Hot Schemes by Sherryl Woods Page A

hold out for a more personal commitment.”
    She frowned at him. “You’re the only one who thinks he has a crush on me.”
    “Only because you are blind to the signs.”
    “Why are we arguing over Ted Ryan’s amorous intentions, when we should be thanking our lucky stars that he dumped all this information into our laps?”
    “You have a point. You read while I drive.”
    Molly had barely made a dent in the material, when they neared Paredes’s neighborhood.
    Westchester was a community west of the Florida Turnpike, where many Cubans had eventually settled, leaving Little Havana to a more recent influx of exiles from El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Panama.
    Along the Tamiami Trail, yet another designation for
Calle Ocho
or Southwest Eighth Street before it continued west to cut through the Everglades toward Naples, there were strip malls and gun shops, a bowling alley, and dozens of neat little restaurants featuring a mix of ethnic fare. One of the most popular Cuban restaurants, Lila’s, with its mounds of crisp
papas fritas
—fried potatoes—atop tender
palomilla
steak, beckoned as Michael and Molly headed for their unscheduled meeting with Paredes.
    Refusing to waste time for a sit-down meal, Michael conceded only to picking up two grilled sandwiches,
media noches
as they were called by Cubans and Anglos alike. They ate the sandwiches as he made the turn off the Trail into a neighborhood of Spanish-style homes with neat lawns and climbing bougainvillaea in vivid shades of purple and fuchsia. Ornamental ironwork covered most of the windows, installed not for its intricate beauty, but to protect against crime. In this respect it was not so different from Little Havana. Here, though, the homes were slightly larger and newer.
    “How’d you get the address?” he asked as he checked the numbers on the houses against the slip of paper.
    Molly was amazed the question hadn’t come up before now. Maybe he just hadn’t had the energy to look a gift horse in the mouth. Well fed now, his naturally suspicious brain had kicked in.
    “Sources,” she said enigmatically.
    “What sources?”
    “What difference does it make?”
    “I’m not sure anyone on the Metro police force could get this address, yet one lone county employee just snaps her fingers and has it. It doesn’t figure.”
    “Oh, I’m sure some enterprising cop over there has it tucked away in his Rolodex for a rainy day.”
    Michael shook his head. “Just about the time anyone pins down his location, Paredes shifts to a new spot. I suppose it’s habit after years of moving his guerrilla camps around the Cuban countryside to evade Castro’s soldiers. So what did you barter with this so-called source of yours to get it? Or was this just more of Ted Ryan’s largesse?”
    “Michael, not everything in life has a price tag.”
    “Yes,
amiga
, sooner or later it does. You just haven’t been asked to pay up yet.”
    Molly decided nothing she was likely to say would counteract that level of ingrained cynicism. She kept her mouth clamped firmly shut.
    When they finally reached the address she had been given, the house looked exactly like every other house on the block. There was nothing to distinguish it, right down to the clutter of toys on the front lawn and the rusty, aging sedan in the driveway, along with a newer, though still not brand-new, car parked behind it. Molly glanced up and down the block in amazement.
    “I didn’t know there were this many old cars still in existence in running order,” she said.
    “You should see the ones on the streets of Havana. I’m told those make these old clunkers look like the latest models. A lot of people have become very adept mechanics.” As he cut off the ignition, he glanced at her, his expression suddenly serious. “
Amiga
, don’t get all bent out of shape over this …”
    “Uh-oh. What?”
    “I think it might be best for you to wait in the car.”
    “Why?” she asked, though she was relatively