Who'll Stop The Rain: (Book One Of The Miami Crime Trilogy) (26 page)

Mambo

Monday, July 18, 2011

9:05 AM

M
AMBO
WAS CHECKING IN
A LIQUOR DELIVERY
when Logan arrived. Boxes were piled
on the floor, all bearing familiar names: Stoli, Captain Morgan, Bacardi. The
delivery driver stood by while Mambo took every bottle out of every box.

You had to make sure they were the
bottles that were supposed to be in that box and that they hadn't been opened.
You don't check, one of these fucking drivers will damn sure slip in a bottle
of some bullshit well vodka inside a Grey Goose box and grab the Goose for
himself.

Bottle
by bottle, box by box, he checked them off against the invoice. Big Felo stood
off to one side, just in case.

Mambo
shot a single nod Logan's way. "I'll just be a few more minutes."

Logan
took a seat at the bar. Mambo pointed at him and told the bartender, "
Eduardo. Una cerveza.
" Eduardo
popped Logan a beer and he settled in to drink it. The sound system played an
energetic salsa tune at very low volume. The TVs were off.

Even
though there were no customers at this hour, the odor of smoke hung in the air,
a permanent feature. Normally, nonsmoking civilians would bitch to high heaven
about it as soon as they walked in the door. If they stayed, which not many did
after getting a lungful of smoke, they got no service. Eventually, they got tired
of sitting around and left. Grifters only in Mambo's. That's how it had always
been and how it probably always would be. His grandfather had seen to it, and
he carried on the tradition with pride.

Kitchen
noises made their way out to the bar. Clanging pots and pans, along with
excited talk in Spanish among the cooks. The first traces of savory aromas
seeped out, telling Mambo the black beans and yellow rice preparations were
well under way. He felt pangs in his stomach.

He
soon finished checking the bottles, then signed the invoice and sent the driver
on his way. The bartender started stocking the liquor and Mambo motioned for
Logan to follow him back to his office. Big Felo walked behind them.

Mambo
pointed to one of the two chairs facing his desk. As soon as Logan sat down, he
realized he was sitting directly under an air conditioning vent. Cold air blew
right on his neck. Mambo noticed his discomfort.

"Too
cold?" he asked.

"A
little."

He
gestured to Felo, who dutifully turned the thermostat up a degree or two.
Things warmed up a shade and Logan appeared to relax.

Mambo
sat in his big swivel chair and offered Logan a Cohiba cigar. He declined, but
Mambo took one for himself, beginning his routine of sniffing and tip-snipping.
When he finally had the thing lit, he leaned back in his chair. It tilted
backward under his weight. He drew a long pull on the Cohiba, and let the smoke
out slowly, forming a wispy line that reached for the ceiling. Logan continued
sipping his beer.

Mambo
crossed his legs and said, "You heard about what happened last
night?"

Logan
nodded. "Ortega came by to see me this morning. Busted right in. Thinks I
had something to do with it."

"Well,
did you?" His voice was level.

"Fuck,
no."

"You
sure?"

Logan
maintained his posture in the chair. He looked loose and confident.

"Of
course I'm sure," he said. "According to Ortega, it was a horror
show, lots of blood. You know I don't go in for that shit."

"You
went in for it in Miami a few weeks ago."

"That
was self-defense, Mambo. What is this, anyway? What's with the third
degree?"

Another
puff on the cigar. Another thin trail of smoke. Then he said, "First Trey
Whitney gets it. Then his girlfriend and his muscle. All within twenty-four
hours. And who benefits?"

The
salsa music didn't make it back here to the office. There was only the light
hum of the air conditioner right above Logan, which had kicked in again. He
angled for a different position, one out of the direct draft.

"Hmph.
Not me," he said. "That's for damn sure. I was collecting a dime a
week from the stripper. You think I want to kill that golden egg-laying
goose?"

Mambo
checked him out closely. "Did you know her throat was cut? And Morgan took
a stab wound to the heart?"

"No,
I didn't know that, but you know I don't use a knife."

He
said, "No, but you do use a .45 semiauto. Stanley took two of those slugs
in the chest."

Logan
turned his head in both directions, pretending to be looking around the room.
"What, is Ortega hiding around here or something? Trying to get me to
confess? Is that what this is about?"

"Look,
Logan. Frankly, I don't give a shit if you did it or not. I don't give two
shits about the stripper and the world is far better off without Morgan and
Stanley. So it's not like one of my family got smoked."

