Miami Noir: The Classics

Washington Avenue

(Originally published in 2001)

One

Tommy MacDonald and I were sitting at a terrace table at Oceana — one of the outdoor restaurants that line Ocean Drive on Miami Beach. We were sipping mojitos and enjoying the sunset on the horizon. It was a wondrous sight, the fiery red ball going down over the palm trees and bathing the wide stretch of sand across from us with a golden orange glow as it made its final journey into the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

It was late summer, my favorite season in Miami, when the town was deserted. Only the bravest Miamians stayed in town during the hellish three months of summer. Locals who could escaped to cooler climates, and the season was too risky for tourists who feared they would lose their vacation deposits if a hurricane hit. For me, it was perfect. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as too much heat and humidity. Maybe it’s my Cuban blood, maybe it’s my contrarian nature.

Tommy and I were trying to ignore our discomfort and make the most of the dismal, pathetic breeze that was struggling to break through the ninety-plus-degree, eight p.m. heat. Our bodies were sticking to the repellent cream-colored canvas that covered our chairs. I was wearing a white linen sleeveless dress, so I was a little cooler than Tommy, who was in his tan poplin suit. I had had the luxury of going home to shower and change after work. Tommy had come straight from a court appearance.

Of the twenty tables on the terrace, only three others were occupied. That was about right for August. Tommy and I sipped our drinks and looked over the menu — although we had eaten at Oceana so often recently we practically knew it by heart.

That night we were at Oceana for a different reason than the food and the ambiance, though. Leonardo — my cousin, office manager, and supervisor of my professional, personal, and spiritual life — had asked me to go there. Manny Mendoza, Leonardo’s longtime friend and Oceana’s manager, had some sort of problem that he wanted to discuss with me. Apparently the phone wouldn’t do, and Manny wanted to see me in person. I had no problem complying with Leonardo’s request, since Tommy and I had planned to go out anyway.

Tommy MacDonald was my friend, occasional employer, and sometime lover. He was also the most successful criminal-defense attorney in Miami — no small accomplishment in a city full of people who need legal representation for their criminal matters, and who often have plenty of money to pay for the best. At any given time an inordinate percentage of Miami’s population is being investigated, is under scrutiny by a grand jury, is facing indictment, incarceration, deportation, or is headed straight for the witness protection program. It’s that kind of town.

I had known Tommy for seven years, when he was just a few years out of law school and I was starting as an investigator. He had been pinch-hitting for one of his partners in a personal-injury case, and I was the investigator of record. As soon as I saw him walk into a conference room for a deposition, the run-of-the-mill case turned very interesting — at least as far as I was concerned. Our relationship, both personal and professional, took off quickly. Aside from our personal chemistry, we’ve worked on some of the more interesting criminal cases in the recent history of Dade County.

Physically we’re different as night and day, but we complement each other. Tommy is light-skinned and Irish; I’m Cuban and olive-colored. At six feet, Tommy is a full foot taller than me. He’s thin in contrast to my voluptuousness, and he has light-blue eyes and sandy hair to set off my hazel eyes and waist-length, wavy black hair that I’ve worn in a braid since I was a child. For some inexplicable reason I have freckles on my face, little black dots clustered around my nose and spreading across my cheeks.

Tommy knew about the subtext to our dinner that night. Leonardo hadn’t shared any details with me, so I didn’t have any idea what was about to happen. It wasn’t really possible to blindside Tommy, though; he was as unflappable as a Zen master.

“It’s getting cooler,” Tommy said as he sipped his mojito.

I nodded my assent. At least an oversized blue-canvas umbrella was protecting us from the still-scorching sun. And we had a good view of Ocean Drive. South Beach isn’t the place for anyone with an inferiority complex about their age or physical appearance. Only the most self-assured can handle the sight of so many seminaked perfect bodies without contemplating suicide or self-mutilation. Tonight’s parade included the usual rollerbladers, young men and women, models and wannabe, all dressed in the most minimal of clothing and showing impossibly tanned and taut bodies with body-fat indexes that could be tallied with the fingers of one hand. And there were the designer pets, the exotic dogs and even a couple of birds. South Beach is nothing if not competitive, from the shape of one’s body, to the quality of drugs one consumes, to who can get past the velvet ropes at the VIP section of the trendiest clubs.

Tommy and I were into our second mojito when Manny Mendoza came outside. He was small and wiry, in his late twenties, dressed in black from head to toe. He seemed nervous when he came over and, in a discreet voice, asked if I had time to speak with him.

“Of course,” I said. “Please. Sit with us.”

I introduced Tommy and scooted over my chair so that Manny could sit between us, facing the water.

“Ms. Solano—” Manny began.

“Please, call me Lupe.”

Manny looked around anxiously, making sure no one was close enough to overhear. I wondered what could be so troubling to the manager of one of South Beach’s most successful restaurants. Could it be that supermodels were going to boycott over the fat content of the sushi? Or were the rock stars heading for another place down the road?

Manny lit up a cigarette and tilted his head toward me.

“Young gay men are dying on South Beach,” he said in a dramatic whisper. “It’s like an epidemic.”

Tommy and I looked at each other. Then Tommy voiced what we were both thinking — it was no secret that South Beach was predominantly gay. “AIDS?” he asked.

Manny shook his head slowly. “No, that’s pretty much under control these days. It’s not the death sentence that it used to be. No, I’m talking about GHB.”

GHB. I tried to remember what I knew about that particular drug. I thought it was something like Ecstasy and Special K — which gave users a euphoric high and heightened sexual energy.

“People don’t usually die from taking GHB,” I said.

“That’s right — usually.” Manny took a deep drag on his smoke. “If it’s taken correctly: on its own, and without any alcohol. But something’s happening. This stuff is killing people. I’m almost positive it’s because they’re drinking alcohol with it, but that doesn’t make sense. Everyone on South Beach knows not to combine drinks with GHB.”

“I haven’t heard anything about this,” I said.

“Me either,” Tommy concurred.

“I asked around,” Manny said. “The guys who died were drinking in the clubs. And their deaths seemed like bad GHB reactions. Word gets around, you know.”

“I see.”

“You wouldn’t have read about it in the paper or seen anything on TV,” Manny said. “But we’ve had six deaths over the last two Saturday nights.”

I blinked, and Tommy and I sat in stunned silence. Our food arrived just then, but neither of us started eating.

Manny perked up a little, seeming satisfied that we understood the seriousness of what brought us there. He crushed out his cigarette so hard that I thought he might break the glass ashtray on the table. Then he took out another one and lit up.

“The police are keeping quiet,” Manny said. “It’s really bad for tourism. Labor Day is just a couple of weeks away, and South Beach is booked solid then. Summer’s slow, and businesses here need all the money they can make in the fall. A lot of jobs are on the line, and no one wants to endanger that. Six drug-related deaths in two weekends would be a real party pooper, if you know what I mean.”

Manny looked at me expectantly. He had made his point. If people were scared to come to South Beach, then people like Manny would be out of their high-paying jobs.

“Me and a couple other restaurant managers have put some money aside to hire you,” he explained. “If you’ll take the case.”

Sure, why not? I was a straight Cuban woman from Coral Gables who was supposed to investigate the drug-related deaths of six gay men on South Beach. It made as much sense as anything did.

Two

Thinking about what Manny Mendoza had told me kept me from sleeping much that night. Around dawn I got tired of tossing and turning. I got up, showered and dressed, and put on my usual work outfit of jeans and a T-shirt.

The drive from my family’s home in Cocoplum — an enclave of the tony Coral Gables section of Miami — to my Coconut Grove office took only about fifteen minutes at that early hour. I drove on autopilot and thought about my conversation with Manny. It was going to be hard to investigate the deaths — whether they were accidental or, I had to consider, murders. The authorities were staying silent, so I’d have to be careful to keep a low profile. I hoped that Manny’s obvious fervent trust in me was justified. Leonardo had apparently portrayed me to him as the Cuban Sherlock Holmes, with dashes of Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot thrown into the mix.

