The man swam fast, like a witch was riding him. His skin was as smooth and dark as Jamaican rum, and he looked that strong, too. At least his arms did. Arms aren't the first thing I usually notice about a man, but I was bored and slightly drunk and there wasn't a hell of a lot else to look at or think about.

I was sitting by the pool of a joke of a hotel in the middle of Kingston, Jamaica called The Montego Bay. It was the third day of a week-long vacation. I was lonely and depressed and the city was feeling like Newark, the place where I live, work as a private investigator.

Everything had started out fine. The ticket down had been free, and you can't get any better than that. But there hadn't been a hotel to go along with it, so I'd made reservations at the cheapest place I could find this side of a dive.

The state of the hotel hadn't mattered at first, but I'd gotten up this morning with a crick in my neck and a bad case of the "runs." I'd stayed in my room until the air conditioner and TV broke within half and hour of each other, and then made it out to the hotel restaurant where I ordered a late breakfast from an ill-tempered waiter with a studied British accent. The cold toast, watery eggs and Sanka-tasting coffee (forget Blue Mountain), told me I'd be better served by a cold rum punch by the pool, so I counted the orange slices stuck on the rim of the glass as breakfast, and settled into a lounge chair to see what I could see. What I saw was the swimmer stroking like he was headed somewhere further than the other end of the pool. I didn't notice the woman when she sat down in the beach chair next to me and started up a conversation.

"I guess you didn't hear me, I said, I see we been shopping at the same place for suits," she said as she peered at me over round, pink-tinted sunglasses and grinned. She wore the same red maillot swimsuit as me, less twenty-five pounds and about fifteen years. I tugged my coverup further down to cover the cellulite on my thighs and returned her smile. She was pretty like a kid is pretty, "pert" they'd probably call her in a magazine. Her short hair was nearly the same reddish brown color as her skin, and about two dozen freckles were sprinkled like dark brown sugar across her forehead and cheeks. Her voice was little-girl high and there hadn't been a trace of attitude when she'd repeated herself.

"Not that I can blame you. Hearing me, I mean. I wouldn't have heard me either," she continued, nodding toward the swimmer. She settled into the beach chair, tucking her right leg under her left and took a sip of something in a brandy snifter that looked like curdled milk. "He's a friend of my husband's. A business associate," she stumbled over the words like they were hard to say or a bad joke. "Delaware. That's what he calls himself, even though he's really from Jersey City, the same as everybody else. Delaware Brown. Isn't that something, how you can give yourself a name like that and everybody calls you by it?"

I nodded, fascinated by how quickly she'd engaged me in a conversation in which I'd said nothing.

"Want to meet him? Delaware Brown?"

Now that surprised me.

"No," I said quickly, more annoyed then I meant to let show.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bother you. My husband says I'm a serious pain in the ass sometimes."

She said it with a sad twist of a smile that told me she was younger than I'd thought. Early twenties, maybe. Young enough anyway to put up with some jackass telling her she was a pain in the butt. Too damn young. I folded up the newspaper and smiled. "You're fine, honey. Don't' worry about it. No problem."

She giggled like the kid she was. "'No problem.' Have you noticed everybody says that down here? 'No problem!' I'm Lilah Love," she offered me her hand. "Lilah Love. My real name is Delilah, that's what my husband calls me anyway, but I like Lilah. It's got a rhythm to it like I'm getting ready to be introduced as somebody bigtime. Like a singer or nightclub star or something like that. Lilah Love. Da, da. da. And introducing Lilah Love!" She giggled and gave a nod that was supposed to indicate a bow. I smiled politely.

"And you are?"

I hesitated for a minute. I wasn't sure why.

"Tamara Hayle."

"Hale? Like the rain that feels like snow?"

"With a Y."

"That's nice. It's got a rhyme to it, too. So you down here on vacation? We are too. Where you from?"

"The states."

"I know that," she said like a little girl being teased. "I know you're from the states, What part? You from the South?"

"Jersey."

"Homegirl!" she squealed so loud the waiter glanced back. "Isn't that weird, you can go half way around the world and meet somebody from Jersey. Jersey City? Everybody I know is from Jersey City."

"Newark."

"Newark? My daddy grew up in Newark. On Waverly Avenue. But he left to go to Jersey City before I was born. Called himself, bettering himself. That's funny ain't it?" She laughed then with a bitter edge, not at all like a pert little girl. "You were born there too?"

"Yeah." I wondered if maybe her husband had a point.

