Miami Midnight

by Davis, Maggie;

  Gaby’s mind had reeled. This yuppie voodoo practitioner and James Santo Marin knew, or at least had known, each other? She had been suddenly glad she’d left out the more intimate details of what had taken place on the living room couch. That, she’d decided, was no one’s business. Not even a Santería high priest’s.

  “I don’t understand what this is all about,” she now said a little angrily. “Don’t tell me I’m having an anxiety attack, either. I want some explanations.”

  “Okay.” The babalawo sat forward in his chair and recited in careful, academic Spanish, “‘He visto vivir un hombre con el punal al castado.’”

  Gaby stared blankly at him. “I’m sorry. My Spanish is not very good.”

  “It was written by a very fine poet, José Martí, who also happens to be the great liberator of Cuba. Translated, it refers to someone who is living very dangerously.” He added, quite offhandedly, “So Jimmy likes you, huh? Well, he’s a great-looking guy, but actually I don’t think he’s been all that involved with women. Most of it’s just publicity.”

  “I—I’m not,” Gaby began with a return of the curious breathlessness that attacked her when she talked, or even thought, about James Santo Marin, “at all involved with—”

  “What I’m doing right now,” the babalawo interrupted, “is setting up on the computer a general consultation for you using the Table of Ifa. Are you familiar with the Chinese I Ching?” He shot her an inquiring glance. “No? Okay, then think of what I do as like casting horoscopes. Actually the Table of Ifa of the Yorubas is based on a system of divination just as ancient and complicated as the zodiac, only it happens to be African and not ancient Babylonian. Incidentally, the Babylonians believed we are descended from the gods, just like the Yoruba. We’re not dealing with trash here.”

  “Oh,” Gaby said. “I didn’t think we were.”

  “Honey, you’re so polite.” He turned to look at her. “But then this whole visit is fascinating,” he murmured, openly admiring her. “After all, how many times am I going to get a gorgeous young Anglo society lady in here with a Santería problem?”

  Gaby’s lips tightened. “If you don’t mind, can we get down to why I came here? I’d like to know why someone put the Santería at my house.”

  The babalawo put his elbows on the computer stand and rested his chin on his fingertips. “Killing the old dog was an afterthought,” he said to the lighted screen. “That’s not kosher. The chicken was more straightforward. But I agree, nobody went to all that trouble for the latino family in the garage. They wanted you to get the message.”

  “What message?” Gaby cried. “So far nobody’s told me what anything means!”

  He peered at the display, where a series of patterns were rolling up in long columns. “How’s the tummy? The soda pop taking care of it? You sure you feel up to all this?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  He sighed. “Miss Collier, because you’re a nice Anglo doll and don’t practice Santería, I’m going to limit some of the invocations, cut out a lot of the deep stuff. You see, in my culture the babalawo is witch doctor, diviner, father confessor, and psychologist all rolled into one. It gives me a lot of leeway.” He ducked his head, consulting the keyboard. “Has somebody already explained to you that in the islands you could go to mass in the village church, and then practice an African religion like Santería, and have the best of both worlds?”

  When Gaby nodded, the babalawo lifted his well-manicured hands from the keyboard and held them out to her. “See the color of my skin, Miss Collier?” he asked softly. “I’m like most people from the Caribbean. I’m a mix of three races, Indian, African, and white, and I’ve got the heritage of all three. Santería speaks to me just as it speaks to my people, you understand?”

  Gaby nodded. She supposed she did.

  “Now what I’m doing here,” he went on, typing in a command, “is trying to find out why someone is putting a bilongo against you. That was the stuff you found at your back door.”

  She said, hesitantly, “The police seemed to think it was a priestess.”

  “Don’t tell me what the police think. I know all the practitioners. None of them are nuts enough to do something like this.” He shrugged. “But I could be wrong. When you get a bad santero, when some of them are into Congo palo, you get into really heavy stuff.”

  The babalawo, too, had his cabinet of the orishas, a piece of plain gray-green office equipment. It also included “heads” made of coconuts covered with clay, and decorated with symbols dedicated to Orunla, the special god of divination. One sat on his desk.