I was so preoccupied by the case that I narrowly missed two bicyclists in brilliantly colored latex outfits pedaling north on Main Highway. I also came a little close to two rollerbladers, who cursed me and gave me the finger. So it was going to be that kind of morning.

Solano Investigations operated out of a three-bedroom cottage in the heart of the Grove, which Leonardo and I had converted into two offices and a gym. We’d been happily ensconced there for the past seven years. I slowed down and parked my Mercedes in its usual spot under the frangipani tree. Once inside, I went straight to the kitchen and brewed up an extra-strong café con leche, then headed for my office. I got out a fresh yellow legal pad.

After a while I heard the outer door to the reception area open, and I called out to my cousin.

“Leo, I need to talk to you,” I said. I heard Leo drop his keys on his desk and rummage in the kitchen for his own cup of coffee.

Close as we were, this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. I was dreading it, in fact, but it was necessary if I was going to get anywhere on the GHB case. Leo poked his head in my office door, took one look at my serious expression, and backed out again.

“Just a minute,” he said, going back to the kitchen. “I think I’d better make this café con leche a double.”

I had no problem with Leonardo fortifying himself with Cuban coffee before our conversation. I could have used another myself. Because in all the years we’d worked together, I’d never really asked Leo a direct question about his personal affairs. I was more than happy to listen whenever he wanted to talk, but I’d never initiated an inquiry into the specific details of his life.

I had my suspicions about his tastes and inclinations, but I never felt that I had the right to intrude. Now, because of Manny Mendoza and the deaths on the Beach, I was going to have to ask some probing questions.

“Hola, Lupe,” Leo said. He took his steaming mug of coffee to the couch across from my desk and sat down.

I tried not to wince, now that I had a good look at his outfit. Solano Investigations had a pretty loose policy about office attire, but Leonardo sometimes went overboard even by our standards. A couple of years ago, I’d been forced to implement an “eight-ounce” rule: anything he wore had to weigh more than half a pound. I had a postal scale out in the reception area if I ever needed to check.

This morning, Leonardo was pushing the envelope. He was wearing a fluorescent-pink tankini over fuchsia bicycle pants. The ensemble was grounded by orange high-tops. I resisted the impulse to put on my sunglasses to cut the glare.

Leo made himself comfortable, then looked at me with an expression of wary apprehension.

“So,” he asked slowly. “Qué pasa?”

“I went to see Manny Mendoza last night at Oceana,” I said. Leo nodded and blew on his coffee to cool it. “Do you know what he wanted to talk to me about?”

Leo looked out the window as though suddenly mesmerized by the family of parrots who lived in the avocado tree. “Sort of,” he said.

I was willing to bet that Leonardo knew more than he was allowing, but I played along and told him everything. Finally I got to the part where I needed his help.

“Leo, I’ve been a PI here for seven years,” I said, trying to find a way to get to the subject I needed to reach.

Leo nodded. “I know. I’ve been here the whole time.”

“Right.” I nodded too vigorously. “I’ve worked all kinds of cases, criminal and civil. And I’ve worked cases for gay clients, and cases that had gay components, but I’ve never—”

I stalled out. Leo’s eyes widened.

“I’ve never worked a case that dealt so centrally with the gay subculture in Miami.”

Leonardo’s body language changed completely; he had figured out where this conversation was heading. He sat up straight, very much the deer in the headlights. I felt like dashing over there and hugging him, but I told myself that we had to press on.

“If I’m going to help Manny, then I have to understand gay club life on South Beach,” I told my cousin. “I need someone I trust who has connections to the clubs to help me out, tell me things that I couldn’t possibly know about.”

I exhaled deeply. This was exhausting.

“Okay, Lupe, I know what you’re asking me — even though you’re not coming out and directly asking me.” Leo pursed his lips impatiently.

Well, I wanted to say, coming out was an interesting choice of words at that particular moment.

“You want me to be the person who tells you about gay life in Miami,” he concluded.

“That’s right, Leo. That’s what I’m asking you.” I was relieved the topic was on the table. Without going into details, I had finally found out that Leo was gay. I supposed that everyone in the family knew it, or suspected it, but we had all respected Leo’s privacy.

Leo seemed to realize that the worst was over, and that I wasn’t asking to delve into his personal life. Suddenly I realized that he and Manny might have had some sort of relationship.

“No problem.” Leo smiled, leaned back, and sipped his coffee. “What exactly do you need from me?”

“First, I need to know about the designer drugs that are being taken in the clubs,” I said. “I know a little about the drug scene, but not what’s going on in South Beach. Specifically GHB.”

I didn’t want to get into how I knew anything about drugs, and I wasn’t going to ask Leo how he might know about the drugs in the gay clubs. Our mutual don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy was stronger than ever.

“GHB is different from Ecstasy and Special K and Ruffies because it’s not a controlled substance,” Leo explained.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that means that anyone can manufacture it — not just trained scientists or chemists,” Leo said. “There’s even a website that tells you how to make GHB.”

“Like the sites that tell you how to make a nuclear bomb?” I shouldn’t have been at all surprised.

“Right,” Leo said. “GHB is taken in liquid form. It’s a clear liquid that people buy in little vials. Depending on how much you take, it can last as long as twenty-four hours — and it’s an upper, so that’s a day without sleep. And the sexual energy it gives is really awesome.”

Leo seemed to catch himself when he saw me looking at him. He took on a more serious expression. “Anyway—” he said.

“Manny said something about GHB being lethal in combination with alcohol.”

“That’s right, and that’s what I heard happened.” Leonardo shook his head, and I could see how deeply he felt the senseless loss of those six men. “They went into a G hole.”

“A G hole?” I repeated. Now I really felt out of the loop, having to ask questions like that.

Leonardo looked me over for a moment, as though trying to gauge just how naive and uninformed I really was.

“A G hole is when someone has a bad reaction to GHB.” Leo visibly shuddered. “I’ve seen it happen. Guys get seizures; they vomit. I heard about one guy who went into a G hole and aspirated on his own vomit. And other people are supposed to have choked on their own tongues. It’s really nasty.”

“What causes this G hole?” I wondered aloud. “I mean, GHB is sold in individual vials, so that’s probably pretty effective in keeping people from overdosing.”

“It had to be alcohol,” Leonardo said. “Everyone knows not to mix GHB with alcohol. It leads to a very bad trip and can kill you.”

“But why risk it?” I asked. “These guys took GHB; they knew they were going to get high. Why try to get drunk on top of it, if everyone knows this is the one rule not to break?”

“I’m not sure,” Leonardo admitted. “Maybe—”

As he spoke, my voice joined in: “—they didn’t know they’d taken GHB.”

I got up and started to pace, which always helped me think. Leo was sitting up very straight, watching me.

“What if they thought they were taking something else?” I asked.

“Remember Ruffies, Lupe?”

“That was the date-rape drug,” I said. “Guys were slipping them into girls’ drinks, or else telling them they were something a lot weaker.”

“It was awful,” Leo said. “Guys were prosecuted and sent to jail — and they deserved it.”

“What if something similar is going on here?” I stopped pacing when I reached the big picture window. “I’d love to see the autopsy reports on those guys, but I know that’s not going to happen. We’re not even supposed to know the deaths occurred in the first place.”

I walked over to my chair and slumped down heavily. Leonardo seemed lost in thought; I didn’t usually involve him so closely in my investigations, and he was giving the moment his undivided attention.

“And what if there were no autopsies conducted?” I said, thinking aloud. “If the authorities are bent on keeping this under wraps, it’s possible they kept autopsies from being performed.”

