Miami Noir

Swap out by Preston Allen

Miami-Dade Correctional Center

How’d the phone call go?

She ain’t much of a wife no more. Tha’s for sure.

You’re inna joint. Whaddaya expect?

I’m inna joint one day. Less than one day.

One day, one hundred days, it’s all the same ta them out there.

It ain’t like I’m in prison.

It’s all the same ta them out there. Out there is Miami. Here is here.

It ain’t like I’m even guilty.

What you ain’t is, you ain’t out there. Tha’s all that matters ta them.

We been married eighteen years. I was her firs.

Her firs what?

Firs, ya know, firs lover.

Oh. A virgin. Tha’s nice. I didn know they made them anymore.

I doubt she even hadda boyfriend before me.

Well, aleast tha’s what she told ya.

Whaddaya talking about? She was pure.

I’m not gonna argue with ya. You say she wuzz pure, then she’s pure in my book. All I’m sayin is ya never really know with women.

Well I know, I can tellya that. My Merly was pure.

Merly. Tha’s a nice name. Kinda like my wife’s name. Kerly.

Your wife’s name is Kerly?

My wife’s name wuzz Kerly. She’s dead now.

I’m sorry.

Yeah, me too. She wuzz a beaut. She woulda been a old lady now, but she wuzz the greatest gal in the world.

Wuzz she pure when ya married her?

Ya want me ta smack ya?

Want me ta smack ya back?

The trustee said, Ya got in a cheap shot this mornin, don’t forget that. Had I been looking, I woulda nailed ya.

You wuzz sayin about Kerly.

Greatest gal in the world. It’s becausa her that I’m inna joint these las fifteen, what, sixteen yearsa my life. They gave me life for it, but I got good behavior and extenuating circumstances, believe it or not, and they knocked a bunch of em off. So I got only six more ta do if I keep my nose clean and help out the guards, and I’m doin em here in the county instead of up at state where I was for ten, what, eleven of em. Up at state wuzz tough, I’m not kiddin ya. You don’t wanna go there.

Nah. I don’t wanna go there. Kerly. Some coincident. Ya killt her, huh?

Nah. I killt the guy what killt her.

Hoo. Hoo. Tough.

You don’t know tough. He wuzz my best friend.

Hoo. Tough. What happened?

See, there wuzz these two beautiful girls we met at the fair.

Hoo! The fair. How corny can ya get? Hoo!

It wuzz the fair. Tha’s where we met em. Kerly and her sista Pearly.

Hoo! Hoo! Go on, finish it. Hoo!

I’m tryin hard not ta smack you.

Hoo! Hoo! Go on, finish it before my lawyer gets here. I wanna hear this. Hoo! Kerly. Pearly. Hoo!

Then shut up and listen. We met em at the fair, me and my best friend Jasper. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh.

Jasper. Hoo! Hoo!

For me and Pearly it wuzz love at first sight. She wuzz the most beautiful girl I had ever met. We started a talk, and we hit it off, we had so much in common.

Pearly? But didn’t ya say—?

Yeah. Pearly. And Jasper, well he kinda got stuck with Kerly, who was cute in her own way, but nothing like her sister. Pearly had the long legs, blond hair, bluest eyes, perky breasts. The whole package. The other one, Kerly, she wuzz short, first of all, and her eyes wuzz dark, her eyebrows kinda thick, and she had more of a, how do you say, boyish body. Okay, she wuzz flat-chested. But still, she was pretty, and it seemed to me she wuzz a nice match for Jasper, who was not the tallest guy in the world and what with this nose that was kinda like a chopped-off carrot and these permanently red cheeks like they paint on a doll. Me, I wuzz the jock. Played baseball. I wuzz in good shape back then. Girls said I wuzz a hunk, though I didn pay it no mind, you know how it is. So there we wuzz at the fair, don’t laugh, and I’m thinkin I’ve jus met the woman I’m gonna spend the rest of my life with, and Jasper comes over to me and he whispers to me, It ain’t working, man. This girl I got is a dud. She’s not my type. Let’s swap. I want the tall one. And I sezz to him, I sezz, I kinda like the tall one. I’m not swappin. But I wuzz the jock, and his old man owned the bank, and my old man worked for his old man, so you know how it is.

Nah. I don’t know how it is.

Well, I’m kinda shamed ta say it. He paid me twenny bucks ta swap out with him.

Twenny bucks?

That wuzz a lot. It usually cost him five to swap out with me. See, the best girl always went for me, and then he’d have to pay ta get her. It’s terrible, I know, but tha’s how it wuzz. I dunno whether he wuzz usin me or I wuzz usin him, but tha’s how it wuzz. So anyway, it took some working on em, but finally we made the girls agree to the swap, and I got stuck with Kerly, the short dark one, who I had wanted all along.

You sly dog!

What can I say, I like girls who are dark and boyish-looking. The blond, voluptuous thing is way overrated. Plus, now I had twenny bucks and I could show her a good time. What a night we had. I fell in love with her on the spot and aksed her to marry me that night. God I loved that girl. God I loved her. And it worked out for Jasper and Pearly too. Pearly kinda fell in love with his money, and with him too I guess. A few weeks after Kerly and me got hitched, Pearly and Jasper did the same thing. It was great. I wuzz his best man. He wuzz mine. I nevah made it big as a baseball player, but the scholarship money got me and Kerly through school, and then we came back to town and worked at the bank, which Jasper was in charge of because his dad had retired to play golf and chase young girls, you know how it is. We wuzz married like ten years before the trouble started, but it had been brewing so long I feel stupid I didn notice. Me and Kerly, well, she got pregnant seems like ever’year. We ended up with four kids. Three girls anna boy. They’s all grown up and got they own kids now. I love ever’one of em. Jasper and Pearly? Well, she was like the Holy Bible says, barren. She couldn have babies. Now that I’ve been inna joint so long and so many cons have told me they stories, I realize that most crimes is committed because of either ya hate someone too much or ya love someone too much.

So, because this fella Jasper couldn have babies, he killt your wife? Sounds ta me like he’s crazy.

Well, crazy is the other reason people commit crimes. People commit crimes because they hate too much, they love too much, or because they crazy. But Jasper was not crazy. See, at one point he called me into his office and aksed if he could sleep with Kerly—

Hoo! Welcome to the crazy nut house.

Well, tha’s what I thought too, but there wuzz a method to his madness. See, this wuzz like ten years into our marriages, and the trouble had been brewing but I wuzz jus beginnin to notice. He was my boss, so I was careful how I answered him, but he wuzz also my best friend and my brother-in-law, so I figured I could have a little bit of slack with him. I aksed him if he wuzz outta his mind wantin a sleep with my wife. What the fuck, right? He explained that lots of people did it. Especially when they wuzz friends, and practically family, like we wuzz. Plus, he said, that I would get to sleep with Pearly. A swap out like inna old days. But jus for sex — no lovey dovey allowed. This is how he explained it.

Is that when you killt him?

Nah. That came later. I said to him, I sezz, Come on, Jasper, wha’s the real deal here? Level with me. Jasper said, It’s like this, you must know by now that Pearly can’t have babies. I’m sure Kerly told you. Women talk and they’re sisters, so I know that you know. There’s no point in lying about it. What I want is for you to lay offa Kerly’s sweet, fertile puss for a while and let me take a stab at it. She’ll get pregnant, and you guys’ll arrange for me and Pearly to adopt the baby. I wuzz stunned. Stunned. I wanted a smack him, but I wuzz jus stunned. I said, No! He said, Think about it. I said, Hell no. We ain’t kids no more. This ain’t no swap out. He said, Think about it. Think about all that I do for you. Think about Pearly’s puss, which I know you do. You gotta wonder what it woulda been like ta be with the pretty one. I’m a fair guy, I’m giving you a crack at the pretty one. This way it’ll be good for both of us. I said, No! He said, The girls have already talked about it and Kerly agrees. I said, No! And when I get home I’m gonna talk with Kerly and straighten her out on this here thing, talkin about this kinda crap behind my back. There’s a goddamned sanctity in marriage, and this goes way beyond it. She oughtta know betta. He said, I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you lots of money. I said, Hell no! And then I smacked him. Twice.

Hoo. Hoo. Did he fire you? I bet he fired you.

I quit. And me and Kerly sold our house and moved upstate to another bank, where we got jobs. After a while, things calmed down between us. I mean, we had been best friends. I mean, he hadda know that what he had aksed me was too offensive for even friends. To sleep with my wife? To get my wife pregnant? And the way he had said it, Lay offa that sweet, fertile puss. Who wuzz he to be getting so familiar with the goings on between a husband anna wife? There’s a sanctity to marriage. He hadda know that I had good reason to be upset. To be outraged. But eventually we started a talk again, sorta like the old days. Of course, it would never really be like the old days again. Then three years later he and Pearly adopted a set of twins, a boy anna girl, and aksed us to be godparents. Fool that I am, I thought all wuzz forgive and forgot. So when Kerly got sick... and she needed that kidney, and her sister offered, offered she did, to give hers, I didn think nothin of it. Kerly and Pearly had a unique blood condition. The doctor said there wuzz only one in a hundred million could donate a kidney to Kerly. With odds like that, how lucky she was that her sister was making the offer. And then the offer wuzz withdrawn. We got word that Pearly’s doctor had detected a condition she had, a form a arthritis that attacked kidneys. In other words, the odds were pretty good that in a few years one of her kidneys would become sick and she would be dependent on the remaining one. In other words, it wuzz against the law for someone who is at risk for a future kidney disease to give up one of her kidneys that she may come to need later. So Pearly did not give up her kidney. Kerly got onna waiting lis for the one-in-a-hundred-million donor. Kerly died waiting on that kidney to come.

Hoo. Hoo. Sad.

Yeah. We had the funeral. Jasper came up to me and hugged me like a best friend should. And Pearly came up afterward and said, I shoulda give her that kidney. I shoulda give it. She wuzz my sister. I shouldna listened to Jasper. Jasper? I said. What does he got to do with this? She said, Don’t tell him I told ya, but he loved me so much, he forbid me to give the kidney. He wuzz afraid somethin would happen to me on the operating table. He wuzz too afraid to lose me. Jasper? But nah. I had that letter from the doctor. I ran home and got out the letter Pearly’s doctor had sent us. I read it and I reread it. When you know someone, you know someone. There wuzz one line in it that went somethin like the kidney being a fertile ground for disease. I kept lookin at that word fertile and I knew what Jasper had done and why...

Hoo. Hoo. You awright?

Nah. I’m not awright.

What he done to you wuzz wrong.

Maybe I wuzz wrong. Maybe I shoulda let him sleep with her. He wuzz my friend and he wanted kids and couldn have em. Maybe because I loved her so much my mind was closed on this point.

Hoo. Hoo.

So I aksed him to go fishing a month later. Jus me and him, like inna old days. I took him down to the Keys. It wuzz night. I pulled into a dark spot along the road where I’d left a marker pointin out the place where I had dug his grave. I took out the gun and stuck it in his ribs and I took outta flashlight and showed him his grave. He started a cry. Said he wuzz sorry. Real sorry. Said he’d pay me a lot a money if I didn kill him. I told him ta get outta the van. He said, No. I shot him in the shoulda and told him ta get outta the van or I’d shoot him like that a little piece ata time. He wuzz howlin and howlin, he didn like pain, tha’s why he had nevah played sports, but he didn get outta the van neither. I shot him again in the other shoulda this time. He howled and finally got outta the van. He wuzz beggin me and pleadin as I pointed him to the hole with the flashlight and the gun. He said, You know you’re not gonna get away with this. Too much blood in the van. They’ll check the van. You can never get all the blood out. You gotta know that. I said, I don’t expect ta get away with it. I figure Pearly will send the cops afta me when I get back and you ain’t with me. But they ain’t nevah gonna find your body. I want you gone forever like Kerly’s gone forever. He pleaded one more time. Got down on his knees. Said he’d give me a blowjob if I promise to let him live. I shot him in the face, and he tumbled into the hole. I shot him again to make sure he wuzz dead. He wuzz my best friend. I didn want him to suffer. It took me like a hour to cover up the hole. Then I got back inna van and drove to the hotel room we had rented in the Keys and lived there for a week.

And then?

Then I went home. The police came. There wuzz court, and I told em what I had done and why. Then I got life in prison, but now I’m here cause of my good behavior.

Hoo. Hoo. Tough.

Shit yeah. Tough.

Wuzz it worth it?

Shit yeah. I’d kill him again if he rose from the dead.

Hoo. Hoo.

The noir boudoir by Lynne Barrett

Upper Eastside

On a warm Tuesday morning in late October, the tail end of the hurricane season, I sit in my car outside the Delphi and pretend I’m on stakeout: a honed tedium. Eight years retired, but you never stop being a cop. I sip coffee and look at the grand old apartment building, long ago converted to condos, recently rehabbed. The pressure-cleaned Sphinxes at the entrance cast sharp Sphinxy shadows, and fresh green awnings ripple up the front in the eastern ocean light as they must have in the Delphi’s heyday. I think of all the stories the place could tell.

At least it’s survived. On the next block I can see some foundation work and the signage for a new tower touting luxury living: Buy your piece of sky. The boom has reached this area north of downtown Miami. Deco buildings less cared for than the Delphi get condemned, knocked down, and replaced by glass towers that can’t emulate their cool lines and glamour.

I’m parked behind Alex Sterling’s white SUV, which was here when I arrived. Alex is young, gay, smart, a North Carolina boy with excellent manners and a work ethic. In three years he has built up quite a business: Sterling Estate Clearance. Old people die alone here in Miami and their children, living far away, often estranged or resentful, come in to take what they want, and then Alex appraises, bids for, and disposes of the rest. With his respectful tone and open face, his name that rings true, they trust him. As do I, as much as I trust anyone.

Right now, I know, he is inside going through the late Mrs. Dorsett’s pockets. Alex deals in fine china and what we call “smalls”: jewelry, silver, personal doodads which he sells at high-end shows around the southeast. He tells me that he learned the hard way that people hide their smalls, so now he combs through a place before we see it: He’s found mine-cut diamonds in a denture case and a Rolex under the insole of a running shoe. To the finder go the spoils.

Which might be the motto for our team. When Alex has identified what he’ll take, he brings us in for our specialities — depending on what the estate offers — and we give him a price for what we want.

Hank Kussrow & Son, Jeff, double-park beside me in their furniture truck. Jeff Kussrow is the one with the knowledge about furniture, his dad the muscle. Hank’s up in his seventies but still a big guy with thick gray hair. I’ve seen many a sideboard go downstairs on his back. He had a moving business, but his son was more into refinishing than lugging, Hank says, and persuaded him that’s where the money is. We get out and make idle conversation about the weather and what Alex has told us so far: The estate is small but choice.

I hear from a block away a chug and backfire. “The old guy,” says Hank, with a grin. The old guy’s van comes into view with his little white dog barking out the passenger window. Others of us may be variously old, but none as decrepit as him. Alex calls him Cash, which may be his name or the way he operates. He helps Alex, and then at the end Alex lets him take all the dreck. He sells the least likely things — rusty tools, old pots and pans, broken cameras — at the flea market in Fort Lauderdale, passing them on to other old guys like himself. He gets out, leaving the van running; it can take him a good six or seven tries to restart it.

In his usual faded tropical shirt and disreputable shorts, longish white hair under a baseball cap, feet sockless in sneakers, he comes over just as Guillermo Reyes pulls up in his peach-colored panel truck inscribed, The Gizmo Man. Guillermo fixes clocks and radios and toasters. His shop on the beach sells a lot of mid-century kitchen stuff, from jelly glasses to Streamline Moderne blenders. Guillermo is a year or two older than me, in good shape, small, bald, and dapper. “Nice place,” he says, as he joins us.

“We did a condo here last month,” says Hank.

I say, “I wasn’t called for that one.” Guillermo shakes his head — him neither.

“Mostly crap,” says Jeff. “The family took everything. All that was left was the bedroom set.”

“Alex said it was good to get us in with the building,” says the old guy, his voice frayed and shy. “And look, already they’ve called us for another.”

Sharon Lawler parks across the street. She waves, but doesn’t get out. Sharon, as we all know, runs hot and must blast her air-conditioning. She drives a wagon like mine but with purple-tinted windows to prevent fading of the vintage clothes she sells on eBay.

These are my fellow members of the species Magpie. We are smalltime antique dealers, which is to say we are collectors who sell to support our habit. We glean old things and send some on their journey up in price, which lets us make a buck and keep the treasures we cannot bear to part with. We’d be mere hoarders if we didn’t sell.

