The same short, muscled Hispanic guy was on the door, and even before he turned to greet me, I wondered why I hadn’t realized who he was, why I hadn’t put that part together yet. I saw the instant recognition in his eyes. He smiled, and I felt some small satisfaction at the gap in his teeth caused undoubtedly by my skates, but the sickness in those eyes made me look away. I didn’t want Cesar to see my fear.

I heard his deep laughter as I headed straight for the back, where Teenie stood behind the bar. I shook the rainwater off my arms and slicked my hair back as I slid onto a stool.

“Hi, Teenie.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cesar disappear down a hall into the back of the restaurant.

“Hey, girl, what’re you doing here? I don’t think that’s such a smart move on your part, honey. Our doorman really doesn’t like you. He had a fit after you left last time.”

“The feeling’s mutual.”

She laughed. “He’s not exactly Mr. Charming, is he?”

“No,” I said, and smiled when she placed an iced Corona in front of me. “Do you know a young girl named either Sunny or Sonya? She’s been staying at Harbor House.” My voice sounded higher-pitched than normal, and I was having trouble breathing. This whole thing was beginning to feel like a terrible mistake.

“Nope, never heard of her.”

“Maybe you’ve seen her around here—a gorgeous blonde?”

“Now isn’t that special,” she said with a grin. “Sure don’t see many of those in here.” She looked up at the music video on the TV set suspended over the bar.

“Look, she left a message on my machine less than an hour ago. Said she was here.”

Teenie looked straight at me, all traces of her smile now gone. “I don’t know nothing about nothing. Got it?”

It was pretty clear she’d been warned not to talk to me. “Right, and thanks for all that nothing,” I said. I’d started to turn away from the bar when Cesar appeared at my side.

“Follow me,” he said in that sickening voice.

“Where’s Sunny?” I asked his back as he headed across the club to a hallway. I shrugged, raised my hand in a goodbye to Teenie, and took off after him. I saw fear in Teenie’s face.

Cesar led me down a long hallway past several open doors where girls were entertaining men in private rooms. To me the only difference between lap dancing and prostitution was whether a zipper was up or down.

“Where’s Sunny?” I said again to Cesar’s back.

Cesar stopped at the end of the hall and grinned at me. His wide-set Indian eyes didn’t look quite right. It was no wonder he nearly always wore sunglasses. He then grasped my forearm and opened the door at the end of the hall. The warm, moist night air blew in from the parking lot beyond. A light rain had started to fall. Behind the club, a small white limousine was parked with the engine running.

“Whoa. Hold it. I’m looking for Sunny, and she said she was here.”

Cesar looked around as though to see whether or not anyone was watching.

“Hey, shut up. You’re going to see Sunny. You’re gonna see a lot of her,” he said, and laughed that guttural laugh of his.

I struggled against his grip. “Let go of me!”

He opened the door to the backseat and, squeezing my arm in his ironlike fist, forced me into the car and slammed the door.

XXI

There were no door or window handles on the inside of the backseat doors, and a Plexiglas partition separated the driver’s and passenger’s seats. Cesar climbed up front and flashed me that smile that made me want to bust his teeth.

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.