Tropic of Night (60 page)

It took them a few minutes to get Dawn Slotsky down to where she was just weeping hysterically. Mrs. Paz took her into the little bedroom and laid her into the hammock, crooning gently. Paz left them to it and got his Glock out of the cupboard. He knew where they’d gone. He could hear the footsteps above him.

The ladder led into darkness. He stopped with his head just above the loft’s floor and waited for his eyes to adjust. Faint moonlight came in through a high, round window. Green light glowed from some kind of cartoon character nightlight plugged into a wall socket. He could hear bodies moving in the dark and he could hear Jane Doe’s voice.

“You can still get away,” she said. “You could go back to Africa, you could see Uluné. He’d help you. You could try to …”

There was the sound of a more violent movement. Paz could now make out what was happening. Moore was stalking his wife. She was backing away from him; he was trying to corner her. Every so often, he would leap and lunge and strike with his knife, and she would simply not be where he expected her to be, or where Paz expected her to be, for that matter. Things were vague in the darkness, but it looked to Paz a lot like magic.

And all the time she was talking. “You could try,” she said, “to unravel the evil, to make some good come out of it. You could have a life.”

This was too much for Paz. He walked the few steps up to the floor of the loft.

“Drop the knife, Moore,” he shouted. They both froze and looked at him.

Jane cried, “Oh, no, please …”

Moore broke into a clumsy run, directly at Paz, with the knife held out rigidly before him, like a spear. Paz saw the shine of his face, the sweat flying, he saw the gleam of his bared teeth and the eyes, white, empty. Almost without willing it, Paz fired twice. Moore kept moving for a few feet until the hydrostatic shock turned his muscles to jelly and he dropped to his knees. The rigid knife arm sagged, and he fell over slowly onto his right side. Paz kicked the knife away.

Then Jane Doe was kneeling by the side of the fallen man, touching his face; she was making high-pitched, awful, keening noises. Moore’s mouth was open, and he seemed about to speak. Paz saw that there was a look of profound surprise on the face. Jane held his face in her hands, and Moore now seemed to see her for the first time. He said, “What? What?” and then he started choking, and blood that looked black in the moonlight shot from his mouth and covered Jane Doe’s hands.

Jane started to scream then, and pull her short hair and scratch her face. Paz grabbed her so she wouldn’t hurt herself. She fought him and he picked up a few more scratches. He was thinking that, except for his mother, there had never been a woman in his life who would mourn for him like this, and the thought made him feel sad and hopeless.

It took Paz and his mother the better part of an hour to get Jane Doe to stop screaming, and the little girl went into hysterics too. In the end Mrs. Paz made both of them drink something, and within a few minutes they were both asleep. Paz carried Jane to her hammock next to Dawn and the child to her bed. Then he called the cops.

After that, he was involved in police business for the better part of eight hours. It was extremely comforting, as was the story he invented on the fly. Witt Moore, celebrated author, it turned out, was also a devil-worshiping serial killer, who, together with his gang of lowlifes and a large supply of psychotropic aerosols, had terrorized Miami as the Mad Abortionist. He had tried it again, with Dawn Slotsky, but Detective Paz, who just happened to be in the neighborhood interviewing Moore’s wife, was able to thwart the crime, shooting all the gang members in the process, including Moore himself, who had died while trying to kill Jane Doe Moore with a knife (Exhibit A). They had the pieces of an obsidian knife that was probably the murder weapon in the serial killings, too. The best part was that the bad guys were all dead, which meant no legal proceedings were in the offing, which cut down on the uncomfortable questions. Did anyone really believe the strange tale? They certainly wanted to, and the more it was discussed, the more the talking heads discussed it, the more the police PR people gave confident interviews to those talking heads, the more it took on the solidity of the truth.

Paz, however, wanted to know what had really happened, so around midday, he pushed away a mound of paperwork, slipped out of headquarters, and swung by Jane’s, bulling his way through the lines of media people, nodding to the cops on duty as guards. He found his mother still there, making herself at home, talking with Jane and the child around a table laden with food, like a happy family. He fit right in, because he discovered that he was incredibly hungry.

“I told you,” said his mother.

After he ate, he went outside, motioning for Jane to come along with him. They sat at the picnic table in the yard, out of the cameras’ view.

“So what happened?” he demanded.

