5

I feel it as soon as they open the airplane doors. There’s the slight whoosh of pressurized air being released, the sudden venturi effect as a vortex of wind whips through my hair, and then there it is, all around me, pressing in from every direction.

“Do you feel that?” I ask Glenda. We’re standing in the aisle of the airplane, waiting for the geniuses in front of us to figure out how to open the overhead baggage compartment.

“Feel what?” she asks, looking around.

“No, no. That. This. In the air.”

She stops for a moment, eyes cast before her, and then I see the change wash over her face, the curl at the corners of her lips, the squinch of the eyes. “Ew,” she says simply.

“Ew,” I repeat. It’s the only word we can use.

Velociraptors are not great swimmers. Our arms are too underdeveloped, our bodies nowhere near buoyant enough to make the action either simple or entertaining. But, like all good human impersonators, we learn to paddle around a pool so we can fit in at little Timmy’s birthday party. No one wants to sit alone by the punch bowl all afternoon.

So, when we’re children, we take swimming lessons, which mostly consist of the instructors—former SS officers, I have no doubt—tossing us into a pool and yelling at us not to drown. I can still remember the first time I hit the deep end, feeling all that liquid surrounding my body for the first time, believing for a moment that I was surrounded not by water, but by impossibly heavy air.

Almost as if I could breathe it in, if I really gave it my all. Like I could walk around on the bottom of the pool for hours, my limbs moving slowly but steadily ahead, my hair perpetually damp, my chest slowly moving in and out as my lungs transformed into gills, sucking in the water and processing it into pure oxygen.

Welcome to Miami.

“Is that . . . humidity?” I ask Glenda.

“That’s what they call it.”

I shake my head. This can’t be right. “Maybe there’s a problem with the airport heater or something.”

“It’s August in South Florida, Vincent,” Glenda chides, pulling her small carry-on bag out from under the seat. “What did you expect?”

“To breathe.”

By the time I make it off the plane and through the jetway, I’m already feeling a bit sticky inside my guise. I wonder if there’s an attachment I can buy that will help dissipate the moisture forming beneath my latex; perhaps there’s a whole catalogue. If not, I should start up a business down here; I could make a killing.

The Miami Airport is wonderfully air-conditioned, though, and within moments I’m chilly and happy all over again. There’s still that feeling that the air around me has weight, a tactile presence, but it’s not cloying anymore. Not yet, at least—we still have to go back outside to hail a cab. If I’m lucky, they’ve domed and air-cooled the entire city. I can’t think of a better use of taxpayer money.

But as we step off the escalator into the baggage-claim area, I realize that a cab won’t be necessary. Tallarico, true to his word, has called ahead and made arrangements.

VINCENT RUBINO reads the sign in the limo driver’s hand, and it’s close enough for me. “Good evening,” I say, heaving my carry-on atop the driver’s cart.

“Hey, hey,” he yelps, yanking the bag back onto the floor, “I’m waiting for someone.” His accent is clipped but clearly Latino, the shortened syllables quite different from the drawled Mexican accents I’m used to back in L.A.

“Yeah, that’s me. That’s us.”

“You’re Rubino?”

“Rubio.”

“My sign says Rubino.”

“Yeah, and your sign is wrong. If you’re here from Eddie Tallarico, then you’re here for me. Vincent Rubio.” I stick out my hand, trying to remain polite. No need to get into an argument here and now; I’ve already got a record with the airport police back in Memphis—don’t ask, don’t ask—and I don’t need a rap sheet in South Florida, too.

“You don’t look like a Rubio.”

I shrug. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that. “Sorry to burst your bubble.”

He doesn’t give. “You look more like a Lerner. Or a Carter. I picked up a Carter last week.”

“That’s fascinating.” I can feel my temperature rising, and it’s not the humidity getting to me.

Ten minutes and a few narrowly averted arguments later, Glenda, the driver—his name, I have learned, is Raoul—and I stroll through the automatic doors and into the lower level of Miami International Airport, where I nearly choke on the exhaust fumes hugging the air. My vacation has begun.

The limousine I expected turns out to be a beat-up Dodge Caravan without air conditioning, but beggars can’t be choosers, and at least I don’t have to wait around for a taxi. As we drive away from the airport, I stare out the windows at what passes for the local scenery. They never put airports in particularly nice areas; there aren’t a lot of flight patterns zooming over Beverly Hills, for example. But we seem to be shooting past some particularly skeevy streets; I’m glad the speed limit is somewhere around sixty, and that the driver’s added a good twenty miles per hour for good measure.

