American Tropic

American Tropic - By Thomas Sanchez


Where the brooding Atlantic meets the moody torrent of the Gulf Stream, water and darkness give birth to the rip tides of fate roaring up through murky underwater canyons. Far above, on the ocean’s roiling dark surface, the silhouette of a lone boat heaves on waves. Bolted to its upper deck is a sturdy metal radio-transmitter antenna. From the transmitter an insistent male voice broadcasts. The words ride, invisible, through the air from east to west. They can be heard from the Great Bahama Bank all the way to the distant island of Cuba. They travel wide across the ocean, from the Tropic of Cancer to the island of Key West, off the coast of Florida. The words become an urgent question.

“Is

anyone

out

there?”

The question hangs, the words stop, then they begin again, rhythmically rising in a strident drumbeat.

“This is Truth Dog broadcasting from pirate-radio boat Noah’s Lark to the whole dead world, speaking to you out of the darkness of night. Are there two brains out there to rub together for a spark of illumination? Do you hear me? Maybe no one is awake in Key West, just twenty miles across the water from me. Maybe all the eyes on that coral-capped island are closed to the obvious truth. Perhaps no one is awake in the wide world that spins obliviously toward its own demise. Could be I’m floating out here alone, broadcasting to a country of unliving people caught in a zombie stupor of collective historical amnesia and collapsed moral hearts. Could be that only the fish beneath me in the sea are awake, sliding through opaque waters, finning through submerged canyons carved by millennia of time, their mouths agape, fins pushing against water’s gravity, on the prowl for their next meal, dead between their eyes to any joy, propelled by their simple ancient truth of gut survival.

“Hey, dead-between-the-eyes fish zombies! Call me now. I’m on the line for you. I’m on the hook. I’m like God in the heavens, or Jesus in the confessional box, or Moses in the lightning glow on the mountaintop. Better yet, I take calls from sinners and seekers, repenters and fakers.

“Call me before it is too late. Wake up, little zombies, wake up. Call even if you are dead and only now are awakening in the afterlife, your cold fish-scaled bodies slithering out of the sea onto the shore of a new beginning in an old world. Call Truth Dog, an old dog with new tricks.

“Call me and tell me how the lightning on the mountaintop strikes you between those dead eyes of yours so you see illuminated the green flash of light across the ocean’s horizon spelling out a new dawn and you can finally shout the truth.

“Illumination.

Illuminate or die.

Show me your rage.”



Luz awakens in her bed from dreams of deep-indigo oceans. Her brown eyes take in the white-skinned body of Joan sleeping next to her. Joan’s blond hair lies spread over the pillow; her deep breathing heaves the curve of her bare breasts in a rhythmic rise and fall that Luz has known intimately for twelve years. Luz kisses Joan’s bare shoulder and slides her dark hand below the white swell of one of Joan’s breasts. Luz stares at her hand, her fingers in a winged shape, a dark bird flying beneath the full orb of an alabaster moon.

Above the bed, the ceiling fan’s blades swirl through the humid air. The insistent sound brings Luz back from her brief flight to Joan’s fleshy landscape. She looks up wide-eyed at the blades as their slicing sound grows louder, as forceful as incoming surf crashing onto an island, waves smashing, spraying, drowning everything, plunging Luz back beneath an indigo ocean, where she swims in watery turmoil surrounded by mysterious creatures lurking in a fathomless deep.

Luz shakes her head, driving submerged images from her mind. She turns quickly away from the fan’s blades. She rises from her bed and stands barefoot before her dresser, her white cotton underwear tight against the sheen of her dark skin. She dresses quickly in black pants and a white Cuban-style guayabera shirt. From the dresser top she picks up a loaded Glock 30 semiautomatic pistol with a thick gorilla-grip handle. She snaps the heavy black weapon into its leather holster on a belt. She lifts the long shirt above her pants and straps the gun snug against her waist. She glances into the mirror above the dresser. The mirror reflects Joan’s naked blondness on the bed behind, superimposed over the image of her own shadow-skinned reflection. She drops her loose shirt over the pistol holstered at her hip and looks closely at herself in the mirror. Her black hair is cropped short; her smooth facial features are natural, devoid of any makeup; her eyes hold a steady gaze and do not blink.

Luz leaves Joan sleeping in the bedroom and walks with quiet steps down a narrow dark hallway to a closed door. She pushes the door silently open and looks in on two teenaged girls asleep in separate beds. The older is a healthy sixteen-year-old; her untroubled breath is even, her lips are curved in a smile. In the opposite bed is a younger girl, of fourteen, her bone-thin body pallid and hairless from chemotherapy treatments fighting her childhood leukemia. Next to her bed is a wheelchair, and a nightstand covered with medicine bottles. She stirs awake; her eyes open slowly, with painful effort. She smiles at the sight of Luz. Luz puts her fingers to her lips and blows the girl a kiss, then softly shuts the bedroom door.

In her living room, Luz kneels before a walnut-wood Spanish chest. The top of the chest is commanded by a tall ceramic statue of a Black Madonna. The Madonna holds in her arms an infant child with a beatific smile etched on its face. Luz strikes a match and lights a candle in a red glass holder in front of the statue. She clasps her hands together in a pointed prayerful position. She looks straight into the Madonna’s soulful eyes as she whispers her prayer.

“As a mother myself, I beseech you to take pity on my daughters, Nina and Carmen. Cure my little Nina of her cancer and suffering. Only you, holiest of all mothers, can stop the pain of an innocent child. Give me the strength to protect my daughters and my beloved, Joan. Give me the strength to do what I must do to keep my family safe from the evil that surrounds them.”

Luz’s misty eyes focus on the candle flame flickering in front of the Madonna. The flame sparkles and burns stronger, transforming into a brilliant glow.



A red rising sun emerges on the ocean’s dark horizon. Out of the sun flies a winged armada of seabirds. The birds swoop down from the sky over the water’s surface. They glide above the humped shell of a large sea turtle below. The turtle’s green front fins stroke through the blue, propelling the primeval creature’s bulk relentlessly forward. The birds pass on; beneath them, dolphins break the sea’s surface. The dolphins’ sleek wet bodies arch out of the water into the air in a dazzling, twisting spray. They then dive back out of sight. Impervious to the dolphins, the birds sail on over the dark saucer-shaped shadows of giant stingrays just below the ocean’s skin. The birds continue their journey over open water. They suddenly bank hard, whooshing the air as they descend in a wing-flapping circle around a channel-marker buoy afloat below.

