Night Of The Jaguar

Four

Professor Cooksey didn’t drive, so Rupert asked Jenny to take him in the Mercedes to Fairchild Tropical Gardens for a science lecture he had to give. Actually Rupert asked Jenny to ask Kevin, who was the group’s designated driver, but Kevin had been stoned and in bed with headphones on since the blowup of the day before, and rather than having to pull his cable out and have a fight about it, she decided to do the run herself. She didn’t mind this at all because she enjoyed driving the big old car, which was a 1968 model 230, in cream with red leather upholstery, that had belonged to Rupert’s mother. It was like being in an old-time movie driving that thing, especially with the Professor next to her talking in his English accent and the churchy music he liked playing on the radio. And, unusually for her, she had a skirt on because the leather got hot beneath her thighs if the car had to stay out in the sun; this, too, added to the effect of being displaced in time.

She didn’t know why the Professor didn’t drive. Her personal theory was he was too old, but Kevin said he was a drunk and they took his license away. Although she had never seen him drunk, so that might be one of Kevin’s stories. When she thought of that, she recalled the story he had made up about the Indian getting lost, which evenshe didn’t believe, and when she asked him later why he did it, he was nasty, and that’s when he got his headphones on and cranked the music up so loud she could hear the punk squeaking through around the edges, and that was that. Sometimes he got so mad at her she thought he was going to hit her, but he never did, not like some guys she’d been with, so she thought it was mainly a pretty good deal, Kevin and her.

It was not much of a drive from the property to Fairchild, a couple of miles at most, and Jenny could have dropped him off and come back and picked him up later, but she decided instead to hang around the Gardens. There was an atmosphere on the property just now that made her uncomfortable, a miasma of irritability because of Kevin, and also maybe things weren’t going so good with the Forest Planet Alliance. Luna was frosty to her at breakfast and spoke to Rupert in whispers, and they had both looked at her in a funny way. Like it was her fault, Kevin being a jerk. She welcomed the chance to get away for a while until it all blew over. And she liked being with the Professor.

“What are you going to talk about?”

“Agaonid wasps.”

“I got stung by wasps once,” she said. “I was about, I don’t know, six or something, and I was chasing a ball. I was living with this farm family, like on a farm? And I stuck my hand into this hole where the ball went, and holy gee, they were all over me! I thought I was going to die.”

“Yes, well, these particular wasps don’t sting. They fertilize the fruits of fig trees. Each species of fig has its own species of fertilizing wasp.”

“Like bees?”

“Exactly. Except that bees are indiscriminate foragers attracted by the color and scent of flowers, and these wasps pollinate only one sort of fig, and are attracted by hormones. The female has to burrow into the unripe synconium, which is a tough pod containing immature blossoms, through a hole so tight that she rips her wings and antennae off.”

“Oh, wow! That must really smart. How does she fly out again?”

“She doesn’t. She has fulfilled her function and spends the rest of her short life entombed in the synconium. Her eggs hatch, and her female descendants pollinate other fig trees. A demonstration of the power of instincts driven by chemical stimuli. A great deal of interesting work has been done on plant-insect pheromonic interaction, actually: for example, Kostowitz and Petersen found that trees of the genus…”

Once you got Professor Cooksey started on his bugs he went on for a good while, which Jenny didn’t mind too much, she was used to tuning stuff out, and with that voice it was like doing ironing withMasterpiece Theatre or a nature show on in the background. She had once stayed in a foster home where that was all they would let you watch, educational programs and nothing with sex and violence, not even cartoons. Oddly enough, some of what he told her seemed to stick in her head by accident and would pop out later with her not even knowing it was there. She occasionally wondered what it was like to know a lot and read the kind of books that Professor C. had, with small printing and no pictures, although he had a lot with pictures, too, that he didn’t mind her looking at. When she did think about it she felt a heaviness grow behind her eyes, and she felt kind of sorry for those people, like there would be no room for their own selves inside their heads with all thatstuff pressing down.

