DALLAS INVITED ME to his apartment the next evening and cooked hamburgers for us on a hibachi out on a small balcony. Down below were blocks and blocks of one-story houses with gravel-and-tar roofs and yards in which the surfaces of plastic-sided swimming pools wrinkled in the wind. The sun looked broken and red on the horizon, without heat, veiled with smoke from a smoldering fire in the Glades. Dallas showed me pictures of his daughter taken in Orlando and in front of a Ferris wheel at Coney Island. One picture showed her in a snowsuit sewn with rabbit ears that flopped down from the hood. The little girl’s hair was gold, her eyes blue, her smile magical.

“What happened to her mom?” I said.

“She took off with a guy who was running coke from the Islands in a cigarette boat. They hit a buoy at fifty knots south of Pine Key. Get this. The guy flew a Cobra in ’ Nam. My wife always said she loved a pilot.” He turned the burgers on the grill, his eyes concentrated on his task.

I knew what was coming next.

“Had a note under my door from Whitey this morning. I might have to take my little girl and blow Dodge,” he said.

I cracked a beer and leaned on the railing. In the distance I could see car lights flowing down a wide bend in an expressway. I sipped from the beer and said nothing in reply to his statement.

“I made a salad. Why don’t you dump it in a couple of bowls?” he said.

The silence hung between us. “I’ve got a couple of grand in a savings account. You want to borrow it?” I said, then raised the bottle to my mouth, waiting for the weary confirmation of the frailty and self-interest that exists in us all.

“No, thanks,” he said.

I lowered the bottle and looked at him.

“It’s just a matter of doing the smart thing,” he said. “I got to think it through. Whitey’s not a bad guy, he’s just got his-”

“What?” I said.

“His own obligations. Miami is supposed to be an open city. No contract hits, no one guy gets a lock on the action. But nothing goes on here that doesn’t get pieced off to the New York families. You see my drift?”