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  “Been told I look like a cop,” Cooper said. “Lucky me.”

  He noticed Manny wasn’t reading anything or doing any paperwork. On the desk he saw a blotter, calendar, and phone-no notes, no forms, no files. Manny was doing nothing but sipping the coffee, probably chasing a BK breakfast sandwich with it. As if this weren’t his real office. Which it wasn’t.

  “Looks like you’re working that big homicide case,” Cooper said. “Reviewing the file, following up on some leads to start the day. Hell, maybe you’ll even give it some more thought while you’re having some plantain chips and a couple of Miller Genuine Drafts on your three-hour lunch. You’ll be taking that lunch in what, about an hour?”

  Eyes shifty, taking in the squad room, Manny said, “Nice to see you’ve maintained your sense of decorum.” Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Fucking gringo, you don’t just come in here and say all that in the middle of the floor.”

  Cooper deposited himself in the chair alongside Manny’s desk. The detective wore a pale brown long-sleeve shirt that looked to be made of silk, the collar unbuttoned, Manny showing off his brown skin and scant few curls of chest hair. He had a big head of wavy black hair and a neat black beard that hid a developing double chin. A thin gold chain snaked around the base of his neck.

  Cooper set the snapshot of the tattoo on the empty desk and pushed it over.

  “Nineteen-year-old kid washed up on the beach in Road Town,” he said. “Had that tattooed on his neck.”

  “And I care about this why?”

  Cooper looked at him. He gave Manny some time, knowing that the detective would give some thought, there with the coffee, to some of the other things Cooper could be saying in the middle of the floor. A few things Manny wouldn’t want his fellow cops hearing.

  “He was shot in the back,” Cooper said after a while. “Had both legs broken, like maybe he jumped off the tenth floor of a building trying to get away. Could have been using, but was probably getting shot up by somebody, I’m guessing heroin. Mark on his neck is a voodoo sign.”

  Almost involuntarily, Manny peered at the picture. “Hard to tell,” he said.

  “Not for you.”

  Manny shook his head. “Might have seen something like it along the way, but the people you’re thinking of don’t use it.”

  “Maybe not,” Cooper said, “but they might know who does.”

  Manny shrugged.

  Cooper said, “You know, this kid could have been a mule. Or hell, maybe he saw something he wasn’t supposed to see. Any way you look at it, somebody wanted him pretty dead. Means to me somebody had something to hide. Probably something worth hiding.”

  Manny looked at the picture again.

  “There’s a cop I know here in San Juan,” Cooper said, “possessed of a keen olfactory nerve. Where others blindly pursue justice, or arrests, he also knows when a case presents an opportunity to pad his numbered account in the Caymans.”

  Manny leaned back in his chair and pushed the coffee to the other side of the desk.

  “You show me that picture,” he said, “you don’t even need to tell me the story. The smell of money ain’t what’s coming off that one. You know what that picture smells like? An outhouse, ese. Smells like you’re knee-deep in shit.”

  He stood up.

  “Fuck you, Cooper. I’ll give you a couple hours, but that’s it. I got that lunch to get to.”

  Cooper entertained himself by waiting to see whether Manny would offer to buy the tickets. He didn’t, so Cooper paid the twenty-four bucks. He saw on his stub that the first fight began at noon.

  The sunglassed Manny eyed his ticket when Cooper gave it to him.

  “Shitty seats,” he said. “Listen, ese, I’ll meet you inside-and I may need to spread some goodwill. Know what I’m saying?”

  “Bill me,” Cooper said. He handed his ticket to a stout old man in a red vest and pushed through the turnstile.

  The cool blast of the gallera’s air-conditioning system dried his sweaty skin. He flagged down a girl in a halter top and short-shorts slinging a concessions tray, bought a beer from her, pulled down a few ounces of it, and thought that if he had to wait for Manny to find whoever it was the cop was looking for, he may as well figure out how to make some money on the noon fight in the meantime. He crossed the lobby to the credit window, laid down a MasterCard displaying a name that wasn’t his, and bought a five-thousand-dollar credit line. The teller, who, like ninety percent of the people in here, was middle-aged, male, and overweight, pushed a bright blue plastic card across the counter. Cooper slipped it into his breast pocket, the card sticking out by an inch or two, enough to show the officials how much he was good for.