She parked the car, and he walked off with his stiff birdish stride to the Garden House Auditorium, and she strolled off toward the lakes. The day was bright, the air mild, and the tall palms swayed in a gentle breeze from the bay. As always the foliage and the precision and artfulness of the plantings had a psychedelic effect, even, as now, when she wasn’t chemically stoned. She thought that if there was a heaven and if it was like Fairchild, then death could have no terrors. Although she had been turned off religion at an early age via the never-fail method of enforced churchgoing, she retained an ample capacity to experience awe, and this was now well exercised as she entered a corridor of gigantic royal palms interspersed with dense plantings, many showing their seasonal blossoms-pink trumpet vine, bird-of-paradise, bellflower, ground orchid. She stood before the blooming plants in thoughtless delight, as a peasant might before an ancient Madonna, quite lost to the world. Flowers made her happy, and she stumbled over the vast question of why everyone just couldn’t be happy with what simply was. A motion attracted her eye: an anole lizard had run out on a branch of a lignum vitae tree. She moved closer to inspect it. It was vivid green, a traveling exhibit of what greenwas, and in full male mating fig: as she watched, it shot out a vivid red throat pouch three times, advertising this state, and then scuttled away.

A laugh burst from her. “Guys,” she said out loud. She often talked aloud to herself while in the Gardens, or to the plants and animals there. It was a habit she had acquired as a child, to keep herself from dying of loneliness. She had lived in places where no one actually spoke to her, except to give an order, for months on end.

She walked around Royal Palm Lake and past the amphitheater and then to the rain forest exhibit. One of her secret shames was that, even though the rain forest was really, really important, and even though she drew her sustenance from an organization dedicated to its salvation, she didn’t really like it all that much, even the compressed simulacrum of one presented by the Gardens. She found it dank and gloomy and clammy hot, and she didn’t care for the way everything crawled over everything else grasping for light and things to eat. In a strange way it reminded her of winter in an Iowa kitchen, steam and bad odors and the adults looming overhead and the unwanted children on the rough floors clamoring and striving and pushing one another. Still, she visited the place every time she came, hoping that she would get it, and feeling down when she did not.

When she came to the little path that led to the entrance to the great conservatory that housed the more delicate tropical plants, Jenny was passed by three running men in the tan uniforms of Fairchild groundskeepers. They seemed to be searching for something, calling to one another, and pausing at intervals to peer behind branches. Shortly they came back along the path at a slower pace with a blue-uniformed security guard in tow.

“Did you get him?” one of them asked the others, and was answered, “No, he must have left over the wall.”

Jenny asked, “What’s going on?”

One of the groundskeepers, a portly woman with cropped gray hair and rimless glasses, said, “Some guy stealing plants. He was just standing there like he was shopping in a supermarket, taking cuttings with a little knife and sticking them in a bag.”

Another groundskeeper added, “Yeah, they usually come over the walls at night. What’d he get, Sally?”

“Not a lot, from what I could see. Usually they dig up plants, but he was just doing snips. Some bark peelings, too.”

The security guard spoke. “You say he was a black guy?”

“Not really. I didn’t get much of a look at him, but I’d say he was an Indian of some kind-brownish red skin and straight black hair. He was wearing some kind of bathing suit, a bare chest anyway, and boy, could he disappear. I mean I was ten feet from him and I saw him chopping at the jatoba, and I yelled, ‘Sir, excuse me, you can’t do that,’ and then he was just gone.”

The guard’s radio burbled, he spoke into it, and then said, “Well, we’ll keep an eye out for him, but he’s probably back on the reservation by now.”

He left, and the group dispersed. Jenny walked back along the path into the rain forest exhibit, looking at the plant labels, laboriously sounding out the names on each until she came to one that readHY-MENAEA COURBARIL -JATOBA TREE, and then some fine print about what all the natives used the tree for, which she didn’t bother to read but looked upward along the trunk. The groundskeeper had said he’d been cutting on this tree, and Jenny figured he was probably still around it. At least it was a place to start looking.

It was a gray-barked tree, around forty feet tall, with shiny thick leaves and dark brown podlike fruit. Its foliage started about three-quarters of the way up and was tangled in some thick climbing vine. She stared up into the green gloom and called out softly, “Hey, Juan! Whatever your name is! Are you there?”