The large anchored buoy’s wide platform base sloshes in the water. Rising up from the base is a tall metal pole with an orange plastic star-shaped reflector at its peak. The reflector glints with shards of orange light. A dead man’s naked body is tied by a thick knotted rope to the pole. Slashed on the body’s abdomen is a painted red X. A steel spear is pierced through the man’s chest. From below the spear a stream of blood has hardened into a congealed purple crust. The white lips of the man’s blood-drained face have been sewn crudely shut with fishing line. His ears have been cut off, leaving two gashed holes. The orbs of the man’s eyes remain open. The eyes stare off across the distance of the ocean. In death, the eyes seem fixed on a horror that the sewn-up lips cannot scream the name of.



Between the islands of Key West and Cuba, the sun’s globe rises into the sky above a weather-beaten 1950s West Indian Heritage trawler. The anchored boat sways in a watery blue canyon created by the rise and fall of waves. On the bow of its thirty-six-foot-long hull is painted the name Noah’s Lark. A twelve-foot-high steel radio-transmitter antenna is bolted to the deck. Inside the windowed pilothouse is a jerry-rigged radio-broadcasting control room. Seated on a ragged swivel chair in front of a console of outdated analog equipment is a man wearing a sun-faded seersucker suit that hangs loosely on his angular frame. His sleep-deprived reddened eyes stare intensely at the console’s flickering red and green lights. The lines etched deeply into the man’s face convey a hard life lived. He agitatedly fingers the bearded stubble of his unshaven chin, then clamps on a pair of battered earphones over the unruly hair of his head. He pulls in close to the metal stub of a microphone on the table before him. His lips loosen with a quiver as if about to deliver a kiss to an unseen lover. His melodious voice suddenly cracks open the morning silence with a basso swagger.

“Rise and shine, all of you in the Florida Keys about to lose your paradise. Rub the stars out of your eyes and take your brains out of your shoes. Today’s temps are soaring up to ninety-nine degrees, too hot to wear your own sweat, let alone your lover’s sweat. This is Noah Sax, your very own Truth Dog, broadcasting from international waters over Conch Pirate Radio offshore from Key West. Key West, Cayo Hueso, Island of Bones—that was the name the early Spanish explorers gave the place when they found it littered with nothing but the bleached remains of the hounded, deserted, and luckless. The Spaniards beat it. Key West, America’s southernmost continental point, where the Overseas Highway ends after hopping across bridges linking forty-three islands on its one-hundred-thirty-mile run down from Miami. Key West, last American island, end of the road at the famous sign, MILE MARKER ZERO. As the poet once wrote, nowhere to go from mile zero except to swim with the sharks and barracuda. Which is where I am, floating with the sharks and barracuda far out at sea, where the feds can’t stop my pirate radio beaming the truth across the open ocean.

“Nowhere does the bell of accountability ring out so loudly as here in the Florida Keys. This fragile ecosystem is dotted with coral-and-mangrove-entwined islands guarded by the third-largest coral reef in the world and the only living coral reef in North America. The fragrant salty air that you breathe here so freely must be defended at all costs, before these islands are covered over in the oil-pollution slime that greases the implacable wheel of man-made environmental destruction. Don’t fool with Mother Nature or Mother Nature will fool with you!”

Noah’s words stop. He grabs a rum bottle from next to his microphone and takes a swig. He swipes the liquid from his lips and continues.

“I’m out here on the open sea in the sun, unlike Internet bloggers hunkered down in solitary dark holes. My old-school live radio is stand-up accountability. I’m the only eco-shock jock broadcasting at sea, letting you, my irreverent audience, roar your disgust against the destruction of the environment. Your words are bullets, so aim straight. Call Noah now, punch me with the power of your pain and pissed-off kisses. If you’re a cynic, comic, or crusader, join the chorus of the committed. Dial Five-Five-C-O-N-C-H. Act out, act up, but act. I’m here for you. I’m a lightning rod, shoot me your lightning. Rock the world with thunder. Show me your rage!”

Noah clutches the microphone in his trembling hand and holds it close to his mouth. He leans back in his chair, takes a deep breath, and switches to a mellow tone.

“While you’re getting ready to put your sweet lips to the phone, let me serve you a hot cup of morning amore, get you in the mood with a beat brewed by our Cuban neighbors just ninety miles across the ocean.”

Noah punches one of the buttons on the broadcast console, starting a CD player wired to a pair of battered wooden speakers. A full-orchestra salsa beat from the speakers fills the pilothouse with an insistent throb. Noah closes his eyes and sways to the seductive rhythm. He gets up from his chair. His arms reach out to an invisible partner, and he dances in a hip-strutting glide around the pilothouse.

Outside Noah’s anchored trawler, the sound of salsa cuts sharp as a musical knife across the ocean’s surface. With nothing to stop it, the music can be heard in the far distance to where a raft drifts. The raft is constructed from scraps of wood crudely lashed with fraying rope. Its sail is a patchwork of fabric stitched together. The ragged sail flaps forlornly in the slight breeze from a broken wood mast. Strewn across the raft are the sun-blackened bodies of men, women, and children. Their arms and legs are akimbo in grotesque contortions of death, the flesh peeling from their bodies, exposing white bones. Their eyes have been pecked out by marauding birds.



In a morning-bright kitchen, Joan at the stove hums cheerfully as she cooks breakfast. At the table, Luz watches her sixteen-year-old daughter, Carmen, brushing toucan-beak-orange-colored polish onto her fingers.

Luz shakes her head at Carmen. “Are you getting ready to go to school or to a nightclub?”

Carmen looks up, her long straight brown hair framing her face. She smiles. “Mom, I’m getting straight A’s.”

Joan turns from her pots and pans steaming on the stovetop and shoots Carmen a reassuring wink. “That’s right, honey, you keep trotting those A’s home and you can paint your nails any color you want. How about painting each one a different color? Be bold.”

Luz loosens her stern gaze. “Okay, I get it. A’s equal painted fingernails. I’ll go with that, but no lipstick. I don’t want my girl wearing lipstick to school. It’s not acceptable in this family.”

Carmen screws the cap onto the nail-polish bottle and picks up her textbooks from the table. She gets up and kisses Luz on the cheek. “You win, Mom. No lipstick. I’m off.”

“And no tricks. Don’t put a ton of lipstick on when you get out of the house. Promise me.”

Carmen hugs Luz. “Promise, Mom. Jeez, no lipstick.”

