ushered by teachers into the waiting buses, some ran to the parental cars, flapping garish infant art (Look what I made in school today!) producing general cooing and the rumble of expensive engines. The remainder, bright Miss Milliken their shepherdess, moved in a pack across the lawn to a bench beneath the tree. Amelia spotted him, and he noted with mixed feelings the expressions that flew across the dear face: first surprised delight and then feigned indifference. His darling had discovered cool, it seemed, and was showing a primitive version of the untaught universal reluctance of the young to acknowledge the existence of the parent while among peers. With a pang Paz experienced the start of his destined slide from demigod to hapless jerk.
Miss Milliken chivvied the children into seated rows, sat on the bench, and opened Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Paz, still something of a detective, noted that his daughter had arranged herself at the extreme end of the seated arc of tots, and that shortly after the revelations at the chocolate factory spilled forth she had slipped off into the shadows of the hanging boughs. He followed her into the heart of the tree.
“He’s not there anymore, baby,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“I just do. Tito went up there a little while ago. Your friend’s gone and I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“Why did he? I mean Tito.”
“Because…Moie…because the police think that Moie may have, I mean he might know something about some crimes and the police want to talk with him real bad. Do you know anywhere else he hangs out?”
“No. What kind of crimes?”
“Bad crimes. Look, we need to talk about this a little bit. What do you say we walk down to El Piave and get some ice cream.”
This was disgraceful. The poor child had a jones for ice cream, the mom doled it out like methadone, and so Daddy could always win a point by playing the genial pusher. She brightened immediately and they walked off, threading through the narrow flower-scented streets of the Grove until they arrived at Commodore Plaza. El Piave, which specialized in homemade Italian gelati, was crowded with after-school business, but Paz and daughter had no trouble getting a seat via the freemasonry of the food service business. Paz had a vanilla soda with coffee ice cream and the girl pigged out on two scoops of cherry vanilla with fudge. The counter guy saw who it was and added, gratis, a tower of whipped cream, several maraschino cherries, and topped it with a paper parasol. Amelia-a foodie princess of Miami-accepted this graciously as her due.
Paz waited for the sugar to drug her into a happy stupor and then said, “Look, I know Moie is your pal, but you need to think about what if he’s really not.”
“He is. He’s nice.”
“He may seem nice, Amy, but let’s face it-you don’t know a lot about him. You say he’s magic, for example. Okay, I believe you, he’s magic. But what kind of magic? You know there’s not just the good kind.”
No response to this; she was looking away from him now, concentrating on carving away at the mound of ice cream, artfully saving the whipped cream and cherries until the last bites. He tried another tack. “You know about Santeria, right?”
“Uh-huh. What Abuela does.”
“That’s right. There’s a world we can’t see, and there are spirits that live in that world. Sometimes they help us and sometimes they hurt us, but the thing you have to remember is they’re different from us and dangerous. That’s why Abuela and her friends try to find out what they want so we don’t get caught in their…doings, and maybe get stepped on.”
“By bad spirits?”
“No, baby, it’s not about good and bad. It’s just about power. See, it’s like a bunch of boys playing football on the grass and a little kitten wanders out there and maybe it gets stepped on and squashed. The boys didn’t really mean to do it, but the kitten is still squashed. You had those bad dreams about a jaguar, remember? And I had the same kind of dreams and I think your mom is having those dreams, too, which is why she’s been so upset lately, and-”
“You made them stop with that Santeria thing.”
“Right, the enkangue, and I hope Mommy’s got stopped, too. But the thing is, I think Moie was sending those dreams, not him really but a kind of spirit he works for, a jaguar spirit, and I think that spirit wants to hurt you, not because it’s bad or Moie is bad but because it’s doing something that we don’t understand and hurting you is part of it.”
Amelia looked up from her dish and met his eye. She seemed suddenly older. “This is like The Lord of the Rings, isn’t it?”
“Just like,” said Paz.
“And we’re like the hobbits.”
“Uh-huh. Except I think Abuela is more like Gandalf.”
Amelia nodded at this-obvious. “And what are you like, Daddy?”
“I don’t know, baby. This is all pretty new to me.”
“I want you to be the king, Aragorn.”
Paz laughed. “You do, huh? Well, I think I’m just another hobbit, and not Frodo either. But the main thing is you need to tell me if you see Moie again, all right? That part isn’t make-believe. Amelia, look at me! Promise, now.”
Amelia looked into her father’s eyes. There was something she had to tell him about…about a word she couldn’t remember, a little girl and a caiman and a jaguar, but it was all mixed up in her head. So instead of that she said, “Okay. I’m going to be Galadriel, and I could make a silver crown, couldn’t I?”
When they were on the street again, Paz called the restaurant and asked Yolanda to fall by the Grove and give them a lift home. The lunch rush would be over by now. He rarely exercised his feudal powers in this way, but he felt it was a special circumstance, his daughter being pursued by a…whatever, and besides Yolanda was always ready to do anything for Jimmy. More shameless manipulation added to Paz’s heavy score.
Yolanda arrived in her battered white Toyota pickup truck. They all squeezed into the front seat, and Paz was glad that he had Amelia as flesh insulation between his thigh and Yolanda’s lush brown one, bared by her pink shorts. Yolanda was a reformed bad girl, a melange of the races and the heartthrob of all the younger waiters and staff, although she had eyes only for the unobtainable Jimmy. This often happened in the restaurant business, and many other sorts of business as well; Paz didn’t take it personally. He flirted but did not (despite his tales to his wife) actually grab ass. They talked restaurant on the way home, with Amelia uncharacteristically silent. When they reached the house in South Miami, the girl darted from the truck and into the house without a good-bye.
“Something wrong?” asked Yolanda.
Paz shrugged. “Just growing pains. I’ll see you at the place later this week, I guess.”
“They caught that guy already? I mean the one that…”
“They think so,” Paz said, and with a wave turned up the walk to his house.
Entering his bedroom, he was relieved to observe signs of life in his spouse. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, her face, stretched, said, “Oh, God. I fell asleep. What time is it?”
“A little past four.”
She struggled into a sitting position against the headboard. “I should call the hospital, see if I still have a job.”
“You’re cool. I talked to Kemmelman. Apparently it happens all the time. I mean people in the ER losing it. It’s no biggie.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You talked to Kemmelman about me? When was this?”
“I don’t know-yesterday morning, I think.”
“Yesterday morning? Jimmy, what’re you talking about?”
“Lola, it’s a little past four on Wednesday. You’ve been out for over forty-eight hours.”
The suspicion on her face turned to stunned astonishment. “That’s impossible.”
“But true. Did you have any dreams?”
Her eyes flicked away from his. He moved his head to catch them again. “No,” she said, “not that I can recall.”
