photographer when he and the Sergeant and Lonnie Kite returned to the marina in the Safe Boat. He couldn’t have looked more americano if he made a conscious effort… tall… floppy blond hair, absolutely straight… a pointed nose… “I’m sorry for intruding hunh hunh hunh hunh. Did you read my story this morning?” said John Smith. “Was I fair?” He smiled. He gulped. He opened his eyes like a pair of morning glories.
As far as Nestor was concerned, this John Smith’s turning up in this parking lot at midnight might as well have been the sort of apparition that people who don’t sleep and don’t exist are prey to… He still had enough sanity left, however, to take this americano at face value. He wanted to ask the americano what he was doing here, but he couldn’t come up with any diplomatic way to put it. So he merely nodded… as if to say, tentatively, “Yes, I read your story and yes, you were fair.”
“I know you’re probably hunhunhunhunh about to go home,” said John Smith, “but could you spare just a couple of minutes? There’s some things hunhunhunhunh I need to ask you.”
An eerie form of elation brought Nestor’s numb central nervous system back to life. He was reconnecting with… something, in any case. Someone, even if only some americano newspaper reporter he didn’t even know, was offering him, if nothing else, an alternative to driving around all night talking to himself. The vagabond in the Camaro! Homeless in the headlines! But all he said was “About what?”
“Well, I’m writing a follow-up story, and I’d hate to have to write it without getting your response.”
Nestor just stared at him. ::::::Response? Response to what?:::::: The word set off a nameless sense of dread.
“Why don’t we go have a cup of coffee or something and sit down?”
Nestor stared at him some more. Talking to this baby-faced reporter could only get him in trouble unless some lieutenant or captain or deputy chief okayed it. On the other hand, he had talked to this guy twenty-four hours ago, and that was okay… and as long as he talked to the press, he existed. Was it not so? As long as he talked to the press, he was… somewhere. Wouldn’t you say? As long as he appeared in the press he belonged in this world… You had to use your imagination… He knew there was not a lieutenant, a captain, or a deputy chief in this world who would understand that, much less swallow it. But maybe they would understand this: “Greatgodalmighty, Lieutenant, put yourself in my shoes. I’m all alone. You can’t even imagine how alone.” It all boiled down to one thing. He needed someone to talk to, not in the sense of talking to a priest or anything like that. Just someone to talk to… just so he could feel like he existed again, after twenty-four hours’ terrible toll.
He gave reporter John Smith a very long, blank stare. He once more nodded yes without a trace of satisfaction, never mind enthusiasm…
“How about that place over there?” said the reporter. He was pointing toward Inga La Gringa’s bar.
“It’s too loud in there,” said Nestor. That much was true. What he didn’t say was that the noise would be coming from other Marine Patrol cops coming off the shift. “There’s a place called the Isle of Capri, over on Brickell, near the causeway. They’re open late and you can hear yourself talk, at least. It’s a little on the expensive side, though.” What he didn’t say was that no cop coming off the shift anywhere in Miami would be going to a place that expensive.
“Not a problem,” said John Smith. “It’s on the paper.”
Off they drove to the Isle of Capri, each in his own car. As soon as Nestor turned on the ignition in the Camaro, the air-conditioning blasted him in the face. As soon as he slipped the floor shift into drive and started off, the muffler blew. In concert the air-conditioning and the muffler rupture made him feel trapped inside one of those leaf blowers that are so loud, the seven-dollar-an-hour operators have to wear baffles over their ears… Trapped inside a leaf blower he was… questions were blowing around in his head. ::::::Why am I doing this? What’s in it for me, besides trouble? What’s he want me to respond to? Why would this be “on the paper,” as he put it? Why should I trust this americano? Just