matter of adding my sample to one of them and swirling the two together in a test tube. I had just finished when my cell phone began to chime. For a brief, irrational moment, I thought it might be Lily Anne calling, but reality reared its ugly head in the form of my sister, Deborah. Not that her head is actually ugly, but she is very demanding.
“What have you got,” she demanded.
“I think I may have dysentery from the coffee,” I told her.
“Don’t be an asshole,” she said. “I’m getting enough asshole from the Fibbies.”
“I’m afraid you may have to put up with some more,” I said, looking at my test tube. A thin line of precipitate had formed between the antiserum and the sample from the crime scene. “It looks like it’s human blood.”
Deborah was silent for a moment, and then said, “Fuck. You’re positive?”
“The cards never lie,” I said, in my best Gypsy accent.
“I need to know whose blood it is,” she said.
“You’re looking for a thin man with a mustache and a limp. Left-handed and wearing black, pointy shoes,” I said.
She was silent for a second, and then she said, “Fuck you. I need some help here, goddamn it.”
“Deborah, there’s only so much I can do with a blood sample.”
“Can you at least tell me if it belongs to Samantha Aldovar?” she said.
“I can run another test and find out the blood type,” I said. “You’ll have to ask the family what hers is.”
“Do it,” she snarled, and hung up.
Have you noticed how difficult it is just to get along in the world? If you’re no good at all in your job, people treat you badly and eventually you will be unemployed. And if you’re a little better than competent, everyone expects miracles from you, every single time. Like most of life, it’s a no-win situation. And if you dare to mention it, no matter how creatively you phrase your complaints, you are shunned as a whiner.
In truth, I do not mind being shunned. If only Deborah had shunned me, I would still be at the hospital admiring Lily Anne and her blossoming motor-control skills. But I could not risk being shunned full-time, not with the economy as bad as it is, and a growing family to think about. And so with a world-weary sigh, I bent my aching back to the dreary task at hand.
It was late afternoon when I called Deborah with the result of my test. “It’s type O,” I said. I did not expect her to respond with flowery gratitude, and she didn’t. She simply grunted, said “Get your ass back over here,” and hung up.
I got my ass back into my car and drove it south to Coconut Grove and the Aldovars’ house. The party was still going when my ass got there, and my parking spot by the bamboo-on-steroids was gone now. I circled the block one time, wondering if Lily Anne missed me. I wanted to be there with her, not here in the dull and deadly world of blood splatter and Deborah’s temper. I would run in, tell Debs I was leaving, and get back to the hospital—assuming I could find a place to put my car, which I could not.
I circled again, and finally found a place twice as far away, beside a large Dumpster in the yard of a small and empty house. Dumpsters are one of the new and fashionable lawn ornaments in South Florida, and they spring up all over our town like mushrooms after a summer rain. When a house goes into foreclosure, which they do quite often nowadays, a crew arrives with the Dumpster and empties the house into it, almost as though they picked it up by one side and poured everything out. The former occupants of the house presumably find a nice freeway overpass to live under, the bank resells the house for ten cents on the dollar, and everyone is happy—especially the company that rents the Dumpsters.
I took the long hike back to the Aldovars’ house from my charming Dumpster-view parking spot. The walk was not as horrible as it might have been. The day was cool for Miami, with the temperature only in the low eighties and the humidity no more than a steam bath, so there were still several dry spots left on my shirt when I pushed through the swarming flock of reporters gathered in front of the house and trudged on in.