  He found the hall that led to the ring; it was lit like a Best Buy. A velvet rope kept you a couple feet back from the glass, but even standing on the other side of the rope you could poke your head in, almost against the window, and get a good look at the birds. The walls in the narrow hall were composed of cages, each about two feet square, stacked in three rows, so that the top row of roosters stared back at you from eye level.

  Cooper found one of the noon combatants and scoped the gamecock out, leaning in until his face was an inch from the glass. The rooster stood his ground. Cooper thought the foot-tall bird looked like somebody had just given him a haircut and removed his pants-the feathers on his wings and neck were slicked back, his legs and tail plucked, the skin red, swollen, greased. There was a splash of gold in the feathers of the rooster’s neck, Cooper thinking this was one proud-looking bird, his handlers unable to make a fool of him despite the plucking. He found the second fighter, a smaller, fatter, relatively unkempt bird, his feathers a mottled black and white. This one bobbed hyperactively around his cage.

  Cooper decided to go with the black-and-white scrapper-unless the fix is in, he thought, I’m walking out of here a few grand to the good.

  The handlers pulled the two birds out of their cages, taking them into the back room. Peering through the empty cage of the black-and-white bird, Cooper caught a glimpse of Manny talking with somebody against a concrete wall. The guy was tall, taller than Manny by a foot, and dark-made Manny look like a gringo himself. Cooper watched as the black-and-white rooster’s handlers gathered behind the cages and took his bird away, the crazed animal pecking and scratching the whole way. When the entourage had passed, Manny and his buddy were no longer there.

  Cooper took his seat while the birds were positioned beneath Plexiglas boxes on the artificial turf of the cockpit. The roosters were going crazy, trying to get at each other with the sharp wooden espuelas their handlers had strapped to each leg. Cooper had heard that gamecocks were fed a pregame meal of brandy and coffee, Cooper thinking he’d be whacking away at the box too-pants off, legs greased, drunk and java-juiced, about to get gouged to death if you didn’t strike first. Bring it on.

  Manny took his seat beside Cooper about three minutes into the fight. Even at noon, the arena was packed, circular rows of middle-aged men rising steeply up from the cockpit, the shouting rising to a fever pitch as the birds beat the shit out of each other.

  “Vámonos, ese,” Manny said. “Got what we were looking for. Maybe you should have stayed in the car-when I show you what it cost us, you going to wish you kept your twelve bucks.”

  “Who said I was paying?”

  Manny ignored him. “The guy runs everything into PR out of Haiti’s name is Ocholito,” he said. “He tell you what you want to know. Or maybe he tell you there nothing to find. Either way, nobody going to know nothing if Ocholito don’t.”

  The golden bird knocked Cooper’s scrapper to the turf and pounced. The official let this play out for ten or fifteen seconds before separating them. The handlers descended on the ring and repositioned the birds. They squawked and flapped their wings.

  A cacophony of shouted bets shot forth, people raising hands, calling out odds. Cooper started pointing his fingers and snapping out “Sí!” Putting three, four grand on the li
ne, getting fifteen, twenty-to-one odds.

  Manny said, “You betting on the wrong bird, puto!”

  They released the birds and let them fight. Cooper’s was down again in seconds, his opponent tearing chunks of meat from his legs with the espuelas.

  “Why would it cost me to see Ocholito?” Cooper said.

  “Ocho prefer not to be found,” Manny said, “so he shacks up somewhere new every couple months. Some new mamacita always waiting in line. You need to know which woman, you want to talk to him.”

  The scrapper lifted himself off the turf and engaged in another twenty seconds of warfare until his adversary practically beheaded him with a swipe of the espuela and he toppled, dead.

  Cooper shrugged and rose.

  “The fix was in,” he said.

  7

  Cooper beheld a cannabis leaf. Made of wood and painted the colors of the Jamaican flag, it overhung the entrance to a store advertising 99¢ palm readings. Above the cannabis leaf stood a second-floor apartment.

  Manny came around the car but hung back at the curb.

