch’akadoulen.” She tapped the little bag around his neck. “A ward against witchcraft.”
“How did she know to send me to the water?”
“She may not have. Yemaya is orisha of the sea. As an oriate of Yemaya she would have thought of water.”
“So it was just a coincidence?”
After a second of amazed silence, Jane Doe laughed in his face. “Yeah, right! Honestly, Detective!”
Paz ignored the rebuke. He didn’t want to think about his mother just yet.
“There’s stuff I still don’t understand,” he said.
“Really? Gosh, it’s all clear as glass to me.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Jane. I need some help here.”
“Sorry.” She looked genuinely abashed, and he felt ashamed.
It struck him that what he had gone through that evening was as nothing to what she had endured. Targeted. He said, “In your journal … he met you at that ceremony, but you never wrote down what he said. Any reason for that?”
She shrugged. “I can’t recall. Something about how he still really loved me. Just what a girl wants to hear at a dance.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Yes, I did.”
“In spite of all the shit he pulled on you?”
She met his gaze. “Have you ever been in love, Detective Paz? I mean totally, up to your eyes?”
“All the time,” he said lightly, and immediately regretted his tone.
“You haven’t, or you wouldn’t ask. I guess I was more of a Catholic about marriage than I figured. I thought it was for life. I guess it is. The Gelede priestess had it right: either I’ll kill him or he’ll kill me. You know what’s the worst thing? I keep thinking it’s my fault.”
“He doesn’t seem like such a bargain.”
“You didn’t know him,” she said with a snap to her voice, and then let out a startled laugh. “Christ! I’m still defending him. Yeah, sure, he’s a demon and a serial killer, but aside from that, when you really get to know him, deep inside he’s … I wonder if he has any inside left. You know what real love is, Detective? It’s not what you think. It’s not loving the virtues of the beloved. Anyone can love you for your virtues, that’s no trick. I mean, that’s what virtues are?lovable qualities. It’s the unlovely stuff that makes love. We all have a little nasty wounded place in us, and if you can get someone to find that and love it, then you really have something. And I thought I did. I thought I really saw him, how he saw himself at the core, the baby in the garbage can, the son of the junkie nigger whore and her white trick. I know he saw me. I certainly opened myself enough.”
“What’s your nasty wounded place, Jane?”
She gave him one of her sharp looks. “Is this part of the official interrogation, Detective?”
“No, but I told you mine.”
“Fair enough. Okay, my mother hated me. Boo-hoo. From the cradle. A staple of cheap pop psychology, so banal I can’t even take it seriously myself, but Witt Moore did. He thought I was beautiful, and smart, and perfect. He may still, God help me.” She turned then and looked backward over the rail, to where the creamy wake vanished into the black waters. Paz let her stare for the remainder of the ride.
He dropped the anchor in the shallow waters of Bear Cut and switched off the motor. In the ringing silence afterward they could hear the swishing of the mangroves and the plash of wavelets on the nearby beach. The air was clean and smelled of salt and marshes. The moon was nearly full, frosting each billow, out to the horizon, row on row. They could see the lights of the city, although some parts of it were oddly dark. There was a red glow north of the river, sign of a major fire.
Paz went below and came back with a bottle of Bacardi Anejo rum and a couple of paper cups. They sat on a cushioned bench at the stern and he poured a generous slug into each cup.
“Happy days,” said Paz, lifting his cup. She smiled faintly and drank. She coughed and pulled a vial from her bag and took a couple of pills.
“So what I don’t get is why the two single killings, if he needs four. I mean that woman in Africa, and your sister.”
“The Olo must have stopped him in Africa. Ulune isn’t the only sorcerer they have. That’s why he came home is my guess. No one believes in that stuff here. My sister … I told you, he wants me to watch him. I’m his audience. He used to tell me that about his writing. Jane, it’s all for you, I think of what you’ll say when you see it. You keep me honest.”
“But he thought you were dead.”
“So I believed. But maybe he wasn’t fooled. Or maybe he was trying to bring me back from the dead.”
Paz drank a big swallow of rum. “Can he do that?”
“Maybe. It’s not unknown. Usually you need the body, though.” She shuddered. “I’m going to have to stay up,” she said. “But feel free to get some rest yourself.”
“No, I’ll stay up with you,” he said. Five minutes later he was snoring softly. She took the cup from his lax hand and went into the cabin. She checked to see that Luz was all right, and then went back on deck. She sat in the swivel chair behind the helm and tried not to think, occasionally taking a sip of rum. Something about Witt leaving Africa buzzed around in her mind, a connection she wasn’t making. They stopped the witch in Africa, and then let the witch’s apprentice come over to the land of the dik, and … and what? Did they mean for him to wreak havoc among the dik? No, the okunikua was forbidden, so they couldn’t have … she shook her head in frustration. It wouldn’t come. She let it fade and let the sounds of wind and water provide a temporary peace.
