Stuff to Die For (8 page)

James seemed hypnotized by the pistol. Rick Fuentes kept his eyes on mine. I was the one he had to convince. He was doing a very good job of it.

“I’m going to tell you where I think he is. Confirm that for me. I would like an answer in twenty-four hours. After that, I’ll send someone to look for you. Understood?”

I nodded. James nodded.

He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled an address on a napkin, pushing it over to James. Cautiously, James picked it up and held it gingerly.

“Cynthia.” It was the first time he’d addressed her. She left the table and returned with a checkbook. Fuentes tore out a pale blue check and penned in the amount, signing with a flourish. He pushed that over to James as well.

We walked out of the condo, Fuentes still sitting at the table, the blond rubbing his shoulders. The last thing I saw was Rick Fuentes, tapping the barrel of the gun on the table. His eyes were like a cat’s, calculating and cunning. We had his money and we had his address. I had a debt to repay. We had no choice.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

W
E WERE THIRTEEN. James and I, Em and Vic. Twelve or thirteen, and it was a school field trip. You remember field trips. Sometimes they were to the zoo or maybe an aquarium or one time to the Miami River. And we were always paired up with a buddy. I was paired up with Vic, and even though we weren’t close, I was excited about the pairing. Vic was playing junior high basketball and was already the star athlete of the seventh grade. His dark features, athletic prowess, and quick smile made him a candidate for most popular kid in the entire school.

Teachers loved his wit and intellect. Girls loved his looks, personality, and gentle nature and they weren’t even sure why. Guys found him to be easy to be around, with a self-effacing nature and a natural humor. There was nothing not to like about Vic Maitlin, except for two guys he palled around with. Justin Cramer and Mike Stowe. Mean, nasty, and full of themselves, these two guys made the school bullies look like choirboys. Vic distanced himself from their antics but hung with them just the same.

This field trip, Vic Maitlin was
my
buddy. He accepted the role with ease and grace and we acted like we’d been best friends since first grade.

And after the incident at the sinkhole, with Cramer and Stowe, Vic told me to keep everything to myself. He swore me to secrecy, for my entire life, and even though it was a childhood promise, it stuck with me. I never had any intention of going back on my word, and if his life hadn’t been in danger, I would have taken the secret to my grave. But Vic was in trouble, serious trouble, and it was time to repay my debt.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“A
LL THE REST OF HIS STUFF is in the truck. Should we go back and—” James pointed back at the high-rise.

“Jesus.” I stared at the back end of the truck. We’d gotten so wrapped up in the finger that we’d forgotten the rest of the mail. I gazed back at the condo. We’d be back to report, and frankly I’d had enough of Rick Fuentes and his gun for one night. “Nah. It’s late and we’ve pretty much used up our half hour. We’ll bring it back when we give him our report.”

“You didn’t sound too sure about this job.”

“I’m not.” It was hard not to tell my story. “Man, we could get our asses shot off. Or fingers hacked off. This could be dangerous.”

We stood in the parking lot, gazing out at the harbor. A long, lean ship moved slowly, lights strung from towers fore and aft. Finally, James spoke up.

“Listen, amigo. We’ve made $1,500 for hauling Fuentes’s stuff. We’ll make $5,000 plus a bonus for finding his son. Hell, Skip, that’s more than half of what the van cost. Not bad for our first day in business.”

“James, you know if we don’t find Vic, Rick Fuentes is going to jump our asses. It was more of a threat than a request. Do you understand that?”

He was quiet. I slid into the truck, and he stayed outside, lighting a cigarette and taking a drag. The crickets chirped in the foliage and a couple of night birds called out. From somewhere in the bay I could hear a motor boat bouncing on the water and the yapping of a young puppy.

“We’re in some deep shit, bubba.” James blew a smoke ring into the night, the lights from the condo casting shadows all around us.

“Duh! We could have given it back to Jackie or gone to the cops, but—”

“Let’s not lay blame. What’s done is done. Vic Maitlin is with a group of Cuban businessmen. Why do you think they’re cutting off his fingers?”

“Fingers? Are there multiples?”

“No. Just a thought. If we don’t find him, there may be more.”

“Let’s think about it. All we have to do is stake out the address and see if Vic is being kept there. We get a yes or no, and we’re done with it.”

“Stake out?” He chuckled, finding humor in a very tense situation. “You’ve been watching too many cop shows, Skip.”

“Give me a better solution.”

“No, you’re right. We’ll go over there tomorrow and see if there’s any activity.” He pulled the address from his pocket and scooted into the cab. Holding it to the light, he silently read. “Little Havana. I don’t know where exactly, but I recognize the street.”

“James, we’ve got twenty-four hours. I think tomorrow is a little late.”

He studied me, flicking the ashes from his cigarette out the window.

“Half an hour.”

“What?”

“The guard. He gave us half an hour. Fuentes gave us twenty-four hours. I’m not used to having people hold a stop watch to my activities,” he said.

“I’m not used to finding body parts and being threatened with a gun.”

James started the truck and pulled out. We stopped at the guardhouse, the old man nodded to us, and we continued on our way. He reached over and turned on the radio. We hadn’t taken the time to punch-set the station settings since we played CDs most of the time. A Spanish station played some brassy salsa music and he left it there, just trying to put some noise over the stone-cold silence in the cab.

Finally he spoke. “Regrets are a bitch, Skip.”

“Huh?”

“What do you regret?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You very seldom regret the things you do. You regret the things you don’t do.”

