A package in plain-brown wrapper sat innocently on Dorothy Preston's small, metal desk. A hand written note on a yellow post-it was attached. It read: "Call me before you open this. Jack." After considering whether to obey the note for almost two seconds, she tore open the package and read the label on the green file folder. "Sunshine State Mutual Life Insurance Company death claim, Insured: José Ibarra, Beneficiary: Marta Sanchez."

    Her eyes widened in surprise. "José Ibarra is dead?" Dorothy flipped pages so furiously that she suffered several paper cuts. She hoped his death had been violent, preferably slow and painful.

    She went through the papers again, more carefully this time, asking herself "Where is the cause of death?" All she found was a Dade County Circuit Court judgment stating that Upon the application of the Petitioner, Marta Sanchez, the Court finds and orders that José Ibarra be and he is hereby deemed to be deceased as of the date of this Final Order.

    She finally dialed Jack as per instructions. Jack Weldon was a senior claims manager at Sunshine State Mutual Life Insurance Company.

    "Weldon," he answered.

    "I got your package, Jack."

    "You opened it."

    "Of course."

    "C'mon, Jack. You sent it because you know I need the work."

    "There's not much for you to do. Just verify the beneficiary's ID. I'll understand if you don't want to handle it, because of--well, you know." he said.

    Dorothy let go a deep breath and swiveled her chair so that she could position her foot against one of the drawers. The chair squeaked as she leaned back. Her hand brushed away a pool of tears under her eyes and then pushed back some uncooperative gray hairs that now outnumbered the brown ones.

    After an uncomfortable silence, Jack said, "Dorothy?"

    "Jack, this file is mine!"

    "Dorothy, this is about a life insurance policy claim, not revenge. Just check out the beneficiary, Marta Sanchez. Nothing more. I mean it."

    "Leave José Ibarra to me," she said.

* * *

    José Ibarra. She said the name aloud.

    She looked at the excerpts from Ibarra's prison record. She concentrated on the photograph, memorizing it. The mustache and the tattoo "Numero Uno" didn't fit with his young boy features. From what Dorothy remembered, he hadn't changed much. The file suggested that Ibarra had been serving an uneventful life sentence for murder until his escape about seven years ago. The record didn't mention what she knew all too well: José Ibarra was a cold-blooded killer without remorse. There hadn't been enough evidence to convict him of the murder of the young soldier from her unit.

    José Ibarra. The last time she saw him, she was in an Army uniform. Sergeant Dorothy's José was a lowly private. Aloud, while looking at the file in front of her, she said, "What about Murphy? What about it, soldier? You better confess. Thought you could do him and get away with it? I'm his Sergeant. I'm responsible for that kid. Are you listening, Ibarra? If you weren't dead, you son-of-a-bitch, I'd kill you myself. You are dead, aren't you? Somehow, I just don't believe it."

* * *

    Dorothy looked across the desk at Warden Henry Terrell. He looked more like an executive than a jailer. She wanted information. He wasn't likely to part with any.

    So you're here about José Ibarra, Ms. Preston?" Terrell asked, gesturing for her to sit down.

    "I have reason to believe that he might still be alive," she said.

    "I don't have any trouble believing that he's dead," Terrell said. "AIDS will do that."

    Dorothy was speechless, but only for a moment. "The blood test that came from here didn't show that he was HIV-positive."

    "Somebody got hoodwinked then, Ms. Preston. Your company got conned by a con." Terrell smiled.

    "Are you sure you weren't the one who got conned, Warden?"

    "I seriously doubt that, Ms. Preston. Ibarra was very smart. He waited patiently for an opportunity to make a break for it. One day he jumped a repairman working on the x-ray machine in the hospital wing, made him strip, and then slit the guy's throat from ear to ear. Then, he shaved his moustache off, put on glasses, changed clothing with the tech and walked out. If he's dead, that's just fine with me."

* * *

    The tan Jeep Wrangler Sahara pulled into a guest parking space in the once-upscale townhouse project. It reminded Dorothy of her Army Jeep. A weathered, carved-wood sign should have displayed the name of the development. Only unreadable pieces of letters remained. It was only a few blocks from the heart of Miami's Little Havana district. A recent rain left a high gloss on the asphalt. The neighborhood was a rough area with gang graffiti everywhere.