“What are the sunbursts for?” Glenda asks. She’s pointing to the large signs hung above the freeway, upon which cheery cartoon suns have been painted in a bright orange glow.

“For the tourists,” our driver tells us.

“What, they’re gonna confuse it for the actual sun?”

The driver shakes his head. “You follow the sunbursts. Takes you to the beach. Takes you to the resorts.”

“And if you don’t follow the sun?” I ask.

He jerks a thumb out the window, toward another decrepit area, the small homes and buildings rife with crumbling plaster, the lawns thick with weeds and rusted-out cars. Graffiti everywhere, streetlights busted. “You end up in there.”

Soon we’re past the slums and merging onto another freeway, and the driver is telling us about his childhood in Cuba, about the freedom they had there until Fidel swept in and ruined it all. “So you came over . . . when?” asks Glenda.

“Seventy-nine,” he says. “The boatlifts.”

I remember reading about it at the time. Castro, in an attempt to cleanse his country of what he considered undesirables, shipped Cuba’s prisoners off to Miami, where they were promptly detained and, eventually, released into the South Florida ecosystem. Sort of like a wildlife preserve, only the INS officials didn’t get to wear any cool zookeeper outfits.

“You were in prison?” I ask.

The driver clucks his tongue. “That what you think? That the Mariel lifts were for convicts?”

“That’s what everybody thinks.”

He turns in the seat, his body twisted, his eyes clearly no longer on the road. It doesn’t seem to affect his driving, but it sure as hell affects my ability to remain calm.

“That’s what they wanted you to think—”

“Hey, you wanna look at the road?”

“The media,” he continues, paying no attention to my protests, “they worked it so we all looked like convicts, right? Uh-uh. It was a racial thing, that’s what it was.”

“Great—can you watch the—”

“A racial thing, my friend—”

“Fine, it was racial, it was racial. Turn the fuck around—”

He casually spins back in his seat and retakes control of the wheel, unconcerned that we were moments away from imminent death. Glenda doesn’t seem to have cared much, either; she’s more interested in his story. “Racial?” she asks. “You were all Cuban.”

“No, no,” he says. “Racial. Castro . . . he never like the Raptors, you know? That’s who he kicked out. Now, no more Raptors in Cuba.”

“He’s one of us?” I ask. I’d always assumed the guy to be human. The beard, the cigar—his entire look is too comical for any guise manufacturer to take seriously.

“No,” my driver says somberly. I can see his jaw grinding, the teeth clenched down hard. “He is not a Raptor. He is not one of us.”

Glenda shoots me a quick look, preparing to open her mouth and give this guy a taste of her Hadrosaur charm, but I give a head-shake to cut her off at the pass. We encounter a fair amount of racial prejudice in our job; it’s part and parcel when you deal with lowlifes, mammal or reptile. But in L.A., I’ve got the equilibrium worked out. I generally know when it’s coming, and from who, and Glenda’s got her own thing going in New York. But down here, we’re both babes in the woods. Better to tread carefully and keep our mouths shut, at least for the time being.

Ten minutes later we’re flying over a wide causeway, the water beneath us shining in the strong August moonlight. Sticking out from the causeway like twigs off a branch are two-lane roads, each leading to its own small island. I can make out a few houses in the distance, their yards butting up against the lapping surf. There are swimming pools out there. Gazebos. Tennis courts.

“This a good area?” I ask.

“Celebrities, politicians,” the driver tells me. “It’s nice. If you like that sort of thing.”

I like, I like. Despite my aforementioned aversion to swimming and the fact that the only time I ever played tennis I ended up with a tail bruise and a bucketful of humiliation, the concept of a home with these amenities is still something to which I’m attracted. Perhaps it’s the materialistic side of my nature. Then again, if there’s a nonmaterialistic side, I’m currently unaware of it. I should probably try to locate that facet of my personality; it might be able to help out with the credit card bills.

One of these small clumps of land, I soon learn, is named Star Island, and it is onto this small bridge that our Caravan veers. We pass by a guardhouse and a set of gates, and make a few short turns down perfectly manicured roads. The homes are difficult to see from the street; most are set back behind their own private fences, with ample foliage to block the view.

