Night of the Jaguar jp-3

by Michael Gruber

  “No!” said Cooksey forcefully. “It is the most siwix thing we can think of. Moie, you must not do it.”

  “But it would be a very large good thing if the wai’ichuranan came alive again and stopped ruining the whole world as they do now. Also, Jaguar would not take her unless she wished it.”

  “It’s still not allowed.”

  “Then I don’t understand. Father Tim said that Jan’ichupitaolik gave himself as a sacrifice, so that the dead people could have life beyond the moon, in heaven, which was a great good thing. And Jan’ichupitaolik was a man and the greatest jampiri of the dead people, and so he was worth much more than a little girl. So this is moral philosophy and not siwix at all.”

  “No, no, you are mistaken,” cried Cooksey. “Listen, Moie, for this is most important. Jan’ichupitaolik sacrificed himself to save the world. He didn’t sacrifice a little girl. And surely Father Tim told you that because he sacrificed himself, no other sacrifices would ever be required ever again, by anyone. And also I tell you Jan’ichupitaolik is chief of all the gods, even of Jaguar, and he will be very angry at you and at Jaguar if you do this thing.”

  “I hear you,” said Moie in a polite but noncommittal way. “I will also consider it in my belly. But let me ask you this: if Jan’ichupitaolik is lord of all, as you say, why doesn’t he tell the dead people to stop ruining the world?”

  “He does, but his voice is very faint. Other gods have louder voices now.”

  “Yes, Father Tim has told me the same thing. I think that maybe Jan’ichupitaolik has said to Jaguar, Go and slay, for the world I made should not be destroyed. Do you think this is possible, Cooksey?”

  Cooksey slowly shook his head and said in a tired voice, “I don’t know, Moie.”

  “Or Jan’ichupitaolik has died and now Jaguar is the chief of all the gods. In any case, I will surely do as he wishes. Now I must tell you a thing. There are new men in the houses of the Consuela. Jaguar has told me. They are men like those who killed Father Tim. They are the dead of the dead, their spirits have rotted inside them and they are hollow and filled by chinitxi instead. I tell you this because I think they will come here.”

  “Here? Why would they come here?” asked Cooksey.

  “Because of the Monkey Boy and the man Fuentes. Because of the unancha, the totem sign of this place.” Here Moie pressed his hand to his chest. “They have painted it on many shirts. I have seen the Firehair Woman give them to many people for money, and also others in this place do the same, and also it is on the car.” Here he used the English word and looked briefly at Jenny, who smiled at him encouragingly. “These men, these chinitxi, are all hunters, and one of them is a very good hunter, not as good as me, but good enough to follow the unancha to this place. I tell you this, Cooksey, because you have been a friend to me, and also because the Firehair Woman is an alive wai’ichura and the gods speak to her, although she doesn’t hear them. As for the others, I don’t care, but you may, if they are of your people. For if they come here, they will kill all, as I have heard they do in villages not far from my home. I will be sorry if they kill you, Cooksey, for it is interesting to talk with you. This is a word Father Tim showed me. It is like smelling an animal you never met before and you wish to know if it is good to eat or not. Now I am going.”

  “Moie, wait…!” said Cooksey, but the Indian moved very quickly, across the room and through the door. Cooksey ran to the corridor, but there was no one there, nor were there any sounds of footsteps on the gravel path.

  “What was that all about?” asked Jenny when Cooksey returned, looking dejected. “Bad news?”

  “You might say that,” he replied dully, and recounted what he had learned from Moie, Jenny asking anxious questions, and Cooksey answering as best he could.

  “What are we going to do about this little girl?” she asked.

  “Damned if I know,” he said. “Damned in any case. Christ! What was I thinking putting him in a tree next to a school? I suppose we’ll have to tell Rupert.”

  “He’ll call the cops, right?”