“You can’t search public records, like in other cases,” Leonardo said. “This is like a lot of other things in the gay world: underground.”

I paused and considered what he had said. He was right. This case was murky, hidden from public view.

And what was hidden was a killer. I was sure of it. If everyone knew that alcohol combined with GHB resulted in a lethal body chemistry, then those six young men didn’t know they were consuming GHB. Two and two made four. They had been tricked or manipulated into consuming a deadly cocktail.

I looked up at Leonardo. He had finished his coffee and gotten up from the sofa.

“You’re going to have to be creative on this one,” he said. Which was, of course, quite an understatement.

Three

“So how do you decide who to let in and who to keep out?” I asked the burly, balding man sitting across from me. I noticed he was sporting a couple of new tattoos since the last time I’d seen him.

I was drinking a double-latte-extra-espresso shot at Starbucks on Lincoln Road. Jimmy de la Vega was having a black coffee. Jimmy was a private investigator who’d become a security guard. I knew Jimmy well enough to confide in him, and I’d told him the bare outlines of my new case. It was no surprise that he’d already heard about the deaths.

Jimmy worked for me a few years back, on a contract basis, first as a moving-surveillance specialist and then as a bodyguard when one of my clients needed protection. Jimmy liked being a security guy, and in a couple of years he had set up his own business, which was now one of the most successful in South Florida. We kept in touch and referred clients to one another. If we weren’t friends, we stayed friendly.

I knew that the South Beach clubs had security guys stationed at the front door, where they checked IDs. According to Jimmy, there were guards inside as well.

“We don’t let anyone inside who looks drunk or stoned on drugs,” Jimmy said. “Or anyone who seems like they’re looking for trouble. People are there to have a good time. We’re in charge of making sure things don’t get weird or heavy.”

Jimmy was on the fast track in Miami, and his clients were trendy clubs and stars who needed someone to watch their backs. In spite of the company he was keeping, though, Jimmy was a serious, laid-back family man. Those characteristics were probably why he survived and prospered in such a tough business, while so many others had crashed and burned.

“And you should see the fake IDs,” Jimmy said with a chortle. “I have a stack of them back at my office. I mean, I’ve seen a little five-foot blond kid with hay sticking out of his ears hand me a green card saying his name is Pedro Flores and that he’s six foot one and lives in the Bronx!”

“Ridiculous,” I agreed.

Jimmy’s smile turned rueful. “Well, now there’s an outfit in Calle Ocho that’s selling green cards! Can you believe that? Green cards for IDs so that kids can party. No respect for anything!”

Jimmy was first-generation Cuban-American. For him, the United States could do no wrong. The idea that someone was selling coveted resident alien cards was abhorrent and borderline sacrilegious.

I liked Jimmy, but now I was remembering that his conversation tended to go off on tangents. I tried to gently steer him back to the subject at hand.

“What about the security in the clubs?” I reminded him.

“Right. Security.” Jimmy looked faintly embarrassed. “Well, the first step is at the door. If a person looks suspicious, then we pat him down for drugs.”

“What kind of drugs are they taking these days?” I asked.

“The usual club drugs,” Jimmy said with a shrug. “Ruffies, GHB, Ecstasy, Special K. There’s probably even some new ones I don’t know about. These bathtub chemists are always trying to come up with the next big thing.”

“What do you know about GHB?” I asked. I already knew that GHB — gamma hydroxybutyrate — was sometimes referred to as ‘liquid Ecstasy’ and sometimes mistaken for E in cases of overdoses. It’s broken down quickly in the body, which makes it very difficult to recognize through autopsy. And, as Manny and Leonardo had told me, it could be lethal when mixed with alcohol.

“It comes in little vials — like those perfume samples they give out at department stores,” Jimmy told me. “Most of the time they take it with cranberry juice. You probably know how nasty it can be when it reacts with alcohol.”

“That’s my theory for what’s going on,” I said. “And it doesn’t make sense that all six men would make the same stupid mistake in such a short period of time.”

“You’re saying someone slipped it to them?”

“Or else they thought they were taking something else.” I paused. “People can drink on Ecstasy, can’t they?”

“Yeah.” Jimmy rubbed his chin. “Are you saying you think there’s a killer working the clubs in South Beach?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Jimmy made a sour face. Part of his job was keeping the peace in the clubs, and I knew he would take this personally. “You let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” he said gravely. “And I mean anything.”

“Which clubs do you handle security for?” I asked.

“Almost all the ones on Washington Avenue.” Jimmy rattled off the names of ten clubs. I recognized some as exclusively gay, some as mixed. Among the clubs were the three where young men had died.

“Look, Lupe, to be honest with you, this is reflecting badly on me and my company,” Jimmy said.

“I understand.” I rubbed my eyes, trying to mine a new idea. “What about when you find drugs on someone, Jimmy?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Listen, this is between you and me. The club owners say there’s a zero-tolerance policy on drug use in the clubs, all right? Well, that’s bullshit. If they cracked down too hard on drugs, then people would stop coming to the clubs. A lot of the time when I find drugs on someone, I just tell them to be careful and stay out of trouble that night. Sometimes I confiscate the stuff, but then there’s a hassle turning it in to the police.”

I thought about this. “So what’s the point of patting them down?”

Jimmy looked at me as though I were a little child. “Appearances, Lupe. There are some city commissioners who want to shut down the clubs completely. They think the clubs bring the wrong element to Miami Beach.” He finished off his coffee.

“But South Beach is famous for the clubs,” I said. “Take away the clubs and you take away the top industry on the Beach.”

I hadn’t considered a political/economic angle to this case, but the possibility was too strong to ignore.

“You don’t know the whole story.” Jimmy looked around to make sure no one was listening, then moved closer to me. His voice had lowered to a whisper.

“What do you mean?”

“Whenever there’s an overdose or a bad reaction in one of the clubs, our orders are to take the person out back and dump him in the alley,” Jimmy told me. “In other words, get him out and get him away. And we’re supposed to search him, make sure he doesn’t have a matchbook or anything linking him to the club.”

“What then?” I asked. “Call an ambulance?”

Jimmy paused, seeming almost sad for an instant. “Police and ambulances get noticed. That brings publicity and investigations. Keep things quiet, and the clubs stay in business. If a guy takes too many drugs and dies, well, I guess it wasn’t his lucky day.”

Even though it was about a hundred degrees outside, I had to suppress a shiver. I couldn’t believe that it had come to this. And I didn’t like knowing that Jimmy was a part of it. “You don’t agree with this, do you?” I asked him. “Leaving guys in the alley like they’re sick dogs?”

Jimmy looked at me long and hard. ‘‘Lupe, someone did call the police about the six guys,” he said, very slowly. “And that guy isn’t surprised that nothing came of it. You know what I’m saying?”

With that, Jimmy got up, said goodbye, and left. I hadn’t learned enough to know how to proceed on this case, I realized. And Jimmy didn’t know what to tell me. If anything, he was more frustrated than me. It was shaping up to be that kind of case.

Four

After Jimmy left, I finished my latte and walked back to my car, which I had parked on 17th Street. I planned on returning to my office as I turned off the alarm and unlocked the door.

I began weighing the possibilities, and decided that I needed to talk again with Manny Mendoza. Instead of driving back to the Grove by way of Alton Road, I decided to take Washington Avenue, the street that’s home to most of the South Beach clubs. It had been awhile since I’d been there, and I wanted to get the lay of the land.

The three clubs were within four blocks of each other — definitely close enough for someone to cover the area on foot in a short period of time. I saw an empty space in front of the Miami Beach post office and parked the Mercedes there. From where I was parked, I could see most of the relevant stretch of Washington Avenue.

