It was a long ride to Darryl’s Fish Camp. Tension hung in the front seat like a heavy curtain between Carlos and me.

My Jeep was back in service with a new battery, thanks to Sal. Carlos and I decided to take it, since his unmarked car, a white Ford Crown Victoria, screamed plainclothes cop. I drove. Carlos rode shotgun.

He’d spent most of our forty-minute trip to the south end of Lake O ignoring me, making calls on his cell phone in rapid-fire Spanish. It was rude on several levels, but I cut him a break. I hadn’t exactly been Emily Post when he came to visit at Himmarshee Park.

I’m sure he thought I was jerking him around. He was entitled to cop an attitude.

The way he was machine-gunning Spanish words into the phone, I didn’t have a prayer of understanding him. I can puzzle out simple words and a few sentences, as long as the verbs are present tense, the speaker goes really S—L—O—W—L—Y, and there are hand gestures and facial expressions to help me along.

Carlos, however, seemed in no mood to help me along.

I did catch a tender tone to his voice in the first call, and the word abuela, which I remembered meant grandmother. My mind went back to the first time he told me about his granny, and the way she spent hours in the kitchen cooking his favorite Cuban dishes, even though she was well into her eighties. That was when we were getting to know each other. What had happened to the bond between us? Sometimes I wanted to make it stronger; other times it seemed I was taking it apart, piece by painful piece.

His present conversation sounded like business, though I couldn’t be sure. For all I knew, he might be placing an order for tomorrow from the new Cuban lunch counter outside of town. If so, I wondered if he remembered how much I liked those sweet fried bananas. I thought of the first time he made Cuban food for me. His face had been joyful as he fed me a forkful of delicious plátanos. We’d gone directly from the kitchen to his bedroom. No one can tell me food isn’t an aphrodisiac.

Now, I stole a glance at him in profile. His jaw was set in a hard line; his face closed and cold. No joy. He stared impassively at the scenery—sugarcane fields that seemed to stretch forever; a flat road shimmering in the June sun; the occasional agricultural truck lumbering by on the opposite side of US Highway 441.

“So you talked to your grandmother?” I finally asked, when he made no move to speak.

“About her.” His brow furrowed. “She’s sick.”

“I’m sorry.” I remembered how I felt when Maw-Maw started failing. I resisted the urge to reach over and stroke his cheek. “I hope it’s not serious.”

“She’s eighty-six, Mace. At that age, anything is serious.”

“I’ll ask Mama to add her name to the prayer list down at Abundant Forgiveness, Love and Charity Chapel.”

“Thanks. Can’t hurt. I know a lot of the old ladies at Saint John Bosco in Little Havana have been lighting candles, too.”

He shifted on the passenger seat. Tapped his fingers on one knee. “How much farther?”

“We’re almost there. But if you need to take a whiz, I can pull over into the weeds.”

His lip curled. “As inviting as that sounds, I don’t have to go. I’m just trying to remember where the fish camp is. There aren’t many landmarks out here. Everything looks the same.”

“Unlike Miami, where all the strip malls and condos display such unique and interesting differences.”

Now, why did I say that? Did I want to start a fight?

“I think we’ve already established that Miami is evil and ugly—though millions of tourists a year might dispute that—and that Himmarshee is paradise. If you don’t mind snakes, bugs, and accents so thick no one can understand a word people up here are saying.”

“Accents?” I raised an eyebrow. “At least we speak English!”

“Marginally.”

I thought of Carlos, with his precise diction and careful grooming, meeting up with Darryl, with his muddy bare feet and redneck growl. I couldn’t help it, I started to laugh.

“Son, jest wait ’til we git to that camp,” I drawled. “You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.”

Before long, the Jeep was rattling over the ruts in the dirt driveway. This time, I noticed that somebody had used the fish camp’s metal sign for target practice. Whoever had done it was a pretty good shot, too. Blue sky showed through a hole where the eyeball of a largemouth bass used to be.

“Where’s the lake?” Carlos asked.

“Can’t see it from here. The shoreline’s behind a dike, at least thirty feet tall. Two hurricanes in the 1920s killed a couple of thousand people out here, which made the government sit up and pay attention to flood control.”

I dipped my chin toward the boat dock as we passed by. “You get into the lake by taking one of those boats and traveling the rim canal.”

He frowned. “They don’t look very seaworthy.”

“Well, nobody plans to take them to sea. This isn’t exactly ocean-fishing out here, Carlos. Most everybody at a camp like this one would just load in a cooler of beer and some bait and shove off.”

As he cast another glance over his shoulder at the boats, I scanned the dock and the fish cleaning table. No sign of Darryl.

As we approached the cabins, I felt a vibration through my left boot in the floor board of the Jeep. Rolling down my window, I got a blast of Rabe’s oldies rock. If the boy was going to indulge his inner head banger, he really should learn to balance the treble and the bass.

Carlos grimaced and stuck a finger in his left ear. “¡Ay, Dios! What is that?”

“Megadeth,” I answered. “Countdown to Extinction.”

He shot me a skeptical look.

“What can I say?” I shrugged. “I went through a brief arena rock phase in college.”

Slash, the dog, barked from the porch. I could barely hear him over the music. Rabe stepped out of the door to Cabin No. 7, wiping his hands on a red mechanic’s rag. He leaned to turn down the boom box, which sat on the warped wooden floor of the cabin’s porch.

I tooted my horn twice, and waved out the window. Rabe walked down the steps into the bright sun, squinting at us from under his worn straw cowboy hat. He gave a slight nod, and commanded the hound to stay.

As Carlos and I got out of the Jeep, Rabe glanced over each shoulder. Then he plodded toward us across the weed-filled yard.

I made quick introductions. As they shook hands, Carlos’ eyes narrowed, taking measure of the younger man. Rabe towered over him, but he had none of the chest-puffing posture of some big men. His face was blank; neither friendly nor hostile. If anything, he seemed a bit nervous, eyes darting from the camp’s entrance, to the cabins, to the boat dock.

I wondered if that was leftover from childhood, when Rabe must always have worried about what corner Darryl would come around next.

“I told Detective Martinez how you and I talked,” I said. “He’s very interested in finding your stepfather.”

His gaze lit on Carlos’ eyes. “Yeah, that’s what I figured when I heard you were out here yesterday askin’ questions. I told Darryl you’d want to talk to him, and all. ’Bout an hour ago, though, he said he planned to go fishin’ off Osprey Bay Island. Said if you wanted to see him, you could take a boat and come on out there.”

“Can we get there by car?”

Rabe looked at me, local to local.

“No,” he said slowly. “It’s an island. In the lake. You get there by boat.”

I saw a flicker in Carlos’ eyes. Annoyance at being talked down to? Something else?