We arrive at Eddie Tallarico’s place a few moments later, and while I’m impressed with the overall magnitude of the joint, it’s clear that maintenance hasn’t been an issue around here recently. Tall weeds choke off the landscaping; paint peels from the house’s facade. It’s a Mediterranean-style home, rolled tile roof, white stucco walls, spots of bright color accenting the window and door frames, but whatever money was put into the house must have busted the bank. Either that, or they just don’t care about the place anymore.

Raoul takes our bags and hustles us inside, where the theme of neglect continues. The carpets are worn, lightbulbs are blown, and the air smells of smoke and mildew. Raoul leads us to our rooms, two small spaces off a main hallway, a single bed in each one.

“You want the one with the faded wallpaper or the smell of cat pee?” I ask Glenda.

“Considering I already flew from New York to L.A.—in coach—and now you’ve dragged my ass down to South Florida—in coach—”

“Right, right,” I say. “I’ll take the cat pee.”

Raoul throws our bags on our respective beds and asks, “You would like to see Mr. Tallarico?”

“We’ve got a choice in this?”

Raoul shrugs and leads us back down the hall and through a wide living room. The television is tuned to some cop show, the speaker blaring out with guns blasting. Five men huddle around the set, sitting cross-legged on the floor, the single sofa behind them unused. They’re in jackets and slacks, their clothing rumpled, worn. A perfect living match to the decor.

“Hey,” one says, a fellow with a tight monobrow and gruff voice.

“Hey,” I say back, unsure whether or not I’m supposed to know the guy. Another one is giving Glenda the once-over, and she pointedly turns away. Good gal. This isn’t the time or place to pick a fight.

As we head through the living room, a petite Asian girl—no more than sixteen, seventeen—enters through another door, carrying a tray of food. Her skin is a dark chestnut brown, her features delicate, innocent, untouched by time. But she doesn’t move like a teenager; her gait is slow, paced, her back stooped, as if a heavy weight has been placed upon her shoulders. I watch as she sets the tray down in the middle of the men and receives, for her efforts, a few slaps on the rump. She disappears through the same door she entered.

“C’mon,” Raoul says. “Boss is waiting.”

We move up a set of narrow stairs, the walls feeling as if they’re pressing in, rubbing against my shoulders. It’s not an illusion; the plaster is cracking, splintering out where the walls have begun to bend inward, and our combined weight on the staircase can’t be helping things. I’m relieved when we reach the top without causing any more damage.

Raoul raps lightly on the wooden door. “Mr. Tallarico?” he calls out. “It’s Raoul. I come back from the airport.”

There’s no answer. Raoul presses his ear to the door, wiggling his lanky body, pressing it against the frame. “Sometimes, the boss . . . he does not like to be disturbed.”

Great, another moody Tallarico. Just what the world needs. Raoul knocks again, and this time, a high, nasal voice calls back, “What is it already?”

“It is Raoul.”

“Go away, Raoul.”

“I have come back from the airport. With the guests from Los Angeles.”

Silence. Glenda and I share a look. Raoul shrugs. He presses his ear against the door again, his body weight firm against the wood, and suddenly it swings wide, dropping the driver to the floor.

Eddie Tallarico looks nothing like his brother. The facial structure, the features themselves . . . night and day. Most guise manufacturers will try to include certain familial traits when a fraternal set is ordered. Not here—the two might as well be from different species, let alone families. And the substructure, as far as I can tell, differs even more. Whereas Frank Tallarico is thin, almost to the point where he could strut the fashion runways of Paris, Eddie has a paunch on him, a serious gut that I don’t think is part of the guise. Sure, there are places where you can order body-modification attachments like the Bill Shatner Love Handles or the Orson Welles Insta-Belly—how do you think De Niro gained and lost all that weight for Raging Bull?—but to my untrained eye, that’s not just garb. That’s gobble.

But if you put me in a room with Frank Tallarico, his younger brother, Eddie, and a thousand other dinosaurs, then blindfolded me and spun me in a circle until I was ready to lose my lunch, I could still pick these two out from the crowd in an instant. Their scents are nearly identical.

Smells are visceral for me, almost hypnagogic. I can’t speak for all dinos, but I imagine it’s the same way for them, as well. I get mental pictures with every whiff I manage to catch. The cleaning lady who comes in to scrub down the office floors, for example, has a buttery-maple-syrup smell, and damn it all if I don’t get an image of Aunt Jemima rocking on her porch every time she comes in with her mop and broom. I can be looking right at her, wishing her a good morning, suggesting places that need to be scrubbed extra carefully, but some part of my brain sees that old black woman laugh and rock and laugh and rock.