  The comparison with casting a horoscope was a good one, Gaby thought uneasily. From time to time the babalawo muttered an incantation over his okuele, a chain linking eight round medallions of tortoise shell engraved with symbols. The babalawo threw it down on the estera, a grass mat spread over a table beside his desk, and the medallions formed themselves into simple patterns. Or, as he explained, one and zero, the system of binary numbers. Then he loaded the data into the computer.

  “I gather you didn’t tell Ibi,” he said, “about Jimmy Santo Marin.”

  “No.” The idea that the babalawo knew James Santo Marin still unnerved her. “Mostly she talked about a goddess Oshun. And Chango, or something.”

  “She what?” He lifted his hands from the keyboard in surprise. “She did what?”

  “There was a jar of honey,” Gaby explained a little nervously. She wasn’t sure what they were talking about. “She gave me some before I could stop her.

  “To her surprise the babalawo laughed.

  “Chango? And Oshun?” He turned around in his chair to face her, his dark face intent. “Did she tell you about Chango’s fire and the lightning and the thunder?”

  Gaby stared at him, open-mouthed.

  “Oshun is the Yoruba goddess of love,” the babalawo went on. “Honey is her symbol. It’s a charm for—Oh, never mind,” he said quickly, seeing the expression on her face.

  Gaby was thinking that the incomprehensible words and spells of the wizened old black woman in her bizarre temple, and now the high-tech psycho-jargon of this high priest with his computer, were weaving a curious web about her. There was no other explanation for the way she felt.

  She gave herself a little shake. Her imagination was running wild, but she could almost sense the invisible strands as they were laid around her, one by one. The babalawo knew James Santo Marin. And hadn’t Crissette’s boyfriend, David, unerringly picked the right iyalocha to visit? The real question, though, was not just why the web was being spun about her, but who the spider was at the center of it, waiting for her.

  “Come here,” the babalawo said. “All the way around the desk. I want you to look at something.”

  Gaby did as he said. When she looked over his shoulder at the lighted computer screen, he pointed to long columns of words rolling up it.

  “I’m going to line up the gods of some other ancient religions with the orishas. I got this out of a book. Look, here’s the Hebrew cabalistic tree of life reading down from Kether, Chochmah, et cetera. Now here are the Yoruba gods. I’m going to line them up with the cabala and on the other side we put the Greek pantheon, then the Roman. Kronos matches Orunla, Zeus matches Obatala, they’re both sky gods, and they match the Roman Jupiter.” He punched up another line of names. “Here’s Oshun-Netzach-Aphrodite-Venus. You see how they’re all alike? Here’s Yemaya-Yesod-Artemis-Moon Goddess. And here’s Chango-Tiphereth-Apollo-Sun God. No matter what you call it, it’s an umbilical cord straight to the cosmos and the universal mystery. And it’s all just as subjective as Hawking’s astrophysical collapsing of time and space.”

  Gaby wasn’t listening. Wasn’t there a pattern to everything, she wondered, that had been happening to her from the very moment she’d seen James Santo Marin in the woods of his Coral Gables estate? What if all this voodoo was a wild plot to make her doubt her own sanity? Who, for instance, she mused, looking around the babala
wo’s office, even knew she was in Little Havana this afternoon?

  The babalawo pressed a key. The columns of gods faded from the screen and a pattern of black and white circles came up.

  “Now when I cast the okuele there are only five ways they can lie: all white, three white one black, two white two black, three black one white, and all black. Sometimes it used to take days for a babalawo to read the patterns, the combinations are endless. It’s a binary system, yes no, go no-go. That’s why the computer can process it. But when you get the pattern oyekun which is all black, over and over like I did when I was casting your okuele, it means something very bad. That’s why Ibi Gobuo was so shook.”

  Gaby backed up a few steps. She had to get out of here, she thought a little desperately. But where was David? If she ran out of the office and down the stairs, would he be below, waiting for her? Or was he a part of this, too?

