I kept track of where we were going. The car executed a number of turns. At first, we headed north up U.S. 1, but soon we turned west on Davie and back into the Riverside neighborhood on the north bank of the river. There were parts of this neighborhood I wouldn’t venture into after dark. Though there were some waterfront homes, most behind locked gates, much of the area was made up of poorly tended cinder-block homes and federally funded apartment buildings. Heaps of trash lined the streets, and little kids in dirty underpants turned to stare at the big car as we passed.
It scared me that Cesar didn’t seem to care about my seeing where we were going. I’d read enough thrillers to know that this was definitely a bad sign. He wasn’t worried about my being around long enough to point fingers. I started exploring the interior of the car, trying to find something I could maybe break off and use as a weapon. I slid my fingers down in the crack behind the seat, and something sharp pierced my skin.
“Ouch!” I pulled my finger out; it was bleeding a little. More carefully this time, I felt around for the sharp object. I touched something finally, and pulled out a thin chain with a tiny golden angel. Ely’s angel. She’d had it on the day we walked on the beach, so she certainly must have ridden in this car. I closed my eyes and pressed the angel to my cheek, wondering if she had left it there intentionally as evidence. I suspected she had. I slid the necklace into my pocket and watched the big dark eyes of the neighborhood children staring at the tinted windows of the limo.
We pulled up finally in front of a large ranch-style house, all ambling stucco, dark-tinted windows, and overgrown, unimaginative landscaping. Dense areca palms shielded the house from both the street and the neighbors. Cesar got out, opened the backseat door, and stood there glaring at me, waiting for me to crawl out. I hadn’t even stood up straight when he grabbed my upper arm again and nearly yanked me off my feet.
“Hey!” I started to complain, but suddenly my face stung and my head flew to the side from the force of the open-handed slap.
“Shut up,” he said. And I did.
Cesar pulled me to the front door, opened it, and pushed me inside. From the entryway, I could see through the living room, decorated apparently by the designers from Motel 6, and out the sliding glass doors to the pool. The rain had stopped and the last rays of the sun angled in under the dark clouds bathing the scene in an orange sunlight. A white powerboat was tied to the dock outside, Hard Bottom written in script across the bow. A smaller runabout was tied up behind it. It looked like the Sea Ray.
Two men stood on the wood deck by the Jacuzzi talking. One was the tall body builder Big Guy. He had two bags of diving gear in his arms. The other was a rail-thin man with a long blond ponytail. I could tell from the way they were gesturing that an argument was under way.
Big Guy saw me through the glass door and nodded in our direction. The ponytailed man glanced at me briefly, then walked off to the far side of the pool.
Big Guy opened the sliding glass door and stepped soundlessly onto the thick carpet. He was wearing swim trunks, and blue veins stood up like a relief map on his forearms as he slid the door closed with his one free hand. He walked over to the hallway and whistled once. A huge black-and-white pit bull bounded into the room. The dog turned his massive head briefly to inspect me, and a deep low growl vibrated across the room. Then he returned his gaze to the big man.
“Zeke, look who’s here,” said Cesar, tilting his head in my direction.
Zeke. I’d heard the name. Then I remembered he was Crystal’s cousin, the one Jeannie had told me about, the freighter captain Crystal had been bringing drugs to when he got busted.
“Heel,” Zeke said to the dog, then walked over to join us. “Hey, Cesar. This the girl? Funny, she doesn’t look so tough.” I recognized his high-pitched, almost effeminate voice from that night on the beach. The dog stayed at his side but reached his muzzle out and licked Cesar’s hand.
“Ugh, get your fuckin’ dog away from me, Moss. Christ, that dog slobbers all over everything.”
“Chewy, sit.” The dog obeyed like a well-trained soldier. Zeke walked over to a milk crate full of dive tanks and dumped his bags of masks and fins. “Hey, Cesar, take this crap out to your car.” He kicked the dive gear toward Cesar. “The boss isn’t here yet. He wants the boat all cleaned up, and you know how he gets.” The new, shining gear was encrusted with salt. The jerks hadn’t even bothered to rinse it off when they got back from their dive yesterday. “He said he didn’t want us trying to talk to her”—he jutted his chin in my direction—“till he gets here.”
Cesar pointed to the couch. “Sit,” he said to me. I complied. “Hey, Zeke, this bitch obeys as good as Chewy.” He laughed and went out through the front door carrying all the fins and tanks in one load.
Zeke got a beer from the fridge, sat on a high stool at the bar and ignored me.
“So who’s workin’ tonight?” Zeke asked as Cesar came back in the door.
“He brought this new chick. Boss is really gonna like her.”
“They doin’ a threesome thing again with Lex and the ponytail?” Zeke nodded his head in the direction of the third man on the patio.
Cesar helped himself to a beer, and the two men were laughing. “Yeah,” Cesar said. “I mean, you should see the tits on this chick.” He cupped his hands in the air.
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.” Cesar’s deep voice made it sound like the word crawled up out of his belly. He curled his upper lip into his snarl-like smile and reached into the kitchen, grabbing an open bag of chips. He stuffed a handful in his mouth. “Muy guapa. ” Small flecks of bright orange spittle flew out of his mouth. “And young, whoo, not more than fifteen goddamn years old.”
Zeke grabbed the bag from the other man and reached in. He chewed with his mouth open and licked the salt from his lips.
“We’re talking fresh pussy—natural blonde, too.”
I clenched my fists and literally bit my tongue, hoping the pain in my mouth would be something to concentrate on so I wouldn’t hear what they were saying and do something really stupid. I had to be smart to find a way out of this, and I intended to take Sunny with me.
Other than the living room, there was a hall to the right of the front door that led into what looked like a dining room. The kitchen was opposite that, and a passthrough bar made part of the kitchen visible from where I sat. I slid over on the couch to try to see what was down the other hall, to the left of the front door. The dog, Chewy, made a rumbling noise low in his throat when I moved.
“You better not try nothin’. Chewy’ll kill ya’ if I tell him to,” Zeke said. “Chewy, ready?” The dog rose to his feet, the fur around his neck bristling. The big man laughed, and his suntanned pectoral muscles bounced. “Down, boy.” The dog lay back down. “Good boy.” The glass door slid open again, and the skinny ponytailed man walked in on a gust of warm, humid air. He, too, wore swim trunks that rode so low on his imperceptible hips that I wondered how they stayed up. After a quick glance at the two beer drinkers, the corners of his mouth turned down and he ignored them.
Cesar spoke to the ponytailed guy. “Eddie, you seen her yet? The new girl?”
“Shut up, asshole.”
“You fuck . . .” Cesar started up off his barstool, but Zeke’s straight arm prevented him from going after the skinnier man. “I’m so fuckin’ tired of his attitude. Think I need to teach him to show a little respect.”
“Respect for what?” Eddie sneered. “Some muscle-bound goon dumb as a rock?”