“I don’t know what I can tell you,” she said. “I told the cops everything I could remember just after Mr. Fuentes died.”

“Yes, but memory is funny,” said Paz. “Sometimes we remember things after a while that we forgot right after the event. That’s why the police sometimes reinterview after some time has gone by.”

“Yeah, that’s what those guys said.”

“What guys?”

“A couple of men, day before yesterday. They said they were from the security firm working for Mr. Garza. They wanted to know about those people who came in the day before the, you know…”

“The murder, yes,” said Paz. “And what did you tell them?”

“Well, one of them mostly wanted to know about the shirt the white guy was wearing, the logo on it.”

“And did you recall what it was?”

“Not really, but then he started asking me was it this, was it that, and it kind of came back to me. To tell you the truth, I kind of wanted to get rid of him.”

“Oh? Why was that?”

“He was creepy, you know. Like if I didn’t answer right he would do something, or he wanted to do something mean. He sat too close, and stared, like I was lying. This was just one of them. The other guy asked the questions.”

“These were regular American-type people?”

“No. We spoke in Spanish, but they weren’t Cubans. Some kind of South American accent, but not Argentinean. I used to have a boyfriend from Buenos Aires. Not Mexican either. Venezuela, Colombia, like that.”

“I see. And what did you recall about this logo?”

“No, like I said, the guyknew about the logo, he described it to me and he just wanted me to say if I saw it in the office that day. It was a black T-shirt, with a big globe on it, the earth like they show you from space, the blue marble. And around the rim of it were some kind of teeth, like a gear in a watch, but green. And three letters in white on the globe and some writing below it. But he didn’t know what the letters were and neither did I. I hope this is the last time I have to go through this.”

“I’m pretty sure it will be,” said Paz. “Thank you for your time.”

“Because I won’t be in town. I’m going to stay with my sister up in Vero Beach. I don’t want anything more to do with this stuff. Those guys, ever since they came by I’ve been having nightmares.”

“What do you make of that, señor?” asked Paz when they were in the car again.

“Our Colombians are doing the same stuff we’re doing.”

“Not just that. They had another source for that logo, maybe something directly associated with the killings. They want whoever’s doing the jaguar act to stop, and they’re just figuring that the same organization that sent those guys to yell at Fuentes might have had something to do with killing him and Calderón. Very thorough, and it means they have information we don’t. Also, and this doesn’t go anywhere else, I just found out from my half sister that old Dad was running what looks to be a money Laundromat out of his construction business.”

“The plot thickens,” said Morales. “These guys were skimming, and the Colombians whacked them.”

Paz shook his head vigorously. “No, no, try to follow me here, Tito, because it’s important. The Colombians are involved, but not in the two murders. It’s the Indian who’s doing the murders. The Colombians are trying to nail the Indian.”

“How can you know that?”

“I don’tknow it, Tito. It’s my operating theory. It’s part of my flair, why you guys wanted me involved. The Indian is part of the structure of weirdness, and Colombian mobsters are not. They’re probably as confused as Finnegan.”

“What? Jimmy, give me a break! You tossed out my ninja assassin, and now you tell me some little guy with a Three Stooges haircut got in there and did all that damage? How do you figure that?”

“If I tell you, you’ll say I’m nuts.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“The little guy knows how to turn himself into a four-hundred-pound jaguar and back again.”

Morales stared at Paz, laughed out loud, stared again when Paz didn’t join in the laugh, saw something in Paz’s eyes he had not seen before, something deeply disturbing, and said, “That’s nuts.”

“See? I told you you’d say that,” said Paz with a laugh. “Relax, I’m just jerking your chain. But I had you for a second there, didn’t I?”

“Fuck you, Paz,” said Morales glumly. “So why are the bad guys after the Indian? And how did he do the murders? Or was that a joke, too?”

“I don’t know how he did it yet, but that’s the way it has to be. Tito, I have seen, with my own two eyes, a man with a certain kind of training walk away from a whole SWAT team and out of a locked police car containing two veteran police officers, me being one of them. This Indian could be that kind of guy, you understand what I’m telling you?”

“Deeply weird,” said Morales.

“You got it, and the truth will emerge in its own good time. Meanwhile, we need to do two things right away. You have to go by the Florida Defenders of the Environment and find out what local group uses a logo like that and get whatever information they have on it, personnel, activities, location. And you have to drop me off at my mom’s place. I need to talk to her.”

“We’re supposed to stick together, Jimmy.”

“Yeah, but I’m with my mother,” Paz replied. “How much trouble can I get into? Come on, Tito, we got to play catch-up. Thosechuteros could wipe out that whole organization and then we’ll never find the Indian.”

Grumbling, Morales put the car in gear and headed toward Eighth Street and the restaurant. “They could take out the Indian, too,” he said. “Then we could all go home.”

“I don’t think so, man. I don’t think it’s going to be so easy to take out the Indian, not for them and not for us. That’s what I need to talk to my mom about.”

Fourteen

On Sunday night Nigel Cooksey told Rupert Zenger that there were Colombian gangsters in town with an interest in the Forest Planet Alliance. By Monday afternoon Rupert was gone, off to an important conference in Bhutan about the mountain forests of that nation, taking Luna Ehrenhaft with him and leaving Scotty in charge of the property, and the name of his attorney with Cooksey.

“Gosh, that was fast, just like you said,” observed Jenny at the gate of La Casita as the airport limo pulled away. “How come he took Luna?”

“Oh, Rupert needs a little entourage. And Luna, despite her bravado, has nearly as strong a sense of self-preservation as Rupert.”

“You’re kidding! Poor Scotty! No wonder he’s been moping.”

“Yes, but moping has always been part of Scotty’s demeanor. I think Luna was growing tired of it. She has something of an instinct for the alpha male.” He drew the gate closed and barred it. “He asked me to come as well, you know.”

“Really? Why didn’t you?”

“I prefer it here. Bhutan is utterly fascinating I’m sure, but I feel obliged to stay with my collections and…things. Nor am I particularly fearful of gangsters.”

“Do you really think they’ll come?”

“Oh, they’re here already.”

Jenny couldn’t help a quick scan of the surroundings. “What do you mean, ‘here already’?”

“Well, as you must know, Rupert’s tower provides the only view of the road over all our foliage, and while I was up there last night discussing this and that with him I happened to notice a large black van cruising by, more slowly than the empty road would require, and then it came by again and stopped briefly. We’re fortunate that there’s no road verge wide enough to park such a machine on Ingraham across from this house, but in any case, the van returned about an hour ago and is now parked just beyond the curve of the road.”

“Are you going to call the cops?”

“I think not. After all, what would we tell them? That an illegal alien bush Indian suspect in two murders intimated that, via mystic powers, he has sensed danger from a group of men innocently parked by the side of a public road? No, I believe we’re on our own for the present. However, they’re likely to wait until nightfall before making any attempt to interfere with us, and we are not without resources.”