She was still sitting there when the sky went violent pink and the sun rose out of the sea. Paz got up a little later and, without comment, went into the cabin. Before long the smell of strong coffee issued from the hatch. He brought her a cup. They had just started to drink it when Paz’s cell phone buzzed.
He hesitated. “Answer it,” she said. “It could be important.”
He held it to his ear, and she saw his face pale. He said, “What!” then “Yeah” a few times, then, “I’m on my boat. No, it’s a long story. No, I’ll be there, ninety minutes tops. Have a car at Northwest Seventh and the river.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Another disaster. Barlow’s barricaded in the police chief’s office, with his shotgun, the chief, and a secretary. He says the end times are coming and he wants to preach on TV. I have to go in. Shit! What do we do, Jane?”
“There’s some stuff at my place that could help. We could drop Luz off with Polly, too.”
“Will we have to go through another … you know, like last night?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think we have a choice, though.”
As if in answer, Paz started the motor. They headed back to Miami at top speed, barely slapping the waves. Ahead, they saw the pall of smoke, with the white skyline poking through it like stiffened fingers.
Headquarters, when they arrived, was a media zoo. A dozen vans were in place, each one supplied with a handsome person filling the voracious maw of live airtime by talking nonsense in a pool of harsh circus light to a camera and the watching world. Their arrival caused a great stir; the police car escorts, with their sirens uttering short whoops, and Jane’s Buick moved slowly through a lane preserved by cops in riot gear, behind whom jostled and shouted several hundred reporters and photographers.
“Care to make a statement?” asked Paz as they rolled into the underground garage. “Explain on national TV what’s going on in the Magic City?”
She had her head down, and seemed to be mumbling something, a chant of some kind, low and rhythmic. In her hand was a dusty plastic baggie containing an ounce or so of some brown powder. She had her fingers in it, stirring, rubbing. She put two brown-stained fingers in her mouth.
Lieutenant Posada grabbed Paz at the elevator when they got off at the sixth floor. His normally tan face was grayed out like old concrete, and his ordinary expression of genial stupidity was now the mask of a trapped rodent.
“What the fuck is going on, Paz? Where the fuck have you been?”
“Dinner and a boat ride,” said Paz. “With this nice lady. This nice lady says she can solve our problem.”
Posada gaped at Jane. He had clearly been briefed over the radio by the cops he had sent to pick up Paz, but he was paralyzed by the thought of sending a civilian in, someone who could provide another hostage.
“What are you gonna do?” he asked her.
Jane said, “I believe Detective Barlow has been affected by an African psychotropic poison. I believe I have the antidote here. I need to get close to him, though.”
Posada said, “He asked for bread and wine. He’s Jesus or some shit. Maybe you could bring it in to him.” He paused, ass-covering thoughts transparent on his face. “Can we put the … um, antidote in the wine?”
“No, I have to be there.”
“You got to sign a release.”
“I’d be happy to,” said Jane.
It took some time to get the release signed and prepare a tray and to explain to the protesting hostage negotiators that they were going to let this civilian woman walk into an office with an armed madman. While all this was going on, underneath the rustle and hum of the hallway they could hear another sound, muffled by the doors that separated the voice from them, but comprehensible nevertheless: “… and the kings of the earth and the great men and the rich men and the chief captains, Christ fucking son of a bitch, goddamn you all to hell, black bastards, the Lamb, they said, the Lamb, they said to the mountains and the rocks fall on us and hide us from the face of us who sitteth, who sitteth on the fucking throne and from the wrath of the Lamb for the great day of his wrath has come and who shall be able to abide it …”
“He’s been going nonstop like that for hours,” said the chief negotiator. “Take a look at this monitor.” They had run a hair-thin cable in through a ceiling fixture, and the tiny fish-eye lens at the tip of it gave a good view of the chief’s office. Horton was in his chair, behind his desk, his arms taped to the armrests with white medical tape, and the same tape had been used to affix the muzzle of a shotgun to his neck and to seal his mouth. His eyes were closed. Barlow was behind him, holding the shotgun’s stock and waving a revolver around as he ranted. The secretary was not in sight.
Jane refused a bulletproof vest. The chief negotiator started talking at her, telling her what she mustn’t do, giving her a crash course in hostage psychology. As far as Paz could see, she was ignoring him entirely, eyes half closed, her left hand clutched around the little bag of powder. Then she seemed to snap awake. She caught Paz’s eye.
“Detective Paz, listen to me?I may not come out of there. If I don’t, I want you to promise me that you’ll get Luz to my family. She likes you. I don’t want her caught in the bureaucracy, foster homes … There’s a lawyer’s card in my bag. He’ll know what to do, but I want you to take her to Sionnet. Will you promise me that?”
Paz swallowed a large gob of spit and said that he would.
“Thank you. If I do come out, I want you to physically take me to an empty room, put me in, and lock the door. Don’t listen to anything I say, just do that. Oh, and there has to be a flame burning in the room, a candle, a gas burner, anything. It’s critical to have a fire. Can you do that?”
