Detective

checked the location of the intersection. It was a good distance, but I could probably make it.
    I locked up the briefcase again and stashed it under the bed, took the map, went down to the garage, got my car, and headed out.
    It was 3:55 by the time I reached the corner of 7th and Burke. I cruised through the intersection slowly, checking out the corner. I couldn’t believe it. There on the corner, large as life, was a businessman in a three-piece suit and tie, holding a suitcase.
    I found a parking spot halfway down the block. I parked the car, got out, and walked back to the corner. I walked slowly, to give myself a chance to size the guy up.
    The first thing I could tell about him was that he had red hair. I figured a tough detective would call him “Red.” Red was about 30. He wore horn-rimmed glasses. He was overweight, and he was perspiring, but who wouldn’t in Miami in a three-piece suit. I had on a light summer suit, and I felt hot. But Red was clearly nervous. He kept fidgeting with the suitcase, shifting it from hand to hand. I figured it was his first. More than that, I figured it was probably a one-shot deal. Red didn’t look like he had the stamina to go it more than once. Moreover, if he were a regular, the job would have been filled and Tony Arroyo wouldn’t have been making overtures to me the night before.
    I had figured all this out by the time I hit the corner. Then I had a problem. I couldn’t just stand there staring at the guy. I suppose I could have turned and looked in the store window, but somehow that seemed hopelessly theatrical, and the only window at hand in the corner drugstore seemed to be devoted entirely to feminine napkins.
    I should have turned around and headed back to my car, but at that moment the light changed, and as the pedestrians on the corner started across the street, I just naturally went with them. It didn’t seem such a bad idea at the time. There was a phone on the far corner, and I could pick up the receiver and pretend I was making a call, and be in a great position to watch Red across the street.
    I had no sooner done that than a black Cadillac pulled in at the corner. The driver opened the door and stood up, leaning on the open door of the car. He was a big, solid, muscular Hispanic with shaggy black hair. Floridian #1! He jerked his thumb at Red. Red threw the suitcase in the back seat, got in, and the car pulled out.
    There was no time for me to get back to my car. Even if there were, I was pointed in the wrong direction. I dropped the phone, stepped out into the street, and hailed a cab.
    Luck was with me. One stopped at once. I hopped in, slammed the door, leaned forward, pointed, and said the words I’d dreamed of saying all my life, ever since I was a small boy: “Follow that car.”
    The driver, who couldn’t have been more than 20, had probably never heard those words said in his life either. He turned around in his seat.
    “Are you kidding?” he said.
    I whipped out my I.D. and flashed it under his nose. “I’m a private detective,” I said. “There’s ten bucks in it for you if they don’t get away.”
    The cabbie’s eyes widened. “No shit!” he said. He slammed his foot to the floor and the cab shot away from the corner and hurtled down the street.
    “Hey, don’t let them know they’re being followed,” I said.
    “Why should they think that?” he said. “Hell, I always drive like this.”
    We caught them in five blocks, and the cabbie was forced to slow to a more reasonable pace.
    “This is more apt to make them suspicious,” he told me.
    “I can’t help that. Just stay about a block behind ’em, but don’t let ’em out of sight.”
    “Right, boss.”
    We followed the car out of town to a residential area. The houses started getting larger and further apart.
    “Pretty ritzy neighborhood,” the cabbie said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Drug deal?” he asked.
    “The reason you’re getting ten bucks on top of the fare,” I said, “is not just because you’re a good driver. It’s because you’ve got a lousy memory and you’re not nosy.”
    “Right, boss.”
    The Cadillac pulled into a driveway on a tree-lined lot that fronted what had to be a two-and-a-half-million dollar house. I had the cabbie stop half a block away, giving them time to get into the house.
    “All right,” I said. “Pull by slow, not so slow that anybody gets suspicious, but slow enough that I can get the house number.”
    “You got it.”
    We