Spanish and bustled off.
Seated again, Paz asked, “What do you think that was all about? Usually she hangs around and gets your pedigree and when we’re going to get married.”
“Perhaps she knew I wasn’t good enough for you in one glance. How long has your mother been involved in Santeria?”
He frowned. “Who said she was involved in Santeria? She hates that stuff.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. She’s a straight-up Catholic. I had a girlfriend once, in high school, gave me one of those little statues. My mom found it, and chewed me out, and trashed it. Why did you think she was into it? Because she’s a black Cuban?”
A challenging tone here. “No, not that at all. As it happens, I saw her at Pedro Ortiz’s ile a couple of nights ago.”
“That’s impossible.”
The waitress dropped off a tray of guava tarts and Cuban cookies, a couple of Cuban coffees, and two brandies.
Jane said, “I saw her. Your mother. Not only was she there, but she was an oriate, a ‘made’ woman. You know what hacer el santo means, don’t you? I saw her mounted by Yemaya. No, don’t shake your head. Listen! I want you to listen to something.”
She recited, almost chanting, “He-went-into-the-river-and-killed-the-crocodile was the one who cast Ifa for ‘Is it profitable to take a caravan to the north?’ Ifa says it is foolish to leave the farm before the rains. Witches are coming to carry off the eldest child. She said her strength was no match for evil-doing. He said seek the son with no fathers. He said the woman will leave her farm and help. He said the bird with yellow feathers is of use. Four are necessary for the sacrifice: two black pigeons, two white pigeons, and thirty-two cowries.”
“What’s that, a poem?”
“In a way. It’s a divination verse. Ifa gave it to me when I asked him what I should do about my husband. I already made the sacrifice. Three allies are named. I have a yellow chick at home. I just met a woman who left a farm, and is made to Yemaya, the sea goddess. My husband is terrified of the water. Now, tell me about your father.”
“This is crazy.” He tried to smile, but it jelled on his face.
“It’s true. Tell me about your father!” He was shaking his head, mulish. She slammed the table with her hand, making the crockery tinkle, and drawing looks from nearby tables. She hissed, “Do you want to stop him or not? Tell me!”
And, surprising himself, for he had never told anyone, he told her. “I was fourteen, we lived above the restaurant on Flagler. She sent me down to the office to get the ledger. She was doing some accounts. Being a nosy kid, I paged through it and I noticed that besides the regular payments for rent and utilities and purveyors, there was a monthly four-hundred-dollar payment to a guy named Juan Javier Calderone. Yoiyo Calderone. You know who he is?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You were Cuban you’d know. He’s a political guy, his father was a real old-time Batistiano big shot. From Guantanamo, as a matter of fact. A homey. Came over with a shitload of money right after the revolution. My mom’d never mentioned she knew him, so I asked her. Nothing. A loan. Mind your own business! She wouldn’t look me in the eye, and believe me, my mom loves to look me in the eye. So I knew something was off.” He drank some brandy. There was clammy sweat on his forehead; he didn’t look at her, but past her, at the bright fishes in their tank.
