"Eyes down!" One of the policemen put his shoe on Jefferson's back to force his face into the concrete. "What is it you're looking over there for, boy?"

The other officer read Jefferson's name and San Francisco address into the radio. "It says he's a reporter. He's out here on Ocean Avenue, taking pictures. What of, he won't say."

Listening to the patrolman broadcast his identity and profession into the Florida night, Jefferson felt a formless, irrational fear touch his imagination. He thought of police-band scanners and of the thousands of expatriate Cubans employed at every level in the Miami city government. As his imagination threatened to turn his dread into panic, he reassured himself with the knowledge that in a few hours he would return to the West Coast, far from the Salvadorans and Cubans and uniformed bigots of Miami.

Days later, Jefferson would laugh at the naive thought that distance might protect him.

After all, airlines sold tickets to anyone who had the money.

2

In the next apartment, Lucha Villa sang of love and loss from a radio tuned to a Tijuana station. The Rivera family gathered around the table as David Holt spread typed sheets and legal papers in front of Antonio Rivera. An attorney with a lucrative practice in San Francisco, Holt wore the gray-suit uniform of an advocate. Though also an attorney, Senor Rivera wore khaki work pants and a polyester shirt. His hands bore the blisters and torn skin of a professional who now earned his living by manual labor.

A month before, Senor Rivera had served as mayor of a tiny town in the Salvadoran province of Sonsonate. Now he, his wife and their surviving children hid in a one-room apartment in a San Diego barrio. By day, he cleared brush and broke concrete, while his wife Lidia taught their children English with the aid of comic books and television soap operas. Nights, they flipped through the television channels for news of their country.