When I stood I could see up over the Royal Flamingo's bulkhead where the group of women whose call for help had set me off was talking with a uniformed Broward sheriff's office deputy. One of the women pointed to me and the cop looked up. I didn't recognize him. He was writing on a pad that looked like a reporter's notebook and the pages were flapping in the wind. I started toward the bottom of the stairs as he pa.s.sed out cards to the women and by the time I reached the top he was heading for me.

"Excuse me, sir."

I stood near the shower and waited.

"Excuse me, I'm Deputy Cardona. You are the rescuer?"

He was a young man with a tight Spanish accent but his English p.r.o.nunciations were careful.

"Sure," I said, offering nothing more and looking down at my soaked pants, now covered with a crust of sand from sitting wet on the beach.

"The ladies there," he said, tipping his pen back toward the group, which had not moved. "They say they were calling for help when they saw the gentleman in trouble and then you came flying in from nowhere and into the water."

"Yeah, a real Superman," I said, not really meaning to be a smart-a.s.s but coming off that way while I was trying to piece together the sight of the smashed bungalow, Rodrigo's broken bones and whether I wanted to talk about any of it with this cop.

"OK. First of all, I will require a name, sir," the officer said and raised his pen to his pad.

"Max. Max Freeman. Look, do you mind if I shower this stuff off?" I said, dropping my fingers to my pants and nodding at the shower. He said, "Not at all, please," and stepped back to the windward side and let me turn on the water.

I let the stream run over my head and kept my eyes closed while I thought of what I was going to say to the guy. I rinsed the sand off my pants as best I could and when I couldn't stall any longer I cranked the valve shut. The cop stood patiently by, looking out to sea and then to the bulkhead, and if he was perceptive enough he would pick up the deep impressions that my landing on the beach had made and then follow my running footsteps leading back to the bungalow. The door was still wide open.

When I stepped away from the shower one of the ladies was there with a towel.

"Thank you," I said, caught off guard.

"You were marvelous," she said. "That man owes you his life."

I started to say something but she held up a palm and then walked away to join her friends. I turned back to the cop, raised my eyebrows and then motioned to the chickee hut nearby.

"Can we sit?"

I picked up the shirt I'd tossed on the ground when I'd bolted for the ocean and pulled it over my head. I ducked under the dried fronds that formed the roof of the open shelter and took a chair facing my bungalow so that the officer's back would be to it. It didn't help. He was perceptive.

"You live here, Mr. Freeman?" he said, pointing the pen over his shoulder.

"Actually, it belongs to a friend. I was just borrowing it for a while."

"Was the drowning man your friend?"

It figured that I'd get one of the bright ones.

"Why do you ask?" I said. It was one of those soph.o.m.ore techniques; answer a question with a question. He checked his notebook.

"One of the ladies, she says she saw the drowning man limping down to the beach and saw him go into the water with his clothes on."

No question had been asked, so I didn't respond. I used the towel to dry my hair and avoid eye contact.

"She also says a larger man who appeared to be chasing him came down these steps with anger and with a baseball bat in his hands."

David, of the infamous Hix brothers, I thought. I could picture him in the bungalow, taking down the dining room light with a single swing.

"The limping man appeared to escape into the water because the other refused to follow."

I draped the towel around my neck and then stretched out one leg and reached into my pants pocket. The cop did not tense. He had already seen me without a shirt and knew I wasn't carrying.

"Do you mind if I make a call?" I said and pulled a dripping cell phone from my pocket but then looked dumbly at it when I saw that the power b.u.t.ton brought no light or noise.

Cardona seemed patiently amused. He reached into his own shirt pocket and took out an even smaller cell phone and handed it to me.

"I will take it that the call is local?" he said.

I nodded my a.s.sent and dialed a number while he watched.

"Lieutenant Sherry Richards?" I said for the cop's benefit when she picked up on the other end.

"You stood me up, Max," she answered.

"No. I've had an unexpected emergency up here, Lieutenant," I said, loud enough for the deputy to hear.

"Are you OK, Max?" she said and the concern sounded real.

"Uh, yeah, there's already an officer here at the scene," I said, and Cardona was now looking into my face.

"What scene are you talking about?" Richards said, now letting worry creep into her voice. I ran through what I figured had happened, that Rodrigo had been tracked by David Hix, who saw his chance to impress his ugliness on the little man and scare him out of the country. I talked loud enough for both Richards and the cop next to me to hear. He looked skeptical.

"Here, I'll let, uh, Deputy Cardona explain," I said and handed the officer his own phone. He turned away and I looked out at the whitecaps, hoping the concern I'd heard in Richards's voice meant she wasn't so p.i.s.sed at me that she would leave me swinging. After a minute, Cardona snapped the phone shut.

"The lieutenant says she wants you down at your prearranged meeting place, asap, Mr. Freeman."

"I think this will go much better this way," I said to him, and without another word I went inside to change my clothes.

CHAPTER 29.

On the drive to the Galleria in Fort Lauderdale I called Billy on the cell and told him about Rodrigo.

"How is he?" was his first question.

"Broken leg and maybe the same for his arm," I said. "Probably with the baseball bat."

"Hix?"

"No doubt on the loose," I said.

"Max, how did they find him? How did Hix know about the Flamingo?"

It was the more difficult question. There was no way bat man was sophisticated enough to be extrapolating cell phone signals. It took expensive equipment to pull that off and he and his brother just didn't come off with that kind of juice. Since Billy had been the one who picked Rodrigo from his last hospital visit in West Palm and drove him to the beach house, the only guess I had was that he'd been followed. He was an attorney, not a street investigator. He could have led the Hix brothers straight to the place where he thought Rodrigo would be safe. But I wasn't going to put it on him.

