Dark Rivers of the Heart

managed to look as intellectual and dignified as he had ever been in a three- iece suit or in a police captain's uniform, in the days when Phil had served under him in the IA7est Los Angeles Division of the LAPD. His ink-black skin seemed even darker and glossier in the tropical heat of Miami than it had been in Los Angeles.
        The Padrakians climbed into the back of the van, and Phil sat up front with the driver, who was now known to his friends as Ronald-Ron, for short-Truman. "Love the shoes," Phil said.
        "My daughters picked them out for me."
        "Yeah, but you like 'em."
        "Can't lie. They're cool gear."
        "You were half dancing, the way you came around the van, showing them off."
        Flashing a grin as he drove away from the hotel, Ron said, "You white men always envy our moves."
        Ron was speaking with a British accent so convincing that Phil could close his eyes and see Big Ben. In the course of losing his Caribbean lilt, Ron had discovered a talent for accents and dialects.
        He was now their man of a thousand voices.
        "I gotta tell you," Bob Padrakian said nervously from the seat behind them, "we're scared out of our wits about this."
        "You're all right now," Phil said. He turned around in his seat to smile reassuringly at the three refugees.
        "Nobody following us, unless it's a look-down," Ron said, though the Padrakians probably didn't know what he meant. "And that's not very likely."
        "I mean," Padrakian said, "we don't even know who the hell you people are."
        "We're your friends," Phil assured him. "In fact, if things work out for you folks anything like the way they worked out for me and for Ron and his family, then we're going to be the best friends you've ever had."
        "More than friends, really," Ron said. "Family."
        Bob and jean looked dubious and scared. Mark was young enough to be unconcerned.
        "Just sit tight for a little while and don't worry," Phil told them.
        "Everything'll be explained real soon."
        At a huge shopping mall, they parked and went inside. They passed dozens of stores, entered one of the less busy wings, went through a door marked with international symbols for rest rooms and telephones, and were in a long service hallway. They passed the phones and the public facilities. stay at the end of the corridor ted down to one of the malc irw I's big communal shipping rooms, where some smaller shops, without exterior truck docks, received incoming merchandise.
        Two of the four roll-up, truck-bay doors were open, and delivery vehicles were backed up to them. Three uniformed employees from a store that sold cheese, cured meats, and gourmet foods were rapidly unloading the truck at bay number four. As they stacked cartons on handcarts and wheeled them to a freight elevator, they showed no interest in Phil, Ron, and the Padrakians. Many of the boxes were labeled PERISHABLE, KEEP REFRIGERATED, and time was of the essence.
        At the truck in bay number one-a small model compared with the eighteen-wheeler in bay four-the driver appeared from out of the dark, sixteen-foot-deep cargo hold. As they approached, he jumped down to the floor. The five of them climbed inside, as though going for a ride in the back of a delivery truck was unremarkable. The driver closed the door after them, and a moment later they were on the road.
        The cargo hold was empty except for piles of quilted shipping pads of the kind used by furniture movers. They sat on the pads in pitch blackness. They were unable to talk because of the engine noise and the hollow rattle of the metal walls around them.
        Twenty minutes later, the truck stopped. The engine died. After five minutes, the rear door opened. The driver appeared in dazzling sunshine.
        "Quickly. Nobody's in sight right now."
        When they disembarked from the truck, they were in a corner of a parking lot at a public beach. Sunlight flared off the windshields and chrome trim of the parked cars, and white gulls kited through the sky.
        Phil could smell sea salt in the air.
        "Only a short walk now," Ron told the Padrakians.
        The campgrounds were less than a quarter of a mile from where they left the truck. The tan-and-black Road Mng motor home was large, but it was only one of many its size that were parked at utility hookups among the palms.
        The trees lazily stirred