Miami Midnight (30 page)

“You want to kiss it,” he muttered. “Tell me.”

When she remained silent, he scowled. “Open mouth.”

Gaby shook her head.

He seemed to shrug. He lifted his big hands and put them at the sides of her face. Then his index fingers bored cruelly at the hinges of her jaw.

For Gaby, the world went black.

She stood the pain for one agonizing second. Then something poured over her like a sudden dousing of liquid fire, and she was unable to hold back from what she knew she was, inevitably, going to do. The fork he had given her was still clasped in her bound hands. Her face twisted with fierce anger and hatred, she thrust both arms up, shoving her weapon between heavy thighs, under pendulous flesh, the whole force of her body behind the attack.

She heard his scream of agony mixed with shock and disbelief. Then she felt a blow at the side of her head that made the room spin wildly. The Colombian lurched against her, nearly knocking her from the box.

Storm noises suddenly burst in upon them like an explosion, making the walls of the shed rattle. In confusion Gaby heard a sharp, staccato banging and the loud
whump!
of something landing outside.

The door flew open.

She was on her feet, hands held out in front of her, body braced, waiting for them to kill her. The Colombian was still screaming, kneeling on the dirt floor and holding his groin, blood seeping between his large brown hands.

In the doorway crouched the
babalawo
, holding an automatic weapon. Behind him was James Santo Marin and, crowding in with them quickly, Harrison Tigertail.

In that blinding moment truth was like the freeze frame of a film, when all action is miraculously stopped, sharp, vividly etched, full of violence.

It was broken abruptly when James pushed past the
babalawo
and with a growl of murderous rage lunged for the kneeling Colombian.

He was, Gaby thought as she closed her eyes, going to kill him. She’d known it all along.

Chapter 20

“It’s not my full title,” the
babalawo
said, looking untypically modest, “but I
am
what you might call your friendly agent-on-station in Little Havana.”

He was sitting in the hospital room’s one chair, dressed as Gaby had last seen him in the everglades in a dark blue windbreaker, black turtleneck sweater, and muddy slacks, smoking a Havana cigar under a framed sign on the wall that said, “Thank You For Not Smoking.” He still looked, with his handsome, slightly jowly face, like a well-fed yuppie, except that one eye was partly swollen shut, and a moderately deep gash on his upper lip was held together by two tiny black surgical stitches.

None of the hospital staff—the nurses, the technicians administering tests, or even the doctors—had asked the
babalawo
to put out his cigar. He seemed to wield authority even inside places like Dade Memorial Hospital.

It was all so strange, Gaby thought as she pushed her dinner tray away, the food on it almost untouched. Her hands were still swollen, wrapped in temporary bandages, which made it awkward to eat, even if she’d had an appetite. She supposed the overnight hospital stay was necessary, but her body was full of adrenaline and manic energy that just wouldn’t go away.

“I don’t understand what that means,” she said, “agent-on-station. Are you some sort of cop?”

The
babalawo
reached into his windbreaker and pulled out a black leather wallet. He flipped it open with one hand in an easy, practiced movement like the detectives on television, and held his identification up for her to see. “Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami Area. I’ve been a public servant, Miss Collier, laboring in the more forgotten levels of drug enforcement, for these fourteen long years.”

He didn’t fool Gaby one bit.

Coming in from the everglades in the ambulance, she’d heard the attendants talking about the three men who hadn’t waited for the weather to clear and for the state police helicopters. They’d taken Miccosukee dugout canoes into the swamp to storm the Colombians’ hideout themselves, the way it had been done in Vietnam. Gaby had known who they were talking about. How could she forget that particular moment when Harrison Tigertail, James Santo Marin, and the
babalawo
, Jorge Castaneda, had burst through the door of the drug smugglers’ shack to rescue her?

The FBI man, according to the ambulance crew, had quite a reputation. Two years ago he’d been in charge of the sweep in South America that had flushed out the kingpin of cocaine, Carlos Lehder. After that, the rumor had been that Castaneda had retired. Now it looked as if he’d just gone underground, right there in Miami.

