I wended my way among the trailers, new home to immigrants from Caribbean islands and Central American countries, all trying to carve out a piece of the pie for themselves as so many had done before them. Some of the men bag groceries during the day and wait tables at night. Their wives work as domestics and take in laundry, and their kids pick up English and graduate from high school. Some will study business and law and medicine at the university. Others will hang out on street corners and bum smokes and deal crack. Others will just get along, making neither waves nor headway. In short, these folks soon will be just like everybody else.
I ducked under a soggy white slip and panties, hanging limp on a clothesline. It took a few minutes, but I found Crespo’s trailer, one of those old models that looks like a thermos jug. I found it by staring right at its shiny aluminum side and having the glare of the sun nearly blind me. I closed my eyes and watched a parade of red and blue dots march across my eyelids. The trailer sagged onto deflated tires. Two folding chairs with torn straps sat under a red-and-white awning out front. Curtains were drawn on a side window. The front steps were two concrete blocks which led to a screen door. Inside, a dragonfly buzzed and snapped against the screen.
I thought there was movement inside the trailer when I banged on the door, but it could have been my imagination. I put my face to the screen, but it was dark inside. Sweat began to trickle down my neck.
“Francisco, it’s me, the best abogado in town.”
Nothing.
Suddenly, a radio was turned on inside. The tinny sound of a Cuban talk show, turned up too loud.
“… para opinar sobre lo que dijo la senora esa que llamo hace un ratico para protestar sobre las fincas que ella perdio en Las Villas, que se las quito Fidel a sus abuelos en 1961.”
I called his name again.
“… es que todo eso es ‘lo que el viento se llevo.’ Hay que ‘hacer borron v cuenta nueva.’ Si no, nos vamos a quedar aqui treinta anos mas.”
“Francisco. Are you in there?”
Still nothing. I listened some more. On the radio, the deeper voice of the comentarista. “Yo estoy de acuerdo. Ademas, aqui en Miami dicen que si Cuba en realidad hubiera tenido tantas fincas como las que los exilados dicen que les fueron confiscadas por Fidel, que Cuba tendria que tener el tamano de los Estados Unidos…”
Then what sounded like a pop-pop, but it could have been the radio.
I let the dragonfly out and myself in.
It took a moment to get used to the darkness.
“Francisco.”
The living room had a small sofa and cheap mica coffee table. A twelve-inch TV with rabbit ears sat on the floor. Yesterday’s issue of Diario Las Americas was on the table, open to the sports page. The talk show was coming from the galley kitchen where a portable radio sat on the counter. But no one was there. I walked to the counter and turned off the radio. Two Key limes sat in a basket and half a dozen potatoes were soaking in a sinkful of water.
The only sounds now came from outside, the blaring of a television from across the row of trailers, the midday news in Spanish. The announcer competed with the voice of a woman in a nearby trailer, then silence, then her voice again, talking with someone on the phone. A dog barked, one of those small yip-yap-yappers that make you think the Vietnamese have the right idea. From somewhere on Tamiami Trail, a police siren wailed.
The door to the bedroom was partly open. Sweat rolled down my back, chilling me. It was no more than three steps to the bedroom. I took them slowly, listening for movement. The only sound from inside the trailer was the creak of metal under my feet.
I slowly pushed the door open, took a half-step into the room, and saw Francisco Crespo on the bed, lying on his back. Two blackened holes stained the front of his T-shirt. I had stepped on something that squished under my shoes, and I looked down at the floor. As I did, the door snapped back, smacking me a glancing shot on the shoulder and a solid thwack on the forehead. I heard something crack and hoped it was the paper-thin door. I had been hit harder by skinny wide receivers who know how to throw a crack-back block. But still I staggered backward, from the blow or the surprise, I didn’t know which.
A shape rushed past me, a man dressed in brown or black who was either tall or short, young or old. He passed eight inches in front of my face, and I never got a look at him. I have always been dumbfounded at witnesses who give such god-awful descriptions to police when they’re really trying. And now here I was, unable to focus on who just bashed me on the head and most likely put two holes in the chest of Francesco Crespo. I had only an instant to think about the wiry guy who used to bring me Gatorade, who once put his life on the line for me, and who most recently trusted me to protect him. There was the flash of shame, the realization I had let him down, and worse, that somehow I had led him to his death.
