She giggled. “Yeah, I hear you, man. It’s dynamite boo. Oh, wait, this is a great song.” She leaned back and closed her eyes and listened to Toby Keith sing “I Love This Bar.” Time passed.
The sound of a car door opening. Professor Cooksey slid into the backseat.
“Well, Jennifer, I see you found our friend. You never cease to mystify and amaze me.”
“Yeah, he was in the Gardens, stealing pieces of plants. He almost got busted, but I got him out of there. I’m trying to teach him English.”
“Are you, indeed? Well, good for you.” Jenny saw that the Professor was staring at the Indian in a strange way, really hard, like he was trying to see into his head, and the Indian was staring back, like he was trying to do the same. She had a familiar and sad feeling that stuff was going to happen that she wouldn’t be able to understand.
“My dear, could you turn that music down a bit? I’d like to see what this gentleman has to say for himself.”
“He can speak Spanish,” she said. “Geli was talking to-”
“Yes, but I doubt he speaks it very well,” said Cooksey, and then he began to speak in a language she had never heard before, and she was about to feel kind of crummy about being shut out and all until she saw Moie’s face light up with sheer pleasure; a flood of the same speech issued from his mouth.
“I’m amazed,Tayit, to hear Runisi in the land of the dead. Are you a priest?”
“Not I, but I spent a lot of time in the Jimori country. Do you know them?”
“I have heard of them, of course. They are vile and steal wives and eat babies.”
“They say the same about the Runiya people. Also that you kill all foreigners in your country.”
“They are liars, then, as well,” said Moie, and after a pause, added, “but we do kill foreigners. Or most foreigners. Did you know Father Tim? He was a dead person like yourself.”
“Well, you know there are very many of us, too many to allow us to know all the others, as you can. Why do you call us dead people?”
“Because we Runiya are alive in this world. We are inside it, and the plants and animals, stones and sky and stars, sun and moon, are our friends and relatives. That’s what it means to be alive. A fish is alive and a bird, too. But you are outside the world, looking in on it as the ghosts do, and making mischief and destruction, like ghosts do. Therefore we say you are dead like they are. Also, when a person is alive, they carry their death behind them, there”-and here the Indian pointed over Cooksey’s left shoulder-“and this is one way we tell a live person from a ghost. But you carry your deaths inside you all the time, so you can have the power of death over all things. So we call you dead people.”
“I see,” said Cooksey, “and very good sense it makes, too. Now tell me this: you came a long way from your home to stop us dead people from killing your forest. So I have heard from my friends. Tell me, how do you think you will stop them?”
So Moie told the story of what he had learned from Father Perrin after he was killed, and as for how he would stop it, he knew he could not. Just one man could not stop such a thing, and he was not a fool to think it. But Jaguar had promised him that if he brought him to the land of the dead, then Jaguar would stop it.
“And how will he do that?”
Moie made a peculiar gesture using his hands and his head that was easily interpretable as a shrug. “We say: we can ask Jaguar what will happen, and ask him what we should do, but we never ask him how he will do what he does. And if he told us we would not understand.”
“That’s probably wise,” said Cooksey, and then they spoke of many things, Cooksey answering many of the questions Moie had about the land of the dead, until, observing an increasingly impatient Jenny, he added in English, “Well, I think the thing to do is return to the property for a bite of lunch, and then we might venture to discuss how we can help our friend here. Drive on, Jennifer.”
At about this time, some miles to the north, three men were seated at a white-clothed and silver-set table in a small executive dining room on the thirtieth floor of the Panamerica Bancorp Building. All three were of the same background, Cubans and the sons of the families who had ruled that island for generations before the revolution of 1959. They had left Cuba as young men (and not floating on rafts either) and had prospered in the United States. In purely financial terms, they were vastly richer than their forebears, yet they harbored, along with most of the rest of their class and generation, a sense of grievance. Their American contemporaries, with whom they did business and played golf, were men of power, but they had never owned a country absolutely and owned all the people in it. Their power was not of that sweetest kind. These Cubans had been able, with the acquiescence of America, to transfer much of their culture to South Florida, which they ran as a kind of fief, the unalterable principle of which was that no one could ever become president of the United States who would normalize relations with the Monster across the Straits of Florida. They were confident, sensual, intelligent, unimaginative, industrious gentlemen, and if they shared a fear, it was that they would never get to dance on Fidel’s grave.
And now another more instant fear: the man who had called this meeting, Antonio Fuentes, had been murdered the previous night, for they had contacts in the police and knew the truth about the full horror of the crime. Cayo Delgado Garza, the host of the luncheon meeting, and the chairman of the eponymous Bancorp, had wanted to cancel it, out of respect, but the other two had insisted that it go forward. These were Juan X. Fernandez Calderón, called Yoiyo, the most vigorous of the three, a developer and financier, and Felipe Guerra Ibanez, who owned a large trading concern. They were all dressed in expensive dark-colored suits and quiet ties; Garza and Ibanez had pins of fraternal organizations in their lapels, in place of which Calderón wore an enamel American flag. They all had immaculately trimmed heads of hair, light brown in the case of Calderón, silver on the other two. They had soft manicured hands, on the wrists of which hung inherited gold watches. Garza was paunchy, Ibanez thin, Calderón still trim and athletic. He played tennis and golf frequently and kept a yacht; unlike the others, he had blue eyes.
A silent brown waiter in a white jacket with shiny buttons served drinks and vanished. They drank the liquor in grateful drafts and spoke feelingly of the dead Fuentes. The waiter returned. Another round of drinks and the lunch ordered, and now they turned to business. Garza asked Calderón, “So…Yoiyo: what do we make of this?”
An eloquent shrug. “I’m just as baffled as you. Who would kill Tony? As far as I know he didn’t have an enemy in the world. And to tear him up like that! It makes no sense.”
“It does if someone is trying to frighten us,” said Garza quietly. Calderón stared at him for a second and then shot a look at Ibanez, who indicated by the subtlest possible expression that this was something worth considering. It was clear to Calderón that they had discussed the matter without him, and he felt a jab of anger. But the three men had been doing business together profitably for years. They knew one another well, at least in the way of business.
“What, you’re suggesting that this had something to do with Consuela?”
“He was the chairman, the public face, to the extent it has a public face,” replied Garza. “And there was that incident the other afternoon, the reason why Tony wanted to meet.”
“That’s insane, Cayo. Some little bird-watcher is not going to chop up a man to make a point.”
“He had a South American Indian with him,” said Ibanez.
“So he had an Indian, for which, by the way we only have the evidence of that dumb secretary and the dumber security guards. How many South American Indians have they seen? I mean, think about it for a minute! A man bursts into a business office, yells a lot of propaganda, gets tossed out, and then what? He goes to the businessman’s home and murders him and chops him into pieces and tries to make it look like some kind of tiger did it? It’s preposterous.”