The blocks weren’t very long, and they were jammed with small storefronts — mostly an odd assortment of shops that sold cheap, glittery clothes, along with a few fast-food joints and delicatessens. The outfits in the windows of the clothes shops catered mostly to cross-dressers, from what I could tell. It wasn’t exactly a high-rent district. In the cold light of day, the neighborhood looked run-down and in need of a face-lift. By night, though, I knew it was a different story. The place would be pulsing with activity and energy.

The clubs’ entrances were marked with small, nondescript signs, looking as though they were almost an afterthought. I assumed this was intended to convey a cachet of exclusivity. If a visitor hadn’t known this was the place to find the clubs, they would have been easy to miss. At night it would be easy to find them; usually there were crowds outside on the sidewalks, hoping they would be among the chosen ones allowed entry into the hallowed ground.

I left my motor running to supply me with life-giving air-conditioning, and sat there for a good fifteen minutes trying to figure out why someone would murder six young men in such a nasty manner. No answers came to me, no matter how long I stared, so I grabbed my purse from the floor of the car — where I usually kept it to avoid tempting a smash-and-grab artist. I looked up Manny’s number at the Oceana from the case file and punched it in.

I was in luck. Despite the early hour, Manny answered on the second ring.

“Any luck?” he asked hopefully.

“We’ll see,” I said. “Look, I’m parked a couple of blocks away. Is it all right if I come by to talk to you?”

“Sure,” Manny said, a note of cautious curiosity in his voice.

I turned off the car, put some quarters in the meter, and crossed Washington Avenue headed toward Ocean Drive. Manny was waiting for me on the Oceana’s terrace. He was again dressed all in black, with a cigarette dangling from his lips and a fresh pack clutched in his hand. He was staring out at Ocean Drive and obviously waiting for me.

He called out my name when he saw me, then bounded down the half-dozen steps to street level to greet me. He kissed me on the cheek, surprising me a little, and escorted me back to the table where we’d talked with Tommy a couple of nights before. I declined Manny’s offer of a drink and got down to business.

“Manny, you told me these guys died from a combination of GHB and alcohol,” I said. “You’re sure about that?”

We were the only people on the terrace, but Manny leaned close to me and whispered, “Whatever I tell you is confidential?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Promise me?”

“I promise you.”

Manny put out his half-smoked cigarette and took a fresh one from the pack. As he lit it, I was willing to bet that smokes were one of the primary expenses in his budget. I didn’t want to even think about the condition of his lungs.

“I found out about the deaths from my boyfriend,” Manny said, his voice almost inaudible. “He’s the one who gave me all the inside information. He’s worried sick about what happened, and how it’s all been kept quiet. He’s really afraid of what’s going to happen this weekend.”

Manny took a long drag on his cigarette. “He’s been a mess since this happened,” he continued. “He can’t eat, can’t sleep.”

I knew this might be delicate ground, but I had to ask: “Manny, who is your boyfriend?”

He flinched back from me. He thought for a moment, wrestling with some unvoiced question.

“All right,” he said. “My boyfriend is an officer in the Miami Beach Police Department.”

That made sense. It explained how Manny had access to so much information that was being hidden from the public.

“I don’t need to know his name,” I said, eliciting a look of relief on Manny’s face. “But I need to know more details about the deaths.”

“Sure, ask away. But I don’t have all the answers.”

“What about the police investigation?” I asked. Manny nodded slowly; I could tell that he was worried about getting his lover in trouble. “Was there anything to tie the six victims together, any common links that might explain why they were killed?”

“No.” Manny smiled without pleasure. “You know, that was the first question I asked. But my boyfriend said that it seems to be random. Six guys over two weekends. Like a serial killer.”

Sounded right. But I had no proof of anything.

“So apart from the fact that they were all partying in gay clubs, there’s nothing to link them? You’re sure about that?”

“That’s what Jake told me.” A second after he realized what he had said, Manny gasped.

I pretended not to have heard anything. “Were there autopsies conducted?”

“Yes. The results were sealed, but my boyfriend found out that they had mixed GHB with alcohol.” Manny paused. “The victims’ families were told that their boys had died as a result of drug overdoses.” He lit a new cigarette off the burning end of the one he had just finished. “I guess the families didn’t ask too many questions. They were probably embarrassed their sons died in gay nightclubs, high on drugs.”

Through a cloud of smoke, Manny looked at me. “You know, Lupe, we may live in a free and easy place here, where anything goes and all kinds of lifestyles are accepted, but that’s not the way it is in the rest of the country.”

“And that’s why the guys come to South Beach,” I said.

Manny smiled, glad that I understood what he was telling me. “Because they can be themselves here. And not have to put up with any bullshit about who they are and how they lead their lives. A lot of these guys have families who don’t want to know anything about their sons’ lives — as long as they’re in the dark, they don’t have to confront the fact that their sons are gay. It’s an old story, everyone in denial. And that’s how the police got away with giving the families so few details about how these boys died. The families really didn’t want to know. And then the police can say that they didn’t disclose detailed information out of respect for the families.”

I considered what Manny was saying. Keeping the deaths quiet served more than one purpose. The families didn’t have to confront too much information about their sons’ lifestyles, and the police didn’t have to admit that they weren’t solving a case that involved the serial murders of six young gay men.

“Is the investigation still ongoing?” I asked. If it was, I had to be very careful. There were strict rules for private investigators in such cases.

“Nothing much is happening right now,” Manny said. “The police are hoping that there are no more deaths and that the whole thing just goes away. Starting a high-profile investigation right now would kill tourism. It would be nothing but bad publicity. There might be a few ghouls — like those tourists who have their pictures taken on the spot where Gianni Versace was murdered — but most people would be scared off.”

I knew what Manny was talking about. On more than one occasion I had seen tourists milling around the wrought-iron gates outside the Versace home, trying to get close to the cordoned-off area where the designer had been shot and killed in broad daylight. It was gruesome.

Manny shook his head with a touch of disgust. “The police figure there’ll always be deaths from bad drugs on South Beach and that this situation is really no different. They’re playing the whole thing down.”

“But your boyfriend doesn’t agree,” I said. “And that’s why he thought of the idea of hiring a private investigator.”

Manny nodded. “You got it.”

“And you knew about me through Leonardo,” I said, almost adding the word relationship but stopping short.

“Leonardo always bragged about what a great detective you were, Lupe,” Manny smiled. “He said that if anyone was going to find out what happened to those six guys, it was going to be you.”

I felt myself blushing at the compliment. I was a little surprised to hear that Leonardo had spoken so highly of me to his friend.

A few customers were starting to arrive; they were looking around expectantly for a maître d’ to show them to a table. It was clear that things were going to get busy soon, so I stood up to leave.

Before I did, though, I had one question for Manny: “If it had been six straight men who had been killed, does your boyfriend think the police would have handled the situation differently?”

Manny’s silence told me everything I needed to know.

Five

After I left Manny, I decided to check out the alleys behind the clubs, which run parallel between Collins Drive and Washington Avenue, so I could have a look at where Jimmy had told me the bodies of the young men were dragged out and left.

Each club was about half a block wide and occupied the space from Washington Avenue to the alley directly behind it. I began walking the alley behind the Neptune, the most northern club. The back door was unmarked steel secured by three prominent dead bolts. There were no markers to indicate where the door led. There were trash cans outside the back door and there was no one in the alley at that time of early afternoon, unless I wanted to count the mangy cats who were pawing through the garbage.

The smell in the alley was almost overwhelming and grew stronger the longer I stood there. It smelled like rotten fruit, animal waste, vomit, and other fluids that I didn’t much want to contemplate. The heat was baking it all to the point at which I felt like gagging.

Looking around, I was filled with sadness for those six young men who had been unceremoniously dumped back there like so much refuse. And if what Manny had told me was true, nothing much was being done to investigate the deaths. If I had access to active police sources, I might have had leads to follow and facts to pursue, but for now I had little more than instinct.