"Excuse me, for a minute, I'll be right back." She patted my arm softly and left. I wondered if it was worth going back to my room to see if the air conditioner had been fixed yet, but before I could make my break, she was back, holding the hand of a man who looked like a bouncer in an afterhours spot.

"Sammy Lee Love, Tamara Hayle. Tamara Hayle, Sammy Lee Love, my husband." She drawled out the world husband so long it sounded like a joke, but there was also a touch of something else that I couldn't identify. Sammy Lee Love wasn't a big man, five foot seven or eight at most, but he was built squarely and solidly, like he could throw a punch without feeling anything but pleasure in the throwing. He was older than Lilah, but the age in his eyes wasn't from years. He narrowed them very slightly as he looked at me, and there was a cruel glint in them.

"My wife here, Delilah, tells me you're from back home. Homegirl? That's the way she put it anyway." There was an old man's patronizing tone in his voice, but Lilah didn't seem to mind it. She just kept grinning.

"I'm from Newark."

"Good city, Newark. Been through some shit, but a good city." He looked around like he was trying to think of something else to say. "Down here on vacation?"

"You could say that."

"Having a good time?"

"You could say that."

"You staying much longer?"

"It depends."

"I like that in a woman. Not talking much. Not saying nothing except what needs to be said." His eyes flitted to Lilah who dropped hers, and then turned to the swimmer. "Hey Delaware," he called out. "Finished with that pool over there yet, man? That's Delaware Brown, over there, doing them laps like he's going to the Olympics."

Delaware Brown climbed out of the pool and walked slowly toward a group of beach chairs. Water beaded on his skin, and dripped off his red bikini in rivulets. He walked with a swagger, like a man who thinks he's better in bed than he is. His chest and legs were big like a heavyweight's, almost too big for his body, and there was a roughness to his angular face that made him look like he'd done some time in the ring or the joint. He snatched a hotel towel from the side of the chair, and wiped his face and neck then walked toward the bar.

"I'm going to get myself a drink, Sammy Lee. Jesus Christ it's hot in this goddamn place."

"That's Delaware Brown," Sammy said with admiration, as if I were supposed to recognize his name. "Come on, Delilah. I'm going on in and have another drink with Delaware."

"I want--"

"Come on in with me into the bar, little lady." His hand fastened on her shoulder, and she shook it off. He dropped it to his side and walked toward the bar.

She watched him go and then gave what sounded like a sigh of resignation and turned to follow him. "Nice meeting you Tamara Hayle with a Y," she said over her shoulder.

"Take care of yourself now, Lilah Love," I replied and meant it.

And that should have been the end of it. Anyone with the sense she was born would have known that folks with names likes Delaware Brown, Delilah and Sammy Lee Love couldn't mean nothing but trouble. But I've always been a woman whose hard head seems to land her squarely on her soft behind, who starts off strolling down the right path then turns around and heads down the wrong one. So when Lilah Love came back with a grin on her face and a rum punch in her hand, curiosity got the better of me and I listened to what she had to say.

"Sammy Lee and me, were thinking," she paused and handed me the drink. "You probably haven't seen too much of Kingston, except what's in them guidebooks I saw you reading before. This is like our third or fourth trip down here, and we know the real Jamaica, what they afraid to talk about in them guidebooks. Me and Sammy Lee and Delaware Brown was going to do some hopping, club hopping that is, later on this evening, and we were wondering if you'd want to come along?

"Delaware Brown's got a pair of wheels over there back at his hotel, so we can get around easy. I know you'll have a good time, girl, hanging out with me and Sammy Lee and Delaware Brown. The whole night will be on us Tamara, on me and Sammy Lee." She tipped her head to the side begging like my teenage son Jamal used to do. When it didn't work, she sensed it like a kid does and changed directions.

"Ain't no fun being in a city like Kingston by yourself, girl. A single woman traveling by her lonesome. And I need some company. Please help a sister out. I'm tired of being alone with these two dudes, out here all by myself. I swear, sometimes I don't think I was born with the sense my mama left me."

There was something in her eyes when she said that last part that I couldn't read but that touched me. Was she afraid? I wondered. I've always been a sucker for the fear in people's eyes.

The Jamaican twilight had turned the city pink, and I could hear the reggae pumping hard and heavy down the road.

"Okay," I finally said and smiled agreeably. But somewhere in the back of my mind, a warning played like the kind that used to come from my dead grandma when I was a kid.

I should have listened.