I was back in my car when the Corolla came out of the depot and drove right past me. I did one of those moves you see in the movies all the time, where the PI does a not-so-subtle U-turn then follows their quarry as if no one noticed. It felt as obvious as hell, and I couldn’t imagine the FPL guy hadn’t seen me.

  But he only drove a couple of blocks in the opposite direction of the substation before he pulled into the gravel lot of a bar. When he got out of his car he didn’t look around as if he was being followed, and I started to wonder if the U-turn thing actually worked because drivers rarely bother to look in their rearview mirrors.

  As he strolled into the bar, I pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall on the other side of the street. For a moment I tossed around whether I should just sit and wait, see where the guy went. But I wasn’t learning anything more by staying outside, so I bit the bullet, crossed the street, and walked into the bar.

  It was one of those workers’ bars where you expect the jukebox to stop playing and every head to turn the moment you walk in. Except there was no jukebox, and no one appeared to pay me any attention.

  I quickly surveyed the room for the guy. There were a couple of pool tables at the back, some tables and chairs scattered about, and a long bar that looked in dire need of a new coat of varnish. Everybody except the bartender seemed to be wearing a uniform of some description, most with a layer of dirt. Lots of Florida Power & Light logos, but those from other trades as well. They all seemed to be relaxed and in good spirits after finishing their day’s work.

  I saw the guy come out of the men’s room, drying his hands. He headed for the bar, where there were two open seats. Rather than continue standing in the doorway waiting to be noticed, I headed in the same direction. We got to the bar one after the other, the guy first and then me, and we sat. He leaned his elbow on the back of his high-backed stool in such a way that he was half facing away from me, the way people at bars do when they don’t know the person next to them.

  The bartender nodded his head and said, “Hey, Neil,” and slid the guy a bottle of Bud. Then he turned to me, and I pointed at the bottle.

  After the bartender had passed me a beer, I glanced at Neil, who was watching a college football game on the muted screen behind the bar. I figured the one thing I didn’t have on my side was time, so I put the chitchat in my back pocket and leaned toward him.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Neil looked over and raised an eyebrow as if I were interrupting the game-winning play in the Super Bowl.

  “So what happened at the substation?” I asked.

  I sucked on my beer while I waited for him to answer, but all I got was a frown.

  “Huh?”

  “You know, the power to the arena. That fake burned-out circuit board. You didn’t seriously think anyone was going to buy that, did you?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m the player to be named later. And you’re Neil.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He stuck his beer bottle into his mouth and tried to ignore me.

  “Sure you do. You were at the substation the other morning when the power went out at the new arena. I’ve seen the video. I’ve seen the tampered circuit board. I watched you come in before the power went down and go out after. I’m not saying it was your fault, or at least your idea. I’ve got no doubt someone put you up to it. But you really need to come clean, because when the byproduct hits the fan, I don’t think these guys are gonna stand up for you.”

  “You work for FPL?”

  “No.”

  “But you have a circuit board from the substation?”

  I didn’t exactly have it in my possession, but I said, “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s stolen property, so you’ve committed a crime. Maybe you need to come clean.”

  Neil put his beer down and pulled a phone from the pocket of his shirt, then punched away at the screen the way people do, like they used to be part of the secretarial pool in a previous life.

  “It’s not stolen property,” I said. “It’s called evidence.”

  “Why don’t you get lost?” he said, putting his phone down on the bar.

  “You’re missing the point here, Neil. I’m trying to help you. You think any of these guys are gonna visit you in the pen?”

  He said nothing.

  “Just tell me who’s directing you. Who’s telling you to do these things?”

  Neil started peeling the label from his beer bottle, concentration etched across his face like he was performing surgery.

  “Who is it? Is it Otto Barassi?”

  I saw him flinch. His eyebrow went up again, before he returned his focus to his beer label. Then he stopped peeling and glanced my way. For a moment I thought he was going to open up, to tell me everything and blow the case wide open. But his gaze wasn’t on my face. He was looking across my shoulder. Then, just as quickly, he turned his attention back to his beer bottle.

  I felt a meaty paw on my shoulder and was suddenly yanked from my stool like a tarpon on a line. There were at least two of them, and although I only felt the one hand on my shoulder, the speed at which I was removed from my place at the bar and dragged across the room made it feel like I was being carried. I wasn’t.

  The second man—a big unit with a shaved head and a receding hairline—pushed the door open, and the other one, who had me by the scruff of the neck, launched me outside. I was about to stand and dust myself off and say it was all fine, whatever, I was leaving anyway, when I was picked up again and dragged around the side of the building.

  Here, the first guy threw me against the cinderblock wall and gave me a second or two to consider my mortality. This guy looked like a carbon copy of the other one but slightly heavier, with maybe two days’ worth of stubble on his head and a jagged scar on his left temple. I wasn’t sure what it was about clean-shaven heads with these types of guys. It seemed like a uniform all its own. With a wicked snarl, he now looked at me like he was deciding where to hit me first.

  He didn’t ask me who I was, or what I wanted, or who sent me, or even my name, rank, and serial number. Instead he punched me in the face.