Me? I’m Ray Strout. Old, but not that old: sixty-three, retired cop, good pension, bad arteries, but I keep going. I’m into paper ephemera. Books, magazines, letters, photos, bills, matchbooks — anything like that interests me. There’s history in paper. The card for a boxing match, a punched train ticket, the menu of a dinner in honor of a later-indicted honcho — these fascinate me. I take apart vintage magazines for the ads, back them with cardboard, wrap them in plastic, and sell them on Lincoln Road on Sundays in the season. One old House Beautiful from the ’40s can yield two dozen sales at ten to fifteen bucks each.

Alex comes out and waves and hops in with the Kussrows, who drive around the left side of the building, past the bougainvillea-draped stucco wall that hides the service entrance. We parade behind. Back here the balconies look out on Biscayne Bay. I gaze up at the building: twelve stories of curves and niches to break up the wind and survive a hurricane. When the glass towers collapse, the Delphi will weather on.

The truck backs up against the loading dock, while the rest of us park in its shade. I get out one of the old suitcases I use for hauling off my finds. My stuff, thank God, is light. The old guy leaves the dog in the van with the windows rolled down. From the back he takes out the first of many much-used liquor-store cartons in which he’ll pack up smalls for Alex.

There’s not enough room in the freight elevator for all of us at once, so Alex takes me, Guillermo, and Sharon up first. Guillermo has his satchel full of flannel sheets — he likes to swaddle his gizmos lovingly. Sharon — her hair tinted the color of Cherry Coke and her chest draped with lots of amber beads — carries her capacious purse. Most clothes she’ll take right on their hangers.

Alex sends the freight elevator back down, and we follow him along the eighth floor hallway which smells of last night’s dinners — you’ll never catch me living in a condo — to Mrs. Dorsett’s place. Alex unlocks the door and we’re in 8-G.

“Nice,” says the Gizmo Man. He’s looking at the Grundig Majestic stereo hi-fi/radio in its Moderne cabinet.

But I echo, “Nice.” The living room is ’50s Louis Quinze, with pale blue sofa and chairs grouped around a coffee table. Alex shows us an elaborate silver lighter/cigarette dispenser: You lift the top and cigarettes rise like petals of a flower. Alex has marked it and the crystal ashtray with his red stickies: He’s into tobacciana. Sheers cover the French doors to the balcony so the bay is just a pale blue suggestion out beyond there. There’s a small kitchen to our left off the living room and, opening from both it and the living room, a dining area where the hutch flutters with Alex’s stickers. To the right there’s a hall, down which Alex leads us. He opens the bedroom door with a flourish.

Light slants through actual Venetian blinds, striping the pure Deco circle of the mirrored dressing table. The slipper chair. The ivory satin-padded curving headboard of the bed. Sherry breathes, “My God, the noir boudoir,” and so it is.

“Great, isn’t it?” says Alex.

The Kussrows come in behind him with the old guy peeking between their shoulders.

“A veritable time capsule,” says Alex. “Listen, there’s a lot in here for Sherry and Ray. You folks,” he says to the Kussrows, “do the big pieces in the living room first. Cash, I need you to pack up all the stuff from the hutch and then Hank and Jeff can get the dining room set. We’ll get the furniture from in here last.”

Sharon dives into the closet while I move around, scanning for what I’ll take. Books fill the lower shelves of both bedside tables. In a nook between bedroom and bath there’s a lady’s bill-paying desk. I glance at a picture on top of it in an etched Lucite frame. Alex hasn’t marked it, so maybe the frame doesn’t interest him, but I’ll have to check. Lucite has value these days. I can always use frames and I like the picture. I assume it’s the dead lady in her youth: white skin, full lips, beautiful curve of nostril and brow, the eyes pale under curved eyelashes. She’s a babe. Her hair lifts from a side part and cascades. She’s vaguely familiar, like a minor movie star.

I get a queen-sized sheet from the linen closet and spread it out to protect the bedspread; the satin looks glamorous with the matching pillowcases propped against the headboard. I open my suitcase on top of the sheet and lay the picture down next to it. I check the bedside table drawers. Spot a great little notepad holder, embossed leather. Mechanical pencil. Several matchboxes from restaurants. A double set of playing cards for bridge, shagreen boxed. I’m making a mental tally of what I’ll offer Alex. I put things in my case but it stays open for his inspection. I toss a hankie over to the other side of the bed, for Sharon’s pile.

Guillermo comes in to get the bedside clock radio: ’60s tortoise plastic.

“Hubba hubba,” he says, looking at the picture. “Nice frame too.”

Sharon comes out of the closet with an armful of suits and asks, “That her?” and looks and says, “Oh.” She lays the suits down on her side of the bed. “Alex,” she calls, “what did you say her name was?”

“Dorsett,” he says, coming in. “Helena Dorsett.”

“The lovely Helena Dorsett,” says Sharon. “What do you know. I didn’t see an obit.”

I ask, “Was she an actress?”

“Femme fatale,” says Sharon, enjoying the effect. I notice that the others have come to the door to see what’s going on.

“Well, tell us,” Alex says.

“She was a singer, for a while, I believe,” says Sharon, “but then she married. Twice. It was when the second husband got killed that she became notorious.”

“Both husbands?” I ask.

Sharon nods. “I was in the ninth grade, so it was 1962. They lived in the Gables. They were society people. Dorsett — husband number two — was trampled to death by a horse he owned, in the stables at Hialeah. And then it came out that her first was run down when he was crossing Collins, a few years before.”

“A theme,” I say. “Death by transportation.” They nod at me. They know I was a cop up north. Mine was a small dying New Jersey city, troubled, but not a patch on what Miami has to offer.

“Well, the first was just an accident, as far as I recall. But in the second husband’s case, they found he had been murdered. Not by her. She was nowhere near the stables.”

“Stable boy?” says Guillermo. “Jockey?”

“Another horse owner?” I say.

“No,” she says. “The vet.”

“Aah,” I say. “Did something to the horse?”

“It had to do with drugging the horse, yes. This was so long ago, I’m surprised I remember it at all. I know I read a lot of stories about her in the newspaper. They as good as implied that she caused it or it was done because of her.”

“Was she tried?” I ask.

“No. But she was smeared in all the papers. You know how it is when there’s a good-looking woman. It has to be her fault, right?”

Guillermo and I look at each other and laugh.

“You guys,” Sharon says.

“What about the vet?” I say.

“That was one reason there was so much coverage of the trial — everyone was waiting for him to implicate her, but he maintained it was an accident. I remember lots of reporting about her crowd, her house in the Gables, and then they went back into her past, because I saw this same picture and I think it’s from when she was younger and singing.”

“Well, everyone,” says Alex, “however much this adds to the price of anything, we still need to pack up.” Which is his polite way of getting us back to work. The others back out, and Guillermo takes the clock radio and goes.

I point at the picture. “You want it?” I ask Alex casually, meaning may I have it. I keep my tone cool, because if I express desire he’ll think it’s worth something and keep it.

Alex hesitates, but then says, “Hey, it’s yours.”

I wrap a towel from the linen closet around the picture and put it in my case.

Sharon says, “Her clothes, I’ll tell you, are first rate. All these St. John suits cost something, and they’re well cared for.” She lays more on her side of the bed. I cart my case over by the desk and seat myself to go through it. With her story in mind, I take a little extra care. She’s kept things tidy, and, as Sharon says, she liked quality. The desktop blotter holder is pale blue leather and a matching stationery case holds Crane’s paper for notes and thank-yous. In the top drawer I find various business cards, but no address book. I’m always careful not to take financial info the estate might need, but I don’t see any of it. In a folder labeled Auto there are expired insurance cards for a series of midsize sedans, and a prior driver’s license from the ’80s, but not the current one, if she was still driving. Helena Dorsett, d.o.b. April 17, 1928. A handsome older lady with gray hair — you can see the bone structure from the early portrait — and then my mind makes a shift and I recognize her. “Hey,” I say, surprised. “I met her.”

“Where?” calls Sharon. I hear her opening dresser drawers, her beads clicking. I lean back in the desk chair and I can see her bending over the bottom drawer. Her hair has fallen around her face and I try to picture what she looked like in ninth grade: a kid with a flip. In 1962 I was in the navy and skinny as a rail.

“On Lincoln Road a few times on Sunday mornings. She’d be well dressed, as you say, in a suit. And pleasant. She bought some crossword puzzle books I had, and then she’d ask for them each time she saw me. Said she liked to do them before she went to sleep. A well-preserved old lady, I’d have said. A femme fatale? You never know.”

“Look at this,” Sharon says. “Longline elegance.” She holds up a beige foundation garment — bra to girdle, all in one.

I look away. This business is disgusting sometimes. We settle back to work. Sharon takes a load down and returns, complaining about how hot it’s getting, and Alex kicks up the air-conditioning for her. I lug my first case down and bring back a stronger one to take the books. I poke my head in the kitchen where the old guy is wrapping the barware, and I ask him to save me any cookbooks. He points to a stack. I grab a Joy of Cooking, Esquire Book of Cocktails, a few recipe brochures put out by companies. One, Chafing Dish Cookery, is ’60s, I’d say, from the illustrations. People collect these, believe it or not.

The sofa is gone and the Kussrows are carting out the dining room table, murmuring to each other as they always do, “Left, a little left. More. Now, right, now.” Guillermo is taking albums out of the stereo cabinet and fitting them into vintage carrying cases he has for them. “Put some tunes on,” I suggest. He pulls out a middle-period Sinatra, and Frank fills the apartment with regret.

Alex sits on the remaining upholstered chair, boxing up ashtrays he’s collected from around the apartment, most of them Wedgwood, and the cigarette lighter/dispenser. “Let me have a few smokes,” I say, and he dumps them beside me. He likes tobacciana, not tobacco. I put them in a sterling case I carry. This is not an affectation, it’s a deterrent; it helps to have to open it and consciously take one out. I’ve got myself down to three cigarettes a day. I can maintain like that forever, but if I try to quit, I’ll swing back with a binge. Better this way.

“There were no other pictures?” I say. Again, casually.

“There were some family photos, but the daughter took those. Not sure why she left that one.”

“She had a daughter?” I don’t know why I’m surprised. A lot of femmes fatales have daughters. Marlene Dietrich did, for instance.

“She came down from Connecticut and handled things. She had dealt with all the business papers before she called me. All clean and organized.”

“Did she die here?” I ask quietly.

He nods.

“How?”

“She didn’t come down one morning to get her paper, so the manager checked. He says he’s always alert to any changes in pattern, with so many older people here. She died sometime the day before — she was dressed but she’d lain down to rest, maybe felt ill. Anyway, peaceful.”

His fair face is flushed. Alex, whose business depends on death, doesn’t like it mentioned. I take my suitcase to the bedroom. Sharon has folded up the coverlet and stripped the pillowcases off the pillows and is stowing them into one of the trash bags she uses for loose linens. The headboard — padded satin — leans against the wall with the bed pulled away from it. When the Kussrows lift off the mattress, we can see, through the box spring, a pair of highheeled pumps. She took them off and died, I think, but I don’t say it.

Sharon adds them to her sack of footwear. “Nearly all the shoes were in shoe bags, dustless, perfect,” she says. “Everything just so.”

I squat down to pull the books out of the bedside tables, since they’ll want to take those soon. I load them into the suitcase. They are mostly current hardcovers, only one or two vintage.

Hank comes back in and edges the vanity out from the wall. “Comes apart,” he says. “Piece of cake.”

Sharon says she’ll have it empty shortly. He stands there for a minute, adjusting his weightlifting belt, then says, “Wife died three years ago.”

Sharon looks up at him.

He tugs his iron-gray forelock. “Got my own hair and” — he clacks — “all my teeth. How’d you like to go to dinner sometime? I’ll buy you a steak.”

Sharon says, “Oh, I don’t think so, Hank.”

“No harm in asking,” he says, and goes out with the bed frame.

There’s a pause. I say: “What is he? Seventy-five?”

Sharon says, “In Miami, once a woman is over fifty, she’s supposed to go out with eighty-year-olds. It’s a tough market.”

I shake my head, but it’s true. She is — in ninth grade in 1962 — I figure, fifty-seven. I’m sixty-three and I never looked at her that way. But I haven’t been looking at anyone much of late except pretty gals forever young on paper. Last week I was smitten with an actress from the ’20s and then I realized she would be 105 if she weren’t already dead.

“My ex-husband has a thirty-eight-year-old girlfriend,” she says.

“Does he have all his teeth and hair, though?”

She laughs. “No.”

Mainly to change the subject, I say, “You know, what you said before, that would be a good name for a business: The Noir Boudoir That stuff is big on Lincoln Road, things from that period: satin nightgowns and marabou slippers and dresser sets.”

She says, “I do handle some old cosmetics and compacts and so on, which you can’t get so much for on-line. People need to touch them to buy.”

“Cast some glamour on them and you can get more. Anyway, it’s a memorable name.”

“You want it?” she says casually.

“No,” I answer. “Not at all. Your idea.” Punctilious as always, we go back to work.

When I’m done I stop by Alex in the living room, now cleared of furniture other than his chair. I tell him what I think my haul is worth to me and write him a check. He doesn’t dicker; he knows I know he’s seen everything I have. I cart my stuff out and then come back up to do a trip for Sharon, carrying down some garment bags and hat boxes to her car. When I leave, the old guy is filling a carton with partially used cleaning products from under the sink, and Hank and Jeff are moving the dressing table base, murmuring to each other. I ride down after them. It’s hot outside, well up in the eighties. I take a moment to check on the dog, but he looks fine. There’s a bowl of water on the floor of the passenger side in the shade. He’s got short white hair, a barrel chest, and thin bare legs. I put him down for some sad mix of terrier and Chihuahua.

Somewhere, the newspapers that reported on the death of William Dorsett may be intact. Everything is still on paper somewhere, that’s my theory. But not where it’s supposed to be, at the library or the newspaper’s own morgue. Microfilm and scanning keep the text but not the context. The juxtapositions of facing pages, the ads, the color process, the smell of the paper itself, are gone, and with them a lot of the meaning. Still, I put in some time at the library on Wednesday, getting a headache from the smell of the microfiche baking as I read what I can find.

In February 1962, William Dorsett’s horse, Panama Sailor, had been ailing, putting in poor times at practice. On a Saturday at Hialeah Park, Dorsett went to the stables to check whether he’d have to scratch him from a race that afternoon. Or, at least, so he’d said to several people in the clubhouse, where he left the missus in full view of many.

In the stables, running to where they heard sounds of distress, a pair of stable boys found him, bleeding from his stomped-on head and chest, the horse over him, the vet there trying to calm the animal. The vet said he had been treating the horse at Dorsett’s behest, and when the owner came into the stall, it had gone loco. The horse’s right foreleg was badly smashed, and they had to put him down.

Between editions the cops must have sweated the vet, Dr. Lucas M. Pryor, because soon he told a different story.

On Dorsett’s orders he’d been doping the horse. Panama Sailor’s “ailment” was just one more ploy to help the odds. The horse was fit and then some. He was supposed to “recover” and win — but the scheme backfired on Dorsett. This was a crime, but the death itself, Pryor insisted, was accidental.

There it sat till the trial. In the interim the newspapers dug into Mrs. D.’s first husband, also a William, this one called Billy Hogarth. The Hogarths were down for the winter in 1953, from Pittsburgh. Dorsett was from Ligonier, horse country, not right next door to Pittsburgh but both in western Pennsylvania. So Mr. and Mrs. Billy Hogarth could have known Dorsett, but that was unconfirmed. On March 2, 1953, Billy Hogarth, having had some cocktails, was walking back to his hotel, crossing Collins Avenue mid-block, when he was struck and killed by a 1950 Studebaker belonging to one Roy Robineau. Robineau got out after he hit Hogarth and readily admitted he was drunk. Being drunk was its own excuse then, not a crime the way it is today. The 1950 Studebaker had the distinctive “bullet nose” front end which hit Billy Hogarth just right — or just wrong. Young Mrs. Hogarth was having her hair done at the hotel salon, in honor of a party they were going to that night.

By the trial’s opening, reporters had gotten Helena’s original name, Helen Immerton. A songbird from Kentucky — some implication of trashiness about Kentucky can be picked up even on microfiche — right across from Cincinnati. She’d sung with a band in Cinci and on live Ohio radio in the ’40s under the name Helena Mar, or possibly Marr — it was printed both ways in different editions. She married Billy Hogarth in 1948 and had a daughter, and all was well till Billy Hogarth intersected with Robineau’s front end. Dorsett married the pretty widow in 1954. She was twenty-six. Thirty-four in 1962 when she was tragically — the papers invariably appended “tragically”—widowed again. Nothing much was said about the daughter. She’d been away at school. Age twelve, but the rich ship them off young, and she was a stepdaughter. One columnist mentioned Roy Robineau not being locatable, rumored to have moved out west.

