Indian Country Noir

On drowning pond by A. A. Hedgecoke

Charlotte, North Carolina

I saw Jimmy earlier this week. Just before the discovery of yet another fallen victim to the drowning way. He was still the same Jimmy, drunk — wasted. Crouched on the curb across from the market with a half-dozen longtime cronies and their women. Women who have been on the down edge so long their bodies have masculinized and hunched with the depression of life lost to drink, hard sex, smoke.

I saw him and I remembered Jolene, her beautiful smiling face, shining hair. Thought of her unrelinquished love for a man who’d only one wife in his heart. Thought of this bottle he’d fully committed to, of his smell, his ways. How she must have longed for him. Leaving her there the way he did, looking down on her maybe, thinking he was quite the man for taking the young passionate breath she’d had, in his making over of her brown body. Thought of his sudden losses of memory, and willingness to go on in life so soon and in such close proximity to her passing, and I wondered if he ever as much as poured a drink on the ground in her memory, or if he held that drink so precious to himself even a gulp would be too much to spare.

I saw him and I watched the walkers, those who’ve taken to carrying signs and speaking out against the assailants they believe they’ll recognize once they stay the vigil until another passing. And I remembered how Jolene was always a private woman and doubted she would show her smiling face in a crowd this immense — especially among the sober living. The waters may look still today, but each time I glance across the creek, use my peripheral vision, for a moment her easy presence forms here, waiting. It’s here I leave some hope for her, a few presents now and then, and ask her to go easy on us — the living. Here, too, I vow to follow him, take him down to the water one night, bring her Southern Comfort.

Jolene came to mind just this morning, how the light illuminated the walking bridge rail above her resplendent body. The shining of her deep black hair, under the water, on the morning they found her two dozen years ago. Right here in the thick of Brooklyn Alley. Just west/northwest from the Double Door Inn and over from the Broken Bank, Marshall Park. I remember how she always smiled when asking for “just a few quarters to get by.”

It was spring. Jolene, though barely grown, had already been married and separated twice. She had a young child, but her parents had taken custody in the recognition of her spirit gone to drink. She had lived among the other ghosts, friends still walking the Earth along Independence, panhandling, selling themselves, huddling together for warmth and for desire of the strange flesh necessary to endure the jaundiced and rotting skin they themselves wore. Those who had lost lives here already, and yet still breathed, still continued this walk among the living. The ones whose blood no longer held hemoglobin, red, nor white leukocyte to speak of, yet flowed with a powerful wine-red fire-rush of alcohol-permeated heat. Those whose tears bore no salt, yet swelled each time a lost love was mentioned in conversation. Worse still if one actually passed by, nonchalant, unknowing, a member of the living world still. Those who fill the deep underworld here, though the white-collars cannot see them.

Jolene had found a lover. A great man, great in size and truly experienced among these parts. His residency here dated back a good decade or more, since his mom was chain gang in South Carolina. Heard she died there. I knew him holding his own guts in his hands. Knew him to be unstoppable. He walked with a certainty. A macho strut. He was certain — of himself, of the drink he made vows with. Everybody knew him. This familiarity, this personal community knowledge, allowed her protection from the perpetrators who infiltrated the Brooklyn-side Charlotte streets on weekends, summers, and holidays. Those who came to prey on the already forgotten but not quite gone. Those who justified rolling drunks as “teaching them a lesson.” Or roughing lobs to “make them understand.” Ethnic cleansers. I despise them.

It was in the month of the eclipsed moon, that time of reddened sky, after a fresh rain and hail pummeling along the curb. Jolene and her man. They were along the newly constructed revision bank when the storm broke. They had gone into the bar to avoid the wetness and to engage some draws from the deep tap-well, at least until the panhandled earnings were exhausted.

They say when the lovers went back down the construction path, Jolene was so taken by the deepening colors of the flora around them, she swelled with passion in the green and purpled midst and they lay together in the wet grasses along the bank, experiencing the fullness of newborn spring. They say she slept there. Fell asleep during, some say. When they found her she was naked from the waist down, as brown as a summer doe, lying half-in and half-out of water. The half-in was the upper part of Jolene. They dragged her out by the bare heels poking up through the wild violets blooming.

You know, she smiled even in death and her heavy hair flowed far past her physical body, much as the water flowed behind her. Jimmy was questioned but never arrested in her passing. He suffered from blackouts and seizures, and couldn’t recall the last he saw her the night before. He was so sure she had returned to the bar with him. So were a few other regulars. They were all certain they saw her at least two hours after the coroner determined her expiration. They recounted Jolene hanging onto Jimmy’s arm and smelling his breath and neck as if it were something scintillating. No one remembered her speaking, though Willie Notches said she tried to steal a cigarette right from his brother Tyrone’s pocket but was so intoxicated she couldn’t grab hold of it. Said his cousin Punchy Blackknees walked by and put a cigarette into her hand and she thought he was handing her a grasshopper since the clumsy numbness made the end shake up and down. Willie still laughed at the recollection. Others said they had seen her swimming near the city center at dawn, where elders and children were allowed to fish before the conversion of the city into cosmopolis. Said they averted their eyes to avoid embarrassing her obvious bathing. The city more concerned with gentrification than the fallen, then and now. Nothing was done. No follow-up, just over and buried, they say. They still claim such. Amazing.

Years passed. Winos would sometimes claim they saw a beautiful woman, underwater, facing up and smiling in the now white-collar park enclave. Back then, they’d leaned over and fallen in trying to get a better look at her before the shock of cold water woke them from drunken stupor. Then there was Tyrone. The creek-bum who hadn’t seen a sober day in so many years his skin had grayed beyond redemption. Tyrone drank with Jimmy, for years they say, drank with Jolene once or twice in the living time. It was Tyrone whose death bristled my attention. Tyrone had claimed it was Jolene in the waters. Claimed she reached right out of the water for the Marlboro in his shirt and held him a moment, puckering wet lips and beckoning him with her muddy eyes. He said he’d shaken her off twice before and was afraid she would come for him again. He told Jimmy he believed her jealous of the woman Tyrone had introduced to Jimmy while he should have still been mourning her. As if the ones who lived on this bordering world were capable of remaining celibate for a year’s time to mourn anyone. He drowned four years after they found Jolene. He surfaced around Freedom Park, no explaining it, the pocket completely ripped from his shirt and his trousers torn through the crotch, one entire pant leg missing.

Then there was that one up from the Catawba River for the Frontier Days rodeo. They said he looked and walked a lot like Jimmy and that he had drunk in the Double Door three days straight before going to “get some sleep” by the pond path. They said his breath had the strong smell of Peppermint Schnapps or Hot Damn over bad beer and cheap wine. Said the peppermint was the only thing kept him from getting picked up P.I. by Officer Wall on his lot patrol at the market. He surfaced exactly four years after Tyrone. After him, they came up more often.

A few full-bloods floated facedown after being lost for two or three days. They were strong men, well built, with the exception of the distended gut from too much drinking. All were known to have frequented the park and the Indian bar nearby. All were going through hard times and break-ups. Then two half-bloods rose from the bottom. One with his woman just twenty yards away, still sleeping after having relations. For a week she told the story of his sweetest day, their closest time together — ever. This day he had drowned. Then she took up with a guy who stayed over nearer the park and they poured wine on the ground for her man every time they took to drink together.

Once they found a drowned stranger, a sort-of stranger, a guy from another tribe who was a known exhibitionist and molested the street women, often paying them in cigarettes after he was finished with them. One had to be hospitalized — he had been so brutal in his business. When they pulled him from the water, his man-thing had been sheared by what appeared to be a sharp branch. They said he’d tried to bribe Jimmy for a turn at Jolene years ago.

Once, or twice maybe, a white man came floating and I began to believe Jolene had given up on Indian guys altogether. I’ve considered it myself, but can’t stand the never-ending explaining you have to do to date outside. One came up so fast they found him minutes after he’d swallowed waters, yet no effort was made to clear his lungs by the followers or the police. I figure she shamed herself in seducing the historical enemy and wanted no part of being affiliated with him after the fact.

I saw Jimmy earlier this week. Maybe I’ll follow him, take him down to the water tonight, bring her comfort. Soothe the blue-black night waters welling with Jolene. Soothe them.

Daddy’s girl by Mistina Bates

Memphis, Tennessee

Standing behind her husband’s left shoulder, the woman emitted hiccupping sobs that set Daniel Carson’s teeth on edge. His skin prickled with the same sensation as if he’d raked his nails against a chalkboard. Carson forced himself to focus on his client’s face. Failure to catch any lies could have fatal results.

The man pursed his porcine lips and shook his head. As if commiserating, his ice-blue gaze locked with Carson’s, and he shrugged. “You have to understand, my wife is so upset because this is our only daughter.”

Carson nodded once, as the fleeting image of his own daughter — a pigtailed girl with a gap-toothed grin — brought a twitch to his face.

Seizing on this minute gesture, the man leaned forward onto the leather blotter built into the massive mahogany desk. He steepled his fat fingers. “So, you’re a family man?”

“My domestic situation has no bearing on the matter at hand.”

The man blinked, and irritation flashed across his face. He quickly regained his composure, no doubt deciding it unwise to piss off a man in Carson’s line of work. “You come highly recommended,” he began, then paused, as if waiting for a response. Carson inclined his head but said nothing. Sighing, the man continued, “You understand that discretion is of the utmost importance.”

“Naturally. Has there been any communication since your daughter’s disappearance?”

This time the scowl remained planted on his face. “Only the one call, demanding a million in cash.” The woman’s sobs grew louder, and her husband reached up to pat the hand she laid on his shoulder.

“And the police are not involved?”

A firm shake of the head. “No. Given my position in the community, I’d prefer to handle this matter privately.”

“Of course.” An avid outdoorsman, true to his Cherokee heritage, Carson had no interest in antiques or other furnishings, yet even his untrained eye knew that the library in which they sat was the work of a well-funded interior designer — as was the rest of the manor that had once overseen the whole Norfleet family estate.

Now the home lay in the midst of an exclusive subdivision, dwarfing the expensive houses crammed into modest-sized lots. Carson knew from research that his client had bought the old home for half a million and tripled his investment within three years, according to the latest property tax assessment. Both the bluebloods and the nouveau riche alike would raise eyebrows if they knew what kind of man had purchased this piece of Memphis history and joined their polite society.

“What can you tell me about your daughter and the missing money?” Carson asked.

The man’s frown deepened, and he clenched his hands. Then he paused to collect himself. He turned to his wife. “Darling, why don’t you see after some coffee?” He glanced over at Carson with thinly veiled disdain. “Or maybe you’d rather have whiskey?”

A tiny muscle twitched at the back of Carson’s jaw, but his expression remained neutral. “Coffee, please,” he said in a soft voice to the raven-haired woman with gentle brown eyes. She nodded and left the room. As she passed through the doorway, she used a fist to stifle her sobs. When Carson returned his attention to his client, an edge clipped his words: “I don’t drink.”

Carson’s eyes bored into those of his newest employer. After several tense seconds, while the older man struggled with his ego, common sense prevailed and he offered an almost-contrite smile. “Sorry. That was poor manners.”

“Agreed.” Carson’s hooded expression warned of the consequences that a subsequent lapse in manners would incur. “You were telling me about your daughter’s disappearance.”

Carson leaned back into the leather armchair as his client started speaking. He studied the man’s face as he committed the information to memory — notes could leave a trail. Just as he had scanned the land and vegetation as a boy — and later as a member of the elite Shadow Wolves in search of drug smugglers — he watched and measured each nuance of every expression, searching for signs of deception or evasion.

For the next two hours, his attention never wavered from the man before him. He extracted the details leading up to his client’s employment of James Hicks, a Navy SEAL with a dishonorable discharge — the man who was now demanding one million dollars. Carson mentally recorded key facts from the sailor’s personnel file. He also gathered information about Buddy Martin, his client’s accountant.

After receiving the phone call, the businessman had contacted Buddy, his friend and confidant of more than twenty years. Since then the accountant had failed to answer repeated calls to his home, office, and cell phones, and Carson’s client feared the worst.

“Why go after Buddy?” Carson asked.