Never, Gaby thought, staring at him, would she have imagined the hip, fast-talking
babalawo
, friend and associate of the
iyalocha
and all the followers of the murky world of
Santería
, to be a federal law enforcement agent. But she was convinced now. He’d been called out into the hospital corridor several times by the state patrol guarding her door to confer with various people. Some were obviously very important law enforcement officials from, she gathered, Tallahassee and Washington; a few were hospital public relations people who wanted to know about a television interview; and, a few moments ago, he’d talked with Gaby’s own bosses, the managing editor of the
Times-Journal
and the newspaper’s publisher, Gardner Hedison. Gaby had heard the
babalawo
tell them she wasn’t allowed visitors yet. Which wasn’t exactly true.

“An agent-on-station,” the babalawo was saying, “is an all-purpose operation. He usually holds down some place in the community where he can monitor developments like ... ah, well, like our friends the Ochoas you stayed with in the everglades, tracking them when they try to move in on leading citizens and persuade said leading citizens to let them come into their big banking and import-export businesses.” He paused, studying her through a cloud of cigar smoke. “So they can, among other things,” he said gently, “launder their drug money.”

Gaby looked down at her tray. He was talking about James. The leading citizen who wouldn’t cooperate with the Colombians.

“We could have gotten killed,” she murmured, remembering the guns, the sheer terror of that moment when they’d burst in. “Even you got hurt.”

He touched his lip. “Well, I wasn’t exactly injured in the action. The eye and lip were ... an expression of severe disapproval from our mutual friend in the chopper coming back. Jimmy blames me for a lot of things, but especially for using you as a decoy.”

Gaby sank back against the pillows in the bed. She was almost afraid of what the babalawo was going to tell her. “Then he never was a holdout.”

“No, he’s not a drug dealer. But, yes, he was a holdout. When the Ochoas initially approached him, Jimmy contacted us right away, and we asked him to cooperate, to play along. Eventually, the strain really got to him. I don’t think Jimmy realized he was going to have to play the part for almost two years until we could get them all into the net. But that’s another story. Look,” he said, settling in his chair, “consider his position—rich, successful, and with his setup, his companies, he had everything to offer the Ochoas. They needed him. They couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to get even richer. But the big problem was maintaining the front, keeping the pace going, with all the pressure they put on him. It was tough.”

Pressure? Tough?
she thought. Did the
babalawo
, Castaneda, the FBI agent, realize what his words really meant, these things she’d seen in James that had baffled and frightened her? And that she knew now he’d had to accept because he couldn’t explain them to her? She’d even thought he’d been flying drug planes!

“The other thing Jimmy’s pissed at me about,” Castaneda went on, “is that some of my people got carried away playing Cupid. I’m really sorry about that. If there’s one thing Jimmy hates its
Santería
. It drives him nuts. He’s had a few problems with it himself in the past.” He frowned, not looking at her. “He’s especially burned with me about the
iyalocha
, Ibi Gobuo. You know, that night on his boat.”

Startled, Gaby sat up. “His boat?”

“Believe me,” Castaneda said quickly, “I had nothing to do with that. I gotta admit Ibi is far out, there’s just no way to hold her down. These people are passionate, warmhearted.
Latinos
are very hung up on
amor
. They just wanted Jimmy to be happy, that was all.”

He’d left her far behind. “That night on his boat?” she repeated.

He had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, Ibi got it in her head you could be some manifestation of Ochun when you nearly passed out in her temple. It might have been the heat and an upset stomach, but she took it for real. That the
orishas
had chosen you to deal with something that had them worried.”

Gaby could only goggle at him.

“Hell, they’re all crazy about Jimmy. Dare I say,” he added, looking sly, “half of Little Havana worships him like a god, anyway? Jimmy’s living on the ragged edge, maxed out. He needed love and someone beautiful like you and ... that’s what they had in mind.” He saw the look on Gaby’s face. “Hey, look, it wasn’t all just giving you some drinks, doing a little mind-adjusting to put you in his bed. This was very serious stuff, between Chango and Ochun. These people don’t play around. And in spite of what you might think, Tiger’s no womanizer. Like
zero
. Jimmy stays too damned busy.”

