Tropic of Night (26 page)

“Yeah, that’s what everybody says,” said Paz sourly. “So … what? The hypnosis, like, triggered this … thing?”

“I guess. You saw the girl. She went under like a lead sinker. Hence suggestible in the extreme. She pointed at you.” She paused and looked at him appraisingly. “You know, it’s possible that the killer really did look like you.”

“Come on.”

“Why not? Both times she freaked out it was when you were around. It’s no crime. One of my brothers-in-law looks like Ted Bundy. Of course, a lot of us think he actually is a serial killer …”

“I take your point. Say more about suggestible.”

“Okay, I’m a pro, so I was very careful not to make any suggestions. That’s the big confusion factor when you work with hypnosis, especially with kids. Tiffany, are you sure Mr. Jones didn’t put his hands up your panties? Didn’t Mr. Jones dress up as a devil and sacrifice to Satan? Oh, yes, he did, the kid agrees, and then he made me eat poo-poo. You can get people to say anything, you can implant all kinds of false memories, even without meaning to, and the subjects will swear themselves blue that the shit really happened. I know I didn’t suggest anything of the kind to her, and then, when I ask her who the guy was, out comes this voice two octaves lower. Did you see her eyes?”

“Yeah, I saw.”

She shuddered. “Jimmy,” she said, “buy me a drink. Buy me two drinks.”

They stopped on a bar on West Flagler east of the freeway, a neon-lit, beer-smelling place with a night game from Atlanta on the TV and a mixed crowd of boat bums and genial rummies in it. They got a couple of dirty looks, but no one made any trouble and the service was fine. He ordered a Bud, she a double scotch. She inhaled it and immediately flagged the barmaid for a refill.

When he thought she was ready, he spoke. “You said she was real suggestible. But somebody had to plant that suggestion in her head. Somebody who knew she was a potential witness.” He thought for a moment. “That means somebody knew I was going to question her. So they grabbed her and, I don’t know, hypnotized her so she would block what she saw.”

Reilly took a sip of her new drink. Her face was flushed now and her eyes were showing white around the blue iris. “I thought you said she went nuts the first time you talked to her.”

“Yeah, but they still could have …” His voice trailed off.

“Right. How did they know to grab that particular kid? Unless you’re proposing that a crack team of homicidal hypnotists fanned out and did everyone on that side of the building. Come to think of it, the boy and the granny weren’t acting all that tightly wrapped either. Why the hell should they get homicidal all of a sudden? Maybe we’re dealing with induced mass hallucination here.”

“There’s such a thing?”

“Oh, yeah. Flying saucers. Thousands of people think they’ve been abducted by aliens. That’s now, in a materialist age. In other cultures, in the past, the sky’s the limit. My point … did I have a point? Oh, yeah, my point was that there’s more to human psych than they teach in college. Your guy does ritual murders, nobody can see him coming or going, and if somebody does happen to spot him, he throws a fit on them from long distance. You don’t need a nice lady social worker, baby: what you need is a fucking witch doctor.”

“You making a referral?” Trying to lighten it up a little, but she was serious.

“Yeah, for your information. Dr. What’s-his-face. Works at Jackson. He gave us a lecture at Barry about the dark forces rampant in Miami. Medical anthropophagist. No, that’s who we’re looking for. Anthropologist. Newman? Began with an N . I could think of it if I had a little more scotchie. I’ll tell you one thing, darling. I’m fucking glad I’m not nine months pregnant.” She finished her drink and started softly to weep.

Paz took her home, which was an apartment on Fair Isle in the Grove. She opened a bottle of white wine and they finished it off. Paz had never gone to bed with Lisa Reilly without her being fairly drunk, but she was really drunk this time. She liked to get on top and pound it. He usually had bruises across his pubic bone the next day. Paz made it a point to concentrate on one woman at a time during the actual act, but now, as she pumped away, he found himself thinking of Willa Shaftel, about how plump and soft and jolly she was and how much, really, he was going to miss her. Reilly was making steam-engine noises through her teeth and moving more violently, working herself up and down and grinding, an altogether industrial sort of sex, Paz thought, and when she went off, she would flail at him with hard little fists and bony knees and elbows.

She finished and collapsed on him, drooling on his cheek. This was merely the first round, he knew. It was not mere lust. It was the kind of screwing people do in wartime, to keep away the terrors.