“It could be as simple as the fact that he kept a sizable petty cash fund for me at his office.”

“How sizable?”

“A quarter-million, give or take.”

Carson studied the man’s face for several seconds. “But there’s more than petty cash involved, isn’t there?”

“I’ve noticed that funds have started disappearing from my various business interests.”

“You think Buddy’s in on this?”

“It pains me, but I can’t trust anyone at this point.”

Carson’s client had been given forty-eight hours, now down to twenty-eight, to turn over the money, or he would lose everything: his daughter, his reputation, his social status. The life that he had carefully built would be destroyed.

Carson maneuvered the Dodge Charger through the maze of East Memphis streets, guided by the robotic female voice of the global positioning system mounted on the windshield. Tara had laughed when he bought the device two years ago, chiding him for relying on technology, rather than the innate skills cultivated by his people over generations.

It was a matter of efficiency. Even allowing for the occasional error — when the gadget directed him to make an illegal left, for instance — his GPS had saved him countless hours plotting and memorizing the lay of the land in every city he worked.

As it wasn’t yet 3 o’clock, Carson easily found a spot near the SEAL’s apartment. He removed the Glock 17 from the space between the seat and armrest. He tucked the gun into the waistband of his Wranglers, where it was hidden beneath the hip-length leather jacket, and exited his car. After scanning the area for residents or visitors, Carson removed the gun when he reached the shared foyer.

His other hand reached for a reverse peephole viewer, which revealed stairs directly behind the door, a dining area to the left, and a hallway leading to the living room.

He pocketed the viewer and stepped to the side, ringing the doorbell. When several seconds had elapsed, he rapped firmly on the wooden door.

Nothing. The odds of a dog were slim to none.

Seconds later, Carson entered Hicks’s home. The still, silent air confirmed that he was alone in the sparsely furnished town home.

Clearly, the man continued to follow the military’s strict code for tidiness, at least downstairs. Not a scrap of paper was lying about. All the dishes were neatly put away in the cabinets. The remote controls were arranged side by side next to the cable box.

Upstairs reinforced Hicks’s fastidious nature. Carson could have bounced a quarter off the queen-sized bed, the only piece of furniture in the room. After searching the closets and the bathroom, he moved on to the second bedroom, which was an office.

Here Carson found the only personal item in the entire apartment: a framed photo of a red-haired woman. He studied the picture. She was posing on a bench in New Orleans’ Jackson Square, the St. Louis Cathedral soaring in the background. He removed the photo from the frame and tucked it into his breast pocket.

Driving downtown on Main Street, past the gentrified Mid America Mall, Carson slowed as he approached the converted warehouse that housed Buddy Martin’s office. Half a dozen city vehicles, including four police cruisers, crowded the street. Carson casually turned west onto Linden, but not before spotting the sedan marked Forensic Medical.

The meat wagon had already arrived, so police must have been on scene for at least an hour or two. Given the looming deadline, Carson hated the delay but adjusted his plans.

He drove north and then east, returning to the revitalized section of downtown Memphis. He deposited the car in a public garage across from the commercial playground of Peabody Place, where he blended in with the tourists who thronged the shopping oasis in the still-bleak inner-city zone.

Carson joined the small crowd of gawkers who had assembled at the crime scene perimeter. Snatches of conversation confirmed that Buddy Martin had been found dead of multiple gunshot wounds, most likely killed the previous day. The receptionist had been out all week, visiting her mother in New Jersey.

After twenty minutes, Carson concluded that he had learned all he could. He headed north toward Charlie Vergos’s famed Rendezvous. He could think of no better temporary office, preferring a slab of ribs to overpriced coffee any day of the week.

Carson had visited the Memphis institution on several occasions, but the surly waiter who seated him didn’t recognize him. Perhaps because he now had dark blond hair and green eyes — a dramatic departure from his natural coal-black hair and brown eyes so dark they, too, looked black.

A few keystrokes later, Carson discovered that Hicks’s black 2007 Land Rover was registered to a Jennifer McLaren of 1375 Agnes Place. He also confirmed the twenty-four-year-old Miss McLaren as the redhead from the photo in New Orleans.

Carson’s food arrived and he made short order of the tender, smoky meat. As he ate, he scanned the current edition of the Memphis Flyer, the local tabloid, which he had picked up in the lobby. Carson turned to page seven, to an article on an exhibit opening referenced on the cover. On the lower right-hand corner of the page, his client’s frosty blue gaze stared back at him — this time from the face of a stunning brunette, hair upswept to showcase a swanlike neck. He checked the caption, tore out the photo, and placed it with the snapshot of Jennifer McLaren.

“She’s not here.” Standing no more than five-foot-two, the elderly woman in the doorway managed to look formidable with her scrawny arms folded on top of an ample, but sagging bosom. The short, wide body and skinny appendages made her look like a dwarf, but Carson suspected that Jennifer McLaren’s grandmother had been a magnificent specimen some forty years earlier.

“Can you tell me where she is, ma’am?” said Carson, returning his credentials to his back pocket.

Piercing green eyes peered out from the wizened face. “Why would I do that?”

“Because it looks like one of Jennifer’s friends might be dangerous,” said Carson. “One woman is already missing. For all we know, Jennifer could be next.”

One birdlike claw, sporting a fresh coat of pink nail polish that clashed violently with the auburn hair dye, flew to her throat. “Dear God,” she whimpered. Her mouth tightened in a crimson slash. “It’s that Hicks boy, isn’t it?” She studied Carson’s face and then nodded to herself. “I told Jenny that boy was bad news. The damn fool kept handing over her hard-earned money every time he smiled at her... Well, come on in,” she said at last, returning her gimlet stare to Carson. “Can I offer you some coffee?”

“That would be mighty kind of you.”

He returned to the Charger, checking his watch. This time tomorrow, his client’s daughter would either be dead or alive, depending on whether Carson completed his mission.

Jenny’s grandmother had given him an address in New Orleans, where the girl had moved the previous month. The woman wasn’t sure about the circumstances, but she thought that Jenny and Hicks had been having troubles.

Driving away, Carson considered his options. Leaving now would put him in New Orleans around midnight. If he waited to check out Buddy’s office, it would be morning before he reached the Big Easy.

Of course, the link to New Orleans was circumstantial. He didn’t have time for a dead end that would eat up more than half his remaining time.

Carson resigned himself to several hours of cooling his heels. He headed west on Union and returned to the garage near Peabody Place.

He took out his cell phone and dialed. “Daddy!” squealed a voice almost instantly.

“Were you waiting by the phone?”

“Yep,” came the smug reply.

“How’d you know I was getting ready to call?”

“We women have our ways.” The grown-up words coming from her eight-year-old mouth reminded Carson of the fleeting nature of childhood.

After a few minutes of banter and a recap of her day, he asked to speak with her mother.

“Hey, handsome.” Tara’s sultry voice never failed to warm him. “And where in the world is my husband now?”

Carson let her know that he was in Memphis and quickly turned the conversation to her and their life in central Texas, what he thought of as his “real life” — separate from the world of his job.

Reluctantly, he ended the conversation. Carson snapped his phone shut and sat for a few minutes, savoring the peace that these conversations always produced.

He finally stirred himself and headed to Beale Street, where he passed the evening hours listening to a performer who sang like Johnny Cash and looked like Jerry Springer. At a quarter to 11, he settled the tab for his nachos and club soda and went back to work.

As Carson left the lights and activity of Beale Street and Peabody Place, he tossed his car keys in the air and caught them. He whistled softly while he walked, casually scanning the now-deserted section of Main Street.

By the time he arrived at the redbrick warehouse, Carson had confirmed that he was alone. He quickly dispatched the lock on the street-level door and entered. He turned left at the second-story landing. To his immediate left, yellow crime scene tape sealed the glass door with black-and-gold lettering that announced: Sherman “Buddy” Martin, Certified Public Accountant.

He sliced through the tape with his horn-handled pocketknife and spent only a few seconds longer on the lock.

When he opened the door, the coppery scent assailed his keen senses like a blow to the gut.

Carson walked through the empty reception area and stood in the doorway of the main office. He surveyed the scene before him, aided by the narrow but bright beam of his mini Maglite. From the spatter of blood, brain, and bone on the wall, window, and floor, he could see the killer had used hollow-point ammunition. The top of the desk was bare; the police had confiscated everything.

He then turned his attention to the open closet door in the far corner of the room, which revealed a large steel safe, also open. And empty.

Carson methodically scanned the area, starting with the ceiling and working his way down to the floor. The light glinted off an object in the corner. He studied the space between him and the safe. Convinced that his passage wouldn’t disturb anything, Carson crossed the room and kneeled in front of the safe.

He played the beam over the floor next to the wall and spotted the item that had caught his attention. Part of the object had fallen into the crack between two of the pine floor-boards, and part had slipped under the radiator. Carson used the tip of his pocketknife to slide the article onto his gloved hand. It was a sterling silver earring in the form of a delicate three-inch chain that ended in a flat, pointed ellipse, similar to a feather or leaf.

Carson smiled, thinking how the nature symbolism would appeal to Tara, who insisted upon educating their daughter on her Cherokee heritage.

A thin hook at the top threaded through the ear. Holding the item in his hand, he realized how easy it would be for the wearer not to notice its loss; it weighed less than half an ounce.

Click.

Damn. Someone was coming in through the street-level door. He had maybe ten seconds before the newcomer arrived.

He chanced a glance out the window and saw a Crown Vic, the stereotypical unmarked police car. Things were getting complicated. Not impossible, but definitely complicated.

Carson stepped to the shadows in the opposite corner, on the same wall as the door. He heard the footsteps ascend the stairs and stop outside the reception area. The hallway door opened a few seconds later, just long enough for someone to pull out a weapon in response to the door’s broken seal.

Carson braced himself for the sudden glare of the overhead light. Instead, a flashlight beam sliced through the darkness.

“Police! Step outside with your hands up.” The words came out thick and imprecise.

Carson stood in the darkness, waiting for the officer’s next move.

“This is your last warning.” There was no mistaking the slur. “Step out or I will shoot.”

Several seconds elapsed, and Carson held his breath. Finally, heavy treads approached. Carson tensed, ready to spring. The officer shone his flashlight into the interior space.

In his mind’s eye, Carson saw himself reach forward and grab the service pistol, snapping the man’s finger before de-gloving the digit and wrenching away the weapon. He quickly dismissed this option and pursued patience. No sense in stirring up a hornet’s nest by leaving one of Memphis’ finest bound and injured at a crime scene.

The man made a sloppy sweep of the room that failed to reach the corner where Carson waited.

Carson had a clear view of the slim man in a dark blazer and rumpled khakis. The sweet stench of Jack Daniel’s turned his stomach, instantly bringing to mind his Uncle Joe — a man who embodied every negative stereotype of his people.

Forcing himself to the present, Carson watched the lawman weave his way toward the bookshelves on the wall opposite the safe. The man holstered his weapon and flashlight, kneeled down, and grabbed two large ledgers from the bottom shelf. While the officer’s back was turned, Carson crossed the room in silence. When the man stood and turned to leave, his eyes locked with Carson’s. He recoiled in surprise, and the heavy ledgers crashed to the floor. Carson secured the lawman’s hands behind his back in an iron grip, forcing his face into the wall.

“Relax,” said Carson. “I don’t want to hurt you. And I’m guessing you don’t want to advertise your presence here.”

“What do you want?”

“I just want to find the person responsible for this mess,” said Carson. “A more interesting question seems to be, what are you doing here?”

“None of your business, that’s what.” The alcohol made him sound like a petulant child.

Carson shrugged and increased the pressure on the man’s wrists. “Suit yourself. I can leave you tied up here and place an anonymous call to the precinct. Or...”

“Or what?”

“Or we can try to work this out. So we both get what we want. That sound reasonable?”

The man hesitated, but then he nodded. “Okay. Let’s talk.”

“Good choice.” Carson removed the firearm from the man’s hip holster. He searched for additional weapons and pocketed the compact gun he found in an ankle holster. Finally, Carson took the flashlight before releasing the lawman to turn around. He offered an apologetic look as he trained the service pistol on its owner. “I’m sure you’d do the same.”

