“We’ll stop him,” said Paz, hardly believing it himself. “So how did you get out of there?”
“Oh, that part’s a little vague. The dry season was on by then, the channels were drying into mud, not that I knew what channels to take. And I was hallucinating a lot, and I was sick, really sick. I got completely lost. I ended up stranded on the mud, burning up with fever. Fade to black. The next thing I remember was the hospital in Bamako. They thought I had hepatitis. Apparently, I was found by a Fulani herder driving his herd down to the Niger for the big river crossing, the Diafarabe. He recognized my amulet and figured it would be good juju to rescue me. I guess you must’ve got the rest if you talked to my father. The weirdest thing was that when Witt showed up in my hospital room in New York, I was sort of glad to see him.” She laughed. “That old black magic’s got me in its spell.”
He was about to say something about it being nothing to laugh about, when Luz came tromping down the ladder, wearing a threadbare red velvet dress over a gingham pinafore over yellow pedal pushers and a frilly blouse. Paz stood up and said to the little girl, “Great outfit, kid, let’s go eat.”
“And see the fishies.”
They got into the old Buick and drove north on Douglas. The Grove seemed reasonably quiet; people were staying in. There were few cars; once a police car whipped by, siren whooping, and Paz felt a pang of guilt. He was, officially, off duty, but maybe he was AWOL as well. He had not called in to find out what was going on, or where his partner was. He had run. He had left his partner and run. Of course, the alternative was staying and shooting his partner and a bunch of guys with machine guns, or being shot himself. He told himself that he was in fact where the action on this case really was. If it could be fixed at all, he would either fix it with this crazy woman or die trying.
At the Trail, they had to stop for some time, while emergency equipment, fire trucks, ambulances, buses full of cops went by, sirens and lights. The worst of the trouble seemed to lie east, over by the bay and Brickell Avenue. Paz directed her west.
Jane said, “I assume you’re off duty.”
Paz gave her a quick nervous look. “I guess. I don’t know what good a cop is when the guy who’s doing the bad stuff can’t be collared and locked up. It strikes me that the prudent investigative posture is to stick as close as possible to you.”
“As bait? Or … what?”
He thought for a moment. “Barlow used to say, the difference between a good detective and a no-account one is three things: patience, patience, and patience. I’m waiting. Something’ll turn up.” After a while he added, “Do you think … will Barlow ever come back to, like, normal? Like he was?”
“He might,” she said. “If he has people around him who treat him like he’s the decent guy you say he was, and love him, the grel may fade back. People have what we call ‘nervous breakdowns’ all the time, and recover. And there are more direct methods against them. Were you close to him?”
“Not close, but he was really good to me. I respected him more than any man I ever met.”
“A father figure?”
His face grew stiff. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Is your father here in Miami?”
“No. My mom said he died coming over from Cuba.” His tone did not invite further questions.
They drove in silence to a crowded parking lot off Calle Ocho. Jane looked at the restaurant with interest. It was a large, brightly lit place, with the name splayed in loose blue neon script over faded pink: la guantanamera. Entering, she was hit with the delicious and barely describable perfume of a good restaurant running at full tilt. The place was packed; panic had not cut into business at Guantanamera, or perhaps the rumors of disaster had brought people out to die replete. Paz was obviously well known here, she saw; the maitre d’ at the tiny front desk gave him a big smile, smiled at Jane, too, and at the fascinated yet shrinking Luz. Ignoring the clot of patrons waiting in the little lobby, he immediately led the party to a nice banquette table, right under a huge saltwater fish tank. The child stood on her chair and watched the fish. Paz stood by her and named them as they drifted by: the beaugregory, the moorish idol, the damselfishes in their varieties, the French and regal and queen angelfishes, the neon goby and the rock beauty. She poked the glass and gave them her own private silly names.
“This is great,” Jane said. “She’ll probably crash in two minutes.”
A waitress arrived and gave Paz a gold-toothed smile. “Hey, Jimmy! You’re out front today.”
“Julia, how’s it going?”
“It’s been crazy tonight. She was looking for you.”
“I bet. Why don’t you bring us a couple of special daiquiris and a Shirley Temple for the kid.”
Then he spoke to her in Spanish for a few minutes and she left. Paz said, “You don’t speak Spanish?”
“Hardly a word, I’m ashamed to say. I usually speak French sprinkled with random a ‘s and o ‘s. And I caught ‘daiquiri’ just now. They seem to know you pretty well here.”
“Yeah, well, I’m here a lot.” They watched the fish and Luz for a while. Jane became aware that the music system was playing the same song over and over, with different singers and arrangements.
“That song,” she said, “I know that song. It’s famous. Didn’t Pete Seeger do that way back when?”
He laughed. “Oh, right, the definitive version. Christ, Pete Seeger! Right now this is Abelardon Barroso and la Sensacion. It’s “Guantanamera,” the greatest song ever written. Back before the revolution, Cuban radio used to play it five minutes before the hour, every hour. People used to set their watches by it. There are thousands of versions. But this next track is the original, by Joseito Fernandez. He wrote it sometime in the thirties.” She listened. A rock-solid beat and a man with precise diction and a rough friendly voice, singing from the heart.
“What do the words mean?”
“Oh, they have all kinds of verses. In the old days, Joseito used to make up verses on the news?murders, scandals, famous people.” He sang along softly: ” ‘Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crece la palma, y antes de morime quiero, echar mis versos del alma.’ “
He translated this and she said, “I believe that. I believe you are a sincere man from the land where the palms grow. And maybe you’ll actually get to sing the song of your soul.”
He shrugged. “Who can tell? Anyway, the chorus is always the same: ” Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera… the girl from Guantanamo, the girl from the farm.”
She stared at him. “From the farm?”
“Yeah, a guajira ‘s like a country girl, a hillbilly.”
“And they named this place after the song?”
“Not really.” He laughed, mildly embarrassed. “Okay, I confess?it’s my mother’s place. She’s the guantanamera it’s named after. We always play this CD after midnight, kind of a trademark. The people like it too.”
“Does she really come from a farm?”
“Oh, yeah, from back in the mountains north of Guantanamo. When I was a kid, I was always hearing what they didn’t have on the goddamn farm. What, you want sneakers! I was seventeen before I saw my first pair of shoes. What, you want a car! I was twenty-two before I even rode in a car, and that was a truck.”
“Well, she seems to be doing okay now. This place …”
“Oh, yeah, now. But they never get over it. My mom left in ‘72. Came over on a couple of doors lashed to four inner tubes. She could always cook, so she got restaurant work. She slept on a mattress in the stockroom to save money. Then I was born, and she got one of those little food trucks, going around to all the construction sites, feeding the Cubano working humps their rice and beans and media noche and the coffee and cakes. I was up there in the front seat until I started school. And she hung on to every goddamn penny and opened her first real place, a counter-and-four-tables joint on Flagler. Comidas criollas. And then this one here, fifteen or so years ago. An American success story.” She could see his face get tight as he said this, tight behind the bright, faintly mocking smile. She controlled her own excitement. “And your dad? What was he like?”