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Bellamy, you just met me—”
    “Please, Mr. Keyes. I don’t know a soul down here, but I like you and I think I can trust you. My instincts usually are very sound. Most of all, I need someone with … “
    “Balls,” Burt said helpfully.
    “You marched into that awful tavern like a trooper,” Nell said. “That’s the kind of fellow we need.”
    The decent thing to do was to say no. Keyes couldn’t take this nice woman’s money, feeding her false hope until poor Teddy finally washed up dead on the beach. Could be weeks, depending on the tides and the wind. It would have been thievery, and Keyes couldn’t do it.
    “I’m sorry, but I can’t help.”
    “I know what you’re thinking, but maybe this’ll change your mind.” Nell handed him the folded paper. “Someone left this in my mailbox at the hotel,” she explained, “the morning my husband disappeared.”
    “Read it,” said the Shriner named James, breaking his silence.
    Keyes moved under the streetlight and unfolded the letter. It had been neatly typed, triple-spaced. Keyes read it twice. He still couldn’t believe what it said:
    Dear Mrs. Tourist:
    Welcome to the Revolution. Sorry to disturb your vacation, but we’ve had to make an example of your husband. Go back North and tell your friends what a dangerous place is Miami.
    El Fuego,
    Comandante, Las Noches de Diciembre
     
    Brian Keyes delivered a photocopy of the new El Fuego letter to Homicide the next morning. Afterward he went to the office to feed the tropicals and check his messages. The Shriners had called from the county morgue to report that no one matching Theodore Bellamy’s description had turned up in the night inventory of Dade County corpses. There was another call-me message from Mitch Klein, the public defender. Keyes decided not to phone back until he knew more about the letter.
    At noon Keyes returned to police headquarters. “Let’s go eat,” Al Garcia said, taking him by the arm. Garcia didn’t think it was a swell idea to be seen around the office with a private investigator. They rode to lunch in the detective’s unmarked Dodge, WQBA blaring Spanish on the radio. Garcia was nonchalantly dodging deranged motorists on Seventh Street, in the heart of Little Havana, when he stubbed out his cigarette and finally mentioned the letter.
    “Same typewriter as the first one,” he said.
    Keyes wasn’t surprised.
    “The Beach police think it’s a crackpot,” Garcia added in a noncommittal way.
    “What do you think, Al?”
    “I think it’s too hinky for a crackpot. I think to myself, how would this Fuego know about Bellamy so soon? Almost before the cops! And I think, where’s the connection between this Bellamy guy and B. D. Harper? They didn’t even know each other, yet after each one comes these death letters. Too hinky, like I said.”
    “So you’re ready to spring Cabal?”
    Garcia laughed, pounding on the steering wheel. “You’re hilarious, Brian.”
    “But Ernesto didn’t kill Harper and he damn sure didn’t snatch this drunk Shriner.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because,” Keyes said, “the guy’s a burglar, not a psychopath.”
    “Know what I think, brother? I think Ernesto is El Fuego”
    “Give me a break, Al.”
    “Let me finish.” Garcia pulled the Dodge into a shopping center and parked near a Cuban cafe. He rolled down the window and toyed with another cigarette. “I think your little scuzzball client is El Fuego, but I also think he didn’t dream up this scheme all by his lonesome. I agree with you: Cabal ain’t exactly a master criminal, he’s a fuckin’ burglar, and not very good at that. This whole thing sounds like a bad extortion scam, and our pal Ernesto, he don’t have the brains to extort a blow-job from a legless whore. So he had help. Who? you’re asking me. Don’t know for sure, but I’ll bet it’s this mysterious superhuman black dude Cabal’s been crying about … “
    Keyes related his encounter with Viceroy