Between the lines, I imagine how hard the cops worked to find a connection between Dr. Pryor the vet and the lovely Helena Dorsett, whose photos from various social do’s were reproduced: jaunty in sports clothes and shapely, but never vulgarly so, in evening wear. There were frequent references to their house on Leucadendra Drive, which clearly meant something about class and money. Dorsett looked handsome and strong-jawed, like an ad for aristocracy, and Dr. P. had the heavy glasses of the period and a crew cut, and that’s about all you could tell about them from the microfiche. Everyone looked middle-aged in 1962.

The vet never implicated her. She testified that she had no idea of anything untoward in Mr. Dorsett’s horse breeding and racing “hobby.” But some dirt on her husband came out, a complaint the defense had found about a misrepresented horse he sold someone in Ligonier and a settlement, which tended to support the doctor’s story, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been a falling out between them. So Dr. P. got second degree murder. He went away to state prison for fifteen to twenty years — maybe a lot for second degree, but they’d loaded on some other charges about tampering and prescriptions. Took away his vet’s license, of course.

And Helen(a), née Immerton, a.k.a., Mar(r), Hogarth Dorsett, twice widowed, presumably sold the house on Leucadendra Drive, and moved, perhaps straight into the Delphi. Who knows? On her inheritance she lived long and wore fine clothes and tried out drinks from the Esquire Book of Cocktails and played cards and did crosswords and died on her satin bedspread at seventy-seven. What’s so tragic about that?

When I get home, I tell myself I need to buckle down to work. In the dining room, which is my workroom (I usually eat in the living room in front of the TV), I have stacked boxes full of papers I’ve picked up: billing records from long-gone businesses and vintage department store ads and menus and greeting cards and falling-apart old children’s books and what have you. Take them apart and shuffle them up and chuck an assortment into a Ziploc and there you go: Ephemera Samplers. Very popular with scrapbookers who come by my booth on Lincoln Road on Sundays. This scrapbooking fad has raised interest in everything with old typeface or illustration. My samplers let me get rid of things of little value, though I find I go too slow because I get interested, wondering when they served broiled grapefruit as an appetizer at the Senator Hotel and setting that menu aside to keep, which is defeating my purpose.

This is tedium without much edge. I’ve got the lovely Helena’s picture on my work table where I can see her. The photo has that strong line between light and shadow they liked in the ’40s. Call it noir or chiaroscuro, it’s dramatic. She seems a hard, lovely woman. But this isn’t getting me anywhere. I assign myself to sit back down and make at least two dozen Ephemera Samplers.

I jump at the phone when it rings.

It’s Alex Sterling, asking if I can come meet him at Café Nublado — right by his house and not that far from mine — to discuss something. “Sounds serious,” I say, and he says it is, and so I allow as how I’ll tear myself away from work and drive down to see him.

Café Nublado is Spanish for coffee with clouds. They do the usual Cuban coffee and guava pastries, but to compete with the high-end espresso chains, the walls are painted with idealized piles of cumulonimbus and the house specialty has a soft puffy topping you have to suck through to get any caffeine. Whatever happened to Sanka? I like to grumble, but the girl knows me and gives me a decaf skim Nublado.

Alex Sterling is in one of the big wicker planter’s chairs out back, wearing chinos and a well-cut yellow shirt. I see he’s looking worried, so I forego small talk. “What gives?”

“Somebody has burgled Sharon,” he says. “She called me.”

“Is she all right?”

“She’s upset, naturally. I told her I’d ask you to go there. The police came and took a report, but I thought you might advise her on security. And then...”

I wait. It seems convoluted to meet here, so he must have something in mind.

“Do you think,” he says, “I overlooked something yesterday?”

“At the Delphi?”

“She says the stuff they took was all from there. And I’m wondering if someone knows there was something of great value and got it.”

“But you’d looked it all over—”

“Meticulously. You know me. It all seemed clean and organized. I didn’t find anything hidden. But I didn’t search every square molecule of space.”

“I think you’re as thorough as anyone could be. Did you go through the flour and sugar?”

He grins. “She didn’t have any flour. I doubt she ever baked. And her sugar was lump.”

“Really,” I say, admiringly. “You never see that anymore, lump sugar. But you obviously looked. How ’bout the salt shaker?”

He shakes his head. “What would be in there?”

“Diamonds?”

“You’re teasing me, Ray.”

“Somewhat,” I say. “Anyway, everything Sharon had was from the bedroom. And you’d been through that.”

“Yes, and then Sharon handled it all, and she says she didn’t find anything concealed. Did you?”

“Well, I haven’t gone through every page of every book. She could have used a thousand-dollar bill as a bookmark. I’ll be sure to check.”

“If I overlooked something, you know,” he shrugs, “that’s the way it is. What I don’t like is the idea that it could be one of the people who was there yesterday, who spotted something and then burgled Sharon to get it.”

“Wouldn’t be me. I was in the bedroom alone enough, I could have taken anything then.”

“I know,” he says. “And you were a policeman.” Alex always says policeman, as in, Say hi to the nice policeman. “Couldn’t you maybe figure out what it was and who took it? If it was someone on our team?”

“Tall order.” I finish my Nublado. I want a cigarette but I had one an hour ago.

“Yes,” he says. “But you could try, Ray, couldn’t you?”

“Well, let’s go see,” I say.

He pulls out his cell phone and calls her to tell her we’re on our way

So I drive us over to Sharon’s place, also not far from Café Nublado. We people with a taste for old things are clustered in the neighborhoods of Miami’s Upper Eastside, where the houses were built in the ’30s of cinderblock and stucco, in styles they’re now calling Mediterranean Revival and Masonry Vernacular. I’m in Belle Meade, Sharon in Bayside, which is an historic district. Alex used to live there, but recently he cashed in and moved into a fixer-upper in Palm Grove, west of Biscayne Boulevard, for a long time the western frontier on realtors’ maps. Lately, people good at restoration like Alex — that is to say, the gay guys — have hopped the line in search of fun and profit there.

On the way he tells me he keeps nothing of value in his house. He has safe deposit boxes at several banks. He adds that Mrs. Dorsett’s daughter made it clear that her mother’s real jewelry had been in her safe deposit box. All that remained was costume, and even that the daughter had gone through carefully. I ask what the daughter was like.

“Like a respectable woman from Connecticut,” he says. “She was organized and I think she knew the status of her mother’s estate in advance. No nonsense. I just don’t see what it could be,” he muses.

Sharon is out the back door to meet us as we pull up. Unadorned, wearing a white T-shirt and leggings, with her hair pulled back, she is a smaller woman than I’d thought. Perhaps she puffs herself up and puts on beads when she’s working with us guys to hold her own.

She shows us where they came in. They simply bashed in window glass by the back door to the Florida room, reached in, and twisted the lock — no deadbolt. The alarm went off, of course, as soon as the door opened, but — as I’m telling her — there’s a limit to alarm systems.

“The noise is useless. Neighbors won’t stir to take a look. The important factor is the signal through your phone line to the alarm company, who then call your house in case you set it off yourself and can give them the secret code to revoke the alarm. If you don’t answer, then they call the cops. And then the cops have to get here, so altogether your thief has a good ten to fifteen minutes. A real pro will take out your phone line, do a thorough job. What you have here is someone looking to smash and grab and run, usually kids wanting something to hock for drugs.”

“Right,” says Sharon. “But if so, why didn’t they take the portable TV right here in the Florida room, six feet from the door?”

She leads us through folding doors to her dining room and down a hall to the back bedroom she runs her business from. He definitely went out of his way to get to this room.

“Forgive the mess in here,” she says.

Of course, it looks far better than my place on a good day. Garments fill a chrome clothing rack, each hanger tagged with notes. Along the opposite wall, a long table holds a computer, scanner, postal scale, packing materials, and a piece of blue velvet with a desk lamp aimed at it, set up for photographing smaller objects. The open trash bags piled on and around an old couch under the windows are the only disorderly note. Heavy shades darken the room. I look behind them — jalousie windows, old thick glass, hard to break.

“Did you have your digital camera here?” says Alex.

“I’d been using it to shoot clothes outside, in sunlight — I hang them from my grapefruit tree. Afterward, I put it in the bedroom. It’s still there.”

“So what did they take?” I ask. Like Sharon, I say “they,” even though I’m assuming it’s a “he.” It helps to keep it less vivid, I figure.

“I’ve been making a list. The police want one and my insurance will too, but I don’t think it’s going to be enough for my deductible.” She picks up a pad. “Shoes, clothes, linens.”

“Which?” asks Alex.

“Not the nicest ones, really.” She opens the closet’s pocket door and reveals shoe racks. “I’d put the best away in here. I guess they never opened this. So they just got a couple of pairs of day shoes, some blouses that were here on the arm of the couch — things I was setting aside to take to the women’s shelter. The women always need clothes, especially for job interviews, work. Well, they took that whole pile. Oddly, they took the satin pillowcases but not the bedspread. I think some of the makeup and perfume is gone. They spilled some powder, see?”

“Young transvestites in the neighborhood?” I say.

Alex gives me an amused look. “Yes, probably.”

I say, “They most likely used the pillowcases to carry the other items. That’s common.”

“Well, it breaks up the set,” Sharon says, pointing to the spread, which looks much less glamourous in here, I notice.

“Had you gone through everything from the estate before the break-in?” I ask.

“Not really. I hung up all the finest clothes when I got home — that was the most important thing, to keep them nice. And then I was tired and my daughter and her family took me out for sushi. In the morning, I went out to the post office to ship things — I try to go early every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, so I don’t get behind.”

“Someone seeing you leave with packages would probably assume you’d be gone awhile.”

“I suppose. I was gone about forty-five minutes. When I came back the police were here, and I turned the alarm off.”

“Wasn’t there some costume jewelry?” asks Alex.

“Yes. I put it in here.” Sharon pulls out a vanity case from the closet floor. “It’s mainly brooches. Substantial ones that look good on her suits.” She opens a jewelry roll on the blue velvet piece and snaps on the light and they shine: fake pinwheels and starbursts.

“She wore the pearl one on Sundays,” I say.

“That’s the best,” says Sharon. “Miriam Haskell.”

“There was a decent coral one,” says Alex, “set in fourteen-carat gold, which I have. The rest was costume, which is Sharon’s territory.”

“Any missing?”

They both shake their heads.

“Well,” I say, “first thing to do is fix the window. And I think you need a deadbolt on that door — no reason to make things easy for them. I can do that for you, if you’d like.”

“Thank you,” she says, and gives me a big smile. She takes us into the living room, a quiet space in greens and beiges. One end is nearly empty. A low table holds candles and a mat is unrolled in front of it on the pickled pine floor. She sees my glance. “I do meditation,” she says, “to calm down.”

“Does it help?” I ask.

“Yes. You should try it sometime. It’s good for your blood pressure. You tune in to yourself and just notice what there is: the light and little sounds.”

“I think I’ve done it,” I say. “On stakeout.” I’m looking at her, recognizing that after — what, three years? — I don’t know her at all. We’re all such strangers.

Driving home, I tell Alex it’s impossible to say what the burglary was all about. It might be something to do with the Dorsett estate or completely random. I drop him at his house in Palm Grove and tell him I’ll stay in touch with Sharon, in case she notices anything else. And otherwise keep my eyes open.

And for the next few days I do, with no particular idea what I’m getting at. I go back to help Sharon out, but she hasn’t made any further discoveries. At home, I work through all of Helena Dorsett’s books and papers. The only thing of real interest is a vintage book on how to dress, from 1939; she was still a girl, if she got it new. There are pencilled tick marks next to various tips. A strawberry blonde should not wear orange-reds, but blue-reds and true violets. There is a chapter about shopping that tells what kind of coat to have if you can only afford one, and then what to buy when you can purchase a second.

I have many pictures of Hialeah Park, postcards, programs. I went to closing day, back in 2001, and bought up a few future collectibles. It was a sad occasion. Even the pink flamingoes on their little island looked faded. I take a drive over there on Friday and circle around behind to see the area of extensive decaying stables where people used to board horses for the season. I forget what I last read about plans to reopen the track.

Then I drive on down to Coral Gables and tour Leucadendra Drive and spot the house. It’s certainly worth a million now. But whatever it was worth in 1962 was plenty.

I think I hear someone scrabbling outside my sun porch, late Friday night, but I’ve had problems with possums there, getting in under the house, and anyway it might just have been palmettos chipping at the window as they do. You have to prune here constantly. I get up, turn on some lights, patrol, see nothing, and go back to bed. I take out the phone book and look her up: an H. Dorsett is listed at the right address.

Now I’m fully awake, so I go into my linen closet which is full of reference books. I have a half dozen assorted Social Registers I’ve picked up. In the one for Greater Miami 1955, I find, DORSETT, MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM ELSFORD (Helena M.H.), listed at the address on Leucadendra Drive, Coral Gables. Then:

I note that she chose the initial of her stage name, and then Hogarth’s — which was needed to indicate where Miss Diana came from. No Coll. for the Mrs. was not all that unusual in those days. I presume the Opera Guild interested her due to her musical background.

I look up Dr. Pryor, but I don’t suppose veterinarians were society people. Nor is there any Roy Robineau. I don’t have a register from the early ’50s, but I know the Hogarths wouldn’t be in there — they were staying at a hotel, not a home or a club. I’ve put Mr. Billy Hogarth down as a young guy with a little family money, not in Mr. William Dorsett’s league.

I think about money and Florida. When I first came down here, years ago, after I got divorced, looking to have some fun and cheer up, I was amazed to see how much money was here, filtering in from all over America as people cashed in their piles. I cannot completely explain the fascination of discovering where they all went. In my old town when I was growing up, there were some rich people. You knew who they were; you worked for them. Then they deserted, and a lot of the people in the middle left. After they made me chief, I put in a few years at my best salary and then deserted too. I bought myself a little house down here in a neighborhood that was turning around and added my bit to the comeback. Here, I got interested in life’s cast-off paper, and started to buy and sell and learn the worth of the worthless.

Sunday morning early, I’m at the Lincoln Road Antiques & Collectibles Market. The humidity has lifted and it’s cool, in the fifties at 8 a.m., though it promises to warm up later. I’m in my usual spot on Drexel just off Lincoln near the community church — the side street gets morning shade. I have set up my tent with plastic side flaps. Rain — even a stiff breeze — can do a lot of damage to my stuff. But it doesn’t look a bit like bad weather today, so I leave them rolled up. I get to work, unpacking the rubberized tubs of pages organized by subject, and the display rack for the intact magazines. I never dismantle anything that’s perfect. Boxes of books go on the ground, and my best stuff under glass on the back table.

Other dealers pass by, circulating — we check out each other’s stuff early. Sometimes an item has changed hands twice before the average buyer comes out looking. There’s interest in my 1934 Vanity Fair with the Albert Einstein paper doll page: mint. I have the whole thing encased in plastic, but dealers know better than to touch. No one buys. I don’t expect it; I’ve set the price high because I don’t really want to let it go. When I have things laid out, I stand and stretch and look around. The Kussrows, as usual, have the corner of Drexel and Lincoln, across from where the SPCA has its table and pen of dogs up for adoption. Jeff and Hank are angling their stuff to best advantage: a bunch of Heywood-Wakefield chairs, a dresser, and there’s Helena’s dressing table with the circular mirror, catching and reflecting the morning sun like a fat full moon.

Sharon arrives, as promised, bringing me coffee, the Starbucks version of Nublado decaf skim, lacking the Cuban depth. While I was putting in her deadbolt on Thursday she said she’d take me up on sharing my space and see how she did selling some things, as a start on the Noir Boudoir idea. She covers one side table with a vintage cloth and lays out an assortment of compacts, old lipstick cases, evening bags, and so on. I have the other side table and the back table — a U so the customer can walk in and browse. We’ll sit at the outer ends in lawnchairs I brought. She’s not only got on all her amber, which I now think of as her chest guard, she is wearing some heavy tortoiseshell vintage shades. “You look invincible,” I tell her, but she shakes her head.

The old guy comes by with his doggie on a leash. The pooch is wearing an argyle vest this morning, though the old guy himself is his usual shambles. He nods at us and heads for the Kussrows.

I ask Sharon to watch my stuff while I go chew the fat.

The old guy is running his hand across the dresser top. “What is this, Jeff,” he asks, “mahogany?”

“Veneer,” says Jeff. “In great shape. No label, but it’s got the look and the lines.”

The dog jumps up on the vanity bench and peers inquiringly at himself in the mirror.

“Gorgeous day,” I say to all and sundry.

“Finally some fresh air,” Hank says, and takes a deep breath to show off his chest expansion. I think he’s looking in Sharon’s direction.