No sound but the breeze whispering among the branches and a lawn mower off in the distance. She continued staring upward, and as her eyes adjusted to the shade, she saw something brown that was not a fruit, or bark, or shadow. At first she thought it was an animal, a coon, or, absurdly, a sloth, but then she saw that it was a man’s face, his.

“Hey, you can come down now. They’re gone. They think you’re out of the Gardens. Come down!” She gestured broadly and wished again that she wasn’t so dumb and could speak Spanish. But the Indian appeared to catch her meaning. In what seemed like no time at all he flowed down the trunk like a python and stood in front of her, regarding her gravely. He was wearing nothing but a breechclout and a kind of furry belt, and a thong around his neck with a little bag hanging on it. He had his cloth suitcase secured over one shoulder by a woven band, like a mailman carries his sack.

“Wow, we thought we lost you!” she said. “You shouldn’t have gone away when you were with Kevin. Anyway, you could’ve got arrested. They don’t allow cutting plants and stuff here. See, itlooks like a rain forest, but it reallyisn’t.”

Blank stare from the Indian.

“Look, man, here in Gardens you no pick! No do like this!” She went to a small bush and looked around to make sure no one official was watching, and plucked a leaf, while shaking her head vigorously. “No do this, see? Not allowed.”

He took the leaf from her and examined it. In his own language he replied, “This ismikur-ka’a. I use it mainly for skin diseases, but it’s also good for headaches. Also, if someone has been cursed by a witch, I have them bathe in a decoction of the leaves, and it usually works pretty well, depending on the witch, and so on. We could try it, if you have that problem.”

“That’s right,” she said encouragingly, “no do. No pick. Get in big trouble.”

“Although you don’t seem witched to me,” he added. “It’s hard to tell with dead people.”

“Right, but we can’t just stand around talking,” she said, “we have to get you to the car and out of here. Let me go ahead and check if the coast is clear, and then I’ll wave, like this, and you come on. Try to stay off the paths, okay?” She sighed. “Hide in bushes, yes.Sí. We go car,sí?”

“Sí,” said the Indian.

She smiled. “Great! Okay, follow me!”

She started off down the path that led from the rain forest area to the parking lot. She waited for a group of tourists to pass and then performed a come-along gesture. The path behind her was empty. “Oh, no!” she cried. “He got lost again!”

But hardly were these words out when the Indian stepped from behind a large cycad three feet behind her. She gaped in amazement. “Wow, that’s awesome! How did you do that?” Receiving no answer, she said, “Okay, just follow me, then.”

She started out again, without the gesturing now, but stopped every fifty yards or so to assure herself that he was still with her. Each time he appeared among the plantings almost within arm’s reach, although she didn’t see or hear him move. When they were nearly at the entrance, she led him through some narrow paths to the wall that separated the Gardens from Old Cutler Road.

“Okay, you have to go over the wall here, because you can’t just walk out past the guard. I’ll get the car and pick you up. Youcomprendo? ” She gestured broadly, climbing and staying, repeating them until she was sure he understood. Which he did, apparently, for she drove around and retrieved him without incident. Then she drove the Mercedes back to the lot and parked in the shade of a cocolobo tree.

She turned the radio on and adjusted the dial. “When I’m alone, I listen to country. Kevin hates it. He likes alternative/punk, Limp Bizkit and Maroon 5, like that. I mean, I can handle that kind of music sometimes, but country is more real, if you know what I mean, it’s about, you know, love and having hard times, like life is, or maybe I’m just a hick. That’s what Kevin says. Of course, compared to you, I’m like totally downtown.” She laughed. “God, what an idiot, Jennifer! You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you? But you sort of know what I mean in a funny way. I can sort of feel it. Like a dog does, but better. Maybe I could teach you English. Do you want to learn English? Okay, here goes: I am Jenny.” She pointed to herself and repeated the phrase, and then just her name, and then pointed to her mouth. “Jen-ny.”

“Jenny,” said the Indian.

