AGAINST THE WIND (Book Two of The Miami Crime Trilogy)
Read AGAINST THE WIND (Book Two of The Miami Crime Trilogy) Online
Authors: Don Donovan
AGAINST THE WIND
by
DON DONOVAN
BOOK TWO OF
THE MIAMI CRIME TRILOGY
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or
dead, is unintended and entirely coincidental. All Rights Reserved. No part of
this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, or by any means not yet known, without permission in
writing from Don Donovan.
Published by Don Donovan
Copyright 2016 by Don Donovan
Edited by Tony Held
http://heldeditingservices.blogspot.com/
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ALSO FROM DON DONOVAN
Book One Of
The Miami
Crime Trilogy
"I slowed way
down for the speed bumps on the narrow, wet street. The cemetery loomed in its
eternal silence on our right, and I felt the eyes of the dead opening under
heavy lids to watch us pass by in the rainy night, somehow knowing we were on
our way to do murder, to send them some company."
For Ken Rijock,
who had to live an
incredible life
so I could get through
this book
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PLACEMENT, Friday, March 30, 2012
LAYERING, Sunday, April 8, 2012
INTEGRATION, Monday, December 23, 1996
PREVIEW OF
STAYING ALIVE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Silvana
Miami, Florida
Friday, March 30, 2012
2:25 PM
S
ILVANA
MACHADO'S CELL PHONE
WENT OFF
while she was
pistol-whipping a street punk. He'd gotten up in her face when she and Vargas
confronted him after they spotted two hookers slipping cash into his palm. She
eyed the caller ID on the bleating phone. Headquarters.
She holstered her weapon and opened the call.
"Machado." Bobby Vargas held on to the punk.
"Sergeant Machado, Lieutenant Santos here. What's your location?"
Silvana stepped away from her partner and the punk, just out of earshot.
"Brownsville, sir. Northwest 26th Avenue, just off 50th Street."
"What are you doing?"
"Questioning a suspect, sir."
"A suspect?"
"Yes, sir," she said. "Possible involvement in last week's
drug murder in this neighborhood."
"Forget it. The two of you get over to 75th and Biscayne, the Sea
& Sand Motel. On the double. The manager found a body in one of the
rooms."
"Yes, sir." She swiped the call off and turned back to the
punk, now sniveling. His lip was slashed open. A dark bulge was forming over
his swollen left eye. She pushed a heavy lock of mousy-brown hair back from her
face and held out her palm. "Give." Two snaps of her thick fingers.
"Gi-give what?" the punk said.
Vargas landed a hard knee into his skinny back. He buckled.
"The money, dipshit," Silvana said. He resisted no more,
reaching into his pockets and pulling out a wad of cash, maybe twelve or
thirteen hundred. She snatched it from his hand.
She said, "Now, I understand they call you G-Man." His head
went up and down fast a couple of times. "Okay, G-Man, get this
straight." She held up the cash, close to his bleeding face. "This is
your initiation fee, any talk of which goes no farther than this sidewalk. Got
it?"
G-Man gave off a discouraged nod.
"I can't hear you," she said.
"Y-yeah. I got it. N-no … no farther than the sidewalk."
He wasn't particularly well turned out, wearing an ordinary polo shirt
and jeans — but with the required AJ 2012s — otherwise lacking the
gaudy glitz popular in pimpdom. She made him as a newbie, just getting his
enterprise off the ground. He'd gotten out of a black Dodge Charger, not a bad
car, but it sported a large dent in the passenger side door, and as such was a
far cry from your typical pimp's tricked-out ride.
She said, "From now on, it'll cost you one grand a week to run your
whores in this neighborhood. You understand?"
He said, "What?
A grand
?
Man, that's a —"
Another whack across his face, this time with a closed fist. Blood flew
from his mouth, nearly hitting Vargas's sleeve. She was well-muscled and that
one had to hurt.
"You're making at least that much every day. So don't give me any
poor-boy shit." She knew just by looking at the quality of the girls who
had just passed him the money that he couldn't possibly be making a thousand
dollars a day. These girls, even more just like them, would be lucky if they
brought him half that much all told. They were strictly in the twenty-dollar
blow job league. By saying G-Man was making a grand a day, Silvana gave him
something to shoot for. Gave him a goal.
G-Man wiped what blood he could onto his shirt collar while Vargas still
held him. Silvana continued, "One thousand. Every Friday. Seven PM, right
here at this corner. You miss a payment or if we don't find you on Friday,
we'll find you on Saturday and you won't see Sunday. You hearing me?"
He nodded.
"Say it!" she said, thoroughly wiping blood residue from her
gun on G-Man's polo shirt.
"One th-thousand. Every Friday. Sev — seven o'clock. I-I hear
you."
She gave Vargas a head signal and he shoved the punk to the pavement. His
squeal of pain faded as they got back in the car.
"Who was on the phone, Silvi?" Vargas said as he sparked the
engine.
"Santos. He wants us to check out a homicide call at a motel up
Biscayne Boulevard." She counted the punk's money. Twelve hundred eighty.
She peeled off six-forty and stuffed it in Vargas's shirt pocket while he
drove.
No point in kicking any of this up
to Santos
, she thought.
He'll never
find out. The grand a week, though, he'll have to get his fifty percent. Word
might well leak out about it and Santos has a wide network on the street.
"Which motel?" Vargas asked.
"Sea & Sand. 75th and Biscayne."
"I know that place," Vargas said. "It's a fleabag. Hourly
rates, strictly for the hooker trade in the area."
Silvana shrugged. "Probably some trick got rough and wasted a whore.
Let's find out."
Vargas drove. They wended their way out of Brownsville and down 54th
Street where they picked up the I-95 feeder. They entered the freeway at 62nd
and quickly reached cruising speed. Vargas said, "So, Silvi, you been
reading anything lately?"
That wasn't an idle question. It was no secret Silvana had never read
much until one day last year when she came to pick him up at his apartment for
an off-the-books job. While he was getting dressed, she browsed his modest
bookshelf and found a Michael Connelly novel. She was surprised Vargas was a
reader, and the cover intrigued her, so she later bought the book. On her way
out of the bookstore, she held it very protectively, as if it were a bar of gold
she found in a back alley.
Because she was an immigrant, twenty-one years in
the country from Cuba, her linguistic confidence was low. Sure, she'd picked up
English as a spoken tongue very handily on the streets of Hialeah, but reading
… that was a different deal altogether. That required a deeper, more profound
feel for the language. Despite her anxieties, however, she tackled the Connelly
book, and although it was rough going at first, she got through it and fell in
love with the magic of reading. Several Connelly novels later, she decided to
spread her wings.
"Yeah," she said. "I've branched out from Michael
Connelly."
"What're you on now?"
"I wanted to get something closer to home, you know? 'Cause all
those Michael Connelly books take place in LA. I still wanted cop fiction, but
closer to home. I got this book, from like way back in the eighties,
Miami Blues
by Charles, uh … uh … I
forget his last name, but it's about this Miami cop, a detective, just like us.
He's got false teeth and he's kind of strange, you know? Not like any cop we've
ever known, but the book is pretty good so far. I'm about fifty pages into
it."
"
Miami Blues
? Wasn't there
a movie called
Miami Blues
? Years ago?"
"I don't know," she said. "I don't go to many
movies."
"The book, is it good?"
"So far, yeah. It starts off, he's investigating the murder of this
Krishna something, whatever the fuck they are, and there's this credit card
grifter fresh out of the joint who's charging all kinds of shit on stolen
plastic."
"Sounds like another day at the office," Vargas said with a
grin. Silvana tossed one back at him and spiced it with a laugh.