A rooster awakened Leala in the morning and for a moment she thought she was back in her village, safe, her mama cooking breakfast. But instead of the scent of wood smoke and tortillas she smelled the oily rags in the corner of her hideout and rain about to fall. She pushed the door open and saw dark and low clouds above, a lone gull wheeling in the air. The rooster, no further than a couple houses away, crowed again, followed by the sound of an engine cranking into life. A dog began barking. The neighborhood was waking up.
How far to the telephone? Leala thought, her mind tracing the distance to the ice-cream store. Is it worth the attempt?
Si. Something had to be done today.
Leala rummaged in her purse for a rumpled bill and a few remaining coins. She combed her hair with her fingers, shook her dress until the worst wrinkles fell away, then tied on her scarf and crept between brush to the alley.
The helado shop was ten minutes distant and Leala passed no one on the way, averting her face as sparse traffic passed. A bus passed her by, then slowed and stopped for two women who had been standing beside the street. The bus hissed away.
The ice-cream store was closed. Leala thumbed coins into the phone until hearing a chime. Hoping it meant the call was accepted, Leala entered the number in her memory. As the phone rang, she practiced words in her head.
“I have nowhere to go. I will do whatever you wish. Please help me.”
A click, a pause …
A voice: “This is Victoree. I am out of town until Monday. Please leave a message.”
Leala stared at the phone as if it had betrayed her. Should she wait until Monday? What to do?
Would she survive?
She turned to see a man a dozen paces behind, skinny as a stick with filthy hair hanging like snakes from his head. He stared at Leala through bloodshot eyes.
“Pardóneme,” Leala said, averting her face and slipping past the staring man. Even passing two meters away the man smelled bad and Leala wondered if the stench came from his arms, red and inflamed on the insides. He was a junkie, she knew, having seen them in her days in Tegucigalpa. He was sick with drugs and the need of them.
She watched the man make his call and continue down the street. Leala had to be bold. There was one thing she might do. But she had to find out certain things first. She had to see a man, a detection hombre named Ryder.
But first she had to find out where he was, where he worked.
In the distance, above the trees and low housetops Leala could see the skyline of Miami, terrifying in its height and breadth. Just aiming eyes at the city stole her breath. But it wasn’t far, three kilometers if that. Certainly the man she needed to see worked in one of the tall buildings.
She would go into the city. Just to see. That was all.
Leala waited beside a garage until another bus appeared. She darted to the street holding her dwindling money in one hand and waving at the bus with the other.
Leala sat behind the driver who, as if he’d seen it often before, pointed at the money in Leala’s hand to indicate correct payment. The driver was Hispanic, with a wide and open face and a cheery manner. The bus entered the city, passing from sunshine into the shadows of towering buildings. When the bus stopped at a light Leala leaned forward. “Excuse me, Señor. I seek the building that houses the policía. Do you know such a place?”
Be nearby, her heart hoped.
“Miami-Dade Policía, señorita?”
Leala frowned, not expecting a choice. She tried to recall Johnson’s words: He is a special detective from the state of Florida …
“Is there a Florida policía?” Leala asked. “Special ones that do the detection?”
The light changed and the bus pulled forward. “You are probably talking about the Florida State Police, or maybe the FCLE, who are—”
“That’s it!” Leala said, recalling the odd sequence of letters. “Is it in the city?”
The driver nodded. “I have a regular, a gentleman who does maintenance there. He usually takes the bus after this one, which arrives at seven forty-five.”
“Drop me where you drop the gentleman, por favor,” Leala said. “And point me in the way he goes.”
At seven fifteen a.m., Ernesto “Chaku” Morales strode into the downtown Miami health club with his black gym bag over a granite shoulder, his small, tight eyes scanning the vast room. A white fan the size of a helicopter’s rotors spun overhead as men and women pumped free weights on the floor. Others used machines or ran the encircling track. Rap-beat dance tracks pounded from speakers in the ceiling.
Chaku Morales didn’t visit the locker room. He simply stripped off his turquoise jumpsuit, revealing a brief scarlet bodysuit that embraced every cut, every ripple of muscle. His genitals stood out like a fist in a driving glove. Eyes drifted to the hulking entrant, some lingering in shaded curiosity, others turning away in fear or shame.
Morales fell forward, catching himself on his fingertips and warming up with pushups before progressing to squats and crunches. After an effortless ten minutes he crossed the room to a weight bench in a far corner, loading the holder with a hundred pounds of barbell carried one-handed from the rack. He lay on the bench and began his warm-up reps, the ham-thick biceps engorging with the push, relaxing at the bottom.
“Need a spot?” a voice said from behind.
Chaku Morales nodded. He looked from side to side and saw that he and the voice were alone. Morales continued to pump, speaking as the weight came down, stopping as it lifted.
“Have you had enough time to find out …” The weight went up, started down. “… what is going on?”
“There’s a new guy sticking his nose into things. Some hotshot from Mobile.”
“Hotshot?” Morales said.
“Carson Ryder. The guy solves things, a specialist. A lot of people are in prison because of him and now he’s in Miami.”
Morales pumped harder. The veins in his arms stood out like the burrows of miniature moles. “You have advice about what … can be done?” he grunted. “Can the hotshot be convinced to go blind to certain things?”
“I know these types. He can’t be bought, a believer.”
“Leverage?” Morales grunted.
“No wife, kids, not even fucking anyone at present.”
“Advice?”
“I’ll keep an eye out. If he starts down a road dangerous to us all, you might have to take him off the board.”
“But someone else takes his place, isn’t that” – Morales pushed the barbell above him like it was a broom – “what happens?”
“A new nose will be sniffing the air, true. But this Ryder guy has a unique nose. You don’t want it near the business. You don’t want it near Miami. It’s a dangerous nose.”
“I will pass this on. Gracias.”
“Nice spotting for you, buddy.”
Morales watched his spotter disappear into the locker room and emerge a minute later in khakis and blue polo shirt, neither man acknowledging the other as the spotter disappeared out the door. Morales followed ten minutes later. He knew Orlando Orzibel well enough to hear the man’s response before he told him the news and advice:
“Why wait, Chaku? Let’s take Ryder off the board now, and be done with him.”