Metro Girl (Alex Barnaby 1)

“Lady, you suck as a bodyguard,” Hooker said to me. “Where were you when they ripped my shirt off?”

“These people are crazy!”

“They’re just a little excited. I don’t understand it, but this happens to me a lot.”

Two cop cars pulled into the lot, lights flashing. A couple cops got out and waded through the crowd.

“Hey look,” one of the cops said. “It really is Sam Hooker. Man, I love to watch you drive,” the cop said to Hooker. “You’re the best. I almost lost it when you took out the Bud car last year at Miami.”

“Yeah,” Hooker said. “That was a good one. I’m in sort of a bind here, guys. I’m turning into fan food.”

One of the cops got knocked to the ground. “Call for backup,” he yelled to his partner. “We need riot control.”

A half hour later, the crowd was dispersed. The cops all had autographs. A property damage report had been filed for the Subaru. One of the cops had gotten Hooker’s shoe back. The hat and the shirt were never to be seen again.

“Thanks guys,” Hooker said to the cops. “Appreciate the help.”

We all piled into Rosa’s gray Nissan Sentra, and the cops escorted us out of the lot and waved us away.

SIX

Rosa, Felicia, and I sat on the crimson-and-yellow couch in Rich Vana’s living room and waited while Hooker went off to get another motor oil T-shirt.

“So,” Felicia said to me. “Are you sleeping with him?”

“No!”

“That’s a good thing. He’s hot-looking, but he’s probably diseased. I read the magazines, and I watch the celebrity shows on television. These race car drivers have sex on the brain. They’re like barnyard animals.”

“It’s not just race car drivers,” Rosa said. “It’s men. All men have sex on the brain. That’s why they can’t multitask. Their whole brain is taken up

with sex.”

“Not all men are diseased, though,” Felicia said.

“Puleeze,” Rosa said, eyes rolling, hands in the air. “All men are diseased. What about herpes and genital warts? Do you honestly think there’s a man in Miami without one of those?”

“Well, no. But I wasn’t counting those. Do you think they count for disease?”

Hooker strolled into the living room. He was wearing a new hat and a new T-shirt that were exact replicas of the ones he’d lost. “What counts for disease?”

“Herpes,” I said.

“Not if it’s on your lip,” Hooker said. “If it’s on your lip you can call it a cold sore. And everyone knows a cold isn’t a disease.”

“I rest my case,” Rosa said. “All men are sex-crazy and diseased.”

“Yeah,” Hooker said. “But we’re fun, right?” He turned to me. “Just for the record, I’m not diseased.”

Felicia put two maps on the coffee table. One was a fold-up road map of Cuba, and the other was crazy Armond’s map, drawn on a piece of lined paper. The road map was dog-eared and worn at the folds. It had a coffee cup stain over Havana and an arrow drawn in red Magic Marker pointing to Club Med Varadero.

“Here, you see, is Maria’s little town, Nuevo Cabo,” Felicia said. “It is a very good place to be a fisherman because the fish are not far offshore, and because there is a safe harbor. It is also a good place to smuggle things you would like kept secret because it is a little remote, but it is still close to Mariel. There were many Russian ships going into Mariel when Maria’s grandfather was looking to make money. The first of the missiles came into the port of Mariel to be taken to the site at Guanajay.

“Remember, there was the blockade by the U.S. Navy, and still Maria’s grandfather went out that night. It was craziness. And it started the curse.”

“There’s no curse,” Rosa said. “Just greed.”

Felicia made the sign of the cross. “Greed is a curse,” she said. “If you look on crazy Armond’s map, you will see where he puts Nuevo Cabo and Mariel. It was always thought the fishing boat went down in the harbor of Mariel. Or maybe that it started to sail to Havana. Armond says Juan found his father far west of there. Juan told Armond he found his father’s bones still with the wedding band on his finger and with a bullet hole in his skull. There are islands and underwater caves to the far side of the Bahia de Cabana, and this is where Armond says Juan found his father. Armond has drawn three islands. One he calls the boot. And another he calls the bird in flight. And he says it is here that Juan did his final diving.”