"Coatimundi. From South America."
The animal chittered inquisitively and poked its velvety nostrils through the slats of the crate. It was one of the oddest creatures Avila had ever seen.
"Big medicine," promised the shop owner.
"I need something for Chango."
"Oh, Chango would love heem." The shop owner had astutely pegged Avila for a rank amateur who knew next to nothing about santeria. The shop owner said, "Si, es muy bueno por Chango."
Avila said, "Will it bite?"
"No, my freng. See?" The botanica man tickled the coati's moist nose. "Like a puppy dog."
"OK, how much?"
"Seventy-five."
"Here's sixty, chico. Help me carry it to the car."
As he drove up to the house, Avila saw the Buick backing out of the driveway; his wife and her mother, undoubtedly off to Indian bingo. He waved. They waved.
Avila gloated. Perfect timing. For once I'll have the place to myself. Quickly he dragged the wooden crate into the garage and lowered the electric door. The coati huffed in objection. From a cane-wicker chest Avila hastily removed the implements of sacrifice-tarnished pennies, coconut husks, the bleached ribs of a cat, polished turtle shells, and an old pewter goblet. From a galvanized lockbox Avila took his newest, and potentially most powerful, artifact-the gnawed chip of bone belonging to the evil man who had tried to crucify him. Reverently, and with high hopes, Avila placed the bone in the pewter goblet, soon to be filled with animal blood.
For sustenance Chango was known to favor dry wine and candies; the best Avila could do, on short notice, was a pitcher of sangria and a roll of stale wintergreen Life Savers. He lighted three tall candles and arranged them triangularly on the cement floor of the garage. Inside the triangle, he began to set up the altar. The coatimundi had gone silent; Avila felt its stare from between the slats. Could it know? He whisked the thought from his mind.
The final item to be removed from the wicker chest was the most important: a ten-inch hunting knife, with a handle carved from genuine elk antler. The knife was an antique, made in Wyoming. Avila had received it as a bribe when he worked as a county building inspector– a Christmas offering from an unlicensed roofer hoping that Avila might overlook a seriously defective scissor truss. Somehow Avila had found it in his heart to do just that.
Vigorously he sharpened the hunting knife on a whetstone. The coati began to pace and snort. Avila discreetly concealed the gleaming blade from the doomed animal. Then he stepped inside the triangle of candles and improvised a short prayer to Chango, who (Avila trusted) would understand that he was pressed for time.
Afterwards he took a pry bar and started peeling the wooden slats off the crate. The sacramental coati became highly agitated. Avila attempted to soothe it with soft words, but the beast wasn't fooled. It shot from the crate and tore crazed circles throughout the garage, scattering cat bones and tipping two of the santeria candles. Avila tried to subdue the coati by stunning it with the pry bar, but it was too swift and agile. Like a monkey, it vertically scampered up a wall of metal shelves and bounded onto the ceiling track of the electric door-opener. There it perched, using its remarkable tail for balance, squealing and baring sharp yellow teeth. Meanwhile one of the santeria candles rolled beneath Avila's lawn mower, igniting the gas tank. Cursing bitterly, Avila ran to the kitchen for the fire extinguisher. When he returned to the garage, he was confronted with fresh disaster.
The electric door was open. In the driveway was his wife's Buick, idling. Why she had come back, Avila didn't know. Perhaps she'd decided to pilfer the buried Tupperware for extra bingo money. It truly didn't matter.
Apparently her mother had emerged from the car first. The scene that greeted Avila was so stupefying that he temporarily forgot about the flaming lawn mower. For reasons beyond human comprehension, the overwrought coatimundi had jumped from its roost in the garage, dashed outdoors and scaled Avila's mother-in-law. Now the creature was nesting in the woman's coiffure, a brittle edifice of chromium orange. Avila had always believed that his wife's mother wore wigs, but here was persuasive evidence that her fantastic mop was genuine. She shrieked and spun about the front yard, flailing spastically at the demon on her scalp. The jabbering coati dug in with all four claws. No hairpiece, Avila decided, could withstand such a test.
His wife bilingually shouted that he should do something, for God's sake, don't just stand there! The pry bar was out of the question; one misplaced blow and that would be the end of his mother-in-law. So Avila tried the fire extinguisher. He unloaded at point-blank range, soaping the stubborn animal with sodium bicarbonate.
The coati snarled and snapped but, incredibly, refused to vacate the old woman's hair. In the turmoil it was inevitable that some of the cold mist from the fire extinguisher would hit Avila's mother-in-law, who mashed her knuckles to her eyes and began a blind run. Avila gave chase for three-quarters of a block, periodically firing short bursts, but the old woman showed surprising speed.
Avila gave up and trotted home to extinguish the fire in the garage. Afterwards he rolled the charred lawn mower to the backyard and hosed it down. His distraught wife remained sprawled across the hood of the Buick, crying: "Mami, mamt, luke what chew did to my mamil"
Above her keening rose the unmistakable whine of sirens-someone on the block had probably called the fire department. Avila thought: Why can't people mind their own goddamn business! He was steaming as he hurried to his car.
At the very moment he fit the key in the ignition, the passenger window exploded. Avila nearly wet himself in shock. There stood his wife, beet-faced and seething, holding the iron pry bar.
"Chew fucking bastard!" she cried.
Avila jammed his heel to the accelerator and sped away.
"O Change, Change," he whispered, brushing chunks of glass from his lap. "I know I fucked up again, but don't abandon me now. Not tonight."
A peculiar trait of this hurricane, Jim Tile marveled on the drive along North Key Largo, was the dramatic definition of its swath. The eye had come ashore like a bullet, devastating a thin corridor but leaving virtually untouched the coastline to the immediate north and south. August hurricanes are seldom so courteous. Its bands had battered the vacation estates of ritzy Ocean Reef and stripped a long stretch of mangrove. Yet two miles down the shore, the mangroves flourished, leafy and lush, offering no clue that a killer storm had passed nearby. A ramshackle trailer park stood undamaged; not a window was broken, not a tree was uprooted.
Phenomenal, thought Jim Tile.
He goosed the Crown Victoria to an invigorating ninety-five; blue lights, no siren. At high speeds the big Ford whistled like a bottle rocket.