The officer narrowed his gaze at Carson as he rubbed his arms. Carson wasn’t sure if he was trying to intimidate — or to focus.

“You working this case?” asked Carson, slowly sweeping the light over the cop. The man’s hesitation gave him his answer. Carson took in the distinctive alligator pattern on the man’s shoes. Well-styled. Probably Italian. He caught a flash of gold as he moved the beam upward. “Mind showing me your watch?” The man pushed back his cuff. Diamond baguettes winked at Carson from a Rolex President. “Nice. Tell me, Officer...”

“It’s Detective. Detective Aaron Lawry.”

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, detective,” he said, emphasizing the title. “You come from money? Or is the city of Memphis exceptionally generous with its hazardous duty pay?” When Lawry remained silent, he continued, “Or does this have something to do your being here after your buddies have gone home?” The man glanced down at the ledgers, and Carson nodded. “I figured it was something like that. Something big enough that you’d risk the complications of a broken crime scene seal. I don’t care what your business was with Buddy Martin,” Carson said at last. “But I’m a man on a deadline, and I always meet my deadlines.”

He told Lawry the tale of an unnamed damsel in distress, in the clutches of an ex-military mercenary who had brought Buddy’s life to an untimely end.

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose my client’s name,” said Carson. “But I can assure you that he is a major player in this town. And very generous.”

“How generous?”

“Generous enough that, once this is done, I can give you fifty large, in cash, for less than a day’s work.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Lawry said after a moment’s consideration. “Can I have my guns back?”

“Not yet,” Carson replied, tucking the pistols beside his Glock. He made a sweeping gesture toward the office. “What do you know about the investigation?”

Lawry gave Carson a look of resentment, quickly replaced by resignation. He sighed. “Buddy was tortured. Every bone in his right hand broken.” No prints other than Buddy’s and his receptionist’s, which suggested the attacker had worn gloves. Lawry glanced over at the safe and back at Carson.

“Yes?”

“We assume he was tortured for the combination,” Lawry said. “Once your guy made sure it worked, he finished Buddy off with a couple shots to the head.”

“Any idea where he went?”

“Since your client didn’t report any of this, it sounds like you know more than we do at this point. You care to share?”

Carson told him about his research and his conversation with Jenny’s grandmother. “The connection is tenuous, but I don’t have anything else at this point.”

“That’s okay,” said Lawry. “I think we might. Let me make a call. You mind?”

“I’ll be right here.” Carson jerked his thumb toward the outer office. He stepped into the next room and heard Lawry make his call. Despite the detective’s hushed tones, Carson’s acute senses allowed him to hear most of the one-sided conversation.

“It’s me... Yeah, I’m here... Yeah, I got them, but we have a situation... Some guy here seems to know what’s going on. He promised me a fifty-grand payout if I help him out... Give me some credit. If he’s offering me fifty, he’s got to be holding back at least that much for himself... Yeah, yeah. It’s perfect. You get the collar, we get the cash, and the business with Buddy gets buried with him. But we got to deliver too...”

Having heard enough, Carson crossed over to the far side of the room. So that’s how it was. Not that he was surprised, but he’d need to plan ahead. At least Detective Lawry had simplified the situation for him. He heard Lawry end the conversation.

“Hey, chief.” Carson bristled and then turned to face his temporary partner, who now wore a look of confusion. “What’s your name?”

Carson slowly stretched his mouth into what he hoped was a relaxed grin. “Faubion. Charles Faubion.”

“You got some proof?”

“Of course.” Carson smiled for real. No honor among thieves, he thought as he handed over an Arizona driver’s license and a card identifying Charles Faubion as a licensed investigator in that state.

Lawry nodded, satisfied. “Okay, Charlie. Our crime scene boys found a note pad on Buddy’s desk with the name Jenny and a New Orleans telephone number. That enough of a connection for you?”

A shave under six hours later, Carson pulled the Charger into the lot for the apartment complex at the address Dorothy McLaren had provided. They located Jenny’s apartment and saw that the place was dark.

“Looks like she’s either still asleep or she’s already left,” noted Lawry.

“Or she’s just now getting home,” added Carson, hunkering down in his seat as he pushed Lawry down in his.

The young woman in question drove past them in a red Corolla from the early ’90s. They watched her walk up the ornate wrought-iron stairs and disappear into her apartment.

“Let’s go,” said Carson.

When she answered the door, Jenny McLaren had scrubbed her face clean of the heavy makeup that revealed why she was returning home at dawn. She looked like a young co-ed, dressed in a Tulane sweatshirt and baggy jersey pants.

“Hello, Jenny,” Carson said in a soft voice. “Mind if we talk?”

Fear flickered across her face, replaced by sullen suspicion, as Jenny assessed her visitors.

“Who are you and why would I talk to you?”

“Because we’ve tied you to a dead guy and a suspected killer.”

Jenny stared at the men and then sneered. “I don’t think you’ve got shit.”

Before she could react, Carson stepped forward and spun Jenny around, pinning her arms behind her back. “Listen up. A woman’s life is on the line, and I don’t have time to waste. We’re going inside, and you’re going to talk.”

Carson ignored the muttered epithet and guided Jenny into the tiny living room, where he released her. “Spill it,” he snapped. “We’ve got James Hicks driving your SUV around, while you’re in a tin can. We’ve also got your name and number in the office of the late Buddy Martin, who was supposed to be protecting my client’s money.”

Jenny covered her mouth with both hands, and tears welled in her eyes.

“Buddy’s dead?” she whispered.

“Stone cold,” said Lawry. “What’s your connection?”

She took a deep breath. “We were lovers.”

Both men stared at her.

“Maybe that’s too strong a word,” she admitted. “A few months back, James talked me into getting friendly with Buddy. He was a lonely old man.” Jenny paused, as if remembering the accountant. “It wasn’t hard for me to seduce him.”

“So you sweet-talked him into stealing the money,” said Carson.

She nodded, eyes downcast.

“Were you and Hicks planning to live happily ever after? Or did you know he was picking up a new high-class girlfriend?”

Her head snapped up. Surprised outrage sparked in her eyes.

Lawry turned to Carson. “I guess not.”

Carson reached into his breast pocket and retrieved the newspaper clipping. He showed the photo to Jenny, who flinched as if Carson had struck her.

“You know this woman?”

Jenny brushed tears away with an impatient swipe. “Of course I do,” she snorted. “She never shied away from a camera in her life. That lying son of a bitch told me to head down here while he wrapped things up in Memphis.”

“Have you seen him?” asked Carson.

She nodded. “Yeah, he came over here last night, just before my shift. He’s staying at some cheap motel about twenty minutes out.”

Before they left, Carson asked Jenny for a pad of paper and a pen. She frowned but retrieved the items.

He jotted down a number and a short note. Then he folded the paper and handed it back to her with the pen.

“Call this number,” Carson said. “If you’re interested in making a change, they can help you out. If not, that’s your choice. Either way, you’d do well to forget we were here.”

Her face remained expressionless as she closed the door.

When Carson and Lawry pulled into the parking lot of the Motel 6 in Slidell, northeast of the city, the Land Rover was parked in front of room 114, just as Jenny had indicated it would be.

“What’s the plan?” asked Lawry after Carson killed the engine.

“We go in, get the girl, and leave.”

“You don’t think your man’s going to have a problem with that?”

“We won’t give him a choice.” Movement in the window confirmed that Jenny had followed his instructions and made the call. “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the room. Go show the manager your badge, and get the master key. One of us will open the door; the other will provide cover.”

Lawry arched his brow with skepticism. “I’ll provide cover. You open the door.”

“Get the key.”

The officer opened the car door and strode toward the office, oblivious as the entrance to room 114 cracked open. Carson opened his own door and crouched behind the vehicle, his silenced Glock ready. The report of a 9mm pistol shattered the morning air, and Lawry dropped to the pavement, the left side of his head missing. Any twinge of guilt Carson might have felt was neutralized by the knowledge that the dirty cop wasn’t planning to let him walk away alive.

Hicks turned to see Carson’s muzzle aimed at him. It was the last thing he saw before the slug in his forehead propelled him backward into the motel room.

Carson launched himself across the parking lot and into the narrow room, entering low with his gun in front. He nudged the body inside with his legs as he scoped out the room’s interior.

Just as his brain registered that the main room was empty, a petite figure emerged from the bathroom. Cold blue eyes stared at him from a doll-like face.

“Your father sent me,” he said.

She took a step backward.

“We have to go. The police will be here any minute. Grab your things.”

The woman took a shuddering breath and nodded. She cast one more wary glance at Carson and then turned to disappear into the bathroom. “It’s not about the money, is it?” she asked.

On the porcelain vanity, Carson saw the mate to the earring he had picked up at Buddy’s office, the same one she had worn to the museum event. He considered the question. “No. I think it’s a matter of security. Peace of mind.” He envisioned this same diminutive woman raising a gun to kill a man who had watched her grow up. Lawry had known that the murder was a two-person job and probably suspected the second player.

“Does the same go for you?”

“No. For me, it’s a matter of honor.”

In the mirror, he saw her reflection shoot him a withering glance. “Honor,” she spat. “That’s an interesting term for it.”

Carson shrugged. “I only pursue those who have proven themselves dishonorable.”

His bullet penetrated the back of her skull, and she crumpled to the floor.

Twenty-five minutes later, he was heading north on I-90, crossing the huge expanse of Lake Pontchartrain. He dialed his client from a disposable cell phone.

“It’s done.”

Silence. Just before Carson hung up, believing the conversation over, the man spoke.

“Thank you. I trust you collected the stolen cash as the remainder of your fee?”

“I haven’t counted it, but I’m sure it’s fine.”

“Excellent. Our business is concluded.”

The line went dead.

Carson rolled down the passenger-side window and tossed the cell phone, along with the spent shell casings, into the water.

He calculated the distance between New Orleans and Gatesville. Then he activated the Bluetooth device linked to his personal phone and dialed home.

His angel answered on the third ring. Once more, Carson found himself wondering how a relationship between father and daughter could go so wrong as to justify his latest assignment.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, sweetheart. I’ll be home to tuck you in tonight.”

The raven and the wolf by O’Neil De Noux

New Orleans, Louisiana

It’s all over the Channel 4 Eyewitness News at 10 p.m. — police officer killed in her home.

I Images of cops standing outside an apartment building fill my TV screen, flashing blue and red lights illuminating the powder-blue N.O.P.D. uniform shirts. I spot my former partner’s yellow-blond hair as Detective Jodie Kintyre moves through the crowd and into the building. Jodie wears another of her skirt-suits, this one tan.

The camera pans to several cops crying, turning their heads away from the camera as the television news anchor explains, “The body of Fifth District police officer Kimberly Champagne was found this evening in her Tchoupitoulas Street apartment after she failed to show up for roll call.”

Jesus Christ! I let out a long breath and, “Motha fuck!”

“The tragic killing of the popular officer is particularly heart-wrenching to the rank and file. Officer Champagne, a recent graduate of the police academy, was a rookie with a promising career ahead of her.” A police ID picture of a smiling brunette with wide eyes comes on the screen as the anchor goes on to explain how Kimberly Champagne went to Sacred Heart Academy before attending Tulane University where she majored in Sociology.

I lift the bottle of Abita beer to my lips and finish it off. It’s taking all my strength to keep from jumping out of the chair, grabbing my weapon, badge, and radio, and racing to the scene. I’m off duty and maybe it’s my Lakota heritage (Sioux, as the white man calls us) that knows better than to go looking for trouble. It’ll find me on its own. Or maybe it’s the Cajun half of me that knows not to volunteer. Volunteers are from Tennessee, not south Louisiana.

I get up slowly to grab another Abita and sit back in the easy chair and wait for the sports to come on. Waves lap against the side of my houseboat and I hear the guttural noise of a big outboard as some boat slips away from Buck-town out into Lake Pontchartrain. Sad Lisa rises slightly then gently settles as the waves subside, and I close my eyes for a moment and hear it again, in my mind. “... cop killed...”

A summer breeze flows through an open porthole of my houseboat carrying in the familiar scent of salt water. I can’t stop my heart from racing no matter how hard I try.