“Good! Terrific! Now, what’syour name? Is it Juan? I’m Jenny, you are…” She pointed. The Indian made a little chin-raising gesture she had seen earlier and which she now understood was a kind of nod. But now he seemed to hesitate, and he stared at her, into her eyes, for what seemed like a long time, as if trying to make up his mind about something. Finally, he placed his hand flat against his chest and tapped it twice.

“Moie,” he said.

She pronounced the name as he had,Mou-ee-eh. “Great! You Moie, me Jenny, this”-touching the interior, pointing broadly-“is car. Saycar!” And so on, with objects and parts of the body. Jenny could not figure out how to show verbs very well, but she had a fine notion of how to teach a dull child, having been on the receiving end for many years, and they made good progress, she thought. After an hour or so of this, she brought out a vacuum bottle of iced tea she had brought along and a crumpled joint. She lit up, turned the music louder, took a hit, and passed the smoldering number to Moie, who placed the coal-end in his mouth and sucked.

She watched, amazed, and after a while said, “You’re supposed to give it back, man.” This idea having been conveyed, in word and gesture, they filled the interior of the Mercedes with hypnotic fumes, after which Jenny opened the door and rolled down the windows. Moie pointed to the fading smoke.“Chaikora,” he said.

“Yeah, we call it pot, or ganja, or marijuana. A lot of names. Dope. This is pretty good dope. We grow it ourselves. You like?” She mimed goodness, rubbing her stomach, smiling broadly, kissing her hand, to which he responded in his own tongue, “You dead people are very strange. You knowchaikora, but you take it without chanting, and also you don’t mix it with its brothers and sisters, so that it can speak to you properly. We say thatassua is the brother anduassinai is the sister ofchaikora. Together they are one of the small holy families that help you listen to the animal spirits. Now, without the rest of the holy family, we can’t hear the animal spirits very well, but only the spirits in our own heads. What’s the good of that?”

She giggled. “Yeah, I hear you, man. It’s dynamite boo. Oh, wait, this is a great song.” She leaned back and closed her eyes and listened to Toby Keith sing “I Love This Bar.” Time passed.

The sound of a car door opening. Professor Cooksey slid into the backseat.

“Well, Jennifer, I see you found our friend. You never cease to mystify and amaze me.”

“Yeah, he was in the Gardens, stealing pieces of plants. He almost got busted, but I got him out of there. I’m trying to teach him English.”

“Are you, indeed? Well, good for you.” Jenny saw that the Professor was staring at the Indian in a strange way, really hard, like he was trying to see into his head, and the Indian was staring back, like he was trying to do the same. She had a familiar and sad feeling that stuff was going to happen that she wouldn’t be able to understand.

“My dear, could you turn that music down a bit? I’d like to see what this gentleman has to say for himself.”

“He can speak Spanish,” she said. “Geli was talking to-”

“Yes, but I doubt he speaks it very well,” said Cooksey, and then he began to speak in a language she had never heard before, and she was about to feel kind of crummy about being shut out and all until she saw Moie’s face light up with sheer pleasure; a flood of the same speech issued from his mouth.

“I’m amazed,Tayit, to hear Runisi in the land of the dead. Are you a priest?”

“Not I, but I spent a lot of time in the Jimori country. Do you know them?”

“I have heard of them, of course. They are vile and steal wives and eat babies.”

“They say the same about the Runiya people. Also that you kill all foreigners in your country.”

“They are liars, then, as well,” said Moie, and after a pause, added, “but we do kill foreigners. Or most foreigners. Did you know Father Tim? He was a dead person like yourself.”

“Well, you know there are very many of us, too many to allow us to know all the others, as you can. Why do you call us dead people?”

“Because we Runiya are alive in this world. We are inside it, and the plants and animals, stones and sky and stars, sun and moon, are our friends and relatives. That’s what it means to be alive. A fish is alive and a bird, too. But you are outside the world, looking in on it as the ghosts do, and making mischief and destruction, like ghosts do. Therefore we say you are dead like they are. Also, when a person is alive, they carry their death behind them, there”-and here the Indian pointed over Cooksey’s left shoulder-“and this is one way we tell a live person from a ghost. But you carry your deaths inside you all the time, so you can have the power of death over all things. So we call you dead people.”