“Anyway, I didn’t let it go. I looked up Calderone’s address, and one Saturday I took my bike over to his house. A big white mansion on Alhambra in the Gables, tile roof, a big lawn with a big tall flame tree in the middle. A crew was working on the grounds, real dark guys, just like in the old country. There was an iron gate on the driveway that was open because of the gardeners, and I walked up the driveway and through another gate and there I was on their back patio. A big pool, cabanas, everything perfect. There were two kids in the pool, a boy and a girl. The girl was blond. I stood there staring like a jerk. The two of them were sitting in deck chairs, Calderone and his wife. She was younger than him, and blond, with blue eyes. And then the woman gets up and notices me. She asks me what I want, and I say I want to see Juan Javier Calderone. He gets up and comes over, asks me what I want, and I say I’m Jimmy Paz, I’m the son of Margarita Paz. Okay, I could see he was my father, I could see it in his face, and I could see he could see it in mine, that it was true. Then this look comes over his face like he just stepped in dog shit, and he puts his arm around my shoulders and he goes, Oh, really? Come along here and we’ll talk. And we go through the little gate to the driveway, and when no one can see us, he whips his arm around my throat, he’s choking me, and he drags me behind some big bushes. He goes, Did she send you? Did that chingada whore send you? I couldn’t answer. He goes, ‘Listen to me, you little nigger bastard, if you ever come here again, or if your chingada mother ever tries to contact me again, the two of you will end up in the bay. Do you understand? And make sure that every goddamn penny gets paid back or I’ll take your fucking nigger slophouse back and kick you out on the street like you deserve.’ Then he pops me a couple of good ones on the ear and kicks my ass out the gate.” Here a long sigh, some silence, and then he said, “Shit, Jane, you ate all the torticas.”
She blushed. “I’m sorry. It’s automatic. They were so good.”
“I know they’re good, Jane. That’s why you should’ve saved some for me. Jeez, I’m telling you about the worst day of my life, and you take advantage to hog all the torticas.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, and he saw that she was not talking about the cookies. After a while he added, “I went back and laid all this on my mother, and she gave me another beating, the last one I ever got from her. I ran away. I split that night, and hiked up Dixie Highway, hitched a couple of rides. I slept on the beach at Hallandale for two nights, and the next day the cops grabbed me up. They shipped me home, and it was ‘Did you finish your homework?’ She never mentioned Yoiyo again, or what happened after. Meanwhile, it didn’t take a detective to figure it out. She wanted to get a catering truck, and like a peasant, she went to the local big man, Calderone, the Guantanamero. She needed eight K to get the truck and a stake to start a business. She was nineteen. And how does a beautiful black woman get eight grand from Senor Calderone? I mean what does she use for fucking collateral? He probably did her right on the couch in his office, or bent her over his great big desk. And the result was me.” He laughed. “My sad story.”
“It is a sad story. I figured it was something like that. And of all the cops in Miami, it’s you that picks up this case, that shows up at my place. This is how it happens, the way you get allies.”
He wiped his face with his napkin, and reassembled his personality behind its cover. “Right. Me and my mother and a chicken are going to help you fight our invisible man. Looney Tunes.”
“Yes, be cynical,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “It’s been a couple of hours, and your mind is reconstructing the consensual reality. All that, the things you saw and did, they couldn’t have really happened, the murder at that hotel, and arresting Witt, and the cops shooting one another, and Barlow turning into someone else, and craziness spreading through the city. Get a good night’s sleep and it’s back to normal. But it won’t be. The only way back to normal is through the magic.”
“So what do we have to do? Sit in a circle and chant and kill a pigeon?”
“It will become clear to you what you have to do in the event. Mainly, I’ll be more or less out of it for what could be a long time. You need to take care of me?I mean this body?and take care of Luz.”
“And the chicken. Don’t forget the chicken. What’s the chicken going to do? Peck at his nose?”
She turned her eyes away from him, as if embarrassed. He felt ashamed, in fact, although he was not certain of what. He said, “Jane … be serious now: can you imagine me trying to explain all this to my mother?”
“You won’t have to explain it to your mother,” she said. “She’ll come to my house, at the right time.”
“Really? And how are you going to arrange that?”
“Because it’s the place to be. It’s the Super Bowl. Your mother’s a player in this, an oriate. She wants to help. You’re not a player, so you have to decide on some other basis whether you are going to fulfill Ifa’s oracle or not. It’ll start tomorrow night, I’m guessing. If he’s writing now, he’ll write all night and crash about dawn, and he’ll wake up around three or four, get a big breakfast, revise the stuff he wrote the previous night and be ready to step out around seven.”
“He’s writing? He’s cutting up women and doing God knows what all around the city, and then he goes home and writes?”