So it’s the same image that pops into my mind when I smell Eddie Tallarico as it was when I sniffed down on his brother, Frank: a construction crew, eating lunch. Something about that tar, about that molasses, and I can’t escape it. There they are, a couple of burly guys up on the scaffolding, opening up their metal lunch boxes to reveal the sandwiches their old ladies packed that morning.

“In,” says Eddie, barely clearing a path for me to scoot by his belly and into the room. Glenda follows, and Eddie nudges Raoul back out into the stairwell before slamming the door in his face. After a moment, I hear the Cuban stomping back down the crumbling stairway, muttering under his breath.

This small study is packed with papers piled three feet high, barely a spare inch of floor on which to stand. Glenda and I shuffle around each other, trying to find a space to make ourselves comfortable. It’s simply not possible.

“He drive okay?” Eddie asks us.

“Who?”

“Raoul. He drive you here okay?”

I nod. The guy was a little heavy on the gas pedal, but I see no reason to make a federal case out of it. “Yeah, peachy.” I thrust out my hand; the guy’s providing room and board, and I’m trying to remember my manners. “Thanks for having us here. I’m Vincent.”

“I know who you are,” he says, ignoring my proffered handshake. “My brother gave me the scoop.” He looks toward Glenda. “Her I don’t know.”

“And vice versa,” she says. I shoot her a look, and she backs off. “Glenda Wetzel.”

Eddie doesn’t look entirely satisfied. He shuffles across the room, keeping his eye on us as he moves. “Okay, do your thing.”

“Our . . . thing?” I ask.

“Strip, strip, go.”

Glenda takes the reins. “Strip?”

Eddie sits behind his desk, his belly coming to rest on the wooden top. The chair squeaks something awful, and I resist the urge to whip out some lip balm and grease the thing down. “You think I’m gonna take you on your word who you are? I got twenty security systems in here ready to take you out if you make one move, ten guys downstairs who’ll be up here in a heartbeat, and you think I’m just gonna accept you on your word?”

“That’s what we were hoping,” I say. “We didn’t make Raoul show us ID at the airport.”

“Your ass, your call. This is my ass, my house, and my call, so shut up and strip.”

“You want us all the way down?” Glenda asks.

“All the way, sister.”

I’ve never had a problem with nudity; I just like it better when it’s someone else doing the stripping. But, as a rule, most dinosaurs don’t have the same hang-ups about baring their behinds as do our mammalian counterparts.

So I get the ball rolling by whipping off my clothes, pants and shirt first, undergarments last, and, almost instantly, I feel better about the overall climate. South Florida could be a grand place to live if only it weren’t for clothing. Bring on the humidity—I’m naked and free.

But not totally naked, which is how Tallarico wants me. I quickly set to work on my guise, pulling at the hidden buckles and buttons, unfastening the straps and loosening the clamps. It takes a while to release the G-series—I need to have that looked at by a professional tailor when I get a chance—but soon enough my human costume lies limp on the ground, splayed out over the assorted papers, and I’m au naturel in the middle of the room.

I’m not quite sure what he’s looking for—my only weapons are my claws and tail, the implements of any proper dino. But if I pass muster, I pass muster, and I’m not going to argue it.

“Yeah, all right,” Tallarico barks at me. “Now her.”

“You gonna stare at me the whole time?” Glenda asks as she removes her clothes, gently laying them on a nearby chair.

“That was the plan, sweetheart.”

Glenda’s guise comes with all the right curves in all the right places, and, revealed piece-by-piece as it is, I’m struck by the workmanship. The seams are impossible to detect, the skin smooth and flawless. Nipples perked right to perfection, everything flawlessly symmetrical.

But I’ve seen Glenda in her bare human skivvies before, come to think of it, and I don’t recall the design or craftsmanship as being particularly outstanding. Did she swap guises sometime in the last six months?

“What is that?” asks Eddie, also clearly impressed. “Taihitsu?”

Glenda shakes her head as she continues removing her garments. “DuBochet,” she says with a wink. The panties come down.

“Couture?” I ask, surprised.

“Only the best.”

“Thought you were a ready-to-wear kinda gal.”

