Luz doesn’t look up from the water. “I remember the day George died. When he gasped his last breath in this pen, he was slaughtered and made into soup and combs. I was inconsolable. I cried myself to sleep every night after. My dad gave me five dollars to go buy myself something to cheer me up. I went to the Catholic church—they have a grotto there with a life-size Virgin statue inside. You can pay money to light a candle for the Virgin to protect you from hurricanes, or answer your prayers. With the five bucks, I lit up all the candles in the grotto for Big George.”
The Chief turns away from the pen and steps back. He pulls out his wallet and takes out a five-dollar bill. “What do you say”—he holds up the bill with a grin—“we go to the grotto and light us some candles.”
Zoe sits at Noah’s kitchen table, wearing a bare-shouldered halter-top sundress. Her blond hair is swept up in a French knot, exposing diamond-stud earrings in her lobes. She watches with fascination as Noah works at the stove over pots and pans of steaming and frying food. “When did you take up cooking?”
Noah carefully flips two yellowfin-tuna fillets simmering in a pan over a gas flame. “I’ve only recently become interested in the alchemy of the culinary arts.” He uncorks a glass vial and spreads crushed ginger root on the fish. He opens the oven door and sprinkles passionflower petals onto a baking plantain-banana pie.
“ ‘Alchemy of the culinary arts’? You make it sound like something exotic. Women cook every day. No big deal.” She picks up the water glass in front of her and takes a sip. Her mouth puckers. “This water tastes like it’s got bitter lemon in it or something.”
“Do you like it?”
Zoe smacks her lips. “It’s tangy. I don’t know if I like it or not.”
“Would you like something more than water?”
“Like some rum, maybe?”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m just trying to be a good husband.”
“A good husband? Too late for that. I gave you every chance a woman can give. I brought the final divorce document with me. All you have to do is sign it.”
Noah opens the refrigerator door and takes out a bowl of strawberry soup. “At least we can have dinner; here’s the first course.” He places the bowl in front of her and sits close.
“What a weird-looking soup.” She bends her head and sniffs at the pink concoction with red nuggets of dried strawberries floating on top.
Noah scoops a spoonful of soup from the bowl and holds it up to her lips.
Zoe laughs nervously. “I’m not sure I want this. What do you know about cooking, anyway?”
“There’s only one way to find out. Close your eyes and take a sip.”
She doesn’t close her eyes.
“Trust me.”
Zoe reluctantly shuts her eyes. Noah moves the spoon near her parting lips. He slides the spoon into her mouth, spilling a trickle of soup onto her lips. She keeps her eyes closed as she swallows. Her lips glisten a bright strawberry-pink. He places his hand under her chin, turning her face up to kiss her.
Her eyes open. “It’s delicious! What bizarre stuff did you put in this? I want the recipe!”
“Only strawberries and sugar.”
She licks the red residue off her lips. “No, I taste something else.”
“I put my love in it. All my love.”
Zoe flinches at the sudden intimacy. She looks at the empty rum bottle in the center of the table. A burning candle is stuck in the bottle’s narrow neck.
Noah touches one of the bright stones on her earlobe. “These are the earrings I gave you on our wedding day.”
“Don’t get any ideas. I just wore them because they go with this dress.”
“And I bought you that dress for our first wedding anniversary. It still fits you like a silk glove.”
“I told you not to get any ideas.” She stares at the empty rum bottle in the center of the table. Inside the bottle, at its bottom, is her gold wedding ring. “I see my ring is exactly where it was when I was here the last time.”
“There’s a prize in each and every bottle of rum.”
She looks back at him. “You haven’t been drinking tonight. Why?”
“I stopped. Trying to walk the sober trail.”
“Famous first words.”
“I quit for you.”
“Famous last words. We’ll see how long that lasts.”
They fall into silence, watching the candle in the bottle burn. The ring inside the bottle shines.
He shifts his gaze back to her earrings. “I think your diamonds have lost their sparkle.”
She pats her ears. “Really? I think they still look good.”