Trouble is waiting for me the following morning as I walk into the detective bureau in the visage of my lieutenant’s dark brown, scowling face. Dennis Merten, all six feet, 250 pounds, stands with his arms folded across his chest. He wears his usual black suit, narrow black tie loosened. He hasn’t even had time to take off his jacket.

“Detective John Raven Beau,” Merten calls out. “Just the man I’m looking for.”

He growls as I approach. “I need you on Tchoupitoulas. Assist the evening watch with a canvass. A cop was killed last night.”

“I know. Mind if I look over the dailies?” I’d like to know more about the case than what was on the damn news.

Merten walks away, snapping back at me, “Just don’t take all fuckin’ morning.” Then he stops and says, “I’m surprised you didn’t go barreling over there last night.”

“I’m on the day shift, remember?”

“’Bout time you learned that.” Always in a good mood, that man.

Climbing from my unmarked Chevy Caprice, I leave my suit coat hanging in the backseat and reach in for my portable radio, note pad, and pen. I wear my black suit today, with a light gray tie. My hair is freshly cut and shorter than usual. It’s still as dark brown as when I was a kid. My 5 o’clock shadow is in check with a close shave this morning.

A better description of me would mention I’m six-two and lean. An ex-girlfriend says my eyes are the color of dark sand. She also says I have a hawk nose and look like a raptor at times, a bird of prey.

I stare at the apartment house that was on TV last night. It’s a redbrick building, old, a warehouse converted into condos. This entire area has been reclaimed — hulking buildings turned into apartment houses or small delis, coffee shops, a Kinko’s at the corner of Julia Street.

Two marked police cars are parked directly in front of the building. I spot two uniforms standing down the street and one outside the front door of the place with Jodie, in a light yellow blouse and black slacks this morning. Her blond hair, freshly blow-dried as always, is longer than usual, a page-boy cut.

I tug up my pants as I start across the street. Must be losing weight, my stainless steel 9mm Beretta 92F, in its nylon holster on my right hip, weighs down my belt more than usual. Jodie nods at me as I approach and I recognize another familiar face. The uniformed cop smiles weakly at me and pushes a wild strand of dark brown hair from her face.

I met Officer Juanita Cruz a couple months ago at Charity Hospital when I worked the murder case we call Shoot Me I’m Late — a case she helped me solve. Wasn’t much to it. Guy had his buddy shoot him in the leg so he wouldn’t get in trouble with his domineering girlfriend for being late again for a date, only the guy died.

I’m about to ask what a Fifth District officer is doing downtown, but when a cop’s killed, we all come out like the cavalry (may not be a very good analogy from a man whose ancestors wiped out Custer at Little Big Horn).

“Hold this,” I say to Juanita, handing her my radio as I unfasten my belt and tighten it up a loop. That’s better. Juanita’s chocolate-brown eyes are wide and I wink. She looks as if she’s lost weight too. She still wears her hair back in a bun, like most women in uniform do. As I recall, she’s twenty-five, a good five years younger than me.

Jodie’s cat eyes are weary as she lets out a long sigh. “We’re going to recanvass the building first. I’ll start at the top with Juanita. You start at the bottom, okay?”

I slip my radio into my back pocket.

It takes me six minutes to solve the murder.

Mindy Cellers, with a “C,” an inquisitive seven-year-old who lives in apartment 1A on the first floor, stares at my gold star-and-crescent badge clipped to my belt as she tells me, “I know who killed her.”

I go down on my haunches, eye level now, and ask the obvious, “Who?”

Mindy tugs at the sides of her reddish hair. “I tried to tell the police last night, but nobody would talk to me.”

“I’m talking to you.” I keep my voice low and soft. “Who killed her?”

“The Wolf.” Her green eyes narrow as she nods. “That’s what he calls himself. He visits her a lot.”

“What does he look like?” Hoping she’s not about to describe a canine from some childhood fantasy world.

“He’s as big as you and thicker. And scary looking.”

“Scary?”

“He’s got a sharp face and big eyebrows.” Mindy leans forward. “I think he’s her boyfriend.”

A door opens behind me and I turn to see an old man peek out.

“He saw the Wolf when he left.” Mindy leans past me, speaking to the old man. “The Wolf almost knocked you over when he left, didn’t he?”

I stand and the old man’s gaze moves from my gun to my badge and he shrugs. He’s barely five feet tall, balding with a craggy, sallow face. He’s in a faded red plaid housecoat. Barefoot.

“I’m Detective Beau. Homicide. You saw someone yesterday?”

The man glances around, hand still on the door as if he’s about to slam it and escape back inside. I recognize the look of fear; I ease forward.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. We’ll get him, you know. Nobody kills a cop and gets away with it.” I drop my voice menacingly. “Not in New Orleans.”

“You don’t know Wolf.”

I slip my radio from my back pocket and call Jodie.

Allan O’Grady lives in 1B, an apartment decorated with timeworn furniture and old-fashioned lamps and smelling like sweaty socks. Jodie and I both jot O’Grady’s story on our note pads.

Last night, at about 7 p.m., the former boyfriend of Kimberly Champagne who lives in apartment 2B came hurrying down the stairs, bumping into O’Grady who was coming back into the building from putting his garbage out. The Wolf, in a black jacket and baggy black pants, kept his hands in his pockets as he jammed his shoulder against the door to swing it open and rush away. An hour earlier O’Grady had heard several loud pops, but thought it was a car backfiring. Later, when the police arrived, O’Grady heard voices and crying but wouldn’t answer his door no matter how many times people knocked on it. He’d turned off the lights.

Jodie asks why everyone knows this man as the Wolf and I spot Juanita Cruz easing in the open doorway. Her eyes are red and she nods me over. We step back into the hall where Mindy still waits in her doorway.

Juanita’s face is scrunched up as if in pain. “I know him.”

She takes a step back and sits on the stairs. “Kim broke up with him months ago.”

I pull out my note pad as I watch her breathing heavily now.

“What’s his real name?”

“Ahern Smith.” She sucks in a deep breath. “Calls himself the Wolf or just Wolf. Always refers to himself in the third person. Like, ‘The Wolf is hungry,’ or, ‘The Wolf thinks this is nice.’” She blinks up at me and tears flow from her eyes. “He’s an ex — Green Beret.”

I sit next to her and ask how long she’d known Kimberly Champagne.

“I broke her in when she came out of the academy.” Juanita buries her face in her hands. “We were partners for six months.”

Before leaving with Juanita, Jodie explains to me how the Wolf made it look like a break-in, as if Kim had stumbled on a burglar. “We’ve been looking at every goddamn 62-man in the computer.”

Jodie shakes her head and thanks me before she heads back to the detective bureau to get a line on this Wolf character and secure the necessary warrants.

I’m left to take the formal statements from O’Grady and Miss Mindy Cellers with a “C.”

“What’s a 62-man?” Mindy asks.

“Burglar.”

“I’m not afraid of the Wolf.” She tilts her head to the side and smiles. “I know you’ll get him.”

I give her a long stare before I say, “I usually do.”

Ahern Keith Smith, alias the Wolf, has no arrest record but did spend eight years in the U.S. Army. In a photo we secured from Kim Champagne’s apartment, a picture we’ve distributed to all law enforcement, he looks a little like the actor River Phoenix, the kid who OD’d, only the Wolf’s face is leaner and meaner-looking with an almost rabid glint in his blue eyes.

His condo is on St. Charles Avenue, corner of Peniston Street, in the center of a row of new town houses built on ground that once housed a mansion. On either side of the condos are mansions with antebellum columns, verandas and all.

At 4 a.m., I follow three S.W.A.T. men, decked out in all black, army helmets, bulky flak vests. The first one carries a sledgehammer, the second a bullet-proof shield. It’s Jodie’s case and her warrants, so she makes me put on a flak vest or I have to stay out. I’m in all-black too, black T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes, my Beretta cupped in both hands as we move up to the Wolf’s front door. Jodie’s right behind me, her own 9mm Beretta in hand. She’s blacked-out also, her hair in a ponytail.

The condo is quiet. A voice booms “Police!” as the sledgehammer shatters the deadbolt and the door flies open. Everybody wants him to be there with a weapon in hand so we can send the Wolf straight to hell, as painfully as possible.

He isn’t there, but there’s blood around the kitchen sink. Pulling on rubber gloves, we start rooting. In the Wolf’s desk, I find detailed notes of his surveillance of Kim Champagne — her work schedule, times entering and leaving home, times and places she went to after work, along with black-and-white telephoto pictures of her. Just as I find the Wolf’s night-vision goggles and binoculars, Jodie discovers six semi-automatic pistols and a World War II Browning Automatic Rifle, the famous B.A.R.

I can see the strain in Jodie’s eyes. Under the bright lights of the condo, her smooth face is still void of age lines, although she’s pushing forty. I remind her of that, just to break the tension, and she gets up on the balls of her feet, extends her five-seven frame, and gives me a rabbit punch in the solar plexus.

As the crime lab tech enters to collect the blood, headquarters calls Jodie on the radio to notify her that Ahern Smith’s black SUV was just found abandoned on the Claiborne Avenue bridge over the Industrial Canal. There’s blood in the car.

“Jesus! I gotta go.” Jodie yanks off her gloves. “You got this?”

“I’ll finish up,” I tell her as she pulls the band from her hair, shakes out her ponytail, and hurries away.

When I find the Wolf’s journal, I read the last entry where he says he’s going to kill Kimberly, then himself. He even gives us the reason, a broken heart he calls my heart’s death since she left him. I flip back through the pages as he describes his life without Kimberly, back through their relationship to the time he first saw her as they each stood outside Galatoire’s, each with friends, waiting for Sunday breakfast at one of the most exclusive restaurants in a city of great restaurants. Kimberly wore a short red dress that day.

He admits his clever lines didn’t impress her at first, but he succeeded in discovering where she worked and kept at her until she let him take her out. I skim over the details of their sex life and feel a sickness in my stomach, knowing all this will be read in open court when we catch the bastard, all the detailed descriptions of Kim’s body.

I shake my head, my heart racing again.

As if he really jumped off the fuckin’ bridge. If he wanted to kill himself, why didn’t he do it at Kim’s? I close the journal, which goes back three years. There are other girlfriends listed too, with more explicit details. I add the journal to the box of materials we’re taking.

We’ve answered the question why, although why isn’t important to a homicide detective. Why is only important in Sherlock Holmes stories and to the news media, which struggles to determine why everything occurs. In homicide, the who, what, when, where, and how of a murder is what leads us to the killer. But sometimes it helps to know why, I guess.

I slip on my extra-dark Ray Ban Balorama sunglasses as I sit at my desk in the bureau, the early-morning sun burning through the withered tint on the wall of windows while Jodie explains the case to the assembled cops. It’s 10 a.m. now and I’m worn out. That’s what I get, being thirty.

Yes, there was blood inside the Wolf’s SUV. No, no one saw him jump. No one saw him walk away either. The ever-alert bridge operator didn’t even notice the abandoned SUV until a passing Harbor Police car almost ran into it. Yes, we checked cabs and buses, but no one picked up anyone close to the Wolf’s description.

The ever-efficient Harbor Police are dragging the Industrial Canal, only they’re not optimistic. The canal’s deep enough for ocean-going ships and they can’t keep the locks closed for long. I feel myself dozing off.

No one in the room believes he jumped, so we set up a routine. Lt. Merten takes over, handing out assignments, sending detectives to cover all the Wolf’s known haunts, houses of his relatives, places he’s worked, whatever they’ve come up with from the computer.

I’m slipping now, my regular breathing lulling me to sleep.

I feel someone shaking me and raise my sunglasses to Juanita Cruz’s eager face. “I’m going with you tonight. You want me to meet you here, or what?”

I pull my feet off my desk. “Come again? What did I miss?”

“I’m assigned to work with you.” She sounds apologetic.

“No problem there.” I stand and stretch. “What are we supposed to do?”

Juanita points to Jodie standing next to the coffee pot, waving us over.

“You two go sit on his ex-girlfriend,” says Jodie. “The one he went out with just before Kim.” She takes a sip of coffee. “We’ve notified everyone from his journals to be careful.”

On our way out, Juanita remarks, “Everyone wants you to be the one to catch him.”

