The Trio episode involved a military type. The diner was stainless steel on the outside looking like an airstream trailer, just like all diners used to look. It was at the Douglas Road entrance, 37th Avenue, to Coral Gables, a mediterranean Moorish style gateway, at Eighth Street. It was not yet called Calle Ocho. The Trio is gone now but in those days it was one of the few places open 24 hours. You could go just to sit if you wanted to with friends, after everything else was closed, to drink coffee or eat. You could be sure of meeting someone you knew if you were alone if you wanted company, or not, or meeting someone you didn’t and getting to know them.

Not ready to turn in one night (my usual pattern), I headed there. I saw a friend with at a table with a clean-cut type and a couple of spiffy looking dames. I joined them, squeezing into the booth meant for four. Mr. Clean-Cut was just back from his tour in ‘Nam. He was relating in chillingly excruciating detail the horror of serving there. He did not talk about the sex. He did not talk about the drugs. He did not talk about his comrades. He just talked about the violence, the fear, the hell of it. After a while it just kind of petered out. No one else had been saying anything.

He offered to share some great weed he had brought back from ‘Nam, and invited everyone back to his place in the Grove off Crystal Court to smoke it. I do not for the life of me remember who it was that I knew that I ran into that night, but we were both done in and declined. Since when did I ever turn down drugs and sex? The ladies went with him. He had given us the address right near Fair Isle. I wrote it down on a piece of paper and put it in my pocket in case I changed my mind. I remember it was a Friday night. I am a newspaper reader. Sunday morning the Miami Herald had this front-page headline, “Axe Murder in Grove”. Yes, him, them, almost my friend and I.