"So
I ask you again. Why the third degree?"

He
set his cigar down and allowed himself a little smile. "Just making sure
is all. Looks like there were two killers, anyway. Gun and a knife."

"But
what's the bigger picture here? I get the feeling this incident strikes you in some
way."

Mambo
noticed the cooking aromas finding their way back into the office. Pangs
getting louder. "You recall that night outside the Casa Marina with my
grandfather — Fourth of July, I think it was — when we told you
about the deal we've got cooking with the Whitneys along a big stretch of North
Roosevelt Boulevard?" Logan said he remembered, and Mambo added,
"This could fuck it up, big time."

"What,
the stripper getting it? Morgan and Stanley? What did they all have to do with
it?"

The
cigar had lost its light from sitting in the big tray. Mambo flicked the ash
and held his gold lighter the proper distance under it, slowly spinning it
between his lips to catch the flame evenly. It caught and Mambo was pleased
again, drawing the Cohiba taste into his mouth.

He
looked at Logan and said, "Nothing, really. They had nothing to do with
the deal. But coming on the heels of Trey's death, it throws a cloud over
everything. Win Whitney lost his son and now some serious muscle, all in short
order. He might well think he's next. As if my family was behind it all."

"You
think he really thinks that?"

"I
don't know yet," Mambo said. "My grandfather's going to meet with him
tomorrow morning at the Dean-Lopez Funeral Home. Nine AM."

"Well,
is there anything I can do?" Logan slid his chair over about six inches,
finally escaping the cold, direct blow of the AC.

"I
want you to go with my grandfather tomorrow. Just in case."

"In
case of what?"

"In
case the Whitneys get carried away in their moment of grief and try to pull any
shit on him."

Not
hiding his surprise, Logan said, "Are you expecting trouble?"

Mambo's
voice stayed low and under control. "No, not really. But Morgan and
Stanley's younger brother is coming down from Marathon to attend the funeral on
Wednesday."

"Younger
brother? I didn't know they had a brother. In fact, I didn't even know until
this morning that they were brothers to begin with, when Ortega told me."

"Yeah,
it wasn't really well known. But their younger brother — Chase is his
name — is cut from the same cloth. Extremely violent, extremely badass.
If he shows up at the funeral home tomorrow morning, I don't want my
grandfather going in there unprotected. Got it?"

Logan
told him he got it. Then he raised his eyebrows and glanced over at Big Felo,
whose icy stare gripped him for a second. "What about Felo here?"

Mambo
shook his head. "He stays with me. I need you to go to the funeral home
with my grandfather. Pick him up at his house and bring him back afterward.
Stick with him the whole time." He pulled out his money clip and peeled
off several hundred-dollar bills. Sliding them across his desk at Logan, he
said, "Will you do this for me?" Another smile, this one recalling
our decades-long friendship.

Logan
put the bills in his pocket and gave him a good-natured smile back. "You
know I'm trying to retire here, right?"

A
chuckle, and Mambo said, "Right. Retirement is right around the
corner."

"Okay,"
Logan said. "I'll do it. But I'm gonna need a piece. I got rid of mine
after the scene in Miami."

"Not
a problem."

Mambo
got up from the desk and went over to his file cabinet. Opening the bottom
drawer, he pulled all the files forward, then reached with both hands into the
back of the drawer and came out holding a semiauto and two magazines.

".357
SIG," he said, bringing it over to Logan's chair and handing it to him.
"Cold as ice, just in case. Never been registered. Never even been fired.
Heavy round. Not quite the stopping power of your .45, but it'll do."

He
had that right. This was a good weapon. Logan tested its heft. Lighter than his
.45 and considerably more stable. "Wow! Nice balance," he said.
"Very comfortable." He shoved it into his rear waistband under his
shirt and slid the mags into his pocket.

"Meanwhile,
Mambo," he said. "That aroma from the kitchen is driving me crazy.
How about you buy me lunch?"

Logan

Monday, July 18, 2011

5:20 PM

D
OROTHY GOT HOME
FROM WORK
at her usual time. I greeted her with a hug and she returned it. No mention at
all of last night's horror … the blood, the bodies … just a hug and then she
popped herself a beer, same as always. And same as always, she went to the
living room and sat on the couch with an audible exhale, expelling all the
day's traffic ticket bullshit at the city hall annex. I went in and sat next to
her. She swigged hard at the beer.

