American Tropic - By Thomas Sanchez Page 0,12

slotted hole cut in a cement wall to pass the coffee through. Luz gets out of her car and orders her third buche double of the morning. She watches through the slotted hole as a broad-butted Cuban woman dressed in tight blue jeans works at the sputtering and hissing nozzle of a monstrous old burnished expresso machine. The woman turns with a triumphant smile and presents a cup of steaming buche to Luz, who cradles it in her hand.

Sipping her hot caffeine nectar in the sun’s morning glare, Luz keeps her eyes on the Duval Street activity from behind her sunglasses. Packs of excited vacationers in shorts and flip-flops hurry by on the sidewalk, darting into gift shops, trying on T-shirts with tropical scenes silk-screened on them, and buying Key West’s two most famous postcard photos, the mile-zero sign at the end of Highway 1, and the tall bullet-shaped concrete monument at the Atlantic’s edge declaring SOUTHERNMOST POINT CONTINENTAL U.S.A.—90 MILES TO CUBA.

From the open window of Luz’s car, parked at the curb, a police dispatcher’s radio voice drones. Luz takes another sip of buche as she listens to the bored voice announcing bicycle thefts, lost dogs, and jaywalkers. The voice is suddenly drowned out by the roar of a motorcycle. She turns to see Pat on her Harley-D jump the curb behind the Charger and come to a tire-burning stop on the sidewalk, scattering the startled tourists.

Luz eyes Pat with mock discipline. “I could arrest you for that stunt.”

Pat tightens her grip on the Harley’s chrome handlebars. She fixes Luz with a bold stare. “Oh, I want to be arrested. That’s my dream, one night locked up with you. I’ll lick all the brown sugar out of your bowl. You should jilt your girlfriend, Joan. Hop on my bike. We’ll never look back.”

Luz swallows her coffee. “You still poaching endangered turtles?”

Pat flexes the muscles of her bare arm with the octopus tattoo, bulking up the one-eyed creature’s nasty-looking tentacles. “No one will ever catch me. But, hey, you can catch that ecofreak brother of Joan’s. He’s broadcasting illegally over the radio.”

“Noah broadcasts from outside the city limits. I don’t have jurisdiction on the ocean. That’s for the feds.”

“I hope his pissy pirate boat sinks in the middle of a shit slick dumped from a thousand crappers off a cruise ship.”

Pat gazes over at the gleaming white Charger SRT8, taking in its arched rear-end cobra-wing spoiler and the black front grille open-jawed like an onrushing land shark.

She grins. “You got yourself some unmarked cop car, tricked out like a Cuban Miami pimp-mobile. I know there’s a siren embedded in that grille, and red strobe-lights under those halogen headbeams that you can switch on from inside. How come you got all the flash, when most of Key West’s dumb-dicks poke around in stupid Ford Victorias?”

Luz grins back. “I have this rocket because I’ll need it to go a quarter of a mile in twelve seconds when I’m coming to bust your ass.”

“Like I said, no one can catch me.”

Luz shakes her head and looks long at Pat. “No hay rosas sin espinas.”

“Huh? I don’t habla the Es-span-yolla. What are you saying?”

“There are no roses without thorns.”

Pat twists her Harley’s throttle in a rev and shouts above the engine’s loud growl, “I’ll take that as a compliment. Whenever you get tired of your blond bunny, you come running to me. I’m the only real rose in the garden. With me you get the prick of the thorns and not just the flower’s soft petal. Life on the edge. It’s your choice, brown sugar.” Pat roars off.

From Luz’s police radio, the droning dispatcher’s voice suddenly crackles with urgency. “Code five at Sugarloaf Key Bat Tower! All Alpha units respond!”

Luz gulps her coffee and starts her car. She switches on her outside flashing red lights and siren and speeds away.

Luz skids to a stop in front of the pyramid-shaped bat tower. Behind her, Deputy Detective Moxel pulls up in his late-model Ford Victoria police car. They both cut their engines and jump out.

Moxel cocks a hand above his eyes to block the sunlight glaring off the tower as he surveys the situation. He puts on his sunglasses. “I don’t see anything going on—place is deserted. Why’d they radio an urgent homicide dispatch? We’re even out of Key West jurisdiction up here.”

Luz doesn’t answer; she hurries toward the tower. Moxel follows with a scowl. They both step under the massive wooden support struts of the