  “Don’t know her by name,” he said, “but she’d recognize me quick. Send Ocholito packing before we say bueno’ día’. You should go in alone.”

  “Gringo like me?” Cooper said. “Probably make me for a cop while I’m standing out here.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, ese. Maybe you her kind of man. You know something? Ocholito likes ’em big. Whole lotta woman.” He grinned. “So doI. Anyway, gringo bastard like you visiting a Cataño fortune-teller-at least you a stranger. Probably confuse her. Strike up a conversation while she trying to figure it out, maybe you can get her to spill the beans. Tell you where Ocholito be spending his days.”

  Cooper looked at the upstairs apartment. “Probably sleeping off a night of ganja-aided love, be my guess,” he said.

  “I’ll stroll around back-his mamacita slip him the signal, I’ll be waiting with open arms.” Manny laughed. “Or maybe legs.”

  “Come again?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Cooper left it at that and went in. His entrance triggered a string of bells dangling from the door, and he found himself overtaken by a fog of foul-smelling incense. He looked for and found the source: a plume rose from a smudge stick beneath the shop’s front window. The window may as well have been made of drywall, slathered as it was with black paint; an assortment of goods hung from its frame, Cooper making out dried plants, spice bags, bongs, a pair of what might have been charred whole chickens. A rack offered decks of Tarot cards and bones of varying sizes; lining the wall at the back of the room was an embedded countertop with a gap in the middle.

  Cooper waited without speaking, and was beginning to think customers were of little concern to the palm readers of Cataño when a bloated hand split a pair of bead-strings behind the countertop and was followed into the room by an enormous woman in a knit halter top. The knots in the fabric of the halter top were stretched so thin that the fabric exposed more of her breasts than it covered. Beneath the counter Cooper could see the woman’s black leather miniskirt, a selection that would have been daring on an anorexic runway model. She had fair skin and plenty of it; ogling the sand-dollar-sized nipples poking through the halter, Cooper pegged the fortune-teller’s tonnage somewhere between two-ninety and three-ought-five.

  She eyed him up and down, Cooper thinking she was debating whether to eat him.

  “¿En qué puedo ayudarle?” she said.

  “Bueno’ día’,” Cooper said. He stayed on with the Spanish. “I’m sorry to say I’ve become lonely-having bad luck with the ladies. I was hoping you could tell me what I’m doing wrong. Maybe see if romance is in store, or what I need to do to get it.”

  “Fifty dollars in advance,” she said, “cash only.”

  “What happened to the ninety-nine cents?”

  “Different topic.”

  Cooper found correct change. She snatched the bills, parted the curtain, and gestured for him to enter.

  Behind the beads was a single swath of floor space crowded with opened boxes, cleared in the center to make room for the card table that stood there. The table, Cooper saw, actually featured a crystal ball. At the back of the room was a stairwell leading up, and a door, presumably leading out.

  They got started side by side at the table, Ocholito’s mamacita asking for his palm, reading its lines in the dark, her fingers working over his wrist and forearm. Cooper felt the rush of endorphines from her skilled hands, thinking she knew what she was doing-focus on the heavy-handed massage therapy and you’ll wonder, a couple days later, what you did with your watch. I leave it out on the beach?

  “I can smell her on you,” she said throatily. “Either you are modest, or a liar. You’ve had women recently, or they have had you. I can smell the last one’s pussy and there will be others soon.”

  Cooper leaned in and sniffed his forearm.

  She let her fingers wander above his elbow and probe the inside of his biceps. She leaned against him, close enough to bite a chunk off his nose, a wide breast pillowing against his shoulder. Her bulbous lips drifted past his face and brushed his earlobe. “Maybe you come looking for love,” she croaked in an addled whisper.

  Cooper shivered. “Could be.”

  “You couldn’t handle me in your wildest dreams, gringo.” She dropped her eyes to his palm. “Still, lucky boy, I see somebody be coming for you.”

  “That so?”

  “Somebody who give you what you need.” Her massage spread to his shoulder, then the back of his neck. She had strong fingers, the big woman’s one-handed technique giving him a hard-on, but something about her technique disturbed him.