“Sure, no problem,” said Paz, and watched her pick up the tray of bread and wine and walk off down the hallway to the door of Chief Horton’s office. She paused, while the negotiators called Barlow and made sure that he knew that a woman was coming through the door with the delivery. The negotiator said, “Go!” Jane opened the door and walked through it. Paz pulled a fat plumber’s candle out of an emergency box and set it alight on a desk in an empty office. Then he rushed back to the monitors.
Jane was standing by the chief’s desk. She had obviously just put down her tray. Barlow was still ranting, pistol in hand. It was hard to see the expression on his face because of the camera angle. Only the top and back of Jane’s head were visible. Barlow was saying, “… and I will give power unto my two witnesses … power, and if any man, if any man hurt them fire proceedeth out of their mouths and devoureth their enemies …” Paz saw Jane toss some powder in the air and step close to Barlow, who snarled something unintelligible and pointed his pistol at Jane. Jane brushed by the gun and placed her hands on Barlow’s cheeks. Barlow staggered backward and stared up, directly at the camera, a look of surprise on his face. Then his head rolled back on his neck and he fell to the floor. They saw Jane stagger at that moment, cling to the desk for support, and then move shakily toward the door.
Paz moved, but not as fast as the SWAT team, who had already burst into the office. He snatched Jane from the grip of one of the black-clad men and hustled her along. She sagged against him, murmuring, “No no no no …”
Into the empty office with her. He closed the door and stood guard, shaking off the many people who came by and asked him what had really happened and who the woman was and what the flying fuck was going on. She was in there eighteen minutes, by his watch. Then the door opened and she was standing in the doorway, swaying, her face pale and sweaty. The office smelled of snuffed candle and vomit. There were smears of yellowish matter on the bosom of her shirt. She said, “I used the wastebasket. Oh, all your lovely meal! I’m so sorry.”
And pitched forward, into his arms.
Later, having scrubbed her, and scrounged a toothbrush for her, and rested her and distributed the requisite lies to the media, and having sneaked her out down an obscure fire exit, Paz was driving Jane Doe home in an unmarked police car. They had just passed Douglas on Dixie Highway when she said, “Go by Dinner Key, please, I want to check on something.”
He did so. When they got out of the car the sun had cleared Key Biscayne and it was another glowing Miami day. She led him down one of the wooden docks.
“There it is,” she said, looking up at the schooner Guitar. “Oh, good, it’s still for sale.”
“This one? It looks pretty old.”
“It is old. It’s a pinky schooner. Like the one I burned. I’m going to buy it.” She wrote down the phone number posted on the For Sale sign, scribbling on the web of her thumb with a ballpoint.
“You’re planning to stay in Miami?”
“Oh, no, I’m planning to sail away in it. I have to escape by water.”
“Water, uh-huh. This escape is after we nail the witch doctor, right? I hope.”
“The witch. A witch doctor is an entirely different profession. What will they do to your partner?” Changing the subject. He did not care to pursue it, either.
“Medical leave, most likely. He didn’t kill anyone, and he was clearly out of his gourd, along with half the cops in town and about a thousand other people. The death toll is over two hundred and climbing, eleven of them cops. You say it could get worse?”
“It could. I don’t know. Let’s go back, shall we?”
They walked. He took her arm when she stumbled once on a loose plank, and held on to it, enjoying the warmth of her through the thin wool.
“Say, Jane? Are you ever going to tell me what you did in there with Barlow? And the deal with the room and the candle?”
“How patient you’ve been!” she said, half laughing. “You’ve been dying to ask me all this time. And the secret answer is … I have no idea. Really. There was a grel in control, obviously, as the Olo believe is the case with nearly all crazy people. There’s a ritual, a mental and emotional preparation you do, augmented with drugs. I think I actually mentioned it in the journal. I invited the grel into me, locked it down, and blew it out when I was alone. The pros use a chicken, but I didn’t have one, so I used me. The candle … I don’t know exactly what the candle does. You toss a pinch of fanti, that’s that brown powder, into the candle, you chant a little, and the grel is out of you and off in grel — land. Sorry if that’s not very satisfying, but I’m pretty much a rote-knowledge sorcerer. Think of an Indian in a clearing in Amazonia somewhere with a portable TV and a satellite feed, watching the Super Bowl. It works, but does he know how? Does he understand what he’s seeing?” She paused. “What’s your name? I mean is it really James?”
“Iago. Which don’t work so good in the schoolyard. So, Jimmy.”
“Is that what your mother calls you?”
“When she’s feeling okay. If not, it’s Iago, or worse.”
“We sorcerers like to call things by their right name, so if I may, I’ll call you Paz. Luz and Paz, light and peace, my daughter and my … detective. And ally.”
“Is that a good omen?”
“It better be,” she said.