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. Calderon 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 Calderon Associates, Inc., to the mutual profit of both men.
They exchanged pleasantries, and then Calderon 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 Calderon’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 some cabron 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 Calderon.
“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 Calderon.
“Good. You’ll keep me informed, yes?” The connection broke before Calderon could respond. It was not really a question anyway. Calderon 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 the wai’ichura canoe that floats on dry ground. He says the name car 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 the wai’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.
Five
The wailing dragged Paz out of the dream, brought him onto his feet stumbling as the dream paralysis passed from his limbs. He struggled into a robe. His wife, now awakened herself, cried, “What is it?”
“Amy’s having a nightmare.”
“Oh, Christ, not again! What time is it?”
“Four-thirty. Go back to sleep,” said Paz, walking quickly from the room. Entering his daughter’s bedroom, he saw by the glow of the Tweety Bird night-light that Amelia was sitting up in bed weeping and clutching her old pink blanket to her face. She stretched out her arms to him, and he sat on the side of the bed and held her to his body, cooing and stroking her hair. This was the fourth one in the last couple of weeks.
“What was it, baby, did you have a bad dream? Tell Daddy, what was it? Did you see a monster?”
Gasping, the child said, “It was a aminal.”
“An animal, huh? What kind of animal?”
“I don’t know. It was yellow and it had big teeth and it was going to eat me all up.”
At this, Paz felt a shock of fear shoot through him. It was at this moment that he understood that he had come to the end of the seven years of peace. What he always referred to as “weird shit” had now officially returned. He wanted to join Amelia in tears but instead took a deep steadying breath and asked hopefully, “You mean like a dog?”
“No, it was a little like a dinosaur and a little like a kitty cat.”
“Boy, that sounds scary,” Paz said, terrified himself. “But it’s all gone now. It can’t get you, okay? Dreams are just in your head, you know? Animals in dreams can’t really bite and scratch you. We talked about this before, you remember.”
“Yes, but, Daddy, I waked up…I waked up and the aminal was still here. I was all waked up and it was still here.”
She had slipped a little back into her baby talk, not a good sign. He said, “I don’t know, baby, sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly when you’re all waked up, especially if you’re having a bad nightmare. Anyway, it was just a dream. It wasn’t real.”
“Abuela says dream sare real.”
Paz took a deep breath and uttered an inward malediction. “I don’t think that’s what Abuela meant, baby. I think she meant that sometimes dreams tell us things about ourselves that might be hard to find out
