Who'll Stop The Rain: (Book One Of The Miami Crime Trilogy) (13 page)

"Who
was his friend?"

"He
wouldn't say, sir. Didn't want to get him in trouble."

"Bullshit!
It's a fucking murder investigation! If he's at the scene forty-five minutes
before a bloody massacre, he's in it up to his dick. Why didn't you get it out
of him?"

"Well,
sir … we, uh, wanted to stick to procedure, to proper legal methods. We wanted
to … you know, to do the right thing. Besides, we're gonna brace Méndez today,
see if he'll tell us anything. We might be able to get him to give us Molina's
accomplice."

Santos
lowered his voice, waaaay down. "Sergeant, are you … are you
certain
you have no knowledge of the
circumstances surrounding Yolexis Molina's death?"

"Yes,
sir. I'm certain."

"Did
you, did you have to get … aggressive with Molina yesterday?"

"No,
sir. He was cooperative. That is, up to the point of giving up his accomplice
in the money pickup."

"Well,
I would ordinarily assign his case to you, since it may be related to the
Little Havana triple homicide. But that's only a 'maybe' and I don't want you
distracted from the Little Havana case. I just got off the phone with Bob
Harvey and he's breathing down our necks about this. The Chief is all over me,
too."

"We're
working on it, sir. We're giving it our full attention."

"Good,
Sergeant. That's very good. Keep it up."

JUNE 29,
2011

Silvana

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

1:30 PM

"A
T LEAST WE GOT
A NAME
."
Vargas sipped his coffee as he and
Silvana finished up their lunch. "Logan."

"Yeah,
Logan." Silvana munched the last of her Cuban sandwich. "And I'm
pretty sure if he didn't waste those three vics, he knows who did." Her
cellphone rang. She swiped the call in. "Machado … Yeah … Sergeant Keith,
what've you got? … Uh huh … You're sure? … And nothing on those other days,
right? … All right, thanks very much … Right. So long."

"Keith?"
Vargas asked. "The guy in Robbery?"

"Right.
He says that Miramar bank job on Friday was the only one in Miami-Dade,
Broward,
or
Palm Beach counties to go
down in the last two weeks. They got away with just under three hundred
grand."

"Any
details?"

"He
says there were three perps, all in ski masks, of course. All three with
automatic weapons. Probably a wheelman waiting outside. They were in and out in
under three minutes. Knew exactly what they wanted and exactly where it was. No
rough stuff. Very polished operation."

"Let's
go to Key —" The waitress then brought the check before Vargas could
complete his sentence. They paid it and made for the door.

They
got into their car. Vargas drove. Venuti had tried to foist off the black
Malibu on them again, but Silvana mentioned the possibility of his wife meeting
with an unexpected accident. They got a brand new Ford Fusion, white,
reflecting lots of sun and heat, and with less than a thousand miles on it.

"Let's
go to Key West and find this Logan motherfucker," Vargas said.

Silvana
shook her head. "He'll keep. Right now, let's take a spin up to Hialeah.
We need to talk with Maxie Méndez. He should be at work by now."

"Why
do you want to see him? Flaco already told us he wasn't involved."

"I've
got an idea."

"Idea?
What idea?"

"I'm
still fleshing it out in my mind. Just play along when we get there."

They
pulled away from the fireplug.

≈ ≈ ≈

Lolita's Liquors occupied two adjacent storefronts in a good-sized
strip mall on East 49th Street in central Hialeah. Silvana parked in the
passenger drop-off zone directly in front of the store and she and Vargas got
out of the Ford. The heat hit them right away, thick and stifling, like the
inside of a baker's oven. Silvana looked around. People walked here and there,
from store to store, chatting, smiling, laughing, like everything was normal,
like this was how God intended it to be. She was only a few miles from the
station, but from the way the sun tried to singe her skin, she thought she'd
been transported to the Arabian fucking desert. It always felt hotter here in
Hialeah.

Inside
was another story. The AC worked beyond perfection. Everything was
coooool
, baby. Silvana could've stayed
there all day breathing deep and looking at brightly-lit arrangements of
whiskey bottles. She and Vargas stood about six feet inside the double doors,
briefly letting the refreshing air wash over their bodies for a few moments,
drying their sweat, cleansing them for their task that lay ahead.