The alley behind the Neptune was yielding no secrets, so I moved on to the next one. The Zenith was also in the middle of its block, with a dumpster next to the back door. It smelled a little better back there — a little. The Zenith’s back door was also protected by big dead bolts, along with a sign next to the doorknob warning that the area was protected by twenty-four-hour surveillance. I looked around for a camera but didn’t find one, not even a phony one to frighten away amateur thieves. As far as I could tell, the sign was nothing more than a bluff.

The third club, the Majestic, was on a street corner a block away from the Zenith. Unlike the other two clubs, its back door opened onto a side street. That meant, in order to dump a body, someone would have to carry it around the corner in full view of passersby. That wouldn’t be easy, with the door in plain sight. I knew that South Beach was crawling with police on a Saturday night. They were out in force, setting up roadblocks and stopping drivers who might be impaired. Washington Avenue was typically well patrolled, with cops busting underage drinkers and arresting anyone who got drunk and disorderly.

South Beach came alive after dark. Most clubs didn’t even open until eleven at night and closed around five in the morning. And then the after-hours places opened, from five to eight o’clock, sometimes even until ten. So whoever carried the bodies out of the Majestic would have had little opportunity to wait for the crowds on the street to thin out.

I decided to drive back to the office without making any more detours. I had something that I wanted to look into.

Back at Solano Investigations, I went straight to my office and turned on the computer at my desk. Leonardo had left for the day, probably heading home before going clubbing that night. I waited for my computer to boot up and banished from my thoughts what he might be wearing for such an evening.

I was pretty much computer illiterate, but I was able to find a few drug-related websites. I struck out on the first two, but the last one confirmed my suspicions about GHB.

I was almost sure the guys who died didn’t know they were taking GHB. The last website I visited said that it was possible to boil down GHB to a point at which it cooled, became a powder, and then resembled Special K — which could be taken with alcohol without any deadly consequences. What if someone substituted GHB for the victims’ powdered Special K without their knowing about it, or sold them GHB while saying it was Special K?

And how could that be done? However it happened, the killer had gotten away with it. The question was: would the killer be satisfied with taking six lives, or would there be more to come?

I sat and stared at the parrots outside my window. If they knew the answer, they sure weren’t saying. I was going to have to come up with an individual who would have the opportunity to commit the murders. And in the clubs in South Beach, that might be anyone. I knew that when someone went clubbing on South Beach, the pattern was often to start off at one club and visit two or three others before the night was finished. So the killer — who committed his crimes at three different clubs over the course of two Saturdays — wouldn’t have been unusual in moving about from place to place in a relatively short period of time.

I figured I could dismiss club owners as suspects — from what I knew, they tended not to go to clubs other than the ones they owned, and they would have been spotted if they visited the competition. Besides, it didn’t make sense that one of them would knock off his or her own customers.

Another possibility would be people who worked at the clubs, maybe a disgruntled employee. But that would be self-destructive. If the clubs were eventually closed as a result of the deaths, then they would be out of work. Plus, why run the risk of going to other clubs to commit the crime? It didn’t fit.

Then there were the city commissioners who wanted the clubs shut down on moral grounds. They weren’t likely suspects, since they were older and ostensibly straight and would stand out in the clubs. And from the sound of it, they wouldn’t be caught dead in such dens of sin.

I looked down at my notes. There was only one place left for me to go. I picked up the phone to call Leonardo. I hoped he would be free that night. I needed an escort for my night of clubbing.

Six

Leonardo and I agreed to go clubbing together in one car; he was going to pick me up at home at midnight. I didn’t want him to ring the doorbell and wake everyone up, so I was waiting by the window when he arrived. When he got out of his car, I was pleasantly surprised to see him dressed in conservative clothes — matching black polyester body-hugging pants and shirt, and boots that John Travolta might have sported in Saturday Night Fever. I was also in black satin jeans and a sheer Lurex T-shirt. We headed off for South Beach together, looking as if we were headed for a seventies funeral.

Traffic was relatively light at that hour, and we got there in about thirty minutes. Fate blessed us, and we found a parking spot on Collins Avenue, just a couple of blocks from Washington. Instead of going into the first club — Neptune — I took Leonardo’s arm and stopped us across the street, in the shadows, where we could watch the entrance.

“What are we looking for?” Leo asked me, staring across the street in a visibly anxious attempt to look calm and relaxed.

“Anything,” I said. “We’re just watching.”

I took my miniature binoculars out of my purse and focused on the Neptune. The first thing I noticed was the fact that, by night, Washington Avenue looked a lot more glamorous and sophisticated than it did by day.

There were about thirty men outside the Neptune, most dressed in blue jeans and white “wife-beater” T-shirts. Two red-velvet ropes cordoned off the in-crowd from the wannabes. I knew the first set of ropes was for normal customers, out-of-towners and the like. Even though the club might be empty inside, those poor souls would be made to wait outside for half an hour anyway. The second rope was for VIP clients, who were let in immediately and without a cover charge.

“That’s the door-god,” Leo said. “The big black guy in the yellow jacket.”

Non-VIP patrons were subject to the whims of the door-god, a big guy with a shaved head who decided who was let in and who had to wait. Next to him were a few men in dark suits — not particularly nice ones — who were checking IDs. I refocused my binoculars when I saw another man move out of the shadows. It was Jimmy de la Vega.

“Jimmy’s here,” I said in a low voice. “I sure found him quick.”

Jimmy had been dressed pretty conservatively earlier that day at Starbucks, but now he was wearing a tailored Italian-cut black suit that made him look like chief undertaker at a Mafia funeral home. I watched him pat down a couple of customers after they had been given the nod to pass through the velvet rope. Jimmy took them aside by the door, as their final obstacle before they could enter the hallowed halls of the club.

I knew Jimmy’s pat-down was for drugs and weapons, although I knew from what he told me that the clubs’ drug policies were basically to wink and look the other way. Leonardo leaned back against the wall and sighed. I knew this wasn’t his idea of an exciting start to our evening.

I watched Jimmy pat down a couple of young guys. Something seemed strange to me. I couldn’t be sure, so I handed over the binoculars to Leonardo.

“Watch Jimmy, over there by the door,” I told him.

Leo focused the binoculars. “Oh, yeah. I remember him. Jimmy de la Vega.” He paused for a second. “Um, he really seems to be getting into his job.”

“You see what I’m seeing?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” Leo said. “But when he patted those guys down, it looked almost like he was feeling them up.”

I watched Jimmy perform the next pat-down. His hands were all over a young guy in a black T-shirt and jeans. I didn’t know, but there seemed something inappropriate about it. Jimmy was a family man, though, married to his high school sweetheart. I figured I was just overreacting. I saw Jimmy’s hands reach deep into the guy’s front shirt pocket and pause for a second. Jimmy said something to him, then clapped him on the shoulder and waved him in.

None of the other security men or the door-god seemed to notice what Jimmy was doing, but then, none of them were paying attention to much of anything outside their direct line of responsibility. I watched the next pat-down. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I saw the young man Jimmy was touching react with a flinch of surprise.

“Let’s go inside,” I said to Leo.

“Finally,” my cousin replied.

Leonardo and I darted across Washington Avenue, and approached the club. Jimmy spotted us and waved us over to the VIP rope.

“Lupe!” he said in a welcoming voice. “You should have called ahead, like you said you would.”

I recalled saying nothing of the kind, but I smiled at him anyway. “Hey, Jimmy,” I said, “You remember Leo?”

Jimmy gave Leo a nod and an awkward smile. Leo blinked in the bright light outside the club, taking Jimmy in.

“We wanted to check out the clubs,” I said to Jimmy. “It’s been awhile since I’ve been out in South Beach.”

