He finished cutting and took the twenty-ounce cast-iron toothed mallet down from its hook above the butcher block and pounded steaks, making each one a quarter of an inch thick with just the correct number of blows, and afterward throwing each one into a bucket of the house marinade?garlic, lime juice, salt, pepper, and a bouquet of herbs whose composition was known only to Paz, his mom, and God. He pounded, pounded to the samba beat, and found (for this is why he had come in to do this task) that, as always, the work tenderized his heart along with thepalomillas. Just before nine Rafael, the prep cook, came in and started parboiling a hundred pounds of potatoes, saying not a word to Paz, as he understood as well as any man the meditative aspects of poundingbiftek. The kitchen grew warmer, sweat dripped from Paz’s face, and he pounded the drops into the meat. His mother, demonstrating the process in the cramped steaming hole-inthe-wall kitchen of their first restaurant, twenty years previously, had said that Paz sweat was the real secret ingredient in theirpalomilla. Paz had believed it as a boy and believed it now.
The last steak dropped into the bucket. Paz washed and put away his knife and his mallet, stretched, doused his head under the sink, dried his face on a towel, and when he put it down there was his mother, yellow pantsuit, hair in its afternoon turban, a flowered one, hands and wrists ringed with pounds of gold.
“What’s wrong,” she demanded.
“Nothing’s wrong, Mami,” he said.
“You didn’t sleep last night. You come in here, where I usually have to drag you, and you cut and pound out a whole round of beef. And”?here she waved her hand around his head, around the aura that she claimed to be able to see, jingling her many golden bracelets?”you’re all cloudy and brown. So don’t tell me nothing’s wrong. It’s some woman, hmm?”
“If you know, why do you even have to ask?”
“What happened?”
“Nothing, I told you. I just kind of broke up with Willa.”
Mrs. Paz faced the heavens and jingled her hands at the uncaring gods.
“I willnever have grandchildren. This is my fate. And there is something else…” She passed her hands through the air, as if trying to net a vapor. “An influence, a curse? God forbid! No, not a curse, but something heavy, dark…”
He turned away from her abruptly and covered the motion by taking off his apron. “Cut it out, Mami! You know I’m not interested in that kind of stuff.”
“No, you’re not interested, but it is interested inyou. I tell you again, you have to be washed.”
“No washing. I told you, I’m fine.”
“Your woman left you, you’re not fine, my son. And here I was so sure you were going to ask her to marry you.”
“I did. She told me no.”
“What! You said you loved her, that you could not live a moment more on this earth without her, and she said…what?”
“I didn’t say that, Mami. I said we got along great together and we should, you know, make it formal, permanent. And she said no thanks.”
“Of course she said no, youbesugo!Zoquete! Don’t you know that women like to hear that you love them?”
“Actually, I do know that, but I guess it turned out that I didn’t. Sorry.”
Cesar, the chef, walked in, picked up the vibes, decided he had forgotten something in his car, turned on his heel and vanished.
Paz had always had a hard time meeting his mother’s glare, especially since, as he had observed from an early age, when Margarita was out of temper she seemed to increase alarmingly in size. She was a broad-shouldered woman, well muscled from years of heavy work, nearly as tall as her son, teak-colored, with elaborately processed and braided hair, glossy as licorice, still stunning in a harsh way at fifty. Now she towered over Paz (so it seemed to him) like a Latina Godzilla, and her nostrils were flaring preparatory, he knew, to reciting the tale of his failures, starting at age four. He therefore felt immense relief when a tingle at his belt line informed him that he had a cell phone call. He whipped it out and punched the button.
“Sorry, Mami, I got to take this. Police business.”
“Don’t give me police business when I’m talking to you!”
Paz headed for the rear of the kitchen with a parting mumble: “Why don’t I just give you a sperm sample, you can forget about marrying me off.”
“What! What did you say?”
He ignored this and scooted out the rear door. In the parking lot, he leaned against his car, put the phone to his ear, and heard the voice of his new partner, tentative.
“Jimmy? Morales. I’m not disturbing you or anything?”
“No, I explained this, man?youcan’t disturb me, I’m your partner. You got something I need to know, then any hour of the day or night is cool. I could be getting a piece of ass, I got to take your call. And the same the other way around.”
“I mean what you were saying about a sperm sample? I thought…”
“No, that was just my mother. What’ve you got?”
A pause here. Then Morales said, “Okay, I checked out David Packer off of the motorcycle license. He’s had the bike for a year and change, no violations. I called the credit bureaus, like you said, and they got nothing on him.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“I mean there’s no credit history on a David Packer, SSN 092-71-9116. He must pay cash.”
“Do you believe that? A middle-class-looking guy, owns a boat and a twenty-eight-grand motorcycle, never had a credit card? What does the phone company say?”
“Pays the minimum by check, no long-distance calls. The bank says he gets a U.S. government check for $2,467.18 deposited every month, and various checks from brokerages quarterly. He’s good for about fifty grand a year, but he owns the boat and the bike free and clear, so he’s doing all right, I guess.”
“I guess. You call that passport bureau number I gave you?”
“Yeah, and that was another funny thing. I couldn’t find out if he has a passport or not. I gave the girl on the line his information and there was a long hold and then she said she couldn’t release that data, it was restricted and she gave me a number to call, her supervisor. Floyd Mitchell.”
“And what did Mr. Mitchell have to say?”
“I couldn’t get him. The phone just rang, no answering machine or anything. So I called the State Department locator and asked for a Floyd Mitchell, and they said there was no such person there. So I called the passport number again and the same thing happened, and I told them all about no Floyd Mitchell, and then after about ten minutes on hold, a guy came on and said he was Floyd and could he help me.”
“And did he?”
“Not much. He said the computer was messed up and they couldn’t extract the information I wanted, but if I left my name they’d get it to me when the computer got fixed.”
“Yeah, Florida’ll be underwater by then. Well, well. A man of mystery, old Dave. What about the other guy?”
“Oh, he was no problem. John F. Wilson, aka Jack Wilson, bought the business about two years ago. Before that he worked as a chief mechanic for Empire Boat Livery in Hallandale, eight years; before that he was in the navy. Credit’s good, he pays his bills on time, owns a house in the Gables and a two-year-old Lexus. Plus the truck.”