So why was she still lying in bed knowing, not just thinking, but knowing, that it wasn’t going to work out and she was going to have to go through that whole high school–like breakup thing that never changed no matter how old you got. She watched the lines of sunlight hit the corner of her room like bars of paint and with each minute shear off at a new angle. Scared to tell him? Yeah, maybe. That whole thing with him disappearing out of Kim’s when those other cops came in. The punch he’d bruised her with last night. Did he hit her high on the thigh because he knew it wouldn’t show? That people wouldn’t ask her what happened? They learn about that, cops did, didn’t they? Sure, he’d snapped at her before, but he always apologized, always told her how sorry he was and how much he really, really cared about her. But what had once been flattering and endearing was starting to make her feel wary, like one of Daddy’s stewing rabbits out in the pens in the barn. They’d get petted and fed and cooed at for being so cute and fluffy but every older kid knew what happened to stewing rabbits when it was time. Kyle was waiting for something. And there was no way she was going to wait and see what it was.
CHAPTER 18
I was up in north West Palm Beach, three blocks from the hotel where Rodrigo was staying, waiting for him to meet me under the huge poinciana near the corner of Twelfth and Wright streets. The “flame tree” Rodrigo called it, because it was the time of year when the poincianas bloomed and the trees’ blossoms were thick and the color of fire feeding off an unlimited supply of clean, dry wood.
I parked my truck in the shade of the tree’s canopy and watched as the earliest blossoms, already leached of their life, fell on my hood like splotches of paint. The soiled orange color made me think of the scar on Rodrigo’s face and then there he was across the street. He was walking with his eyes down, hands in his pockets in the unobtrusive but wary manner that people other than beat cops will never notice.
“Mr. Max,” he said, climbing into the cab.
“Rodrigo, Kumusta ka?”
“OK,” he said and immediately, wanting to please, pulled a sheet of ruled notebook paper from his jacket pocket and smoothed it on his thigh before handing it to me.
“For Mr. Manchester. Names of others hurt in the fire,” he said and his eyes looked up through the windshield into the blossoms and he blew a short whoof of air from his nose at the irony of meeting under an umbrella of flame to discuss the matter at hand.
“But they are afraid,” he said. “For the jobs they are afraid to talk to you, Mr. Max.”
“Has anyone been scaring them, Rodrigo? Has there been anyone talking about organizing some kind of labor union or threatening you not to?”
The small man averted his eyes and his short, thick fingers went nervous.
“There is always talk. But only in whispers, Mr. Max. And we are only a few here now and we know it takes numbers, this union.”
I reached into the space behind his seat and took the manila folder Billy had given me and showed him the DOC photos of the Hix brothers.
“Have you seen these men? Talking with the workers or just hanging around?”
He studied the faces, holding them side by side.
“This is the one,” he finally said, fluttering the picture of David Hix, whose jaw I had broken with the top of my head.
“He is big, like you. Yes, Mr. Max?”
“Yeah, he’s big. Where?”
“He big here.” The little Filipino patted his stomach with both hands. “Fat, here.”
“No, no,” I said, unable to keep from smiling. “Where did you see him?”
“I see him at the food stand. Not talk to nobody. Sit and watch. Just watch.”
I wondered if Hix had seen me with Rodrigo and his friend the week before, if that had been enough to put him on to me by someone who had hired him to look big and ugly in front of the workers.
“I watch him follow the, the, what you say?” Rodrigo said, putting his fingers to his thumb and finger to his mouth.
“Smokers,” I said. “He followed the guys when they went for a smoke?”