“Tastes change,” she tells me. Never figured her for the fashionable blushing type, but maybe she’s tired of the tomboy-with-an-attitude shtick. Maybe she’s ready to move along. Still, I’m surprised that she could come up with the scratch to buy a DuBochet, especially after our late-night phone calls wherein we both bemoaned our lack of funds. A DuBochet isn’t your everyday catalogue or boutique wear. That’s the kind of guise you see strutting down the red carpet come Oscar night.

“Nice gams,” Eddie says, “but off with ’em, and fast. I got a business to run here.”

Glenda starts with her G-clamps, and doesn’t have her tail halfway out of the straps before Tallarico is on his feet, pushing back from his desk with an excited grunt.

“Out!” he shouts, waving his arm through the air. “I knew it! I shoulda smelled it on ya—”

“Whoa, whoa,” I say, stepping in front of Glenda, shielding her from the stocky man’s wild gestures. “Let’s take a breath, here.”

“You take a breath. She can take her goddamned Hadrosaur ass outta here.”

“Now, wait a second,” I start.

“No discussion,” Tallarico yells. He’s worked himself into a miniature tornado of activity, limbs flailing about as he butts up against me, against Glenda, bouncing her around the room like a sumo wrestler gone batty. “She’s outta my house, outta my goddamned sight—”

“What the fuck?” Glenda shouts back. “You wanted me to undress, so I undressed.”

“And you thought you were gonna sneak in here—”

“What?”

“—under the radar, just slide in and stay as a guest in my house, with my family.” Tallarico edges forward another step, and it’s getting hard to keep him at bay. “Wait until we got all cozy with ya, real friendly-like, then creep outta bed in the middle of the night and slit our throats. That the way it was planned out?”

Glenda throws her hands in the air and restraps her tail in place. I can see it quivering a bit, the tip shaking back and forth with anger. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” she says, “but you got a lot to learn about being a host.”

As an outsider to this little argument, I feel honor-bound to make some sense of it. “I’m sure we can solve the problem,” I say. “Let’s talk this out rationally.”

“Ain’t nothing to talk about,” Tallarico says. “Raptors stay. Everyone else—goddamned Hadros, especially—can make themselves scarce.”

“So this . . . this is a racial problem?”

“Fuck racial,” Tallarico spits. “This is smarts. You think I lived this long trusting one of them?”

I’m about to protest again, to put up a fight for Glenda, but she waves it off. She’s got her bra and underwear on, hurriedly redressing, and I can see that she’s already donned a mask of nonchalance. It’s a brave front. “Forget it,” she says. “I know where this prick’s coming from.”

“I bet you do,” Eddie grunts.

“I’ll find a hotel,” Glenda tells me, her voice shaking a bit at the edges.

“Glen—”

“No, it’s fine. Hey, business is business, right?”

I look at Tallarico, at that satisfied smirk spreading across his wide face. The kind of grin you just want to introduce to the business end of a shovel. “I’ll come with you,” I say, reaching down for my own straps and buckles. “We’ll find a nice place on South Beach to hole up.”

“Uh-uh,” Eddie says, yanking my P-clamp from my hands and tossing it over his shoulder. It lands with a clang upon his desk and disappears into a mountain of papers.

“What the—that’s my only one—”

“My brother said I gotta keep a watch on you.”

“Yeah, and he also said you’d put up my friend.”

Eddie shrugs. “Frank know she was a Hadrosaur?”

“He didn’t ask.”

“Then it don’t matter what he said. You’re down here to work for the family, you stay where I can see you.”

The money. He knows about it, of course. Frank’s not shy about such matters.

“Oh yeah,” he continues, picking up where my thoughts left off. “I know what you’re in for, pal. Twenty large, and I don’t see you forking it over any time soon. So till your two weeks are up, you’ll be staying right under my thumb. As for her . . .” Eddie reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a fat black wallet, the leather bursting with old receipts and useless business cards. Plucking a few twenty-dollar bills from within, he crumples them into a ball and tosses them at Glenda’s feet. “That’s for the striptease.” He chuckles, and turns back to his desk.

This time it’s Glenda who restrains me from attacking the corpulent son of a bitch, firmly grabbing my upper arm and delivering a slow, meaningful head shake.

“He’s not worth it,” she says quietly. “Not now.”

