Naked Came the Manatee

Lilia smiled a wide smile. She was reliving memories that had wiped thirty years from her face; there was no mistaking that despite politics, she was in love.

"One hundred and ten."

Right again, Britt thought. Fidel had been on the phone.

Guess who's coming to dinner, Britt told herself, already writing her story's lead in her head.

"Doesn't make sense," Jake said, holding the door open for Fay and Britt as they walked outside into the liquid afternoon heat. His hulking form stood high above the two women. "If Castro comes here, Miami's welcoming committee is going to grind him into hamburger. Or picadillo anyway. He won't last two hours."

"Maybe that's what he wants," Britt said. "Think about it. Phony heads. A staged assassination. A reward for proof of his death. And where better than Miami? Everyone expects people to get killed in Miami."

Fay, following them to the curb, was silent. She noticed that her pickup was now tagged KING in bright orange paint across the cab, and the kid had vanished. Jake cursed loudly, but Fay wasn't worried about her truck. She had other things on her mind.

There was no mistaking that Pulitzer lust glazing Britt's eyes, so Fay figured her friend would head straight for the newspaper, where she'd be no help-and Jake was content, saying something about getting a beer. Him and his damned Grolsch. It figured. He'd always been too eager to punt on fourth down instead of going for it, she recalled from their brief courtship.

To her, something just didn't add up. Even if those creepy Castro heads were part of some fake assassination scheme, how had one of them found its way into her grandmother's hands by way of Booger, the manatee? And they still weren't any closer to figuring out what had happened to Phil, her ex-husband, who'd been mixed up in bringing the heads in the first place.

It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic, Fay thought. She could have told whoever had hired Phil that the guy couldn't be trusted to bring back the change from the grocery store, or even the groceries, much less deliver valuable cargo.

The poor jerk had already tried to kidnap her to get the heads back once he lost them, and now they'd somehow led to his disappearance. He was a loser, but he was her loser, and it had touched her to see him so shaken. Her stupid mothering instinct had drawn her to Phil in the first place, like a moth to a burning stick of dynamite. She should have listened to her grandmother and gotten a puppy instead, and she wouldn't be in this mess now.

Granny.

A thought made Fay shiver slightly, despite the hostile midafternoon sun: If Castro's heads had put Phil in danger, wasn't her grandmother in danger too?

Granny had tucked the lone metal canister with Castro's head on the bottom shelf of her refrigerator-"Just in case it starts to thaw," she'd said, patting it like a leftover pot roast. "I'm not too fond of dead flesh at room temperature, Fay. Even a head of state."

Fay wasn't crazy about dead flesh at any temperature, especially disembodied flesh. As soon as she got to a phone, Fay decided, she would give her grandmother a call, just to hear her voice. That way, maybe she could shake off the feeling, which had snaked its way around her middle, that something was terribly wrong.

It was a body.

Fishing off the bay at Peacock Park in Coconut Grove on Sundays, all day on Sunday, standing on the same spot of fine white sand beside his favorite clump of sea grape trees, Vernon Sawyer had seen enough floaters over the years to know one from a distance. And this one was bobbing only fifteen yards out, just beyond his plastic red and white cork, a patch of unexpected shade for a school of minnows that had just vanished underneath it.

That was the thing about this park, which seemed to Vernon like a tiny strip of paradise for the common man. There was more to it than the neatly planted rows of coconut palms, or the view of the legion of rich folks' sailboats docked across the way. You never knew what you would find here, whether it was a squatters' campsite built from plastic wrapped around a trio of palm trees or an unforgettable conversation with a vagrant who'd seen the world and who understood its workings, inside his unkempt head, better than any coiffed, overfed politician he might ever meet.

That was why Vernon came here, for the surprises. It sure wasn't for the fish.

Today's surprise, the body, was fairly fresh, hardly any swelling, not puffed the way bodies get when they've been in the water for days. Once, Vernon had seen a brother who'd ballooned so big that his skin had peeled off white, except in spots.

Not this one. Not her.

It was a woman, a white lady, he could see that. She looked almost serene, bobbing facedown in the rust-colored water as though she were embracing it. Her white hair fanned around her head like a lace wedding veil. Her lifeless body was clothed in a pair of soaked khakis and a dark shirt, maybe plaid.