“Then we stick to the fired ones,” he said, and in just a few moments he had printed out a list with, as he had said, less than a dozen names and last known addresses on it —nine, to be exact.

Deborah had been staring out the window, but when she heard the printer whirring into action she stalked over and leaned on the back of my chair. “What've you got?” she demanded.

I took the sheet of paper from the printer and held it up. “Maybe nothing,” I said. “Nine people who were fired.” She snatched the list from my hand and glared at it as if it was withholding evidence.

“We're going to cross-check it against their files” I said, “to see if they made any threats.”

Deborah gritted her teeth, and I could tell she wanted to run out the door and down the avenue to the first address, but it would certainly save time to prioritize them and put any real zingers at the head of the list. “Fine,” she said at last. “But hurry it up, huh?” We did hurry it up; I was able to eliminate two workers who had been “fired” when Immigration had forced them out of the country. But only one name moved right to the top of the list: Hernando Meza, who had become obstreperous —that's the word the file used —and had to be removed from the premises forcibly.

And the beauty part? Hernando had designed displays at airports and cruise terminals.

Displays, like what we had seen at South Beach and Fairchild Gardens.

“Goddamn” Deborah said when I told her. “We got a hot one, right off the bat.”

I agreed that it looked worthwhile to stop and have a chat with Meza, but a small and nagging voice was telling me that things are never this easy, that when you get a hot one right off the bat, you usually end up right back on the bat again —or dodging as the bat comes straight at your face.

And as we should all know by now, any time you predict failure you have an excellent chance of being right.

Sin determinar

NINE

Hernando Meza lived in a section of Coral Gables that was nice, but not too nice, and so, protected by its own mediocrity, it hadn't changed much over the last twenty years, unlike most of the rest of Miami. In fact, his little house was only a little more than a mile from where Deborah lived, which practically made them neighbors. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to influence either one of them into acting in a neighborly way.

It started right after Debs knocked on his door. I could tell by the way she was jiggling one foot that she was excited and really thought she might be on to something. And then when the door made a kind of mechanical whirring sound and opened inward to reveal Meza, Deborah's foot stopped jiggling and she said, “Shit.” Under her breath, of course, but hardly inaudibly.