Night of the Jaguar (32 page)

She shrugs. Then the animation returns to her face and she asks, “If God said you should kill me with a big knife, would you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“We had Bible study. They used to kill little boys and girls. It’s a sacrifice. I think Abraham was mean to sacrifice his little boy just ’cause God said.”

“But he didn’t sacrifice him.”

“No, but he was going to. I think God was mean, too.”

“It’s just a story, honey. Abraham had faith that God wouldn’t really make him do anything bad to his little boy.”

Again that dreamy expression crosses her face and clears.

“Isaac. There’s a Isaac in my class. He brought his Game Boy to school and Miss Milliken took it away and gave it back later.”

After a short pause she asks, “Anyway, would you?”

“No,” replies Paz without thought.

“Even if God would be mad at you?”

“Let him be. I still wouldn’t.”

“People who let themselves get sacrificed are martyrs, did you know that? And they get to be angels and fly around in heaven. Oh, look there’s Abuela!”

“
Abuela!
” she cries and runs across to the car and hoists herself through the window into her grandmother’s lap. The two chatter happily in Spanish for the whole drive to South Miami while Paz tries several times to get his wife to answer her cell phone, and grows increasingly worried.

At the house, after Mrs. Paz departed in her Cadillac, Paz and his daughter went around the back, and Paz noted that Lola’s bike was not in its place. She must have taken a cab home, which did not bode well at all. He paused before the door and said, “Look, kiddo, your mom’s a little sick and I want you to try and be real quiet, okay?”

“Okay. What’s wrong with her?”

“I don’t know. Probably a little flu or something. Just watch cartoons for now, and later you can help me make our dinner.”

“I could make it myself.”

“I’m sure,” he said and opened the door.

“What’s in the bag, Daddy?” the child asked.

“Nothing, just some stuff Abuela gave me.”

“Torticas?”
Hopefully.

“No, just…a kind of medicine for Mommy. I’m going to go in now and see how she is. Go change out of your school clothes now.”

The child skipped off to her room and Paz entered his own bedroom. His wife was a mound on the bed under a light throw. He sat carefully on the bed, and as he did, he slipped the
enkangue
made with her hair under the mattress. She stirred and groaned.

He tugged the blanket off her face and felt her forehead. It was clammy but without fever. She blinked at him with red and swollen eyes.

“How’re you doing, babe? Not so hot?”

“They sent me home,” she croaked.

“Well, yeah. You’re sick. It’s a hospital.”

“I’m not sick. I had a…a breakdown.”

“A what?”

“I…they called me in, we had a kid, a drug OD, comatose. There was a traffic accident, a van, half a dozen seniors all hurt and the ER was jammed. And I couldn’t think what to do. I was the only spare M.D. and they were all staring at me and I went blank. I couldn’t…I told them to…I made the wrong call, and they all stared at me, the nurses, because they knew it was wrong and I started screaming at them and…I can’t remember it all, I was…hysterical, and they got Kemmelman and he grabbed me and threw me into the doctors’ dressing room. And later I went home, I sneaked away and took a cab and I have to sleep, Jimmy, I need to sleep and I can’t. I take pills, I can’t remember all the pills I took and I’m a doc. I’m a doc but I can’t sleep. Why can’t I sleep, Jimmy? I’m so tired and I can’t sleep.”

“You have bad dreams.”

“Sixty milligrams of flurazepam and I can’t sleep,” she said. Her voice had become high and soft, like a little girl’s.

“You have to get off those pills, babe. No more pills.”

She stiffened and tried to sit up. “Is Amy okay? Where’s Amy?”

“Amy’s fine,” he said. “She’s in her room. Listen, you’re going to sleep now. I’m going to stay here with you and rub your back and you’re going to go to sleep and when you wake up you’ll be fine.”

“No…I have to see Amy.” She repeated her daughter’s name several times, weeping now, but he held her close and stroked her back and after a while the sobs faded and were replaced with the sighing breaths of deepest slumber.

Paz awoke with a start out of one of those dreams that are so confused with reality that it takes more than a few seconds to discover which is which. He thought he’d been on a stakeout and fallen asleep and the suspect had slipped away, and he felt shame and despair. But, thank God, just a
regular
bad dream. Lola was still out, inert next to him, softly snoring. He slipped from the bed and went into his
daughter’s bedroom. There he placed her new
enkangue
on the bedpost and retrieved his own, returning it to its old place around his neck.

His cell phone played its tune. He pulled it out, saw who was calling, and after a brief hesitation, made the connection.

“What’s up, Tito?”

“No one says hello anymore,” said Morales, “ever since they figured out how to tell you who’s calling. I think that’s a major cultural change.”

