Oliphant fiddled with his coffee cup, seeming to be fascinated by the information on it, which wasFOURTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON CHILD PORNOGRAPHY,PHILADELPHIA 2001. It was a gesture familiar to Paz. The man was doubtful but he was about to roll right.
“That would be the consultancy, then, expert on weird and uncanny criminal behavior?”
“That’s us,” said Paz. “No job too small.”
Oliphant said, “I’ll think of something more bureaucratic after I take a Gelusil.” He turned to Morales. “Detective Morales. Show this guy the files and fill him in. I’ll call Sheriff McKay and call in some chips and I’ll let you know when it’s clear to go over to their shop. Meanwhile, I expect you to stay close to Mr. Paz at all times as he consults. I expect you to cup his scrotum in your hands as he consults. I expect you to be there when he awakes and to tuck him into bed at night. You’re off of all other cases. Am I making myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” said Morales, straightening a little in his chair.
“And you’re clear, too, Jimmy? Straight pool, use our playbook, and no leaking to your slimeball pals up there by the bay.”
“Yes, sir,” said Paz. “But could you explain to Detective Morales that the part about my scrotum was just a figure of speech?”
“Get the fuck out of my office, the both of you,” said Oliphant in a reasonably friendly manner, considering the circumstances.
The Hurtado organization had rented a whole floor of a condominium on Fisher Island, convenient to the homes of the two surviving Consuelistas. Hurtado and El Silencio had one apartment to themselves and the dozen or so gangsters he had brought along shared the others. They had an adequate number of cars and a couple of fast boats. The only thing they lacked was a target. They watched; nothing happened. Hurtado had limited patience. This operation was important, to be sure, but not important enough to risk being out of Cali for an extended time. Therefore, after some days of stewing, Hurtado sent his enforcer out with Prudencio Martínez and a couple of boys to see what he could find.
Hurtado was enjoying a late-afternoon drink poolside at the condo when the shadow of El Silencio fell across him.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Everything,” said El Silencio. He pulled up a lounger and looked at the girl in the thong bikini who was keeping his employer company. The girl went away without a word. Leaning close so that Hurtado could catch his whisper, he elaborated. “The kid in the painted van is the same kid who was in Fuentes’s office. Fuentes’s secretary remembered his hair. Also he had a shirt with the same sign that was all over the van. Martínez described it and she said she remembered.”
Hurtado said, “It seems a little too easy. You know, Ramon, people remember things that didn’t happen sometimes when you talk to them. It’s part of your charm.”
El Silencio shrugged. “I didn’t touch her. She talked to him.”
“Fine. So what does that get us? Who are these people and where do we find them?”
In answer, El Silencio passed his boss a small brochure.
“What’s this?”
“We joined the Florida Audubon Society. A hundred-dollar contribution, the woman wouldn’t shut up. There’s a list of local nature clubs on the back. With the logos. I marked the one that the boys spotted on that VW van.”
Hurtado flipped the brochure over. “Forest Planet Alliance? What is this, environmentalists?”
“That’s what it looks like, but who knows what they really are? There’s something else. Look at this.” He handed Hurtado a color photograph of a young woman with blond-streaked hair leaving the doorway of Felipe Ibanez’s mansion and said, “We’ve been taking pictures of everyone who goes in and out of both houses. This is Ibanez’s granddaughter, a woman named Evangelista Vargos. You see her shirt?”
“That’s interesting. Another connection, the girl belongs to the same group. And…?”
“Ibanez wants to knock off his partners. He knows this organization from his granddaughter-maybe he even set it up. The bitch is some kind of spy, say. He figures we’ll look into these killings, we’ll think maybe someone is trying to get a piece of the Puxto deal, someone from home, but this way he can lay it off on these Americans. The environmentalists are all of a sudden killing people who piss them off.”
Hurtado shook his head. “That doesn’t explain the Indian, though. And these American kids, I can’t see them doing these kinds of things to Fuentes and Calderón, not to mention getting past our boys and taking out Rafael. And Ibanez or whoever would know we’d never go for the idea that this came out of some nature lover club. No, what I think is that Ibanez brought a bunch of toughIndios up from somewhere as muscle and he’s just parking them with these Americanpendejos. Americans love the fuckingIndios, and why should they make a connection? So he gets cover and a team of killers at the same time. That has to be it.”
“He must think we’re stupid,” said the other. “So…we take them out? I mean Ibanez and the girl.”
“No, there’s plenty of time for that. And we need Ibanez to run the timber and transport operations. For the time being. What we need to do is find thoseIndios. Take some people and check out this”-he consulted the card-“Forest Planet Alliance. See what they have, who’s associated, and so on. Low-key, Ramon. I don’t want blood on the ceiling yet, understand? Speaking of that, did you get that garage we talked about?”
“Yeah. No problem. It’s south of here, off the highway, very quiet.”
“Good man. And the machinery is there? If we need it.”
El Silencio nodded, rose from his chair and started to leave. “And Ramon?” Hurtado added, “Send the girl back.”
“Here’s the file,” said Morales, dropping two heavy cardboard folders with a thump on his desk in the homicide squad bay. “Knock yourself out.”
“You’re pissed at me, right?” said Paz, catching the other man’s tone.
“At the prima donna act, yeah. I come to you like a pal, I ask for help, and I get shit, and now you set up this…situation, where I got my boss’s boss with his nose up my ass, and I got no fucking idea where you’re going with this thing. And it would’ve been nice if I’d fuckingknown about you and Calderón beforehand, instead of looking like a complete and total asshole in there. I mean, I was your fuckingpartner… ”
“Right, and I’m sorry. I apologize. And the reason I changed my mind is because when Calderón got it, it became a family thing. You don’t think I was blindsided, too? You’re a Cuban, you know how it works.”
“Right, and if my father got whacked, I would be the absolutely last person allowed on the case. But exceptions get made for Jimmy Paz.”
“That’s right, Tito. They do. Meanwhile, I am a fucking supernumerary mugwump on this case and when it clears, you and you alone will pick up the glory.”
“Assuming it clears,” said Morales, trying to keep a grin from forming. “A supernumerary mugwump, huh? You’re a piece of work, Paz.”
“I love you, too,” said Paz. “Let me read this shit, okay? It doesn’t look like it’ll take that long.”
Nor did it. Paz already knew the broad outlines on the Fuentes killing, but it was useful to study the forensic reports and the actual photographs taken at the scene. And there were details Morales had not shared when he’d discussed the case in Paz’s restaurant the previous month. They had found claw marks on the wooden railing of the balcony from which Fuentes had been hurled. They had calculated the weight of whatever had made the paw marks in Fuentes’s garden-a little over 453 pounds, and this was a puzzle. There was a report from the Metrozoo, from a Dr. Morita, attesting that although the cast of the paw print shown to him was undoubtedly that ofPanthera onca, it was nearly 50 percent too large, nor had a jaguar of such a size ever been recorded by science: the largest males rarely topped 300 pounds. Dr. M. expressed keen interest in studying the beast should they ever secure it. I bet, thought Paz as he read this and turned to the interviews with the staff at the Consuela Company offices-Fuentes’s secretary, Elvira Tuero, and the three building security men. The police had constructed Identi-Kit likenesses of both men. One was a young kid, good-looking in a wispy way, with a scraggily beard and a nest of blond dreadlocks. The other was the famous Indian.