  “I rather doubt that. Rupert is a good sort, but as between saving the world and looking after himself, the latter usually wins out. And also, can you imagine him going to the police with this story? Yes, Officer, I’d like to report an Indian from South America who thinks he can turn himself into a jaguar and has killed two prominent Cuban businessmen. Yes, he was staying at my house after he killed the first one, but I didn’t report it because I wanted to use him as an environmental poster child. No, Officer, I have no idea where he is now. He’s often more or less invisible. Oh, and there are a group of demons in town, disguised as Colombian gangsters, but I have no idea where they are either. And, yes, one other thing, that Indian is preparing to murder a little girl, or rather the jaguar who doesn’t exist is going to do it. He’s a god, you see. I mean it’s beyond absurd. And also…I’m not entirely sure the police can successfully intervene here. Moie is perhaps not what he appears to be. Perhaps we’re involved in something deeply strange. I speak not as a scientist, of course, but as my mother’s son.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Jenny. And after a brief pause she asked, “So you don’t have, like, a plan?”

  He burst out laughing. “Yes, my immediate plan is to drink a large whiskey.” He smiled at her. “Well, you don’t seem paralyzed with fear, although I would strongly advise you not to wear any Forest Planet Alliance T-shirts in the near term.”

  “I’m fine. It all seems too weird to worry about. And I still feel kind of good. I mean about today.”

  “Yes, that’s what messing about in boats will do for you. Saving the news of the apocalypse just now, it was a lovely day.”

  “But the weasels are coming.”

  “Indeed they are, and the wise thing at this juncture, I believe, is to model ourselves on Rat and Mole, and stick to our cozy burrow, and wait for Mr. Badger to arrive and show us what to do. Perhaps he can save that little girl.”

  Thirteen

  The restaurant Guantanamera did not collapse when Jimmy Paz announced that he was leaving its kitchen to pursue his father’s killer, which discovery made him feel both less guilty and more miserable: an even split, he thought, or maybe a little better than even, since his mother had been telling him since early adulthood that absent his daily help, ruin faced the family Paz. In the event, Mrs. Paz made a few calls and came up with Raul, a steady man of middle age who not only knew how to grill meat but also followed Mrs. Paz’s instructions to the last tomato, and was not interested in concocting outlandish dishes that had no place in a traditional Cuban restaurant.

  Lola was mildly encouraging. It would do him good to get out from under Mom, was the doctor’s opinion, and maybe he’d get used to it. After playing cop for a while, maybe he could think about going back to school. It wasn’t too late: just look at her. Indeed, look at her: she went to work, came home, ate briefly, and then went to sleep exhausted. She had a glazed, frightened look and blamed it on various work-related stresses, although she hadn’t looked like that in her intern year, when the stresses were far greater, and there had been a lot more kidding and sex back then, too. He had a pretty good idea what was going on by now, he could hear her thumping around the house in the middle of the night and he could tell by the pill bottles in their medicine cabinet that she was taking some fairly serious stuff. He wondered if she was an actual addict yet. It happened to docs a lot, he knew, but he’d never figured Lola for the type. So that was another thing on his list, which he decided to cross off before he left the house. Feeling stupid and disloyal he went into the bedroom and plucked a tuft of blond hair from Lola’s hairbrush and in the girl’s bedroom plucked a few darker hairs from hers.

  Securing these items in separate envelopes, he turned to something he had more confidence in. He settled himself in a comfortable chair with a fresh cup of coffee and called a woman named Doris Taylor at the Miami Herald. Taylor had been covering crime for the Herald since (according
to her) before the invention of gunpowder, and had waxed fat on Jimmy Paz’s exploits in pursuit of the infamous Voodoo Killer. She was delighted to hear he was, in a manner of speaking, back on the street and was elaborately forthcoming with what she knew about the Miami Ripper, as she now called him or it, asking only to be leaked when he had something new. Thus prepared, Paz called Tito Morales and had him set up a meeting with Major Oliphant to discuss the Calderon murder and how Jimmy Paz could help with their investigation.

  The meeting was set up for that very day. Paz dressed in one of his old detective suits, and polished up a pair of four-hundred-dollar shoes and arrived at police headquarters looking very much as he had when he’d walked off the job seven years ago. Oliphant was all smiles until it turned out that Jimmy Paz did not just want to help with the investigation. He wanted to investigate.