  “What is it I need, exactly,” he said, then realized the nature of his discomfort as she dug a clawed hand into the back of his neck and rammed a big-boned knee into his groin. He could feel both his testicles mash against the blow, her knee following through and toppling him backward. He’d have laughed had the blow not stolen his wind; grimacing, he flipped like a falling cat and found his legs before the floor found his ass. He had his gun out before he landed too, his Agency-issue FN Browning, Cooper pointing it at her with the palm she’d been reading. He didn’t need it, since the fortune-teller had already wheeled and begun to run, all relative terms considering her carrier-group maneuverability.

  “Ocholito, ¡vámonos! ¡Policía!” she spat in the direction of the stairwell.

  Cooper took an elbow and pivoted to extend a leg across her intended course; she caught his shin and toppled violently. He came around the table and stood over her, and as she withdrew what looked like a Swiss Army knife from the panties beneath the leather skirt, Cooper slugged her in the jaw. She went limp, a pond of flesh on the floor, and Cooper heard footsteps before observing the odd sight of an extremely short man in a red top hat charging mostly nude down the stairwell and out the door. Daylight burst into the room, blinding him, and as he felt his way out, the thought occurred to him that he had just witnessed the escape of The Cat in the Hat from the upstairs apartment.

  Hustling into the alley, he found only a rusted Hyundai propped up on cinder blocks beside a Dumpster. He crouched, advancing gun-first around the Dumpster, then let his gun arm drop.

  His back against the wall just past the Dumpster, Manny was lighting a particularly long joint for The Cat in the Hat. The Cat, whom Cooper presumed to be Ocholito, toked a lungful of weed and nodded his approval.

  Cooper resheathed his Browning in the small of his back and took his first good look at the little man. Four foot nine at best, he wore a knotty beard that looked as though it would never grow all the way out, and like the taller man Cooper had seen conferring with Manny at the gallera, Ocholito was dark enough to make the cop look pale. The red top hat was half as tall as the man himself, and Ocholito wore a robe-satin, red like the hat, and unsecured, his manhood hanging unabashedly exposed to the Puerto Rican sunshine. Cooper now understood why Ocholito preferred, as Manny had put it, a whole
lotta woman: in his own way, the four-foot-nine Ocholito was a whole lotta man.

  Ocholito passed the doobie, and Manny sucked down a lungful of his own. Once he’d held it awhile, Manny said, “Mi amigo here, he’s looking for some answers nobody going to have but you, Ocho.”

  “Oh yeah, c’est vrai?”

  Ocholito’s voice was deep and oddly rough, like somebody with sand lodged in his larynx.

  Cooper pulled the picture of the tattoo, thinking he ought to open a PI firm-we handle your problems when you’re already dead, just contact us in our dreams and we’re on the case. Hundred percent pro bono. Keeping his distance, he reached out to hand the snapshot to Ocholito.

  “A kid who washed up dead in Road Town,” he said, “had that tattooed on the back of his neck. Voodoo symbol for death, the way I understand it. Had some tracks on his arms too. What I’d like to know is who uses the tatt-kid was running drugs, got caught stealing, I’d like to know who he was muling for. Somebody wearing that sign, maybe it makes him a banger-Eighty-seventh Street Voodoo Crips, I don’t know. Maybe you do.”

  The Cat in the Hat glared at him, causing Cooper to observe that one of Ocholito’s eyelids was permanently wrinkled shut. The little man snatched the picture with manicured fingernails painted a high-gloss black and looked at the snapshot.

  “Where your boy die again?”

  “Body washed up on Tortola. Where he died? Anybody’s guess.”

  The Cat in the Hat returned the picture and shook his head.

  Cooper said, “Doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “Personne, nobody kill him,” Ocholito said in that sandy voice.

  Cooper waited for further clarification. Getting none, he said, “Trust me, the boy was killed.”

  “Nobody kill him ’cause he already dead.”

  Cooper eyed the snapshot, seeing nothing more than he’d seen any other time he’d looked at it. “You’re telling me you can see from a picture of his neck he was already dead when they shot him?”

  “That picture you showin’ me,” Ocholito said, “ain’t no tatt.”