Louis folded the paper, thanked Green, and headed toward the door. When he got outside, he paused and looked around. Three men were loading sod onto a flatbed. Another was carting potted palms across the lot. Two more were pruning pink bougainvilleas in the shade of an awning. All were Hispanic. All were sweaty and dirty, with whisker-stubbled faces. From the sounds of it, most didn’t speak English.
You can screw upward. You can screw sideways. But you never screw down.
“Mr. Kincaid.”
Louis turned to Green, who had come up next to him. “I just remembered something,” Green said. “Don’t know if it will help or not, but there was one time Emilio asked if he could work the Emerald Dunes golf course in West Palm instead of the island.”
“Did he say why?”
“No. Just came to me one day and asked real politely if he could transfer crews.”
“Did you reassign him?”
“I couldn’t right then,” Green said. “Landscaping those places over there takes a special kind of talent, and Emilio had that artist’s eye. I couldn’t just stick anyone over there, so I told him it would be a few weeks.”
“How long after did he stop showing up?”
Green scratched his chin. “Now that I think about it, it was only a few days later. He wasn’t the type to get mad, so now I’m wondering if someone over there was giving him a hard time and he was afraid to say something.”
“Afraid he’d be discovered and deported?”
“Yeah,” Green said. “These guys live in fear of that. That’s why they slink around here, taking whatever shit people heap on ’em. They got no choice. They speak up, and they’re gone.” Green snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
The idea that Labastide was back in Mexico was depressing. He was the only solid lead he and Mel had at this point, maybe the only person who could firm up the sex connection to Mark Durand.
The question was too big to ignore: Why had Labastide wanted a transfer away from the work-and the easy sex-of Palm Beach? It had to have been quite a powerful drug for a young guy like Labastide.
Had he been threatened by a jealous husband, as Margery had said? Or had he gotten himself in too deep, maybe fallen in love with one of the women? Or had he gotten himself mixed up with a man?
Green interrupted Louis’s thoughts.
“If you find him, you let him know he’s welcome back to work here anytime,” Green said. “He was a real nice kid. Real nice.”
It was late afternoon by the time Louis got to the Farm Workers Village. It was just a few miles outside Immokalee, set in the vegetable fields, just off the sun-bleached main highway that ran through town.
Louis parked next to a rickety pickup and got out of the Mustang. He had the feeling he had stepped back in time, onto an abandoned military base where everything had been torn down but the concrete barracks.
There were six two-story, boxy buildings with peeling paint, stairwells littered with plastic toys, and balcony railings draped with laundry. Children with dirty feet and long black hair played in the yard. A few men had found shelter from the sun under a mango tree, hats pulled down over their eyes, fingers wrapped around Tecate beers.
Like in the nursery in West Palm, there was a peppy tune playing somewhere. Faded numbers painted on the buildings led Louis to the farthest building in the compound. He was acutely aware of the attention he was drawing from the folks on the second-floor balcony as he approached.
Building six stood in the shade of a gumbo-limbo tree. Apartment eight was on the second floor, last in a line of four doors, three of which were open to capture the cool air. But as Louis passed, the doors slammed shut, followed by the hurried closing of curtains.
At the last door, Louis ducked under a hanging red-flowering plant and knocked softly on the freshly painted blue door. From inside, he could hear a baby crying but no indication that anyone was coming to the door. He knocked again. A pair of beautiful brown eyes appeared suddenly in the gap of the yellow curtains. Louis had no reason to think Labastide’s sister still might live here, but he tried.
“Rosa Labastide?” Louis called.
To Louis’s surprise, the door opened. A lovely woman with flowing dark hair stood in front of him, a baby propped on her plump hip and a bold tilt tipping her chin upward. She and the baby were dressed in bright orange cotton dresses.
“¿Porqué usted busca a Rosa?”
Louis shook his head. “Do you speak English?”
She pursed her lips and shifted the baby to the other hip. He caught a glimpse of the inside of the apartment: blue sofa, brown throw rug, a gold-framed picture of Jesus dominating a wall of family pictures. A female voice, from a radio or TV, murmured softly in Spanish.
“I am Rosa,” the woman said. “And I am not afraid of you. I am Rosa Díaz now. All legal.”
“I’m not Immigration,” Louis said. “I’m looking-”
The door of the apartment next to Rosa Díaz’s opened. An older woman stuck her head out and spoke excitedly to Rosa in Spanish. Louis was sure she was asking Rosa if everything was okay. Rosa barked back at her, and the other woman quickly retreated. Rosa turned back to Louis, her eyes still wary.
“What you want, then?” Rosa asked.
“I’m looking for your brother, Emilio,” he said.
“Who are you?”
“I’m a private detective,” Louis said.
Rosa put a protective hand on her baby’s head and reached for the door. Louis gently held it open.
“Not policía,” he said. “A different kind of detective. Private, like…”
“Like Mr. Magnum PI?” Rosa asked.
Louis smiled. “Yeah.”
Rosa returned his smile with a small one of her own, but still, she kept her hand on the door.
“I mean Emilio no harm,” Louis said. “I’m not going to arrest him. I just want to talk to him.”
Rosa glanced behind her, then motioned for him to come inside. A portable fan stirred the air, which was thick with the smell of baking cheese and baby powder. The blue sofa was draped with cream-colored things that looked like big doilies. A tiny TV sat under the picture of Jesus, its screen filled with the snowy image of that Latina talk show lady, Cristina something.
“I not know where Emilio is,” Rosa said. “I not see my brother for long time. Almost five years now.”
“Fall 1984?”
Rosa laid the baby down on the sofa and lowered her head. The bodice of her cotton dress rose and fell. “Sí. Eight-four. It was Halloween. I remember because I give out candy to the little ones. Since then I have no word. No letters. Nada.”
“Can you tell me what happened?” Louis asked. “Did he just stop coming home? Did he say anything about leaving?”
Rosa dropped to the edge of the sofa and placed a hand on the baby’s back. Its eyes closed at the touch.
“One time, he just not come home,” Rosa said. “He never speak of going away. He would not do that. We come here to this place from Santa Teresa, Mexico. I sixteen, he twenty. He not want to work here, so he get job in Palm Beach, for Mr. Green, working on pretty houses.”
“When was this?” Louis asked.
“That summer before he go away,” Rosa said. “He only work for Mr. Green short time before he got new trabajo.”
“A new job?”
“Sí.”
The baby drifted off to sleep. Rosa brushed a few strands of hair from her eyes and looked up at Louis. It was obvious that she had gone on with her life, marrying and having a baby, but in her soft brown eyes, he saw a profound sadness, the kind that came with being suddenly abandoned and not knowing why.
“Did he tell you what this new job was?” Louis asked.
“No,” Rosa said. “But he… ganó mucho dinero.”