  “Okay, that’s the bad news,” the babalawo said cheerfully. “The good news is there are other patterns called diloggun that modify it. Each divination set has a proverb. The one that keeps coming up with yours nonstop is called Obbara. Interestingly, it’s the only one where Chango and Oshun speak together. It’s very ancient. Do you want to know what it says?”

  He looked up to see her staring at him. “The Obbara says, ‘A noble king does not tell lies.’”

  Gaby shook her head. “I don’t understand any of this,” she said. “It hasn’t answered any of my questions. I think I’d better go.”

  He turned back to the computer screen. “I can’t tell you anything about James Santo Marin, Miss Collier,” he said in a different voice. “You’ll have to figure that problem out for yourself. But I don’t deny there’s plenty of drug dealing going on in Miami.”

  Gaby suddenly realized the babalawo’s long dissertation on the African voodoo religion hadn’t gone anywhere because he didn’t intend it to.

  “You’ve been stringing me along!” she accused him.

  “Now, now, don’t get upset.” He wasn’t smiling. “Remember, I’m not charging you anything for this. And my usual fee is pretty steep.”

  “I don’t care how steep it is.” Gaby looked around for her purse. “The iyalocha was giving me the runaround, too, wasn’t she?”

  “Look, I answered the question about what happened at your house.” He sounded defensive. “Yes, it was somebody’s idea of Santería. The bilongo on the back door was vicious. I can’t relate to it.” The babalawo turned his back to her, hunching over the keyboard. “But if you have to have a clear-cut message, Miss Collier, okay. I would say that somebody wants very badly to kill you.”

  The door to the babalawo’s office burst open with a bang. The babalawo did not lift his gaze from the computer display. He merely said, “Hey, what took you so long?”

  Gaby whirled, knocking over the empty 7-Up can. It rolled across the desk and dropped to the floor. She hardly noticed.

  The tall figure in blue jeans and a tight black T-shirt filling the doorway was out of breath, almost bursting with fury. The brilliant dark eyes blazed at Gaby.

  “Just tell me,” James Santo Marin said angrily, “what the hell you think you’re doing.”

  Chapter 11

  “They telephoned you!” Gaby grabbed for the railing and held onto it, refusing to let James Santo Marin pull her down the stairs from the babalawo’s office.

  “Damn right,” he snarled, breaking her grip with an angry jerk. “I’d break their necks if they didn’t!”

  At street level Gaby balked, bracing one arm against the door. “You bastard, let go of me. I’m not going anywhere with you! You killed my dog!”

  “I didn’t kill anybody’s dog.” He managed to pry the street door open enough to push her through. “Walk nice. I don’t want to start a damned riot on Calle Ocho.”

  “You jerk!” She was almost sobbing. “I have a friend waiting for me. Believe me, he’ll—he’ll take you apart!”

  “Who, the Jamaican? I told him to get lost.”

  “He’s not a Jamaican, he’s from Trinidad!” She broke away, her hair flailing wildly, the jacket of her new coral suit twisted down over one shoulder. The hot sunshine hit her like a blow and she suddenly sagged. “You’re lying,” she said weakly. “David wouldn’t go off and leave me with—with somebody like you!”

  “Get in the car and out of this heat.” He steered her to the curb. “What the hell have you been doing, anyway? I ought to cream that son of a bitch Castaneda.”

  A magnificent low-slung midnight black Lamborghini sports car was parked in the no parking zone. Gaby felt an irrational surge of relief when she saw it. At least James Santo Marin’s car wasn’t a stretch Cadillac limousine with tinted windows.

  She pulled her arm out of his grip. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Keep your hands off me!”

  He opened the door of the Lamborghini. “The sooner you get in, the sooner I can turn on the air-conditioning. I’m taking you home.”

  “You can’t.” She was undecided now. “My car’s parked down here.”

  “I’ll have somebody pick it up.” He towered over her, mouth tight with irritation. The rough clothes he wore, the tight-fitting black shirt and threadbare jeans, outlined the muscular lines of his body sexily. “Right now I’m going to take you home,” he told her. “You can show me exactly what happened out there.”

