Spiral

trip.’” Pepe gave me a different look. ”How you feeling, Mr. Whatever?”
    ”Better,” I said automatically, then realized—despite the nightmare—that I really did.
    A nod before Pepe glanced at the woman behind the counter. ”What I say before about the old cars is true. In Havana, we have them, but no gas, like I told you yesterday. Here, we got the old cars, but with the gas, too. You want a sixty-four Caddy convertible, I got this friend—”
    ”Pepe, thanks, but I think something less conspicuous might be better.”
    ”Less con-spic-u- ous , huh? So, like some little shitbox, four doors and no performance package.”
    ”Like that, yes.”
    ”Okay. You see the nice lady behind the counter, I wait on the chair, then drive you to the police station.”
    ”I’ll have my own car, Pepe. Can’t you just lead me in yours?”
    ”Mr. Vega, he tell me to drive you this morning so he can meet you there. I don’t argue with Mr. Vega, you don’t argue with me, okay?”
    ”Okay.”

    ”This Fort Lauderdale, she’s a pretty nice town, you don’t mind the murders now and then.”
    We’d left my Chevy Cavalier—four doors of teal-blue anonymity—in the garage beyond the hotel’s pool. With the air temperature hovering around eighty again and a cloud-patched sky smothering us in humidity, I’d shrugged out of my suit jacket before getting into Pepe’s Ford Escort. When we turned onto West Broward Boulevard, he set the air conditioner on high, its motor or fan ratding a little. ”Thanks,” I said.
    ”I figure, you still on Boston weather, Mr. Whatever, you need it. But you better get used to this Florida stuff, you gonna be down here a while.”
    I turned sideways in my passenger seat. ”Pepe, a question?”
    ”Sure, man.”
    ‘You know any of the people at the birthday party for Colonel Helides well enough to give me your take on them?”
    ”‘My ‘take’? You mean like, do I think they maybe not right, somehow?”
    ”We can start there.”
    Pepe thought a moment. ”I see a few of them, but the onliest one I talk to is Berto —Umberto Reyes, the security guy? He is cubano, too, so I think he okay.”
    ”Would you bet your life on it?”
    Another moment of thought. ”No, but I would bet the life of a very good friend.” Pepe grinned at me.
    He eased the Escort over to the center lane, then turned left into a parking lot that ran the length of a sprawling, multilevel building. Light gray exterior walls sported powder-blue trim and awnings while palm trees swayed above tended beds of brightly colored flowers.
    I said, ”This is the police station?”
    ”You got it.” s
    ”Looks more like a resort hotel.” I opened my door, but Pepe stayed put. ”You’re not coming in?”
    ”Uh-unh,” he said, gazing out the windshield at the traffic on Broward. ”Police places remind me too much of Presidente Castro’s Courtesy Inns. Mr. Vega meet you on the second floor, though. You got to go first up to the counter, then they buzz you in the doors.” j
    ”Pepe?”
    ”Yeah?”
    ”You don’t like being in police stations, how come you know so much about the layout of this one?”
    He turned toward me this time. ”Mr. Vega tell me.” Turning back and glancing in his outside mirror, Pepe said, ”And remember, in this country, the policeman is your friend.”

    The interior of the building didn’t look like a resort hotel.
    In a lobby of gray cylindrical pillars and gray formed chairs, one wall was hung with glass cases bearing yearbook-like photos and captions such as police employee of the month . Another wall had a different array of more candid photos marked please help—missing children .
    I walked to the information counter on the left as a uniformed officer in a chocolate-brown shirt and gray pants with brown piping passed me, the small radio on his epaulet squawking. Two women were behind the counter, enclosed in thick—and probably bulletproof—glass. One of them got me through two security doors, the second of which led to a staircase.
    I climbed the flight and wound up in a smaller reception area with a beige metal door and a window covered by the kind of roll-down grating you’d see over a pawnshop. The window was closed most of the way down to its ledge, an elderly woman sitting sidesaddle behind it and an equally old sign saying something about ”It’s freezing in here.”
    Justo Vega rose from one of the chairs in the reception area. ”John, you slept