I say, “You guys hear Sharon got burgled?”

Jeff nods. “Alex mentioned it. They get anything valuable?”

I shrug. “Just some assorted duds from that estate we did. She’s mostly upset that anyone came in. Probably someone who saw her unloading.”

“That’s what you get when you run your business from your home,” Hank says.

I say, “I’ve always counted on no one thinking I’ve got anything. House doesn’t look like much, you know. Probably the least improved property in Belle Meade at this point. You guys have a warehouse, right? Design district?”

“Right above there, Buena Vista,” says Hank.

“It’s a fortress,” Jeff adds. “We all move in when there’s a hurricane. Where I live on the beach, they evacuated twice this fall, for nothing, really.”

Hank says, “But if a big one came, we’d be safe in there. Got a generator and everything.”

“Well, looks like we’re through with that this year. Weather’s changed.” I stretch. “I’m going down to Islamorada and fish a bit, I think. I’ll head down this afternoon against the traffic coming back from the Keys, take a few days.”

“You got a boat?” asks Hank.

“Just a small one. Boston Whaler. Sixteen feet. How long have you lived down here?” I ask Hank, now that we’re talking.

“I grew up here,” he answers. “But I lived in Southern California for a while — used to surf, loved the beaches. Then got married, had a family, brought them back here.” He nods at Jeff. “Got Jeff and two more you haven’t met, not in the business.”

Customers are talking to Jeff, who has them around behind the dressing table to show how the mirror connects. The little pooch apparently has an overblown sense of himself from his time with the mirror, because he jumps off and yanks the leash from the old guy’s hand and runs across to the SPCA gang, an assortment of biggish dogs who look like they could eat him for brunch. He growls at them from his side of their not-very-secure-looking pen. I go over and pick him up. His little body is vibrating with indignation or machismo or whatever it is.

“You’ve got guts,” I say. I hand him back to the old guy, who takes the leash with a shaky old hand.

“Archie, say thank you,” he instructs, and the dog yaps at me in what doesn’t sound like gratitude.

“You should get a dog, Ray,” he tells me, nodding at the orphans up for adoption.

“I probably could use a watchdog, at that,” I say to the old guy, and he walks with me back to my booth. The dog sniffs around Sharon’s ankles and the old guy peruses our goods while Guillermo comes up with some kind of heavy bundle he sets down by my chair.

Guillermo unwraps his find, a vintage interest-calculating machine with Bakelite keys. “In operating condition,” he boasts.

“Seriously outmoded,” I say.

“But,” he says, “the guys who have outmoded it love these. I had three manual typewriters in my shop and last month they all sold to high-tech guys who like to decorate their offices with them.”

“You never know,” I say. “Business been good, then?”

He says, cautiously, “It runs hot and cold. I’m going over there to open up now.”

“I could never stand being stuck in a shop all day myself,” I say. And I tell him, too, that I’m going fishing, but he just shakes his head at my laziness. I let him leave a stack of cards for his shop on my table.

The little dog is nosing through my bin of Ephemera Samplers. I pull him away. “You looking for anything special this morning?” I say to the old guy. “I’ve got more at home, things that came from that estate. Nice stuff.”

“Just giving the dog some exercise,” he says, and shuffles off.

“How old is he?” whispers Sharon.

“Too old to ask even you out,” I say. She gives me a look through her shades.

And so the morning passes pleasantly. Beautiful girls come by and Sharon and I sell them things. One buys a powderbox, another an old Vogue, several select the brooches and hankies and hats of Helena Dorsett, fragments of another woman’s beauty, now theirs. We see a couple buy the dressing table, the fellow writing a check while the young lady sits on the bench, laughing up at him.

“I wonder if she kept it because it was a magic mirror,” Sharon muses. “Maybe it showed her always beautiful and young.”

“I think to her it stood for class,” I say. “Some idea she’d formed of what she’d have, and when she got it she never let it go. Why did she keep that whole room like that?”

Sharon shrugs.

A collector comes back twice before finally buying my Albert Einstein. “That’s how it works,” I say to Sharon. “If you want something too much, you’ll pay any price.”

She says we are all poisoned by desire and tells me some more about meditation. We discuss mindfulness and the radiance of things. It gets warm by noon, and Sharon breaks out a mini-battery-operated fan and fusses that the heat will ruin the perfumes. I agree with her by 1:00 that it’s time to pack it in.

Late in the afternoon I get the Whaler out: Paper Boat, I named it. Hook the trailer to my car, drive it over to the marina on the Little River just north of Belle Meade Island, and leave the boat and trailer there, for a fee. Driving back through my neighborhood, I take a different route and park a few blocks down beyond my house. I stroll back, enjoying the air, and think how I really have to walk more.

Home, I settle down for a night of meditation. It’s after 1 a.m. when I see the flashlight flicker by the dining room window. For God’s sake, break in by the back door, I think. That window frame is rotting from the rainy season and needs to be replaced. I left the bolt off.

He works his way back there. A quick smash of glass, and he’s in: sun porch, kitchen. He must be thanking his stars there’s no alarm. He slows down. In the dining room, his flashlight circles the piles on the table, and then he sends a beam into the living room. And there I’m waiting. I turn on the standing lamp by my chair.

I say, “Where’d you leave the dog?”

“Home,” Cash says. He sighs.

“What are you looking for?”

He tries to shrug, the big robber: “Anything of value.”

“No,” I say. “You’re looking for something about you — or you and her. Which one are you? Robineau or the vet?”

“I’m...” He sits in the other armchair across from me. “Cash Pryor. As you say, the vet.”

“Lucas turned into Cash?”

“No one ever called me Lucas much,” he says. “Newspapers always use your formal name. I got the nickname as a boy because other kids were always hitting me up for small loans and I was generous. You wouldn’t think it now, I realize.”

“You killed the second husband,” I say.

Sadly, he says, “And I killed the horse.”

“Well, then you served your time,” I say. “Can’t be tried twice. So it wasn’t that she had evidence. It was—”

He pulls out a gun.

“Oh jeez,” I say. “I’ve got one too.” And I show him my Glock. “Yours looks rusty.” It’s a Jennings J25, dregs of the gun world, and the finish is gone on it. “Ever shot it?”

He shakes his head and lowers the gun, some. His hand is trembling so much I’m afraid he’s going to shoot me accidentally. Those pistols jam a lot, but every once in a while one manages to emit a bullet.

I say, “Put it down and let’s talk.”

He sets it on the broad arm of the chair. I lay mine on my thigh, where I can get to it if needed.

He says, “You were expecting me.”

I nod. Though to be honest, I’d also worked out a theory where Hank Kussrow was Robineau.

I say, “I figure you killed her. Are you looking for something you touched when you were there before? Something that might have your fingerprints that you couldn’t explain? Maybe this?” I point to the picture in the Lucite frame, on the table beside me. “Did you expect Sharon to have it?”

“You don’t understand,” he says.

“I probably don’t. Let’s go back. What was it all for? You killed Dorsett for her?”

“She needed him dead.”

“Oh,” I say. “Did she ask you?”

“She... implied it.”

“Why’d she need him dead?”

“Dorsett was a bully. And a killer. Let me explain how it was. She told me that he’d seen her when she and her first husband came to Miami Beach. And he wanted her, naturally. But she was married with a child. And then someone ran her husband down and she was a widow, so when Dorsett courted her, she married him. It was only later — years later — that she found out he’d hired the man who hit her husband. This is what she told me, you understand?”

“Dorsett hired Robineau?”

“She said that when she expressed a desire to leave Dorsett, he told her so and frightened her.”

“And Robineau, what happened to him?”

“She said Dorsett took him out on his yacht and drowned him, in the Bahamas somewhere. And let it be thought he’d moved away, west. This was right after Hogarth was killed, she said.”

“More death by transportation,” I say.

“It’s not funny.”

“So she told you all this, and you decided you could take him on, this brute?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“She was worth killing for?”

“You should have seen her. At the racetrack, in blue linen. She was a dream. Then Dorsett asked me whether I could make it seem that the horse was having problems, to jigger the odds. So I did that, God help me. He was, as she said, a bully — he bullied me, never knowing what I was thinking. I stopped doping Panama Sailor in time for him to run. That was the plan. But on the day I gave the horse a little something else, Dorsett handled him rough and the horse knocked him down and I... helped.”

“And then you didn’t tell.”

“I kept my mouth shut for her,” he says.

“Did she ask you to?”

“We only had a moment,” he says. “At the stables. She came in after he was dead. They didn’t let her see his body, but then she asked to see the horse, and I was in with Panama Sailor, trying to fix his leg, but it was no good. She said, ‘Thank you, Cash,’ and it might have been thank you for the horse, but... And after that, we couldn’t speak again because the cops had me.”

“You hadn’t slept with her?”

“Oh,” he says. “I had. Twice. She was a dream, I told you. Your loveliest, dirtiest dream.”

I’m thinking that’s a quote from somewhere, but I’m not

“Did you figure if you killed him, you’d keep her?”

“I didn’t think that much. I felt she was a creature in trouble and I would get her out.

“The police took me in right after I put the horse away, and all I could do was try to keep her out of the story.”

“You’re an idealist,” I say. “You could have cut a deal and given her to the law.”

“I was an idealist,” he says. “Certainly so.”

“And when you got out of prison, you didn’t look her up?”

“No,” he says, “I stayed away.”

“Why?”

He shakes his head. “Well, prison... broke me, I suppose you’d say. I didn’t do well there. I loathe violence.” He clears his throat, his sandy old voice wearing thin. “When I got out, I hated that I’d killed and I didn’t want to see her or for her to see me. I didn’t try to find her, I didn’t want to know where she was. I couldn’t earn a living as a vet, just did odd jobs and picked up money and lived close to the ground and tried to... recuperate. You could live cheaply here then. I’ve been over ten years in Palm Grove. I’m just down the street from Alex. It cost very little, till lately. I live in a building they’re about to redo now, but for years it was full of poor folks. Nobody bothered us, Archie and me, because we didn’t have anything worth taking, as you said this morning about your house. When you were implying you had something I’d want.”

I ignore that. “Okay, so you steered clear of her. Then?”

“About a month ago, we did a job at the Delphi, a small estate. You weren’t there. Just Jeff and Hank. I was lugging stuff out for Alex. And she saw me. She caught me outside when I was alone putting things in my van and... asked me to come see her.”

“Did you recognize her?”

“She hadn’t changed nearly as much as I had. And she recognized me.” He clears his throat. “Like I say, prison broke me. But I did learn to think more — what would be the word — more cunningly. And I had thought about her story.” He gives a dry smile. “Often. As you can imagine. It was too...”

“What?”

“I kept seeing patterns. I killed the second husband, somebody killed the first. The guy who killed the first got killed — at least that’s what she’d said. It couldn’t be simpler, I felt. I did it for her. So maybe the others did it for her.”

“Wait. Robineau killed Hogarth for her?”

“Could have been. Could have been just because Dorsett paid him, but I looked up what I could find and he hadn’t been a bad guy, just a silly rich drunk. So I think he may have done it for her, yes sir.”

“And Dorsett killed Robineau?”

“So she said. For her, I think. I mean, at her behest. Possibly.”

“And you killed Dorsett.”

“Indisputably. So, if you pay attention to the pattern, someone ought to kill me. I’m the loose end. She could have been looking for me, but I would have been hard to find. I’d entered the cash economy. I have no phone. And maybe she just didn’t have a man to sic on me.”

“Well, maybe,” I say.

“I don’t have a lot of evidence. But she said she was happy to see me. Now, should she have been happy?”

“Well, you’d been a stand-up guy and gone to jail without ratting on her. You might have been her idea of a hero,” I say, though I know he’s right.

He shakes his head. “But I could still have sent her to prison. Now.”

“Let me get this straight: She knew you were going to kill the husband ahead of time?”

“She asked me to do it... in the clearest way one could, without saying it right out.”

“In bed, was it?”

“In bed. Her bed. I have no evidence for that. But if I were to say she had done so, even now, would the police not at least speak to her?”

“Cops aren’t that eager to open settled cases from 1962.”

“But there was scandal and she’d become respectable again. And she might think the police would care. My impression was that she was scared that I’d appeared in her building.”

“Okay. Let’s say you’re right. She should’ve avoided you. Instead, what did she do?”

“She wanted to get together, she said. I agreed to see her, but said I had a lot of work.” He laughs his dry laugh. “So we made the date for a week from then. I was to come to her place, have a drink, then maybe we’d go out to dinner. I wanted a week to think. What would she do with the loose end? She’d be looking for a way to kill me, I felt. She had to. I considered running, but she would be able to find me now. People can’t disappear as easily they used to. So I put on my jacket and tie, and left my dog with plenty of food and water and the door ajar in case I didn’t come back, and went to see her.”

“Did you take your gun?” I gesture at it.

“No, I didn’t own it then. When I got there I was scared. She offered me a cigarette, but I don’t smoke. Offered me a drink, a martini, which I accepted, but didn’t drink, just lifted it to my lips and put it down. My dog, Archie, has quite a few ailments. I had a dog tranquilizer with me to put in her drink, but I didn’t get a chance. Her eyes were on me all the time. Intent.” He sighs. “I was raised to think of women as emotional creatures.”

“Creatures?”

“Weren’t you? Soft, dependent, lacking calculation. Of course, that’s a mistake we make about many other creatures too, underestimating them. In any case, believe me, she was rational, detached, watchful. She said she’d thought about me, a lot. That she’d been alone a long time. And she invited me into the bedroom. Perhaps I was supposed to be woozy. I know I was shaky, anyway, following her in.”

“My God,” I say. “That bedroom.”

“She lay back on the bed the same way she had when—” He pauses, clears his throat. “And I sat beside her and leaned forward and I put the pillow over her face.”

“That’s why you stole the pillowcase.”

He nods. “She died unexpectedly fast. I was thinking I would give her an empty injection, just put some air into her vein and cause an embolism.”

“You had a hypodermic on you?”

“I have a whole kit. You know, you can buy anything in Miami. But she just stopped breathing. She must have had a heart attack — perhaps the shock?”

“She was old.”

“And she smoked,” he says. “She may have had heart disease. I figured nobody pays attention to the death of an old lady in her own bed. I took off her shoes, and wiped them, and set them under the bed. I wanted it to look like she’d felt ill and had to lie down and then died. I cleaned up the glasses, dried them, put them away. I have them now — I got them from the kitchen. I believe I have washed them half a dozen times. Interestingly, among her liquor there was a bottle with a dropper, hand-labelled Bitters. I don’t know what was in it. Maybe it was bitters, maybe something else. I moved it to the kitchen cabinet, and later threw it out, then realized I should have kept it, had it tested if I needed to prove self-defense. I left her one cigarette butt in the ashtray. I wiped whatever I thought I’d touched. But I was fairly sure we’d be in there to do the estate clean-up and I’d handle a lot of things and so my fingerprints wouldn’t mean anything. I’m not going back to jail!” He shrieks this last.

“I understand,” I say, soothingly. “How did you know Alex would get the estate job?”

“Oh,” he says, “Alex left cards when we were there before — at the desk and by the mailboxes and so on. So I didn’t think anyone would find it odd that Helena had picked one up and had it in her desk, where she had other business cards. The daughter saw it and called. It was a gamble, but a good one. I left feeling fairly confident and calm. It was only afterwards that I started to doubt myself and worry about little things. I couldn’t have taken the pillowcase. That would have drawn attention. But later I kept thinking about it — forensics people can pick up tiny fibers, hairs. That day we were there, I never could get into the bedroom alone till after Jeff and Hank carted off the furniture, and by then Sharon had packed up the bedclothes. I am sorry I had to steal from her.”

“What’d you do with the pillowcases?”

“I burned them both. I didn’t know which one was which.”

“And the rest of the stuff you took?”

“In my van. I was going to put it in a dumpster, but I kept worrying it would be found.”

“Sharon was going to give it to abused women.”

He looks somewhat ashamed.

“Did you touch the dressing table?” I ask.

“I don’t think so. But afterwards I wasn’t sure.”

“So on Lincoln Road you touched it and you let the dog hop up there?” He nods. “Did you touch the portrait?”

“I don’t recall. There were a number of pictures in the living room that she showed me — her daughter and her grandchildren. I think it was there. I don’t think I touched it. Did I?”

I say, “Lucite does hold prints. But I had already cleaned it myself when I got it home. Here — look at it. You’re safe.”

He takes it, holding it between both palms, and I lift his pistol off the chair arm and put it on the floor beside me.

“So there’s no evidence,” he says.

“Just what’s in your head.”

“What are you going to do?”

I shake my head. “Don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t have hurt you, Ray,” he says. “Tonight, I didn’t even think you’d be here.”