I don’t have to ask why.

Shortly after sunset, following some needed sleep and a thick burger and fries at my favorite haunt, Flamingos Café in Bucktown, I sit parked in my unmarked car with Juanita. We’re outside the Wolf’s old girlfriend’s apartment house on Constance Street just down from Howard Avenue, only three blocks from Kim’s apartment. The building is three stories tall with a security front door and a gated garage out back.

Juanita and I both wear dark, short-sleeved dress shirts, unbuttoned and open over black T-shirts, black running shoes, and black jeans, with our 9mm’s in nylon holsters on our hips. She wears her hair down and looks different. Even with only a hint of makeup, a brush of red on her lips, she’s very pretty, with those sultry Latina looks.

“So what’s this girl’s name again?” She has her note pad open.

“Bessie Cleary, white female, twenty-three, five-five, thin, light brown hair. Went out with the Wolf for over a year. Lived with him. Jodie talked with her and Bessie doesn’t think the lovely Mr. Ahern Smith would ever hurt her.”

Juanita looks up from her notes. “You sure he can’t get in the back way to this place?”

“I’m not sure. But the security guard’s retired N.O.P.D. and he’s just chomping for a shot at the Wolf. Carries a Glock 35, 40 caliber, seventeen rounds. Itching to shoot.”

I stretch out my legs as best I can. Even with the windows down it’s still steamy, not even a breath of wind. The only smell is Juanita’s light perfume, which is kind of nice actually.

“So, your girlfriend’s mad at you?”

I’d mentioned it when I picked her up. “Yeah. Another night alone. She said it’s getting old all these hours I put in.”

I don’t tell her how many girlfriends have given up on me. Don’t want to sound pathetic. Heartache’s part of the job, I keep telling myself. Suddenly, the Wolf’s words, heart’s death, come to mind, and I brush them away. Fuckin’ bastard.

“Kim thought the Wolf was the one.” Juanita’s voice is husky with emotion. “Soul mate, you know.” She takes in a deep breath. “I remember the first time I saw Kim, all bright-eyed and eager, right out of the academy. She smiled all through that first shift.” Her voice cracks.

“You were her training officer?”

She nods, catches her breath, and continues in a staccato voice filled with emotion. “Her family’s rich. She was an athlete. Played tennis in high school. Had two college degrees. Was going to go to law school, but went to the academy instead.”

I watch a man enter the building, but he’s too short and too old to be the Wolf.

“She became a cop because she was tired of being a victim.”

I turn to Juanita, my eyebrows rising.

“Kim was mugged twice, once in an evening gown coming from her debutante ball. It scared her and she didn’t like the feeling and wanted to do something about it herself.”

A cab parks in front of the apartment house and an elderly lady gets out and enters the building.

“I’ve never known anyone with a clearer definition between right and wrong,” Juanita goes on. “She was a problem solver at scenes, running a guy in for hitting his wife, running a woman in for neglecting her kids, making peace between people more often than not.”

I’m not much of a peacemaker.

Juanita readjusts herself, leaning against the door, facing me more as she says, “Why is your middle name Raven?”

“I’m half Lakota.”

She’s confused, so I explain: “Sioux.”

“Oh. Anyone ever call you the Raven?”

“No.”

She comes right back with, “I looked up the word in the dictionary this morning. Raven has other meanings, besides the bird. It also means to be predatory, to seek or seize prey and to plunder, and—”

I raise my hand. “I know. But what does that have to do with anything?”

“How many men have you killed?” Her eyes are narrowed, her pouty lips set seriously, and for some reason I can’t tell her it’s none of her business.

“I quit counting at five.”

I figured I’d get a raised eyebrow, but her face remains set.

“The Grand Jury decided all were justifiable homicides. They did cite me, however, for scalping two of them.”

“Scalping?” Her eyes go owly. She’s so gullible, I have to play it out, so I reach my left hand around and pull out my black hunting knife from its sheath on my belt. It has a nine-inch blade, a Sioux instrument, sharpened on one side only, a proper knife for a plains warrior.

She folds her arms. “You never scalped them.”

Shrugging, I put my knife away. I don’t bother telling her I hadn’t much choice in shooting the men. Truly. But most cops never shoot anyone and Juanita doesn’t have to explain her curiosity. I’m an aberration, either the unluckiest Cajun or a predatory Sioux taking revenge on the white eyes.

“The word wolf also means predatory, rapacious, and fierce.”

I chuckle finally to ease the pressure and counter, “So what’s your point?”

“I want to call you the Raven.”

“You can call me Detective Beau, Officer Cruz.”

She sits up as if I pinched her and looks out the windshield.

I have to laugh. “I’m just kiddin’, Juanita. Beau’s fine. I just don’t like nicknames.”

A minute of silence is broken when she says, “I told you, everyone wants you to be the one to find the Wolf. It’s all they’re talking about at headquarters.”

I don’t like where this is going.

“Because you’ll kill him.”

“You shouldn’t hang around headquarters so much.” It’s my turn to stare out the windshield at the dark night. The apartment building is now bathed in exterior lighting. The night is extra dark because it’s moonless and in the darkness I feel a heartache, or rather the memory of heartache.

Her name was Lily and I thought she was the one. Soul mate, you know. Only she walked out on me at the lowest point in my life. Lying in that hospital bed after the operation to repair the knee I tore up in the spring game at L.S.U., sophomore season, with my bright future as a quarterback all but gone, Lily told me she didn’t love me anymore. I wanted to run after her, convince her it couldn’t be over because I still loved her, but I couldn’t even get out of bed.

It was for the better, I suppose. And the heartache only returns if I think back. I fidget in my seat thinking how the Wolf reacted to his heartache. Where did he find the fury? I’ve never felt anger toward Lily and I guess that’s the difference. The Wolf let his pain turn into rage. The Raven left his pain where it belongs because life is a series of losses. The Sioux know this and so do the Cajuns, refugees from Canada driven to the swamps of south Louisiana.

“I wish something would happen,” Juanita says.

Those chocolate-brown eyes stare into mine for a long minute and her face looks very relaxed, calm, and lovely in the dim light. I feel my heartbeat now, but the moment is lost as I catch a movement behind Juanita’s head and tense a moment, then I see it’s a homeless man.

Juanita turns as the man stops and asks if we can spare a buck.

I climb out and he starts to back away until he sees me dig into my pocket. He’s middle-aged with a scraggly beard and a well-worn knapsack on his back. I give him a five and he thanks me. I pull out the Wolf’s picture and ask him if he’s ever seen this man around. He shakes his head and thanks me again and hurries away.

When I climb back in Juanita says, in a shaky voice, “I didn’t see him coming up behind me.”

“That’s what you got me for.”

“Partner, right?”

“Almost.” She nearly smiles and all the depressing thoughts fade away from my brain. “Saw a bumper sticker yesterday that said, There are three kinds of people — those who can count and those who can’t.”

It takes her a second and then she laughs.

It hits me as soon as I wake up the following afternoon. The Wolf broke into Kim’s apartment and laid in wait for her. I get dressed in a hurry. An ex — Green Beret is no one to mess with but he’s the one on the lam, not me. If he’s dumb enough to come at me, he’ll join the list and I’ll cruise through another Grand Jury hearing. I’m thinking maybe I should call Juanita, or at least Jodie, but all I have is this gut feeling and I hate to roust the troops, especially if I’m wrong.

Stepping away from Sad Lisa, I see the brown-green water of Lake Pontchartrain is as still as a pond. There’s no wind whatsoever, the warm air steamy with humidity and the fishy smell of iodine. The calm is unsettling. To a Lakota warrior, any change in the environment, especially when normally rough waters are suddenly calm, can be a warning from nature. The warning is understood, if that’s what it is. It reinforces my gut feeling and I make sure to carry two extra clips of ammo, not that I’ve ever needed that many bullets to kill someone.

Parking behind Bessie Cleary’s apartment house, I walk up to the garage gate and wave to the retired N.O.P.D. man who recognizes me and opens the gate.

“Something wrong?” he asks, pulling out his Glock.

I shake my head. “Just checking.”

“She’s at work,” he calls out behind me, and I wave as I tuck my portable radio into the back pocket of my faded blue jeans. I wear a short-sleeved gray dress shirt over a navy-blue T-shirt. Unbuttoned, the shirt covers my knife and holstered Beretta. My gold star-and-crescent badge is clipped to the front of my belt. I’m breaking in a new pair of black Reebok running shoes.

I go up the back stairs. Bessie lives on the third floor, at the front of the building. I turn into the hall from the backside and freeze. He’s at the far end of the hall dressed in black fatigues and black combat boots. Working on Bessie’s door, the Wolf doesn’t see me creeping along the hall toward him. I ease out my Beretta and flip off the safety. My heart’s already pounding but my hands are steady as I raise my weapon in the standard two-handed police grip.

A door opens between us and a young woman steps into the hall, drawing the Wolf’s attention, and he spots me and bolts.

“Police!” I raise the Beretta and the woman falls back against her door. I race past. The Wolf leaps into the front stairwell. My Beretta cupped in both hands, I stop at the opening of the stairwell and hear footsteps descending heavily, thudding on the carpet.

I follow the sound down the stairs, keeping on my toes, pointing my weapon ahead as I take each turn. I can still hear him descending as I reach the landing above the ground floor. A metallic slam echoes up and I stop and ease my way forward until I see the front door slowly closing. He’s outside now and I run for the door, catching it before it closes, hitting the metal bar and swinging it outward. I hesitate a second, then scramble through the door.

The Wolf races around the corner, down Howard, not even looking back, moving flat out. I pull my portable radio from my back pocket and charge after him.

I key the mike. “3124 — headquarters!”

“Go ahead, 3124,” the dispatcher responds.

“I’m in foot pursuit of a signal thirty suspect. River bound on Howard from Constance Street.”

I describe what the Wolf’s wearing and what I’m wearing, trying my best to keep my voice low and calm. Last thing I want is to sound like a lunatic on the air. Excited voices fill the speaker but I can’t hear as I pump my arms, running hard, Beretta in my right hand, radio in my left.

People watch us from the sidewalks and the street, standing with wide eyes, like deer caught in headlights. The Wolf’s a half-block ahead of me, running head down, not looking over his shoulder as he cuts between parked cars into the street then back through them, up on the sidewalk in case I’m crazy enough to let off a round or two. He bowls over an elderly couple coming out of a furniture store as he turns another corner.

“Police!” I yell as I jump over the couple, who don’t seem seriously damaged. I try my best to tell headquarters we’re on Annunciation now, heading uptown. I’m gaining on him, I think.

When he turns at the next corner, he glances back at me, but doesn’t lose stride. I don’t know what street this is, but it’s even narrower. We’re heading toward the river again and there are fewer people here. A man in a hard hat steps from a building in front of the Wolf and then leaps out of the way, crashing against a parked car.

I manage to croak out “Police!” as I pass to keep him out of the way.

The Wolf turns down South Peters and I know this street and try my best to tell headquarters we’re heading downtown now. Cars are parked on both sides of this skinny street. A siren echoes in the distance, then another. The cavalry’s coming, thank God.

Jesus! This guy’s as good a sprinter as me and I run regularly on the levee. My knee’s pinching a little now, but I can’t fall back. At least my breathing’s still coming evenly, although I’m sucking in a lot of air. I feel a surge in my warrior blood and increase my pace. Can’t let this fucker get away.

The Wolf crosses the street and I see umbrellas ahead. It’s an outdoor café, tables covered in wide Cinzano umbrellas. I get up on the sidewalk as the Wolf skirts the first table and grabs the next one, crashing it and umbrella to the sidewalk. I cut between the parked cars back into the street.

A woman screams and a gunshot echoes. The picture window of the café explodes and I spot the Wolf jumping behind a parked car. The window of the car to my left shatters and I see yellow flashes as he fires at me. I leap behind a van across the street, take to the far sidewalk, and go belly down as more slugs hit the van. I crawl forward and slip behind an SUV. It’s big enough for me to look under, but I can’t see the Wolf’s position from here.

Six more shots ring out.

Jesus, I hope he’s not shooting people in the café! I tell headquarters where we are, steeling myself as I get up and move forward as fast as I can, the parked car shielding me.