“I see,” said Cooksey, “and very good sense it makes, too. Now tell me this: you came a long way from your home to stop us dead people from killing your forest. So I have heard from my friends. Tell me, how do you think you will stop them?”

So Moie told the story of what he had learned from Father Perrin after he was killed, and as for how he would stop it, he knew he could not. Just one man could not stop such a thing, and he was not a fool to think it. But Jaguar had promised him that if he brought him to the land of the dead, then Jaguar would stop it.

“And how will he do that?”

Moie made a peculiar gesture using his hands and his head that was easily interpretable as a shrug. “We say: we can ask Jaguar what will happen, and ask him what we should do, but we never ask him how he will do what he does. And if he told us we would not understand.”

“That’s probably wise,” said Cooksey, and then they spoke of many things, Cooksey answering many of the questions Moie had about the land of the dead, until, observing an increasingly impatient Jenny, he added in English, “Well, I think the thing to do is return to the property for a bite of lunch, and then we might venture to discuss how we can help our friend here. Drive on, Jennifer.”

At about this time, some miles to the north, three men were seated at a white-clothed and silver-set table in a small executive dining room on the thirtieth floor of the Panamerica Bancorp Building. All three were of the same background, Cubans and the sons of the families who had ruled that island for generations before the revolution of 1959. They had left Cuba as young men (and not floating on rafts either) and had prospered in the United States. In purely financial terms, they were vastly richer than their forebears, yet they harbored, along with most of the rest of their class and generation, a sense of grievance. Their American contemporaries, with whom they did business and played golf, were men of power, but they had never owned a country absolutely and owned all the people in it. Their power was not of that sweetest kind. These Cubans had been able, with the acquiescence of America, to transfer much of their culture to South Florida, which they ran as a kind of fief, the unalterable principle of which was that no one could ever become president of the United States who would normalize relations with the Monster across the Straits of Florida. They were confident, sensual, intelligent, unimaginative, industrious gentlemen, and if they shared a fear, it was that they would never get to dance on Fidel’s grave.

And now another more instant fear: the man who had called this meeting, Antonio Fuentes, had been murdered the previous night, for they had contacts in the police and knew the truth about the full horror of the crime. Cayo Delgado Garza, the host of the luncheon meeting, and the chairman of the eponymous Bancorp, had wanted to cancel it, out of respect, but the other two had insisted that it go forward. These were Juan X. Fernandez Calderón, called Yoiyo, the most vigorous of the three, a developer and financier, and Felipe Guerra Ibanez, who owned a large trading concern. They were all dressed in expensive dark-colored suits and quiet ties; Garza and Ibanez had pins of fraternal organizations in their lapels, in place of which Calderón wore an enamel American flag. They all had immaculately trimmed heads of hair, light brown in the case of Calderón, silver on the other two. They had soft manicured hands, on the wrists of which hung inherited gold watches. Garza was paunchy, Ibanez thin, Calderón still trim and athletic. He played tennis and golf frequently and kept a yacht; unlike the others, he had blue eyes.

A silent brown waiter in a white jacket with shiny buttons served drinks and vanished. They drank the liquor in grateful drafts and spoke feelingly of the dead Fuentes. The waiter returned. Another round of drinks and the lunch ordered, and now they turned to business. Garza asked Calderón, “So…Yoiyo: what do we make of this?”

An eloquent shrug. “I’m just as baffled as you. Who would kill Tony? As far as I know he didn’t have an enemy in the world. And to tear him up like that! It makes no sense.”

“It does if someone is trying to frighten us,” said Garza quietly. Calderón stared at him for a second and then shot a look at Ibanez, who indicated by the subtlest possible expression that this was something worth considering. It was clear to Calderón that they had discussed the matter without him, and he felt a jab of anger. But the three men had been doing business together profitably for years. They knew one another well, at least in the way of business.

“What, you’re suggesting that this had something to do with Consuela?”

“He was the chairman, the public face, to the extent it has a public face,” replied Garza. “And there was that incident the other afternoon, the reason why Tony wanted to meet.”

“That’s insane, Cayo. Some little bird-watcher is not going to chop up a man to make a point.”

