Changó, who owns all music,
Whose thunderstones burn down forests.”
She could feel the oozing sores of Babalu Aye. She remembered Padre Pio channeling the stigmata into his body. Robles did not move, his arm hanging by his thigh, his pistol pointed at the floor. She saw the developing fear in his stare. He is a believer. She took a small step toward him, then another. Then, with strength in her right hand she did not know she had, she reached under his shirt and grabbed the belt of Ogun and jerked it. Robles backed off from her touch and the broken belt came away in her hand, its black and green beads rolling across the floor.
“Ogun is useless,” she said. “Ogun is on the floor.”
She dropped the belt and more beads rolled.
“Ogun has the iron sword but Changó has lightning. Can you fight lightning with a sword?”
“You have the diabolical in you,” Robles said. She read his lips. She could not hear him.
“You are recognizing yourself,” she said.
He had raped her as an unconsummated bride, but she had seduced him. He was killing her but she had prayed him into her vagina, where Changó often dwells, where he has been lying in wait since the wedding.
And in that place Changó’s lightning had scorched the invader’s will and silenced his soul.
“Robles,” she said, “you will kill me no more.”
The music was cool, solid when Quinn entered the ballroom, the crowd poppin’ and tappin’, keeping together in time. Quinn counted at least five hundred people, at twenty a head that’s ten thousand, fifty percent for the room, food, and wine, so five big ones for Cody, nice, a middle-aged bunch, maybe a third of them black, some in tuxes and dinner gowns to tone things up for Cody. Cody was wearing his tux, white lapel carnation, playing so fine, drum and bass backup, doing “Poor Butterfly” in up tempo, not wild, can’t do those double-time breaks anymore, they punish his lungs; but his beat is there and why hasn’t the rest of the world recognized the originality of this man’s style the way Albany has? It certainly wasn’t his fingers, you can get by with eight, he said, but ten is where it’s at, and he always had ten, and some nights twelve. So what did he do wrong? Missed the subway and didn’t show up in time for the recording session with John Hammond, the record producer, was that really it? A born loser? Can’t stand prosperity? Doesn’t believe he’ll ever jump over the moon? He’s humming, zum-zum-za-zum, those lungs not failing that part of him, and he looks all right, thinner, goes with the territory, all gray and almost militarily upright, as if he took West Point posture lessons, and there’s that same tight mustache, same chin whiskers, same frowning down at the music he’s making, always his own toughest critic.
Quinn saw Renata sitting between Max and Martin Daugherty, Vivian with Pop, Matt not here, or Gloria. Quinn inhaled like a pigeon, puffed up his chest, pissed-off husband. She has fucked Max, surely. She knows how to thank a guy. She looks so gorgeous, exquisite, can’t blame Max for all that yearning. Now she’ll tell Quinn it meant nothing. When he caught up with her in Miami after her disappearance from the Holtzes she apologized for fucking Max but what could she do? He’d saved her life. She and Quinn were still in the honeymoon stage then, two weeks after the marriage, which had never been consummated because Fidel intervened. “I loved our wedding, Daniel, and our dancing with Changó and Oshun, and then Changó saving me from Robles. I’m still your virgin bride and Max means nothing, he helped me, but I’ll never be close to him again.” Quinn was then fourth in line for her prize, after Changó, Robles, and Max. A new form of virginity: I can give it to you wholesale.
“Martin,” Quinn said when he sat at the table, “where have you been, what brings you to the violent city?”
“I got bored out there in the deathbed city,” Martin said. “It’s nice to be comforted into the grave, but I’m not ready.”
“Glad to hear it. Where’s that big son of yours?”
“Over at police headquarters complaining about their methods, that’s what he does. You two had a big day, I hear.”
“We know how to have a good time,” Quinn said. “You know Cody?”
“I remember when he played down in Big Jimmy’s place, long time ago. Lot of talent. I didn’t follow him. I went in other directions. But that was good jazz down there.”
“I was only a kid. But I heard him. Never forgot him.”
“How’s your life at the newspaper?”
“They cut my throat tonight. I had a truly great story — a scam about assassinating the Mayor, which is really just a way of smearing the Brothers, and Roy in particular, and they wouldn’t print it.”
“I don’t know Roy,” Martin said.
“He’ll be here. Pop, are you all right?”
“As well as can be complimented under the circumstances.”
“Good. Vivian, I want to hear about your evening.”
“It was thrilling,” Vivian said. “Your father’s doing fine.”
“I can tell. I thank you for seeing him through a difficult day.”
“It wasn’t difficult. He got a little cut, that’s all. We had a wonderful time. And it’s not over, is it?”
“Not that I can see. Where’s Gloria?” he asked Renata.
“She’s with Matt finding out about bail for Roy.”
“Bail for Roy? They weren’t giving him bail.”
“Somebody called Cody and said it was happening.”
“I asked Jake Hess to represent Roy and Tremont. He must’ve changed their minds.”
“Then you did a good thing,” Renata said. “And Max says he’ll put up Roy’s bail.”
“Ah, Max,” Quinn said, looking at him for the first time, “very generous.”
“I like that kid,” Max said.
“How was your interview with Alex?” Renata asked.
“Predictable, but some things got aired.”
“Did you talk to him about Gloria?”
“No. I didn’t want to listen to him lie about something so important.”
Quinn was bursting with the impulse to stand up and deliver a speech about the night they took away his story on Tremont. His publisher summarily declared history unpublishable, and the Mayor, who had orchestrated that history, affirmed that it had never happened. Tremont the assassin and Zuki the provocateur did not exist. It’s odd how the Pashas reverse themselves, Tremont free, Roy bailed, Renata released from her torture cell (with divine intervention).
Quinn just listened as Renata updated him on the situation with Max: now waiting for the okay to enter Cuba, and when he gets it he’ll leave for Canada, Gander. Complicated, but it’s being arranged. The amazing Renata, who never lost her taste or her talent for intrigue.
Quinn leaned toward Max and whispered, “Alfie may be in Cuba.”
“They let him in?” Max asked.
“That’s the hot rumor in Miami. What does that do to your getting in?”
“I’ll have to ask Renata’s babalawo.”
When Robles ended Renata’s torture he had asked her what she wanted. I want my mother, she said. If they let my mother come to the Buro they won’t kill me because she is a woman of means, of status, of influence. Robles had said influence doesn’t matter here, but it matters. Robles had the guards wash the blood off her body, her face, her ears, her hair. He gave her a policeman’s shirt out of the closet, small, it almost fit her, but nobody was her size on the police force. They put ice on her face where she had been cut and bruised to reduce the swelling, brushed her hair, then gave her a room with a cot to lie on until the morning. She feared they would kill her during the night. A woman came in and examined her and put drops in her ears and gave her water and pills and said, take three for your pain. Renata could not hear her voice. She accepted the pills but kept them in her hand. Pills might be poison, Diego had told her. I have no pain, she told the woman.