When I reach the vehicle directly across from the Wolf’s position, a marked police car skids to a stop at the far corner, lights flashing, siren wailing. I take in a deep breath, let half of it out, and peek from between the cars.

The Wolf’s on his haunches, looking at the police car. I raise my Beretta as he lifts his weapon, sticks it in his mouth, and shoots himself. He falls face forward, half in the street.

The cops alight from their car. I wave at them as I cross the street.

“He shot himself!” I call out as the patrol officers approach, guns drawn.

“Check the people in the café,” I tell them. “Make sure no one’s hurt and make sure no one leaves! They’re witnesses.”

The two move off as another police car screeches up. I put out a code four on my radio, then ask to have the homicide supervisor, the crime lab, the coroner’s office, and Jodie Kintyre join us.

As I holster my Beretta, the Wolf’s body twitches and I yank out my knife, then laugh at myself, which draws curious looks from the two cops. I feel someone move up behind me and turn to see Juanita Cruz’s wide eyes. She’s in T-shirt and jeans too, her hair down. Her lips tremble as she stares at me and says, “You are the Raven.”

I stop myself from snapping at her when I kneel next to the Wolf and check his throat, trying to find a pulse in his carotid artery, not that it’ll do him much good with most of his brains on the sidewalk. I find no pulse and calmly slice off a chuck of his hair to slip into my pocket. Juanita’s eyes are huge and I see I’ve nicked the Wolf’s forehead with my knife. I feel his warm blood on my fingers.

Slipping my knife back into its sheath, I rub my eyes with my clean hand. When I blink them open, I spot several uniformed men whispering to one another, nodding toward me.

Jodie comes on the air asking me, “Is the subject 10-7?” (Out of service — permanently.)

“10-4. 29-S.” I make sure to tell her he killed himself.

“I’m in route.” She sounds relieved that I didn’t have to shoot anyone.

I call out to the first officer who’d arrived, asking if anyone in the café was hurt. He shakes his head as I turn to the sound of running feet behind me. Lt. Merten lumbers up, sees the body, and looks at me, wheezing as he tries to catch his breath.

I raise both hands and tell him, “I never fired a shot.”

He nods and leans both hands against the nearest car.

“You... all right?”

“Yeah.”

Juanita stands stone-stiff above the Wolf’s body, staring down at it. I lean close and ask if she’s okay.

“This doesn’t make me feel any better,” she says.

Boy, do I know that feeling.

She takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. I can feel the emotions raging through her tight face. Suddenly, a gust of wind washes over us from the river, a warm summer breeze that rustles Juanita’s hair. She peers up at the sun, closing her eyes as it touches her face.

When she opens her eyes, I ask, “How’d you get here so fast?”

“I remembered how he’d broken into Kim’s and decided to check on Bessie’s apartment.”

“Me too.” I reach over and spread the Wolf’s blood on Juanita’s face in two stripes, painting her like a good plains warrior, the obsidian knife suddenly heavy on my belt. Her eyes grow wide with comprehension. I nod and repeat, “Me too,” adding the word she’s been looking for, “partner.”

Juracán by R. Narvaez

San Juan, Puerto Rico

There must be more dead dogs on the side of the road in Puerto Rico than anywhere else in the world. The strays must go out of their way to kill themselves there. Or maybe Puerto Ricans just don’t like dogs. I was in a cramped rental car, driving my three aunts to my cousin’s wedding in Ponce. It was a ten-minute ride, and I’d already seen four dog carcasses. Tongues hanging out. Guts. Blood. It took some of the buzz off.

“Qué pasó con los jodios peros en la highway?” I asked.

“Se dice perrrrros,” my Titi Juana said.

“Perrrrrros,” I tried.

“Perros,” Titi Gloria said.

Then Tía Nidia said, “No sé, mi amor. Toda la gente maneja como loco aquí.”

I could see how the roads in PR could drive you crazy. There wasn’t always a traffic light where you needed it. A lot of the blacktop hugged the sides of mountains and were crazy-narrow so that your sideview mirror hung over a thousand-foot drop into nothing but jungle. Still everyone on the island seemed to drive fast.

But no one honked. They might not like dogs in PR, but they sure as hell were polite.

“Por favor, mi amor, maneja más rápido,” Titi Juana said.

My aunts giggled about something I didn’t follow. I wondered if the reception would have an open bar.

The church was dark, big. Polished pews. Bleeding Christ. The ceremony in Spanish. I spent the time shifting my weight from one foot to the other.

At the reception, I went right to the bar. The drinks weren’t free, so when the bartender poured, I told him, “Más. Chin más,” and he was cool about it. I tipped him a couple of bucks.

At the table, my aunts gossiped, and I tried to listen, nodded a lot, and laughed when I thought I should. I knew everyone at our table except one woman. She had black hair cut straight across the forehead. Copper skin, broad cheeks, thick, dark lips. She sat alone, except for a gift bag in the seat next to her. It was decorated with a coquí wearing a straw hat. I got up and walked around to her side.

“Quieres que yo lo puse ésto con los otros regalos?” I asked, standing over her.

“Qué dices?” she replied, looking up with her eyes.

I gestured to show what I meant. Gift bag. Gift table.

“Grácias, pero es algo diferente,” she said and looked down at her manicure.

“No sweat,” I said and took a seat next to her. “Me manejó aquí esta noche y vió una cosa... rara. Vió, como, cuatro perros en la highway — muertos. It was crazy.”

She laughed, covering her teeth like some women do, then shook her head to herself. I hadn’t been trying to be funny. She looked completely away from me. I got the hint and so I bounced and went back to the bar.

Some people gave some speeches. I went outside for a smoke. The moon looked like my grandmother’s glaucoma eye.

It smelled good out there, green, wet. Palm trees and the sounds of tree frogs all around, like this invisible choir. I’d never seen a coquí before so while I puffed I walked around to see if I could spot one. Then I heard a woman talking in a loud voice. I glanced up and saw a silhouette. A woman talking on a cell phone. I couldn’t catch all of it. Something like, How can you do this to me? Then some bad cursing.

I got closer. It was the woman from the table. Framed in the light coming from the reception hall. She had that gift bag with her.

She hung up, saw me standing there. “Estás perdido?” she asked.

“Qué noche bella!” I said.

“Qué noche fea!” she responded and walked past.

“ Frío, you mean,” I said to her back.

I finished my cigarette and considered calling Julie. I had a vision of her tight, freckled body in a bikini. But it wasn’t a good time. So I just went inside.

A band was playing, and my Tía Lidia wanted to know when I would ask her to dance. So I danced with her and then my other aunts and then with every female relative I had. As one salsa finished, another aunt would come up, and so it went. I had a couple more drinks. Then I danced with my cousin Carmen. She was a good egg — a doctor who had just married another doctor.

I asked her who the dark woman was. “Una amiga de co-legio. Se llame Itaba,” she said. “That’s funny, Papo, because she asked me about you.”

My cousin was small, thin-hipped, dark-haired, glowing. She was tiny in my arms. At six-four, I towered over her.

“Oh really? What did you tell her?”

“That you were divorced. That you were trying to find your feet. Not too much.”

I guess that was the nicest way of saying I’d been unemployed and unemployable for almost a year. “Okay,” I said.

“I can’t wait to get to Mexico. This humidity is killing me. Is my hair okay?”

“How’s mine?” I said, and we laughed. “Leave it to you to get married during hurricane season.”

I danced another salsa with Titi Juana. I felt good, energized, buzzed. I figured I’d give that dark lady another shot.

But then I saw my grandmother. She wore a black dress ringed with fluffy edges and sat on the edge of her chair. I could tell she wanted to dance.

“Abuela. Vamos a bailar,” I said. She smiled up at me with shiny false teeth. I took her velvet soft hand and led her to the dance floor. She put her white-haired head against my chest.

When the dance ended, she smiled at me again and said, “Coco Duro,” the nickname she had for me as a kid. Then she smacked me in the arm because she couldn’t reach my head anymore.

When I got back to the table the dark woman was gone.

Maybe she’d left to make a phone call again. I was walking to the door, caught myself in the mirror and put up a hand to fix my hair, when this guy bumped into me. Dark, wraparound shades. I don’t like not being able to see a man’s eyes. You can’t see if you can trust him. He was swarthy. Jet-black hair, combed back. Funny thing was the man’s forehead — it was deformed. Flat from his eyebrows to his hairline. And there were thin scars up and down his dark cheeks. The guy caught me looking, his shades turned toward me, but he said nothing, I said nothing, and that was it.

I went back to my hair, making sure the pointed peak I kept on the top was just right. The gel was holding fine.

Outside there was no sign of the woman. Her loss.

The rest of my night I drank enough to feel good, then drove my aunts back to my aunt’s house, where I was staying. It rained lightly, making the dark road shiny and slick. I saw four more dead dogs. More guts. More tongues. Or maybe they were the same dogs. The women gossiped in the car — what a nice ceremony, the food could’ve been better, et cetera.

Back at my aunt’s house, in the middle of the night, when everyone else was asleep, I got up and went to the living room, found a bottle of dark rum, and filled a glass with it. I tipped my head back, drained it, burped, and went back to bed.

Outside the drizzle had turned into steady rain.

In the morning, I sat at the kitchen counter in front of a plate filled with eggs, plátanos, half a mango, and buttered bread. Café con leche, orange juice. “Come más,” my Tía Lidia said, and before I could answer I got another piece of bread, another fried egg, another mango half. My head was buzzing, my stomach turned, but I kept eating.

“I gotta get ready to go to San Juan,” I told them.

My aunt gave me more bread and told me about a tropical storm warning. She was happy my cousin had flown to Mexico that morning for the honeymoon. The warning could turn into a hurricane. She told me I shouldn’t travel even though the rain had stopped.

“I’m meeting a friend,” I said in English. I was too sour to try Spanish. “And I got to get a little blackjack and poker in while I’m here. Besides, there’s not going to be no hurricane.”

I went to pack my duffel bag. I wanted to get moving before it started to rain. Through the bars on the window, I saw a taxi park in front of the house. A woman got out. It was my cousin’s friend Itaba. Tía Lidia walked out to talk to her.

I was twisting the lid onto my flask when Tía Lidia came in the room. “La amiga de Carmen necesita ir a San Juan.” Since I was going to San Juan today, I could give her a ride, no?

“She can’t take a cab?”

Cabs are very expensive, my aunt said.

I could see I didn’t have a choice.

“Y ella es muy bonita. Parece india.”

“Yeah. Well, I got to get ready first.”

It’s good to make new friends, my aunt said. You need someone to take care of you, she said.

“I have a friend waiting for me in San Juan.”

Not that kind of friend, my aunt said.

I took my sweet time with my hair, getting it just the way I like it, and trimmed my beard to make sure it was the same thinness around my jaw. It’s hard to get it right sometimes. Then I splashed on some cologne and I was good to go.

When I came out, Itaba was sitting in the patio with a big purse and that gift bag.

“Tantas gracias por hacer ésto,” she said, standing up and smiling this big smile at me. I walked past her and went to the car.

When we got into the little vehicle, I noticed that she smelled good, not sweet like perfume, but like trees, like soil, like wood. For some reason it made me hungry.

“Tu huele bien,” I said.

At first she looked at me like I’d said something nasty. Then she smiled and thanked me. So I played it off, stayed quiet.

We drove like that for five minutes before she started talking.

“What do you do?” she asked.

“So you speak English?”

“Of course,” she said. “Look, I promise not to torture you anymore with my Spanish and you do not have to torture me anymore with yours.” She gave me that smile again, full of brilliant white teeth. I wondered if she bleached them.

“Funny lady. Very funny.”

“So what do you do?”

“You mean for a living? This and that.”

“Is that what you tell everybody?”

I could’ve told her I had gotten out of prison awhile ago and couldn’t find anyone who wanted to hire me. Not that I’m ashamed of that. I just didn’t think it was her business. “I do fine. I have money.”

“So why are you going to San Juan? To gamble?”

“I like to play cards, you know what I mean? And I’m meeting a friend.”

“A lady friend?”

“The best kind.”

“I’m sure you’ll have a good time.”

