When he put the boat in neutral and broke out the fishing rods, he noticed her eye the GPS. “I know which way is north,” she warned.

Her sister Maribel replied, “Of course. You know everything. That’s the way she is.”

“I know you can’t fish without bait. This man has no bait, only plastic things with hooks. The liar claims to be a fisherman. You’re an idiot, Maribel, to believe him.”

Ford said, “I’m going to troll a couple of lines while we talk. If we’re not fishing, the Coast Guard will wonder what I’m doing out here. You’re wrong about them, they’re very nice people, but this will give us some time.”

“Where are they? Are there cameras?” The girl in her flowered dress was on her toes, scanning the misty horizon.

“They have radar screens, too,” he said. “Later, I’ll show you how it works, but after we discuss what’s best for you two.”

“No.”

“What do you mean? If you’ve already figured out the GPS, learning to use radar won’t be a problem for a smart girl like you.”

“He promised us,” Sabina said to her sister. “He promised to take us home to Cuba. I knew he was lying. I told you, but you didn’t believe me. You never do, you brat.”

Repressing a smile, Ford said, “What I promised was that you and your sister would be safe and you are. I didn’t say I would—”

“Yes, you did! You promised not to force us to do anything I don’t want to do. If the Guardia comes, they will send us to Guantánamo Bay, or put us in buses with strangers in Miami. Isn’t that true?”

Ford’s smile faded. “Well . . .”

“See? It is true.”

To Maribel, Ford said, “If your sister didn’t want to come to America, why did your parents send her? And what about you, Maribel? What do you want?”

The teenager, frightened again, looked away.

“She can’t tell you,” Sabina chided. “Mama made her promise not to talk about it. But I didn’t promise. Mama didn’t know I was listening, so—”

“Shut up, just shut,” the older girl said and began to cry.

Ford wondered if he should pat her on the back or something but only said, “Once we’re moving, I’d like to talk about a few things, Maribel. But only when you’re ready.”

He rigged a privacy curtain forward and placed cushions under the spray hood so the girls had a space of their own. Beneath the console, he heard the toilet flush, then the sump of the shower as he idled toward the Coast Guard vessels, ten miles away, his fishing lines out. It had been a while since he’d tried hailing Tomlinson. He had the mic in his hand when ten-year-old Sabina appeared and approached in a sneaky, tiptoe sort of way.

“We’ll wait for your sister,” Ford said.

“Not if you want to know why Mama sent us away,” the girl shot back. She looked at the GPS. “Why are you driving west? Cuba is south. Are you lost?”

Ford patted the seat next to him. “Hop up, I could use a good navigator.”

“Only if you keep your promise to take us home.”

“Sabina, if your mother and father were here, what would they—?”

“No father,” she interrupted, “so keep him out of this. I never wanted to meet him anyway.”

Ford tried a different approach. “Okay . . . what would your mother want you to do? She paid money to get you to America and you’re so close. Only thirty miles. I can’t go against your mother’s wishes without a good reason.”

A dramatic sigh of impatience before the girl climbed into the seat next to him, neatened the dress over her knees, then waited until she had Ford’s full attention. “Mama didn’t want us to leave. We had to leave. Mama was scared we would be killed because of what Maribel saw.”

“Oh?” Ford didn’t give it too much.

“Something very bad. At night, sometimes, Maribel still has dreams. That’s why Mama made her promise not to speak about it to anyone.”

On the console was a box of cheese crackers. He offered them to the girl. Watched her arm, no thicker than a sapling, disappear into the box, then reappear with a handful. “This sounds serious,” he said. “It happened recently?”

“No, I was only nine then. After that, Mama was too afraid to sleep—but she and Maribel are always afraid of something. Then a man said he would drive us to Florida in a big boat, but he lied. It was a very small boat with a motor, and that night, our first night, he made us get on the raft with Mr. Molera. I didn’t like Mr. Molera, but his wife was worse. She spanked me, called me a spoiled little nag, and made us sleep on the front of the raft.”

The girl popped a cracker into her mouth and chewed while Ford said, “I wouldn’t worry about them now. I’m more concerned about your mother. If she was afraid, why didn’t she come with you?”

“The man who lied about his big boat charged so much money, Mama had to borrow the rest and said she would come later. She didn’t want us to go, understand?”

Ford, although he believed himself to be open-minded, seldom changed his mind, but this situation was beginning to realign itself. A mother, unaware she was being conned, had spent her last cent and stayed behind rather than risk harm to her daughters.

“That’s why you must take us home—like you promised. If the bad man comes looking for Maribel, what will Mama do in the house all alone?”

Ford asked, “The man who lied about his boat?”

No, this was a different man, which the child explained, a Santería priest who pulled three girls into a cane field and stabbed one to death, then did something worse, although the ten-year-old in the flowered dress didn’t think that was possible.

“But Maribel knows,” Sabina said, “because that’s what she saw before she ran from the cane field and hid.”

Before dawn, meteorites showered seaward over clouds from the south, but the clouds weren’t clouds, Tomlinson realized. It was Cuba.

Maybe Figgy was right, he thought. Maybe I’m not dead.

It wasn’t the first time God had taken His cuts and missed.

He’d been dozing on the foredeck, a space reserved for the dinghy, but the dinghy was gone. Same with a lot of other gear swept overboard when that freight train wake hit them, a wave the sailboat had surfed in the wildest ride ever until the bow buried and they’d pitchpoled.

Figueroa had been swept over, too.

After that, events were fuzzy and very, very wet. There remained, however, the memory of the little shortstop saying, Brother, you are unconscious. It would be wise, I think, to wear a helmet if we make this trip again. Later, another lucid vision: Figgy, a wrench in his hand, saying, That puta Vernum Quick is the cause of all this. Him and his magic. I will beat that Santero when we meet in hell.

Around midnight, Tomlinson’s brain had rebooted sufficiently to take stock. The boat’s cabin resembled a trailer park after a tornado, but a few true valuables had survived: his vinyl records, a little brass Buddha, three baggies of heirloom grass, his baseball bag, and a minor miracle: the leather briefcase, the initials F.A.C. barely damp.

A sign, Tomlinson decided. In a day ripe with omens and harbingers, the message was clear: continue south, but carefully. No more of this blind hipster bullshit, blundering into the unknown. After that, all planning was prefaced by a simple rule: stop being creative, and try to think like Doc Ford.