and I joined the others. Billy had put Rodrigo at ease and they were clasping hands, the lawyer saying something again in Tagalog and adding: “Please have Allie take down that phone number and Mr. Avino’s contacts. Ako’y nagpapsalamat, Mr. Colon for your courage.” When Rodrigo stepped out to Allie’s desk Billy turned to me.
“Thanks for b-bringing him in, M-Max. I think w-we can work this without too much t-trouble. That part about the lower rung of workers getting p-paid by the cabin boys to handle some of their w-work so they can impress their supervisors by increasing their own n-numbers. It’s amazing. The hungry ones work twenty-hour days just to g-get ahead. It’s like an entire s-social crab pot on each sh- ship with race and color and p-payoffs all tossed into the mix and all invisible to the American customers around them.”
“Nothing a good union couldn’t fix,” I said, only half joking.
“There’s a p-political land mine,” Billy said. “How about if we just try to get some of these m-men compensated for having their faces b-burned off?”
“Sounds fair to me. So how come the rest of them won’t join up?”
“They’re scared, M-Max. He says the Filipino job brokers have long arms. They make money by providing cheap labor, not on workers who have to get paid for injuries. He says the p-pipeline from Manila to Miami is short enough to send an enforcer to shut down dissent. They’re all looking over their shoulders.”
I told him I’d watch out. I’d already given Rodrigo my pager and cell number. We were already setting up prearranged sites off the street. But I didn’t want to tell him that I couldn’t afford to be the guy’s twenty-four-hour bodyguard when we had other cases to work. My own acceptance of Richards’s request had just put another pinch on time and I wasn’t going to bring it up. I changed the subject.
“Speaking of politics,” I said, motioning toward his desk and the photos and layouts.
Billy did not bother to look back.
“She w-wants to be a judge. I t-told her I would help in any way I could.”
I stayed quiet. I knew Billy. His face said more was coming.
“But it s-seems that the good ole boy p-political cabal th-thought, when they heard her fiancé was a r-respected attorney, I’d be an asset.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “They didn’t know you were black?”
“How w-would they? I’m never in the courtroom. N-not much for their f-fund-raisers or cocktail circuit.”
“Jesus, Billy,” I said. “You think that’s going to make a big difference?”
He looked past me for a few moments. I could see something working behind his eyes, a twinge of pain he rarely ever showed. I wondered if he’d misconstrued my question, thought I’d pointed it at his and Diane’s personal relationship.
“In love and politics, M-Max, everything m-makes a difference,” he said, manufacturing a wry grin. “When you mentioned the paparazzi the other night, you weren’t far off. We’ve caught people taking photographs of us together before, on the street, coming out of the courthouse, leaving one another’s apartments.”
“Campaign sludge?” I said. “I doubt an interracial marriage would cause a second look in South Florida.”
Billy was still watching out over the skyline.
“State p-politics doesn’t get run by the residents in South Florida, M-Max. The power is still in Tallahassee where the real South still runs d-deep.”
His knowledge of law and languages aside, Billy had not left his ghetto beginnings and real-life taste of racism behind. I did not want to get into a discussion of his paranoia, or my naïveté, and left him at the window.
I drove Rodrigo to the block where he took treatments at a small walk-in medical clinic. Once again, around the corner and out of sight, we had lunch at a whitewashed lunch counter that opened out onto the street, with a row of worn swivel stools that sat on the sidewalk concrete. The place bragged on its original Cuban sandwiches and Colombian arepas. After my first mouthful I decided they were justified. If you can back it up, brag on.
While we ate, Rodrigo introduced me to three other cruise workers who had obviously come at his urging. One man wore a bandage from his wrist to his shoulder. Another covered his head with a large-brimmed hat, but I could make out the signs of singed hair and burn scars at the nape of his neck. I took down names and promised only to pass them along to Billy. I paid the bill and