I had called Morrell from the car to let him know I would be a little late, just a little. He had sighed, the exaggerated sigh of a lover who is always being stood up, and said if I wasn’t home by eight he and Don would eat without me.

The exchange sent me into Cocodrilo in a bristly mood. I let the door bang shut behind me, like Clint Eastwood, and put on my Clint Eastwood face: I own this bar, don’t mess with me. There were maybe fifteen people inside, but it was a small place, and dark, just a narrow room with a high counter and a couple of rickety tables jammed against the wall, so it was hard to survey the crowd.

The television over the bar was tuned to a soccer match, Mexico versus some small Caribbean island. A few men were watching, but most were talking or arguing in a mixture of Spanish and English.

Cocodrilo seemed to be a young man’s bar, although there were a few older faces—I recognized one of the men from this afternoon’s construction site. And it was definitely a man’s bar: when I walked in, conversation died down as they eyed me. A trio near the door thought they’d try a smart remark, but my expression sent them back to their beer with a surly remark in Spanish—whose meaning I could certainly guess, even though it hadn’t been in my high school text.

I finally spotted Diego, my center Sancia’s boyfriend, in a small knot at the far end of the room. The man next to him had his back to me, which made him easy to recognize—he had the thick, dark hair and camouflage jacket I’d trailed through the warehouse a couple of hours earlier.

I pushed my way past the trio at the door and tapped him on the shoulder. “Freddy! And Diego. What a wonderful coincidence. We’re going to talk, Freddy.”

When he turned, I saw Rose was right: he did have sort of pretty-boy good looks in his high cheekbones and full lips, but she was also right—indolence and drugs were eating away at them.

Freddy looked at me blankly, but Diego said, “The coach, man, she’s the basketball coach.”

Freddy stared at me in dawning alarm, then shoved me hard enough to send me reeling. He barged down the narrow length of the room to the front door, knocking over a bottle of beer as he went.