Luz watches Carmen leave, the door closing behind. She notices Carmen’s plate of uneaten food on the table. “Left without eating again. She’s too skinny. Got to fatten her up on rice and beans and ropa vieja.”

Joan hands Luz a cup of coffee. “Don’t be so hard on her. She’s a good girl.”

“Carmen’s goodness is not what worries me. It’s the world out there around her that bothers me.” Luz takes a sip of coffee. The wrinkled look of concern across her smooth face doesn’t go away.

Joan nudges her playfully. “You were a wild teenager. Drove the boys crazy. You got knocked up when you were eighteen.”

“Nineteen, and it wasn’t boys, you know that, it was one guy. Twice he got me pregnant, I married him like a good Cuban girl—you know the story.”

“Sorry, hon, didn’t mean to bring that up. We won’t talk about him.”

“No, we don’t speak of the beast with no name. Story over.”

“But look at you now. A pillar of society, an officer of the law, and a cute one at that.” Joan strokes Luz’s short black hair and sings with a throaty purr, “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, my panther prowls for me.”

Luz tilts her head back; her worried expression fades as her brown eyes gaze up at Joan.

Joan’s hands caress Luz’s arched neck. “You want to fool around, panther?”

“You know I can’t on a workday.”

Joan leans over; her blond hair cascades around Luz as she whispers, “We could fool around and fool around and fall in love.”

“We are in love, my darling.”

Joan’s fingers deftly open the top buttons of Luz’s shirt; her hands slip onto Luz’s exposed skin.

Luz grips Joan’s wrists, pulling Joan’s hands away. Joan’s jaw tightens; her lips draw into a tight line.

Luz rebuttons her shirt and gazes with concern around the kitchen. “Why isn’t Nina here? Where’s Nina?”

“Don’t be such a cop on the job all the time. Nina is fine. She wants to get herself ready for school. She needs to be independent.”

Luz shoves her chair away from the table and leaves. She walks quickly down a hallway and pushes open a bedroom door. She looks inside.

Nina sits in her wheelchair before a dresser with a large mirror. Her fourteen-year-old body is frail, her torso shrunken, her head bald from chemotherapy. She turns around to Luz, her large brown eyes still luminous. “Mom, I’m glad you’re here. I need your opinion.”

“About what, baby?”

Nina holds out two long wigs, one blond, one brunette. She studies the wigs critically. “Who should I look like today? Marilyn Monroe or Cleopatra?”

“Show me both wigs so I can judge.”

Nina puts on the blond wig and purses her lips in a sophisticated pout. “What about Marilyn? Am I as irresistible as her?”

“Marilyn never looked so good. Maybe it’s a bit too much for school—but you look great.”

Nina pulls off the blond wig and puts on the brunette. She gives a sassy stare. “Am I as powerful as Cleo?”

“Yes, you’ve definitely got the Queen Cleo vibe going.”

“Mom, you can’t be such a pushover and like both wigs. Help me. Which one?”

Luz steps close to Nina in the wheelchair. She picks up the blond wig and pulls it on over her cropped black hair. She stares at her reflection in the dresser mirror. The light-colored wig contrasts sharply with the darkness of her face. Luz mugs a sultry expression. “Do you think I’m sexy?”

“Mom, you’re such a goof.”

Luz leaves the wig on. “Come on, do you think I’m sexy?”

“No. I think you’re funny.”

“I think I’m sexy.”

Nina studies Luz in the blond wig. “Okay, yes, you’re crazy nutzoid sexy!” Nina’s frail body shakes with laughter.

Luz pulls off the blond wig. “Baby, I’ve got to go to work.”

“Which wig should I wear, Mom?”

Luz wraps her arms around Nina and holds her tight, then strokes her smooth bald head. “I want my girl as she already is. Shining more beautiful than Marilyn on the silver screen. Braver than Cleopatra on her war boat.”



Far out on the ocean, the recorded beat of salsa music ends inside the pilothouse of Noah’s pirate-radio boat. He stops his dancing with an invisible partner. He sits back down on the worn chair in front of the makeshift broadcasting console.

Noah speaks rapidly into the microphone. “I still don’t have any calls from my intrepid pilgrims out there. If you don’t want to show me the rage, let’s talk about the Powerboat Championship Race starting from Key West Harbor this morning. Those boats burn enough fuel in one race to fly a jumbo jet across the Atlantic. Hey, let’s not sweat the carbon emissions. Let’s disregard a monstrous guzzle of fossil fuel from the tit of Mother Earth when the scent of blood sport is in the air. Today, Key West’s native-son racer, Dandy Randy, is set to break his own speed record of more than ninety miles an hour. Problem is, Randy went missing after yesterday’s qualifying race. Where’s Randy? Holed up in a poker parlor? Adrift in puke after a night of prowling sleazy bars? At the bottom of the sea, entangled in a net with dead turtles? What’s up with Randy? What’s up with the turtle slaughter? Sea turtles are being killed by gill nets and long hook-lines by the millions. Show me the rage!”

In front of Noah, on the console’s instrument panel, three cell phones are wired into battered wood speakers. A light flashes red on one of the phones, signaling an incoming call.

Noah presses the answer button. “I’ve reeled in my first caller. I hope you’re a whopper.”

A male voice booms from the speakers. “Hey, Truth Dog, I’ve been listening since you started your pirate-radio gig a year ago. You’re so righteous to call out those macho joystick powerboat racers like Candy Bambi.”

“Dandy Randy.”

“Whatever. Were you around back in the eighties, when Key West was Dodge City on the Gulf Stream? Totally lawless time, cocaine smuggling and high jinks par excellente!”

“I was getting my degree in environmental law up in Miami then, but Key West has always been a pirate island, stolen treasures off of wrecked ships lured by false lights onto the reef offshore, rumrunners, gunrunners, drug runners, any kind of contraband. What ruined your little paradise?”

“Not the smuggling. It’s that Key West isn’t a fishing port anymore. The shrimpers and their boats were kicked out to put in seaside condos. Hordes of tourists driving down here on the Overseas Highway. Giant cruise ships spitting out thousands of passengers. It’s the tourists who are killing the coral reef offshore of Key West.”

“Now you’re showing some rage. But tourists, you think they’re killing America’s only continental reef? You think they’re killing a two-hundred-forty-million-year-old reef?”

“Hell, yeah!”