I heard the screen door bang, realized I should do something, and took off. I skipped the concrete block steps and jumped to the ground, just catching sight of him from behind, weaving his way around an old Chevy slouched onto cinder blocks and a splintered wooden dinghy that sat on the ground. He was wearing brown, or maybe khaki, work pants and a matching shirt.
He looked stocky, but he didn’t run stocky. Gliding steps. Coaches have a word for it. Fluid. No wasted motion. The head stays still, the arms pump but not too high. There’s a word for my running style, too. Herky-jerky. All arms and legs, grunts and groans, working hard, getting nowhere fast. I was the slowest linebacker on the team, but not the dumbest. I made up for a lack of natural ability with decent instincts and a lot of hard work. I studied film till my eyes blurred, learned tendencies of offensive linemen and receivers, and generally knew a split second before the next guy where the play was going. I wished I had a playbook now.
The man in brown was a decent broken-field runner. He did a nifty job avoiding an overturned tricycle, a hibachi, and a woman in curlers with coppery red hair. I remembered the agility drill with the tires as I hopped the tricycle and hibachi but didn’t try it with the woman, though she was nearly short enough. Ahead of me, the man ducked between two trailers, heading toward the outer boundary of the lot.
When I turned the corner, there was just a streak of brown, turning left between a pink-and-white trailer and a canal that separated the lot from the cemetery. I kept my eyes on the trailer and picked up my pace. Coach Shula always started summer practice with the twelve-minute run. Not a jog, a run, and in the ninety-degree heat, ninety-percent humidity, a lot of my teammates left their breakfast on the practice field. I may not have led the pack, but I never hurled either.
I made the turn and saw him scrambling on all fours near a live oak tree that bordered the canal. It occurred to me then what I was doing. Here I was, without even a stick, a stone, or an Italian leather briefcase, and I was chasing a guy who had a gun. And had just used it. Yes, Abe Socolow, you’re right. Sometimes circumstantial evidence is very persuasive.
I didn’t know what I’d do if I caught him. He was thirty yards or so away when I saw him duck as he neared the tree, then… whoosh… my feet were swept out from under me. My body was jolted upright, my feet were off the ground, continuing their running motion like Wile E. Coyote, and I wondered who had crushed my Adam’s apple. No one threw a flag or blew a whistle, and I crumpled to the ground, looking up to see the clothesline humming like a guitar string.
T he sweat was pouring off me when I got back to Crespo’s trailer. I gingerly walked into the bedroom, felt a squish beneath one foot, and looked down to see a potato splattered in pieces across the floor. It made no sense to me.
I was trying to swallow but couldn’t. In football, a forearm across the throat is called a clothesline, for obvious reasons. As a linebacker, I had lots of chances to level receivers coming across the middle that way. Never did it intentionally, so why aren’t the gods kinder to me?
I looked toward the bed. I half expected the body to be gone, like something from a Hitchcock movie. Now, Mr. Lassiter, you say you saw Mr. Crespo with two bullet holes in him. Really, had you been drinking? But Crespo was still there, lying on his back, hands beneath him. I rolled him over. The hands were tied at the wrists with baling wire. I felt for a pulse. Not a flicker. As I held his wrist, I saw a metallic glint in Crespo’s palm. I pried open the fingers, and something fell out, rolling across the bed and onto the floor. I found it among the potato pieces-a gold rabbit holding an egg of what looked like brown glass flecked with gold. A loop that would have held a thin chain was fastened to the bunny’s head. Somehow, I doubted that the gold rabbit was part of Francisco Crespo’s personal jewelry.
I picked up Crespo’s phone with two fingers and called the police, Abe Socolow, and Charlie Riggs. The cops were there first, Abe next, and Charlie last, but he had to interrupt a med school lecture on figuring date of death by
