My mouth opened to say “which brother?” before I realized I’d never again have to ask that.

“Carlos called?”

“Yes, sir. He sounded in some distress. We lost the connection before he could convey his message, but we managed to track the location of the call. Should we dispatch a team there now?”

“No, Griffin and I will take it. Could you please send the GPS coordinates to—” I glanced through the divider at Griffin, who lifted four fingers, “—car four.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And do you have a tape of Carlos’s call?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll play that for you now.”

THE TAPE TOLD me little. Nothing, in fact, except that it did appear to be Carlos and not someone who’d found his phone and randomly hit speed-dial. He demanded to know why the network circuits were jammed and why a call to our father hadn’t gone through. And he wanted to speak to “whoever was in charge there.” Carlos wouldn’t know the names of anyone “in charge” of the security center.

The operator then made the mistake of asking “Is this Carlos Cortez?” Perhaps she was unable to believe the subject of the intense manhunt that was jamming the circuits was actually calling in. Or perhaps she was simply following protocol, confirming his identity before passing the call along.

Her reward was a string of profanity, and a threat that she’d be jobless if she didn’t transfer the call in five seconds. As for what happened next, I’m sure there would be an inquiry into the matter, and someone might indeed become jobless, because the line went dead. Carlos may have hung up. Or the flustered operator had made a mistake. Or the overloaded circuits disconnected the call.

The operator had called Carlos back, but only got his voice mail. Then she’d phoned me.

Had the call been a clumsy attempt to provide himself with an alibi? Pretend not to know why the circuits were jammed and our father unavailable, as if his ignorance would prove he hadn’t been responsible? Or in light of my father’s survival, might Carlos be trying to betray his comrades in the conspiracy to save himself? Or perhaps Carlos was not involved at all and was, this moment, at risk himself?

For my father’s sake, I hoped for the last explanation and I hoped we would arrive in time.

THE ADDRESS TOOK us into southern Little Haiti, to a street that seemed to be trying to edge into the adjacent Design District. The art community had claimed about one quarter of the storefronts, and the “cafes and coffees” trend consumed another. In the remaining half, family-run Haitian businesses struggled to hold on, resisting the move to gentrification.