“No! Coral die-off is caused by the thermal stress of ocean warming. Added to this is the ocean dumping of toxic pesticides and chemicals. I want to expose the real culprits. I want to peel the lies off of their greedy hides, the same way the shark hunters used to knife-skin a shark with a one-bladed stroke. The reefs are the rain forests of the sea. Fifty percent of the Caribbean reefs are already dead because of warming, pollution, and net-fishing ships. Soon every coral reef on earth will be dead!”

Noah punches off the caller and clicks on another phone. “I can’t hear you, talk louder, there’s static on the line.”

A belligerent voice echoes through the static. “I want you to know, I’m a vet. I was in Vietnam.”

“Is that supposed to be a cause for celebration or condemnation?”

“F*ck you!”

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’m all ears.”

“Perm … ian Ex … tinc … tion E … vent.”

“Permian Extinction Event? What’s that got to do with anything? Happened millions of years ago. A volcanic methane-gas explosion that wiped out nearly every living thing on our planet.”

“It’s also called the Great Dying. It’s what you’ve been quackin’ about and you don’t even see the connection. It’s comin’ again.”

“Okay, Nam vet, I’m on the edge of my seat. Shoot me facts.”

“This time the explosion of obliteration will be man-made.”

“What’s the trigger? Nuclear war?”

“It’s comin’ from beneath the boat you’re floatin’ on, from the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico.”

“And you say it’s man-made. So I figure you must mean that—”

A thundering boom comes from outside Noah’s trawler. He looks through the window of the pilothouse. The radio-transmitter antenna bolted to the deck sways. The trawler rocks hard from side to side. Noah tries to keep the shaking electronic equipment on the broadcast console from falling. He catches his rum bottle as it tumbles from the table. He glances around, trying to figure out what happened. He looks down through the window and sees that a drifting raft has collided with his trawler.

The raft is filled with a jumble of dead bodies. From among the bodies a bone-thin teenaged boy, shirtless and barefoot, rises. His black skin is sun-blistered and riddled with lacerations. The whites of his startled eyes loom large as he stares up at Noah in the pilothouse.

Noah yanks the ship-to-shore radio mike from its holder and shouts: “Mayday! This is Noah’s Lark! Mayday!”



A gray sixty-foot-long Coast Guard cutter tows the small wooden raft with dead bodies toward Key West Harbor. Noah follows the cutter in his trawler. The cutter slows to a stop. Noah motors alongside and shouts to a uniformed guardsman on the cutter’s deck, “What’s the holdup?”

The guardsman shouts down, “Harbor’s blocked, powerboat race starting, have to wait before going in.”

Noah cuts his engine. He sees around him an anchored flotilla of fancy yachts, paint-blistered skiffs, sleek ketches, and listing lobster boats crowded with beer-drinking revelers waiting for the spectacle to begin.

From the harbor’s distant shoreline a cannon booms, signaling the race start. Cheers go up from the anchored flotilla. A roar of jet-propelled engines vibrates the air. Twelve long-hulled powerboats emerge from the harbor entrance. The waterborne herd thunders at full throttle, their boldly painted hulls nosed high, sharp bows tilting six feet into the air, their rear exhausts blasting water up behind them. Deep within the cocooned cockpits bolts of sunlight reflect off the driver’s and throttle-man’s crash helmets. The boats race in front of Noah’s trawler with an earsplitting engine snarl; white-hot jet exhausts plow a showering spray. Above the powerboats a TV news helicopter chases the action. From the copter’s open doorway a cameraman leans out, filming the boats as they roar toward the ocean’s distant horizon and over its edge.

Noah’s boat rocks in the watery wake left behind by the powerboats. The Coast Guard cutter’s engines rev to a turbine whine. Noah follows the cutter towing the raft. Inside the harbor’s anchorage, the cutter slows to a stop, and guardsmen secure it alongside a cement pier. Noah steers his boat around the cutter and ties up behind the raft. He watches through his pilothouse window as a crowd gathers on the pier, gawking at the sight of the raft with its cargo of bodies.

Among the crowd is Hogfish, straddling a rusty bicycle. From the back of his sun-faded fisherman’s cap hangs a ragged swag of graying hair. IPhone earbuds are jammed into his ears. A tight T-shirt on his bony chest reads DON’T KILL THE MESSENGER. A queer grin spreads over his forty-year-old face, remarkable for its smooth, unlined quality. Only his bulging eyes, washed of all color and seeming to spin in opposite orbits, indicate a man burned out from battles fought in distant wars. Between the handlebars of his bicycle is stretched a fishing line, dangling with barbed J-hooks. He pushes the bicycle’s front wheel against the taut rope mooring the raft to the dock.

A bullnecked deputy detective with a slick sunburnt shaved head, Moxel, shoves through the crowd to Hogfish. A shiny badge is pinned to his crisp blue uniform shirt. His lips carry the arrogant expression of a young man barging through life based on a combination of brute force and triumph over his low social origins. He grips the handlebars of Hogfish’s bicycle above the line of dangling fishhooks and snarls in a Southern accent: “Get away from that rope. This is a crime scene.”

Hogfish’s head bobs to the clash of heavy-metal guitars playing through his old-model iPhone’s earbuds. He pushes his front bicycle wheel harder against the rope to get a closer look at the grotesque scene in the raft.

Moxel tightens his fists on the handlebars of Hogfish’s bicycle. “I’m talking to you! Back off! Didn’t you hear me? Take out your goddamn earplugs!” Hogfish’s head keeps bobbing.

Luz, dressed in her dark pants and guayabera shirt, steps quickly through the crowd and grabs the scraggly ponytail hanging from behind Hogfish’s fishing cap. The muscles in her arm tighten as she tugs the ponytail, pulling him away from the rope. She leans into his face and shouts, “Dios da sombrero a quien no tiene cabeza!”

Moxel elbows Luz and sneers. “What the hell does that mean?”

“God gives hats to some who have no head.”

“Why not just say it in English? Your kind are always trying to make this a Spanish-speaking country.”

Luz ignores Moxel and steps to a guardsman protecting the raft with a rifle clutched in his hands. The guardsman nervously holds up the rifle, blocking Luz. “Ma’am, you’ll have to stay on the other side of the rope. This is official Coast Guard business. No one goes on the raft.”

Luz pulls out her wallet, flips it open, and flashes her silver badge. “I’m Detective Luz Zamora, Key West Homicide. This dock is city property. I’ve got jurisdiction here, not the Coast Guard. I’m boarding the raft.”

The guardsman looks at the badge and stands aside. “Yes, ma’am!”