“The end of civilization as we know it. How did you make out?”

“Oh, I got the name and address. We’re looking for the Forest Planet Alliance, on Ingraham. Where are you now?”

“At my place.”

“I could come by. I think we should pay these folks a visit.”

“It can’t be now, man. I got personal business.” A silence on the line, and Paz added, “Lola’s sick.”

“Oh? Nothing serious, I hope.”

“No, just some kind of flu. Look, I’ll check in with you in the morning.”

“Fine. Look, you ever hear of a guy named Gabriel Hurtado?”

“No. Who is he?”

“A Colombian. Some kind of drug lord. His name came up. Apparently your…I mean, Calderón was in communication with him recently. We got it off his phone logs. The feds have expressed an interest. They’ve been after him for years, two million reward for information leading to.”

“The more the merrier,” said Paz, sniffing. Someone was cooking onions. He heard the familiar rattle of implement against pan. “Look, Tito, I got to go. I’ll call you.”

“Colombian narcos. Usually they don’t use mystic panthers.”

“Jaguars,” said Paz and broke the connection. Then he went into the kitchen and found his daughter, standing on the little wooden stool she had used as a baby, calmly sautéing chicken pieces. On the stove steamed a pot of rice and a pot of black beans. “I’m making arroz con pollo,” she said. “I was hungry and I thought if Mommy was
sick and you were sleeping I would cook this for all of us. I didn’t make a mess.”

Paz looked around the kitchen. Well, not much of a mess. He sat on a chair and watched his daughter cook, rendered speechless by the splendor of it.

T
hey finished setting out the booby traps just before it got dark, leaving the trip wires slack. They were gunpowder/ napalm pipe bombs. Cooksey explained that they would rig them just before they went to bed. There were only ten of them, and it would be an easy matter to set them in the event that anyone nasty arrived during the hours of daylight.

“We’ll need to have Kevin now, my dear,” he said to Jenny while he camouflaged the last one. “He’ll have to walk the property with us so that he knows where these little beauties are to be found.”

“I’ll get him,” she said and ran off to the cottage they had once shared. No Kevin, just the lingering smell of his marijuana smoke.

She called his name, checked the bathroom, both without result, but when she came out the door she heard the sound of a VW starter cranking futilely.

Kevin was in the driver’s seat of the van, twisting the ignition key and cursing.

“That won’t start,” she said.

“Oh, you’re the fucking expert now,” he snarled and tried it again.

“No, but I can take a distributor rotor off.” She took it from her pocket and held it up for him to see. “Kevin, there’s a car full of gangsters
down the road. They’re looking for you and me. Could you please just for once
think
!”

He threw open the door of the van. “Give me that!”

“No. What is so important that you have to go this minute?”

“I’ll tell you what, bitch! Me and Kearney are going to blow up the S-9 pump station tonight. Give me that fucking rotor!”

“That’s crazy, Kevin…,” she began, but stopped when she saw the pistol, pointing at her in his shaking hand.

“You’re going to
shoot
me?” she asked after a hideous pause.

“Not if you give me the rotor.”

As he said this, she could not help but notice that Kevin still had the pistol’s safety on and didn’t know it. Even in the fading light she could see the red dot wasn’t showing. She could also see in his face the flickering terror behind the arrogant asshole mask. It struck her forcefully for the first time that she was the real thing of which Kevin was the counterfeit, and not the other way around. She was tough, and a survivor, and knew her way around the world, and had shot guns, and been in jail. Kevin was a banker’s kid with attitude. She wondered why this had never occurred to her before. In fact, Kevin should not be allowed to cross the street alone. But, she thought, he could change, with some help from her. Now that she knew what a real man was, maybe she could nudge him somehow in the right direction. In any case, she couldn’t just ditch him, the jerk!

“All right,” she said, “but I’m coming with you.”

“No fucking way.”

“Then pull the trigger.” She took the rotor out of her pocket. “And hurry up, because I’m about to fling this thing into the pond.” They stood that way for some moments. Then Kevin cursed and shoved the pistol into his waistband. “Okay, okay, let’s go, then. Put that thing back in the engine!”

“Give me the keys first,” she said. “I’m driving.”

In the dark van Prudencio Rivera Martínez felt his cell phone vibrate. The number showing was that of Garcia, who was crouching behind a tall hibiscus hedge directly opposite the property they were watching.

“That painted van is coming out,” he reported. “The girl is driving, and that little blondie
maricón
is with her.”

“Which direction?”

“Just a second.” A pause. “North.”

