Tropic of Night (55 page)

“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 Guantánamo, 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 Seńor 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 déjŕ 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 Santería, 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!”