American Tropic (17 page)

The reporters in the dark room gasp. Sound speakers beneath the screen blast a piercing static. From the static emerges the crackling mutant sound of an electronically altered voice.

The weird sound of Bizango’s voice stops. On the movie screen, the black-and-white skeletal Bizango continues rappelling down the hull of the ship. Bizango lets go of the hanging rope. In a black-and-white blur, Bizango drops. The image of Bizango falling goes out of the movie frame. Suddenly, from another angle, a different security camera picks up Bizango’s steep fall. Bizango’s image becomes smaller and smaller in a seventy-five-foot plunge down the side of the hull toward the water. The white spray of a splash erupts from the water at the bottom of the hull as Bizango disappears beneath the surface. The disturbed water continues to roil, then smooths over and becomes placid.

The video on the screen ends. The bright overhead lights of the room come on. Luz steps to the lectern. She looks out at the stunned reporters. “Again, we share this information with the public so that anyone who knows anything about these heinous crimes will come forward.
We are dealing with a self-appointed ecoterrorist, killing those he thinks are responsible for killing the environment. Bizango is a ticking time bomb. He must be stopped before his next murder.”

I
n the second-story bedroom of his dilapidated mansion, Lareck lies in bed propped up on pillows. A shawl is draped around his shoulders despite the humid night air. His sparse white hair forms a crazy unkempt halo around his head. On the nightstand beside him are scattered bottles of medications.

Noah sits next to the bed, in the old chipped wicker chair. He shakes the ice in his glass of rum and looks up to the ceiling, where a scorpion is scuttling. He watches the scorpion’s hooked stinger-tail arch and twitch as it inches along. He takes a slow drink from his glass, swallows, and clears his throat. “In Key West, you have either scorpions or rats in your house. One or the other. The two will not live side by side.”

Lareck’s weak, watery eyes look up at the scorpion; words wheeze from his lips: “Where’s Hogfish? He’s supposed to be here to give me my medication. I haven’t seen him for days. He couldn’t care less if his old man lives or dies. I’m getting worse by the day.”

Noah takes another drink, then sloshes the ice in his glass. “I wouldn’t worry about Hogfish. He’s probably
lying low, spooked by Bizango. We’re all spooked. We each fight fear in our own way. Some light a candle and pray, others have a shot of courage of one sort or another.”

Lareck breaks into raspy laughter. He pushes his bedsheet off, exposing his wrinkled and shriveled body. “Look at me. I’m already a skeleton. Maybe I’m Bizango! I’m not really trapped in this bed. I arise at night and prowl the streets in a skeleton costume. Don’t you know, I’m a spook on the loose!” His raspy laugh continues, turning into a hacking cough. He falls, exhausted, back onto the bed.

Noah sets his glass on the nightstand. “I’ll give you your medication. Let’s not wait for Hogfish.” He pours out a concoction of pills from the bottles on the nightstand and fills a glass with water from a pitcher. He puts his arm around Lareck and helps him sit up.

Lareck’s hacking cough becomes louder. He takes the pills from Noah and struggles to choke them down. He swallows the pills with a groan and sputters. “Why do I keep taking these damn things to stay alive? I’ve already lived eighty-seven years. Doesn’t seem right that I’m still hanging in when your young niece is on her way out. No matter how many pills Nina takes, she’s still being pushed through the exit door. Wish I could take back half my years and give them to her.” Lareck catches his breath and gives Noah a mischievous wink. “Of course, I wouldn’t give Nina my best years. I wouldn’t give the poor unsuspecting girl my shameless pussy-hunting years. I’m a generous man, but those years I’m keeping for myself. I’ll take them to Hell with me to keep things hotter.”

“There are some events in a man’s life that he should only share with the devil.”

“The bastard devil hasn’t heard the half of it. Wait till I
get there and fill him in. He doesn’t know about the Shanghai French Concession in the 1930s, before Mao finally ruined the party. My God, such antics put Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris whorehouses in the shade. I made my best paintings there. Such colorful goings-on.” Lareck’s wheezing breath breaks into excited hacking coughing.

Noah looks up at the ceiling. The scorpion above stops directly over Lareck. It releases its grip on the ceiling and drops, spiraling down in a fall through the air onto Lareck’s bedsheet. It maneuvers its scaly body into a crawl across the sheet toward Lareck. The hooked stinger-tail vibrates, its forward clawed pincers rapidly snapping.

Noah slugs down all the rum in his glass. He scoops the scorpion up off the sheet into the empty glass. He flips the glass over onto the nightstand, trapping the scorpion inside. He watches the scorpion futilely trying to escape, clawing at the transparent walls of its prison. “Got to protect scorpions. If not, rats will take over the house. They will take over the island.”

Lareck nods in agreement. “Where’s my son? The rat.”

Noah flips the glass right side up with the scorpion inside.

Lareck falls back onto the bed, his pale lips quivering. “Where’s the rat?”