  The Major scowled at this and said, “This is because he was your father?” He had just learned this interesting fact from Paz’s own lips.

  “More or less,” said Paz. “More, really. My mother and my half sister wanted me to, so here I am.”

  “You know, it would’ve been really cool if you’d told me about this family connection the last time we talked.”

  Paz shrugged. “It wasn’t something I was proud of. I kept it pretty close. Tito didn’t know either.” Morales confirmed this with a sour grunt and a nod.

  “And now,” said Oliphant, “you want to…what, be a freelance cop on this thing?”

  “No. I’ll work with Tito. Under Tito, really; I mean he’s got the badge and the gun. It’s nothing unusual. The department hires consultants all the time.”

  “Not to catch killers, we don’t. We like to keep that in the immediate family. So, just for the sake of argument, how do you see this so-called consultancy playing out?”

  “Well, the first thing is, I have to see the file on the Fuentes case. Tito can fill me in on whatever he’s done since the day of. Then you’ll have to call the sheriff and get me into the Calderon file and clear Matt Finnegan to talk with me.”

  “Oh, I’m really going to enjoy that conversation.” Oliphant held his hand up to his head in the phone-call gesture. “Say, Frank? I got Calderon’s kid here, we’d sort of like you to help him track down his daddy’s killer. No, he’s not a cop, he’s a cook, but we here at the Miami PD always like to help out anyone on a personal vendetta….”

  Paz inclined his head and smiled. “I know you’d be more subtle than that, Doug.”

  “The answer is still no.”

  “That’s funny because the two of you were just a while ago all over my ass asking for help and now I want to go full-time on the thing and what do I get? Stonewall. Whereas, if I can speak without offense, neither of these investigations is going anywhere.”

  “Who told you that?” asked Oliphant, with a bristle.

  “Oh, you know-around. There are plenty of people in this town who make it their business to know what the cops are up to, and back when I was a famous police hero and the savior of the community, I got to know most of them.”

  “You’ve been talking to the press,” said Oliphant. He made it an accusation, something like molesting a minor.

  “Yeah. Look, the fact of the matter is I’m going to do this, and I’d like to work with you guys and not against you. If not, there are other investigative resources in the city. What you don’t want and what the sheriff doesn’t want is to read all about how I found this guy while you all were standing around looking into the middle distance.”

  There was the usual staring contest after this remark, which Paz let the Major win. Who then remarked, “You know, I always thought you were a modest kind of guy, Jimmy. Unless being a cook has vastly increased your criminological skills. Or unless you know something you’re not telling us, in which case you’d be obstructing an investigation, which you might recall is a felony in this state.”

  Paz nodded and grinned. “Okay, I threatened you and you threatened me back and we’re even, so could we chuck this horseshit and get off the dime here? Am I blowing my trumpet a little? Yeah, guilty. But let’s review for a second-you got two rich white Cuban guys ripped to shreds, you got claw marks, you got jaguar tracks, you don’t have a lead that’s worth a shit, except for some literal shit, and you got cannibalism, or something-ibalism. It adds up to weird and uncanny, and it so happens that when it comes to weird and uncanny in the Greater Miami Metropolitan area, I am The Man. And cross my heart and hope to die, I don’t know anything about these cases that every newsie in town doesn’t know already. Nothing against Tito here or your guys or Finnegan, but you know and I know that there is such a thing as instinct and flair. There is stuff that I’ll catch that other guys won’t, not because I’m a great genius or anything, but there isn’t a lot of experience around town with off-the-wall cases like these, and I got most of it.”

  Oliphant fiddled with his coffee cup, seeming to be fascinated by the information on it, which was FOURTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON CHILD PORNOGRAPHY,PHILADELPHIA 2001. It was a gesture familiar to Paz. The man was doubtful but he was about to roll right.

  “That would be the consultancy, then, expert on weird and uncanny criminal behavior?”