“He had a South American Indian with him,” said Ibanez.

“So he had an Indian, for which, by the way we only have the evidence of that dumb secretary and the dumber security guards. How many South American Indians have they seen? I mean, think about it for a minute! A man bursts into a business office, yells a lot of propaganda, gets tossed out, and then what? He goes to the businessman’s home and murders him and chops him into pieces and tries to make it look like some kind of tiger did it? It’s preposterous.”

“They knew about Consuela and the Puxto,” said Garza. “Maybe that makes it a shade less preposterous.”

This appeared to take some of the bluster out of Calderón. He nodded and drank his Laphroaig. “Yes,” he said, “that’s troubling. They shouldn’t have known about the Puxto. But it’s still stupid to connect the two events without more information. The two things may be unrelated.”

“Do you think that’s likely, Yoiyo?” asked Ibanez gently. Calderón looked straight into the seamed turtle face and said, “Why not? Look, what was it, eight or nine years ago? That nigger maniac chopped Teresa Vargas into pieces, and that was connected to nothing at all. Some insane cult, whatever…so this could be the same, the cat prints. It’s Miami, these things happen. You never think it’s going to happen to someone you know, but now it does. It happened to the Vargas girl, and now it happened to Fuentes. That’s one possibility. The next possibility is it was political. Tony gave money to the resistance, he was quiet about it but it wasn’t a secret. We all do, yes? So maybe it was that.”

“You think Fidel sent an agent to kill Antonio Fuentes?” asked Garza, incredulous.

“Of course not. I’m just laying out the logical possibilities. So, next, we have, yes, something connected with the Consuela deal. Something out of Colombia. Why? Everything is arranged at that end and has been for months. So we don’t know, and frankly, I’d find it hard to believe. As a matter of fact, it feels like a maniac again to me. Maybe that nigger left disciples, only this time he’s going after men and not pregnant girls.”

“But you’ll check out the Colombian angle, won’t you?” said Ibanez. Again Calderón saw that look between the two of them. Consuela had been his deal, and the message here was that if there was any mess associated with it, it was his to clean up. He got a quarter, no, now a third, of the profits but had all the work to do. A certain resentment here, but if things had to be done he would rather do them himself than leave it to this pair ofviejos. He took, however, a considerable time before responding, to show he was not their errand boy. “Of course,” he said then, “I’ll be glad to, Felipe.”

The rest of the lunch passed pleasantly enough, in discussions of other matters of business, local politics, and their various interests. After lunch, Calderón called his driver on the cell phone and found his white Lincoln waiting for him when he reached the street. He was driven back to his firm’s headquarters, housed in a new mirrored glass cube on Andalusia in Coral Gables. His private office was furnished in mahogany, leather, and worn old Persian carpets, all expensive, understated, and chosen by an interior decorator not often employed by Cuban businessmen. Calderón did not want to be associated with that sort of Cuban at all, the people who had run little shops in Havana and were now magnates in America.Cursilería was the word for the style of such people, vulgar and ostentatious.

He was efficiently rude to his staff, and after some scurrying and scraping, he conducted a meeting about a golf course and resort condo development he had begun near Naples, on the west coast of the state. It was the largest thing he had ever attempted, and he had financed it with an unstable structure of rolling credit, in addition to nearly all his own liquid capital. The profits would be colossal, but he was now somewhat overextended, which was the main reason why he had organized Consuela Holdings LLC. The timber money should start coming on line just in time to cover the first series of notes on Consuela Coast Resort and Condominiums. Provided everything went off on schedule.

When he was alone again, he dialed a number in Cali, Colombia, and after a few brief conversations in Spanish with underlings, he was connected to a man with a low, quiet voice. Calderón understood that Gabriel Hurtado was what the U.S. media called a drug lord, but he was quite capable of cloaking this knowledge from his ordinary consciousness. He was a man of aristocratic pretension and habit, and the ability to ignore the ultimate sources of one’s wealth is a commonplace talent among such men. The Kennedys and the Bronfmans spent bootlegging dollars with clear consciences, and the fortunes of his own family and those of most of his Cuban friends derived at a couple of removes from slave labor. Money washes, as the saying goes, and in any case Hurtado was not a mere thug. He was well connected with the government of his nation and was at least as well insulated from drug cartel massacres as Joe Kennedy had been from the machine guns of Al Capone. There is an immense flood of Latin American money swimming around Miami seeking safe investment, whose provenance does not bear too much inspection, and many such dollars under the control of Hurtado had over the years swum into the projects of JXF Calderón Associates, Inc., to the mutual profit of both men.

