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sk him if he remembers the marina,” said Emma wearily, looking around for a shady place to sit downâor at least get out of the sun. There wasn't any.
It was the next morning, and Emma had found Migelina with surprisingly little trouble. There was only one main road south from San Marcos City, as Timoteo had said, and it had led directly to the old resort town Sid Garr had told them about, the place where a marina had disappeared twenty years ago in a hurricane.
The problem was that, except for its location on a sheltered inlet, Migelina looked like all the other poor villages they had driven through the day before, only larger. The buildings were of crudely painted wood and corrugated steel. The decaying streets were more mud than concrete. If Migelina had been the Las Calvos of its day, then it was a good advertisement for hurricane insurance. Not a trace of anything but poverty remained.
“He say he remember the marina,” said Timoteo, who had
been chattering in Spanish to a man without shoes whose broad smile revealed numerous missing teeth.
“Does he remember the
Kaito Spirit?”
said Emma.
They had talked with dozens of people, it seemed, since parking the car and getting out to walk the narrow streets of Migelina. Most had not even known that there had once been a marina there. Emma was not sure they were in the right place until they found an elderly man who walked them down to the water and showed them what was left of the rock pilings where the piers had once stood. But he had not heard of the
Kaito Spirit
. No one had.
The man without shoes spoke again.
“He say he knows a man who talks about the
Kaito Spirit,”
translated Timoteo, turning to Emma.
“Where is this man?” asked Emma, perking up.
“He say he will tell for ten pesos,” said Timoteo, staring at the shoeless man contemptuously and spitting a long stream onto the dusty ground. “He is lying.”
Emma dug into the pocket of her jeans and produced a ten-peso note, which she held out. Timoteo grabbed it before the man could.
“Why do you give him money? He is lying. He is a miserable lying dog.”
“Give it to him, Timoteo,” said Emma. “We might as well check out his story. We don't have any other leads.”
Timoteo reluctantly held out the note, which the man took with much bowing, scraping and smiling. Then he spoke animatedly in Spanish for several minutes to Timoteo, who listened with his arms folded in front of his chest, his face skeptical. Finally the man finished and walked off, turning back every few feet to nod and smile.
“So?” said Emma, when the man had turned the corner and disappeared out of sight. Timoteo spat in the dust again, then spoke.
“He say there is an old man who lives on Calle de las Flores on the other end of town, who used to work on the boat, the
Kaito Spirit
. He say this man lives in a big yellow house next to an almond tree. He is called Eduardo and he is big and fat and well-known to everybody on the street because he gives candy to all the children.”
“All right, let's go find him.”
Emma led the way back to the car. It took fifteen more minutes to find Calle de las Flores, a narrow dead-end street on the far side of town. There were some potted plants in front of one of the rickety-looking wooden buildings, but no almond or any other kind of trees. None of the houses was yellow.
“I told you he was lying,” said Timoteo, snickering.
“Ask her,” said Emma, pointing to a sad-looking black woman sitting in front of one of the buildings.
Timoteo walked over and spoke to her. The woman shrugged and eventually replied in a low, slow voice. Timoteo nodded and returned to Emma's side.
“She say there is no almond tree, no yellow house, no man named Eduardo, no big and fat men living here at all. And nobody gives candy to the children. I told you.”
“You told me.”
“What we do now? Go swimming?”
“Ask her if she remembers the marina,” said Emma, indicating the woman again.
Timoteo made a face, but walked back to the woman. They spoke again, longer this time.
“She say there are men at the market who used to work at the marina,” said the boy when he returned. “They sell all kinds of things now. She say she knows the man who sells tires and he is very nice. His name is Fimo. You want to go there?”
“She's talking about the market near where we came into town?”
“Yeah, I think.”
Emma looked over to the woman, smiled and waved. The woman nodded and smiled a sad smile.
They drove back through Migelina to the hilly street where Emma had first seen the market. It occupied a large open-sided buildingâno more than a roof on wooden supports, reallyâwhere people were selling merchandise of every kind. Inside, the dirt floor was covered with straw. The air was ripe with smells of pigs and chickens.
A thin black man with grizzled hair was sitting in one of the first stalls by the door, atop a pile of worn automobile tires. He wore no shirt, revealing a sinewy chest and protruding ribs. A tiny gold cross hung on a chain around his neck.
Timoteo addressed him in Spanish, but after a moment the man waved his hand and smiled brightly at Emma.
“It's okay. I speak English very good.”
“Are you Fimo?”
“Fimo, si. You want buy tires from me?”
“Not exactly ⦔
“It's okay, I have many other things,” said Fimo, bounding down from his perch and digging through the cardboard boxes at the foot of his pile of tires.
“Please don't go to any trouble.”
“I sell to you cheap,” declared Fimo, triumphantly holding up a toaster and a plastic umbrella covered with pink polka dots.
“Thank you,” said Emma. “They're very nice, but I'm just trying to find out some information about a boat that used to be at the marina. We were told you used to work there.”
“SÃ,” said Fimo with a big smile. “I was crew for many fine boats. I very good sailor, like very much.”
“Did you ever hear of the
Kaito Spirit?”
“Don't think so â¦
Kaito Spirit.
It was long time ago. Before the big hurricane wreck everything, and all the rich peoples go away, never coming back. What you gonna do?”