  “That’s us,” said Paz. “No job too small.”

  Oliphant said, “I’ll think of something more bureaucratic after I take a Gelusil.” He turned to Morales. “Detective Morales. Show this guy the files and fill him in. I’ll call Sheriff McKay and call in some chips and I’ll let you know when it’s clear to go over to their shop. Meanwhile, I expect you to stay close to Mr. Paz at all times as he consults. I expect you to cup his scrotum in your hands as he consults. I expect you to be there when he awakes and to tuck him into bed at night. You’re off of all other cases. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Morales, straightening a little in his chair.

  “And you’re clear, too, Jimmy? Straight pool, use our playbook, and no leaking to your slimeball pals up there by the bay.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Paz. “But could you explain to Detective Morales that the part about my scrotum was just a figure of speech?”

  “Get the fuck out of my office, the both of you,” said Oliphant in a reasonably friendly manner, considering the circumstances.

  The Hurtado organization had rented a whole floor of a condominium on Fisher Island, convenient to the homes of the two surviving Consuelistas. Hurtado and El Silencio had one apartment to themselves and the dozen or so gangsters he had brought along shared the others. They had an adequate number of cars and a couple of fast boats. The only thing they lacked was a target. They watched; nothing happened. Hurtado had limited patience. This operation was important, to be sure, but not important enough to risk being out of Cali for an extended time. Therefore, after some days of stewing, Hurtado sent his enforcer out with Prudencio Martinez and a couple of boys to see what he could find.

  Hurtado was enjoying a late-afternoon drink poolside at the condo when the shadow of El Silencio fell across him.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  “Everything,” said El Silencio. He pulled up a lounger and looked at the girl in the thong bikini who was keeping his employer company. The girl went away without a word. Leaning close so that Hurtado could catch his whisper, he elaborated. “The kid in the painted van is the same kid who was in Fuentes’s office. Fuentes’s secretary remembered his hair. Also he had a shirt with the same sign that was all over the van. Martinez described it and she said she remembered.”

  Hurtado said, “It seems a little too easy. You know, Ramon, people remember things that didn’t happen sometimes when you talk to them. It’s part of your charm.”

  El Silencio shrugged. “I didn’t touch her. She talked to him.”

  “Fine. So what does that get us? Who are these people and where do we find them?”

  In answer, El Silencio passed his boss a small brochure.

  “What’s this?”

  “We joined the Florida Audubon Society.
A hundred-dollar contribution, the woman wouldn’t shut up. There’s a list of local nature clubs on the back. With the logos. I marked the one that the boys spotted on that VW van.”

  Hurtado flipped the brochure over. “Forest Planet Alliance? What is this, environmentalists?”

  “That’s what it looks like, but who knows what they really are? There’s something else. Look at this.” He handed Hurtado a color photograph of a young woman with blond-streaked hair leaving the doorway of Felipe Ibanez’s mansion and said, “We’ve been taking pictures of everyone who goes in and out of both houses. This is Ibanez’s granddaughter, a woman named Evangelista Vargos. You see her shirt?”

  “That’s interesting. Another connection, the girl belongs to the same group. And…?”

  “Ibanez wants to knock off his partners. He knows this organization from his granddaughter-maybe he even set it up. The bitch is some kind of spy, say. He figures we’ll look into these killings, we’ll think maybe someone is trying to get a piece of the Puxto deal, someone from home, but this way he can lay it off on these Americans. The environmentalists are all of a sudden killing people who piss them off.”

  Hurtado shook his head. “That doesn’t explain the Indian, though. And these American kids, I can’t see them doing these kinds of things to Fuentes and Calderon, not to mention getting past our boys and taking out Rafael. And Ibanez or whoever would know we’d never go for the idea that this came out of some nature lover club. No, what I think is that Ibanez brought a bunch of tough Indios up from somewhere as muscle and he’s just parking them with these American pendejos. Americans love the fucking Indios, and why should they make a connection? So he gets cover and a team of killers at the same time. That has to be it.”