Luz steps over the rope onto the edge of the concrete bulwark. She winces at the rotting stench drifting up from the bloated bodies. She jumps down onto the raft and moves quickly among the jumble of dead people, feeling the wrists of stiffened arms for a pulse.

A siren wails from the dock. The crowd parts for the arriving ambulance. The side door swings open; a paramedic hurries out. He jumps onto the raft and shouts at Luz above the still-wailing siren, “Is anyone alive?”

Luz turns to the paramedic. “No one. All dead.”

The medic gazes in astonishment at the bodies on the raft. He looks back at Luz. “Must be hard for you, seeing your people end up this way.”

“What do you mean, my people?”

“You’re Cuban. These are Cuban boat people.”

“These people aren’t Cubans, they’re Haitians. But that doesn’t make it less horrifying.”

Luz looks away from the bodies. She sees Noah on the fly deck of his trawler, docked next to the raft. She calls over to him, “What do you know about this?”

Noah shouts back, “The raft was adrift, banged into my boat. I called in the Mayday.”

Noah turns from Luz and goes back into his pilothouse. He grabs his bottle of rum off the console table. He walks over to a canvas curtain covering a storage closet in the corner. He pulls the curtain back, exposing the teenaged survivor from the raft. The boy appears terrified. Noah speaks softly in French: “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. We’ve got to keep you hidden. If they find you, they’ll send your sorry ass back to Haiti.” He drinks rum from his bottle and looks sympathetically at the trembling boy. “Kid, you crossed seven hundred miles of shark-infested ocean to escape an earthquake-racked country of poverty, disease, and violence. Now you’ve got to do the hardest thing, you’ve got to trust me.”

The boy mumbles in French, “My … name … is Rimbaud.”

Noah responds in French. “What’s the family name?”

“Mesrine.”

Noah guzzles down the last of the rum and fixes the boy with a glassy-eyed philosophical expression. “Rimbaud Mesrine, damnedest thing. They named you after a famous gunrunning poet and a famous cold-blooded killer. They must have figured you were going to become a French politician.”

Noah turns and looks down through the salt-streaked window of the pilothouse. He sees Luz on the raft moving among the dead bodies and speaks to her in words he knows she can’t hear:

“Slaves and masters. F*cked up as it ever was.”



Five miles out to sea from Key West, the twelve powerboats roar across the ocean’s surface at ninety miles an hour. The TV news helicopter overhead chases the boats as they make a turn around a large channel marker. They speed away from the floating buoy. The copter hovers over it. The side door of the copter slides open, and a cameraman looks down, shocked at what he sees, almost losing his grip on the heavy camera as he shouts back at the pilot. “Damn! It’s what I thought! Can’t believe it!”

The copter’s blades whip the air as the cameraman leans perilously out from the doorway. He aims his lens down and films the naked body of a dead man tied by rope to the buoy’s metal pole.

The downward force of wind from the copter’s blades above the body creates a churning circle in the water around the buoy. The copter pulls up and banks away. The buoy rocks in the watery wake left behind. The mutilated body tied to the pole sways beneath a relentless sun.



The Bounty Bar faces the boat-filled Key West Harbor. The walls are hung with an array of seafaring artifacts, big-game fishing rods and reels and colorful mounted trophy fish caught in their plasticized death leaps. The humid air moves in a rush from ceiling fans spinning over the heads of sport fishermen, shrimpers, real-estate hustlers, deadbeats, lushes, lowlifes, and wide-eyed tourists wearing floral-print shirts.

Commanding the scene from behind the long mahogany bar counter is Zoe. She emanates an effortless sophisticated beauty cut by a savvy aura of understanding the world of men. She moves quickly, with the calculated feline grace of knowing her ability to land securely no matter what situation she is thrown into. She pulls two bottles of beer up from the icy water of the large bright-red cooler and bangs them down on the counter in front of two Bounty Bar regulars, Big Conch and Hard Puppy.

Big Conch’s cocked-up stature comes from the years when he outran Coast Guard cutters in his cocaine-packed cigarette boat across low-tide coral inlets. His face registers the righteousness of an outlaw who cashed out of his scam before being busted and left to rot in a federal slammer. His gray hair is dyed an unnatural blond hue and is slicked back flat against his scalp. Around Big’s neck dangles the circular gold weight of Spanish medallions. His blue-eyed stare is that of a thug feigning a legit life in a new world of real-estate pimps and condo hustlers. He grabs the beer bottle in front of him and ham-fists it to his lips, sucking out the foaming brew.

Next to Big, Hard Puppy takes a slow, cool drink from his bottle. Hard is descended from a line of black Bahamian freemen who were once the property of British Caribbean overlords. He is outfitted in a flashy white silk suit and white alligator shoes, befitting his position as the number-one cash kingpin of illegal dogfighting from Key West to Miami. Around Hard floats in the air the lime scent of aftershave lotion that he slaps onto his sharp-featured face every day to keep away the scent of poverty he grew up with and that he always smells: the stink of unchanged shit in diapers and a drunk stepfather snoring on top of his puked-out, passed-out mother.

Hard and Big straighten up on their stools to get a better view of Zoe behind the bar. They admire her long tanned legs captured by tight white shorts and, above that, a thin strategic halter top offering the right amount of provocative glimpse of her breasts.

Big glances at his gold Rolex as if time is running out, then looks back at Zoe and rattles off at her: “After your divorce is final from Noah, you’re gonna marry me. I’ll be richer than original sin itself when my resort is completed. Bank on that, girl. Big will have you farting through silk panties for the rest of your gorgeous life.”

Zoe plants her elbows on the bar in front of Big; she leans her chin into her cupped hands and defiantly nails Big’s blue eyes with her own big blue eyes. “Everyone knows your Neptune Bay Resort is illegal. You bulldozed tidal lands before the environmental study came in. The ecologists stopped you. You’ll be lucky if they don’t hang you from an endangered gumbo-limbo tree before you make your first dime.”

Hard Puppy snorts his approval of Zoe’s put-down of Big. His platinum-encased teeth shine as he speaks with a singsong Caribbean twang. “Baby doll, you don’t have to be marryin’ me for my monies. Just be givin’ me one hot honey night and we be doin’ the nasty black and white, then Hard’s fortune be yours.”

