He was in the car. It was moving and he appeared to be driving it. He wasn’t sure whether he really knew how to drive a car. It seemed huge, like an ocean liner. He turned left on Twelfth Avenue. There were dead bodies in the gutters and burning cars all around. He would be dead soon if he didn’t stop driving and leave this car. What he needed was bed. Thong was choking him. Stop the car get rid of the thong. He slowed, pulled toward the curb.
Jane Doe punched him in the mouth. The blow came from nowhere: one second she was slumped against the car door, the next she was on him, punching, scratching at his face. He braked to a stop and fought her off. She connected with his nose. The shock of pain. Suddenly his head was clear. He concentrated on the pain. He thought the pain was wonderful, compared to what had been going on in his head before. He grabbed the wheel and tromped on the gas pedal. They roared north. Jane Doe stopped hitting him.
They were on the boat. He had trouble untying the lines because the lines had turned into fat snakes. His hands wouldn’t grab them. He reached back to his hip and punched himself in the jaw. It really hurt and his head cleared enough to let him do simple acts. He threw off the lines, jumped onto the boat, and started the motor. As soon as black water separated them from the bulkhead he felt a little better, and the further they traveled down the Miami River the more normal he felt. Something had gone wrong at the restaurant, but he couldn’t quite recall what it was. He noticed that there was something around his neck, a finely woven rectangular straw bag on a leather thong. Where had he got that? And why was there blood all over it, and down his shirt? And why did his nose and jaw hurt? And what was he doing on a moonlight cruise with Jane Doe and her kid?
But by the time they passed under the Brickell Avenue Bridge a good deal of it had come back to him, like recalling a dream you had last night in the middle of the workday, or a dejr vu. The air smelled of smoke, like burning garbage; he could hear distant sirens.
The cabin hatch opened and Jane came out. She stood beside him, her arms crossed, her fine pale hair whipped by the wind of their passage. They broke out into Biscayne Bay, and when they passed the marker, Paz pushed the throttle forward. The boat stood up on its counter and roared into the night.
“This is nice,” said Jane. “I haven’t been on the water in a while. Where are we going?”
“I thought Bear Cut. It’s a little channel across the bay. We can drop anchor there and figure out what we’re going to do.” She nodded. The boat was bouncing on a light chop, but she wasn’t holding on, just swaying easily with the motion.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Considering, yes I am. Did I punch you?”
“Yeah. A right to the nose, I think. A nice shot.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not a problem. It was probably the thing to do, to be honest. I punched myself, too.” He cleared his throat. “Are you going to tell me what went on back there?”
“He probably sent one of his creatures around with a dose of something mind-altering, untargeted except for me. Mass confusion and madness. He wanted me to come to him.”
“My mom didn’t seem too affected.”
“No, she’s under Yemaya’s protection. And she gave you a … I don’t know what they call it in Santeria, but in Olo it’s ch’akadoulen.” She tapped the little bag around his neck. “A ward against witchcraft.”
“How did she know to send me to the water?”
“She may not have. Yemaya is orisha of the sea. As an oriate of Yemaya she would have thought of water.”
“So it was just a coincidence?”
After a second of amazed silence, Jane Doe laughed in his face. “Yeah, right! Honestly, Detective!”
Paz ignored the rebuke. He didn’t want to think about his mother just yet.
“There’s stuff I still don’t understand,” he said.
“Really? Gosh, it’s all clear as glass to me.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Jane. I need some help here.”
“Sorry.” She looked genuinely abashed, and he felt ashamed.
It struck him that what he had gone through that evening was as nothing to what she had endured. Targeted. He said, “In your journal … he met you at that ceremony, but you never wrote down what he said. Any reason for that?”
She shrugged. “I can’t recall. Something about how he still really loved me. Just what a girl wants to hear at a dance.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Yes, I did.”
“In spite of all the shit he pulled on you?”
She met his gaze. “Have you ever been in love, Detective Paz? I mean totally, up to your eyes?”
“All the time,” he said lightly, and immediately regretted his tone.
“You haven’t, or you wouldn’t ask. I guess I was more of a Catholic about marriage than I figured. I thought it was for life. I guess it is. The Gelede priestess had it right: either I’ll kill him or he’ll kill me. You know what’s the worst thing? I keep thinking it’s my fault.”
“He doesn’t seem like such a bargain.”
“You didn’t know him,” she said with a snap to her voice, and then let out a startled laugh. “Christ! I’m still defending him. Yeah, sure, he’s a demon and a serial killer, but aside from that, when you really get to know him, deep inside he’s … I wonder if he has any inside left. You know what real love is, Detective? It’s not what you think. It’s not loving the virtues of the beloved. Anyone can love you for your virtues, that’s no trick. I mean, that’s what virtues are?lovable qualities. It’s the unlovely stuff that makes love. We all have a little nasty wounded place in us, and if you can get someone to find that and love it, then you really have something. And I thought I did. I thought I really saw him, how he saw himself at the core, the baby in the garbage can, the son of the junkie nigger whore and her white trick. I know he saw me. I certainly opened myself enough.”
“What’s your nasty wounded place, Jane?”
She gave him one of her sharp looks. “Is this part of the official interrogation, Detective?”
“No, but I told you mine.”
“Fair enough. Okay, my mother hated me. Boo-hoo. From the cradle. A staple of cheap pop psychology, so banal I can’t even take it seriously myself, but Witt Moore did. He thought I was beautiful, and smart, and perfect. He may still, God help me.” She turned then and looked backward over the rail, to where the creamy wake vanished into the black waters. Paz let her stare for the remainder of the ride.
He dropped the anchor in the shallow waters of Bear Cut and switched off the motor. In the ringing silence afterward they could hear the swishing of the mangroves and the plash of wavelets on the nearby beach. The air was clean and smelled of salt and marshes. The moon was nearly full, frosting each billow, out to the horizon, row on row. They could see the lights of the city, although some parts of it were oddly dark. There was a red glow north of the river, sign of a major fire.
Paz went below and came back with a bottle of Bacardi Anejo rum and a couple of paper cups. They sat on a cushioned bench at the stern and he poured a generous slug into each cup.
“Happy days,” said Paz, lifting his cup. She smiled faintly and drank. She coughed and pulled a vial from her bag and took a couple of pills.
“So what I don’t get is why the two single killings, if he needs four. I mean that woman in Africa, and your sister.”
“The Olo must have stopped him in Africa. Ulune isn’t the only sorcerer they have. That’s why he came home is my guess. No one believes in that stuff here. My sister … I told you, he wants me to watch him. I’m his audience. He used to tell me that about his writing. Jane, it’s all for you, I think of what you’ll say when you see it. You keep me honest.”
“But he thought you were dead.”
“So I believed. But maybe he wasn’t fooled. Or maybe he was trying to bring me back from the dead.”