I
remembered what Mambo the Third had told me before. About how his grandfather
came home that night all those years ago after having smoked those three brutes
from Miami for what they'd done to little Danielita. How he came home, went to
bed, and got up and went to work the next day. Just like Dorothy.

"How
was it today?" I asked.

"Slow,"
she said. "Light. And I thank God for it, after last night." She set
her beer on the coffee table and tensed her arms around me, pressing into my
kidneys, bear-hug style. "Please hold me."

I
hugged her tighter, and I felt a slight tremble inside her, lingering backwash
from our bloody encounter. We sat without talking and embraced each other. I
was really, really glad to see her, and right then I never wanted to let her
go. At that very moment in time, all was still, there was no world outside, the
only noise our breathing.

My
hands roamed around her torso and she ground her breasts into my chest. Then
her fingers moved onto the back of my neck and danced through my hair. Her lips
soon found mine and our insistent kiss said it all.

In
a rapid, fumbling manner, she undid the top buttons on my shirt while I pulled
her loose-fitting top over her head. One snap later, her bra fell, allowing her
breasts to swing free. I knelt on the floor and buried my face in them,
swirling in their soft roundness. Her arms held me close, and we could've
stayed like that forever. But instead, she slid to the floor, pulling me with
her. I ran my fingers under the elastic band of her pants and eased them down
over her large hips. With a hungry snarl I'd never heard from her before, she
jerked my T-shirt off in one move and went to work on my jeans. By the time she
had them off, I'd removed her panties and we rolled on the carpet in our
nakedness.

She
shoved me onto my back and put her entire weight on top of me. She bent
forward, her face inches from mine, and her sweat dripped onto my face and
chest. I felt droplets roll across my mouth and onto my tongue. I licked it all
off my lips and swallowed.

Then
she pushed her bulk upward and straddled my face, steering me into her wet,
dark realm. Alternately, I sucked and licked, eventually nudging her higher and
higher. After I don't know how long, she flung herself into an insulated
mini-world of shuddering orgasm, loud and frantic.
Soon after, she moved herself
down my body until she found what she was looking for. Stroking and jerking,
she quickly had me where she wanted me, and she mounted me hard. And there we
were, swaying in sync, grunting and grinding for what seemed like hours. We
lost ourselves in each other's flesh and sweat, noisily releasing from deep
within each of us all of the stench and the blood and the death of last night
until it all spit out with Dorothy's final wail.

≈ ≈ ≈

We remained naked for another hour, lounging on the floor before
eventually making our way back up to the couch. I picked up the remote and
flicked on the TV. It landed on a movie, or what looked like a movie — a
car crash and a couple of other explosions. I hit the mute button.

Dorothy
curled into the crook of my arm and slowly moved her hand around on my chest.
She finally seemed a little more at peace.

"It
had to be done, didn't it," she said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes,
it did. And now … we're murderers."

She
stopped stroking my chest.

"Well,
technically, only the stripper," she said. "Those two big guys were
self-defense. They were flat out going to kill us right then and there."

"But
you can't say 'only the stripper' as if that makes it okay. As if murdering one
person instead of three lets us off the hook somehow. You can't say that."

"Honey,
I can say whatever I want. And for that matter, I believe I already made the
case for the stripper being self-defense. Big time self-defense."

"How
do you figure that?" I asked.

"Don't
make any mistake about it. If we hadn't shown up when we did, she would've sure
as shit rolled over on you for killing Trey. Maybe she'd already told them by
the time we got there. In any case, when they left her place, they were
undoubtedly coming here. Coming to kill you."

I
absently clicked the remote to another channel. This one was the local news. A
big car crash on I-95 in Pompano Beach. I kept the sound off.

"This
wasn't what I'd counted on," I said. "All that killing. It's just so
cold-blooded. I've … I've never …"

Her
head stayed on my shoulder and she reached her arm around my waist. "I
know, honey. I know. But now it's over. Don't you see? It's all behind us.
Forever." She hugged me.

"Over?"

"Over,"
she said. "Totally."

"I
… I guess you're right."

"I
know I'm right. It had to be done. You know that, don't you?"

I
knew it, all right. Sharma would've certainly spilled it all to Morgan and
Stanley, if she hadn't already, and they would've come charging toward our
apartment. She had to be silenced. I cursed Trey again for hitting his head
against that fucking lamppost and causing all this.
Why the fuck couldn't he have just stayed out of it and let me collect
my thousand dollars a week from Sharma? Why did he give a shit about that?

"Only
one problem now," I said.

"What's
that?"