They exchanged pleasantries, and then Calderón told him about the events of the last few days, stressing especially the knowledge of the Puxto business shown by the maniac in Antonio Fuentes’s office.

“So the reason I’m calling,” he went on, “is to check out whether the leak came from your end.”

“That’s impossible,” said Hurtado. “My people know how to keep their mouths shut.” This was said with a certainty that could not be doubted, although Calderón’s mind did not long settle upon what made for such certainty. He said, “Of course. What I meant is the possibility that someone down there wants to make trouble for us, for you, in some way. A rival. Someone who thinks he didn’t get enough of a…consideration, a commission, whatever.”

A pause on the line. “I’ll look into it. There was some crazy priest down there in San Pedro who was threatening to make a stink, but he’s out of the picture. Meanwhile, you got somecabrón wandering around Miami with information he’s not supposed to have. What’re we going to do about that, Yoiyo?”

“I’ll handle it at this end,” said Calderón.

“You may need some help.”

“I’m fine, Gabriel. I was just checking with you.”

“That’s good, but I want you to remember that I have commitments on this thing, to people down here. I’m talking about significant people. So it can’t go sour on us. You’re clear on that, yes?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Fine. Your family okay? Olivia and Victoria and Jonni?”

“Everybody’s great,” said Calderón.

“Good. You’ll keep me informed, yes?” The connection broke before Calderón could respond. It was not really a question anyway. Calderón was now trying to recall whether, in the course of their extensive business relationship, he had ever mentioned his family to Hurtado. It would not be a thing he routinely did. He had the old-fashioned Cubano sense of strict separation between the world of affairs and the interior world of the home. He was, however, absolutely sure that Hurtado had never asked about them by name before. Suddenly he discovered that he wanted to leave the office and have a strong drink of scotch.

Moie watches the world float by from the windows of thewai’ichura canoe that floats on dry ground. He says the namecar in his head and is grateful to the Firehair Woman for having given it to him. It is always good to have the names of things. He is happy to have met Cooksey and to have received answers to many of the questions that troubled him. He now understands that thewai’ichuranan cannot change the stars in the sky, and also that they didn’t know they were dead at all, but thought they were living life. He thinks of the stars again, that they are not always the same in the sky but like trees along a path, and that as you move a long way across the earth they change in the same way. This is a wonder to him and makes him a little sad.

The car turns and enters a compound of several buildings and they dismount from it, all three of them. There are other dead people there, including the Monkey Boy, who looks a curse at Moie, which he averts with some words in the holy tongue. There is an angry woman who speaks too much and too loud and one man with a beard who speaks slowly and is the chief of this place, and another man who has a hairy face but does not speak much. They chatter in their monkey talk but also to him in Spanish, and when he does not understand, Cooksey says in Runisi what they have said.

They sit at a table, and the Firehair Woman brings food that tastes like clay and hot brown water. He is not hungry at all but takes a little so that the gods of this place are not offended. The Angry Woman talks about the death of the man of the Consuela whom the Monkey Boy screamed at the day before in the house the size of a mountain that you go to in a little hut with no windows that hums in a way you can feel in the belly. The Monkey Boy is happy he is dead, but the others are confused. Who has killed him? they wonder. Moie says in his own language that it is Jaguar, and they all look at him strangely. They are silent for a moment. Then Cooksey asks, “Moie, did you kill this man yourself?” And Moie answers, “Perhaps I would have, if he came to my country, but here I have no power. No, it was Jaguar alone who did this. He is angry at the men who want to destroy his country, and if they don’t say they will stop, I think he will kill others, too.” He sees that they are amazed, but they say nothing more about it at this time.