“You’re asking me? You seem to know the whole story. We went over to Polly’s a little while ago and watched the police chief on TV. You were on, too.”

“I don’t mean that bullshit. I mean what happened ? For example, I shot those … guys?” he asked.

“Yes. That was very useful. A very police thing to do.”

“And what went down between you and Moore?”

“The short version? I met him in m’doli as I planned. But I wasn’t ready. The circle of allies was wrong, so I was too weak to defeat him there. Because it wasn’t the chicken. Luz was the third ally, the yellow bird …”

“Yeah, I kind of got that, but she started to … I don’t know, fade.”

“Yeah. He was unmaking time, so that I wouldn’t meet her. So she wouldn’t be here.”

“Uh-huh. He can do that?”

“Technically, yes. But it’s not allowed. Ifa doesn’t like it. The rat bit the baby and Ifa pulled down the house.”

“Come again?”

“An old saying. Uluné set all of it up, a trap, and he fell into it. Anyway, you probably noticed some weird stuff going on.”

“Um, yeah, there were some, um, unusual phenomena, I would grant you that. What was it, some kind of drug?”

He saw several expressions flit over her face. Irritation, then resignation, then the strong features relaxing into what looked like compassion. He noticed that she was beautiful in an unfamiliar way, like the statues of the orishas in the little Cuban shops.

“Yeah. Some kind of drug. That, or the nature of reality you’ve accepted for your entire life is wrong. You choose.”

“Drugs,” said Paz. “And so, what? He’s dead so that means it’s all over?”

“For the moment. I’m going to bury him in Sionnet.” She wiped her eyes. “He was a lovely man.”

“Yeah, well, you could have fooled me.”

“Oh, that wasn’t Witt. That was some chunks of him, the worst chunks, the fear and the hatred, assembled into a kind of robot. Like a zombie but more capable. People do that to themselves all the time, I mean, really, look at the people who run for office. But this was done to him by an Olo witch. He let it be done to him, the poor man.”

“But anyway, we’re out of danger?” Paz had limited sympathy for the deceased.

“You all are. Me, I’m … what’s the word? Or’ashnet in Olo. Deodand, touched by a god, spiritually unstable. Part of me is stuck in m’doli, and I’m sort of vulnerable to beings who live there. I have to escape by water, to fulfill the prophecy.”

The day went on, life cranked up again, as if nothing had happened to time, again there were sixty seconds to be lived in each precious minute. Mrs. Paz went back to her restaurant. Dawn’s husband came home and took her away. Paz and Jane slipped away with Luz to Providence, where they watched the yellow bird in the Noah play. They went to the Grove for ice cream, and to the park. Oddly enough, no one recognized them. Magic, or their fifteen minutes were over? Paz didn’t know and didn’t care. He lay back on Jane’s blanket, with his cheek close to her thigh, and felt as happy as he had ever been.

That evening, Paz gave a long interview to Doris Taylor as he had promised, telling the whole invented story, and casting Jane Doe as a hapless victim, not worth an interview, a very dull bird. Doris bought it and went away happy. Then they ate again from the institutional-quantity load of chicken, rice, and beans that Mrs. Paz had brought, and Paz drank a couple of Coronas while Jane put Luz to bed upstairs. When she came down again, as she walked by the sling chair where he sat, he reached out and pulled her down onto his lap, and kissed her. She kissed him back, then pulled away. “Um, Paz? There’s some stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“Yeah, stop that or I won’t be able to.” She sat up on his lap. “About my sister.”

“If you were an accessory, I don’t want to hear it.”

Her face stiffened. “What do you know?”

“Nothing for sure. But you didn’t blow the whistle on him. I mean afterward. The house is full of guns and you didn’t even try to shoot him. I mean, could he read your mind?”

“Not as such. But he knows me pretty well. Better than I thought. It was like Barlow. There was something in me, from way back, a grel, we might as well say. Insane jealousy. That’s the real dirty secret. I should have told you out on the boat. You have no idea what it was like growing up with her in the house. I mean as a little kid. Nobody ever looked at me. Invisible, like him. Our sick bond, and didn’t he make me pay for it? Except my dad saw me, sometimes, when I was a boy for him.

“Oh, shit, Paz!” She pressed her face into his shoulder. “I saw him,” she said into his shirt. “That afternoon. I knew he wasn’t at the car show with them. He walked right past me and waved and smiled, and I knew what he was going to do. I just sat there. And part of me was glad. Not seeing people is the worst thing you can do.”