At work the next morning, Paz found a note from Barlow on his desk, directing him to interview room one. There he found his partner with a rummy?a sagging, middle-aged, freckle-skinned black man with bloodshot eyes. You could smell it coming off him. He seemed startled to see Paz, although Paz could not remember seeing the man before.

“Jimmy, this here’s Eightball Swett,” Barlow said. “Mr. Swett got some information about our case up there in Overtown. He seen a fella with Deandra Wallace.” Paz sat down on a reversed chair and gave Swett the eye. Swett looked down. His face twitched.

“Go ahead, Mr. Swett,” said Barlow. “We’re all listening.”

“Was in that Gibson park,” said Swett. “I hang there sometimes, you know, have a couple, shoot the shit. Anyway, last Thursday, maybe, or Friday, I seen her. She big as a house, couldn’t hardly walk, and she sat on a bench, and there’s this dude sitting with her. She talking to him and he talking to her, but real sincere, like he trying to get into her, which was dumb, ‘cause sure as shit he already got into her, him or someone else. ‘Cause she be big as a motherfuckin’ house.”

“Yes, we know that,” said Barlow. “Could you hear what they were talking about?”

“Nah, they’s too far away. Anyway, they left together. I ain’t see them no more after that.”

“What did this man look like?” asked Barlow.

“Just a regular dude,” said Swett. Again he threw a quick glance at Paz. “Nothing special. Dap, though. Had a suit on, white or tan, light color anyway, shiny shoes, fresh shine. I used to do it, so I knows.”

“What did the man look like, Mr. Swett?” Barlow insisted. “Big? Small? Light? Dark? What?”

A nervous shrug. “You know, just a regular dude … normal looking.”

Paz said, “Mr. Swett, let me ask you something. Look at me.” Paz stood up. “Just say it right out. Did the man you saw have a resemblance to me?”

Swett nodded vigorously. “Yeah, yeah, he did. I spotted it the minute you walked in here. I said, damn, that boy look like that other dude’s brother.” He narrowed his eyes, studying Paz. ” ‘Bout the same size, same no-hair, same shade of skin. Maybe the guy was a little … softer, a little older, I don’t know. No, something else … the dude was, I want to say, brighter …”

“You mean a lighter complexion?” asked Paz.

“No, it ain’t that. Something like … light coming off a him, like some kind of movie star, like they look, you know? Not like real folks. What I thought, when I seen the two of them, here be a preacher and he be trying to help this sister got herself in trouble.”

They sent Swett off to work with an Identi-Kit technician, and the two detectives busied themselves for a time with other cases. The drawing came back and they looked at it together.

“You have the right to remain silent,” said Barlow.

“That’s really weird,” said Paz. The likeness was the usual anti-portrait, stripped of personality, and in Paz’s view, quite useless for actual identification. It showed a round-headed, high-cheeked, shaven-haired, light-skinned black man. It looked a good deal like Paz and several thousand others in Dade County.

“Yes, it is. That old boy just about jumped when y’all walked in there. I guess you can account for your whereabouts on the night of.”

“Last Saturday? Gosh, I can’t recall. Oh, I know! I wrapped up my chef knives and took a long walk all by myself.”

“For the record, Jimmy. A lot of folks going to see this thing.”

“For the record, I worked at the restaurant until eleven-thirty, and spent the rest of the night with a lady named Beth Morgensen. Want her number?”

“No, but if you strike again, we may need it. Anyway, a lucky break, Mr. Swett walking in. We have a face, at least. A small reward brings in the street folks pretty good. I wonder why they call him Eightball? It looks like a long time since he was steady enough to lean over a pool table.”

“It’s a drink,” said Paz. “Olde English 800 malt liquor. The drink and people who drink it are eightball.”

“Well, well. I never knew that.”

“I never knew you played pool.”

“I don’t, anymore,” said Barlow. “But I ran some tables a time or two back when I was raising Cain. I guess you’ll tell me, after a while, how come you knew our suspect looked like you before old Eightball copped to it.”

Paz felt blood rush to his face. In an instant a set of lies and evasions flashed through his mind, all dismissed as fast as they appeared.

“Someone else told me the same thing,” Paz said, and went through the sorry events of the previous night.

Barlow listened to this without reaction. When Paz was done he said, “Son, you and your girlfriend better hope that old lady don’t know any sharp lawyers.”

“I do hope. Meanwhile, we got confirmation about the physical appearance, which is good.”

“Unless he witched that, too, fixed it so anybody saw him would think he looked like the investigating officer.”

“Cletis, come on!”

“Still don’t believe it?”

