Metro Girl (Alex Barnaby 1)

plate glass windows. One end of the factory was devoted to a small retail store. And at the other end, six women sat at individual tables. Barrels filled with tobacco leaves had been positioned beside the tables. A woman selected a leaf and then rolled it into a cigar. A man stood supervising. The man and all the women were smoking cigars. They looked up and smiled when they realized we were watching. It was a silent invitation. Come in and buy a cigar.

“I’ll wait here,” Judey said. “Brian is very sensitive to smoke.”

Hooker sauntered in and admired some tobacco leaves. He bought a cigar, and he asked one of the women about Maria Raffles.

No, she said solemnly. Maria didn’t work there. It was a small community. They’d heard she was missing. The woman thought Maria worked at the National Cigar Factory on Fifteenth.

We climbed into the Porsche and Hooker drove to the National Cigar Factory. Again, there was a small retail store. And beside the store there were women rolling cigars in the window. There were six tables. But there were only five women.

I followed Hooker into the store and took a step back when one of the women jumped up and shrieked at Hooker.

“Omigod!” she yelled. “I know you. You’re what’s his name!”

“Sam Hooker?” he said.

“Yeah. That’s it. You’re Sam Hooker. I’m a huge fan. Huge. I saw you on television when you crashed at Loudin. I started crying. I was so worried.”

“I got pushed into the wall,” Hooker said.

“I saw that, too,” I told him. “You were hot-dogging and you deserved to crash.”

“I thought you didn’t watch NASCAR,” Hooker said to me.

“My family watches NASCAR. I was at the house mooching dinner, and I was forced to watch.” All right, so maybe sometimes I still enjoyed NASCAR.

“Who’s she?” the woman wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” Hooker said. “She’s been following me around all day.”

I gave him a shot to the shoulder that knocked him back a couple inches.

Hooker said “ow,” but he grinned when he said it.

“Alexandra Barnaby,” I said extending my hand. “I’m looking for Maria Raffles.”

“Rosa Florez,” she said.

Rosa was my height, but more round. Fat round breasts. Round brown eyes. Flushed round cheeks. A round Jennifer Lopez bootie. A small, soft roll of fat circling her waist. She had pale Cuban skin, and she had a lot of wavy brown hair cut short. Hard to tell her age. In her forties, probably.

She was wearing a white V-neck knit shirt that showed a lot of cleavage, and jeans that were rolled at the ankle. If you stuck a quarter in Rosa’s cleavage and turned her upside down the quarter wouldn’t move. She was wearing clear plastic, open-toed four-inch heels that clacked when she walked. She was wearing minimum makeup and lots of flowery perfume.

“Maria isn’t here,” Rosa said. “She hasn’t been here all week. I have to tell you, I’m real worried. It’s not like her to miss work. Or not to call anyone. We were real good friends. She would have told me if she was going away.”

“Were you at the club with her?”

“No. I don’t go to those clubs. I mostly stay in Miami. Maria didn’t used to go to those clubs either. She’s a Cuban girl, you know. She always stayed in the neighborhood. Then one day a couple months ago she decided she wanted to be by the marina in South Beach. When she was in Cuba she lived in a little town right on the water. She said she missed the diving and the boating since she’s been here.” Rosa lowered her voice. “I think she was looking to get out of the cigar factory, too. She thought maybe she could meet someone and maybe get a job on a boat. I think that’s why she started clubbing. She was pretty. She could get in for free and look at the rich men with the boats. And she was crazy about the diving. Always looking at charts. Always talking about the diving.”

“Did she ever mention Luis Salzar?”

“Not that I remember. Maybe just in conversation. Everyone in Little Havana knows of Salzar.”

Rosa looked beyond us to the parked Porsche. “Is that your car?” she asked Hooker.

“Yep.”

“It’s a Porsche, right?”

“Yep.”