"That was in 75," the Shriner added.

"By then his knees were shot," Keyes said half-heartedly. He didn't feel much like defending any creep who'd sucker-punch him in a place like Pauly's. In all his years as a reporter he had never been slugged. Not once. He had been chased and stoned and menaced in a variety of ways, but never really punched. A punch was quite a personal thing.

"You should file charges," Nell suggested.

Keyes felt silly. Here was this stout little woman searching godforsaken neighborhoods in the dead of night for her missing husband, while Keyes just moped along feeling sorry for himself over a lousy bump on the neck.

He asked Nell Bellamy about Theodore. She mustered herself and told, for the sixteenth time, all about the convention, the venomous jellyfish, the unorthodox lifeguards, and what the cops were saying must have happened to her husband.

"We don't believe them," Burt said. "Teddy didn't drown."

"Why not?"

"Where's the body?" Burt said, swinging a beefy arm toward the ocean. "There's been an easterly wind for days. The body should have floated up by now."

Nell sat on a seawall and crossed her legs. She wore blue slacks and a modest red blouse, not too vivid. Biting her lip, she stared out at the soapy froth of the surf, visible even on a moonless midnight.

The loyal Shriners shifted uncomfortably, conscious of her grief. For the sake of distraction Burt said, "Mr. Keyes, what'd you say you do for a living?"

Keyes didn't want to tell them. He knew exactly what would happen if he did: he'd have a missing-persons case he really didn't want.

"I work for some lawyers in town," he said ambiguously.

"Research?" Nell asked.

"Sort of."

"Do you know many people? Important people, I mean. Policemen, judges, people like that?"

Here we go, Keyes thought. "A few," he said. "Not many. I'm probably not the most popular person in Dade County."

But that didn't stop her.

"How much do you charge the lawyers?" Nell asked in a businesslike tone.

"It depends. Two-fifty, three hundred a day. Same as most private investigators." No sense ducking it now. If the fee didn't scare her off, nothing would.

Nell got up from the seawall and daintily brushed off the seat of her pants. Excusing herself, she took the Shriners aside. Keyes watched them huddle in the penumbra of a streetlight: a chubby, pleasant-faced woman who belonged at a church bake sale, and on each side, a tall husky Midwesterner in a purple fez. Nell seemed to do most of the talking.

Keyes ached all over, but his head was the worst. He checked his pants pocket; miraculously, his wallet was still there. Just thinking about the three-mile hike back to the MG exhausted him.

After a few moments Nell approached again. She was holding a folded piece of paper.

"Do you take private cases?"

"Did I mention that my fee doesn't include expenses?"

Not even a flicker. "Are you available to take a private case?"

"But, Mrs. Bellamy, you just met me—"

"Please, Mr. Keyes. I don't know a soul down here, but I like you and I think I can trust you. My instincts usually are very sound. Most of all, I need someone with ... "

"Balls," Burt said helpfully.

"You marched into that awful tavern like a trooper," Nell said. "That's the kind of fellow we need."

The decent thing to do was to say no. Keyes couldn't take this nice woman's money, feeding her false hope until poor Teddy finally washed up dead on the beach. Could be weeks, depending on the tides and the wind. It would have been thievery, and Keyes couldn't do it.

"I'm sorry, but I can't help."

"I know what you're thinking, but maybe this'll change your mind." Nell handed him the folded paper. "Someone left this in my mailbox at the hotel," she explained, "the morning my husband disappeared."

"Read it," said the Shriner named James, breaking his silence.

Keyes moved under the streetlight and unfolded the letter. It had been neatly typed, triple-spaced. Keyes read it twice. He still couldn't believe what it said:

Dear Mrs. Tourist:

Welcome to the Revolution. Sorry to disturb your vacation, but we've had to make an example of your husband. Go back North and tell your friends what a dangerous place is Miami.

El Fuego,

Comandante, Las Noches de Diciembre

Brian Keyes delivered a photocopy of the new El Fuegoletter to Homicide the next morning. Afterward he went to the office to feed the tropicals and check his messages. The Shriners had called from the county morgue to report that no one matching Theodore Bellamy's description had turned up in the night inventory of Dade County corpses. There was another call-me message from Mitch Klein, the public defender. Keyes decided not to phone back until he knew more about the letter.

At noon Keyes returned to police headquarters. "Let's go eat," Al Garcia said, taking him by the arm. Garcia didn't think it was a swell idea to be seen around the office with a private investigator. They rode to lunch in the detective's unmarked Dodge, WQBA blaring Spanish on the radio. Garcia was nonchalantly dodging deranged motorists on Seventh Street, in the heart of Little Havana, when he stubbed out his cigarette and finally mentioned the letter.

"Same typewriter as the first one," he said.

Keyes wasn't surprised.

"The Beach police think it's a crackpot," Garcia added in a noncommittal way.

"What do you think, Al?"

"I think it's too hinky for a crackpot. I think to myself, how would this Fuegoknow about Bellamy so soon? Almost before the cops! And I think, where's the connection between this Bellamy guy and B. D. Harper? They didn't even know each other, yet after each one comes these death letters. Too hinky, like I said."

"So you're ready to spring Cabal?"

Garcia laughed, pounding on the steering wheel. "You're hilarious, Brian."

"But Ernesto didn't kill Harper and he damn sure didn't snatch this drunk Shriner."

"How do you know?"

"Because," Keyes said, "the guy's a burglar, not a psychopath."

"Know what I think, brother? I think Ernesto is El Fuego"

"Give me a break, Al."

"Let me finish." Garcia pulled the Dodge into a shopping center and parked near a Cuban cafe. He rolled down the window and toyed with another cigarette. "I think your little scuzzball client is El Fuego,but I also think he didn't dream up this scheme all by his lonesome. I agree with you: Cabal ain't exactly a master criminal, he's a fuckin' burglar, and not very good at that. This whole thing sounds like a bad extortion scam, and our pal Ernesto, he don't have the brains to extort a blow-job from a legless whore. So he had help. Who? you're asking me. Don't know for sure, but I'll bet it's this mysterious superhuman black dude Cabal's been crying about ... "

Keyes related his encounter with Viceroy Wilson at Pauly's Bar.

"You deserve a good whack on the head for showing your shiny angel-food face in that snakepit," the detective said. "You wanna file A-and-B on the sonofabitch?"

"Just find him, Al."

"Yes sir, Mr. Taxpayer, I'll get right on it."

"This might help." Keyes handed Garcia a scribbled note that said "GATOR 2." "It's the tag on the Caddy that Wilson was driving."

"Hey, you do good work. This'll be easy," Garcia said. "Come on, let's get a sandwich and some coffee."

Both of them ordered a hot Cuban mix and ate in the car, wax paper spread across their laps.

"Al," Keyes said, savoring the tangy sandwich, "what do you make of the name of this group? Las Noches de Diciembre—the Nights of December, right?"

Garcia shrugged. "Usually Cuban groups name themselves after some great date in their history, but the only thing I know happened in December is Castro came to power—nothing they'd want to celebrate. 'Course, there is another possibility."