We were quiet for a little bit, then she said, “Listen, negrito, we first have to make a stop in Utuado.”

“What? That’s out of my way. It’ll take hours to get there.”

“It will take all day with the way you drive.”

“Fine.” I pulled the car sharply to the side of the road. “Take the wheel.”

She got behind the driver’s seat and slammed on the gas. We burned rubber. I put my seat belt on.

I looked at her dark, caramel fingers on the wheel. No ring.

My cell phone beeped. It was Julie — I had forgotten all about calling her. I looked at Itaba, then took the call.

I tried to whisper. “Nothing’s wrong. No one’s here,” I said, but when she complained that she couldn’t hear me I had to speak up. “Yeah. Hey. How are you? What time’s your flight get in?... That’s ridiculous. This is a just a tropical storm... Hey, I know you’re nervous, but we’re going to have a terrific time... C’mon, you’ve always been my good-luck charm... Hey, that’s not going to happen. He’s not going to find out... Call me when you know the new arrival time. Yeah. It’ll be great. Don’t worry.”

Itaba kept her eyes on the road and said nothing. I stared out the window. The sky was dark, the clouds looked ready to explode with rain. The palm trees were bowing in the wind. I watched the dark road and — this is funny — I realized I was keeping an eye out for more dead dogs.

Itaba parked the car on the side of the road. We were somewhere near Utuado.

“What the hell is this?” I said.

“We’re going to the Taino village at Caguana Park.”

All I saw were trees. “This doesn’t look like anything.”

“We’re taking the back way.”

“Is the front way closed?”

“Do you know anything about the Tainos?”

“The Indians? Oops. Sorry. Native Americans.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Tainos were the indigenous people of Boriken, the real name of Puerto Rico. Don’t you know anything about your history?”

“I was born and schooled in the Bronx, lady.”

“The Tainos were the first people that Columbus met. In a few hundred years most of them were wiped out of existence.”

“I heard they all died. Measles and shit. And stuff, I mean. See, I’m not as stupid as I look.”

“Smallpox. But no, some survived. And there are many of us who want to reclaim what is ours. Negrito, I need your help. And for your help I will give you a reward.”

I looked at her lips, tried to imagine what she would look like when she was coming. If she was a screamer.

“No me mires así. I can give you money, so you can show your friend more of a good time in San Juan.”

“How much?”

“A friend was supposed to drive me but he got delayed. I was going to give him a thousand dollars. I will give you two thousand because I have inconvenienced you.”

I pursed my lips. “That’s sweet money for a cab ride. But I want to know what this is about.”

“Look in the bag,” she said.

I took the gift bag from the back. There was something wrapped in plastic and then bubble wrap. I began to unwrap it.

“Be careful!” she snapped, raising her voice.

The stone had three points and was the size of my fist. One point had large eyes and teeth bared like a mad dog.

“You probably don’t recognize it. It’s a stone carving of Yocahú, a Taino deity.”

“Looks like an animal. Check out its fucking teeth.”

“Yocahú was the god of good, with no beginning and no end. This was discovered in an excavation at Jacana, near Ponce. I’ve been working there. I’m an archaeologist. Thank you for asking. The Army Corps of Engineers was clearing land in order to build a dam. They uncovered some of the most important archaeological treasures ever found in Puerto Rico. This one piece is priceless.”

“Okay,” I said. It was still ugly.

“An American buyer is waiting for me in a hotel in San Juan. But he wants to make sure it comes with a certificate of authenticity. That’s why we’re here.”

“So you stole this?” I waved the stone.

“Please be careful with that.”

“It’s a rock.”

“It’s a cemi. It’s sacred. The Neo-Taino movement needs money to buy back land. To take back what is ours. This carving is a great sacrifice but it will be worth it.”

“And what’s a Neo-Taino?”

“According to DNA testing, more than half of Puerto Ricans still have Taino blood in their veins.”

“That doesn’t make them Indians. They’re selling quenepas on the side of the road, not doing rain dances.”

She rolled her beautiful hazel eyes. “Listen, the buyer will pay one million dollars for this cemi.”

“For this?” I whistled. “So, why not just rent a car? Why did you need me? Or was it just an excuse to get to know me better?”

“Ay, negrito. I didn’t want to do this alone. Don’t you understand?” she said and got out of the car.

She led me through the trees. The soil was wet and squished under my feet. We came to a wooden fence. With her boots, she began to kick it down.

“Let me do that,” I said. With a few kicks, I opened a space big enough for an SUV.

“You didn’t have to destroy it.”

“I don’t know my own strength,” I said.

We came out from the trees and into a wide clearing. On one side there were several rectangular spaces of cleared dirt. Around it were stone carvings, one foot to five feet high, with faces and figures in white. Animals, people, and people that looked like animals.

“That is a batey court,” she said, “where the warriors would play in order to settle disputes between different villages. We were wise and peaceful.”

“What did they play? Tennis?”

We circled the courts. Light rain began to fall. “There’s that tropical storm,” I said.

“Have you heard the story of Juracán, who was there at the creation of the world?”

“Nope.”

“He was the brother of Yucahú and the son of Atabey, and he was created from elements in the air and therefore without a father.”

“Like me.”

“Juracán became envious of Yucahú when he saw his brother create the race of humanity, and so he tried to destroy his brother’s creations. He became known as the god of strong winds — we get the word hurricane from his name. And the Tainos came to fear and revere him. When the hurricanes blew, they knew they had displeased Juracán.”

“Then someone must’ve pissed him off today.”

In the distance we could see a few straw huts. Cone roofs, small doorways. She led me toward what looked like an office building, and we soon passed a hut. She seemed to see something and ran toward it.

The way she gasped — I could tell something was wrong. Then I saw it. A man lay on his back on the ground. His face was stuck in a grin of pain. A line of blood led from a small hole in the man’s bright, white guayabera to a black-red pool.

“It’s Dr. Arroyo,” she said. “He was supposed to give me the certificate.”

I was about to bend down to enter the hut when I heard something moving in the grass behind the body. I turned. Somebody hit me.

I was kissing dirt. I heard talking, but it wasn’t English. Some of the words were like Spanish. It was a strange, rhythmic dialect. Like a drumbeat almost.

I tried to move. My hands were tied. I glanced up and saw the flat-headed man from the wedding coming toward me with a big stick. It looked like a giant pilón. In his other hand something was cupped. The man put the hand on my face, covering my nose and mouth. He said something in that strange language. There was a rotten-smelling powder in the man’s hand. I tried to shake loose but I couldn’t help inhaling the powder. I opened my mouth to breathe and more went in. It hit me like another smack to the back of my head. I began to vomit, all the eggs, plátanos, mango slices, and buttered bread. He came at me with a knife in his hands and cut the rope around my wrists. I tried to move, but my body didn’t listen.

I lay there for a thousand years. The sky got brighter and brighter, then dimmed like a flame going out. At the edge of my face tiny insects crawled up and onto my eyes and under my eyelids. I heard the sound of coquís, first low and quiet, then it grew and grew until I thought my eardrums would bleed. I saw a dark beach, black water, black sky. The waves jumped onto the shore like the claws of a giant animal, tearing at the sand, reaching for me. There was a sound like a gunshot, and I tried to shut my eyes, and then I thought I was crying. I looked up and saw a dog licking my face. Small, hairless. It moved its mouth like it was barking but no sound came out. My face felt so wet I thought the dog was drooling all over me, then I realized it was raining.

There was no dog. I was on the ground outside of the hut. My head throbbed.

Soon I heard sirens.

I tried to get up and quickly realized there was a gun in my hand. I saw the body, still lying there. Poor bastard, but there was nothing I could do.

“Fuck,” I said.

The dark sky was circling, moving fast. Set up. The gun in my hand — it was a setup.

“Fuck,” I said.

I pushed myself up, felt nauseous.

I stood, threw the gun away, then I said, “Stupid. Stupid.” I went to pick it up again, fell down, got up again, began running.

I saw the batey courts and tried to remember where we had come in. I fell. I heard the sirens approaching. I got up and ran toward where I thought we had come through the trees.

I pushed back through the trees, saw the big space in the fence, tripped, got up, got to my car. I opened the door, sat down, wiped the powder off my face, checked the back of my head. There was a little blood.

I went to start the car. “Keys,” I said. Itaba had the keys. “Fucking fuck fuck fuck.”

I grabbed my duffel bag and wobbled away from the car. How far was I from San Juan? Blackjack, I thought. Julie. Blackjack. The cops. I had to get out of there.

I walked five feet, got down on my knees, and felt the hard, wet, cold road, considered laying down, considered throwing up again. Then a vehicle stopped in front of me.

There was a big canoe on the back of the guy’s truck. He was an old man, with white, kinky hair, and his skin was as dark as an overripe banana.

“Necesita ayuda?” the man asked.

“I need to go to San Juan,” I said. My voice sounded thick, garbled.

“Venga. Entre.”

I got in the truck. I thought I looked normal but I was worried that I looked slow, drunk. The man asked if I was okay.

“I need to get to San Juan.”

In a thick accent, the man said, “You look bad. You better see a doctor.”

“I’ll be all right.”

There was a big crucifix hanging from the rearview mirror. The radio played old tunes, singers picking at a cuatro. The saddest music ever, the kind of music to slice your wrists to. One song after another.

We drove on, and I concentrated on the blacktop and the highway signs, mile after mile. I saw two more dead dogs, ripped open, lying there like pieces of meat on the road. I had the kind of aching hangover that makes you want to split your own head open and take your brain out to rinse it in cold, clear water. My mouth didn’t feel like it belonged to me. My head was numb, throbbed.

All of sudden I said, “You ever heard of the Taino Indians? The Tainos?”

“Sí, los Tainos. A long time ago. In school,” the man replied.

“You think you have Taino blood? You think you’re a Taino?”

The man laughed, kept his eyes on the road. “My abuela was. At least she said so. Who knows? I respect the history. I respect where I come from. Pero soy lo que soy ahora, en este momento. Puertorriqueño, tu sabes? Boricua.”

“Uh huh,” I said, although I didn’t understand. I felt like sleeping but somehow knew it was important not to.

Mile after mile of blacktop went by. The sky grew darker. Rain started to pelt the windshield.

“My name is Papo,” I offered.

“Ángel Luis,” the man said and stuck out his hand. We shook and he kept on driving.

When he dropped me off at my hotel on the Condado tourist strip, ángel Luis warned me about the hurricane. “Storm is coming,” he said. “Dios te bendiga.”

I waddled with my duffel bag toward the hotel. I was tired all the way to my balls. I was just about to walk in when I saw these two men through the glass doors. Talking to the front desk lady. Plainclothes cops look the same wherever you go. Bad suits, lots of attitude. There was no way they could be after me already. I mean, they could trace me through the rental car, but not that fast.

Still.

I turned around and walked a couple blocks to a cash machine, got out my last five hundred, then headed to a little hotel outside of the Condado.

It was a small room with smelly blankets. One chair, one desk, an AC that rattled. I pulled the blanket off the bed, folded it neatly. Then I sat down, opened my flask, took a shot. It hit my stomach like a bull — I ran to the bathroom to puke. I got some soda, mixed it with another shot. It stayed down, but not for long.

I laid on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Mosquitoes had arrived from somewhere and were biting me.

Back at the other hotel, there were six dozen roses in vases waiting. A box of candy. Champagne. I had called ahead to prepare everything for my night with Julie. All on credit.

Then I remembered to check my cell phone.

There were two messages, both from Julie. “Papo, where the hell are you? Call!” The second: “I don’t know, Papo. The flights are all being delayed. This must be a sign. I don’t think I can do this. He’s your best friend and it’s not right for you to do this either. Goodbye, Papo.”

“Fuck,” I said.

I turned facedown on the bed and thought of Julie’s fine perfect-handful breasts and her pale freckled skin and I woke up twenty hours later.

It was dark outside, and rain hit against the sliding door of the balcony. I took a hot shower, did my hair and beard, put on a jacket, put on cologne. I smoked at the table. The curtains were pulled back and I watched the rain beat at the glass, a million tiny liquid bullets trying to get in.

I had the gun on the table. I knew I should ditch it but it made me feel safer to keep it. I thought about finding Itaba and the man with the flat head. But San Juan was a big town.

