"Deborah," I said carefully. "I think you're a little bit upset-"

"You're goddamned right I'm upset," she said. "I bust my ass to get Samantha Aldovar back, and now she's gone again-and I'm betting Bobby Acosta has her, and he's going to get away with it."

Of course, it would have been more accurate for Debs to say she had busted my ass getting Samantha back-but now was not the best time to correct her, and anyway I suspected she was right about Bobby Acosta. Samantha had gotten into this because of him, and he was one of the last people left who could still help her fulfill her dream. But at least it offered a way out of the awkward moment-if I could steer the conversation on to where Acosta was, rather than what to do with him.

"I think you're right," I said. "Acosta got her started on all this. Samantha would go to him now."

Deborah still didn't sit back down, and she was still looking at me with red spots on her cheeks and fire in her eyes. "All right," she said. "I'm going to find the little bastard. And then…"

Sometimes a short reprieve and a change of subject is the very best you can hope for, and clearly I was there now. I could only hope that in the time it took to find Acosta, Debs would calm down a little bit and decide that feeding her felon to Dexter was not the wisest course. Maybe she would shoot him herself. In any case, I was off the hook-temporarily, at least.

"Okay," I said. "How are you going to find him?"

Deborah straightened up and ran a hand through her hair. "I'll talk to his old man," she said. "He's got to know Bobby's best chance is to walk in here with a lawyer."

That was almost certainly true-but then, Joe Acosta was a rich and powerful man, and my sister was a tough and stubborn woman, and a meeting of two such people would probably go a lot smoother if at least one person present had just a tiny smidgen of tact. Deborah had never had any; she probably couldn't even spell it. And judging from his reputation, Joe Acosta was the kind of man who would buy tact if he ever needed any. So that left me.

I stood up. "I'll come with you," I said.

She studied me for a moment, and I thought perhaps she was going to tell me "no" out of sheer perverseness. But then she nodded. "Okay," she said, and she headed out the door.

Like most people who live in miami, i knew a good deal about Joe Acosta from what I'd read in the newspapers. It seemed like he had been a county commissioner forever, and even before that little chunks of his life story had slipped into the media from time to time. It was the kind of story that makes for wonderful, heartwarming reading, a real boy-makes-good tale. Or in Acosta's case, perhaps it should be chico makes bueno.

Joe Acosta had come to Miami from Havana on one of the first Pedro Pan Freedom Flights. He had been young enough at the time to make an easy transition to America, but he stayed gusano enough over the years to keep a high standing in the Cuban community, and he had done very well for himself. He had gone into real estate in the boom time of the eighties and put all his profits into one of the first big developments south of South Miami. It had sold out in six months. And now Acosta's construction and development business was one of the largest in South Florida, and driving around town you saw a sign with his name on it at nearly every construction site. He was so successful that even the current financial meltdown apparently hadn't hurt him too badly. Of course, he didn't need to rely solely on his construction business. He could always fall back on the salary of six thousand dollars a year he made as a county commissioner.

Joe was about ten years into a second marriage, and it seemed like even the divorce had not wiped him out, because he still lived very well and publicly. He was often in the celebrity gossip section of the papers, pictured with his new wife. She was a British beauty who had been responsible for a number of truly terrible techno-pop dance hits in the nineties and then, when the public realized how awful her music was, she came to Miami, found Joe, and settled into a comfortable life as a trophy wife.

Acosta kept a business office on Brickell Avenue, and that's where we found him. He had the entire top floor of one of the newer skyscrapers that were remaking the Miami skyline into something that looked like a giant mirror had fallen from outer space and shattered into tall and jagged shards that were now jammed into the ground at random intervals. We got past the guard in the lobby and rode up to the top in a sleek elevator. Even Acosta's ultrachic steel-and-leather waiting room had a wonderful view of Biscayne Bay, though, and that turned out to be a good thing. We had plenty of opportunity to enjoy it, because Acosta kept us waiting for forty-five minutes; after all, there is no real point in having clout if you don't use it to make the police uncomfortable.

And it worked wonderfully well, at least on Deborah. I sat and flipped through a couple of very high-end sports-fishing magazines, but Deborah fidgeted, clenching and unclenching her hands and her jaw, crossing and recrossing her legs, and drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair. She looked like someone waiting for the methadone clinic to open.

After a while, I couldn't even concentrate on all the glossy pictures of ridiculously rich men with one arm around a bikinied model and the other around a big fish, and I put down the magazine. "Debs, for God's sake, stop fidgeting. You'll wear out the chair."

"That son of a bitch is keeping me waiting because he's up to something," she hissed.

"That son of a bitch is a busy man," I said. "As well as being rich and powerful. Besides, he knows you're after his son. And that means he can keep us waiting as long as he wants. So relax and enjoy the view." I picked up a magazine and offered it to her. "Have you seen this issue of Cigar Aficionado?"

Debs slapped the magazine away, making a thwack noise that sounded unnaturally loud in the hushed and clinical elegance of the waiting area. "I'm giving him five more minutes," she snarled.

"And then what?" I said. She didn't have an answer for that, at least not in words, but the look she gave me would almost certainly have curdled milk if I'd been holding any.

I never got to find out what she might have done after five minutes, because after only three and a half minutes more of watching my sister grind her teeth and jangle her legs like a teenager, the elevator door opened and an elegant woman strolled past us. She was tall, even without the spike heels, and her platinum-colored hair was short, possibly to keep it from hiding the gigantic diamond that hung around her neck on a thick gold chain. The jewel was set in the eye of what looked to be an ankh, but with a sharp, daggerlike point to it. The woman gave us one snooty glance and went right to the receptionist.

"Muriel," she said in an icy British accent. "Send in some coffee, won't you." And without pausing she went by the receptionist, opened the door to Acosta's office, and sauntered in, closing the door behind her.

"That's Alana Acosta," I whispered to Debs. "Joe's wife."

"I know who it is, goddamn it," she said, and went back to grinding her teeth.

It was clear that Deborah was beyond any of my paltry efforts at bringing her comfort and joy, so I grabbed another magazine. This one was devoted to showing the kind of clothing you have to wear on boats that cost enough to buy a small country. But I had not even looked at it long enough to discover why twelve-hundred-dollar shorts were better than the kind that cost fifteen dollars at Walmart when the receptionist called to us.

"Sergeant Morgan?" she said, and Deborah shot up out of her chair as if she were sitting on a big steel spring. "Mr. Acosta will see you now," the receptionist said, and waved us at the office door.