entirely different way. Around men, Magdalena wore an expression that as much as said, “I know exactly what you’re thinking. So let’s start from there, okay?” This girl looked absolutely innocent and guileless, a clueless white madonna come to Overtown. She still had the black child—a girl, as it turned out—in her arms. The child was staring at Nestor with what?—wariness?—simple curiosity? At least she wasn’t crying. She was a pretty thing—even while sucking on the nipple of a pacifier with a swee-oooop glug swee-oooop glug earnestness. Nestor gave her a smile that was supposed to say, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for I am here on a friendly mission.”
“I’m Officer Camacho,” he said to the white-white madonna. “Sorry to be so…” He couldn’t think of an acceptable adjective to indicate he knew what a sweaty mess he must look like. Even “wet” would sound… like, crude. So he lifted his hands chest high and turned his fingers inward toward his torso and added a helpless shrug. “… but we have to ask everyone who saw what happened a few questions. Why don’t we go out on the porch?”
The girl began blinking a lot but said nothing. She nodded a tepid yes and followed Nestor out to the front porch, still holding the child.
Out here on the porch he saw her in the light for the first time. ::::::¡Dios mío! She’s so exótica!:::::: He couldn’t stop staring. He looked her up and down far faster than it takes to say so. Her skin was as white and smooth as a china plate—but her hair was black as black could be… well, straight, thick, shimmering, streaming down to her shoulders as luxuriantly as any cubana’s but black as black could be… and her eyes… staring at him wide-open with fright—and all the more gorgeous for that—and black as black could be… but in a china-white face. Her lips were delicate and curved in a certain mysterious way that Nestor thought of—for no good reason—as “French”—French perhaps but not red, more of an aubergine… no lipstick… she’s totally innocent of makeup—but hold on! That’s not really true, is it! He has just noticed the eye shadow. ::::::She’s got the rims of her lower lids coated with it!—really makes her big eyes pop out! And don’t tell me she’s not aware of that… and hey, don’t tell me she’s not aware of how short her skirt is—or does it just happen to show off her lovely long legs, the kind they call lissome… what other white americana would dare turn up at a raggedy dope den in Overtown showing off a pair of lissomely alluring legs like that?::::::… She doesn’t look very daring at this moment, however. She keeps blinking blinking blinking blinking… She keeps her lips parted, because she’s breathing fast… and with that her breasts rise and fall. They’re beneath a shirt, Oxford cloth, which has a coarse weave, button-down, only the top button open on the shirtfront, which amounts to not even trying to be sensual—even hidden this well they look to Nestor like perfection, those breasts… and somehow, her obvious fear really moves the heart of Nestor… Nestor the Protector… He immediately felt toward her the way he had felt toward Magdalena the day he first met her on Calle Ocho. He was a cop and she was a damsel. He was a chivalrous cop—but still 100 percent cop in his core. Not that Magdalena had looked frightened for a second. Nevertheless, the feeling of being the strong chivalrous warrior overseeing the damsel was the same.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Ghislaine.”
“Jee-len… how you spell that?”
“G, h, i, s, l, a, i, n, e.”
“G, H?”
Ghislaine, with an H, nodded yes, and Nestor cast his eyes down, as if looking at the notes he had just taken, screwed his lips up, and shook his head in an ancient cop mannerism that says, “Life is hard already. So why do you tontos go to so much trouble to make it harder?”
At this point, to some punk he would have said, “You got a last name?” But in her case, the exotic Ghislaine’s, he just said, “What’s your last name?”
“Lon-te-ay,” she said, or that was the way it sounded to him. She shielded her face from the sun with her hand.
“How do you spell that?”
Sweee-ooooop glug sweee-ooooop glug—rubber-suckled the child in her arms.