“I’ll have Montoya pick you up,” said Martínez. He had stationed two cars in blocking positions, one at each end of the short road called Ingraham Highway. His own van was lodged in a driveway in the approximate center of this road. Now he formulated a plan and mobilized his vehicles. In a few minutes, the VW van rolled by and Martínez’s driver, Cristobal Riba, swung behind it. Traffic was moderate.

“Where are we going to lift them?” asked Riba.

“Just ahead. This road goes under some heavy trees. It’s like a tunnel, pitch dark. We’ll do it there.”

“A lot of traffic for a lift,” said Riba doubtfully.

“They’ll think it’s a little accident. Iglesias will jam on his brakes, and you’ll run into their ass. We’ll get out, they’ll get out, we’ll show them guns, they’ll get in with Iglesias and Rascon, and I’ll get in with them and we’ll drive to the garage. One two three.”

Jenny gave a little cry and jammed on her brakes when the black van shot into the road from a hidden driveway and was thrown against her seat belt by the impact.

“Oh shit!” cried Kevin, and the same again when the following van rammed against the rear bumper. Dark-skinned men emerged from each van and walked toward the VW.

“Move the car, move the car!” Kevin screamed. He popped his seat belt and shifted in his seat, looking frantically to either side of the VW, watching the men approach.

“I can’t, we’re stuck,” she shouted back at him, and then she saw the man just outside her window, a thick man with a round hard face, heavy brows, pockmarked cheeks, black hair worn in a brush cut. He was dressed in tan slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt, untucked at the waist.

“You hit my car,” he said in clear but accented English. “You come out now and we show insurance, all right?”

She started to open her door, but Kevin shouted something she
didn’t catch and heaved himself across her. To her horror he had his gun out and was pointing it at the man. “Move your fucking car, motherfucker, or I’ll blow your head off.”

Jenny saw surprise register on the man’s face. Kevin’s pistol was trembling right before her eyes and she saw that the safety was still on. She was about to mention this to Kevin when the pockmarked man reached under his shirt, drew out a semiautomatic pistol with a strangely long barrel and shot Kevin twice in the face, making less sound than the popping of two birthday balloons. Kevin collapsed, his dead head fell right on her thigh, gushing volumes of blood. She looked down at it, at the great obscene bulge of blood-matted hair, bone splinters, and ropes of gray brain, and drew in breath for the scream of her lifetime.

Whether she made a sound or not she never knew, for between that moment and the next she felt the familiar shaft of coldness shoot through her center and the sounds of the uncaring traffic faded and the face of the killer and everything else contracted to a bright dot and she went away into seizure land.

Tuesday morning, Lola Wise was still sound asleep, and her husband forbore to wake her. He called the hospital and had a brief conversation with Dr. Kemmelman, the chief resident, in which he said that his wife was suffering from exhaustion and would be out for some days. The doctor said he understood, that such things happened often in ER work, and not to worry. He asked if Paz wanted to pick up some meds; Paz declined. Paz then prepared his daughter for school, dodged a series of questions about what was wrong with Mommy, and took her to Providence. On his way back, he received a call from Tito Morales.

“Did you hear yet?”

“Hear what?”

“We should’ve gone over there last night, man. I had a bad feeling about that. I should’ve gone myself.”

“What’re you talking about, Tito?”

“Around nine-thirty last night a van belonging to the Forest Planet Alliance—remember them?—was jammed up on Ingraham Highway by a couple of vans. Witnesses thought it was a fender bender. A man
named Kevin Voss took two through the head from a silenced nine and his companion, a woman named Jennifer Simpson, aged nineteen, was abducted by persons unknown. How do you like that shit?”

“Not much. I presume you’re all over the Forest Planet office by now.”

“You could say that. It’s based out of a big property on Ingraham south of Prospect, the bay side. Owned by a guy named Rupert Zenger, who’s conveniently out of town. Left just the other day, ho-ho. The only residents are a James Scott Burns, some kind of yard man, and a fellow named Nigel Cooksey, he’s an adjunct professor at the U. and the organization’s scientific guy. A Brit. Nothing on either of them, but this Simpson woman has a sheet, did six months in Cedar Rapids for guess what?”

“Impersonating a large spotted cat?”

A silence on the line. “You need to take this shit more seriously, amigo. She was muling dope, felony weight, but she caught a break as a first offender. And a cooperative witness. Also, we found a nine-millimeter pistol in the van that Voss and Simpson were in, unfired, with Voss’s prints on it. We traced it as stolen from a gun shop in Orlando last March.”

“So what’s the thinking now with all this?”