Zoe spins around from Hard and Big. Her attention goes to a large television behind the bar. On the screen, a basketball game cuts away to a breaking news story. A headline scrolls across the screen, MURDER AT THE RACE, followed by a video shot from a helicopter of a race-marker buoy floating at sea. Tied to the pole of the buoy is the blurred image of a man’s body. Everyone in the bar stops talking and turns toward the television just as the blurred image of the dead body flashes off the screen and is replaced with DANDY RANDY FOUND DEAD. WE RESUME REGULAR BROADCAST.

Big jumps from his stool and jabs his finger at the television. “That was my Neptune Bay partner tied to that buoy! What the hell happened?”

Hard sneers. “Randy be gone, good riddance. He grew up on this island sellin’ bad fish to navy wives. In the end he be tryin’ to sell overpriced resort condos to retired military and New York divorcées. F*ck that. His white ass be fish bait now.”

Big swings around with doubled-up fists. He takes aim to punch out Hard’s mouthful of metallic teeth as a wiry woman, Pat, steps in front of him. Pat wears rubber shrimper boots, blue jeans, and a tight T-shirt. She pulls up onto the stool vacated by Big. Wrapped around the bare skin of her left arm are purple tattooed tentacles of a one-eyed octopus. She nails Hard with a mocking smirk. “Don’t be mean about dearly departed Dandy Randy. Show him some respect. That’s not any way to talk about your brother.”

Hard spews out a mouthful of foaming spit. “Dandy don’t be my brother! Dandy be a white cracker boy. My mama never let no rooster wearin’ white socks in her back door. No white chickens be in her yard.”

Pat laughs at Hard. “Your mama should’ve ate whatever rooster was your daddy for giving her a big load of crap like you to haul.”

Zoe pops open a bottle of beer and slides it across the bar counter. “Here you go, Pat, this one’s on the house. Let’s keep the peace.”

Pat grabs the bottle and swigs the beer. She smacks the bottle back down and stares at Hard.

Hard’s angry glare turns into a smile of glinting teeth. “Pat, you be a mean son-of-a-bitch. You should quit shrimpin’ and come workin’ for me. I could use a scrapper like you.”

Pat swipes beer from her sun-hardened lips. “You want me to give up being captain of my own shrimping boat to rig dogfights for you?”

“I be no dogfight gamer. That be a white-devil lie. I be a peaceful man, not like you. Word is you be the number-one killer of leatherback turtles in the Florida Keys.”

“Yeah, Chinese dudes pay a fortune for leatherbacks. They believe leatherbacks can cure everything from cancer to limp dick.”

Hard smirks. “Who you be accusin’ of limp dick? Nothin’ between your legs but eight inches of strap-on stiff rubber.”

Zoe leans in between Pat and Hard. She beams Pat a friendly heads-up. “Honey, you should use turtle excluders on your shrimp nets. If you’re caught slaughtering endangered turtles, they’ll lock you up and throw the key away.”

Pat shakes her head defiantly from side to side. “I got a right to fish anything from the sea. No one can stop me. No feds, no man, no woman. Not even a woman as sexy as you, Zoe, Miss Show My Cute White Ass in Shorts to All the Customers When I’m Bending Over to Get the Beer.”

Big Conch’s eyes go to the television, where the basketball players on the screen are replaced by the image of Luz being interviewed by a reporter. Behind Luz is the Haitian raft filled with dead bodies. Big shouts at Zoe. “Turn the goddamned TV up, for Christ’s sakes!”

Zoe raises the volume. Luz’s steady professional voice fills the room: “They died from hunger and exposure. No indication of foul play. Just a horrendous end for desperate people.”

Pat whistles and calls out to Luz on the screen. “Look at you! You’re a gorgeous star. They should put you in a Hollywood movie. You could be the warden in a woman’s prison.”

Zoe pushes a firm finger against Pat’s lips. “Quiet. Let’s hear what Luz is saying.”

Hard bangs his beer bottle on the counter. “Luz be one black sister can’t be trusted. I hate cops, ’specially colored cops. Be bad for business.”

The outside door to the bar slams open. In the doorway is Hogfish, backlit by a shaft of sunlight. His iPhone earbuds are clamped into his ears. He looks wild-eyed from beneath his long-billed fisherman’s cap and screams in panic: “This world is rigged for hurricanes! El Finito’s coming! I see the eye of his category-five hurricane winking offshore! Monster of destruction blowing two-hundred-mile-an-hour winds and pushing a fifty-foot-high storm surge before it! I’m the best fishing guide on this island, I read the weather. The ocean’s currents spell out the future to me! I see the ocean’s truth with my own eyes!”

Big stomps his feet on the floor and shouts back at Hogfish. “You’re no fishing guide anymore! You can’t find your own pecker to take a piss, let alone find yourself a fish to hook.” Big grabs his beer bottle and hurls it at Hogfish.

The bottle flies by Hogfish’s head, hitting the wall behind in a shatter of spraying glass. He ignores the shards around him, his head bobbing to music pumping through the earbuds. He lurches violently, seemingly caught by a great wind. He staggers, regains his footing, stands alone in the center of the room, with everyone fixed on his screaming rant.

“Like the baby Jesus grown into a righteous monster, El Finito will shut your mouths and open your minds! You don’t need satellite photos to see him coming! Finito is speeding here to punch your lights out! Punch your teeth down your throat! Punch your civilization down the drain!”



Along one of the many deep-water canals running in from the Gulf of Mexico side of Key West and crisscrossing the island stands Noah’s nautical-deco-style house. The 1930s structure is long past its glory days, the paint of its once-sleek exterior spider-cracked and peeling. In the hazy humid atmosphere of the setting sun, the rounded walls and porthole windows give the appearance of a formerly glamorous yacht now forsaken and stranded on land.

Inside the sparse living room, a few pieces of worn-out dull-yellow bamboo furniture are scattered around, and piles of dusty hardcover law books and tattered paperbacks are stacked along the walls. Noah sits at a lone bamboo table, listening to the chorus of frogs outside croaking anxiously for night to fall. He takes a drink from his rum bottle and stares pensively through the open window, across a parched grassy expanse, at the still water of the canal. A fish leaps from the flat surface. It snaps into its gaping mouth an unlucky flying insect, then splashes from sight back into the depths of the canal.

Behind Noah, in the rose glow of dusk, Zoe quietly walks in. She sits across from him at the table and watches him drink. The sound of frogs outside grows more insistent, at odds with the measured tone of Zoe’s words: “I need you to sign the divorce papers in two weeks. Don’t play any tricks.”

