American Tropic (20 page)

T
he outdoor food market is crowded with island locals and tourists jostling one another between open-air stalls piled with vivid mounds of tropical fruits and vegetables. Noah stops before one of the stalls and chooses from the exotic selection of purple plantain bananas, brown tamarind, yellow egg-fruit, orange loquat, blue-speckled mangoes, and green sweetsop. He moves on to a stall with a palm-thatched roof, protecting it from the overhead sun, where fresh sea fare is sprawled across iced trays. He studies the wet display of octopus, crab,
horse conch, tuna, shark, dolphinfish, grouper, stingray, and snapper. He pokes a finger against an open-mouthed black grouper, then jabs a fat red snapper.

The stall’s monger, gripping a curved-blade gutting knife in his hand and wearing a white rubber apron streaked with fish blood, suspiciously watches Noah poking the fish. The monger shouts with gruff irritation: “Why you pokin’ that snapper? You gonna eat it … or you gonna make love to it?”

“Both.”

“Then, buddy, that’s not the one for you.” The monger looks over the colorful fish arrayed on the iced trays. He slaps the bright scales of a yellowfin tuna. “Here’s the one. She’s got a firm body and clear eyes.”

“I’ll take her.”

O
n the Gulf side of Key West, known as Land’s End, where once shrimping, fishing, and turtling boats were docked years before, are anchored tourist sunset cruise and glass-bottom boats, elaborate yachts, and fancy sailboats. Facing this leisure-time fleet is an open-sided restaurant serving buckets of peel-your-own shrimp and platters of shell-shucked gritty oysters. At the edge of the farthest dock is a long wooden shed where shark bodies by the hundreds were once piled before being reduced to fillet slabs, severed fins, and skins. The shed is now filled with a selection of souvenir postcards,
T-shirts, seashell necklaces, suntan lotion, and plastic sandals. To the side of the shed is a concrete saltwater holding pen. The deep-water pen is the last of the turtle kraals constructed in the 1890s, where captured turtles were dumped by the boatload from docked schooners to be slaughtered for steaks, soup, combs, and toothbrush handles.

At the top edge of the concrete pen, Luz stands staring down into the water. She watches trapped snook and barracuda kept as a tourist attraction. The fish dart back and forth in silver flashes, searching for a way out.

The Chief comes up behind Luz and stands alongside her. He hands over a thick manila envelope. “Here it is, promised I’d get it. I’ve got pull with the boys in a state-of-the-art Miami lab. Told them it was for an important case when I sent the blood samples. They fast-tracked it through.”

“I suppose I should say thanks, but I don’t know what it says.” Luz takes the envelope. “Have you read it?”

“I wouldn’t know how to read it—too technical, cutting-edge DNA-predisposition genetic stuff. Only a few labs in the country can do this. It’s what you wanted.”

“You don’t have such a happy face. Did they tell you what it says?”

“Of course they told me.” The Chief looks down at the circling fish in the water. “I don’t know how I’d react if I got this news. Jump off a bridge maybe, stay at home twenty-four/seven with my family, go up on a mountaintop to meditate, or shoot heroin.”

Luz scrapes her fingernails across the thick envelope, cutting into the paper.

The Chief looks back at her. “I hate to say this, but,
because of how the testing worked out, you should quit the force.”

“Never.”

“Go home and be with Carmen and Joan.”

“No, they would know why I was there, just sitting around the house. It’s better if life goes on, and they are strong with that. It’s too much for them to bear after what happened to Nina. They couldn’t go through it. They’d be crushed.”

“Given this new information, I could ask for your resignation. This can jeopardize your job performance. You’re still fit now, but any day that could change.”

“I won’t quit while Bizango is still out there.”

“I’ll make you a deal. Stay on until Bizango is caught, then go home to your family.”

Luz turns and gives the Chief a firm handshake. “It’s a deal. I can live with that.”

“It has to be. I can’t take the chance of keeping you on.”

Luz peers down into the pen; she sees her own reflection on the water’s surface above the snook and barracuda making their futile runs at freedom. “I used to come here after school as a kid. Back then they kept a six-hundred-seventy-five-pound loggerhead turtle in this pen. He was a hundred thirty-nine years old, and famous for biting off the fingers of the turtle hunters who captured him in the ocean. Big George, they called him. He was a celebrity, a real tourist attraction, the biggest turtle in the world in captivity. Every day I’d throw a head of lettuce into the water for George. George would circle around the pen, then cut above the surface and give a big blow of water as he went for the floating lettuce. George wasn’t a meat eater. He loved lettuce.”

The Chief stands closer to Luz, his shoulder touching hers. “The DNA results I brought you don’t lie. You don’t have much time left. You already knew your breast cancer came back, but this test turned up two different kinds of cancer waiting to spread. You’ve got a deadly trifecta going. I just want you to understand: should you change your mind and decide to walk away from the force now, no one will say you didn’t serve honorably. In fact, everyone will say how brave you were to hang in so long.”

Luz doesn’t look up from the water. “I remember the day George died. When he gasped his last breath in this pen, he was slaughtered and made into soup and combs. I was inconsolable. I cried myself to sleep every night after. My dad gave me five dollars to go buy myself something to cheer me up. I went to the Catholic church—they have a grotto there with a life-size Virgin statue inside. You can pay money to light a candle for the Virgin to protect you from hurricanes, or answer your prayers. With the five bucks, I lit up all the candles in the grotto for Big George.”

The Chief turns away from the pen and steps back. He pulls out his wallet and takes out a five-dollar bill. “What do you say”—he holds up the bill with a grin—“we go to the grotto and light us some candles.”