It only takes her a few more moments to completely dress and gather her wits, Tallarico no longer paying us any attention, his head bent over the desk, shuffling papers back and forth.

“Thank you for your graciousness,” she says without a hint of sarcasm. “You have a lovely house.”

Eddie mumbles, “They’ll call you a cab downstairs,” and waves his hand in that dismissive gesture mastered by the Tallarico family. I get a quick hug, a peck on the cheek.

“I’ll call you when I find a place,” Glenda tells me. “Keep your cell on.”

I want to fix this, to tell her to stay, to piggyback along on her ride across the causeway, but I’m in a bind. The same forces that sent me down here to Miami are keeping me inside this house, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Before I can even mutter any salutations, Glenda is out the door and down the stairs, and I’m alone in the study with Eddie Tallarico.

“So . . .” I say, unsure of where to begin or end. “That’s it? We done?”

He stops messing with the papers on his desk, raises his thick eyebrows at me. “You think that was wrong, what I did?”

“I think that was chickenshit,” I tell him. He might own my ass, but not my mouth.

Instead of the rage I expect, Tallarico just shrugs. “You ain’t from here, you don’t get it. Can’t trust no one but your own kind. ’Specially Hadros.”

“Sounds a little paranoid to me.”

Tallarico shrugs. “I’m alive. And I’m tired. You gonna stand here and bug me all night or you gonna do your job?”

I’m not in any particular mood to do my so-called job—whether or not impersonating a Lo-Jack is an actual job is something I don’t need to argue right now—but I certainly have no urge to spend any more time with Tallarico than necessary. “You want me to find Hagstrom?” I ask.

“We’re paying you to keep your eyes and ears open.”

“They’re open.”

“Not here,” he sighs. “Go, yes. Out. Talk to the boys downstairs, they’ll tell you where to get started.”

And with that, he’s working again, that feverish look to his eyes, hands flipping pages back and forth. It barely looks likes he’s giving the papers a good glance. I wonder if there are words on them. I wonder if he can actually read.

Downstairs, the motley group of fellows still surrounds the television set, only now the show is some raunchy sitcom that forces a few laughs out of the group every ten seconds or so. I approach the one who gave me the nod earlier, hoping he’ll be amenable to dispensing a few directions. I can’t tell if the smell of cheese and feet is coming from him or from the bowl of nachos on his lap.

“Hey,” I say, shuffling into view. “I’m Vincent.”

“Sherman,” he says, and as he moves to shake my hand, the stench of Limburger past its prime grows stronger. Maybe he’s got an infection in the scent glands. Happens to the best of us; word is, that’s why they sent Lewis and Clark west—no one back east could stand the smell anymore. “Siddown, take a chip.”

“Maybe later. Eddie said you could tell me where to find Nelly Hagstrom.”

A new punch line pops out over the TV audio and Sherman bursts into a series of chortles, slapping his pal on the back a few times to complete the effect. He leans back, his body nearly tipping over and onto the carpet before he rights himself again.

“Look, I’m just trying to find out where they hang out—”

“The Sea Shack,” he grunts. “Restaurant up on Biscayne Boulevard. Get Raoul to take you.”

“Raoul took off,” another one of them interrupts. “Like, ten minutes ago.”

“That’s okay,” I say. “I’ll take a cab.”

“Suit yourself,” says my new pal. “Phone’s in the kitchen.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder, and I turn to make my way out of the living room.

But I stop as he calls out, “Hey, wait a sec,” and I dutifully turn and step back onto the dirty carpet. “Come back, come back—”

“Something else?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding his head at a small rectangular device no more than five feet away. “You wanna pass me the remote? I hate this freaking show.”

The Sea Shack. We have places like this back in L.A. Only there, we know it’s supposed to be a joke.

Stuffed sharks hang from the walls, their glassy eyes practically pleading with the patrons to put an end to their misery. Put me in a box, a landfill, even a moderately tasteful living room, they say. Anywhere but here. Nothing doing; this is kitsch korner, and right where Jaws Jr. belongs. Empty conch shells strung along strands of fishing line hang like streamers from the ceiling, dangling down to annoy the taller customers and frustrate small children. The requisite seashell-bead curtain adorns the front entrance, a throwback to some sad seafarer’s concept of seventies style.

