“What was that all about?”

“You’re angry.”

“Ofcourse, I’m angry. Animals eating kids? Human sacrifice? Do you have any idea what it’s going to take to get her to bed now? She already has dreams about animals eating her up.”

His mother’s eyes grew wide. “What! She has dreams like that! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why? Because they’re just dreams, Mother. All kids have nightmares at her age, and this kind of crazy…stuffdoesn’t help. Speaking of which, I must have been nuts to bring her here. All of this…” He gestured to the room, the devotees in their standing clusters. He couldn’t think of any word that was not vile, for all of this.

“You don’t understand,” she said with uncharacteristic calm. “You should be made to thesantos, like a man. But you hold back, and this is why Orunmila can’t speak to you clearly.”

She spoke as to a child, and this made Paz even angrier. His mother wasn’t supposed to be calm like this, he wanted a fight. He said, “I’m taking tonight off,” a statement normally guaranteed to produce a battle.

But she only nodded and said, “If you like.”

“I’ll see you later, then,” he said and turned away to collect Amelia.

Who was not to be found.

Paz strode through the rooms, pushing past crowds that seemed to have grown thicker, and thicker, too, the odor of the candle and incense, and warmer the rooms. Sweat ran into his eyes and soaked the sides of his shirt. He called her name, he asked strangers if they had seen a little girl (pink shirt and jeans, pink sneakers) and got concerned but unhelpful looks, shakes of the head. With panic rising in him, he ran outside and looked up and down the block. The air felt wonderfully cool against his hot skin, but he plunged back into the heat and the noise, with his stomach lodged in his throat.

And found Amelia sitting peacefully on her grandmother’s lap, having bits of smeared yellow and green icing wiped from her mouth. She said, “Daddy, I got a piece with Orunmila’s name written on it.”

“That’s nice,” said Paz from an arid mouth. “Where were you? I was looking all over for you.”

“I was right here with Abuela all the time.”

Paz could not meet his mother’s glance. He would have sworn out a federal affidavit that he had been in this very room four times in the past ten minutes, and that it had contained neither Margarita Paz nor her small descendant.

Paz let Amelia sit in the shotgun seat of the Volvo like the irresponsible daredevil dad he was. The wife always made her sit in the backseat for that extra level of safety, but Paz as a cop had seen a lot more car wrecks than she had, and he thought that safetywise it was a toss-up. Also he liked having her up there with him. He himself had spent what seemed like years in the front seat of an old Ford pickup with a bright stainless catering rig on the bed, sans seat belt in an interior vaunting any number of steel edges capable of piercing young skulls. He had survived this, and such riding with his mother remained among his dearest memories of childhood.

He was now driving in a dreamlike state, more or less southward toward home, but when he reached the turnoff to South Miami he passed it by and headed farther south on Dixie Highway. I could keep going, he thought, down to the Keys, to Key West, the end of the road. He could get a boat and a hose-rig and dive for conch, and Amelia could sit up topside and mind the regulator. He could open a little shack and serve conch fritters to the tourists and drink a lot of rum and let Amelia take care of him. That was a kind of life. He knew guys who had it, and they seemed pretty happy until their livers crumpled or they went boating in their rusty old automobiles. He wanted a beer to go with these stupid thoughts.

He pulled into a truck stop just north of Perrine, at the point where suburban Miami fades into rough and rural. It comprised a squalid array of gas stalls and a low office/grocery made of peeling white concrete, somewhat uglier than it had to be, as if in defiance.

“Can I have a Dove bar?” asked Amelia.

“No, your mother’s going to slaughter me as it is. I’ll get you a juice box. Don’t move and don’t touch the car.”

“I can drive a car.”

“I’m sure, but not today, okay?”

Paz got out and went into the store. The air was cruelly refrigerated and stank of microwaved tacos. He purchased a six-pack of Miller talls and a box of juice. He sat in the car, popped a can, and drank most of its tasteless fizz in one long swallow.

“That lady has clown hair,” said Amelia.

Paz looked. The lady, an African American, indeed wore a thick helmet of bright orange hair, also tiny blue satin shorts, high-heeled sandals, and a red tube top that served up her large breasts like puddings. There were several other similarly dressed ladies lounging around, chatting to truck drivers and a car full of what looked like Mexican farmworkers. As they watched, the lady with the clown hair walked off with a stocky man in a feed cap and a long trucker’s wallet stuck in his back pocket and fixed to his belt by a chain.

“Is she that man’s wife?” asked Amelia.

“I don’t know, darling. I think they’re just friends.”

“He’s going to let her ride in his truck. He’s a demon.”

“Is he. How can you tell?”

“I just can. I can tell demons and witches. Some witches are good witches, did you know that?”

“I didn’t. What about monsters? Are there good and bad monsters?”

“Of course. The Credible Hunk is a good monster. Godzilla is a good monster. Shrek is a good monster.”

“What about vampires?”

“Daddy, vampires are just make-believe,” explained Amelia patiently, “like Barbies. Look, there’s that lady who had dinner with us.”

Paz looked. Beth Morgensen had just stepped out of a Honda and was talking animatedly with a couple of the road whores. They appeared to be well acquainted.

Paz downed the rest of his beer and started the car, planning on a quick getaway, but the sound of the engine had attracted attention, and Beth walked over, grinning. She gave Paz a fat kiss through the window, holding lip contact a little longer than was strictly required, and then eyed the beers.

“Getting your load on before going home to the wife. How perfectly working-classish of you.”

“Ever the sociologist.”

“Accompanied by the little darling, I see. How are you, sugar?”

“Fine,” said Amelia and sucked loudly on her juice straw. Whatever was happening was grown-up stuff, boring and a little disturbing. More interesting were the funny ladies who now came vamping up to the car, cooing over Amelia in a friendly way. Beth made introductions, as at a garden party. It was all very civilized. One of the whores offered to watch the child while Paz did whatever business he needed to do (laughter). Another offered a lowball price on account of you got such a cute baby. Not that I want another one. More laughter, in which Beth joined. Paz pasted a sickly grin on his face and traded wisecracks until their business called and they drifted away.

“Are you what they call a participant-observer in this study?” Paz asked, with a little edge to it, at which Beth Morgensen chuckled and said, “Oh, no, Jimmy darling, you know I’m a charitable foundation. I just give it away.” She drew a business card from her bag, licked it lazily, and stuck it to the visor above his head. “Call anytime. Sociology never sleeps.”

On the way back, Paz removed the card from the vinyl, and instead of tossing it, his hand moved as if compelled by a mystic force and slid it into the pocket of his shirt.