“They aren’t as lustrous as when I first gave them to you. Someone told me that the only way to bring back the original sparkle of diamonds is to rub royal jelly from the Brazilian queen bee on them.”
“And I’ll bet Mr. Alchemist the Cook has some of that jelly stuff around here somewhere, don’t you?”
Noah slips from his coat pocket a purple velvet bag. He unties the bag and pulls out a corked glass vial containing honey-colored jelly. He opens the vial and dips a finger into the jelly. He rubs the jelly onto one of her diamond earrings, then massages the slick substance into the soft skin of her surrounding earlobe.
Her words come with intimate breathiness. “Are they sparkling yet?”
He leans close to her, his lips almost touching hers as he whispers, “Sparkling, like the sun. Radiant, like you.”
Zoe pulls back and stands. She grabs her purse from a chair and snaps it open, taking out a bundled stack of papers. She slaps the bundle on the table. “I said this would be our last dinner.”
“But you only tasted the soup.”
“No more games. Sign the divorce papers.” She turns to leave.
Noah leaps up and grabs her arm. “Wait, I’ll walk you home.”
“Walk me home? I don’t need you to walk me home. I’m a big girl.”
“It’s dark outside. There’s a killer on the loose.”
“A killer on the loose?” She stares into Noah’s eyes with a sudden illumination. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’ve been the one following me home at night after I close up the bar.”
“Of course it was me. I told you, it’s not safe.”
“I don’t need a knight on a white horse to protect me! I just need a sober man who believes in himself and is one hundred percent present!” She spins around and walks out.
Noah slumps back down on the chair at the table. His lips turn down as he looks at the stack of divorce papers. His fingers drum lightly on the papers, then drum harder and harder. His hands begin shaking uncontrollably. He shoves his chair back with a loud scrape against the floor. He turns the flame off beneath the pan of burning fish. He yanks open a cupboard and pulls out a full bottle of rum. He opens the bottle and tilts it toward his mouth; the glass tip of the bottle touches his trembling lips. He turns swiftly, holding the bottle upside down over the sink next to him. He watches the dark rum flow down the sink drain and disappear. He stares at the empty bottle with a look of shocked remorse. “Goddamn, that was stupid!” He grabs the hard edge of the sink, his knuckles white against the porcelain as he holds on. “But I’ve got to try!” His body begins shaking violently as he fights against the barbed blood rush of alcohol deprivation consuming him.
Luz drives her white Charger slowly along Duval Street. She keeps a vigilant watch on the tourists and locals navigating their way along the crowded, hot sidewalk in the humidity of the high-noon day. A police dispatcher’s voice crackles from the car’s radio speaker.
“Alpha-zero-zero-eight. Respond to Code Five at Blue Hole Key Deer Refuge on Big Pine Key!”
Luz wheels her car around with the siren wailing and heads down a narrow side alley. At the end of the alley, Hogfish appears, pedaling his bicycle directly at the car. Luz stomps on the brakes; the car skids, its front bumper stopping just before smashing into Hogfish.
Hogfish rises up on the cracked l
eather seat of his bicycle. He points his bony finger at Luz and shouts above her car’s siren: “The statue angel guarding Nina’s grave will protect her! El Finito won’t be able to dig up Nina and violate her when his devil’s breath blows this island to hell!” Hogfish slams his butt back down on the bicycle seat. “Almost Halloween! Finito’s almost here!” He pedals away in a manic fury.
Luz revs her Charger’s engine and drives off, quickly leaving behind Key West’s narrow streets. The red outside lights of her car flash as she speeds north on the broad concrete ribbon of the Overseas Highway, skimming above the vast ocean. She crosses over a series of bridges linking the highway from island to island. On one side of the highway suddenly looms a billboard announcing ENTERING NATIONAL KEY DEER REFUGE. Luz wheels the Charger into a hard turn after the sign and travels a gravel road into a pine-tree forest. Her car bumps along the road, kicking up a stream of dust. The gravel road abruptly dead-ends. A dirt trail is ahead, leading deeper into the forest. Blocking the trail is a row of parked police cars. She slows her Charger and cuts the engine.
