see the autopsy.”
This was fine with Paz. Barlow had taken the call and was, by rule, the primary detective on the investigation. They’ll probably eliminate suicide right off, he thought, but kept the thought to himself. After Barlow retired he was going to get a partner with a sense of humor.
“You want me there?” Paz could live without autopsies.
“No, no point the two of us going up to Jackson. Why don’t you find out what that nut thing is, and I’ll meet you back here around five and we’ll both of us go see Mr. Youghans.”
Also fine. Paz went back to his car and took I-95, going south this time. He lit one of the unbanded maduro seconds he bought in bundles of fifty from a guy on Coral Way. Paz had been smoking cigars since he was fourteen, and was amused by the recently renewed fashionableness of the vice among downtown big shots. You were not supposed to smoke in police vehicles, which Paz thought was another indication of the end of civilization. Man smoked; it was what made him man, and distinguished him from the beasts.
Puffing contentedly, he turned off Dixie Highway at Douglas Road and then onto Ingraham. The roadside trees had not fully recovered from the ravages of Hurricane Andrew in ‘92, and Ingraham was not yet the continuous lush tunnel it had once been, but it was cooler and shadier in here than on the unforgiving sun-blasted Dixie Highway. Fairchild Tropical Gardens, his destination, is the largest tropical arboretum in the nation and a center for the study of tropical botany. It, too, had been knocked flat by Andrew but was nearly back to where it had been, a small paradise of lush growth and flowers. Paz flashed his badge at the gate guard and parked in the shadiest corner he could find. The heat of the day was building to its usual apex. Afterward, around three-thirty, when the air was nearly too thick and hot to suck into the lungs, it would be doused by the predictable thunderstorm. Now dense scent hung in the unmoving air: rot, divine perfume, clipped grass. Paz took a deep cleansing snort of this, and strolled past the fish pond and the immense banyan to the two-story gray Florida limestone building that housed the research and administration offices.
After a few false turns he found himself in the office of Dr. Albert Manes, a gangling, pleasantly ugly fellow about Paz’s age, tanned, spectacled, and looking very much the intrepid plant explorer in a green T-shirt and khaki shorts. He took Paz’s card with interest.
“A cop, huh? Looking for dope in the garden again?” He grinned.
Paz kept his face blank. “No, sir, this is in reference to a homicide.”
Manes’s face took on a suitably chastened look. “Wow, who got killed?” he asked, and then paled. “Oh, shit, wait a second, you’re not here because …” His eyes darted over to a family portrait on his desk.
“No, sir, nothing like that. We just need a little botanical advice.”
Manes took a deep breath, blew it, laughed nervously, and sat down on the edge of his desk. “Sure, what about?”
Paz handed him the thing in its evidence bag.
Manes peered at it, holding the bag up to eye level. He sat on a steel stool, took the nutshell from its bag, examined it in a hand lens, measured it, took down a thick green volume from the shelf above him, thumbed through it for two minutes, and said, “Here it is.”
Paz looked past his shoulder at the open book. There was a black-and-white photograph of a similar nutshell joined to its mirror image at the narrow end.
“It’s Schrebera golungensis, ” said Manes. “The ewe’s-foot tree. Also called the opele tree, although what an opele is I couldn’t tell you. Did you want to know anything else besides what it is?”
“Does it grow around here?”
“Well, it probably would, everything else does. But it’s native to West Africa, Nigeria down though the Congo and up to Senegal.”
“Have you got one here? In the gardens, I mean.”
“Alive and
This was fine with Paz. Barlow had taken the call and was, by rule, the primary detective on the investigation. They’ll probably eliminate suicide right off, he thought, but kept the thought to himself. After Barlow retired he was going to get a partner with a sense of humor.
“You want me there?” Paz could live without autopsies.
“No, no point the two of us going up to Jackson. Why don’t you find out what that nut thing is, and I’ll meet you back here around five and we’ll both of us go see Mr. Youghans.”
Also fine. Paz went back to his car and took I-95, going south this time. He lit one of the unbanded maduro seconds he bought in bundles of fifty from a guy on Coral Way. Paz had been smoking cigars since he was fourteen, and was amused by the recently renewed fashionableness of the vice among downtown big shots. You were not supposed to smoke in police vehicles, which Paz thought was another indication of the end of civilization. Man smoked; it was what made him man, and distinguished him from the beasts.
Puffing contentedly, he turned off Dixie Highway at Douglas Road and then onto Ingraham. The roadside trees had not fully recovered from the ravages of Hurricane Andrew in ‘92, and Ingraham was not yet the continuous lush tunnel it had once been, but it was cooler and shadier in here than on the unforgiving sun-blasted Dixie Highway. Fairchild Tropical Gardens, his destination, is the largest tropical arboretum in the nation and a center for the study of tropical botany. It, too, had been knocked flat by Andrew but was nearly back to where it had been, a small paradise of lush growth and flowers. Paz flashed his badge at the gate guard and parked in the shadiest corner he could find. The heat of the day was building to its usual apex. Afterward, around three-thirty, when the air was nearly too thick and hot to suck into the lungs, it would be doused by the predictable thunderstorm. Now dense scent hung in the unmoving air: rot, divine perfume, clipped grass. Paz took a deep cleansing snort of this, and strolled past the fish pond and the immense banyan to the two-story gray Florida limestone building that housed the research and administration offices.
After a few false turns he found himself in the office of Dr. Albert Manes, a gangling, pleasantly ugly fellow about Paz’s age, tanned, spectacled, and looking very much the intrepid plant explorer in a green T-shirt and khaki shorts. He took Paz’s card with interest.
“A cop, huh? Looking for dope in the garden again?” He grinned.
Paz kept his face blank. “No, sir, this is in reference to a homicide.”
Manes’s face took on a suitably chastened look. “Wow, who got killed?” he asked, and then paled. “Oh, shit, wait a second, you’re not here because …” His eyes darted over to a family portrait on his desk.
“No, sir, nothing like that. We just need a little botanical advice.”
Manes took a deep breath, blew it, laughed nervously, and sat down on the edge of his desk. “Sure, what about?”
Paz handed him the thing in its evidence bag.
Manes peered at it, holding the bag up to eye level. He sat on a steel stool, took the nutshell from its bag, examined it in a hand lens, measured it, took down a thick green volume from the shelf above him, thumbed through it for two minutes, and said, “Here it is.”
Paz looked past his shoulder at the open book. There was a black-and-white photograph of a similar nutshell joined to its mirror image at the narrow end.
“It’s Schrebera golungensis, ” said Manes. “The ewe’s-foot tree. Also called the opele tree, although what an opele is I couldn’t tell you. Did you want to know anything else besides what it is?”
“Does it grow around here?”
“Well, it probably would, everything else does. But it’s native to West Africa, Nigeria down though the Congo and up to Senegal.”
“Have you got one here? In the gardens, I mean.”
“Alive and
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