  Hard.

  My body fell back against the wall and my knees buckled some. There was no doubt my brain was bouncing around inside my head giving me some kind of concussion, and I wondered how boxers managed to stay upright for as long as they did.

  Scar guy punched me again, a quick one-two-three in the gut, and I felt the sudden urge to vomit. I folded over. He seized the perfect opportunity for a feisty uppercut, which connected with the bottom of my chin and sent me back into the wall then onto my backside in the dirt.

  After that, I just curled up into a tight ball, and the two took turns sticking their boots into me. I covered my head, but pretty much everything else was fair game. The kicks to the back stung the most, and I hoped like hell that my kidneys weren’t gushing blood inside me.

  It may have been thirty seconds or thirty days, but eventually they stopped and simply walked away, their message having been signed, sealed, and delivered in no uncertain terms.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I probably should have gone straight to the hospital—I suspected Danielle was going to give me grief about it—but an urgent care waiting room was the last place I wanted to be. If I started coughing up blood, then I reserved the right to change my mind on that.

  I set my sights on getting to the office instead. It took longer to get up, cross the parking lot and then the road, and ease myself into my car than it did to drive back to Banyan Street. I parked on the curb outside the bank branch that took up the ground floor of our building, then stumbled my way to the elevator. I got a few concerned looks from people on the sidewalk and those watching me through the window of the bank, but no one approached to see if I was okay.

  I had read something about a scientific study that showed that groups of people were far less likely to offer assistance than a person on their own. Something about needing to conform to the tribe, or some such. I resolved to remember that if I ever really needed help, and if I ever saw someone else in need.

  It didn’t matter. I was in no position to help anyone, and I found the help I needed as soon as I opened the door to my office.

  “Oh my Lord,” said Lizzy, the closest she ever came to taking her Lord’s name in vain. She practically vaulted over the desk and helped me into a chair in reception. “I’ll call the paramedics.”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “You’re okay?” She got in tight to my face, as if she were inspecting my soul, or maybe just the whites of my eyes. “You must have a concussion if you think you’re okay.”

  She turned toward my office and called for Ron. He appeared at the door, and his face dropped.

  “What happened?” he asked. It was a fair question, and for a moment I considered the fact that Lizzy hadn’t asked it—maybe she figured it was a question to be asked later.

  She opened a metal case on the floor containing all manner of bandages and Band-Aids and ointments. It took me longer than necessary to realize she had procured a first-aid kit, but I had no idea from where.

  She used a small towel to dab my face, and I was somewhat surprised to see the quantity of blood that came away on it. Once done, she touched up various parts of my head with antiseptic, then dressed my wounds.

  “Take off your shirt,” she said.

  “Lizzy, I didn’t think you cared,” I said.

  I didn’t get the sharp rebuke that I expected. She and Ron simply pulled the shirt over the top of my head like I was a three-year-old boy, and I heard Ron gasp.

  “Are you sure you shouldn’t go to the hospital?” he asked.

  I tried to inspect my wounds but given the fetal position I had assumed in the alley beside the bar, most of the damage was on the back side of my body.

  “It’s just a few bruises.” Then I looked at Ron. “Isn’t it?”

  “It’s more than a few,” he said.

  Lizzy had me take a series of deep breaths to see if it hurt. And it did, but not in a way that said major internal injuries. I allowed her to patch me up as best she could. Then I sat still for a long time in the reception area until I felt ready to move, thankful we didn’t get many drop-in clients. My head was clearing, and I came to the conclusion that driving back to the office might not have been the smartest idea, for me and all the other drivers on the road.

  Eventually I made my way into my office and lowered myself into the chair behind my desk. I didn’t kick off my shoes or put my feet up on the desk. That felt like more activity than was warranted.

  I wanted to understand how a bit of friendly sabotage could have taken such a dark turn for me. I used the speakerphone on my desk to call Sal, who had lived more lives than a cat and had more connections in dark corners of Florida than I could comprehend.

  It took a number of rings for him to answer. I pictured Sally, in his little pawnshop on the wrong side of the turnpike on Okeechobee Boulevard, shuffling from one end of the counter to the other to answer the phone, cursing the entire way.

  “Hey, Sal,” I said. “It’s me.”

  “You okay, kid?” he asked with a raspy voice, like his dry throat was about to hack a cough.

  “I’m peachy.”

  “You don’t sound so good. You been drinking?”

  “Not nearly enough, Sal.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Just wanted to throw a name at you, see what you knew.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Otto Barassi.”

  There was silence down the line for a moment, and I figured Sal was entering his mind palace or whatever it was he did in order to rifle through the mental Rolodex he kept in his head. I presumed by the time I got to his age I’d be lucky to even remember what model of car I owned, let alone all the shady figures he seemed to be able to recall.

  “Yeah, Barassi,” he said. “He’s old school. Union guy, in that Jimmy Hoffa kinda way. Only he’s playing the part of the other guys, not Hoffa, if you understand my meaning. He’s an old-fashioned racketeer, from back in the days when the unions had real power. Working guys like him loved to wield it in the face of all the white collars. You know, call snap walkouts and go-slows and all kinds of trouble, sometimes for better pay and conditions, and sometimes just because they could.”

