Naked Came the Manatee

Jake and Fay exchanged glances. Could Hector or whoever he worked for have followed them? The rap was sharp and insistent.

"I'll get it." Tensing his body for a straight buck up the middle, Jake threw open the door.

The boy in the Marlins baseball cap and high-top Air Jordans stood on the threshold. "Where's Miss Lilia at?"

Lilia swished her way past Jake. "What's happening?"

The boy handed her a crumpled slip of paper. "Old man in cutoffs and sandals say to call this number."

Lilia turned from the boy and slipped the paper in the folds of her kimono. "It's a message," she said.

"Who from?" asked Jake.

"Garcia," she replied.

8. STRANGE FISH-Tananarive Due

Lilia Sands worked her overpainted face into a frown. "Garcia? Which Gar-cia? Do you know how many Garcias there are in the Dade County phone book?" She studied the young messenger, who was orbiting her as though he expected a tip. I'll give you a tip, all right, kid, Jake Lassiter thought. You'd better earn that ten bucks I just gave you and go back outside to keep an eye on Fay's pickup.

"What's his first name?" she asked the boy.

He shrugged. "He said you'd know."

Lilia smiled, then delicately raised her fingertips to her temple as if to brush away imaginary perspiration.

"Ah…" she said, with a long, rapturous sigh. "That Garcia."

Jake shifted his weight from one sore leg to the other. Time out, he thought. He, Britt, and Fay had come to Lilia's for a lock of Castro's hair-the real Castro's hair. So, they had what they'd come for. No need to tango here all day. Even a pit bull reporter like Britt had to know when it was time to move on.

"Look, Miss Sands," he said, surprised at his own politeness, "we can bail out of here if you need to catch up on your phone calls."

"This will interest you," Lilia said, holding up her index finger to silence Jake. (Watching, Fay and Britt both took mental note of this tactic in case it might come in handy someday.) Lilia cradled the receiver of her black novelty telephone, which was shaped like a baby grand piano. Each time she pressed a key, a tone sounded; she was dialing a laborious version of "When the Saints Go Marching In."

Long-distance, Britt noticed.

Off key, Fay decided.

Damn annoying, Jake thought.

"It's me. Put him on," Lilia said abruptly, in Spanish, and then she smiled and nodded, her green-flecked brown eyes wide with pleasure as she listened to an indiscernible voice. Hanging up, she surveyed her waiting audience as though she were reliving a finale number onstage at the Nacional.

"I shouldn't tell you this… " Lilia began.

But you will, Britt thought, perking up. Sentences that began with "I shouldn't tell you this" were verbal foreplay, and satisfaction was never far behind.

"You didn't hear this from me, and don't ask who told me-but Miami is about to have an important visitor from Cuba. Believe me, when he comes, the people's reaction will make Nelson Mandela's reception in Miami look like the papal visit. He's coming soon, within days. He didn't say exactly when."

"Give me a break," Jake said, not buying it.

"It can't be," Fay said.

"It is," Lilia said, beaming.

Britt's brain was turning somersaults. Not one head, but two, and Fidel was still alive? And, apparently, intending to set foot in a city that nourished itself on fantasies about the day he would drop dead? Home to weekend commandos who would love to help him do just that, with a million-dollar price tag on his head?

Castro is Coming! Britt was already thinking in headlines. This was top-strip, front-page, WW II type. She'd need to get on the phone and pull some favors with her sister-in-law's bureaucrat uncle in Havana to get confirmation.

Britt's delight at the whiff of a huge story warred with her disappointment that the man who killed her father was still breathing. "I can't believe he's alive," she said.

"Si, como no," Lilia said. "Of course he's alive. But if he's planning to come to Miami, he's obviously lost his head."

Silence. The three of them started.

"What do you mean?" Britt asked first.

Lilia circled her finger around her ear. "You know… loco."

The proportions of this story were growing in light-years, Britt realized. They'd been fearing riots if people thought Fidel was dead? What about the riots when word got out that he was about to enjoy a big plate of arroz con polio in the glare of fluorescent lights and mirrors at La Carreta?

Did that phone call mean that this woman, a disenchanted revolutionary, was still maintaining her own special brand of diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro? And if that was the case, exactly how "inside" was her mysterious tipster on the phone?

Britt, having a hunch-and her hunches were rarely wrong-fixed a probing gaze on Lilia.

"Listen," Britt said, "on a scale from one to one hundred, if I ask how confident you are of that tip-how close your source is to Castro himself-where would it rank? Tell me that and we'll be out of your life."