“Okay, we had a fight, I apologized, and now it’s over. You forgive me and we move on, just like always.”

“It’s not as simple as that.”

“Explain the complexity.”

“I feel totally betrayed. I don’t know if I can trust you now.”

“What, because I had a couple of beers?”

“Don’t be smart! I still can’t believe that you took our daughter to a voodoo ceremony, fortune-telling and blood sacrifices and…and yams. Without even the courtesy of discussing it with me. Filling her head with frightening toxic nonsense. How could you!”

“It’s not voodoo, Lola, as you know. I wish you’d stop calling Santería voodoo. It’s insulting.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Right, like Catholic and Jewish is the same because they both come from Palestine. I explained all this to you last night. It’s not a conspiracy. It was spur of the moment. Margarita was there, and Amy asked me, and I didn’t see the harm in-”

“It’s ridiculous barbaric nonsense. You don’t evenbelieve in it!”

“Maybe that’s true, but my mother does, and I have to respect that. And Amy only has the one grandmother, and they love each other, and I’m not going to stand up and tell her her grandmother is full of shit because she follows thesantos. It’s part of her culture, just like science, just like medicine.”

“Except medicine is real. That’s a slight difference. Medicine doesn’t cause nightmares in little girls.”

Something in her tone, a higher pitch, a shake in the voice, made Paz stop and examine his wife more closely. This stridency was not like her at all; a joke, a light mockery, was more in her line when discussing the peculiarities of his culture.

“What’s going on, Lola? This can’t just be about Santería. We been married seven years, and you never went nuts about it before.”

Therewas something wrong. She was not meeting his eye, and Lola was ordinarily a major fan of eye contact. “Maybe,” he added lightly, “you should’ve married a Jewish doctor after all.”

“Oh, and a little sneaky anti-Semitism added to the mix now? Look, I absolutely have to leave now or I’ll be late for rounds.”

Somewhat stunned at this last interchange, Paz lifted his hands. She jumped up on the bike and rolled clicking down the shell driveway.

Later that morning, Paz was at work in the restaurant, having deposited his daughter at school without incident and without discussion of any bad dreams. She had summoned him (he lying awake alone in the marriage bed) with a shrill cry in the night, and he had arrived at her side to find her still in a sense asleep, but whimpering and shaking, eyes open but unseeing-terrifying. Paz had neglected to mention this episode to the resident psychiatrist: Lola had (mercifully) slept through the whole thing. Nor did he intend to.

Paz was preparing yuca, a tedious task, which he now welcomed. The yuca is a pillar of Cuban cuisine, but it is a tricky tuber, devious like life itself, Paz was now thinking. It has an ugly rough bark, which must be removed, and then the toxic green underskin must be carefully stripped off, without losing too much yuca. It bleeds a white liquid while this is happening. The core must also be removed, as it is inedible. Paz, too, felt stripped and bleeding, and he knew there was something poisonous at his own core. He laughed out loud.The Yuca Way to Personal Growth, a book he might write:A Cuban Line-Cook’s Guide to Enlightenment.

He prepped a bushel of yuca and then ran it through a food processor. The sludge would be the basis of Guantanamera’s famous conch ’n’ crab fritters and also a new dish Paz was trying out, deep-fried prawns in yuca batter mixed with rum. He made a handful of these, adjusted the flavorings, shared samples with the rest of the kitchen crew, took counsel, and then played with seasonings and the temperature of the deep fryer. By eleven he’d decided it was good enough to serve as a special with a raw jicama salad, and so informed the waitstaff. His mother was absent, so there were no arguments that yuca tempura prawns had not been thought of in Cuba in 1956 and hence were not to be served in her restaurant. But where was she? She’d gone to pick up Amelia at the usual time. A little tick of concern started, which was quickly submerged in the violent amnesia of the lunch rush.

Surfacing around half past two, Paz looked down to see his little girl soliciting his attention. She was dressed in an ankle-length armless sheath of yellow silk patterned with large green tropical leaves, and tiny white strapped sandals with a modest heel. Her hair was braided and arranged in a shining crown around her head set off by a white gardenia behind her ear. Around her neck was a necklace of green and yellow glass beads.

“That’s quite an outfit. Been shopping with Abuela?”

“Yes. We went to a special store.” She fingered the necklace. “These beads are blessed. It’s not just a regular necklace, Daddy.”

“I bet. How’s the room? Everybody enjoying?”

“Yes. There’re millions of Japanese people all dressed the same. Why do they do that?”

“I don’t know. It’s a custom, I guess.”

“Anyway, the because I came in is there’s a man outside who wants to see you. He knew you were my daddy. Table three.”

“Thank you. What does he look like?”

She thought for a moment. “Like a football player, but bald, too.”

“Right. Tell him I’ll be out as soon as I finish these orders.”

Police Major Douglas Oliphant did look like a football player and had actually been one in college, a linebacker for Michigan. He was dark brown in color and calm in mien, and Paz liked him as well as any man he had ever worked for. Oliphant ran, among other things, the homicide and domestic violence unit of the Miami Police Department. He looked up from his nearly empty plate and nodded at Paz, indicating the seat opposite.

Paz sat and said, “You had the prawns.”

“I did. I’m almost ready to say you’re more valuable to humanity and the city cooking this stuff than you are catching murderers. Terrific food, Jimmy.”

“Thank you. The answer is still no.”

“You don’t know the question yet.”

“I bet I do. Tito was by the other day. You want me to advise on this big shot who got eaten up by the invisible voodoo tiger.”

A tight smile from Oliphant. “That would be nice. It would be a civic gesture and appreciated by all your friends in the Cuban community, especially in light of recent events.”

“Such as?”

“Last night the home of a man named Cayo D. Garza, a Cuban-American banker, was vandalized. His front door was clawed to ribbons and deposits of feces were left on his front walk. On examination, these feces proved to be that of a jaguar. According to the zoo. Our crime scene people don’t have much expertise with jaguar shit. It’s not something that comes up a lot. We took a look around his yard, and we found big-cat paw prints, not unlike the paw prints found at Fuentes’s place.”

“The partially devoured Fuentes.”

“Him. So we’re now real interested, and when Tito looks at the known associates of Mr. Garza, what does he find? The late Antonio Fuentes. And upon further investigation of the K.A.s of Fuentes and Garza, we find Felipe Ibanez, an import-export fellow, and guess what? He had exactly the same vandalism two nights ago, although he thought so little of it that he declined to report it to the police. He was having someone replace his door when the Miami Beach cops showed up, and he’d already flushed the jaguar poo-poo, but we found paw prints there, too. They’re both out on Fisher Island, big estate-type places. Now, it seems that Fuentes, Garza, and Ibanez were partners in a venture, because when we ran their names through county business records, we found a little d.b.a. they set up last year called Consuela Holdings, LLC. Four equal partners. The fourth guy is Juan X. Calderón. You know him?”