“Oh, thinking is not the word, my man. Finnegan and the county are having conniption fits that we found this FPA outfit and didn’t tell them like immediately. They’re moving to pick up a bunch of Colombians been hanging out on Fisher Island with the surviving Consuela guys. Oliphant is ballistic. How come we weren’t on them yesterday? And like I said last night, the feds are interested because of this Hurtado character. I hear they’re working on a warrant to raid your sister’s company.”

“Uh-huh. I think she’ll be forthcoming. By the way, did you find the Indian?”

“No, but at this point fucking magical invisible Indians are not high on the priority list. Everybody’s pretty well focused on Colombian gang war in the Magic City just before the tourist season.”

“None of which explains the two funny murders.”

“No, but the bosses got the bone in their teeth now. They want some Colombian
pistoleros
in the cells and we’ll figure out how they did it later.”

“So am I fired from being a funny-murder consultant?”

“Not that I heard. Why don’t you come by this Ingraham place and we’ll consult. They got a pool with piranhas in it. It’s something to see.”

“Twenty minutes,” said Paz. By this time he was on his own street. He went into the house and checked on his wife. She hadn’t moved since the last time he saw her, and he watched her for a considerable time, comforted by her slow, steady breathing. Then he left a note saying “
Mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada
. Call me when you get up,” and left.

Driving north on Coral Way, Paz had a thought and put it into action. He called his half sister’s cell number on his own cell phone.

“It’s Jimmy,” he said when she answered. “The feds are about to raid your company.”

To his relief she was not flustered by this news. “What’s their interest?”

“Dad, if I may call him that, apparently spent a lot of time on the horn to Cali, Colombia, talking to a fellow named Gabriel Hurtado. He’s a drug lord.”

“¡Coño!”
she said, and Paz chuckled. “Yeah, that explains why your books are fucked up.”

“I figured out that much myself. What’s your advice,
mi hermano
?”

“Total transparency. Fire the old fart accountant, let him and Dad carry the can. Did you have guilty knowledge?”

She laughed. “Are you serious? I have half a dozen witnesses that’ll say he reamed my ass for even asking about a load of funny money I spotted on a balance sheet.”

“Then you should be all right personally. The company could go down, though.”

“I’ll work something out. If we fold, maybe someone will let me waitress in the family restaurant.”

“A done deal, Sis.”

“And thanks for the heads-up. I don’t even know you and I love you already.”

Paz closed the call feeling better and more comfortably Cuban than he had in a while.

There were police cars and a crime scene van parked at the Zenger property. Paz had to wait for Morales to let him through the gate.

“Anything interesting?” Paz asked, taking in the scene.

“Not much, but we’re still tossing the place. The late Voss had a collection of anarchist-type literature and a stash of high-grade marijuana. Also someone had secreted Baggies full of what looks like white bread at various places. They’re going to give it the full lab treatment.”

“Far more dangerous to the health than pot, if you ask me. Get anything out of the Professor?”

“Not much. The abducted girl was some kind of lost soul according to him. Epileptic, too. He seems like he’s a lot more concerned about her than about Voss getting killed.”

“What does he have to say about jaguars?”

“I don’t know. I was saving all that for you. Want a crack at him?”

“Lead on,” said Paz.

They found Cooksey sitting at the table on the patio, looking forlorn. When the two men approached, Cooksey asked, “Have you found her?”

“No, sir, I’m sorry, not yet,” said Morales and introduced Paz as a consultant on the murders of the two Cuban businessmen.

“I don’t understand,” said Cooksey. “What have they to do with what just happened?”

Paz smiled and pointed to the garden. “We don’t know, sir, that’s what we’re trying to determine. How about you and me take a stroll around the grounds. You could show me around and we could talk about it.”

They strolled. Paz asked questions about the pond and the plantings, about the work of the Alliance and Cooksey’s own work. Cooksey was formal, constrained, answering the questions but not allowing a natural flow, which Paz thought was a little off. He’d had much to do
with experts in various fields (mainly women) and had learned that when experts got going on their chosen fields, it was if anything hard to shut them up. Another thing that was off about Cooksey was the way he moved down a path. He made very little noise when he walked and his head moved slightly from side to side at each step. Perhaps field biologists also learned to walk like that, but the last time Paz had observed such a walk was when he was in the marines. Guys who had been in close combat walked that way.

They were on a shady sun-dappled path under large mango trees when Paz noticed something glinting against a low trunk in a thin bar of sunlight. He knelt to examine it, then stood and asked, “What’s that?”

“It’s a hook for a booby trap trip wire,” said Cooksey.

“Really?”

“Yes. Raccoons come in at night and steal fruit and try to catch our fish. One can often annoy them by stretching wires across the paths rigged to let off flash-bangs.”