“But you brought the gun. Where’d you get it?”

“In my neighborhood. I bought it from a sad woman, a... prostitute. I said I wanted it to defend myself. I just thought if the police were to surprise me — if I had no warning — I could use it on myself. Or wave it at them and they’d shoot me. I’m not going back to jail.” He says it calmly this time.

“Miami,” I say. “This place is full of killers. Guys who work on your car may have been in death squads in Peru, dictators own steak houses, drug kingpins become developers. I can’t fix every little thing. Go home. I know you did it, and you know I know, but there’s not a bit of evidence left, I promise you. She’s ash and her things are scattered, and scattering further every day.”

He uses his shirttails to wipe off the picture frame and hands it back to me. I clasp it. Her eyes smile at me in the lamplight.

“Is that how she looked when you knew her?”

“She’s a little younger, but yes.”

“It’s driving you nuts,” I say, “isn’t it?”

“What is?” he says, but he knows.

“The shred of a shadow of a glimpse of a chance that she might have been innocent. That the first story was true, the one she told, with Dorsett the killer and bully and you the rescuer. The one you went to jail on.”

He says, “I’m sure as one can be.”

“It’s just too bad you have a conscience.”

He blinks at me. “She didn’t,” he says. And sighs. He picks up his flashlight and nods to me and leaves. I bolt the door after him. On close inspection, his gun’s in even worse shape than I thought. I put it into a bag. I’ll drop it out to sea. I listen to the sound the palmettos make chattering against my windows and treat myself to a cigarette.

Three weeks later, on a Friday, I’m getting spruced up to go out. Two days after our long discussion, Cash was found dead in his apartment He had a needle beside him containing nothing but air. In a note he left his worldly goods to Alex and asked that I take care of his dog Archie. He left no explanation for his suicide other than to say, I’m very tired

Our team cleared out his place. He had many old books, those of most interest with illustrated plates of birds and animals. He owned a complete medical bag and a collection of antique vet instruments that Guillermo says might be worth something. He’s researching it. These things might possibly realize enough to repay Alex for the cremation. None of us could start the van, but Alex located some of Cash’s buddies from the flea market in Fort Lauderdale and they came down and towed it away. The Kussrows declared his furniture of no resale value and we put it all out on the street for pickers to take. The building itself will soon be gutted.

Alex is looking for another trustworthy clean-up man. I haven’t told him about Cash. The morning after my talk with him, Sharon found the stolen clothing tossed behind her hibiscus bushes. Alex and Sharon like the theory that the burglar was a boy seeking women’s clothes who found them too dowdy.

Archie came to me with a list of what he eats and his ailments and a wardrobe of waistcoats and sweaters. I think Cash underestimated him. There’s a nip in the November air this evening, but I’m making Archie tough it out. We’ll walk down to Sharon’s to pick her up and have dinner at a new restaurant on Biscayne that Alex recommends. We’ll go on afterward to Café Nublado, and beyond that, who knows? She’s a warm woman, as I’m coming to appreciate.

On my way out I stop in the dining room — as I often do — to look at the portrait of Helena Dorsett. What was it she had? Beauty enough to kill for, any way you look at it. I strain to recapture the woman I met. Quite a lady, I remember thinking. Her face is a pattern of shadow and light. Now, just paper.

Machete by Barbara Parker

Biscayne Bay

The Miami PD had beaten us to the scene. Yellow tape already circled the yard from one royal palm tree to the next. An officer in a rain poncho held up a hand and I waited, wipers flapping, while the fire-rescue truck pulled out of the driveway. No emergency lights, no siren. The bodies would be taken out later in the ME’s unmarked van.

I drove past the police vehicles and parked at the end of the block. The house was in Coconut Grove in a wealthy enclave of narrow streets that deadended at Biscayne Bay. Confined by the downpour, neighbors watched from their porches or second-floor windows.

The only thing I could find to keep myself dry was a plastic bag from Target in the backseat. I dumped out the jeans to be returned, grabbed my camera bag, and shoved the door open just as a silver BMW sedan lurched around me and skidded on wet leaves. Its brake lights went off, and through the misted rear window I could see Charlene on her cell phone. She disconnected and struggled out of the car with an umbrella as thunder rattled the sky.

I called out, “Did you reach her?”

“No. Doesn’t matter, we’re here. Come on, let’s go.” I could hear Brooklyn in her voice, though she’d practiced law in Miami longer than I’d been alive.

Charlene held the umbrella for both of us, but I told her to go ahead, and she clattered along beside me in her high heels and tight skirt. An officer stopped us at the end of the driveway.

“I’m Charlene Marks, Mrs. Zaden’s attorney. Would you kindly tell the lead investigator I want to see my client? Who’s in charge, by the way?”

Ignoring the question, the officer lifted a radio to his lips. Water dripped off the hood of his poncho. I looked at the house from under my white plastic bag. Standard South Florida mansion: red barrel-tile roof, a portico over the circular driveway, double doors with beveled glass, a chandelier in the foyer. The builder had probably bulldozed the little three-bedroom-with-carport that used to sit on this lot. What can I say? I don’t like bling.

My name is Sara Morales. I do private investigations, and Charlene’s firm is one of my accounts. I used to work for the Miami Police Department until I slid down some stairs while chasing a supposedly docile suspect and broke two vertebrae. I’ve recovered from the injury; I run five miles a day, when the weather isn’t so hot it melts my shoes to the asphalt, but I won’t go back to police work. I’ve come to enjoy my freedom.

I rent a two-room office in a commercial strip on South Dixie Highway, walking distance to my apartment if I had to. My parents still live in Little Havana in the first house they bought after coming to the U.S. on a raft. Literally a raft: inner tubes and a wooden platform that broke up halfway across the straits. Three of the people who started out, including my grandfather, didn’t make it. Till the day she died, my nena claimed she could talk to him in the other world. Of course she could. She was into Santería big time. I moved out after high school, a sacrilege for a Cuban girl.

Twenty minutes ago I’d been at my desk writing invoices when the phone rang. I picked up and heard tires screaming down the ramp of a parking garage. Charlene had told me whatever the hell I was doing, drop it and meet her at Kathy Zaden’s house. She said a woman had come in and slashed Dr. Zaden with a machete. Kathy heard him yelling for help, and ran downstairs with a pistol. She killed the woman, but not soon enough.

“The idiot called 911 before she called me. Damn it!” Charlene wanted to get there before her client said anything stupid to the cops. She told me to bring my camera.

I was out the door in less than thirty seconds.

The uniformed officer lifted the tape. “You want to speak to Sergeant Bill Nance.”

“Thanks.” Charlene headed up the driveway. Water sheeted over the interlocking pavers.

Bill Nance. He’d been my supervisor in the detective bureau. I’d been promoted to homicide after only five years on the force, so to him I was a minority cutting in line. When I left, he didn’t send me a goodbye card.

We ran under the portico, where the mist was blowing in sideways. One of the front doors was wide open, and Nance stood there, feet spread, leaning back a little to balance his gut. Short white hair, gray slacks, gun on hip, silver shield clipped to the holster. He dismissed me with a glance and nodded at Charlene. They go back to her days at the prosecutor’s office. They’d been close, but damned if I can see why.

She propped her folded umbrella against a poured-concrete lion, one of a set flanking the entrance. The humidity had frizzed her curly gray hair. “Hello, Bill. Crummy day for this, isn’t it?”

“It’ll blow over.”

“What have you got so far?”

“Two dead downstairs in the study. Dr. Howard Zaden and a black female, early fifties. Mrs. Zaden ID’d her as Carmen Sánchez. She’s from the Dominican Republic. It appears she attacked Dr. Zaden with a machete, and Mrs. Zaden shot her. I’d like a few more details, but your client won’t talk to me.”

“It’s my fault. When she called, I told her to sit tight. Where is she?”

“Sitting tight.” Nance looked at me, at my camera. “No photos, Morales.”

“Nonsense,” Charlene said. “We have a right to record the scene, and if you make me call a judge, he’ll tell you so. You’ve got the gun, and Kathy Zaden admitted firing it. How could we possibly impede your investigation?”

There was an argument, which Charlene won by dangling the possibility that she’d let Kathy Zaden talk to him. I don’t think Nance bought it, but he took us inside.

My wet sneakers chirped on the marble floor and fell silent on the Oriental rug. A crowd at a door on the opposite side of the living room meant I’d find Dr. Zaden and his guest over there, but Charlene said to come with her.

Nance led us through a dining room overlooking the canal where the Zadens’s boat was docked, then to a kitchen done in stainless steel, cherry wood, and black granite. Either nobody cooked in here, or they had a better staff than I did.

Kathy Zaden was sitting at the counter with her head in her hands and a wad of tissue in her fist. She saw us and stood up, and her crop pants and sleeveless yellow top showed splashes of red. Her knees were bloody, and her forearms, like she’d crawled in it.

“Oh... Charlene!”

Making shushing noises, Charlene patted her on the shoulder. She didn’t bother setting down her purse. She wasn’t staying long enough to chat. “You need to put something else on, darling. We’re leaving. Pack your jammies and a toothbrush.”

“Will they let me go?”

“They will unless you have confessed to something extremely naughty.”

“I didn’t! I had to... oh. Oh—” She sobbed. “He’s dead. Oh, God. The blood. It was so terrible. I was sick. I threw up.”

“Let’s just run upstairs and get you into some clean clothes, shall we?”

“The detective said to give him these.”

“Oh, really.” Charlene looked darkly in toward the door, where Sergeant Nance lingered. “Well, if and when a warrant is issued, he can have them.”

“Why are they acting like I did something wrong? They swabbed my hands like I was a criminal. Why?”

“It’s routine. Come on, let’s go.”

Kathy blew her nose. A weak smile came my way. “Hi, Sara.”

I put an arm around her. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.”

She lowered her head to mine and made another little sob.

Kathy Zaden and I are the same age, thirty-three. That’s as far as the similarity extends. I’m short and dark, thanks to my mulatta grandmother. Kathy Zaden is a sexy blonde with long, tanned legs. She had a realtor’s license, and she’d met Dr. Zaden four years ago showing him an apartment on South Beach. He had just dumped his first wife and was looking for something more exciting — in both real estate and women, I suppose. Howard had made a fortune doing plastic surgery. He had a good build, an easy smile, a Mercedes CL500 coupe, a forty-two-foot Bertram sport fisher, a condo in Vail, and a tax attorney who showed him how to shelter his assets. For her birthday, he’d done Kathy’s boobs.

You want to hate men like Howard Zaden. I’d wanted to hate Kathy, but I couldn’t. She’d been born poor in Valdosta, Georgia, and fought her way out. She sent money home; she organized charity events; she took in stray cats. But she finally got it: She believed Howard when he said that two kids from his previous marriage were enough. She believed that one day he would dump her too.

Kathy had gone to Charlene to see about breaking the twenty-page prenuptial agreement he’d made her sign. Needless to say, Charlene had not been Kathy’s lawyer for the prenup. I’d been shadowing Dr. Zaden for a couple of weeks to see if we could find anything useful, and I was getting nowhere. Now it didn’t matter.

We went upstairs. When I was finished taking shots of Kathy Zaden and the blood stains, Charlene shooed her into the bathroom, and I found my way to the study.

The cool stares I got from the crime scene technicians meant that Bill Nance had told them who I was. He gave me a pair of blue paper booties and said, “Don’t touch anything, and don’t get in the way. You’ve got five minutes.”

It was more a media room than a study, with a huge flat-screen television facing a leather sofa, rows of DVDs on the mahogany built-ins, and audio equipment behind glass doors. Hitting the shutter of my digital SLR, I maneuvered toward the other side of the room, where a desk and a clot of detectives hid my view. When they moved I saw two bodies in a puddle of dark red seeping into the ivory-colored carpet.

Howard Zaden lay on his back in a blue dress shirt, arms out like he was soaring, gold on his cuffs. A heavyset woman in black pants and a white knit top lay facedown across his lower legs. I barely saw her; my eyes were on Dr. Zaden.

His head had rolled to the side, and his neck looked like a piece of fresh steak. I could see something paler red protruding: bone, cartilage. His tie was gone just below the knot. Sweat prickled my scalp. This had not been the first cut; he’d survived long enough to scream and hold up his hands. Half his left hand was missing, and a long gash had opened his shoulder. More cuts went through his left bicep, his chest, his abdomen, as though she’d kept chopping after he hit the floor.

I forced myself to concentrate on what I saw through the viewfinder. Carmen Sánchez was black, or Afro-Cuban or Afro-something. Her hair was medium length, processed straight. I squatted to see her face, but her hair covered it. There were two red holes in her back, another in her neck. One shoe had come off, and I saw a brown foot, a tan sole. It reminded me of Nena’s feet, the calluses, her cheap plastic sandals. I didn’t see a purse.

If Kathy Zaden had said Carmen Sánchez was stalking her husband, then Charlene had to know about it. Charlene hadn’t told me, but then, I hadn’t been hired for that.

The machete lay near the bodies, a shiny curve about three feet long. Wood handle, blood drying to brown on the steel. I waited for a female officer to walk by, then zoomed in for a closeup. The edge had been honed till it shimmered. Something odd on the trailing edge: black smudges, like soot. Like she’d tried to burn it.

Why had Howard let her in? Most sane people would have slammed the door on a woman carrying a machete. Then I noticed a raincoat on the floor and pressed the shutter.

Sergeant Nance stood beside me. “What did she want with Dr. Zaden?”

“I have no idea.” My viewfinder showed the desk, the stuff on it. A checkbook lying open, the big kind with a leather-bound cover.

He said, “She doesn’t look like a disgruntled plastic surgery patient.”

“No, she’s a poor black Dominicana.”

“Take it easy, Morales.”

I shot images of the blood spatter up the side of the desk, over the bookshelves behind it, across the ceiling.

He asked, “Who was it answered the door? Mrs. Zaden?”

“I don’t know.”

“Somebody let this woman in.”

I looked at him. “You think?”

Nance made a little smile, showing his teeth. He was still smoking, I noticed. “This lady came to do harm to Dr. Zaden, and we don’t know why. His wife could shed some light. We’re not out to get her. We just want to clear things up.”

“Okay. I’ll be sure to tell her.”

“You’re done here,” Nance said. “Put it away.”

I shot one more for the principle of it. At the door I took off the booties and balled them into my pants pocket.

Nance leaned closer. “Lucky thing you tripped down those steps, Morales. Know why?”

I turned away, but his voice followed me.

“Because they gave you disability instead of firing your ass. You weren’t cutting it.”

I kept my reply to myself. You don’t get anywhere arguing with a cop.

The clouds had rumbled off, dragging the heat with them, leaving a gray overcast and a few stray drops of rain. Beyond the crime tape, the crowd of onlookers had grown. Two local satellite news trucks had set up operations on the street, and another was moving into position. The murder of a prominent Miami plastic surgeon would be breaking news at 6 o’clock.

Among the assorted police vehicles in the driveway, I spotted a red Toyota with a missing hubcap and a cracked side window. A Florida tag. I went over and took a picture of it, then the vehicle ID through the windshield. Whoever owned it would know Carmen Sánchez.

Nance would do the same thing. This case would be all over the front page, and Nance would work it. Somebody — hair stylist, personal trainer — would eventually tell him that Kathy had wanted out, and that she’d get more from a dead husband than an ex-husband. Nance knew that Carmen Sánchez had been stalking Dr. Zaden. He was wondering who let her in. Had Kathy waited until her husband was dead to fire the pistol into Mrs. Sánchez’s back?

A movement on the street caught my eye. A monster Hummer painted bright yellow turned into the front yard, tires digging into the wet grass, chrome snout pressing on the crime scene tape. The door opened, and a guy slid off the seat. Short brown hair, average build, a Hawaiian shirt. He shouted something to a uniformed officer and ran full speed toward the house.

I’d seen him before: Richard Zaden, age thirty-one. He owned an overpriced pizza restaurant in the Grove that his father had bought for him. People came and went that I thought the DEA would’ve liked to interview.

Maybe I still look like a cop. Rick Zaden saw me and veered in my direction. He said he was Dr. Zaden’s son, and a neighbor had called him. What the hell was going on here? Where was his father?

I should have turned him toward the door and suggested he find Sergeant Nance, but instead I told him the truth as gently as I could, then said I was sorry. I told him he probably didn’t want to go in there right now.

He broke down, hands over his face, wailing. Then he looked at me with tortured eyes and whispered, “My father. He’s gone? Oh my God, no. Dad.”

Call me hard-hearted, but it seemed overdone. I knew that Rick and his father had been at odds. But this didn’t mean anything. Lose your father, feelings can change.