Jimmy took two tickets from a stack the door-god was holding in his hand. He handed them both to me. “Have a good time,” he said. “So how are things going on the matter we talked about this morning?”

“Nothing major,” I said. “That’s why I’m having a look around.”

Jimmy nodded. We were holding up the line. Jimmy held up his hand in the call-me gesture and waved us in. He began searching the next patron in line.

We reached a window in a tiny vestibule, where our tickets were exchanged for drink vouchers. I saw that, had we not been comped by Jimmy, the charge for coming in would have been twenty dollars each. And that didn’t include drinks.

As soon as we stepped inside, the music was too loud to talk over. It was a sort of tribal rock, part electronic, instrumental with no lyrics. It was so dark in the entryway that Leonardo and I had to grope our way upstairs while our eyes were adjusting.

We hadn’t even reached the main room yet when my head began to pound to the same beat as the music. I didn’t think I was going to last long at the Neptune. If possible, it was even darker upstairs in the main room. I saw clusters of light in the dark as my eyes struggled to focus. The only lights in the place came from strategically placed high hats on the ceiling.

“God’d get the day!” Leo yelled at me, his mouth close to my ear. The music was far too loud to know what he was saying.

“What?” I yelled back.

“Gunner diss a drake!” he screamed.

“What?”

Then I got it: he was offering to get us some drinks. I gave him the thumbs-up. Leo left me standing against the wall, watching the scene in front of me. The main room was cavernous, filled with young men mostly in their twenties and thirties. Some wore T-shirts, others were bare-chested. Most wore jeans. All looked amazingly toned and physically fit. I noticed that a few had drinks in their hands, although far more common was the sight of water bottles tucked into the jeans’ back pockets.

I was the only woman in the whole place, as far as I could tell, but no one looked at me strangely or made me feel unwelcome. I was pretty much ignored, in fact, which was fine with me.

Just about all the men in the room were dancing — some alone, some with partners. The place was freezing cold from air-conditioning, but they were all sweating copiously. I hadn’t seen any bullets or vials, but I saw on many faces the spaced-out, blissed-out expression of someone on drugs. Those looks — not to mention the excessive sweating and the water bottles — were pretty broad clues to indicate what was going on.

I watched these young, attractive men, swaying to the tribal beat of the music, and couldn’t help but wonder what the future held for them, what would follow after the allure of the clubbing lifestyle wore off. But then I told myself that I was sounding like an old lady.

Leo returned with our drinks: a Manhattan for him and a red wine for me. Both were served in identical plastic cups. I felt as though I were at a frat party. We crossed the room and found a smaller room off the main dance floor, where mercifully there was an empty table by the north wall. Once we were seated, I had a look around at the tables nearest us. Although I spotted some makeup and cleavage, I was still pretty sure that I was the only biological female in the place.

There were three bars in the Neptune. Each one was three deep with young men waiting to buy drinks — bottles of water, it turned out, were as popular as alcoholic beverages.

Because these young men knew better than to mix booze with GHB. They dissolved it in juice to get high. The guys who were drinking hadn’t had any GHB.

At least, they’d better hope they hadn’t.

We had been there less than fifteen minutes, but I had seen what I needed.

“What do you think?” Leo yelled at me, straining his vocal cords.

“We can skip the next two clubs, Leo,” I told him. “I just realized something. I think I have an idea what happened.”

“So what’d you think about the Neptune?” Jimmy asked me. He had come to Solano Investigations in the early afternoon the next day, as I’d requested. “You really should have told me you were coming. I could have arranged the real VIP treatment for you and Leo.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “We had a nice time.”

Jimmy was back to his regular casual mode of dress, in dark pants and a white, open-necked polo shirt stitched on the shoulder with de la Vega Security. Unlike me, he looked none the worse for the late hours he was keeping. One night on the Beach, and I was ready for a week off.

I escorted Jimmy from the reception area toward my office. Leonardo was at his desk, looking over a report before sending it out with a bill. He didn’t glance up from his work, nor did he offer to make coffee for the first time in my memory. Once inside my office, I motioned toward the chair in front of my desk.

“You want to close the door?” Jimmy said.

“No, I keep no secrets from my cousin.”

Jimmy peered over his shoulder, then back at me. His chair was arranged perfectly so that he couldn’t look out the open doorway without turning in his seat. I gave him an are you comfortable? look, then hit him with it.

“So, Jimmy, tell me something. Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?” he said, his eyes widening. “What are you talking about?”

I waited a long moment; we stared into each other’s eyes, each waiting for the other to break.

“All I want to know is why,” I said.

Jimmy looked at me as though I were a lunatic. For an instant, one tiny moment, I doubted myself. But no, it all fit together too well.

“When you patted down customers at the door searching for drugs, you substituted their bullets of Special K with GHB that you had boiled down into a powder,” I told him.

“You’re crazy,” Jimmy said.

But I saw a look in his eyes — a look that told me I was right.

“You had access to GHB — you confiscated it from a few clubgoers,” I told him. “And as door security, no one was going to say much if you were rummaging around in their pockets long enough to switch vials. They’re carrying an illegal substance, and they’re not in a position to complain.”

Jimmy shook his head. “I don’t have to listen to—”

“You worked security at a few clubs that night, right?” I said. “You had plenty of opportunity to make your mark at three different places.”

Jimmy’s lip curled into a sneer, but he didn’t get up and leave. I knew that he wasn’t going to, either.

“You found six guys who had already been drinking,” I said. “You got close enough to smell their breath when you were patting them down. Even if they didn’t continue drinking that night, the amount of alcohol in their system would make sure they went into a G hole when they took the GHB.”

“Maybe you’re the one who’s been taking junk,” Jimmy said, trying to laugh. “It’s made you lose your mind.”

“As security chief, you had full access to the clubs at any time. No one would suspect you had anything to do with the deaths,” I said. “You took them out into the alley and no one suspected a thing. Even at the Majestic — where you had to take a body out in view of people — your clout and position on the Beach probably made people think you were just taking a drunk guy to a taxicab. And then, like you said, you went through the guys’ pockets to take away anything that might link them to the clubs. How perfect was that?”

“I guess I’m a real criminal mastermind,” Jimmy said sarcastically.

“And, to top it all off, you were the one who called for help,” I went on. “And you certainly wanted me to think you were cooperating with my investigation.”

Jimmy put his hands on the chair arms, as though to leave. “Why would I do something like that, Lupe? Why?”

I walked to the side of my desk and perched on the edge. “Jimmy, I know you. Something’s wrong. I saw you the other night patting down those guys. Leonardo saw it too. And after he saw you at the club he said you were setting off his ‘gaydar.’”

Jimmy sputtered. “He said what?”

“You’re in the middle of all this, Jimmy,” I said. “And you’re giving off signals. Why’d you do it, Jimmy? Please, tell me.”

Jimmy amazed me just then by getting up and closing the door. Before he could turn around to face me again, I pressed the open intercom button on my speakerphone.

“Can I really talk to you?” Jimmy asked me. I could see that he had started sweating, and there was a haunted look in his eyes.

“It’s just us here,” I said. “I want to know how you thought of it, and why. I just want my curiosity satisfied. You know as well as I do that I don’t have any fingerprints or witnesses.”

Jimmy looked out the window at the parrots, who were squawking and fighting. I could see the wheels spinning. My heart was beating so hard that I was afraid Jimmy would hear it and not speak.

“You’re right, Lupe,” he finally said. “I did it. Does that make you happy?”

“No, Jimmy,” I said. “It really doesn’t.”

“It’s a goddamned mess,” he said. “And when I found out you were investigating it, I got worried. I didn’t know how to handle you, and I was worried it might come to this.”

“Why, Jimmy?” I whispered.

“Is my secret safe with you?” Jimmy said, his voice suddenly hoarse.