Z
oe sits at Noah’s kitchen table, wearing a bare-shouldered halter-top sundress. Her blond hair is swept up in a French knot, exposing diamond-stud
earrings in her lobes. She watches with fascination as Noah works at the stove over pots and pans of steaming and frying food. “When did you take up cooking?”

Noah carefully flips two yellowfin-tuna fillets simmering in a pan over a gas flame. “I’ve only recently become interested in the alchemy of the culinary arts.” He uncorks a glass vial and spreads crushed ginger root on the fish. He opens the oven door and sprinkles passionflower petals onto a baking plantain-banana pie.

“ ‘Alchemy of the culinary arts’? You make it sound like something exotic. Women cook every day. No big deal.” She picks up the water glass in front of her and takes a sip. Her mouth puckers. “This water tastes like it’s got bitter lemon in it or something.”

“Do you like it?”

Zoe smacks her lips. “It’s tangy. I don’t know if I like it or not.”

“Would you like something more than water?”

“Like some rum, maybe?”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m just trying to be a good husband.”

“A good husband? Too late for that. I gave you every chance a woman can give. I brought the final divorce document with me. All you have to do is sign it.”

Noah opens the refrigerator door and takes out a bowl of strawberry soup. “At least we can have dinner; here’s the first course.” He places the bowl in front of her and sits close.

“What a weird-looking soup.” She bends her head and sniffs at the pink concoction with red nuggets of dried strawberries floating on top.

Noah scoops a spoonful of soup from the bowl and holds it up to her lips.

Zoe laughs nervously. “I’m not sure I want this. What do you know about cooking, anyway?”

“There’s only one way to find out. Close your eyes and take a sip.”

She doesn’t close her eyes.

“Trust me.”

Zoe reluctantly shuts her eyes. Noah moves the spoon near her parting lips. He slides the spoon into her mouth, spilling a trickle of soup onto her lips. She keeps her eyes closed as she swallows. Her lips glisten a bright strawberry-pink. He places his hand under her chin, turning her face up to kiss her.

Her eyes open. “It’s delicious! What bizarre stuff did you put in this? I want the recipe!”

“Only strawberries and sugar.”

She licks the red residue off her lips. “No, I taste something else.”

“I put my love in it. All my love.”

Zoe flinches at the sudden intimacy. She looks at the empty rum bottle in the center of the table. A burning candle is stuck in the bottle’s narrow neck.

Noah touches one of the bright stones on her earlobe. “These are the earrings I gave you on our wedding day.”

“Don’t get any ideas. I just wore them because they go with this dress.”

“And I bought you that dress for our first wedding anniversary. It still fits you like a silk glove.”

“I told you not to get any ideas.” She stares at the empty rum bottle in the center of the table. Inside the bottle,
at its bottom, is her gold wedding ring. “I see my ring is exactly where it was when I was here the last time.”

“There’s a prize in each and every bottle of rum.”

She looks back at him. “You haven’t been drinking tonight. Why?”

“I stopped. Trying to walk the sober trail.”

“Famous first words.”

“I quit for you.”

“Famous last words. We’ll see how long that lasts.”

They fall into silence, watching the candle in the bottle burn. The ring inside the bottle shines.

He shifts his gaze back to her earrings. “I think your diamonds have lost their sparkle.”

She pats her ears. “Really? I think they still look good.”

“They aren’t as lustrous as when I first gave them to you. Someone told me that the only way to bring back the original sparkle of diamonds is to rub royal jelly from the Brazilian queen bee on them.”

“And I’ll bet Mr. Alchemist the Cook has some of that jelly stuff around here somewhere, don’t you?”

Noah slips from his coat pocket a purple velvet bag. He unties the bag and pulls out a corked glass vial containing honey-colored jelly. He opens the vial and dips a finger into the jelly. He rubs the jelly onto one of her diamond earrings, then massages the slick substance into the soft skin of her surrounding earlobe.

Her words come with intimate breathiness. “Are they sparkling yet?”

He leans close to her, his lips almost touching hers as he whispers, “Sparkling, like the sun. Radiant, like you.”

Zoe pulls back and stands. She grabs her purse from a chair and snaps it open, taking out a bundled stack of
papers. She slaps the bundle on the table. “I said this would be our last dinner.”

“But you only tasted the soup.”

“No more games. Sign the divorce papers.” She turns to leave.

Noah leaps up and grabs her arm. “Wait, I’ll walk you home.”

“Walk me home? I don’t need you to walk me home. I’m a big girl.”

“It’s dark outside. There’s a killer on the loose.”

“A killer on the loose?” She stares into Noah’s eyes with a sudden illumination. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’ve been the one following me home at night after I close up the bar.”

“Of course it was me. I told you, it’s not safe.”

“I don’t need a knight on a white horse to protect me! I just need a sober man who believes in himself and is one hundred percent present!” She spins around and walks out.

Noah slumps back down on the chair at the table. His lips turn down as he looks at the stack of divorce papers. His fingers drum lightly on the papers, then drum harder and harder. His hands begin shaking uncontrollably. He shoves his chair back with a loud scrape against the floor. He turns the flame off beneath the pan of burning fish. He yanks open a cupboard and pulls out a full bottle of rum. He opens the bottle and tilts it toward his mouth; the glass tip of the bottle touches his trembling lips. He turns swiftly, holding the bottle upside down over the sink next to him. He watches the dark rum flow down the sink drain and disappear. He stares at the empty bottle with a look of shocked remorse. “Goddamn, that was stupid!” He grabs the hard edge of the sink, his knuckles white
against the porcelain as he holds on. “But I’ve got to try!” His body begins shaking violently as he fights against the barbed blood rush of alcohol deprivation consuming him.