“James was cooperating with you,” she said slowly, “to help catch the Colombians. What has this got to do with
Santería
?”

“I’m trying to tell you. The Hispanic community’s very devoted to Jimmy. Also, they know Jimmy and Harrison Tigertail are into something dangerous, but very straight, even patriotic. That’s something they can relate to.” He shrugged, eloquently. “They wanted to help.”

Gaby lay back against the pillows again, feeling, for the first time, the pull of deep weariness. The story of the everglades rescue and raid had been on local Miami evening television news. She’d already seen the evening papers the nurses had brought in, with banner headlines: “DARING EVERGLADES RESCUE,” “DRUG-RELATED KIDNAPPING.”

Front-page pictures had featured Gabrielle Collier, Miami fashion reporter, in a dramatically torn and water-soaked eighteenth-century gown, being helped out of an ambulance. There were photographs of the Florida State Patrol manning the roadblocks on the everglades highways, the federal parks service that had been called out to help with search operations in the swamp, even the Dade County Deputy Sheriff’s Department. But although Gaby had looked, there’d been no pictures of Harrison Tigertail’s tribe. In newspaper accounts the Miccosukee Seminoles were only mentioned briefly as “guides” who’d helped in the search. Even more curiously, conspicuously missing was any reference to the three men who had, with the help of the Miccosukee Indian nation, taken canoes into the everglades in the storm to be the first on the scene to rescue her.

Why did Castaneda pretend everything had been explained? Gaby said, “You’re not a real
Santería
high priest, are you?”

“I’m a computer engineer. I believe in everything. Nothing’s impossible in binary numbers. I thought I proved that.”

He stood up and paced around the room, stopping finally to look out the night-dark window at the rain. With his back to her he said, “Look, don’t feel bad about the night on the boat, will you? Ibi Gobuo likes you, and that’s saying a lot, considering you’re a
mundele
. But the things she believes in say to her and others at times that the
orishas
come down to take over us ordinary people. Like if you got this great beautiful godlike guy ... ergo, you got a god.”

Gaby closed her eyes. “I thought he was a drug smuggler. I thought he was a pilot who flew in drugs, and all the time he was cooperating with the law.” She looked up suddenly. “The police have him? I saw them taking him away at the highway, when I got into the ambulance!”

“The police don’t have Jimmy in custody. He did get a little carried away. You know his temper. He was still calling his lawyers, trying to get the Ochoas the electric chair, until about a couple of hours ago. If they’d let him personally throw the switch, he’d do it. He was pretty racked up.”

“But they didn’t rape me, you know that.” She sat up in the bed. “You see, the—the Colombians thought I was his sister. We were wearing practically the same clothes.”

“You were the Ochoas’ first choice, honey,” he said quietly. “Don’t minimize the danger. It’s a very classic means of persuasion, grabbing the subject’s girlfriend. When the Ochoas came to your house and you weren’t there, they tried to find out where you were from your tenant. You saw what happened to him.”

“But David didn’t tell them where I was. He tried to warn me.”

Castaneda shrugged. “They were going to snatch either you or Pilar because Jimmy was still stalling them. On our orders.”

“Is David all right?” she asked anxiously.

“He’s a big strong guy, he’ll live. Legally? It’s too bad he got caught for doing a good deed.”

She was still confused. “But they’re not going to arrest James?”

He sighed, patiently. “Miss Collier, the citizens of the United States owe Jimmy a big debt for his part in apprehending the Ochoa drug ring. He’s a hero. We asked him to cooperate because every federal agency in Miami wanted the Ochoas’ base in the everglades. We’d been tracking it for five long years. We knew our tiger would do anything to help, even if it meant driving himself to the wall. Which,” he added, “he was practically doing already.”