I nodded.

“I want those clubs closed down. I wanted to do something to get the clubs shut down and out of my life.”

“But they employ you, Jimmy,” I pointed out.

“That’s just it,” he said. “Don’t you see? I have to be there at those damned clubs all the time.”

“So?”

Jimmy hung his head down. He was standing in the middle of my office, his arms limp at his sides. I glanced over and saw that the office intercom channel was still open.

“I was beginning to like it too much.” Jimmy raised his hands to his eyes and stifled a sob. “All those young, half-naked kids. Sweating and dancing all around me. I was inside those clubs too much, seeing too much. I don’t need the temptation, Lupe. I have a family.”

I was speechless. Before last night, I would never have considered Jimmy capable of any crime, much less murder. But after talking to Leo about Jimmy’s “vibe,” as my cousin called it, I began to realize that my old friend Jimmy was in the throes of a sexual conflict.

“What would people say if they found out I liked the boys on the Beach, Lupe?” Jimmy said, his voice breaking.

“I don’t know, Jimmy. I guess they’d say you were gay. Or bi. Or somewhere in between.”

“Don’t say that,” Jimmy hissed. He took a step toward me but stopped, his face constricted with self-loathing.

“There were better ways to eliminate temptation,” I said to him. “There are plenty of other places you could work.”

“Thought of that. Doesn’t matter,” Jimmy said. “As long as the clubs are there, I’m going to want to be there. The only way out for me is to shut down the clubs. And I found a way to make that happen.”

Nowhere in Jimmy’s worldview was a thought of remorse for his six victims. I was beginning to see that Jimmy was one sick puppy.

“But the cops were keeping it all quiet,” I offered.

“I know. I hadn’t counted on that happening,” Jimmy said with genuine amazement. “Still, sooner or later word’s going to get out. Right?”

Jimmy was still in his moment, still thinking he had options. I was chilled to realize that he was contemplating committing more murders.

“Gotta get rid of those clubs,” Jimmy said. He looked at me strangely. “Are you with me or against me, Lupe?”

At that, I whistled sharply. Jimmy started when the door burst open and a man with a gun shouted at him to hit the floor. It was Miami Homicide Detective Anderson, whom I’d worked with once or twice before.

“Get it on tape?” I asked him.

“No problem,” Anderson replied. “That intercom worked perfectly.”

Leonardo poked his head around the corner with a look of mixed alarm and satisfaction. The South Beach killer was caught. All the evidence against Jimmy was circumstantial, but the taped confession wouldn’t hurt matters.

“You lied to me! Puta!” Jimmy shouted in disbelief as he sank to the floor, his fingers instinctively interlacing behind his head. “You said it was just you and me!”

“You need help, Jimmy,” I said.

“That’s an understatement,” Leo called from the doorway.

Detective Anderson started reading Jimmy his Miranda rights. Jimmy’s worst fear was about to be realized. Everyone in Miami was going to find out that Jimmy de la Vega, husband of Maria and father of three, had killed six young men because he was tempted by their youth and beauty.

With Detective Anderson on the case, every detail of Jimmy’s crimes was going to become public knowledge very quickly. Jimmy had just been outed. In a big way.

Opa-Locka

(Originally published in 2006)

The Sister

The sister has the moon in her hair and the wind at her feet.

The brother has the wind at his heels. He wants to be a football star when he grows tall.

She wants to run fast and catch medals of gold, but she has the moon in her hair. She is fair. All men stare. She has the moon in her hair.

He has the wind at his heels. He has thunder and lightning in his hands. He hits hard. He steals fast. He runs fast.

His sister. She has the moon in her hair.

His little sister.

They live in the house in Opa-Locka their mother does not own, the house of the man with the snake in his eyes. In the summer, when there is no school, and the mother goes to work, the man with the snake in his eyes locks himself in the room with the sister with the moon in her hair because she is fair.

And the brother?

He hits. He hits hard. He hits fences and cars with baseball bats. He hits walls with clenched fists. He hits classmates, hits teachers, and screams at his mother, who will not listen. He wants to be a superhero when he grows taller than the man who owns the house. He is tall now, for fourteen. He wants to be Batman.

His friend says, “I want to be Superman.”

The brother says, “I still want to be Batman.”

His friend says, “Sometimes I want to be Batman too. Sometimes I want to be Superman, but no one can be so perfect. I mean, he’s got no real weaknesses.”

“Kryptonite,” the brother points out.

“But there’s no such thing.”

“Magic. Magic can kill Superman,” the brother of the moon child suggests.

“There’s no such thing as magic,” the friend says. Then he asks, “What’s in the bag?” as he observes the bag the brother has brought to the roof.

Up on the roof, they lie staring up into earth’s yellow sun. They pass the joint back and forth. They take sips from the pint of Mad Dog 20/20. They are getting fucked up, which is what they like to do on sunny summer days when there is no school to skip. They are getting so fucked up.

“Magic is real,” the brother contends. “I went to a magic show to see a woman get sawed in half. She waved at us while she was in half, and she moved her toes. Magic like that can kill Superman.”

“I don’t think so. Before he could even get close to him with that saw, Superman would zap the magician with his X-ray vision eyes. Plus, it’s fake. It’s a trick.”

“I saw magic in church. A man was sick in a wheelchair. The preacher laid hands on him and he jumped up out the wheelchair.”

“Man, that’s not magic. That’s Jesus. Pass me that Mad Dog again, homeboy. Jesus ain’t going to waste His time fighting no comic book hero,” the friend says, trading the joint for the sweet bottle of wine they swiped from the Cuban man’s store.

The friend is stouter than the brother, but with a leaner, more handsome face. The brother has a leaner body, but with musculature that is better defined, and he is taller by at least an inch. Six of one, half a dozen of another — they are both big boys. They are only in junior high, but they will grow up to be football stars, or criminals, or maybe even superheroes.

It all depends.

The friend gulps a good one from the bottle he has been handed and says again, “What’s in the bag?”

The brother of the moon child says, “Too bad he won’t fight him, though. ’Cause Jesus the only one be able to kick Superman’s ass—” taking a hit off that joint after each syllable, his eyes glinting with malice, the demon smile curling his lips.

It’s the bag. It’s a plain brown paper bag, the kind they put groceries in. It has to be about the bag, thinks the friend.

“I want to know what’s in the bag, homeboy.”

“I bet you do, homes.”

“Don’t make me have to kick your ass off this roof, homeboy.”

“I am Batman, homes.”

“It’s a long way to the ground, and Batman can’t fly.”

Something crazy in his head, something evil in his eyes, the brother says, “Wanna see something better than what’s in the bag?”

The friend shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Gonna see some real magic now.”

“Yeah.”

They are both nodding their heads, laughing and slurring “yeah” drunkenly, but only the brother knows what about.

They smoke the last of the joint. They drain the MD 20/20. They climb down and catch the wind at their heels and they run.

They are big boys. They are fourteen and still growing. They are fast. They are running fast. They are Batman and Superman. Batman and Plastic Man. Batman and the Flash. Batman and Little fucking Lulu. The friend is so fucked up, the fucked-up friend can’t remember who he is — but the brother is always Batman. The Dark Knight.

The Bag

When they get to the brother’s house, the brother is coaching the friend shhhh, don’t say nothing, climb more quiet, shhhh, look inside the window, look inside, what you see?

The friend on the ladder looks inside the window, but not for long. He climbs down the ladder more quietly than he went up.

The brother says, “What you see?”

The friend kneels at the foot of the ladder and vomits. The friend is no superhero.

When the friend lifts his head again, there is a chunk of vomit on his chin and a little in his throat that he chokes on when he says, “I saw your dad on top of your little sister.”

Then bowing, the friend vomits on the backyard lawn again. When he looks up this time, the brother is pulling the handgun from the brown paper bag. It is a nine millimeter, the kind street thugs use.