“What, you do?”

“I got to. Like I already told you, Our Lord spent a good parcel of His time driving out unclean spirits. The smartest thing Satan ever done was making folks believe he ain’t real.”

There seemed nothing to say to this. Paz remained silent, waiting for Barlow to come down on him for the stupidity at Mrs. Meagher’s.

To Paz’s relief, though, he saw that Barlow was going to let it pass, because in a lighter tone, he said, “Now what about this medical anthropologist? We might catch us a lead there.”

“I’ll get on it,” said Paz. At his desk he checked the time, then dialed Lisa Reilly’s number, reaching her between her fifty-minute client hours.

“Did I do anything awful?” she asked.

“No, I wouldn’t call three guys and a German shepherd awful. Unusual, maybe.”

“Oh, stop it! I’ve been walking bowlegged all morning. Was that all you?”

And more lascivious chatter. It was one of her habits, he knew, and Paz normally went along with it cheerfully enough, but today he found it wearing. There was something too bright about her tone. He decided to switch it off.

“Look, Lisa, why I called?I need the name of that anthropology guy you mentioned.”

“I’m sorry, what guy?”

“It was after that scene at Mrs. Meagher’s?you said I needed a medical anthropologist, and you said you heard a lecture …”

“Oh. Jesus, that really happened, didn’t it? Are you going to check on that little girl?”

“Yeah, sure,” Paz lied, “so, if you could look it up?”

“Right.” There was the sound of drawers opening and paper being flipped. Paz wrote down the name and phone number, and said, “Thanks, Lisa. I’ll call you later, maybe we’ll get together next week sometime.”

“Yeah, about that … I actually was going to call you. I think maybe I’m going to get back with Alex.”

The husband. “Oh, yeah? When did this happen?”

“Oh, we’ve been seeing each other more over the last couple of weeks. I guess we both decided it was time. We want to have kids.”

“That’s nice. And what was last night? A farewell fuck?” He was surprised at the vehemence with which he spoke.

“No, I was going to bring it up, but after what happened and me getting a little blasted … and let’s face it, we went into this with no promises on either side. I thought that was the deal.”

“Yeah, it was,” he said tightly. “Well, good. What can I say? Have a nice life, Lisa.”

“Ah, Jimmy, don’t be like that. We can still be friends.”

“Yeah, the pair of you can have me over sometime. It’ll be great. I got to go now.”

And that was that, thought Paz, good-bye, Lisa. He called Ticketmaster and got a couple of tickets to Race Music for that Friday night, and then called Willa Shaftel’s machine and left a message confirming the date. Then business again: a call to Jackson Memorial put him in touch with the Medical Anthropology Unit and he made an appointment with a Dr. Louis Nearing.

Medical Anthropology, Paz found, was stuck in a short blind corridor in building 208, out of the way of real doctors but convenient to the ER, where nearly all of its clients arrived. Outside Nearing’s office there was a corkboard nearly covered with witch-doctor cartoons cut out of magazines. He knocked, received a “Yo!” in response, and walked in. It was a tiny place, hardly larger than a suburban bathroom, and it was the messiest office Paz had ever seen. Nearly every horizontal surface?desk, floor, shelves, the computer monitor, and the seats of a pair of side chairs?was covered with paper: stacks of books, some of them splayed open, journals, clipped articles, stuffed file folders, magazines, cardboard cartons, reprints, notebooks, and stapled computer printouts. In the interstices and hung from the walls and ceiling were impedimenta in startling variety, adding to the wizard’s-cave effect: cult statues, masks, bundles of herbs and feathers, crystals, stuffed animals and birds, colorful and folkish-looking pouches and bags, a green-and-white Notre Dame football helmet, and what looked like shrunken human body parts. The occupant sat hunched over his computer keyboard, with the light from the screen giving his face an appropriately mystic glow. He turned to Paz and grinned, showing large tombstone teeth. “Just let me finish this thought. Move that shit and have a seat.”

Nearing pounded heavily on the keys. Paz couldn’t see how tall he was, but he was big, his neck thick, his shoulders heavy, his forearms powerful and covered with a rich golden pelt. Nearing gave a little grunt of satisfaction, punched one last key, spun around on his chair, and stood up, extending a meaty hand. Six four, at least, Paz estimated, a moose. He had a wide, flat, ingenuous face, blue eyes behind cheap plastic frames, the lenses none too clean. He wore a plaid, short-sleeved shirt and wrinkled chinos with a military belt.