There
were a dozen or so active customers moving among the aisles. Not bad for the
middle of the afternoon, Silvana thought. She tossed a light head-jerk to
Vargas and they moved to the back of the store. Through the swinging doors
marked "Employees Only" and into the storage area. Crates and
cardboard boxes bearing logos of wineries and distilleries were stacked in a
clearly organized fashion and took up a lot of space. The cops moved among them
and down a short hallway, up to a door marked "Private". The
no-necked guard in a white guayabera seated to one side of the door stood to
block their way.

"Whatchu
want?" he asked through a pinched face and squinty eyes.

They
showed tin. "Police officers," Silvana said. "We're here to see
Maxie."

"He's
busy right now. He can't —"

Elbowing
past him, they entered the room, the inner sanctum of Maxie Méndez. The Man
Himself sat behind a big desk consumed by whatever was on his laptop screen.
The office was too small for the desk, and Maxie was too big for his chair. A
leather couch took up one wall. Photos lined the other walls, Maxie with movie
stars, Maxie with politicos, Maxie with hot babes, all of it speaking to
Maxie's fabulous life. No photos, though, of the crack houses he owns in the
worst parts of Liberty City, or the processing rooms where the coke is cut, or
the whores who find the end of the road in his filthy brothels. No images of
the OD'd John Does lying lifeless in back alleys and dark stairwells, and no
pictures of their unmarked graves. Those photos never made Maxie's Wall of
Fame.

Apart
from the door they came in, Silvana noticed two other doors, both unmarked,
both closed. She assumed one was Maxie's private bathroom. The other one eluded
her. Maxie looked up from his laptop. He swiveled in the chair, his great bulk
shifting slightly, the chair groaning beneath him. The no-necked guard had
followed them in, stood to one side on high alert.

He
lightly passed a beefy hand over slicked-down hair. "Well, Sergeant
Machado," he said in a gravelly voice. "Long time, no see."

"And
a hello back at you, Maxie. I don't suppose you could tell us where you were
this past Friday night."

He
grinned from beneath his thick mustache. "Oh, I don't know, lemme see, uh
… Friday? Oh, yeah. Friday night. That's right, I was at Honey Buns Show
Lounge."

"Until
what time?"

"I
can definitely tell you. I was there all the way up to closing time. Five AM.
And there are plenty of witnesses, in case you were wondering."

"I'm
sure. Did you happen to see Yolexis Molina anytime that night?"

"In
fact, I did. Say, Sergeant, what are you after here? Do I need to call my
lawyer?"

"I
don't know," Silvana said. "Do you?"

"I
always like to cooperate with the police. Only you're not Hialeah PD. You're
Miami. Out of your territory."

"But
we're here for something that happened
inside
our territory. And Yolexis Molina was part of it."

 
Maxie raised the side of his upper lip.
It made for a pretty effective sneer. "You got no right to get in my face
like this, Machado. I'm a good citizen. I pay my taxes. I cooperate with the
proper
authorities."

Vargas
spoke up. "Then cooperate now and tell us what you were doing with Yolexis
Molina Friday night."

Maxie
eyed the two carefully. Silvana engaged her entire body to appear relaxed,
although her insides were at hair-trigger level, senses strung tight. Part of
her was begging Maxie to get careless and give her an excuse to blow his
sorry-assed brains all over the wall, but part of her knew if that happened she
might never make it out of that store alive. And yet another part of her knew
if she lit Maxie up and managed to make it out alive, she'd have to leave Miami
immediately to avoid retribution from the Dávila brothers, Maxie's loyalist
crew chiefs. She stayed calm.

After
a short, silent pause, Maxie said, "Not until you tell me what this is all
about."

Silvana
stepped closer to the desk. From the corner of her eye, she caught the guard
reflexively inching forward, hand going under his guayabera toward the bulge.

She
said, "Chicho Segura and two others were shot to death late Friday night
not long after he gave Yolexis Molina a large amount of money to deliver to you
in payment for a gambling debt."