  I heard Sal cough away from the phone—par for the course for him—then he continued.

  “He’s still connected, but these days the unions are trying to be more legit. So he’s tolerated more than loved by union HQ. What’s your involvement?”

  “Not sure yet,” I said. I closed my eyes for a second as a shudder of pain shot across my body like an electrical current.

  “Well, whatever it is,” said Sal, “be careful. Like I say, this guy’s old school. He don’t love publicity, and he knows how to shut things down in an old-fashioned way.”

  I considered how that might have been useful advice an hour or two earlier.

  “Listen, Sal, I’m gonna be at the hockey game tomorrow night. You want to come?”

  “You mean like ice?”

  “Yes. At the new arena.”

  “I don’t understand hockey in Florida,” he said.

  “It’s the same as everywhere else, Sal.”

  “I can’t follow the ball.”

  “They call it a puck.”

  “I can’t follow that either. When I see it on TV, I’m not sure there’s even a puck out there. It’s just a bunch of guys skating around in circles.”

  “It’s all the beer and hot dogs you can eat, Sal.” This was always my checkmate move. Sal was a sucker for sports stadium hot dogs and beer in plastic cups. His preferred variety was minor-league ballparks. That was how we had met, years ago, when he came to St. Lucie to watch me pitch and sent me a note about something I was doing with my back during my windup.

  “Aach, what else am I going to do?” he said.

  “Good. I’ll pick you up.”

  I ended the call and gingerly stood.

  “Going somewhere?” asked Ron from my sofa. I had forgotten he was there.

  “I need to go home.”

  “Where is that, exactly?”

  It was good question, but despite his hospitality, I didn’t mean his apartment. “Miami.”

  I took a step toward the door and was surprised at Ron’s agility as he jumped up and blocked my exit.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “You can’t drive.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I said.

  “MJ, it’s not a polite inquiry. You can’t drive, for your safety and that of everyone else, and I’m prepared to take you down to stop you.”

  “You’re prepared to take me down?”

  “I am.”

  I took a deep breath, in through my nose, out through my mouth, and it hurt like hell. Ron wasn’t taking me down, and I wasn’t going to give him cause to do so. But I didn’t doubt he would try. Everyone should be so lucky to have a friend like that.

  “I do need to get to Miami, Ron.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  “You’re not driving me two hours just to turn around and drive back.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “I do,” said Lizzy from behind Ron. We both looked at her. “Take the express bus.”

  “What express bus?” I asked. I wasn’t, generally speaking, a bus kind of guy. I had done my fair share of sitting on buses during my baseball career. They don’t call it the bus leagues for nothing.

  “There’s a new bus that runs from Palm Beach Gardens to Bayfront Park in Miami. Stops once in Fort Lauderdale.”

  So Ron drove me to Palm Beach Gardens. He didn’t debate that I needed to go, because he knew that it wasn’t the where that I needed but the who.

  We waited there in a parking lot of one of the large malls with an eclectic mix of folks. There were people who were clearly done with a day of shopping, as if Palm Beach had some tax-free status that didn’t exist in Miami, and others who looked like office workers. I wondered why they traveled all the way from Miami. There were office jobs down there, I was sure of that. But then, there was plenty of investigative work in Miami, too, and here I was, spending my working days seventy miles from the apartment I called home.

  As the coach pulled into the lot, Ron said, “Text me when you get home.”

  I embarked and found a seat by the window a couple rows back. Having come down off my adrenaline high, I fell asleep before the bus even left the parking lot.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I woke up just outside of Lauderdale with a pounding headache. Fortunately Lizzy had sent me on my way with a baggie of ibuprofen and a bottle of water. I took a handful of tablets, washed them down, then promptly fell asleep again until the bus driver roused me at Bayfront Park.

  The city was dark by the time I disembarked the bus, so I stood on the sidewalk and sent Danielle a text message. Seconds later she replied: Monty’s? Remember?

  I forgot we had arranged to meet Lucas for a drink near the marina, so I flagged a cab. As we headed for the causeway, I returned Danielle’s message, saying I’d be there in ten.

  Monty’s was a tourist favorite situated on the intracoastal side of South Beach, not far from the marina that Lucas managed. It was doing a roaring trade by the time I arrived, holidaymakers and snowbirds and locals intermingling with a buzz that set me on edge. My headache had gone, but a couple hours on the bus had stiffened every muscle in my body, so I was walking like a ninety-year-old man. From the glances people gave me, I may have looked like one.

  I found Danielle and Lucas sitting at one of the tall tables overlooking the pool. It might have been heading into winter, but there were always visitors from Ohio or Indiana who thought it was still swimming weather.

  I sidled up to the table and tried my best nonchalant face. Danielle wasn’t buying it.

  “What on earth happened to you?” She slipped from her chair and placed her hands on my cheeks.

  “You should see the other guy,” I said.