He sagged against the front fender of the Toyota. “She shot the bitch. Jesus Christ. I can’t believe it. Kathy shot her. Where is she? I want to talk to her.”

“Not now. She’s on her way out. Her lawyer won’t let her talk to anyone.”

That got me a blank stare. “Her lawyer?”

“When the police get involved, people call lawyers.”

“Is she... under suspicion?”

“Not that I know of.”

He took a long, slow breath. “I want to go in.”

“Just a second.” I held onto his arm. “Who was Carmen Sánchez?”

“She wanted money from my father. It was a lawsuit or something. An accident when he was on vacation in the Dominican Republic. Some guy — her son — walked right in front of his car. It wasn’t Dad’s fault, but she wouldn’t leave him alone. He said he was going to pay her off.” Rick wiped his hands down his face. “What am I supposed to do now?”

“Somebody will be out to speak to you. Excuse me, but did this person, Mrs. Sánchez’s son, did he die?” Rick nodded. “And then what? She came here on a tourist visa?”

“Yeah. That’s what they do, then they don’t leave.” Rick Zaden gave me a closer inspection. “Are you a police officer or what?”

I had to tell him. “I’m a private investigator. I work for Kathy Zaden’s attorney.”

He stared at me, turned his back, and walked under the portico, leaving me with the answer to at least one of Sergeant Nance’s questions: Carmen Sánchez had come here to collect money from the man who had killed her son. Had Dr. Zaden planned to write her a check? If the death had been an accident, why would he pay her? And if she’d thought he would, why did she want him dead?

I scanned the faces across the street, wondering if anybody had seen a middle-aged Latina getting out of her car in a raincoat. I noticed the house next door. It wasn’t much of a house, but it had a terrace on the roof, and a man leaned on the metal railing with a long-neck beer. A chickee hut with a palm-frond roof had been built up there, and the flag of Great Britain hung from one end of it like a curtain.

My pant legs got soaked as I cut through his overgrown yard. He was around forty, with bright blue eyes and spiked, sandy hair. He wore old khaki shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt that revealed a pair of nicely muscled arms. I asked if I could talk to him. He said to come up.

Circular metal stairs took me to a teak deck on the roof. He had a view of the houses along the canal, sailboats and sport fishers at the docks, and a slice of Biscayne Bay at the end of the canal. The water repeated the dull gray of the sky. He’d installed a bar, a hot tub, and a sunning area. The reed privacy screen made me think he liked an all-over tan.

His name was Ian Morris. After I’d told him what had happened, he asked if Kathy was all right. “Is she, really? Poor baby. She must be in shock.”

“Are you English?”

“Born in Newcastle. That’s on the North Sea. I came here ten years ago. Love the weather, most of the time.” He finished his beer, went to a small fridge under the chickee hut, and took out another, lifting it toward me inquiringly. I sat on a stool and he opened a bottle for each of us.

He told me he was a metal sculptor, which explained the big arms. I asked if he’d made the piece on the sea wall, a rusted oval that swung and groaned from an arch of polished aluminum.

“Not your style, is it?” He grinned. “I sold one similar for twenty thousand dollars to a collector in Mexico. Oh, but Howard told me it sucked, and he wanted it gone. That and my little roof garden too. He promised to sue me into the ground, and I said fine, give it a go. Horrible man. Am I speaking ill of the dead?” He took a swallow of beer.

I asked him if he’d seen Carmen Sánchez arrive.

Ian Morris said that at about 4 o’clock he’d been taking down his umbrella before the storm broke, and he’d noticed a little red car pull into the Zadens’s driveway, a black woman at the wheel. Then the car went out of sight.

“I didn’t know who she was. I certainly didn’t see her get out with a machete. Howard had come home early, so I thought she might be his voodoo lady making a house call.”

“His...?”

“Psychic. Spiritual advisor? Tarot card reader?”

“No. Dr. Zaden had a psychic?”

With a grin, Ian said, “This is Miami, love. With a name like Morales, you must have an altar to Chango or Eleggua in your bedroom.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Most of us are smarter than that.”

“Well, Howard went for his reading at least once a month. He said his voodoo lady guaranteed the code-enforcement people would be on my ass. I told him I was shaking in my boots.”

I nudged him back to the point. “What about Carmen Sánchez?”

“Yes. Kathy told me about her, although, as I said, I didn’t recognize her.” Ian Morris shuddered. “My God. What a hideous thing to do! Even to Howard. And poor Kathy. I have to call her. Would that be all right?”

“She’ll be with friends for a few days.”

“I have her mobile number.”

Did he, now?

From the roof I could see the windows of the Zadens’s master suite. Their balcony overlooked the pool. Kathy had said she knew it was time to leave Howard when she started watching him do his hundred laps every morning and think about heart attacks. I could also imagine that Ian Morris had watched Kathy standing on the balcony in her nightie.

I said, “I met Rick Zaden a little while ago. I told him his father had been murdered and he seemed... like he had to convince me he cared.”

Ian laughed. “He doesn’t care. He’s probably ecstatic. You see, Rickie had borrowed, or conned, his father out of so much money that Howard finally decided to shut him down. Howard had a mortgage on a restaurant Rick owned, and he was going to collect.”

I sipped my beer. “How did you know this? From Kathy?”

“Howard was yelling about it right down there on the dock. He was hosing off his boat, must’ve been a weekend, and Rick came over. I don’t know how it started, but Howard told him he wasn’t getting another effing cent, and furthermore, he’d be calling his attorney and taking the effing restaurant. He finally told Rick to get off his property or he’d have him arrested for trespassing.”

“When was this?”

Ian’s eyes focused upward. “I’m going to say... three months.”

Plenty of time for them to get over it. “Anything more recent?”

“Couldn’t say. Rick hasn’t been around.” Ian shrugged. “Kathy tried to be a peacemaker. I kept telling her, why bother? Can I get you another beer?”

“No, thanks.” Ian Morris liked to talk, so I asked him if he knew anything about the car accident in the Dominican Republic.

He gazed past me at the Zadens’s house. “I don’t think Kathy would mind. It’s no secret. She and Howard were visiting friends over there. They rented a car and went sightseeing. It happened outside some wretched little village. Mrs. Sánchez’s son, her only son, was walking along the road, and Howard hit the poor sod and killed him.”

“Was he drunk?”

“He’d been drinking, but he wasn’t drunk. No, he was yelling at Kathy just before the impact. She doesn’t remember what about. Something petty. Howard was a shameless verbal abuser. He didn’t strike her, at least she said not, or I’d have been forced to beat the crap out of him.”

Ian crossed his arms on the bar. I could see little scars from metal cuts or torch burns. “Anyway, the accident. The policía investigated, but Howard’s friends were wealthy, quite connected, and so forth. Howard felt he’d done nothing wrong, but he paid the man’s burial expenses and returned to the States. That would’ve been the end of it, except that Mrs. Sánchez turned up. She wanted compensation, and Howard basically told her to bugger off.”

“How much was she asking for?”

“Ten thousand dollars for every year of her son’s life, and he was twenty-five. Oh, Howard could’ve paid, he just didn’t like to be told to. Carmen Sánchez came here to torment him. The staff at the clinic would find things at the entrance — a doll with pins in it, or a dead chicken — and it was driving Howard crazy. The police wouldn’t do anything because they couldn’t catch her at it. Howard filed a report with Immigration and maybe they’d have gotten around to deporting her in a year or two. Meanwhile, the bones kept appearing on his doorstep. Bad for business. A lot of Howard’s patients were Cubans, and Cubans know Santería when they see it, don’t they? He had no choice but to pay her.”

I let these facts settle, then said, “But why did she kill him?”

“Ha. Now there’s a question.” Ian Morris lifted his beer in a salute.

As night closed in, Charlene Marks put Kathy Zaden in the passenger seat of her BMW and eased through the pack of reporters shoving cameras at the windows. I followed on her bumper. At Bayshore, the BMW put on its left-turn signal, then squealed right as I blocked the street. I saw the brake lights go on at Seventeenth Avenue, and the car disappeared behind thick foliage.

I hooked up with them a couple of minutes later on U.S. 1 heading downtown. Charlene would deliver Kathy Zaden to a friend’s condo on Brickell Key, a posh private island overlooking the city. If you aren’t invited, you don’t get in. I called Charlene on my cell phone and gave her a quick summary of my conversations with Dr. Zaden’s son and the next-door neighbor. I was curious whether either of them had known Carmen Sánchez. Ian Morris had told me no, but I’ve been lied to before.

I asked Charlene to pull over and let me talk to Kathy.

“Make it quick,” Charlene said. “Somebody’s about to pass out on me.”

She parked a block off Brickell Avenue on a side street overhung with oaks and air plants. Glass towers haven’t completely taken over, not yet. A street light at the corner sent a weak yellow glow through the branches.

I opened the rear door and got in. Kathy rolled her head on the seat back to focus on me. Whatever she’d found in her medicine cabinet, it was kicking in. “Hey. What a mess, huh?”

“Kathy, I talked to Ian Morris. He told me about the accident in the Dominican Republic. Did you ever give him Mrs. Sánchez’s phone number?”

“Ian? No. Why would I?”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Who let Mrs. Sánchez into the house?”

“I did.”

The lack of reaction from the driver’s seat told me that Charlene had already learned this much from her client. “I talked to Rick too. He thought she had come to collect money from his father.” Kathy nodded. “Did you know she was coming over?”

“Yes. I asked her to.”

Charlene sat up straighter.

Kathy sighed. “I’m sorry, Charlene. I didn’t want to lie to you, but... I don’t know. It sounds so bad. The truth is... I arranged the meeting.”

Charlene said, “Well, well.”

“It was Ian’s idea. He said we should offer her less money. She wanted $250,000! He said offer her $100,000.”

“Why was Ian being so helpful?” I asked. “He hated Howard.”

“He cares about me.”

“Is he in love with you?”

“I suppose he is. He knew things were bad between me and Howard. I was depressed, and I wasn’t sleeping.” Kathy frowned. “Maybe Ian did have her number. The first time I called her, it was from his house.”

“Kathy.” I shifted between the seats to see her more clearly. “Did Mrs. Sánchez say she would accept $100,000?” “She said she’d think about it. I told Howard, and when he finished screaming at me, he said he would ask his tarot card reader. I’m serious. He had to get permission. She said yes, but he wouldn’t pay more than fifty, so I called Mrs. Sánchez back and told her. She said she’d come at 4 o’clock today and pick up a check.”

Kathy hugged her arms around herself and stared through the windshield. “Howard told me to get the door. It was raining, and... she was standing there in this long black raincoat. I didn’t want to let her in. I mean, I had this, like, premonition. She was going to kill him. I could see it. She was... death, and she’d come for him.

“I tried to close the door, but she held it open. Howard took her into the study. I heard them arguing. She started yelling and cursing, and I went to get Howard’s pistol out of the bedroom. I ran downstairs and opened the door, and she was killing him, swinging the machete up and down. I shot her. I kept on shooting till I just heard clicks.”

Tears were sliding down Kathy’s face. “It was my fault.”

“How can you think that?” Charlene pulled her close. “You didn’t know what she would do. She was out of her mind.”

“Yeah, she’s not the only one.” Laughing, Kathy opened her purse and found a tissue. “Can we go? I’m so tired. I want dinner. I have to sleep.”

“One more thing,” I said quickly. “This psychic that Howard used. Who is she?”

“Rosario...” Kathy closed her eyes, then said, “Cardona.”

“Did Ian know her?”

“I think he met her once. It was like two years ago. The grand opening of Ponte Vecchio — that’s Rick’s restaurant. Next to Señor Frog’s. Rick hired her to read palms. A marketing gimmick, you know? She read Howard’s palm and said he’d win his lawsuit with his partner. He did. The next week the judge ruled in his favor, so after that, he believed anything Rosario Cardona said.”

“She could have learned about the lawsuit from Rick,” I said. “Have there been any fights lately between Rick and his father? Ian said they had a big one a few months back.”

Shaking her head, Kathy said, “Rick was pretending to be very good. I don’t know if Howard believed him or not. I don’t care. Please. Can we go? I’m so tired.”

Charlene turned the key. “Sara, you ride over there with us. I’ll bring you back.” Headlights made a brilliant wash of white on the street. It was raining again, and the wipers moved silently across the glass. Charlene turned onto Brickell, a leafy canyon of bank buildings and million-dollar apartments. Banyan trees and royal palms divided the street. A short bridge took us onto Brickell Key, and out of habit I studied the cars behind us as we waited in line at the visitors’ gate.

“Howard didn’t kill her son. It was me.”

Charlene and I looked simultaneously at Kathy Zaden.

Her lips barely moved. “He wasn’t driving. I was.”

A horn sounded, and Charlene moved forward. Kathy twisted her tissue into a rope and started tearing pieces off the end of it. “We were having an argument. I wasn’t watching the road, and then I heard this loud... thump. I stopped the car and we got out. Howard was a doctor. I was screaming for him to do something. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me. ‘He’s dead. Can’t you see he’s dead?’”

Charlene pulled her eyes off Kathy long enough to give the guard the name of her friend in the condo.

“A truck came along with workers in the back. Howard told them he’d been driving and the man walked right in front of him. I didn’t say anything. I went back to our car and just sat there. I didn’t open my mouth.”

The gate arm rose, and Charlene moved at a slow speed toward the entrance of the Atlantica. She idled in the drive-way

“I had nightmares. I could hear the body hitting the car, then flying up and shattering the windshield, and the blood everywhere. Howard gave me some antidepressants, and I was okay, until Carmen Sánchez showed up.”

A uniformed valet waited under the bright lights of the portico.

Kathy said, “We’re here.”

Charlene pulled to the curb and pressed the trunk release. The valet opened the passenger side door, then hurried to get Kathy’s suitcase. I stood by the car. Charlene took Kathy into the lobby. Through the glass doors I saw them embrace.

When Charlene came back, she got in the passenger side. “You drive. I want a drink. I want a drink bad.”

We went to a quiet Cuban bar on West Flagler where for under $10 you could get a draft beer and a pretty good grouper sandwich. You could also smoke without getting cursed at. We found a booth in the back, and I gave Charlene one of my cigarettes when she held up two fingers.

She was on her third scotch and soda before either of us said anything about Howard Zaden’s murder. I told her I wanted to find Rosario Cardona.

“What for? You need your tarot cards read?”

“No, I’d like to know why she advised Dr. Zaden to let Carmen Sánchez come to his house. The woman was obviously unstable. It was like letting a rabid dog in the house.”

“Rosario Cardona was wrong.”

“Wrong? Oh, come on, Charlene. She’s a fraud. She rents out by the hour to read palms at parties. They’re all frauds.”

“No, they aren’t. I’ve had my palm read. She said I’d have a younger lover within the year, and I did.” Charlene set her elbow on the table and dragged in some smoke. She let it out slowly through an O of red lipstick. “You think someone paid her to set Dr. Zaden up? That’s far-fetched.”

“Probably.”

“Let’s just hope it wasn’t Kathy.”

The Yellow Pages listed two dozen psychics in the Miami area, but only one called Rosario. No address, but the phone number indicated an area about four miles west of Dr. Zaden’s clinic in Coral Gables, convenient enough. The flowery border of the ad encompassed a sketch of a woman’s hand holding a crystal ball and the name Rosario floating above it. Underneath she listed her specialties: Horoscope forecast. Crystal energy. Healing. Specialist in auras. Palm and tarot card readings. Call today for a better tomorrow. Private and confidential. Over 15 yrs. exper. At the bottom, a pair of scissors and dotted lines made a coupon: $25 off first visit.

When I called, I heard wooden flute music, then a female voice telling me, in English then in Spanish, that Rosario regretted not being available, but if I would leave my number...

I requested an appointment as soon as possible, and she called back an hour later and agreed to see me at 10 o’clock the next morning. It would cost me a hundred dollars.

I Xeroxed the page and clipped out the coupon.

Rosario Cardona’s studio was in a tree-lined warehouse district with rows of small shops and tree-shaded parking. I drove past open bays of unpainted wooden furniture, racks of clothing, and bright pottery, the sort of stuff that comes from China or Mexico in containers, to be grabbed by Miami Latinas hunting for a bargain.

She had told me to enter through number 8750-B. I parked and went into La Couture Shoes, specializing in knockoffs of $500 designer names with skinny straps, five-inch heels, and polka-dots, the kind of footwear that requires a professional pedicure. When a saleslady approached, I pointed at the stairs going up the left side of the shop.

Rosario rented the second floor. She didn’t have a sign on the street, so I assumed the landlord didn’t know. The stairs led to a door painted dark green. On the wall somebody had hung a framed print of a naked angel with long blond hair and golden wings, flying through pink clouds with a crystal ball in her hand.