Maxie's
eyelashes fluttered for a second. Silvana caught it. A tell. He was an old hand
at keeping his cool under pressure, but telling him she knew about the money,
this was a big surprise to him, throwing him off his game. Advantage: cops.

"What
of it?" he said, trying to hide his unease with a smile. "Guys pay
their debts. It's the American way."

"Yes,
but it's not so American when they get smoked right after paying. Especially if
your boy Yolexis knew one of the victims. What do you know about it?"

"Nothing."

"Listen
to me, Maxie. I whisper your name around the department in connection with a
triple homicide, I mention that one of your boys was in that murder house a
half-hour before the shooting, you're gonna have so much fucking heat on you,
you'll lose fifty pounds of that fat in sweat alone. And once the department
comes down on you, imagine what fun the Miami
Herald
will have. Detective Vargas and I will dedicate our lives to
making you miserable if you don't come clean with us right now."

This
was all scoring. Silvana noticed a few beads of sweat forming around Maxie's
hairline. "I told you, Machado. I don't know nothing about this. Nothing
about no triple murder."

"Bullshit!"
Her arms flailed around a little. The guard was ready to pull his piece. Vargas
readied himself for combat. Maxie was all defense now. "Think about it,
Maxie," she said. "Front page for days, maybe weeks. We will bust
your bookie joints, your poker games, your coke and H dealers on every street
corner, your fences, your shy operation, your inside crew of thieves at MIA.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, in your organization is gonna feel it."

"You
two can't do all that."

Her
eyes turned fiery and she showed more of her teeth when she spoke. "That's
right, we can't. But can you say 'Task force,' motherfucker? Because that's
what will be crawling up your fat ass every hour of every day and night. The
department's been looking for a way to go after you for years. And this is
it."

Maxie
softened his tone. "Okay, look, Machado. I'm tellin' you for the last
time, I don't know about no triple murder. Now what's it gonna take to get you
to believe that?"

Silvana
didn't move a muscle. She hardly breathed, in counterpoint to her rapid
heartbeat. Her eyes never left Maxie's, burning their way into his brain. She
waited and waited, then waited a little longer. Maxie wheeled around behind his
desk and swiveled a little in his chair, looking for a place to get
comfortable.

Finally,
she said, "Fifty large."

"Fif
— what the fuck?"

"Fifty
large. Right now. Plus a thousand a week from now on. That's what it's gonna
cost you to make this go away."

"Fifty
large? That's fucking blackmail! You can't do that."

"Blackmail?
Ha! Call the cops."

"Fifty
large? That's way the fuck out of line, Machado."

"Maybe,"
Silvana said. "But that's what it's gonna cost you. Fifty plus one a week
and your name will never be mentioned in the same sentence as the Little Havana
triple homicide. It's our case and we will see to it. Nor will we mention that
there was another hundred dimes sitting around inside that house. From a bank
job Chicho pulled earlier that day. Yolexis might have seen it, phoned you
about it, and you sent someone over there to 'collect'
that
money. And leave a few bodies lying around while they were at
it."

"Bullshit!
That's circumstantial and you know it!"

"Yeah,
but that's also motive. And those circumstances are gonna put you right under
the fucking microscope, where it's plenty hot."

He
went into deep thought, or as deep as it ever got with him. Silvana lost the
badass in her voice and added, "Look at it this way, Maxie. Yolexis Molina
brought you two hundred grand the other night. All profit. Chicho Segura lost
it to you gambling. Cost to you: zero. We're letting you keep three-fourths of
it. And the weekly grand? Hmph! You probably hand out more than that to those
sleazy strippers at Honey Buns every week."

After
much more thought, he said, "I pay you this dough, this whole fucking
thing goes away."

"Let's
say it moves permanently out of the spotlight. But that's just the triple
homicide. Anything else? Well, that's between you and Vice."

"Just
a minute," he said. He got up and went through one of the other doors into
what looked like a small dark room. He closed it behind him and came out a
minute later holding five packets of banded hundreds. He slapped it on the
desk. "Here. Remember … I better not hear any more about this."

Silvana
took it and handed it to Vargas, who put it into both his pants pockets.

She
said, "I'll be by every Friday for the weekly juice."

They
turned and left the office, enjoying the final remnants of the store's
beautiful air conditioning on their way out.