Fimo smiled broadly.
“Do you know anyone else who worked at the marina who might know the
Kaito Spirit?”
“We go ask. Come.”
Fimo tossed the toaster and plastic umbrella unceremoniously onto his pile of tires, then led the way from stall to stall, greeting people with the same broad smile. He stopped occasionally to speak in Spanishâconversations that Emma could not understand, but which all included the words
Kaito Spirit,
and which all ended with head shaking or shrugs.
“Sorry, but cannot find your boat for you,” said Fimo finally, throwing his hands in the air, his big smile unperturbed. “The marina was very big. Many boats. All gone now. What else can Fimo do for you?”
“Thanks anyway,” said Emma with a sigh. “This whole idea is hopeless. I must be nuts.”
“You want to buy some fruit?” said Timoteo, who had wandered over to a stall across the way from where Emma and Fimo were standing and was looking at a pile of peaches.
“I know,” declared Fimo, holding up his finger suddenly. “Maybe you go talk to Señor Zuberan. Maybe he can help you.”
“Señor Zuberan?”
“SÃ. It was Señor Zuberan who own the marina. He is a great man, very rich. He take care of many people.”
“Where do I find this Senor Zuberan?” asked Emma.
“You must drive to the south and then follow the road to his property. Señor Zuberan own much land. My cousin used to work there in the kitchen and he say that Señor Zuberan's house is as big as the stadium in Benitra.”
“We buy these?” said Timoteo, holding up a handful of peaches.
“Yes, let's buy those,” said Emma happily, digging into her pocket for money. If this Señor Zuberan had owned the marina, he was more likely to remember the
Kaito Spirit
than anyone they
had yet talked toâprovided, of course, that the boat had been here.
Emma owed Fimo a debt of gratitude. After giving some change to Timoteo for the peaches, she peeled off a twenty-peso note and held it out to the happy tire man.
“You no buy anything,” said Fimo, shaking his head.
“You've helped me, Fimo,” said Emma. “I'd like to give you something in return.”
“Fimo help everybody. No take money unless fair and square. You want to buy something, yes?”
Without waiting for an answer, Fimo dived into his pile of tires and surfaced with a big smile, a flowerpot, and an originalcast LP of
Oklahoma!
Emma smiled back. So far the polka-dot plastic umbrella looked like the best bet. She apparently had to take something for the sake of his pride, but didn't need a toaster and sure as hell wasn't going to buy any tires.
“You have wood carvings from Indians?” said Timoteo, coming over chewing a peach, his mouth full. “She looks to buy carvings.”
“Ah,” said Fimo happily and dug back into his pile of tires. What he held up after a moment next to his smiling black face sent a chill down Emma's spine.
It was about nine inches highâa kneeling figure with pencilthin legs, high forehead and huge eye sockets. The wood from which it was carved was dark brown, almost black, and obviously heavy. Emma recognized the style at once. She had seen others so similar that they might have been made by the same hand. They had stood in solemn formation for as long as she could remember in the exact same place they must be standing now: in the house on Potrero Hill, on the top of Pépé's dresser, around the model of the
Kaito Spirit
.
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Emma followed Fimo's directions, heading south from Migelina for twenty minutes, then taking the poorly marked road to the Zuberan estate. Immediately the scrubby vegetation that had bordered the main road was replaced by tall trees and masses of flowers.
A ten-foot-high wall surrounded the estate. Made of brown and gray stones mortared together and covered with moss and lichens, the wall looked as organic as the vegetation, almost as if it had grown out of the earth. On top of the wall, jagged pieces of broken glass embedded in the cement glistened in the sun.
It was an ugly way to keep people out, Emma thought uncomfortably, realizing suddenly that Senor Zuberan might not be as eager to see her as she was to see him.
But see him she had to.
The wood figurine that Emma had bought from Fimo had clinched it. It was Kaito. Fimo had declared that what was left of the tribe lived in the forests near here; Migelina was where they had always sold their handiwork. The figurine tipped the odds that her grandfather had indeed sailed on the
Kaito Spirit
from this harbor. Zuberan was the only person Emma knew who might be able to say for sure. She had come too far to go away now without talking to him.
“How are you doing over there?” Emma asked, glancing at Timoteo, who was slouched in the passenger seat with his feet on the dashboard and his eyes closed.
“I'm okay,” grunted the boy.
“Didn't get enough sleep last night?”
“Yeah.”
Where had he been? Emma wondered. What had he been doing? She tried not to think about it. It was none of her business.
“Would you like me to take you back to Migelina?”
“Why?” said Timoteo, not opening his eyes.
“You could sit on the beach and take a nap or something while
I see this Mr. Zuberan. I don't know how much fun this is going to be for you.”
“I don't need any nap.”
“You're sure?”
“I am your guide. I stay with you.”
Emma drove for several more minutes along the forbidding wall of the vast estate, wondering again what she was doing there.
“Did you ever do something that didn't make any logical sense,” Emma asked, “but you just had a feeling that you should, that it was important?”
“I guess.” Timoteo yawned, stretching in his seat.
“Is it healthy to do something like that, do you think? Or is it some kind of compulsive behavior?”
“Huh?”
“I'm asking if you think I'm crazy.”
Timoteo opened his big brown eyes at her and grinned.