The door opened, revealing a petite, dark-eyed woman in jeans, high-heeled boots, and a silky white shirt. Her hair was in a ponytail, and gold circles hung from her ears. She looked to be about thirty-five, younger than I’d expected. She had all the sexuality of a porcelain doll, but I could see how a man of fifty might keep coming back.

“Ms. Morales?” Bracelets tinkled softly as she took my hand. “Come in.”

My eyes had to adjust to the dim light. The room was about twenty feet square, with a painted concrete floor and area rugs. Candles flickered from wall sconces, shelves, and low tables. A brass chandelier with a dimmer on low hung from the midnight-blue ceiling. Wind chimes turned in front of the air vents, and water splashed in a rock fountain. There were display cases with crystals, oils, candleholders, and packaged sticks of incense; a revolving rack of greeting cards with angels, unicorns, and Native Americans; shelves of CDs and books.

A glance to my left revealed a fringed curtain, behind which the spiritual advising took place. The whole setup reminded me of La Botánica Lukumí, around the corner from my parents’ house, which I swear my grandmother had singlehandedly kept in business.

Rosario Cardona’s eyes rested on mine, unblinking. “You didn’t come for a reading, did you?”

I took a business card out of my shoulder bag. “I’m working for Kathy Zaden. I don’t know if you heard the news yesterday about her husband, Dr. Howard Zaden. He was one of your clients.”

“Yes, I heard about it.” Rosario set my card on the low table that held the fountain. “What a terrible tragedy. I am so sorry for Mrs. Zaden.”

“We’re trying to understand what happened. You knew him. If I could just ask you a few questions—”

“You know, I could have taken another appointment, but I made room for you.” She shook her head when I went for my wallet. “No. You should have told me, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Please take it.” I put five twenties on the table next to my card. “I should have told you.” And if you were for real, I said silently to myself, you’d have known. “Can we sit down?”

She was still giving me a look you couldn’t get through with an ice pick. “I’m sorry. I don’t discuss my clients.”

“Dr. Zaden is dead.”

A couple of seconds ticked by. She said, “Transformed.” Her voice was as soft as the glass wind chimes tinkling overhead. “We use the word ‘dead,’ but the dead are still with us.”

I started over. “His wife blames herself for letting Carmen Sánchez into their house. Carmen Sánchez is the woman—”

“Yes, the story was in the Herald this morning.”

“Kathy just needs to understand what happened. You advised Dr. Zaden to let Carmen Sánchez come pick up a check to settle her claims. Could you tell me why?”

I listened to the splash of water until Rosario took a breath, let it out. “All right. I’ll talk to you.”

She led me farther into the room, to an overstuffed sofa with wine-colored cushions and a cat curled up on one of them. I saw a woman in the corner. Candles flickered on her pale face, her red lips, her stiff hands. In the next instant I saw a mannequin dressed like a Spanish dancer in a black-lace mantilla.

“Jesus,” I muttered.

Rosario smiled up at me from the sofa. “Her name is Fátima. She’s my gypsy. She isn’t real, in the ordinary sense of the word, but she guides me. Please, have a seat.”

The cat wasn’t real either. It was one of those stuffed things made out of rabbit fur. Rosario set it on the coffee table. At least she didn’t pet it.

“Dr. Zaden came to me and asked what he should do about Carmen Sánchez. I said that he needed to free himself, and if he had to pay, so be it. We did some cleansing rituals, and I gave him some oils for protection.” She lowered her lashes. “I make no claim to perfect vision. I don’t always see the outcome. Tell his wife... Tell her that I am sorry.”

I’m usually pretty good at reading people, but I didn’t know if Rosario Cardona was real or as phony as her friend Fátima. “Did Dr. Zaden ever talk about his next-door neighbor, Ian Morris?”

“Yes. They had some problems. He and I tried to resolve them.” Rosario cocked her head as if puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

“Did Dr. Zaden ever say that Mr. Morris had talked to Carmen Sánchez, or that Mr. Morris knew how to reach her?”

“No. I can’t remember Dr. Zaden saying anything about that. Why?”

“You know Rick Zaden, Dr. Zaden’s son.”

“Yes, of course. I did a reading for him once, but that was before his father became my steady client. I don’t read for people in the same family. There could be conflicts.”

“Did Rick ever mention Carmen Sánchez to you?”

“No. I haven’t seen Rick in a long time.” Rosario Cardona lifted her brows. “These are strange questions. What is it you’re looking for, Sara?”

I had the sensation of walking on a moving sidewalk going the wrong way, losing ground. The sofa faced a long table piled with the implements of a Santera: strands of colored beads, a vase of feathers, a drum. Tall glass candle-holders for San Lazaro, Santa Barbara, San Antonio. I saw a flat can of lighter fluid and a long butane lighter, and I remembered my grandmother dancing around a circle of flames. I’d been in the middle of the circle on my knees.

As the air conditioner cycled on, the wind chimes tinkled softly and the candles flickered at the gypsy’s feet.

I said, “I’d like to know why Dr. Zaden died. I don’t think it’s as simple as it appears.”

She nodded slowly, not that she agreed with me, but that she understood. “Why does it have to be complicated? Most things aren’t. A woman was grieving for her son. She wanted justice. She wanted the blood of the man who killed him—”

“Howard Zaden didn’t kill him,” I said without thinking, then added, “I suppose he told you.”

“Yes. Kathy is responsible. And now she suffers. Carmen Sánchez got her justice. You see? It’s simple. The universe knows what it’s doing.”

I stood up, wanting to get out of there. “Thank you for your time.”

Rosario said, “Please take your money back. I haven’t earned it.”

“Keep it.”

As we walked to the door, she lifted her hand and held it close to my neck, not touching my skin, but I could feel the heat. “You’re very tense. Wait.” She went over to the display case and returned with a small brown glass bottle. “This is lavender oil, very good for tension, for headaches and sleeplessness. Take it with my compliments.”

She held onto my hand and came closer. Her eyes were huge, outlined in black. “I see... I see loss. I see grief.”

“What?”

“Was it a child?”

“Not mine. I never had any children.”

“But I do feel something, Sara. A death. There was a child, and it’s gone. You suffered from this loss.”

I dropped the little bottle into my purse. “That’s news to me.”

“Well, all I can tell you is what I feel. Someone died. A girl, I think. Maybe a young relative? The child of a friend?”

“You’re fishing, Ms. Cardona.”

With a smile, she crossed to the door and opened it. “Goodbye, Sara. If you would ever like me to do a reading for you, please call.”

I held on tightly to the railing on the way down, a habit I’d developed since my fall. Or maybe it was that my legs were trembling. I got halfway and leaned against the wall to catch my breath.

Rosario Cardona talked to a mannequin named Fátima. She had a stuffed cat and she believed in spirits. Bullshit. Total bullshit. So how had she known? When I’d fallen down the stairs chasing the suspect, I’d been two months pregnant and trying to decide what to do about it. I lost the baby. Nobody knew. No one, not even my mother.

The idea that Rosario Cardona knew made me queasy.

She hadn’t known, she’d guessed. She’d read my body language, picked up a clue in my reaction.

Simple.

As simple as the reason for Howard Zaden’s murder. He was dead because Carmen Sánchez had decided on her own to seek justice.

But I had no faith that Bill Nance would see it that way.

It took me the rest of the day to track down the owner of the red Toyota. He was a cook at a Nicaraguan restaurant in East Little Havana. The police had already been there. They had his car. He didn’t know Carmen Sánchez, except from the restaurant. The food was cheap, and she came in a lot. She had given him $50 to use his car for a few hours. She had seemed very nice, but she had murdered a man. Qué barbaridad! The cook didn’t know her, not at all, no. He’d only loaned her his car, and he wanted it back. The police were thieves. He thought that Señora Sánchez had lived in the pink apartments on Southwest 1st Street.

It was a two-story, stucco-over-frame building, twelve studio units built in the 1920s, when Miami was growing past the river. A ranchero tune came through open glass jalousies. I took the concrete steps to a door with a security screen. It wasn’t locked. The dim hallway went straight through, and stairs turned toward the second floor.

I asked an old man coming out of apartment four if a lady named Carmen Sánchez had lived here. In Spanish accented with Portuguese, he told me the police had just left. They had searched an apartment upstairs, the one right over his head, el número diez. Was it true she had killed two people with a machete? Was it true that she herself was dead? Thanks be to God. He’d thought something was funny with her, the way she never spoke to anybody, the things he’d heard through the ceiling. Candomble, Palo Mayombe, who knew what? He’d been afraid to complain. A woman like that. No, he’d never seen anyone come to her apartment.

I thanked him and took the stairs and walked to the middle door on the left side. It was open, leading to a small room with a vinyl tile floor, burglar bars at the windows, a single bed, and a kitchen area to one side. A big woman with her hair in pink rollers was cleaning out the refrigerator.

She saw me and asked if I was a reporter. She had already thrown reporters from four TV stations out of the building. I gave her my card and said I worked for the murdered doctor’s wife, and I had seen the dead bodies.

The woman closed the refrigerator and peeled off her rubber gloves. For the price of a few details about the murder scene, she agreed to talk to me.

She hadn’t seen any American men visiting Señora Sánchez. No men of any kind, or women. And no big yellow trucks had ever parked in the lot. She would have known. She kept her eyes open. Carmen Sánchez was crazy, no doubt about that. Just look. Look at all this.

She didn’t mean the ordinary clothes in the small closet, the shoes side by side on the floor, or the cans of beans and bag of rice in the kitchen cabinet. She meant the heavy purple curtains that made it dark as a cave in here if you closed them. She meant the things on that table over there in the corner. What kind of a crazy person would have such things in her house?

I’d seen the like in homes of Cuban believers in Santería but this made Nena’s simple collection look almost Puritan. Mrs. Sánchez’s altar had a three-foot-tall statue of St. Michael the protector, about to slash a demon with his sword. There were drums, conch shells, cowrie shells, beads, feathers, and carved gourds. There were candles in glass holders, dozens of them. Little bottles of perfumed oil. I saw a box of kitchen matches, four butane lighters, and a quart bottle of Ronrico rum. I lifted the lid of a wooden box and saw a pile of small charred bones.

“Did she burn these in the backyard?”

The landlady gave a shake of her head that bounced her pink rollers. No, that wasn’t allowed, burning bones. Such things were not permitted.

I thanked her for her time.

Before I went away to the police academy, my grandmother stopped crying long enough to make me promise to come over for a sacred fire circle. I’d seen her do one before, when my cousin joined the army, and he came back from Iraq in one piece. So I said okay. If it would make you happy, Nena, okay.

It’s best to do this under a full moon. You need a flat concrete surface, like a driveway. Or a back porch.

Mami was there, and my Aunt Josefa. I can’t say they believed, but they didn’t want to tempt fate, so they agreed to help. Nena made me kneel, then she used two entire cans of lighter fluid to make a circle around me. She clicked a lighter, and orange flames shot up in a whoosh of heat. I coughed on the smoke. Meanwhile, Aunt Josefa poured rum over the blade of a machete. I believe she got it from my Uncle Raul, who had been clearing weeds in their backyard.

Blue flames poured off the steel and dripped to join the orange circle. Nena took the machete and sliced through the flames. “Olodumare, rey del universo, protégela. Protege a esta niña. Cuídela.” She was praying to the gods for my protection in the line of duty, but I remember looking side to side and hoping none of the neighbors were seeing this insane little white-haired lady dancing around the fire.

The women passed the bottle around and filled their mouths. They pressed the trigger of a butane lighter and sprayed out the rum, which turned to a fiery blue mist. I was afraid my clothes would catch on fire, but miraculously all I felt was a cool rush of air. The orange flames sputtered and went out.

For years I thought Nena had invented this ritual, and that she and her friends used it as an excuse to get drunk. She had put her own touches on it, but she hadn’t made it up.

When I broke my back, Nena came every day to the hospital and reminded me I was alive. She said it was a sign: I should get out of police work and take a normal job like other women.

If Nena is looking on, I don’t know if she’s happy with what I do. It may not be a normal job, but it’s a job, and I’m pretty good at it.

For the second time that day, I went through the shoe shop and up the stairs to Rosario Cardona’s place. It was a few minutes past 6 o’clock, and her last client had just left. Heavy clouds were moving in, bringing an early twilight.

I knocked. Rosario Cardona frowned when she saw who was there. “I’m sorry, but I can’t see you now. If you could call tomorrow—”

“I only have one more question. I promise it won’t take long.”

I slid past her. The sound of New Age flutes and a harp came through hidden speakers.

Rosario pushed the door shut. “All right. What’s your question?” Her perfect little mouth was in a polite smile, but her body language said something else. Arms crossed, weight on one hip. The sharp heels of her boots cut into the rug.

“Has Rick Zaden been here lately?”

She waited for me to explain this. When I didn’t, she said patiently, “No. I told you, I haven’t seen Rick for a long time.”

“At his restaurant in the Grove.”

“Correct.”

“Then why — and I guess this makes two questions — why did the lady who owns the shop tell me she’d seen a yellow Hummer in the parking lot two days ago?”

Rosario Cardona shrugged, a slight lift of one shoulder. “There’s more than one yellow Hummer in Miami.”

“And last week, and sometimes at night—”

“It wasn’t Rick,” she said. “I don’t know whose car it was, but it wasn’t Rick’s. Excuse me, but I have work to do.” She went to the door and swung it open for me.

From my purse I took a small plastic bag and held it up to let her see the brown glass bottle inside it. “Do you remember this?”

“Yes. I just gave it to you.”

“No. You gave it to Carmen Sánchez. I found it in her apartment.”

There was the first flicker of dark anger in her eyes, like distant lightning. “Everyone sells that.”

“I called seven botánicas, and they never heard of Nature’s Meadow.”

“I don’t know what your little game is, but I want you to leave. Right now.”

I pivoted and crossed the room to the table in the far corner. The gypsy smiled blankly at me. Rosario’s boots thudded across the floor. “I’m calling the police.”

“Go for it.” I tipped a basket to see what was inside. “Bones. Mrs. Sánchez had these in her apartment too.”

“Get out.”

“How did you meet her? Did you bump into her by accident at Sedano’s Supermarket on Calle Ocho? At the Nicaraguan restaurant where she ate? No, not there. Someone might’ve remembered you. What did you say to her? I see loss. I see grief. A young man who died. Is that what you said? Rick knew she was nuts, but he couldn’t play her like you could. But you wouldn’t have used your own name. You couldn’t bring her here. Did you open a studio in Little Havana? Turns out, you didn’t have to worry. Kathy Zaden shot her.”

“I said get out!”

“I can’t decide if you’re sleeping with Rick Zaden or he’s paying you. It must be tough working over a discount shoe store.”

She leaped for the first thing in reach, a wrought-iron candle-holder about waist high. The candle flew off the top, leaving a bare black iron spike that came straight for me. She was a small woman, and I wrenched it out of her hands, put a hip in her side, and threw her to the painted concrete floor.

She lay there wheezing, no wind in her lungs. I picked up the stuff that had fallen out of my purse, including the bottle of oil. Maybe her fingerprints were on it, maybe not.

When I looked back at the shoe shop in my rearview mirror, they were turning off the lights, closing up.

I dialed a direct line to Miami homicide and listened to the rings on the other end.

What would Rosario Cardona do next? Make her own phone call. And then she and Rick Zaden would run around trying to figure out what to do, and they would trip over themselves. Rick wasn’t that smart.

I didn’t have all the answers, but I had a few.

A man’s voice said, “Nance here.”

Nena used to tell me that a psychic couldn’t read her own cards, couldn’t see into her own future. That must be right, because Rosario Cardona didn’t have the least idea what was coming for her.

The swimmers by Jeffrey Wehr

South Beach

Jacques first saw the other three Haitians through the darkness as he stepped into the go-fast boat at the dock in Freeport, Bahamas. They were sitting huddled together on the deck, leaning back against the side. Paul had nodded to Jacques in greeting as soon as he saw him, and Jacques returned the nod. Though sitting, Paul looked short, had a well-groomed mustache, and was bald. His wife, Bahy, looked even shorter, had thickset stubby hair, and was overweight. Bahy’s head rested on Paul’s shoulder and she looked at Jacques with suspicion, and then pressed her face against Paul so hard that Jacques could see her neck straining. He thought the third passenger, Emania, was beautiful — stick-thin legs, bulbous knees, high cheekbones, and night-black, shiny skin that glowed in the dim light from the wharves. The unblemished white of her eyes flickered when she blinked, and when Jacques looked for too long, she fixed them to the floor between her knees.