A nervous twitch crosses Noah’s face. He takes another drink. He holds the liquor in his mouth, feeling its sting before swallowing. His throat is tight as his words come out with a cut: “What’s the hurry? We haven’t been living together for a year.”

“You haven’t been living for a year.”

“Depends on what you call living.”

“You’re either drunk or out there on your boat, ranting on the radio.”

“I’m not an alcoholic. If a man drinks himself into oblivion, it means he doesn’t want to see the sun rise the next morning. I still want to see the sun rise.”

“You haven’t obliterated yourself—yet—but you’ve given up. You used to be a damn fine lawyer.”

“I didn’t give up, sweetheart. I was disbarred.”

“What did you expect? You went ballistic in the courtroom.”

“I was prosecuting corporate bastards drilling illegal wells in protected tidelands. Toxic sludge killing off wildlife. Politicians paid off. Nobody had the guts to stand up against them. Masters and slaves, same as it ever was. At least one day, in one courtroom, before the judge let the criminals off, I could expose them. You know what I always say: speaking the truth will set you on fire.”

“I know the story by heart.”

“Then don’t come in here and lecture me, saying I gave up.”

“I don’t buy into your excuse of indignation. You didn’t have to storm out of the courtroom.”

“You didn’t have to walk out of the marriage.”

“I only walked out when you started drowning yourself in a sea of booze.”

“A man who does not enter the sea will not be drowned by the sea, right? Don’t worry about me—I’m a good swimmer.”

“Nobody is that good of a swimmer.”

“What do you want me to say, Zoe? The usual muck: ‘Hi, I’m Noah, I’m an alcoholic’? Well, this boy won’t play that shtick, because it’s really a stick with one sharp end and the other end covered in shit. I will stand up and shout: ‘I’m Noah and I f*cked up and I don’t want sympathy, antipathy, hallelujahs, or condemnations. It is what it is, between a man and himself, a void to swim in until it’s a win-or-lose.’ ”

Zoe pulls the bottle from his hand. She slips the gold wedding ring from her finger and drops it into the empty bottle. The ring falls to the glass bottom with a clink. She hands the bottle back to Noah. “Congratulations, now you’re married to it.”

“And you’ve finally got what you want: you’re free to date the Big Conchs of this world. That’s why you still run a bar, so guys like Big can get drunk and hit on you?”

Zoe bites down on her lip, trying to suppress her fury, but she cannot. “That’s disgusting. You know good and well that I got into the bar business years ago only to support you through law school. Why do you try to hurt me like this?”

Noah picks up a cork from the tabletop. He pounds the cork tightly into the bottle’s neck. He holds the bottle up and shakes it. The gold ring trapped inside rattles. He stares through the glass at the ring. “Haitian rum. There’s a prize in each and every bottle.” He shifts his intense gaze onto Zoe. “You are still my prize. My dazzling angelfish, my resplendent butterfly fish, my gorgeous queen triggerfish.”

Zoe pushes up from the table. “I’m nobody’s fish. Stay here and drown in the drunken sea of self-pity you’ve created for yourself.” She walks out.

Noah does not move; he sits alone in the stillness. Through the open window from outside, the sickly sweet scent of night-blooming jasmine drifts in. The blood in his veins hums with the sugar rush of rum. On a moisture-slick wall, he watches a gecko make its slow, paranoid way until it senses him watching. The gecko’s ghostly-pale color flushes to a bright bold green; the blow bulge under its chin balloons into pulsating crimson. It pumps up on its short legs and puffs its three-inch lizard body into what it thinks is an intimidating size that will back Noah down from any hostile intentions.

Noah raises the empty rum bottle with the ring in it and salutes the gecko. “That’s right, buddy, you’re the man. You are the man. Don’t ever forget it.”



Eighteen miles up from Key West, on distant Sugarloaf Key, an eighty-foot-high pyramid-shaped wooden tower looms at the dead end of a gravel road. The moon’s glow reveals that the tower is surrounded by a putrid mangrove swamp of twisted trunks and gnarly branches. From the swamp’s brackish green water emerges what appears to be a human skeleton. The skeleton is a person totally encased in a full-body black rubber suit stretched tight and painted with luminescent white skeleton bones. A rubber skull mask covers the face and head. The skeleton rises out of the dark water onto the hard gravel road. A coiled rope is slung over its shoulder. The skeleton peers out from deep black eye sockets to see if anyone is watching. It reaches back down and hefts from the swamp’s mud-suck of water a heavy object wrapped and tied in a canvas tarpaulin. The skeleton slowly moves along the road, the gravel crunching beneath its rubber feet as it drags the heavy object behind. The skeleton stops and bends its head back, its skull face staring up to the top of the tower’s point.

In the blue light of a full moon, the skeleton continues dragging the object toward the tower.



Sharp morning sunlight glares off the pyramid-shaped wood tower surrounded by mangrove swamp. A tour bus travels on the gravel road leading to the tower. The bus’s high black rubber tires kick up a cloud of white dust. The bus rolls to a stop in front of the tower. The side of the bus is painted with bright green words: FLORIDA KEYS ECO-AWARE.

Ecotourists step out of the vehicle with eager purpose. Slung around the necks of the men and women are binoculars and cameras. They wear fashionable shorts and green T-shirts emblazoned with DON’T FOOL WITH MOTHER NATURE. They aim their cameras at the wooden pyramid tower.

The last person out of the bus is a tour guide with a tight expression of righteousness etched on her youthful face. She motions for the group to gather around her. The tourists snap to attention at her words. “Many years ago, a real-estate tycoon had a grand scheme. He wanted to drain this mangrove swamp and build a city here. But first he had to eradicate the mosquito population that swarms by the billions from this swamp. So the clever developer built this eighty-foot-high wooden tower to house thousands of bats. The plan was that at night the bats would fly out from the tower to eat the mosquitoes. It seemed like a good idea at the time, an army of bats gobbling up bloodthirsty mosquitoes.”

The ecotourists groan their disapproval of the developer’s scheme.

A thin young man wearing a green silk bandanna tight around his forehead speaks up. “Are the bats still inside? I’d just like to—”

A ruddy-faced Australian cuts off the question with his thick accent. “Hell, mate, if the bats are inside, all the bloody buggers will be hanging upside down asleep. Maybe Count Dracula is in there with them. Spoookyyy.”

The thin young man looks nervously at the tower. “That’s not funny, dude!”

The guide raises her hand for quiet and continues her story. “The developer’s grandiose mosquito-eating scheme didn’t work. The bats flew away and never returned. The guy went belly-up, lost all his money, and slunk back to where he came from.”

