P. Parrish - The Little Death

Louis looked back at a photo of Labastide with two other men about his age. They were lounging around a picnic table, holding beers and apparently sharing a joke. He could read nothing in the body language or gazes. And he could not ask Rosa that kind of question.

Louis took one of the smaller photos off the wall and studied it. It was of Emilio and Rosa, standing under the gumbo-limbo tree down in the courtyard. His arm was around her waist. Her head was against his shoulder.

“Mrs. Díaz, may I take this?” Louis asked. “I’ll make sure you get it back.”

Rosa nodded. “I have others.”

Louis turned the frame over and started pushing back the clips that kept the photo in place. Rosa turned back to her baby and started humming softly.

It was good that she had a family of her own, but he had been an investigator long enough to understand that when a loved one simply vanished, it left a special emptiness that could maybe be eased but never filled.

There was no doubt in Louis’s mind now that Emilio Labastide was dead. If he had been deported, or even imprisoned, he would have found some way to contact his sister.

“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Díaz,” he said, setting the empty frame down. “Could I leave you my phone number, just in case you hear from him or remember anything else?”

Rosa waited while Louis wrote his home phone and the hotel’s phone number on the back of one of his business cards.

“You are more nice than the man on the beach,” she said.

“The man on the beach?” Louis asked. “What man?”

“When Emilio not come home for three days, I ask Juan to drive me to the beach, and I speak to policía about Emilio.”

“The police on the island, near the ocean?”

“Sí,” Rosa said. “I try to make complaint about Emilio missing, but policía not listen. He tell me Emilio probably go home to Mexico, but I know he didn’t.”

“This policeman, do you remember his name?”

“His name was… Cisne .”

“Cease-nay?”

Rosa raked her hair. “In English is… like white bird. I know… is swan. Yes, swan.”

“Tall guy with blond hair?”

“Sí.”

“Thank you,” Louis said.

Rosa nodded and retreated again to her sleeping baby. Louis had learned not to offer false hope to someone who was in the process of moving on, since in some ways that was crueler than never knowing. But he could give her one thing.

“I know Officer Swann, Mrs. Díaz,” he said. “I’ll talk to him about your brother. I promise.”

“You will find Emilio for me?” she asked softly.

Find him. How was he supposed to answer that?

Rosa didn’t wait for his answer. “ Usted es muy amable. I know you find Emilio for me. I look for you to come back soon. ¿Sí? ”

Louis gave her an uncertain nod. “Sí,” he said. “I will come back.”

The choice was simple: Domino’s pizza or Captain D’s seafood. Louis couldn’t imagine how a hook-’em-and-cook-’em fry shack like Captain D’s stayed in business in a place like Florida. But he did know that once you ate fresh grouper at Timmy’s Nook, you just didn’t-as the folks in Palm Beach would say-lower yourself to beer-batter fish in a bag.

Mel would just have to eat pizza and like it.

The sky was pink and lavender as he parked the Mustang in the lot of their hotel. Louis grabbed the pizza box, the Styrofoam cooler he had filled with beer back at the 7-Eleven in West Palm, and the photograph of Emilio that Rosa had given him. As he hurried upstairs to the room, he wondered if Mel was feeling better and hoped he had forced himself to get out for a walk.

Mel didn’t look as if he’d gone anywhere. He was sprawled on his bed, one knee up, arms behind his head, eyes closed. He wore only a pair of baggy jogging shorts and a set of headphones. His cherished CD player sat on the bed next to him.

Louis set the pizza and cooler down and nudged him. Deep in either sleep or Coltrane’s jazz, Mel jumped. He propped himself on one elbow and reached for his glasses. It took him a moment to focus.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Almost eight. You been asleep all day?”

Mel pushed to a sitting position and discarded the headphones. His chest, arms, and face were so sunburnt the color looked painted on. And it looked painful.

“You go down to the beach?” Louis asked.

“Just for a few minutes.”

“Must’ve been longer than a few minutes,” Louis said. “You look like a lobster.”

“I am a sensitive man with sensitive skin,” Mel said.

“You’re a stale, pale male who lives like one of those underground creatures in that movie The Time Machine .”

“Morlocks.”

Louis snagged a beer from the cooler. “Why didn’t you buy some sunscreen?” he asked.

“Why are you nagging me?”

“Well, don’t bitch to me all night when you can’t sleep.”

“I won’t have any trouble sleeping.”

Louis flipped open the pizza box. There were no plates in the room, so he grabbed a couple of Domino’s napkins.

“How many slices you want?” Louis asked.

“Not hungry,” Mel said.

Louis started to ask where he’d eaten but paused when he saw a plate sitting on the nightstand between the beds. He picked up the linen napkin that lay on top. The food was a partially eaten bacon cheeseburger. The plate had the Ta-boo logo on the edge.

“You’re getting takeout from Ta-boo?” Louis asked.

“Sure, why not?”

Louis threw the napkin down. “A little pricy, isn’t it?”

Mel shrugged and started to put his headphones back on. Louis reached down to stop him.

“What’s your problem?” Mel asked.

“Have you gotten any money from Kent?”

“He says he’ll have some in a few weeks.”

“How much?” Louis asked.

“He didn’t say.”

Louis went back to the pizza box. “I don’t know how you expect us to get by here,” he said. “Eighty-five a night for the room, a couple hundred for tuxedo rentals, and now you’re laying around here eating takeout from the most expensive place in town.”

“It’s not the most expensive place,” Mel said.

“That’s not the point,” Louis said. “We haven’t even decided if we’re going to take this case yet, and we’re already five hundred bucks in the hole.”

Mel swung his feet to the floor. “You going to bail on me here?”

Louis had a slice of pizza to his mouth, but he stopped and lowered it. Despite his increasing blindness, Mel was the most independent and get-out-of-my-face guy Louis knew. But his voice now had an edge of panic, a don’t-quit-on-me kind of panic.

“I’m not walking away,” Louis said, “but I’d like to know if it’s going to be worth our while. This isn’t going to be an easy investigation.”

“There are no easy investigations, you know that,” Mel said. “It’s just a lot of begging and digging, and if you’re lucky, you sniff out a lead that cracks things open.”

Louis sat down on the edge of his bed and bit into the pizza. Mel started to pick at the cold French fries on the plate. For a couple of minutes, there was nothing but the soft crunch of their chewing.

“So, what did you find out today?” Mel finally asked. “Does this Emilio fellow exist?”

Louis nodded. “Yeah. His last name is Labastide. He’s a Mexican illegal who worked for the lawn company in 1984.”

“You found him?”

Louis rose, grabbed Rosa’s photo off the dresser, and tossed it to Mel. Mel turned on the lamp and held the picture under the bright light.

“I found his sister, Rosa,” Louis said. “She hasn’t seen him since October of eighty-four. Says one night he just didn’t come home.”