"I'm not sure, Billy. But he's in North Broward Hospital now, and I doubt he'll be going anywhere soon."

"So you're there with him?"

"Ah, not right now," I said, the admission sticking in my throat. Billy had put me on the cruise worker case. He expected certain things from me. I was letting him down by chasing after Morrison and O'Shea.

"I'm driving down to meet with Richards now," I said. "She took a report from the deputy at the Flamingo and I'll ask that they put a guard on Rodrigo's door. He's been the victim of the same attacker twice now, it's gotta pull some protection."

My excuse sounded lame. Billy let it sit there in my mouth, forcing me to taste it by not answering.

"OK, Max," he finally said. "I hope, my friend, you know what you're doing."

Me too, I thought and punched off the cell.

When I met Richards in the parking garage, I wasn't in the mood for any more questions or some p.i.s.sing match over O'Shea. She said he'd called her, after all this time trying to avoid all contact with "the b.i.t.c.h." The last time I talked to him he said he wanted to help me find the truth about Morrison before any internal investigators got in on the rape charge, a charge that Richards would want to file as soon as she found out.

When I pulled up to her unmarked car she got out and walked around to stand at my door. She was in jeans and a collared blouse with a cotton jersey underneath. Her detective's shield was clipped to her belt and her 9mm was in a holster on the other hip.

"We going on a raid?" I said in greeting.

"I'm not sure what we're going to, Max."

I got out and leaned back against my closed door. She crossed her arms. The ball was in her court.

"O'Shea called me at the office," she started. "It was nearly midnight but he talked dispatch into giving me his cell number by telling them he had information about the missing girls I was tracking."

I nodded my head. At midnight O'Shea would have been on the stakeout of Marci's apartment for several hours. Long enough to do some thinking.

"When I reached him he was cryptic as h.e.l.l. Told me he thought you were getting in deep chasing down Morrison and that the only way he figured he could really help you was by coming out with the truth."

I couldn't react. It was too much to grind. I could still feel the sand in my shoes from pulling a guy out of the ocean, a guy I should have been guarding. I was less than twenty-four hours from getting caught trying to tail a cop, a cop who might be guilty of multiple homicides.

"So what's the truth?" I said.

"That's where we're going, Max. He gave me an address," she said, pulling an orange "While You Were Out" message note from her pocket. "He said not to get there until after two. He told me it would be safe and in fact kind of begged me not to bring anyone but you. He said bringing you would be proof that it wasn't some kind of setup that would be dangerous."

I looked around in the garage like I was searching for the SWAT boys.

"And you're going to trust him?"

"You did, Max," she said.

We took her car and I rode shotgun. The address was a few blocks to the north along the Middle River. She was nervous. I knew because she always had to talk when she was nervous.

"So tell me about the scene at the Flamingo," she said.

I told her the story in more detail, how Rodrigo had somehow slipped out of the bungalow and took his chances in the water.

She stopped at a light to cross Sunrise and rolled down the window.

"I'd have to agree with Deputy Cardona," she said. "Those spots of blood on the walkway would make me nervous, too."

I shook my head and told her that from the impressions left in the walls and the descriptions that the women gave Cardona, it had to be David Hix.

"This is your union-busting guy? The one who took on you and O'Shea in the alley with his brother?" she said.

I nodded and then told her about the photos and the threats that Billy and Diane had received at their home and the additional photo of the Fort Lauderdale attorney.

"You do know how to get your nose into the s.h.i.t, Max," she said.

"It is a talent," I said.

She cut her eyes at me and I thought I could see a smile play at the corner of her mouth. I took advantage of the moment.

"And since Mr. Colon has been attacked twice by this baseball bat-wielding felon, can we get an officer to watch his room over at North Broward Medical Center?"

She looked over at me and then picked up the radio. She made the arrangements with dispatch, only asking me the spelling on Rodrigo's name and then checking a computer screen attached to the dash in front of her and finding the case number.

We turned east for a few blocks and then made a right onto Middle River Drive.

"Thanks," I said.

The address on the note was a small, two-story apartment building. Eight units in all. Painted a powdery light green. There were three cars parked in s.p.a.ces at the front, older models, a four-door Caprice, a small SUV, a Volkswagen beetle, the original, with rust spots on the rounded corners and door seams. We sat quietly and watched for a minute. Richards wrote down the license plate numbers in her notebook.

"Not the Ritz," I said.

"Unit C has to be on the first floor, huh?"

"That'd figure."

Richards pulled the 9mm, checked the load, slid it back in the holster.

"Let's go find the truth," she said and we got out together.

The tiny pool in front of the complex wasn't much larger than a hot tub. The shrubbery was dry and needed clipping. Unit C was in the middle and we stepped under an overhang and flanked the door. Inside I could hear the sound of a television, the tinny words of a game show host, the canned applause. When Richards knocked someone turned down the volume. There was a peephole in the door and Richards stood in front of it but I could see by the cant of her hip that her weight was all on her right leg, ready to push off to one side if she didn't like what appeared. We heard the snick of a lock and the door opened only as far as the safety chain would let it.

"Yes?"

The nose, full mouth and expectant eyes of a woman filled the crack.

"Can I help you?"

"Hi," Richards said. "Uh, Colin O'Shea sent us over. He said that you might have something for us."

The woman's eyes were dark brown, wary, but not afraid. She looked straight into Richards's face and then down to the badge, maybe the gun.