The ecotourists give a congratulatory cheer.

The Australian chimes in. “Bloody hell, that served the greedy grubber right.”

The guide looks out across the surrounding fetid mangrove swamp of tangled tree trunks and branches. “The Florida Keys are a one-of-a-kind unique and fragile environment which we all must respect and protect. What is the lesson that I’ve been teaching you on this tour?”

The ecotourists chant in unison: “Don’t fool with Mother Nature or Mother Nature will fool with you!”

The guide beams her approval. “Let this tower stand as a living lesson to all those who want to come to our paradise and try to rip it off.”

The ecotourists pump their fists, shouting, “Don’t fool with Mother Nature!”

“Good. Now, let’s take a closer look at this tower and witness one man’s folly.” The guide leads the group across the crunchy gravel road. She stops beneath the tower’s base of massive wooden support struts. She beckons the tourists to gather around. “At one time this was the highest structure in the Florida Keys between Miami and Key West. The tower could be seen by passing ships from miles out at sea. Take a look up and see how high this is—quite a feat.”

The ecotourists bend their heads back and look up inside the soaring shaft. In a stunned moment of silence, their eyes widen as they are transfixed by the vision they see in the clammy darkness far above, at the tower’s point. Their sudden shouts and screams echo up the shaft in panicked horror. They turn and run between the tower’s massive support struts and back onto the road. They attempt to knock one another out of the way as they scramble toward the bus. The thin man with the tight green bandanna is pushed aside and falls onto the road; the gravel cuts into his knees, drawing blood. The tour guide yanks him up by the arm. He looks back toward the tower and his body shakes violently. A spray of vomit shoots from his mouth and splatters at the tour guide’s feet. The guide tightens her grip on the wobbling man’s arm and runs with him toward the bus, where the others are cowering in their seats.



Luz steers her white Dodge Charger down the skinny slot of Olivia Street. The street is crowded on both sides with century-old Cuban cigar-makers’ shacks, built when Key West was the cigar-producing capital of the world, rolling out a million smokes a year. None of the shacks retain their original bare-board anonymity, having been painted by affluent new owners to a pastel prettiness. Gone are the generations of Cubans who once stood on the porches calling out hot gossip to neighbors in hot weather. The humid air no longer carries the garlic scent of sizzling shrimp and the sweet aroma of Cuban bread. The white fences in front of the shacks have been trimmed of their overgrown red bougainvillea and riotous yellow allamanda blossoms. Everything is prim and calm, like a street in a proper New England port town, not the boisterous place where Luz grew up.

Luz turns her car at the corner of Olivia onto wide Duval Street. She parks in front of one of the last Cuban expresso-buche shops on the island not retrofitted into a trendy franchise coffee palace. The shop is a nondescript narrow storefront with a slotted hole cut in a cement wall to pass the coffee through. Luz gets out of her car and orders her third buche double of the morning. She watches through the slotted hole as a broad-butted Cuban woman dressed in tight blue jeans works at the sputtering and hissing nozzle of a monstrous old burnished expresso machine. The woman turns with a triumphant smile and presents a cup of steaming buche to Luz, who cradles it in her hand.

Sipping her hot caffeine nectar in the sun’s morning glare, Luz keeps her eyes on the Duval Street activity from behind her sunglasses. Packs of excited vacationers in shorts and flip-flops hurry by on the sidewalk, darting into gift shops, trying on T-shirts with tropical scenes silk-screened on them, and buying Key West’s two most famous postcard photos, the mile-zero sign at the end of Highway 1, and the tall bullet-shaped concrete monument at the Atlantic’s edge declaring SOUTHERNMOST POINT CONTINENTAL U.S.A.—90 MILES TO CUBA.

From the open window of Luz’s car, parked at the curb, a police dispatcher’s radio voice drones. Luz takes another sip of buche as she listens to the bored voice announcing bicycle thefts, lost dogs, and jaywalkers. The voice is suddenly drowned out by the roar of a motorcycle. She turns to see Pat on her Harley-D jump the curb behind the Charger and come to a tire-burning stop on the sidewalk, scattering the startled tourists.

Luz eyes Pat with mock discipline. “I could arrest you for that stunt.”

Pat tightens her grip on the Harley’s chrome handlebars. She fixes Luz with a bold stare. “Oh, I want to be arrested. That’s my dream, one night locked up with you. I’ll lick all the brown sugar out of your bowl. You should jilt your girlfriend, Joan. Hop on my bike. We’ll never look back.”

Luz swallows her coffee. “You still poaching endangered turtles?”

Pat flexes the muscles of her bare arm with the octopus tattoo, bulking up the one-eyed creature’s nasty-looking tentacles. “No one will ever catch me. But, hey, you can catch that ecofreak brother of Joan’s. He’s broadcasting illegally over the radio.”

“Noah broadcasts from outside the city limits. I don’t have jurisdiction on the ocean. That’s for the feds.”

“I hope his pissy pirate boat sinks in the middle of a shit slick dumped from a thousand crappers off a cruise ship.”

Pat gazes over at the gleaming white Charger SRT8, taking in its arched rear-end cobra-wing spoiler and the black front grille open-jawed like an onrushing land shark.

She grins. “You got yourself some unmarked cop car, tricked out like a Cuban Miami pimp-mobile. I know there’s a siren embedded in that grille, and red strobe-lights under those halogen headbeams that you can switch on from inside. How come you got all the flash, when most of Key West’s dumb-dicks poke around in stupid Ford Victorias?”

Luz grins back. “I have this rocket because I’ll need it to go a quarter of a mile in twelve seconds when I’m coming to bust your ass.”

“Like I said, no one can catch me.”

Luz shakes her head and looks long at Pat. “No hay rosas sin espinas.”

“Huh? I don’t habla the Es-span-yolla. What are you saying?”

“There are no roses without thorns.”

Pat twists her Harley’s throttle in a rev and shouts above the engine’s loud growl, “I’ll take that as a compliment. Whenever you get tired of your blond bunny, you come running to me. I’m the only real rose in the garden. With me you get the prick of the thorns and not just the flower’s soft petal. Life on the edge. It’s your choice, brown sugar.” Pat roars off.

From Luz’s police radio, the droning dispatcher’s voice suddenly crackles with urgency. “Code five at Sugarloaf Key Bat Tower! All Alpha units respond!”

Luz gulps her coffee and starts her car. She switches on her outside flashing red lights and siren and speeds away.