A fair statement.

“I don’t want to have regrets. I want to go out doing everything. I want to own my own business. I want to be worth a million dollars in two years. I want to make love to a hundred beautiful women and settle down with the best one. So what if it means taking chances? My old man took chances—”

“Your dad probably regretted what he did more than what he wished he’d done.” As soon as I said it I wished I hadn’t. I regret the fact that I didn’t get to know my old man a lot better. But I’m not sure it’s
my
regret. It should be his.

“But not regrets about never having tried. He tried, Skip. He got blind sided by a partner. But, God how that man tried. He regretted never having ridden in a Cadillac. That was his regret. But my God he tried!”

“Your point is?”

“I’m trying, just like he did. But
I’m
going to succeed. We’re getting a nice windfall here, and if we play our cards right, this business could be a huge success. I don’t want to regret that I didn’t give it a chance.”

I gazed at him, my best friend. He motivated me. I never would have gone to college if he hadn’t pushed the restaurant idea. He was right, of course. A man should do everything during his life to avoid having regrets. I believe that, maybe because James believes it, but it seems like a mantra to live by. Live your life so that when you die there are no regrets. But then, I’m twenty-four years old and when I’m thirty-five or forty, I may laugh at what I thought when I was twenty-four. When I was sixteen, I thought I’d know a lot more at twenty-four than I do now.

“I’ve got one regret already.”

“What?”

“I didn’t call Em.” I pulled my cell phone from its plastic holster and hit speed dial.

“Jesus. You don’t want to tell her that—”

“Hello?”

“Em.”

“Are you guys done unloading? I’ve got your check. Want me to stop over?”

I looked at James and he was shaking his head, watching the oncoming headlights as they whizzed by. He had a big frown on his face.

I put my hand over the receiver for a second. “You were ready to make her a partner when you found out she could drive without a rearview mirror. In retrospect—”

“What do you want to do? Have a conference with her?”

“Not here on the phone.”

“Good.” He spoke in a loud whisper.

“I want to stop by and see her. I want to tell her what’s going on.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant. Put her in danger too?”

“Skip? Skip? Are you there?”

“Yeah. Hold on just a sec.”

“She’s out of danger.
We’re
in danger, Jackie Fuentes may be in danger. Vic Maitlin is definitely in danger, but Emily is on the outside. We could use some advice from someone on the outside.”

“I guess we don’t have to take it.” He frowned. “All right. Do what you need to do.”

“Em, we’re going to stop by. We need to talk to you about something that’s come up.”

“Skip, that doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not, Emily.” I almost quoted Angel’s line about starting a task that becomes a nightmare, but she wouldn’t have understood and it probably would have scared the hell out of her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

E
M LIVES TWENTY STORIES up in a high-rise overlooking Biscayne Bay. Everyone we know seems to have a water view; James and I are the only ones that have a brown water ditch to look at. Em looks out at South Beach and the cruise ships that dock across from the causeway. It took us about twenty minutes to get to her condo.

“Come on out on the balcony.”

She brought out three Heinekens and we stared out at the lights from the Saturday night party that South Beach was putting on a mile away. You can see some of the Miami skyline and you can see Indian Creek Village from her place. The drawbridge was opening on the causeway to South Beach to let a large-masted sailboat through and a dozen or so cars, trucks, panel vans, and buses were backed up on either side of the bridge. One rich boater, holding up the progress of twenty-four working-class slobs. Florida is all about water and boats and the rich and famous who can afford to live on the water and own those boats. Maybe James was right in his pursuit of the golden goose. Someday he’d be that rich asshole with the boat, holding up the little people on the bridge.

“So, what’s so important?” She handed me the check for $1,500. I had to agree with James, we’d lined up more money in one day than either of us made in three months.

James looked at me. “We had an accident.”

Em frowned and glanced at the check, still in my hand.

“What kind of accident?”

I believed in fast and factual. “We hit the storage building, the mail spilled out of the back of the truck, and we found an envelope with a severed finger.”

I’ve never seen Emily get such an incredulous expression on her face before. The three of us sat there as she absorbed the short story. Finally, she found her voice.

“A severed finger. Somebody’s actual finger.”

“Yes. We tried to take it back to Jackie, but she wouldn’t give us permission to come back to her home and—”

“She knows about the finger?”

“No. I don’t think so. So we—”

“Came here instead?”

James squinted. “Not exactly.”

“Where did you go? To the police. You went to the police. My God, a human finger.”

“Uh, Em,” I cleared my throat. “We didn’t go to the police.”

“Tell me.”

“We went to Rick Fuentes.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Well, James pointed out that it
was
his mail.”

“This is a joke. You guys made up this story just to mess with me.”

“No.”

“Tell me it’s a joke.”

“We’d be lying.”

She stood up and started pacing, taking short swallows of beer as she walked. “Jesus, what am I going to tell Jackie? Why this finger?”

“Well, it’s not her business is it? And we’re not sure why the finger. It came in the form of a threat to Fuentes.”

“Of course it’s Jackie’s business. And what kind of threat?”

I shook my head. “Em, it’s Rick Fuentes’s business. The threat seems to be from some Cuban guys who have an ax to grind with Fuentes. And we haven’t got to the bad part yet.”

“Give me a break. Tell me that it doesn’t go any further.”

“It’s his son. Vic Maitlin.”

She dropped the green bottle and it shattered into a dozen splintered pieces, watery brown beer running into the grout between the white ceramic tiles on the balcony.