There were two Bahamians taking them; one was the driver and the other was to make sure the cargo didn’t try to take the boat. Jacques was told to sit low next to the other three, and not to talk or raise his head to look around. He sat then, listened to the lapping water and the few murmurs between the Bahamians. He leaned his head back against the fiberglass and noticed there were no visible stars or moon that night, or evident wind. The other three were looking back and forth at each other in distress and Jacques wanted to tell them not too worry, that it was a good night to cross.

There was intermittent laughter from the beginnings of a party a few piers down, where none of the Haitians could see, and the smugglers looked from their map. The second smuggler then told the four Haitians to go underneath through the hatch between the two front seats, and so the four crawled through the small opening. Inside there was one dim overhead light that flickered occasionally, a fiberglass counter to the side of the entrance (with a hole where a small sink had been removed), an empty fiberglass floor space that sloped up the sides, and a two-foot-high plywood platform (stained with the quilted pattern of a mattress) that occupied the front half of the cabin, contouring the long V-shaped bow to a point. It smelled strongly like mold, vomit, and gasoline, and Bahy made a whimper noise as they sat on the curved floor against the walls.

“It is not that bad,” Paul told her. He looked at Jacques, who sat next to Emania across from him. “I am Paul.”

Jacques introduced himself and they began talking in Kreyol. Jacques learned Bahy had a wealthy cousin in Weston who had sent them $6,000 in the Bahamas to pay the smugglers. Once they reached Florida, they were to use a pay phone to call him collect and let him know where to pick them up. They had never been to the United States before but were excited for their new lives. Paul was planning on becoming an immigration attorney (he was an attorney in Cap-Haitian) to help other Haitians that arrived, and Bahy wanted to finish high school and then study to be a nurse.

Before Jacques could talk to Emania, the second smuggler poked through the hatchway and said, “We are leaving now.” Then he closed the door. They heard the engine start, then rumble and spit as they pushed from the slip. The overhead light flickered, then shut off, and they drifted into the darkness where they hoped the United States was.

For the next three hours they bounced on the sloped floor as the boat smacked one wave after another at high speed. Jacques watched young Emania’s shadow as she carefully moved from her spot next to him to the top of the platform where she had enough room to kneel on all fours, hoping she could adjust her body to absorb the shocks more effectively. Bahy rubbed Emania’s leg as they bounced, and the plywood snapped against the platform with each rebound from her weight, making it sound like there were firecrackers exploding inside. Jacques knew she must be sick and waited for her to vomit.

After an hour, the second smuggler opened the hatch and flashed a light in, then directed it on her. “Is she cool?” he yelled over the sound of the motor.

“Yes,” Paul said back.

“She better not retch, mon.”

Paul stared at the silhouette of the man. The man stayed a few more moments, then backed out and closed the door.

Jacques began to fear that if she vomited they would try to throw her over, and tried to prepare himself for it. He created the scene in his mind while watching Emania: the driver grabbing her from under her arms while the other grabbed her legs, avoiding her kicks. Jacques dug for the courage then, so when they tried to take her he would not freeze in dismay, and would step forward to defend her. Emania never vomited though, or at least not that Jacques could tell.

They reached the coast of Florida in early-morning darkness. The four felt the driver slow the boat and their bodies began to relax some after hours of impacting the waves. Then they heard the sound of sand scraping the bottom and the boat jerked to a stop, sending their torsos forward in unison.

“We must be on the beach,” Paul said. The engine was shut off and the hatch opened. The second smuggler, talking above the cursing of the driver, told the four to come up top. Once there, Jacques saw they were not on the beach, but had run aground on a sandbar a hundred yards offshore.

“Get in the water,” the man said.

Paul’s eyes widened. Bahy put her trembling hand to her heart and shaped her mouth like she was going to make a noise, but nothing came.

“We are not on land yet,” Jacques said. “We paid for you to take us to the shore.”

“We need you to lighten the weight and help shove the boat off. We’re stuck.”

“We will not do it,” Paul said.

“Didn’t you hear me, we’re stuck! We’re all going to get caught!”

“You get out then too,” Paul said.

The driver turned around, shoved the second man out of his way, then rushed up to Paul and seized his arm. He put a pistol to Paul’s forehead, moving his wet face and fierce eyes closer, his gun hand shaking. “Get the fuck off the boat,” he said, tapping the barrel on Paul’s head six times, one for each word that had strained through his clenched teeth.

Paul stared to the man’s side, unable to make eye contact. Jacques looked on, pressing his lips together tight in anger. The man breathed hard through his nose, then stepped back from Paul and waved with the gun for all of them to go in the water. Jacques put his legs over the side and hopped in first, finding the sandbar was about two feet below the surface. He helped Emania into the waves carefully, then helped ease Bahy in while Paul held her by her arms from the boat and whispered encouragement. She was so scared she claimed she couldn’t use her legs.

“I cannot feel them, Paul. What’s holding me up?”

Paul hopped in and the two Haitian men were able to shove the boat afloat again. As it drifted, Jacques jumped to it and clung onto the side to keep it from moving too far, but the second man kicked his fingers off and pointed the pistol at him as the driver started the engine.

They were left alone waist deep in the darkness, listening to the motor grow quieter behind the sound of the crashing surf. They turned and could see the lights of the hotels along the beach across the expanse, and the sky beginning its first shade of dark blue, then hugged themselves and shook from the cold.

“My wife, she cannot swim,” Paul said to Jacques.

“You don’t know that,” Bahy said. “I’ve never tried.”

Paul kept his eyes on Jacques. Jacques met his glance, but didn’t know what Paul wanted him to do. He looked at the distant beach.

“We shouldn’t try now anyway. I see someone running,” Jacques said.

“What?” Bahy was panicked, and pulled Emania close. “They are running to get the police!”

“No, no. They are running for exercise,” Jacques said.

“What? Who runs for exercise? Paul, what kind of place are you taking me to?”

“Hush up.”

“Do not tell me to hush up.”

“We should go on after that runner, before too many people are on the beach,” Jacques said.

“She cannot swim,” Paul said. His eyes were wide now. He tried to keep his balance against the waves.

Jacques looked at Paul for a few moments. “After I go, please give me at least a half hour before you yell for help.”

“No!” Bahy said. “I am not going back to Haiti.”

“Hush up.” Jacques’s and Paul’s eyes stayed on each other. Then Paul looked at the water. “We will.”

Jacques nodded. Bahy held on to Paul’s arm, darting her eyes between them.

Emania swayed with the water a few feet behind. She pointed to the beach and said, “Look!”

Jacques distinguished a man driving an ATV and scanning the water a few feet offshore with a spotlight. They all dropped to their knees, so that the waves frequently covered their backs or knocked them over. Then they heard the sound of a helicopter, but didn’t see anything.

“Maybe they are looking for us,” Paul said.

Jacques stared at the ATV. He wanted to swim to the beach right then, to get it over with before the sun came. Everybody would see them on the sandbar during the day, the lifeguard, the helicopter, the beachgoers. But the ATV wouldn’t leave. The driver finally parked next to a small dark structure on stilts fifty yards down the shore. He would see Jacques cross the beach no problem now, and might have a radio in there. Jacques supposed he could swim, then crawl across the beach. Or even run — they can’t catch him with a radio. The water looked dark and wild. He was scared of it. He stayed on the sandbar. They all fought the waves in silence, each trying to figure out their circumstances.

Bahy began protesting again and Paul moved her slowly through the crashing waves to the other side of the sandbar to talk things out, which frustrated Jacques. He wasn’t sure he wanted to wait for them, but he couldn’t leave while they were away. It would be rude. He cursed once, then remembered Emania was close. She held her crossed arms against her stomach and Jacques knew she must still feel sick.

“Can you swim?” he asked her.

“I think so.”

“You’d better know. You might drown.”

She was offended. “I can make it. Can you?”

“Yes, but I can’t carry you.”

She was silent. Then she said, “You don’t have to carry me. You don’t have to do anything for me.” She glanced at the beach and rung out a portion of her T-shirt.

Jacques looked at the water. “Your mother can’t swim. Your parents might have to call for help.”

“She’s not my mother. They are friends of mine.”

Jacques didn’t respond. He was curious, but didn’t want to waste time

“I am going to swim no matter what they do,” she said, then looked at Jacques. “And if I can’t make it, you will carry me on your back like a boat.” She smiled. Then she seemed o shrug off her nausea and Jacques couldn’t get her to stop talking.

She told Jacques that she was the citizen of no country; her parents had emigrated from Haiti to Marsh Harbour, Bahamas before she was born, and then conceived her there. She was not a Haitian citizen, in fact had never been to Haiti, and was refused Bahamian citizenship because her parents were Haitians. She had lived her whole life with her mother and father in a one-room plywood shelter in a crowded ghetto west of Marsh Harbour called Pigeon Pea, until eight months earlier when her parents had died from cholera within a week of each other.

Emania told Jacques that over the seventeen years her father was in the Bahamas, he had worked as a gardener for a large vacation estate, and after nine years had saved enough money to get all three of them to the U.S., but was swindled by smugglers who left him with nothing. He found out later that the three men who cheated him were brothers who never even owned a boat, and who used the money to travel to Las Vegas in the U.S. Her father started over and began saving again, but became paranoid. He kept all their savings in their shelter and wouldn’t let his wife and Emania have any friends, scared if anyone found out about the money they would be killed for it. He kept the savings in a steel padlocked box buried three feet deep in the ground beneath the ant-infested carpet, and would dig it up and rebury it every Friday when he was paid. To save money on dinner, he often collected shellfish from the shallow reef on the vacation estate’s property for himself and Emania’s mother, though Emania refused to eat them. For her, he would buy ramen noodle packages at the convenience store on the way home from the estate and she would boil them and eat separately. It was those shellfish that gave her father cholera, and he died before he could again make enough for all three to be smuggled, refusing to pay even a dollar for simple medical treatments that would have saved him, and with his haggard last words told Emania and her mother not to pay for a funeral.

Afterward, there was enough money for Emania and her mother to hire smugglers, but her mother had become paranoid too without her husband and was afraid to approach a smuggler. She fell sick to cholera (spread either from the shellfish or her husband’s vomit) and died before she could arrange anything. The bodies were taken and disposed of by the Bahamian government, and Emania was cleared of having the disease. They wanted to burn her shelter, along with others nearby, but her neighbors had gathered into a mob that wouldn’t let the police near. The Bahamians compromised and posted a sign at the entrance to the settlement warning of cholera. No one else there ever caught it.

Then she was alone and had seven thousand dollars, but was too scared to let anyone know. She kept it buried like her father had, and for eight months would occasionally dig it up in the middle of the night and take only small amounts for ramen noodles and wedding-planning magazines. She spent her nights praying like she had with her mother. During the day, she looked in the magazines at cakes, dresses, flowers, and planned for her day; she was to be married within the rose bush — bordered vineyards of the Ledson Winery in Sonoma Valley on a cloudless day — the groom (as of now, a nameless man who better behave himself) arriving on horseback and situating himself under the arch. Then Emania would appear from the winery’s castle, striding elegantly to his side, escorted by no one. She had the dress narrowed down to six choices and was going to wait to try them on before a decision, but most likely it would be the Alvina Valenta style #AV3159, the pink one with the side slit and deep cowl back.

“The Avrils said they would find me work somewhere,” she told Jacques. “They would help me find a place too. They were able to transfer the rest of my money to Bahy’s cousin in the United States.”

“You don’t know anybody else here?”

“No, do you?”

“No.”

“We should stay together then,” Emania said. She looked at Jacques firmly, then pulled herself to him so that they held each other. Their faces were close enough that Jacques saw her white eyes through the darkness, saw how desperate she was for someone, anyone, to know and to know her. He saw hope in her eyes too; she could see the Unites States now, it wasn’t a myth, and she had a man by her side. He knew she thought the Lord was answering her, affirming she had been right to faithfully wait in solitude. He wanted to pull her close and press her head against his chest and tell her she was right. He wanted to give her a place and a life where she belonged, and could afford the dress. But he couldn’t give that. He had been enduring for a long time too, and now it was the only thing he knew how to do; instinct wouldn’t let him give, no matter how much he wanted to. He wasn’t there yet.

The Avrils were arguing when they drew closer. Bahy still claimed she could swim, but in their twenty years of marriage Paul had never seen her do so.

“It is dumb, Bahy, to drown just because you do not want to go back to Haiti,” Paul said.

“I can swim.”

“Then swim now. Let’s see you swim.”

“Where am I going to swim? If I swim, it’s going to be to the beach.” She sounded angry, but Jacques could see she was crying. Paul took Jacques aside and gave him the contact information card for Bahy’s cousin in Weston. It was wet, but still intact, and Jacques put it in his back pocket.

“Let him know we did not make it,” Paul said. “Please.”

Before the top of the sun could glimpse over the water, Jacques and Emania began the swim together, and to Jacques’s disillusion, were followed by the Avrils.

Once Paul and Bahy jumped into the depths from where they could stand, Bahy had begun swatting the water in hysteria while Paul treaded at her side, trying to calm her and keep her afloat in the current. They both became exhausted, and Paul used all of his remaining energy to hold her in his arms. Bahy responded by halting her frenzy to hold him. She held him so tight that it forced all his air out, but he didn’t let go. They sank until they were standing on the sand and coral, and in the darkness she gave him a quick peck on the lips while the surface heaved only four feet above. Their bodies were found still together two days later by a fisherman about a mile north, so bloated that they at first looked like the body of a single strange sea creature being carried in by the tide.

Jacques reached the beach first and ran to the shadows beside a hotel to wait for Emania, and to put on the tennis shoes he had wrapped around his neck for the swim. Five minutes passed and she didn’t show. He leaned his face as close to the shadow’s edge as he dared and squinted, but couldn’t see past the unlit beach to the water. The sound of squeaking wheels echoed off the wall, and he ducked behind a large shrub against the building in time to avoid a cleaning woman pushing her cart. The woman’s cell phone rang and she stopped the cart on the concrete path in front of him to spend valuable minutes scolding what must have been her child or husband.

After she moved on, Jacques came out from behind the shrub and saw Emania face down in the sand about thirty feet up the beach, toward the small building on stilts. He began to move in her direction through the knee-high grass along a low fence marking the upper border of the beach, then saw the headlight of the ATV turn on and heard the engine fire. Within seconds, the machine was roaring and bouncing at full speed toward her. Jacques stepped into the darker shadows, then leaned against the hotel building behind him. As he watched, he beat his palms against the concrete until his wrists hurt.

At last he decided there was nothing he could do. He cut through the hotel property and ran west as fast as he could — only stopping while crossing the deserted width of A1A to snatch off his sloshing tennis shoes and throw them into a cluster of shrubs beside a bank. He crossed a canal bridge and found cover in the semidarkness of a strip mall parking lot where the bridge reached the mainland, then keeled over and vomited.

After heaving a few minutes, he walked behind the strip mall and found a faucet on the building in the alley. He drank until he was full, and then washed his face to flush the sea salt taste that was migrating to his mouth from his face and hair. A light wind funneled through the alley and chilled his body under the wet clothes. Part of the sun appeared and poured through the hotels and across the canal. Jacques looked to the direction of the beach.

He tried to conjure the image Emania must have glimpsed as she struggled against the waves with her throbbing lungs and tight heart, choking on saltwater and tears: the silhouette of Jacques reaching land, then springing from all fours and running across the beach in panic. Then the hardness of the dry, dark beach after she had crawled from the waves and waited in exhaustion for Jacques to reappear and take her numb arm into his grip. She had told him she could make it, and she had. She had done her part, and now he was to come forth and carry her on his back, not like a boat then, but like a car or that ATV, all the way to Sonoma Valley. But she did not feel his grip, and not trusting her sense of touch, kept her eyes open slightly to see if she was being carried or dragged. And when she heard the ATV fire up, she must have realized he was truly gone, that he had already begun in America, perhaps had already made his fortune and was happily married. And again she was alone, and so this time gave up. Her face showed no indication, nor did she make a sound — she merely tucked her arms under her head like a pillow and fell asleep, oblivious to the dry sand pasted to the wet on her lips.

Jacques couldn’t know what happened after she was found; that she was given a bed in a clean hospital where she slept and was hydrated. That she was questioned days later and admitted to the officials that the middle-aged couple found drowned had been on the sandbar with her, but no one else. That she was transferred to Krome Detention Center outside Miami to be incarcerated for over a year and raped twice before being repatriated to Haiti, where she had never been and knew no one. He couldn’t have known all this, but still he dropped his gaze to the tangle of shadows on the concrete behind the strip mall, and began crying.

The ink had bled on the contact card Paul had given him, but the penmanship was still clear. He had seven American dollar bills, folded together and pasty. He washed his face one more time under the faucet, then shook the drops from his fingers and began to walk.