“No!” shouted Falcon. “He can’t drink yet. If he drinks, he’ll die. No water!”

The Bushman made a face, confused. “What are you talkin’ about, mon?”

Falcon couldn’t find a response. His thoughts were scattered, and he was too tired to chase them. He looked at the Bushman, then at Johnny. No one said anything, but Falcon no longer felt welcome. “I’m going home.” He stepped right over Johnny and continued on his way, following the footpath along the river.

Slowly, the rush of anger subsided, and he was beginning to feel the cold again. His thoughts turned toward home. He would definitely sleep in the trunk tonight. That was by far the best place on cold nights, offering complete shelter from the elements. Just thinking about it brought a warm feeling all the way down to his toes. Forget those losers and their scraps of cardboard under the bridge. Who needed their insults and aggravation?

He was just a few yards from home when he stopped in his tracks. A fire was burning beside his house. Not a big, raging, out-of-control fire. It was a little campfire. A stranger was seated on a plastic milk crate and warming his hands over the flames. No, not his hands. Her hands. Falcon’s visitor was a woman. She spotted Falcon and rose slowly, but not to greet him. She just stared, and Falcon stared right back. In this neighborhood, her appearance was far more curious than his. Hers were not the clothes of a homeless woman. The overcoat fit her well, and it still had all the pretty brass buttons in place. There were no holes in her leather gloves, no fingers protruding. The shoes were new and polished. Her head was covered with a clean white scarf. It almost looked like a nappy. A well-dressed older woman with a diaper on her head.

Falcon took a half-step closer, then stopped.

“Who are you?”

She didn’t answer.

“Who are you?”

Silence. Falcon tried another angle.

“What do you want?”

Still no answer. Instead, she simply started walking around the campfire, walking in circles, walking in silence. Falcon’s hands started to shake. He clenched them into fists. He bit down hard on his lower lip, but a fireball was burning inside him, and there was no containing it. “Get away, get away from me, GET AWAY FROM ME, WOMAN!”

He shouted at her over and over again. He shouted at the top of his voice. He shouted until he couldn’t shout anymore. He gasped for air, and it felt so cold going down that he thought it might sear his lungs. He wanted to run, but there was no escape.

Because he did indeed know who she was, this Mother of the Disappeared.

And he knew exactly what she wanted.

I t was after midnight, and Alicia was still standing outside Houston’s Restaurant waiting for the valet attendant to bring her car around. That was one way to crack down on drunk drivers, make everyone wait till dawn at the valet stand. Next time she would be sure to drive her yellow Lotus or red Ferrari and get “preferred parking” right at curbside.

Her cell phone rang inside her purse, which, in turn, was inside a doggy bag. She planned to bring the whole thing into the lab in the morning to have them check for fingerprints, which could confirm that Falcon was the lipstick bandit. She let the phone ring to voice mail, but it started ringing again. Someone was psycho calling her. She wrapped her hand in a tissue, carefully removed the phone, and answered it. It was her father. He wanted to know where she was, and she told him.

“Sweetheart, your mother and I think you should come home tonight.”

“I am going home.”

“No, I mean here, with us.”

She was twenty-seven years old, and her parents still thought of their house as her home. It was a price she gladly paid for being the only daughter of a Latin father. “Papi, it’s late, and I have to work in the morning. I’ll come by this weekend.”

“We’re just concerned for you, that’s all.”

There were times in her life when she could have sworn that her parents knew everything about her-including whom she was dating and whether he called her or nudged her in the morning. But could they possibly know that her purse had been stolen? “Why are you concerned?”

“You know why. That Falcon wacko is out on bail.”

“That seems to be the top news for the night.”

“This is serious, Alicia. The state attorney assured me that setting bail at ten thousand dollars was as good as throwing away the key on this guy. That obviously didn’t turn out to be the case. He may be a drifter, but we have to be very careful with him.”

She couldn’t have agreed more, but she didn’t want to worry her parents further by telling them about the stolen purse. “Look, I can’t come over tonight. But I promise, first thing tomorrow I’ll meet with the chief and the state attorney about tacking on a restraining order to the terms of release.”

“All right. That’s a good plan. But be careful going home tonight.”

“I’m a cop, remember?”

“You’re my daughter first. We love you, that’s why we worry.”

“Love you, too. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

The valet brought her car around as the call ended. The drive home took fifteen minutes, which she spent in total silence, no radio. The stolen purse had given her plenty to think about, enough to make her stop worrying if the call to Vince had been a mistake-for now, anyway. Phone calls to old lovers, particularly those made from a bar, usually didn’t start replaying in your mind until about three a.m.

Alicia lived alone in a Coconut Grove townhouse. The Grove was part of the City of Miami, an area unto itself that was well south of downtown. Alicia was one of eight of “Miami’s bravest” assigned to patrol it. Long before the developers took over, the Grove was known as a Bohemian, wooded enclave, a haven for tree lovers and flower children of the 1960s. Some of that charm had managed to survive the bulldozers and wrecking balls. The sidewalk cafés on Main Street were as popular as ever, and finding your way through the twisted, narrow residential streets beneath the green tropical canopy was a perennial right of passage in Miami. But to Alicia-to any cop-the Grove was essentially a world of extremes. It was a place where some of south Florida’s most expensive real estate butted up against the ghetto, where the mayor’s multimillion-dollar mansion was just a short walk from his daughter’s “questionable” townhouse. The Grove could ser vice just about anyone’s bad habit, from gangs who smashed and grabbed, to doctors and lawyers who ventured out into the night in search of crystal meth, to the distinguished city councilman in need of a twenty-dollar blow job. But yes, it did have some of that old charm, whatever that meant, and Alicia couldn’t imagine living anywhere else in Miami.

“I hate this place,” she muttered. Searching for a parking space always made her feel that way. Naturally, some jerk had taken her assigned space outside her townhouse, so she was forced to cruise the lot for a visitor’s spot. She found one next to the Dumpster, which of course meant that her car would be covered with raccoon tracks in the morning. She turned off the ignition, but her Honda continued to run. It sputtered twice, the chassis shook, and then it died. Never before had she owned a car that made such a production out of killing the engine. This one was such a drama queen, which was why she’d named it Elton.

She got out and closed the car door. An S-curved sidewalk led her through a maze of bottlebrush trees and hibiscus hedges. A rush of wind stirred the leaves overhead-another blast of Arctic air from one doozy of a cold front. She walked briskly, with arms folded to stay warm, then stopped. She thought she had heard footsteps behind her, but no one was in sight. Up ahead, the sidewalk stretched through a stand of larger ficus trees. The old, twisted roots had caused the cement sections to buckle and crack over the years. It was suddenly darker, as the lights along this final stretch of walkway were blocked by sprawling limbs and thick, waxy leaves.