“He witched you.”

“No,” she said. “He didn’t have to. God forgive me. And I didn’t have the guts to really kill myself. I just pretended to be Dolores Touey, a woman whose sandals I am unworthy to tie.” She cried for what seemed like a long time, heaving against him, making odd, dry croaking sounds. Then, without a significant transition, she began to kiss him again, and after a mouth-bruising clutch of minutes, she pulled away. Sparks seemed to be flying from her eyes.

“I had to tell you that,” she said, “and also I have to tell you that while I am unbelievably hot for you, we are not going to jump into bed right now.”

“No?”

“No. I was serious about being still a little stuck in the unseen world. It wouldn’t be healthy for either of us. Real sorcerers are usually chaste.”

“Uh-huh. And when do you think you’ll get unstuck?”

“When I’m home in Sionnet, after having escaped by water. The prophecy.”

“But the thing’s over. Dingdong the witch is dead.”

“Oh, right, so now we can just forget what happened? You’ve seen Ifa. Do you think he’s someone you want to fuck around with?” He had nothing to say to that. An involuntary shudder ran up his spine. She rose from his lap, grabbed a straight chair, and straddled it.

“A little distance, I think,” she said. “Look, you’re feeling sexual, right? Attracted to me?”

“Majorly.”

“Right, and I’m attracted to you. You’re exactly my type, as you probably figured out already. You don’t have his brilliance, but you’re more solid. You love your mother and she loves you. You really are un hombre sincero de donde crecen la palma . There isn’t a big fat hole in you for the grelet to crawl into. Besides that, I’m unbelievably horny. The escape from danger, and it’s been years for me …” She laughed. “Always a deadly combo. I’m throwing out gallons of pheromones and so are you. If we’re not careful, we’ll have a romance.”

“This would be bad?”

“Well, yeah. Do you want to spend more time in drugged hallucination? I don’t.”

Paz didn’t like the way the conversation was going. “What do you want, then?” he asked.

“I want to take Luz back to my family and glue her into it. I want to ask forgiveness from them, and forgive them, too. I might be able to help my mom, and even if not, I can be there for her as a person, not a cranky child. She doesn’t love me, but I can love her. I want to sail around the Sound with Josey and teach Luz the water. That seems like enough for starters. Later, I’ll take up my work again. I need to get back in touch with Marcel Vierchau, too, speaking of forgiveness. You know, I saw him once a couple of years ago in the Atlanta airport. I spotted him coming down the corridor and I ducked into the ladies’ so I wouldn’t have to confront him. The point is, I want to live actual life now, not hallucination, so …”

“I get it.” He stood up. “Well, I guess I’ll be going then.”

“Oh, sit down! We just defeated the powers of darkness together and now you’re ditching me because I won’t fuck you?”

Surprising himself, he sat down again. She said, “You want some advice?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Sure. If your life is perfect you don’t need any advice. That’s a Yoruba saying.”

He thought about that for a while. “All right. What is it?” Grumpily.

“Do the same as me. Stop acting like a baby with your mom. See her. Love her for what she is. And your father, too.”

“What? That bastard?”

“He’s still your father, and you’re not a little kid anymore. You’re a big, strong cop. A heroic cop. You’ve been on TV, on national TV. Your pal Doris is going to write a bestselling completely fallacious but plausible book about this whole thing, and you’re going to be the star of it. There’ll be a movie. The Cuban community’s going to be falling all over themselves to thank the guy who caught the fiend who killed Teresa Vargas. Don’t you think the whole thing about your dad is going to come out?”

Paz had not considered this. He felt fear sweat prickle on his forehead. She went on: “You have to look him in the eye and forgive him. If he rejects you then, it’s on him, you don’t have to drag his shit around for the rest of your life. You’ve got a couple of half siblings, too. And a stepmother. They might have something to say about it.”

“Thanks for the advice,” he said neutrally. She held his eye for a long time, waiting, it seemed, for something that did not occur, and then closed her eyes.

“You’re welcome.” She stood up and yawned. “Look, Paz. I haven’t slept more than a couple of hours in over four days. I’m going to sleep until Luz wakes me up tomorrow. We’ll talk then. Good night.”