Bad Monkey

Neville was disappointed that the Dragon Queen’s spell had failed, and increasingly skeptical of her claims. He’d returned to try once more only because of her considerable reputation for dark magic. He told her that stronger voodoo was needed to neutralize the man called Christopher. The Dragon Queen replied that she had needs of her own, and flapped the flowing dress up over her head. Neville was mortified to be flashed in such a crude manner. Driggs began to shriek and twitch and claw at his diaper.

“Madam, please,” Neville protested.

“Wot’s wrong wit dot ugly boy of yours? Am I de first grown woman he ever seen naked as God made us?”

Neville lied and said he was late to meet a boat mechanic in Rocky Town. He dug into a pocket and came up with twenty-one Bahamian dollars, which he counted out and placed on the table next to the rum. The Dragon Queen sighed, tucking the bills into her damp bony cleavage.

She said, “I will need some udder poysonal tings belonging to dis mon. Dot shoyt is all boined up.”

Neville told her he’d come back with something better. That evening he would snoop in the trash cans outside the big oceanfront house that Christopher was renting. That’s where he’d found the piece of shirt.

“Now, put dot sweet pink boy on my knee,” she said, jabbing a dirty fingernail toward Driggs. “Lemme have a squeeze.”

“No, madam, he bites.”

“Wot!” She craned forward like a buzzard, studying the face of the trembling animal. “I tink someone pudda bod coyse on dis youngstah long time ago. But, see here, I kin make ’im good as new. Juss leave ’im wit me.”

The monkey hissed and vaulted out of her reach. Neville followed him out the door.

Dinner was superb. Yancy cleaned his plate for the first time in weeks. Afterward he took Rosa out on his skiff. She asked why he hadn’t remarried after Celia left him. He told her he’d come close twice. Rosa’s own marriage had lasted three years and fizzled with nobody to blame, or so she said.

The truth was more depressing, laid bare by Google Earth. It happened on a rare slow day at the Miami-Dade morgue, when she had only one autopsy scheduled—an elderly female tourist who had straightforwardly drowned at Key Biscayne, a tragedy witnessed by fourteen blood relatives, none of whom could swim a lick. Why a family devoid of water skills chose to vacation at a seaside resort was beyond Rosa’s scope of inquiry. The postmortem was completed by lunchtime and she had the afternoon to kill.

That’s when a blood tech named Gaylord showed her the Google Earth app, which he downloaded to Rosa’s office desktop. Soon she was enjoying aerial views of the Hoover Dam, the Malecón in old Havana, and even—more impressively—her parents’ home in Union City. From thousands of feet in the sky she could still make out the old sycamores lining each side of the driveway, the rectangular outline of her mother’s flower garden and a blurred image of her backyard swing set, which her father sentimentally refused to dismantle.

Next Gaylord loaded Google Maps with a street view, which sent Rosa eagerly cruising the roadways of her youth. There was the Ferraro house—Bobby Jr. had asked her to the junior prom; the shutters were now periwinkle blue, not white like before. The two-story where Angie Fernandez and her sisters had lived looked deserted, a sign planted in the dead lawn saying the place was up for sale by some bank. Also gone were the Sotos, who’d come from Cuba with Rosa’s parents; the new owners had erected a tall wooden fence and nailed up a Beware of Dog sign embellished with the silhouette of a snarling pit bull.

It was only natural for Rosa to check out her present Miami neighborhood and the dwelling she shared with Daniel, her then spouse, who worked as a teak carpenter on yachts. The driver of the Google camera truck had chosen a sunny morning to map the streets of Morningside, and Rosa thought their small home looked tropical and welcoming—the red barrel-tile roof, the green ivy nibbling at the bright stucco walls; in the front yard, ponytail palms, crimson bougainvilleas and a birdbath carved from limestone.

The only thing out of place that day, when the Google crew with their roof-mounted cameras rolled by, was a car Rosa didn’t recognize in the driveway. The car was parked next to Daniel’s Ram pickup, and it appeared to be a late-model Camry or an Accord; who could tell the difference? Dark blue was the color, though, definitely. The car had a Florida license plate that was partially fuzzed in the video—Gaylord surmised that Google did that on purpose because of privacy concerns—although upon enlargement Rosa was able to identify the prefix, which was LRW.