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Sergeant Henderson’s new partner, Teodoro “Teddy” Gonzalez, was the newest investigator in the division, and Henderson was supposed to break him in to homicide work, as Hoke was supposed to break in Ellita Sanchez. Bill and Hoke had worked together as partners, even after Henderson had been promoted to sergeant, for more than three years. They had worked well together, but because neither of them spoke Spanish, and both refused to learn the language, Major Brownley had broken them up and assigned them bilingual partners. Hoke, being senior to Henderson, had kept the little office, and Henderson and Gonzalez now occupied two beat-up metal desks next to the men’s room. There wasno women’s room; Ellita had to take the elevator down to the second floor.
    With more than half of Miami’s population a mixture of various Latins, but mostly Cubans, and with more Salvadoran and Nicaraguan refugees coming in daily, the change in partners had been inevitable. Bill and Hoke hadn’t been happy about the switch, but they had accepted it without complaint because there was nothing they could do about it. Altogether, there were forty-seven detectives in Homicide, and, thanks to Affirmative Action, the balance was about even between Anglo and Latin officers. Not counting Major Brownley, who was black, there were three black detectives, and one of these was a Haitian. The Haitian detective, a Sorbonne graduate, spoke French fluently, as well as Creole and English, but he had less work to do than any of the others. The Miami Haitian population, about 25,000, was the most peaceful ethnic group in town. The occasional homicides in Little Haiti usually involved somebody from outside their district shooting one of them for fun from a passing car.
    When Hoke came into the office, Ellita Sanchez, with the help of a small hand mirror, was applying a coat of American Dream to her lips. Except for this vividly red and wet-looking lipstick, Ellita used no other makeup. Because the corners of her mouth turned down slightly, unless she was smiling the two tiny red lines that tugged at the corners of her lips sometimes made it seem, at first glance, as though her mouth were dribbling blood. Hoke wondered if anyone had ever told her about this effect.
    “How’d it go?” Hoke said.
    “We’ll know more later. The assistant M.E. said he thought it was an OD, not a suicide, but not for the record. I sent for Hickey’s file. According to the computer, he’s got a record, so I asked for a printout.”
    Hoke handed her the Baggie with the items he had picked up in Hickey’s room. “Send the tinfoil balls and the bags of powder to the lab to be checked out. Send the roach, too, if you want—or take it home and smoke it.”
    “I don’t smoke pot, Sergeant.” Ellita put the roach into her purse.
    Hoke went through Hickey’s wallet, a well-worn cowhide fold-over type, and removed a driver’s license, expired; a slip of paper with a telephone number, written in pencil; a cracked black-and-white snapshot of a mongrel with a ball in its mouth; a folded gift coupon for a McDonald’s quarter-pounder, expired; a Visa credit card in Gerald Hickey’s name, expired; and a tightly folded twenty-dollar bill that had been hidden behind the lining of the wallet.
    “Not much here.” Hoke passed the twenty across the desk. “Put this bill with the others.”
    “I’ve already sealed the money in an envelope.”
    “In that case, you’ll have to unseal it, won’t you?”
    Ellita cut the flap of the brown envelope with the small blade of her Swiss army knife, took out the money, flattened the twenty, and added it to the other bills. She placed the money in a new brown envelope, threw the mutilated envelope into the wastepaper basket, and then sealed the money inside. She wrote “Gerald Hickey” and “$1,070” on the outside of the envelope before passing it to Hoke across the desk. Hoke put the envelope in the side pocket of his leisure jacket, and