  In spite of the blazing heat a small crowd of loungers had gathered to watch. “I want you to leave me alone!” Gaby cringed under the stares, wanting to be anywhere but there, in a shouting match with James Santo Marin in the middle of Calle Ocho. “I’m not going with you. I have to go back to the newspaper and file my story!”

  “I’ll have somebody call them.”

  “You’ll what?” She knew she was screaming like a harridan but she couldn’t stop. “You tell my friends to get lost? You’ll have somebody pick up my car? You’ll have somebody call the newspaper about work I have to do? Who do you think you are, some sort of king?”

  He gave her a furious look, black brows drawn together like check marks. “Get in the car. Please.” He emphasized the last word. “I’ll turn on the air-conditioning. We can talk.”

  The “please” made a difference, Gaby told herself. The street was like a blast furnace, and she didn’t know how much longer she could endure it. “Remember, I’m not going anywhere with you,” she warned, and slowly lowered herself into the sumptuous black car.

  He shut the door and walked around to the other side of the Lamborghini. He slid behind the wheel, started the powerful engine, and pulled away from the curb, tires squealing.

  Gaby reached for the door handle but it had locked automatically. Gasping, she leaned back against the soft black leather and watched the shabby buildings of Little Havana flash by. Now what? she wondered. She’d been absolutely stupid to trust him. She didn’t even know if he was really taking her home.

  In the close confines of the Lamborghini, James Santo Marin’s physical presence was disturbing. He was big enough, in spite of a lean, rangy frame, to crowd the front seats. The biceps of a bare tanned arm bunched impressively as he shifted gears. His faded denim jeans hugged his long, muscular legs, and on his feet were battered work boots.

  Gaby couldn’t stop staring. It was the same man, yet a totally different version in jeans and T-shirt, hair tousled, face grim. He looked tough. Low-down, she thought with a sinking feeling.

  “There’s nothing to see at the house,” she muttered. Everything’s been cleaned up.”

  He shot her a quick look. “Did you get my flowers?” When she looked at him in confusion, he said impatiently, “Roses. Four dozen red roses. I sent them to the newspaper.”

  It took her a moment to understand. The bouquet that had arrived at the newsroom. The one she thought had been sent for some shopping mall promotion. “You sent those?” She couldn’t believe it. “But there was no card!”

  He turned his head, surprised. “Who else would be sending you flowers? I sent them
after I—” He stopped. “After,” he said, his jaw clenched, “that night.”

  That, too, took a minute. After that night.

  Gaby turned her face to the window. That stormy night and the way it had ended there on the couch in her living room. Until now she had managed to bury the more painful parts of it deep in the back of her mind.

  She inched away from the touch of his leg and arm as far as she could. Who else would be sending you flowers? He was crazy if he thought he had some sort of claim on her.

  When they stopped at a red light on the causeway, she kept the back of her head to him, pretending to be absorbed in the cruise ships in the port of Miami.

  “I was out of town for a few days.” His voice was expressionless. “Otherwise I would have called you.”

  If he’d gone out of town Gaby could guess why. No, she hadn’t changed her mind about him. He was too flashy, too good-looking, undoubtedly dangerous. Dodd had told her as much. Even the babalawo had more or less agreed. He might be responsible for the Santería at her house, she thought with a shiver. After all, he had tried to threaten her, hadn’t he?

  The Lamborghini purred up the driveway and stopped at the Colliers’ front door. James Santo Marin got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side to open her door.

  “Start from the beginning,” he said. “When your friends brought you home and you found the dog.”

  Gaby stepped from the car and pulled her arm out of his grip. “It’s really none of your business. And this wasn’t funny, practically kidnapping me. I want you just to leave me here and go back to”—her gaze raked his clothes meaningfully—”to whatever it was you were doing.”

  “I was working on my boat. I can do that anytime. Now, where did you find the dog?”

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, her anger flaring. “Are you checking everything out to see if it worked? Well, it did! Beautifully! This Santería mess put my mother in the hospital. The police came.” He strode ahead of her on the path. She stalked after him, yelling like a harridan again, amazed at herself behaving that way. But she found him, and especially the way he acted, unendurable. “We got the whole neighborhood up in the middle of the night,” she went on. “And it scared me half to death!”