“You find your guy yet?”
Louis looked up. Swann was standing at the cell door, hand on the bars.
“Not yet.”
“Hurry it up. I have to get back.”
Louis went back to the cards. He was almost finished with the stack for 1984 when a name stopped him.
Emilio Labastide.
He was twenty-five years old, six foot one, and 170 pounds. He was a gardener, and his employer was a company called Clean amp; Green, located in West Palm. There was no social security number-something that would have made it easier to trace him.
Louis stared at the small photograph. Labastide was handsome in an earthy, unkempt kind of way. Black hair, hooded dark eyes, and an insolent half-smile probably directed at the cop taking his picture. Louis could imagine the bored rich women, sitting in the shade of their patios, watching the shirtless gardener sweat in the white-hot sun. It was something right out of a Harlequin novel.
Swann knelt down next to him. “That our guy?”
“I think so,” Louis said. “You recognize him?”
“No.”
“Why no social?”
“Probably an illegal,” Swann said. “They come and go like the weather.”
Louis pushed to his feet. “Can I keep this?”
“Let me make you a copy,” Swann said. “If Labastide turns out to be a witness or something, we’re going to need evidence of an investigative trail.”
Louis heard the “we” Swann had used but decided to let it go for now. He pulled his notebook from his pocket and wrote down the information, just in case he was wrong about Swann’s interest and Swann decided at some point to destroy the card. When he finished, he was surprised to see that Swann had picked up the open box and returned it to its stack. Swann dusted his hands and faced him. Suddenly, he looked like a kid caught behind the church with a cigarette.
“You’ll be real discreet when you talk to him, right?” Swann asked.
“Sure.”
“And you’ll let me know if there’s any truth to what Reggie Kent said?”
“Sure.”
Swann looked down at Labastide’s index card, then back at Louis. “I guess I’ll just have to trust you.”
Louis smiled. “Andrew, this could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.”
Chapter Eleven
It was hotter inside than out. The sun was out in full Florida force, and after the rain, the glass walls of the orchid house were steamy with condensation. Louis was just inside the door, and already he could feel the tickle of sweat down his temples.
He had never been inside an orchid house before, but he suspected the moisture and heat were what the flowers needed. After all, they grew in jungles, didn’t they?
The kid outside had told him this was where he could find Chuck Green, owner of Clean amp; Green Landscaping and Lawn Service. “Look for the big guy in the Dolphins hat,” he’d said.
Louis made his way down a narrow aisle, ducking under hanging baskets of orchids and their long, stringy roots. He spotted a barrel-chested man in a dirty Miami Dolphins ball cap near the back, stacking empty baskets under a table.
“Mr. Green?” Louis asked as he approached him.
The man grunted and pulled himself erect. His face was round and sunburnt, his dirty skin cut with lines of sweat.
“That’s me,” he said.
Louis introduced himself. Then, without mentioning Durand’s murder or Reggie Kent, he told Mr. Green he was looking for Emilio Labastide. He figured Green probably saw a revolving door of immigrant workers and that he would need a reminder to be able to place the kid. But Green surprised Louis with a quick nod and a half smile.
“I remember Emilio,” Green said. “He’s not in trouble, is he?”
“No,” Louis said. “I think he may be a witness to something, that’s all. Does he still work here?”
“Hell, no,” Green said. “It’s been a good four or five years. One day, he just stopped showing up, and I haven’t heard from him since.”
“Do you remember what time of year it was?” Louis asked.
“Not exactly, but I know it was the middle of the season. I had a full crew and more business than I could handle.”
“When’s the season?”
“Thanksgiving to Easter, give or take.”
“Would you have kept any personal information on Labastide?” Louis asked. “Home address? Phone number?”
Green’s eyes skittered and finally settled on something over Louis’s shoulder. Louis turned to look. Green was watching a young Hispanic man hang baskets.
“Mr. Green?”
Green blew out a breath scented with Mexican spices. “Look,” he said. “I do the best I can. I pay my guys good, and I treat them with respect. But I got no way of knowing if the information they give me is accurate. The government says that if the ID looks good, I can take it.”
“I’m not Immigration, Mr. Green,” Louis said. “I just need a lead here. Somewhere to start.”
Green hesitated, then gave a small nod, indicating that Louis should follow him outside. Green led him to a small cinder-block building. The office walls were papered with schedules and flyers written in Spanish. Green gave one of the file cabinets a sharp kick in the side, and the middle drawer popped open. It was stuffed to the brim with papers.
Louis waited while Green dug deep into the mess. From somewhere outside, he could hear a DJ chattering away in Spanish. A few seconds later, a song came on. It sounded a lot like that Mexican Christmas carol… “Feliz” something. The song had ended by the time Green pushed to his feet.
“Here it is,” he said.
Green handed him a Xerox of a form. Like the index cards in the old Palm Beach jail, it contained only the basic information: Emilio Labastide. Farm Workers Village, building 6, apartment 8. Immokalee, Florida.
“Can I keep this?” Louis asked.
“Sure,” Green said. “It’s been five years. Don’t see what I’d need it for.”
“You said he just stopped showing up for work one day. Is that normal for these guys to just disappear from the job?”
“Normal for most but not Emilio,” Green said. “He was reliable and steady. Didn’t have that chip on his shoulder many of ’em have.”
“I was told he worked over in Palm Beach,” Louis said. “Was that his regular route?”
“Hell, they all wanted to work on the island,” Green said. “Ocean breezes and lots of T and A. But the people there are damn picky, so I only send my best guys over there. Only send the honest ones, too, so they wouldn’t steal nothing-or get accused of it. Emilio worked there steady for over a year.”
“Did you ever get complaints on him?”
“Not a one.”
“Did he ever talk about his personal life?”
“The kid never said much about anything except his sister, Rosa. He worried a lot about her.”
Louis looked back at the paper. Labastide had listed a Rosa Labastide as the emergency contact at the same address in Immokalee. Louis had been to Immokalee once before. Set in the middle of state land and vegetable fields, it was a dusty, nondescript town of rough-and-tumble bars and immigrant camps. It was a place where people came and went with the seasons but also a place that had the feel of a close-knit family making do in a hostile, foreign land. Louis hoped that if Labastide had moved on, someone there might know where he had gone.
“Did he ever talk about any of his customers in Palm Beach?” Louis asked.
Green shrugged. “Probably bitched about ’em once in a while, like they all do,” he said. “Not that I’d understand much of it, since his English was kinda bad and my Spanish ain’t good. But I don’t remember anything specific.”
“Is there any way to find out exactly whose yards he worked on?”
Green shook his head. “I have five or six different guys working the island at any point, and I wouldn’t have kept daily route sheets from that far back, so there’s no way I could know.”