    Dorothy locked the Jeep and looked around. She could feel four young men staring at her. The oldest looked about sixteen. He was the leader. They all dressed alike, down to the black baseball caps worn backwards.

    She squeezed her purse. Her revolver, a snub-nosed thirty-eight caliber Lady Smith was in place.

    "Nice Jeep, lady," the leader yelled to her. "Can we borrow it? We need to pick up some school supplies." The others laughed.

    They were in her path. Dorothy stared at them and kept walking. She felt the beginning of her involuntary "flight or fight" response.

    The leader stood between her and the townhouses. The others spread out so that she could not walk around them. They were going to force her to turn around.

    "You going to pay a visit to Marta?" the leader asked.

    Dorothy kept walking. She was beginning to perspire behind her knees.

    "I hope you brought cash, Mamacita. Marta don't take American Express. You got the cash?"

    Dorothy walked straight up to him. She would not let herself show either fear or hesitation. She squeezed her purse again. She squinted and put on her "hard" look.

    "I asked you if you got the cash." She heard a metallic click. The leader held a long knife out in front of him. He waved it at Dorothy. "Where's the money? Sometimes I collect for Marta, sometimes for me."

    "It's right here in my purse," she answered with a false calm.

    She used her purse as a weapon, holding it at the top and swinging it at the knife. The boy's right wrist took the impact. He screamed in pain. The knife went flying.

    Dorothy opened her purse and pulled out the chrome revolver. She pressed it against the young man's stomach.

    He froze. He tended to his sore wrist. "Hey, lady, I was just kidding. We're friends of Marta. We didn't mean nothing."

    Dorothy shoved the gun against his stomach hard, and he moved out of her way. She glared at the others before she lowered the gun to her side. She hoped the adrenaline rush wouldn't make her hands shake.

    The young man looked down at her. He wasn't that tall, but he towered over Dorothy. She didn't blink. "Second unit from the right," he said politely.

    Dorothy passed him and didn't look back. She looked tougher than she felt. She put the gun back in her purse.

    Dorothy had to rap on the metal-made-to-look-like-wood door. The door bell button was missing. Two bare wires stuck out of a hole in the stuccoed-concrete wall.

    Marta Sanchez opened the front door, after the second knock. Sanchez was above average in height with jet-black hair, and looked down at Dorothy. She wore more makeup than Dorothy would have expected on someone wearing a worn, longsleeve housecoat.

    "What do you want?" the woman asked in an earthy voice with only a hint of a Latin accent.

    "My name is Dorothy Preston. I'm working for Sunshine State Mutual Life on a life insurance policy claim. Are you Marta Sanchez?"

    "If you brought my check, I’m Marta Sanchez."

    "I'm afraid it's not that easy. May I come in?"

    "I suppose so," Marta said. "I’m not dressed and my place is not so neat today. I wasn't expecting company."

    Not so neat, to her, meant pigsty. Cups, dishes and clothing were everywhere. The room was sparsely furnished with cheap furniture, the kind that gets rented by the month. Dark wood with gold fabric.

    "Can I get you something to drink?" Marta asked.

    Dorothy was thirsty, but not so thirsty that she would drink from one of Marta's glasses.

    "No thank you," Dorothy said. "I just need to ask you a few questions." She took a notepad from her purse.

    They sat down at opposite ends of the uncomfortable sofa. Dorothy looked around, surveying the disorder.

    "Let me get some of this junk out of the way," Marta said, picking up three empty beer bottles and mismatched mugs. She took them to the kitchen and dumped them into the sink.

    "Ms. Sanchez," Dorothy began, "I'll need to take some notes and get you to sign a statement that I can send to the insurance company."

    "You don't need to be so formal. Call me Marta."

    "All right, then, Marta," Dorothy began again. "Do you have a driver's license I can see?"

    Marta got her wallet from a side table and fished out her license. She handed it to Dorothy. Dorothy looked at the picture, resisted the urge to make a comment about the photography and wrote the license number on her pad. She returned the license. "Are you related to the late Mr. Ibarra?" Dorothy continued.

    "You mean married?"

    "Yes. Either legally or common law."

    "No. José and I were just close friends. Our families have been friends for three generations. This is very common in Cuba."

    "Can I ask you why José would leave you a million dollars?"

    "José always said that he was worth more dead than alive," she answered. "He kept telling me that one day he would make me a wealthy woman."