Noah quickly crosses the room with the agitated scorpion in the glass. He shoves open a window and tosses the scorpion out from the glass. The scorpion spins away.

N
oah walks in the moonless night through a trash-strewn weedy lot past a battered sign barely discernible in the darkness:
TROPIX PARADIZE
. He continues along a row of dented and rusting mobile home trailers sitting cockeyed on concrete blocks. He stops, hesitating in front of the most dilapidated trailer. He eyes the rickety steps leading up to a closed aluminum door. Shards of feeble light shine through jagged holes in the door. He walks up the steps, careful not to slip, and bangs on the door. He waits in the silence for a response, then bangs again. From inside the trailer a jittery high-pitched male voice calls out, “No one is here! Go away!”

Noah tries the flimsy handle of the door; it is unlocked. He creaks open the door and cautiously steps inside. He looks around in dim light thrown off by one bare bulb hanging overhead from a frayed cord, its copper wires exposed. His eyes adjust to the shadowy interior. The surrounding windows are boarded over with scraps of plywood. The floor is cluttered with parts of old appliances, bent automobile hubcaps, tangled wire guts of disassembled machines, cracked baseball bats, and broken rat-traps. Seated high up on a dusty stack of yellowed newspapers in the corner is Hogfish.

Hogfish stares from beneath the bill of his fisherman’s cap and shouts in a jittery voice: “I keep moving, so El Finito won’t know where I am when he blows in. Got to keep moving. Got to trick Finito. How’d you find me?”

Noah opens his mouth to speak, but Hogfish jumps down from the newspapers and cuts him off. “Shut up. Don’t talk. El Finito can hear you.”

Noah speaks in a low voice. “I was just going to say—”

“Hey! You want an organ? Works fine!” Hogfish turns to a scratched-up wood organ shoved against the wall. He pounds his fists on the chipped black and white keys.

Noah grimaces at the screeching notes reverberating off the trailer’s tin walls. He covers his ears with his hands and shouts at Hogfish, “Cut the concert!”

Hogfish stops pounding the keys; his head turns around. “You don’t want the organ? You got to take something. When El Finito comes, I can’t be weighed down. I’ve got to run. Run for my life.”

“I’m here to tell you, your father doesn’t have long. He wants to see you.”

Hogfish holds up a dented waffle iron. “How about a waffle iron? You want a waffle iron? Everybody eats waffles.”

“I don’t want anything. Do you understand? Your father might die at any moment. He needs to see you.”

Hogfish throws the waffle iron down with a loud clank. He kicks away boxes overflowing with trinkets and bric-a-brac, exposing on the floor an old 1950s spearfishing gun. The speargun is cocked and loaded with a sharp harpoon spear. Hogfish whips around, pointing the speargun at Noah. “You want a speargun? You can kill a shark with this.”

Noah reels back. “I don’t want a damn thing!”

Hogfish tosses the speargun to the floor and bangs open the top of the organ against the wall. He reaches inside the organ and pulls out a black-handled German Luger. He aims the pistol’s blunt barrel muzzle at Noah. “How about a World War Two German Luger? Shoots nine-millimeter bullets. Nazis killed Yank soldiers and Jews with this!”

“What can I do with that? Shoot your El Finito when he roars ashore? Bullets can’t stop a two-hundred-mile-an-hour category-five hurricane.”

Hogfish moves toward Noah, frantically waving the Luger. “No one can stop El Finito except Bizango! I got a feeling about that! Got a feeling in my bones!” Hogfish stops; the Luger wobbles in his hand. “Take the gun. Shoot yourself in the head with it before Finito catches up to you. You’re better off dead than to see what Finito will do. His thousand-foot tsunami will smash everyone into a million pieces of shattered bones, severed eyeballs, splintered hearts, and hurl them into space.”

Noah lunges forward and grabs the barrel of the Luger, ripping it out of Hogfish’s hand.

Hogfish moans and stares glassy-eyed at the junk-strewn floor. He sees his iPhone and picks it up, shoves its earbuds into his ears. He turns the volume high. His head bobs wildly to music. He lurches at Noah.

Noah whips up the Luger. “No further! Stay where you are!”

Hogfish’s voice ratchets up into hysteria. “Finito’s chasing you! Finito’s going to get you!”

Noah backs away from Hogfish. He kicks open the closed door behind him and jumps out into the night.

T
he severe slant of late-afternoon sun glares off the brass instruments of a walking band of solemn men dressed in dark suits. The band plays a low-pitched funereal dirge with muted trumpets, melancholic slide trombones, and the repetitious heartrending thump of a bass drum. A long line of mourners follows the band through the open ornate iron gates of the Key West Cemetery. Directly behind the band, Luz and Noah carry a short white casket supported on their shoulders. Following the casket are Joan, Carmen, and Zoe, dressed in black, their faces grief-stricken; they support one another, arm in arm. At the very end of the procession, Hogfish pedals his rusty bicycle.