From inside a public telephone booth on Biscayne Boulevard, Rolando, the priest, looked out at the long, dark green leaves on a palm tree to his left. When the leaves began swaying gently to the soft, invisible rhythm of a mild breeze, the priest opened the door, then stuck a finger in the warm dampness between his neck and Roman collar. Eighty-five degrees, and the cramped telephone booth was on fire with skull-searing sunlight. A touch of hell that filled Rolando’s mouth with the dry taste of cobwebs. He waited for Mas Betancount, on the other end, to order Cruz Real’s death. Rolando sweated, licking salt from his dried lips as he watched teenage boys and girls across the street in Bay Front Park shriek and paw each other in a game of touch football. All of the teenagers appeared to possess a vapid beauty, an obnoxious exuberance and long blond hair that flew wildly in several directions at once. The gold that paved the streets of modern America was on the heads of its young. To his left and much farther away in the distance was the General Douglas MacArthur Causeway, connecting Miami with the long, thin island of Miami Beach and the largest concentration of luxury hotels in America.