    Dorothy looked carefully at Marta, staring at the woman's dark, almost-black eyes.

    Something just wasn't right. Dorothy couldn't put her finger on just what it was yet, but she had the feeling that what she saw was not what she was getting. A million-dollar policy for a family friend, paid for by a man doing life in prison. It didn't add up. She was going to check the arithmetic. Maybe a little half-truth would help.

    "Marta, the company insists that José's death be proved."

    "My lawyer got José declared legally dead. The Judge gave us a paper saying that he's legally dead, same as if we know where he was buried. Isn't that all you need?"

    Dorothy held her notepad in Marta's direction. "Look this over and see if you feel that you can sign it," Dorothy requested.

    As Marta reached for it, the sleeve of her housedress pulled up, revealing a scarred area on her right forearm. Dorothy studied the injury. Her gaze dwelled too long and Marta noticed Dorothy's interest in her arm.

    "Nasty burn," Marta said. "A small splatter of hot oil did that. Ever since then, I try to stay out of the kitchen," she laughed.

    At that moment, Dorothy knew that Marta Sanchez was hiding something. She knew exactly what it was.

    The party was about over and Sunshine State Mutual Life was going to pay out the tidy sum of one million dollars. The court had said that José was dead. Marta could easily establish that she was the beneficiary. The company would close its file and not be too quick to waste money on an outside P.I. anytime soon. At least not on Dorothy Preston.

    It was now or never.

    "You're very clever, José. You damn near got away with it," Dorothy hissed.

    "What are you talking about?"

    Dorothy rose, took back her notepad and put it in her purse. "Your arm. That's no burn. That's a removed tattoo. I've got a hunch it said "Numero Uno." You've got a nice figure, but a man's hands and Adam's apple. Pretty good surgeon. Local or Swedish? Should I continue?"

    "You're out of your mind," Marta raged, her hands on her hips. "You'll never prove anything."

    "A million bucks says I prove it all. Want to put up or shut up on a DNA blood test? If that's too high tech for you, we could always try matching fingerprints. I wonder if they saved your prison cell for you?"

    Marta's face looked as if would explode. Dorothy had her answer: Marta was José; José was Marta. He had come up with a nearly perfect place to hide: in a woman's body. Dorothy was not prepared for Marta/José's reaction.

    Instantly, the former man was upon her. Fingers were locked around Dorothy's throat before she could duck Marta's charge. Dorothy's lack of height was a real disadvantage. Leverage and adrenaline made her opponent much less Marta and much more José. It was an odd thought for that moment, but Dorothy, while being choked, remembered that José was a murderer. In her mind, she knew that she would find a way to avoid being his next victim. She would not let herself be another Murphy.

    Dorothy's hand-to-hand combat training came back to her. But this was no time for reminiscing. She was getting light headed as powerful fingers closed tighter around her throat. She fought to pull the fingers off, but her strength was not enough to dislodge José's grip.

    She desperately needed oxygen; she couldn't even cough.

    Dorothy leaned forward and down. Her own body weight put enough pressure on her attacker's fingers that the grip moved and was less effective at cutting off Dorothy's air. At the same time, Dorothy clenched her fists and forced her hands outward in opposite directions, causing her elbows to bend. She rose sharply, shooting her hands inside and against José's forearms in an arc that started low and moved out to the left and the right.

    The grip around her throat broke and José fell backwards. Then, he came after Dorothy again, but this time, Sergeant Preston was ready. A right uppercut that began around Dorothy’s knees landed flush on José's jaw. His head snapped back. Dorothy moved in quickly and as she stepped forward, she delivered a sharp left hook to José's right temple, just as his head came reflexively forward and he moved toward her. He stumbled for only one step and collapsed to the left, already unconscious. His fall was broken by the ugliest floor lamp Dorothy had ever seen. It was made of metal and was more or less in the shape of a palm tree. The falling José turned it into an instant metal abstract. I like what you've done to the lamp, Dorothy thought to herself.

    Her breathing slowly returned to normal. She touched her throat gingerly. It was very sore. She knew she would have black and blue marks on her neck tomorrow.

    After a brief look at the motionless José, she made her way to the kitchen. She placed a non-emergency call to the City of Miami police. She tried to explain what she needed to the voice on the phone, but got put on hold.

    Welcome to Miami, she thought to herself.

Contact the Author -kuvasz@attbi.com