“Please don’t let him get hurt, Mr. Freeman,” Carmen said, looking into my eyes. Her strong will couldn’t hold the tear drop this time.

I stayed silent, waiting.

“My height, my coloring,” she finally said. “He wears a Marlins baseball cap, turned backward. You know how they do. And he is driving an old Toyota, dusty white you know, from the sun.”

“And how old is he?”

“He is nineteen years old.”

“So he’s not a juvenile.” It was a statement, not a question.

“His date of birth is June fourteenth, nineteen-ninety,” she said looking hard into my eyes.

“You know Mr. Manchester is a lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll look up your brother’s juvenile record.”

“And you will find it,” she said, losing a bit of the bravado now. “I am very much trying to save him, Mr. Freeman.”

She was back to staring at her fingers, the rubbing more severe now. And for some reason, I was thinking about the callus she’d built up on that fine delicate knuckle of hers. I was trying to think of something to say to assure her that things will be all right, when I knew they wouldn’t. And while both of us were avoiding eye contact, I began to hear the thrumming of an electronic heartbeat pulsing somewhere in the distance, and growing.

When I looked up out from the shade of the tree, I saw a metallic green Chevrolet Monte Carlo swinging through the parking lot, its chrome wheels spinning the sunlight. The windows were illegal black. The driver didn’t seem to be in a hurry. At first, I thought it was “just kids.” But when I turned and looked back at Carmen, she was knitting her brow.

“It’s OK, Ms. Carmen,” I said.

But she was looking past my shoulder to the approaching car.

Then I heard the bass pounding of the music suddenly go louder, as if a barrier had been lowered. When I glanced back, a rear window was rolling down.