Tropic of Night by Michael Gruber Page A

growing? I could check our database, if you’d like.”
    Paz would like, and the scientist sat down in front of a large monitor and started pressing keys. Lists scrolled, windows flashed into existence and vanished.
    “It doesn’t look like we do. If you made me guess, I would doubt that anybody else in Miami does, either.”
    Paz wrote this into his notebook. “What do they use this tree for? I mean, they eat the fruit, or what?”
    “Oh, it’s not a cultivar,” said Manes. “This grows wild in the jungle. The locals might use parts of it, but I’m not up on that kind of thing. If you have a couple of minutes, I could check on the Net.”
    “Let’s do it.”
    Manes punched keys. The computer warbled and hissed.
    “I’m in the EthnobotDB database. Uh-uh. No S. golungensis . There’s a related Schrebera used in folk medicine.”
    “How about to make poison?”
    “Poison. Okay, that’d be the PLANTOX database. Just a second, here. I’ll just check out the genus for starters. Nope, a blank. Which doesn’t mean actually that much. These general databases are always a little behind the curve. You need an ethnobotanist.”
    “Isn’t that you?”
    “No, I’m a plant systematist. I figure out which plants are related to which and also decide if something somebody collected is a new species or not. An ethnobotanist actually goes out and works with locals to see how they use plants. Drug companies hire them in platoons.”
    “Got a name of one I could talk to?”
    “There’s Lydia Herrera, she’s pretty good, at the U. I know she’s around because I just saw her the other day. Your problem’s going to be finding someone who knows West Africa, assuming you’re interested in this particular tree.” He paused. Paz could see he was about to expire from curiosity thwarted, and was not surprised when he asked, “So … what’s the connection between the specimen and the murder? If I may ask …”
    “You could, but I couldn’t tell you anything. Sorry, it’s procedure.”
    Manes chuckled and said wryly, “Yeah, and of course, an unusual tropical plant is connected to a murder, you can’t tell, it could be a tropical botanist did it.”
    “Could be,” said Paz, unsmiling. “For the record, did you know the victim, Deandra Wallace?”
    A short nervous laugh. “No, not that I know of. Who was she?”
    “Oh, just a woman, up in Overtown. Back to what you were saying, about finding someone who knew about Africa?”
    Manes seemed relieved to get back to his field. “Right. Well, most of the ethnobotanists in this part of the world are going to have experience in the American tropics?makes sense, of course, we’re close and we have political and economic connections with Latin America. Most of the West African botany’s been done out of France, and the East African out of Britain, for obvious reasons, the former colonial powers. I’m sorry I can’t help you more.”
    Paz finished writing and put away his notebook, thanked Manes, and collected his nut from the table. His opele nut. An accomplishment to know its name. Back at his car, he sat in the front seat with the door open and read through his notes. He always did this after an interview; it was another one of Barlow’s rules. Make sure you got what you want before you leave the informant. In all, good news. The crime scene contained a rare nut, which was better than if the thing was growing all over South Florida. He had actually written “rare nut.” You could say that again, he thought, and laughed. It was a shame he couldn’t share it with Barlow. He used his cell phone to call the University of Miami locator, and then called Dr. Herrera’s office, using Manes’s name but not identifying himself as a detective, making an appointment with the secretary for later in the day.
    Paz drove out of Fairchild and turned north. A rare nut. He thought it would be nice to find the other half of that particular Schrebera golungensis shell. He had a