But the first thing I notice upon venturing into the Sea Shack is the smell. This fish is funky. They’ve got the Atlantic Ocean less than a mile away; you’d think they could afford to run down to the beach and do some spearfishing when the last catch started to ripen up the place. Alas, it’s probably a human-owned joint; they can’t sense the stink until it’s way past salmon and into salmonella.

The other river of scent riding past my nostrils is more familiar: the pine, the autumn morning. Here there be dinos. I step past the bronze sculpture of a tortoise and make my way into the restaurant, toward the back bar, where a good number of patrons have gathered, hunkered over the wooden countertop. A series of television sets, hung above the bar, are tuned to a Marlins game, but no one’s watching the tube. It’ll be nice to have some conversation for a change.

“Evening,” I say to the bartender. “Think I could get a—”

“Shhhh.”

“Shhhh?”

“Shhhh.”

So it’s a quiet bar. I can dig that. I’m running through my repertoire of sign language, trying to figure out how to order up a soda, when I realize that not everyone in the bar is here to rest their vocal cords. There is one voice riding above the silence, a strong, commanding lilt that’s both familiar and new.

“. . . and I’m called in to have a word with him. Now, this is the phrase that was used. A word with him. And when Francesco wanted a word with someone, more often than not, that individual was well advised to prepurchase a headstone and plot.”

The sound is coming from within the center of a massed group, some storyteller plying his trade on the bar patrons. I can’t see him from here; the crowd is thick, evidently entertained. Maybe this is the South Florida version of a lounge singer. Some dope gets up and starts prattling on about his life, and every once in a while someone throws a dollar into his jar. I edge closer.

“So I enter Francesco’s office,” the guy is saying, “the one he had down by Vizcaya. And everything’s dark in there. I’m thinking, first things first, I gotta make out a will, I gotta get my affairs in order, right?” A little laughter from the crowd, but he doesn’t let it go on too long.

“Francesco tells me to sit, and I tell him I prefer to stand. He tells me to sit again, and this time I listen, ’cause I figure I’m already in trouble with the guy, I don’t wanna stoke those fires any more. Maybe I’m dead already, but if I’m nice, he could let me go quick.

“So I sit down, and before I can apologize—me not knowing what I did, right, just ready to apologize for every damn thing out there—Francesco says to me, ‘I need you to do a job.’ Just like that, from the man himself.

“And I say, ‘A job?’ And he nods and repeats it. A job.

“So now I’m getting all nervous, but in a good way. ’Cause now I know he’s gonna put me up for my button after this thing, something big, something that’s gonna make waves, get me known. ‘Whatever you need,’ I tell him. ‘I’m here for you.’

“And he stands up, puts an arm around my shoulder, and leads me up to this door in the back of his office, this little tiny thing I never even noticed before. I’m starting to shake, but keeping it together, keeping it tight, knowing this is where I learn the secrets, here is where he’s gonna tell me what he knows about the life.

“Francesco looks me in the eye, and nods. I nod back, and he turns around on me, facing away. ‘This is a job I cannot do myself,’ he says. ‘I hope you can handle it.’ And I take a breath and look up—

“And there’s Francesco, a sponge in one hand, a bar of soap in the other, and he’s popping out the spikes on his back, one by one. Francesco says, ‘My nurse went out of town and I need someone to wash my spikes. Make sure you scrub the third one good. It’s so hard to get it clean without help.’

“And that was my entrance into the Francesco family.”

Applause and laughter from the circle—it’s a tale they’ve heard before, I can tell, but enjoyed all over again. There’s something dastardly familiar about that voice, though, and I muscle closer, trying to pick up on a scent. It’s tough—the overriding smell of fish is clogging up my nostrils, making detection difficult.

So I sit and wait for the crowd to clear out, to move away from the center of attention so I can get a visual make. The bartender has gone back to fetching drinks, and I take this moment to grab myself a diet soda.

I’m just a few sips into my drink when I feel a firm hand clamp down on my shoulder, and a very familiar whiff of cinnamon and soy climbs up my nose. “Don’t I know you?”

Hagstrom. I keep my body toward the bar, hoping he wasn’t interested in smelling me that day at the casino and won’t recall my face. “Don’t think so,” I mutter, and take another sip of my pop.

“Yeah, yeah, I know you. You’re the one who smells like cigars.”

“Lots of us do.”

“And lots of you play baccarat in Norwalk?”

Whoops. I can sense a crowd building around us. Hagstrom’s friends, no doubt, backing him up. I turn around, trying to keep my eyes steely, my glare constant. I can’t bluff my way out, but I might be able to keep them at bay with a few well-placed sneers.