Moxel stands in front of his squad car, his beefy arms crossed tightly over his broad chest. He bends down and peers at Luz through her car window. “You won’t believe what’s at the Blue Hole. I’m the one who found it. Already got law enforcement from half the county here.”
Luz swings her door open and steps out, knocking Moxel back. “You’re a hero. Always the first one to bag the big stuff. Why wasn’t I called in earlier?”
“No reason for you to have rushed. We’re miles away from Key West jurisdiction. We’re in County Sheriff territory.”
“What did you find?”
Moxel fires a sharp spit at the dirt trail. “Why don’t you just trot along to have a peeky-poo for yourself.”
Luz follows the trail as it twists through tall, spindly trees. She comes to the end of the trail, where the forest abruptly opens up into a vast clearing. Before her is the Blue Hole, a lake of intense bright-blue water filling the depths of a former coral-rock quarry. The pathway to the Blue Hole is blocked by stretched yellow crime-scene tape. On the far side of the tape, forensic investigators, dressed in white jumpsuits and wearing white latex gloves, scour the area.
Standing at the shoreline of the Blue Hole, the Key West Police Chief and the uniformed County Sheriff converse intensely with a police diver who wears a swimsuit, face mask, and rubber foot flippers, and holds a long pole with a cloth net attached to its tip. He nods to the Chief and Sheriff, then wades into the Blue Hole’s water up to his shoulders. He swims out to the center of the Hole, holding the long pole in one hand above his head. He treads water, lowers the pole, and skims the net across the water’s surface toward a round floating object. He scoops up the object with the net and swims back toward the shore.
The Chief spots Luz standing behind the stretched yellow tape. He walks to her and lifts the tape, beckoning her to step through. “You’re going to be surprised what Moxel found floating in the Hole this morning.”
Luz steps under the tape. “What was Moxel doing here?”
“Fishing. Some big ones in these waters if the gators don’t get them first. Place is crawling with gators.”
“Why was I called in so late?”
“I told Moxel to have you radio-dispatched right away, an hour ago. This ties into our investigation.”
“Moxel waited. I just got the call.”
“Forget it. Come with me.”
Luz follows the Chief to the Blue Hole. The diver emerges from the water onto the muddy shore, holding the long pole; inside the dripping net is the severed head of Hard Puppy, his face lacerated with crisscrossed purple gashes, his eyes plucked out, and his ears slashed off.
Luz exhales with surprise. “Looks like he was attacked by his own pit bulls. They chewed his head off.”
The Chief nods at Hard’s lips, sewn crudely shut with fishing line. “Pit bulls can’t do that. That’s Bizango. Bizango fed Hard to the gators.”
“Can’t know the gators ate him until the forensics come in.”
The Chief slips off a pair of binoculars slung around his neck on a leather strap. He hands the binoculars to Luz and points across the Blue Hole to the opposite shore. “Check out that bad-ass scene over there.”
Luz looks through the lenses. Across the water, on the far shore, she sees three twelve-foot green-scaled alligators bellied in the mud. The alligators’ nostrils are flared; the jaws of their snouted mouths gape open, exposing long rows of razor-sharp teeth.
The Chief prods Luz. “It gets worse. Look above the gators.”
Luz raises the binoculars and refocuses beyond the alligators on the muddy bank. She spots a lone pine tree. The brittle bark of the tree’s trunk is spray-painted with a red X. From the center of the X protrudes a steel spear shining in the sunlight.
A sleek seventy-foot-long sport-fishing boat plows through the water at twenty knots. Big Conch is strapped by a leather shoulder harness into a teakwood marlin-fighting chair on the boat’s aft deck. His bare, broad chest strains against the leather straps as he leans into the bow of his fourteen-foot-long fishing rod, its line spinning out from the reel. Big’s line runs farther out into the white-water wake left behind the boat’s diesel-engine thrust. With the rod’s butt anchored in the fighting chair’s steel gimbal between his legs, he reels hard to recapture the line. The muscles of his arms bulge and sweat breaks out on his face. The tip of the pole curves and bends almost double, on the verge of breaking.