“Oh no,” the friend says. He feels light-headed. He feels like he wants to puke again, but there is nothing left inside.

“He ain’t my dad. He ain’t her dad neither,” the brother with the gun in his fist says.

The friend pleads, “Just tell your mom—”

“Slapped my mouth. Called me a liar. Told me stop making trouble where there ain’t no trouble. She don’t wanna believe.”

“Maybe your sister likes it.”

Thumb under, four fingers above — gangster style — the brother touches the friend’s face with the cold steel barrel of the gun.

“Want me shoot you too, homes? She’s only twelve.”

The big gun is weightless in the brother’s hand. He knows how to handle the gun. The brother reaches for the knob on the back door of the house. The friend raises a hand to stop him from going through that back door with that gun.

“Wait!”

The friend still feels like puking. There is something in him that would like to see the brother shoot the stepdad. There is something in him that longs to see the bad guy dead. It is the dream of every boy who wants to be a superhero.

Blam. Good riddance, bad guy. You got what you deserved. But there is the superhero’s code. No killing. Even bad guys. And this bad guy is a stepdad. And a cop. He’s the one gets them out of all the trouble they get into. He’s the one taught them to fish and throw a football and drive a car and smoke cigarettes. The best porn in the whole wide world, he gave them. So this thing here the friend saw through the window with the naked stepdad on the naked twelve-year-old girl, well this is bad, this is real bad, but no matter how fucked up they are, you just can’t go around shooting your role models.

“Wait.” The friend is on his feet now, hand on the brother’s arm, stopping him from going through the back door with that gun.

“Wait,” he says to the brother, prying the gun from his hand, dropping it carefully back in the bag. “Listen to me, homeboy. Here is what we do.”

The friend has a plan.

The Children

The plan worked like this.

They did it like superheroes. They did it with masks. What they needed was handcuffs and a Magic Marker.

And iron and wood to beat him with.

They also needed two more guys because the friend said the brother couldn’t be in on it. The stepdad might recognize him even with the mask. So they got two more guys, two more big guys. A boy from another school who smoked weed with them from time to time and who was down for anything. And the big scary white guy with the hunch on his back who smoked weed with them from time to time and who was strong as a motherfuck.

What they did was, they put on their masks, they snuck in there real quiet, and they bum-rushed him while he was watching All My Children. The scary hunchback guy grabbed him while the friend and the big boy from the other school slapped the handcuffs on. The friend pushed the gun against his teeth and told him to shut up, keep still, quit moving around so much, while the big guy and the hunchback guy ripped the shirt off his back and dragged off his pants.

It was a shock to them and kind of embarrassing because he wasn’t wearing any drawers, and the condom was still on. They didn’t know what to do after that. They kind of backed off after that, when it hit them what he really was. They were just kids after all.

The big kid from the other school was the oldest at fifteen, and he freaked and ran out of the house and never came back.

If the stepdad were not cuffed he might have gotten away, they were all so freaked out. He sat naked on the couch with the condom on his dick and his hands cuffed behind him and a police officer’s shield tattooed over his heart in black.

“You boys better just go home.”

The boy with the hunch on his back didn’t know what to do, so he looked to the friend.

The friend was shaking. He still had the gun in his hand, but he was hiding it behind his leg now. He didn’t know what to do either.

“Uncuff me and go home. I’ll forget about this,” the stepdad told them. “Where’s the damned key?”

The boy with the hunch on his back had a two-by-two maple wood scantling in his hand that he had brought to beat the stepdad with. The hard piece of wood was just trembling in his hand. There was the steel pipe lying on the ground that the big coward from the other school had left when he ran out. The friend had the key to the cuffs in his pocket, but he was so scared he was about ready to run out of the house too.

Then the brother came into the room.

He brought the sister in with him.

He wanted her to see it go down.

Holding his hand, she didn’t seem scared at all.

She had the moon in her hair. She was so fair.

The hunchback guy fell in love with her and was ashamed he lacked the courage for vengeance. The friend saw her innocence and swore always to defend a beauty so fair.

The brother picked up the steel pipe the big coward from the other school had left behind. He swung it above his head.

“Let’s get this party started!”

They beat him until he rolled off the couch. They beat him until All My Children went off. Then they beat him some more.

When it came time to write, the brother wouldn’t let anyone else hold the Magic Marker. He wrote all over the stepdad’s naked body. PERVERT STOP RAPING MY SISTER LEAVE HER ALONE!

Then they all went over to the friend’s house and raided his mom’s refrigerator.

The boys and the hunchback guy ate all the pudding and chips and Kool-Aid while the sister quietly supped a small cup of vanilla ice cream. They watched for a long time to see if she would say something about it, or maybe cry, but she just kept holding her brother’s hand like he was her hero. She kept looking up at him and smiling.

Then everybody went home.

The Roof

When the friend finally sees the brother again, he has two black eyes.

It has been a whole month since the friend has seen him.

He has to get the ladder out of the shed so the brother can climb up on the roof with him. The brother can’t just do a pull-up to the low roof like before because his arm is in a cast.

The friend passes him the Mad Dog and whistles through his teeth. “What he do to you, homeboy?”

The brother swallows slowly from the pint. “You better watch your back, homes. He might come after you.”

“Me?”

“Watch out for cops too,” the brother says. “He called them and they came over and got him out of the cuffs while we were at your house. Washed off all the Magic Marker stuff I wrote. They’re probably out to get you too. Thump you up a little bit so you won’t tell on him. But maybe you’re all right. Maybe you shouldn’t worry about it too much. They had most of their fun with me already. I took one for the team.”

With his good hand, the brother digs the joint out of the pocket of his jeans and passes it to the friend, who pushes it between his lips and lights it.

“Nothing happened for a couple days,” the brother explains. “Then I was at the Cuban man’s store and two of them showed up, told the Cuban man they had caught me shoplifting, go check the camera. What camera? You know the Cuban man ain’t got no camera in that store much as we swipe stuff off him.”

The friend inhales the sweet essence from the joint. His cheeks puff, and he coughs it out, fanning. “Yeah. I know.”

“I didn’t argue. I figured I was dead anyway. They beat me up and threw me in the trunk. I could hear them talking loud about the scary stuff they was gonna do to me. I was in there for like two hours with my heart pumping out my chest. But I focused on what we had did and that got me through. Then they brought me home and told my mom I had shoplifted and gotten hurt trying to run, but because of who my stepdad is they took care of it and got me off with no charges.”

The friend ponders something he does not share with the brother. There are things you don’t share even with your best friend. Things you have to keep to yourself. Things that make you sound crazy. Not crazy in a hard-core I ain’t scared, I’ll do anything dangerous kind of way. But crazy like in a real smart way.

Behind all these walls in all these houses. How many snakes in how many eyes? The baddest crime you’ve committed in all of your fourteen years is not as bad as this. The baddest crime you shall ever commit is not as bad. Six of one. Half a dozen of another. You shall grow up to be a preacher, or a criminal, or maybe even a superhero. It all depends.

The friend pinches the lit joint between two fingers but he does not smoke it. His breath smells like Mad Dog 20/20 when he says, “What about your sister?”

The brother shakes his head. “He don’t mess with my sister no more.”

“Yeah!”

“He better not. He know I’ll kill him next time.”

“Yeah, man.”

They high-five, and the brother signals for the joint, which the friend passes to him.

He emphasizes each phrase with a hit off the joint. “I am fast as the wind. I got lightning in my hands. I got thunder in my hands. I am a superhero. I will kill you if you mess with those I love.”

“Yeah, man,” the friend says.

The friend stretches out on the roof and stares up into the earth’s yellow sun. The sun is so beautiful, better than Krypton’s red sun any old day.