Hell, I was here to have fun, to do some gambling. I would cope with whatever hand I was dealt. Why not live it up until the cops found me?

I headed for the casino at the Caribe Hilton — the rain moved in thick, slow strokes across the streets, palm trees were flopping about like they were dancing the salsa — and went inside and warmed up with the slot machines. I ordered a Jack and Coke, but only sipped at it. After $200, I went to the blackjack table. I played without caring, losing deal after deal. This gay couple laughed and joked with the dealer, and I felt like a fourth wheel.

“Lady Luck is not with me tonight,” I said to no one but myself.

I turned to order water and that’s when I saw her. Straight back, head held high, firm ass in a tight red dress, Itaba walked past the slot machines. Gift bag in hand.

“Lady Luck.” I cashed out and followed her.

Itaba was in a ground-floor suite outside, past the pool. There was tape on all the windows, for the hurricane. When she opened the door, I moved. I pushed her into the room, pulled out my gun, and aimed it at her.

“Bruto,” she said.

She was on the floor and her wet skirt was up around her waist. Her thighs were smooth, copper.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said.

“I wasn’t,” I replied, and then she kicked me hard in the shin. “Fuck,” I said.

“I know men.”

I smirked at her. “Sure you do. You led me to that park and left me to hang out for the cops.”

“That was not my idea.”

“The guy with the weird head?”

“Yes. Kaonabo. It was his idea.”

“Ka-nabo?”

“He’s my husband.”

“No shit,” I said and went to close the blinds and the curtains on the windows. I kept my eye and the gun on her the whole time. “So what’s up with his forehead anyway?”

“The Tainos believed that a flat forehead was a sign of beauty. Taino mothers carried their babies on their back on a board secured to the baby’s forehead to make it that way. His real name is Pedro. He is very serious about the Neo-Taino cause.”

“Shit yeah.”

“Oye me. I wanted you along, negrito, because I knew he would do something like this. Like I said, he’s very serious.”

“You were looking for a bodyguard, then, not a patsy? I don’t know about that.”

“You have to believe me.” She kicked off her shoes, lay back on the couch, her body open. Her wet hair covered part of her face. She looked delicious. “I wanted protection. Your cousin used to talk about you all the time. A big man. She told me you do karate.”

“Aikido. I used to.” Suddenly I felt like I needed a drink. But there was still a knot in the bottom of my stomach.

“She had your picture in her room. You had a kind face, a vulnerable face. I liked it.”

I was standing above her. Water dropped from my hair onto her thighs.

“What was that stuff your husband made me inhale?”

“Cohoba. A hallucinogenic.”

“I’ve had worse. I saw a dog that couldn’t bark.”

“The Tainos had mute dogs,” she said.

“Nice.” I didn’t want to tell her that the dog saved my life.

I could smell her scent, musky and earthy. Her dark, wet clothes clung to her body like a glistening second skin.

“What happened to your lady friend?”

“Her flight was delayed. Where’s your husband?”

“He went to meet the buyer.”

I was on my knees, the gun still in my right hand. Then I put my palms on her calves and began to move them up her legs, pulling her dress back and dragging the gun across the copper of her thighs. Goose bumps rose all up and down her skin.

“What are you doing, negrito?”

“Nothing,” I said, standing up. I leaned way down, looking right into her eyes. I kissed her. She let me. But her lips didn’t respond. I tried again. She stared at me.

“Are you done?” she said.

“Looks like I am.”

“Your cousin also told me you were a mujeriego — a womanizer.”

“I know what it means. Wait till I see Carmen again.”

I was half hanging off the couch. I should’ve seen it coming.

Itaba kneed me hard in the balls and yanked the gun easily out of my hand. I curled up and she kicked me off to the side. I smacked the coffee table with my head and hit the floor.

I wasn’t hurt. Coco duro. I just looked at the ceiling and sighed. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

She sat up on the couch and didn’t even bother pointing the gun at me. “Oyeme, negrito. Kaonabo is coming, and he’s dangerous.”

“Looks like you can take care of yourself fine.”

“He doesn’t just want to sell the cemi to buy land. He wants to become a drug king.”

I got up on my elbows. “What?”

“He thinks we can get more land and more power if we buy and sell drugs.”

“He’s right. You’d have money coming in all the time. I—”

“It disgusts me,” she said, getting up. “I knew he was coming to Ponce to try to get the cemi from me. I knew he would do something stupid. But I didn’t know he would kill Dr. Arroyo.”

“Why did he?”

“To start his drug business without witnesses.”

Outside the wind and rain had picked up and smacked against the windows. The taped glass was throbbing like it wanted to bust.

“I need your help. I want your help.” She waved the gun like it was no more than a hairbrush. “It’s Pedro.”

“So you want to stop him?”

“He is a very violent man. I may have to use this.”

“I believe you could,” I said.

We listened to the growing storm for what seemed like an hour. It had begun a slow conga rhythm against the windows, against the walls. I was itchy for a drink. I was so used to having a drink in my hand it was strange not to have one. Itaba just sat there and stared at me. She kept the gun near her the whole time.

When the man with the flat forehead opened the door, he was drenched from the storm. He did not look happy to see me. In fact, it looked like he wanted to rip my heart out of my chest and eat it.

“Hola, Pedro,” I said. “How’s it going?”

He stood there, saying nothing. He had his dark shades on. Behind him was a short white man, late fifties, I’d guess. Bald head, yellow-white beard soaked with rain. He looked even more shocked. Probably didn’t expect a party. He had a satchel in one hand.

The conga rhythm of the storm seemed to suddenly pick up in intensity.

“This must be the buyer?” I said.

The flat-headed man said something to Itaba in that strange language. His voice was deep and came out like a growl. She spoke back to him and he seemed to calm down.

Itaba walked up to the white guy and they shook hands. “Mr. Hubbard,” she said. “Welcome to Puerto Rico.”

“Thank you,” Hubbard replied. “I look forward to seeing the amazing cemi you’ve told me about.”

He kept his eyes on me. I glanced at the couch. The gun wasn’t there.

“This is an associate of mine,” Itaba explained. “Don’t worry about him.” From where I stood I could see she had the weapon tucked into the back of her belt. She turned and said to me, “Please hand me the cemi, Papo.”

I could feel that rhythm, that storm, beating in my own head. I picked up the gift bag from where it sat on the couch. I was tired of being at the sucky end of all this. I handed her the bag and in the same motion I grabbed the gun.

“Get back,” I said.

The buyer yelped. Like a puppy. Pedro muttered something in Spanish, fast. I didn’t get all of it, but I think he called me a stupid, fat American. Itaba stared at me. Wondering what I was going to do next. I had no idea.

“Give me that satchel,” I told the buyer. “You guys can divide up your rock. All I want is the cash.”

The buyer stood still, hesitating.

Pedro spoke again before the buyer could move. This time in English, with a heavy accent. It sounded like it hurt him to say each word: “You fool. Destroyer of the Earth. You have no regard.”

“At least I try to recycle. I’m reusing this gun, for example.”

The storm continued to bang against the windows and in my head with that conga rhythm, hard and fast. And loud.

“The Tainos are a good, noble people!” Kaonabo yelled above the noise. “You are not noble.”

“And you call stealing and killing and selling drugs good and noble?” I shouted back. “You’re living in the past, my man. I know from experience that gets you nowhere.”

“What’s this about?” the buyer said.

Kaonabo turned to Itaba. “Puta! Mentirosa!”

“Hey!” I snapped. I scratched my head. “Listen up. If things were different, I could help you. I know about this sort of thing. You could probably use my help.”

Kaonabo cursed me more in Spanish.

Itaba came to my side. “Negrito, he won’t listen. You have to stop him.”

“Wait a second.”

She took another step toward me, and I turned to point the gun at her. There was something in the look of her eyes that was hitting me wrong. I never said I was smart, but she seemed a little too excited to get rid of her husband.

The flat-headed man took a step forward. The buyer took a step back.

Then there was a knock on the door.

It was a man from the hotel. Through the door he said, in Spanish, something like, “We would like you to move to the main part of the hotel. For safety. The hurricane is here.”

“Itaba, get that,” I said. I turned to face her and, in that instant, Kaonabo picked a glass from the table and threw it at me. It smashed against my skull and I dropped the gun. I was reeling.

He grabbed Itaba, pulled the door open, and ran out. The buyer ran too, in the other direction. I got the gun, wobbled on my feet, and moved to the doorway. The confused hotel man looked at me. It was wild outside. The rain came down in black sheets and the wind howled like a baby giant dying for attention. I could barely see more than a few feet in from of me. I ran after Itaba.

I saw a flash of color ahead — Itaba’s skirt — headed down the path toward the beach.

I followed through the throbbing storm, onto the sand.

“Stop, you son of a bitch!” I yelled into the wind, then remembered I had the gun. I shot into the air. The pop barely registered in the storm.

But Kaonabo let go of Itaba and turned. “Nuyoriqueño!” he shouted.

Just then the giant got nasty, smacking us down with a huge slap of wind.

Kaonabo was on me, elbowing my head and kneeing the gun out of my hand. I tried to get up, but the wind kept me off balance.

I really should’ve gone after the guy with the satchel. Stupid.

Kaonabo head-butted me in the stomach and, as I bent over, in the chin.

I fell back on the sand. The wild surf curled in large, foamy waves onto the shore, only a few feet away. The sky over the sea was dark, but there was something black and gigantic on the horizon, moving closer.

I reached for Kaonabo, but he ducked and kicked me twice in the ribs. His sandals were not soft. I went down, spitting up, almost vomiting. We wrestled, moving closer to the waves, getting wet. Kaonabo was about to hit me again, when I moved, then used his momentum to throw him to the ground. He came at me, I turned on my left foot, and dropped him down again. He got right back up, came in low. I smacked my flat palm into his nose, hard, and Kaonabo fell back. I went to stomp him, but he kicked my feet out from under me. I fell on the cold, wet sand — it was like hitting concrete. I felt the ocean spraying on my back.

Kaonabo got my head and neck in a choke hold. “Hijo de la gran puta,” he said.

Then there was a shot. In a haze, I turned, looked up, and saw a small hole in Kaonabo’s flat forehead. He fell back onto the dark sand.

Itaba stood there with the gun. The gift bag lay on the wet sand between us, closer to me. She ran toward it, and I leaped like a frog across the beach. Our fingers closed on the bag at the same time. I yanked and she fell on the sand.

She sat up quickly and pointed the gun at me.

“Itaba. Wait,” I pleaded, standing, the bag in my hand.

“Lo siento, negrito. But I need this,” she said and fired. The bullet whizzed past my face. I fell back; a wave clawed at me and pulled me under.

I don’t believe in magic. I pray at night but don’t expect any answers. I do it just in case — like making a side bet.

I went deep. I swallowed water. There was darkness and cold and then maybe even small glowing lights. I could’ve imagined that. But somehow I survived. Clutching the plastic bag with the stone cemi inside. I can’t explain it. If I had to give an answer, I’d say it was just dumb luck.

This time there was barking. When I lifted my face from the sand, there was a small, hairy dog yelping at me, stepping forward, moving back, stepping forward. Sand in its fur. I glanced up and saw dull sunshine. All around me — seaweed, dark wood, things tossed out by the ocean, just like me.

I turned my head to one side and saw Kaonabo’s body on the drying sand. Moving toward us were police and paramedics. A gurney. Some tourists.

It began to make sense. I think Kaonabo wasn’t the one who wanted to start a drug empire. It was Itaba. She’d wanted Kaonabo out of the way, maybe because he didn’t approve, maybe to keep the money for herself. He could’ve killed the doctor for her. But my money was on her — she’d had plenty of time to do it then come back and pick me up to be her patsy.

Now all she had was her gift bag with the little coquí on it. Bienvenidos a La Isla del Encanto. I thought about what was going to happen to me. I didn’t know.

I thought about what was going to happen to the dog. It kept licking me. It was still there. It existed. It looked like a stray. “It’s my dog,” I told the first policeman who bent down to see if I was alive. “Mi perrrro.”

He must’ve thought I was crazy. I was glad to be alive. But my hair must’ve been a mess.