The boat’s first mate stands behind Big in the fighting chair. The mate whoops with appreciation at Big’s skill, urging him on. “You got her now!”
Big bellows at the mate, “How many runs am I up to?”
“Over twenty! She’s been running in and out for the last three hours!”
Big presses his chest forward against the leather harness as the bent pole’s line whirs back out. Diesel-exhaust smoke clouds up around him from the boat’s engines’ backing down into reverse to follow the running marlin.
The mate shouts, “Don’t buck the reel! Let her take the line or you’ll snap the rod!”
Big hollers above the reel’s screech, “Shut up, asshole! Don’t tell me the obvious!”
Behind the boat, the roiling water parts and a massive blue marlin sails high into the air. The marlin’s muscular body twists for freedom in a mighty shake against the barbed hook sunk deep into its bill. The fish lurches its full body upright, trying to throw the line, its long bill pointed skyward as it tail-dances in skipping leaps over the surface of the ocean.
The mate whoops at the top of his lungs. “Look at that! She’s a record breaker!”
The marlin dives out of sight.
Big reels back quickly on the line’s sudden slack. “That was her last run! She’s gotta be played out! I’m bringing her in! Get the gaff!”
The mate grabs a long steel gaff with a snarl hook at its end. He leans over the transom with the gaff, eager for action.
Big Conch’s sport-fishing boat cuts a wide wake through the surface of the water. From atop its twenty-five-foot-high aluminum crow’s-nest lookout, a cloth pennant rips in the hot wind. On the white pennant is the black image of a marlin. Big stands in the cockpit of his boat with the mahogany-wood helm gripped in his hands. The mate works on the bloodied deck, lashing down the giant fish.
Ahead of Big’s boat, a floating dark speck appears on the horizon. Big turns his mahogany helm, steering toward the speck. The speck grows larger, finally coming into full view. It is a thirty-six-foot West Indian Heritage trawler with a radio-transmitter antenna bolted to its deck. The trawler is silhouetted against the sky, its name across the hull, Noah’s Lark. Big slows his boat.
Inside the trawler’s pilothouse, Noah looks through the window at the sport-fishing boat with Big at the helm. He idles his engine and goes outside onto the deck.
Big bellows across the water at Noah: “Hey, pirate! You’ve lost your treasure! Heard Zoe’s divorcing you f
or good!” He laughs and throttles up his fourteen-hundred-horsepower engines with a guttural diesel roar. His boat speeds into a tight circle around Noah.
Noah’s trawler rocks from the high wakes roiled by the larger boat. The trawler violently lists to its side, slamming Noah to the deck. A wave crashes over him, washing him to the deck’s edge. He reaches out and grabs the steel strut of the radio-transmitter antenna to keep from being swept overboard.
Big circles his speeding boat closer, causing higher-curling waves to smash against the trawler’s hull.
The trawler rolls up, then lurches low, tipping into a near-capsizing slant. Noah clings to the radio tower with one hand. He raises his other hand and stiffens his middle finger at Big. His voice soars above the roar of Big’s engines: “Fuck you!”
Big’s voice booms back: “Truth Dog! Sink to the bottom of the sea! Maybe you’ll find your dick down there!”
Noah opens his mouth to shout back but chokes on an incoming wave of seawater. He coughs hard, gasping desperately for air, as he hangs on to the tower for his life.
A long Key West’s sport-fishing pier, boats are tied up in a row. At the end of the pier, Big and his mate stand with a crowd of sunburnt fishermen. The men watch with anticipation as Big’s huge blue marlin is hoisted by a pulley chain hanging from an iron weighing scale.
A craggy old fisherman wearing fish-gut-stained khaki trousers and a frayed long-billed cap comes up next to Big and nudges him. “Hey, fella, what’d you hit her with?”
Big keeps his eyes on the marlin being hoisted as he answers. “Used a naked horse-ballyhoo rig at first. Can’t trust ’em, a bitch getting a solid hook setup. Kept losing fish all morning. Switched over to a braided polyethylene ballyhoo lead with a J-hook lure and no skirt attached. Nailed her.”
American Tropic Page 14