“There a problem with that?” I ask. “You lost, I won. Luck of the cards.”

I can’t take my eyes off Hagstrom’s forehead, off that puckered scar twisting the skin between his eyebrows.

“You following me?”

“Yeah,” I snort. “That’s what I’m doing, I’m following you.” With a grunt, I turn back on my stool and down another sip of soda.

He’s not giving up. “You turning your back on me?”

“That’s what it looks like, pal.”

Before I even realize what’s going on, my arms are caught up by two of Hagstrom’s associates and I’m yanked from my stool and thrown to the sawdust-covered floor of the Sea Shack, joining a mash of peanut shells and dried beer. Breath escapes me for a moment as I thud to the ground, my field of vision twisting, the world turning itself upside down.

Hagstrom’s shoe—dark leather, polished to a shine—is on my throat a second later, pressing down not on the human-guise larynx but right below it, where the dino soft spot is located. He’s got his anatomy down tight.

Pressure. Lack of breath. Intriguing.

I wonder if the bartender or the waitstaff or anyone will come to my rescue, but soon realize that this is the kind of place mobsters patronize for the very reason that the bartender and the wait- staff are blind, dumb, and deaf exactly when they need to be.

“Now,” says Hagstrom, standing over me, lauding his little conquest. “You gonna turn your back on me again?”

He starts pressing down harder with that shoe, and suddenly I can feel my air starting to go, the breath catching in my throat. I flail my arms to get up, but the same two goons who threw me to the floor are suddenly on their knees, holding me in place. I’ve got no leverage, so I’ve got no chance.

“Wait—” I try to say, the words coming out in a choke, a gurgle. “Wait—”

But Hagstrom isn’t listening. His body swims in my suddenly blurring vision, that scar on his forehead pulsing in and out, his lips twisted in a sick combination of joy and rage. My legs are feeling weaker, my arms wet linguini against the firm grip of Hagstrom’s friends.

And just as I think it’s all going away—the sights, the sounds, the smells—just as Hagstrom’s shoe comes pressing down harder, just as it feels my life is finishing up, wiping its hands on the napkin of existence and leaving the restaurant for good, just as I realize I’m making absolutely no sense whatsoever—

The pressure disappears. For a moment, I think I might be dead, then figure out that heaven probably doesn’t smell like day-old tuna.

“Let him up, let him up.” It’s the voice from before, the one that was telling the story about sponging the big guy’s spikes. Presumably, the buccaneer in charge of this ship. “Help him, for chrissakes . . .”

I feel arms, lifting me back onto the stool, patting me on the back, keeping my body balanced. It takes a few moments, but I’m able to come back to myself, regain control of my limbs. They’re buzzing, tingly.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” I repeat, looking up into the wide face of the man who saved my life, if not my dignity—and catching nothing but air. I let my gaze fall a few feet to find a well-groomed chap strapped into a powered wheelchair. His voice is still familiar, but not the look. Never seen the guy before. “Your boy got a little carried away, but I’m cool.”

“Nelly’s high-strung,” he says to me, placing a hand on my shoulder, keeping me steady. But my head is coming back to me, my nostrils are beginning to gear up again, working past the fish, trying to get a bead on my momentary savior. “But if you’re feeling better—”

“I’m good.”

A push of the joystick on his chair and he spins away, preparing to leave. As he turns, though, I see a flash of thought slide across his face, lighting his eyes, furrowing his brow. He turns back to me, nostrils flaring, chest heaving deeply. Even as I’m smelling him, he’s smelling me, and suddenly the picture-in-picture inside my head pops up with an image, a series of stills that’s been stuck in the craw of my brain for years and years.

Lemongrass and copper. A small Asian boy walking through a field, flipping a penny into the air.

“Jack?” I say involuntarily, the word escaping my lips before I can stop it.

And the man—this fellow, whose face I have never seen before, yet once knew as intimately as I know anyone on the whole damn planet—just grins and spreads his arms to envelop me in an all-out, no-holds-barred bear hug.

“Vincent Rubio,” he croons, pulling my face down into the fabric of his suit, his hand running over the back of my head, caressing my hair as if I were a lost child suddenly found. “I don’t know whether I should kiss you or kill you.”

“Jack—”

“Shhh, stay still. Let me think this over.”