"I'm
going to have to find something worthwhile to do in my retirement. Some sort of
income-producing activity."

"I
thought you were going to start that tree-trimming business."

"Not
anymore. Don Roy Doyle's cousin is out of the picture. He's awaiting trial on a
marijuana bust. Plus I'm not getting that dime a week from Sharma
anymore."

Dorothy
adjusted her head to a slightly different position, closer to my chest.
"Well, we've still got your end of the bank score. That'll see us through
for a while. Until you get something regular."

I
cleared my throat. "Uh, well, um … it might not see us through for as long
as we thought."

She
lifted her head up as though she'd just received an electric shock to the back
of her brain. "What do you mean by that?"

"I
gave most of it to my mom today."

"You
what
?" She pulled her hands from
around my waist.

"I
gave her thirty grand. She needed it."

"What?
Thirty grand
?" Her voice
modulated upward to highly agitated level.

"Right."

"Because
she
needed
it? She fucking
needed
it?"

"That's
right." I instantly wished I'd never brought this up. But what could I do?
Dorothy was going to find out sooner or later. I had to tell her. I always told
her.

She
said, "What the fuck did she need it for?
We're
the ones who fucking need it!"

"I
know, I know. It doesn't look good. And it means we don't have much left. But I
had to give it to her."

"Fuck
does that mean, you
had
to give it to
her?"

I
flicked to a different channel. More news, different car crash. "Look,
baby, she's my mom, you know? She raised me and put food in my stomach, even
when it meant not eating herself. She was real young when she had me, and we
kind of grew up together in that little house up on Catherine Street."

Dorothy's
jaw remained wide open, like she was about to bite into one of those
industrial-sized sandwiches. "You
had
to give it to her? That was just about our last money. What were you
thinking? Have you lost it?"

"She'll
pay it back. If this deal of hers pans out, that is."

"Oh,
I'm sure. I'm just positive she'll pay it back. Yeah, that's a
real
possibility."

"All
right! I told you already. The money's gone and that's that."

She
said, "How much do we have?"

"My
end, after Mambo got his taste, was thirty-six grand, plus the thirteen I got
back for fronting the score makes forty-nine. I gave my Mom thirty. That leaves
us with nineteen thousand."

"Nineteen
thousand? Out of what, three hundred grand?"

"Dorothy,
come on. We never got the full three hundred. We only got, like, less than a
hundred. You know that. The other two hundred just … disappeared somewhere. And
besides, it's not like we're really up against it here. Nineteen grand can last
us a little while if we want it to."

"Oh,
sure. It can last us, all right. My car insurance is coming up. That's eleven
hundred right there. Yours is due in a couple of months. We got rent. Our
electric bill last month was over four hundred. Sure. It'll last us a long
fucking time."

I
tried for as much accommodation in my voice as I could muster. "I'll find
regular work here pretty quick. Then none of this will matter. Plus, we've
still got what you make down at the courthouse."

"That
don't amount to shit!" She fell back into my arms again, tired of the haranguing.
Her voice softened, sliding way down to intimacy. "Oh, honey, don't you
see? We were almost
there.
Right
where we needed to be. A big nest egg. Both of us would've had jobs. You had
the stripper paying you a nice chunk every week. We came so
close
." She began to cry.

I
held her head to my shoulder and let her have her cry. It went on for a minute
or two. The TV went to the weather. Wet season. Eighty percent chance of rain
tonight in Key West. Here in our apartment, the rain had already started, streaming
from Dorothy's eyes. Outside, it would be just like last night, only tonight we
weren't going out to kill anybody.

She'd
just about run out of tears when I said, "Mambo gave me five hundred
dollars today."

A
couple of sniffles, then, "What for?"

"The
Original Mambo's going to the funeral home tomorrow to meet with Win Whitney,
to make sure their deal is still on. Mambo wants me to go with him.
Protection."

"Whitney?
Does he suspect anything about us? About last night?"

"No.
I don't think so. Ortega does, though. He came by this morning after you'd gone
to work, trying to get me to admit to it, but he's got nothing to go on. He's
just groping around for something."

She
rose up again. "Fuck, honey! Ortega's onto us? And those Miami
motherfuckers have you in their sights, too."

I
guided her head back to my shoulder. "No, no, no, no. Ortega's only
fishing. Like I said, there's no evidence. He doesn't have shit. Neither do
those Miami cops."

"And
what about Whitney? Does he think you did Trey?"

I
stroked her head with plenty of reassurance. "No. I don't think so. Mambo
says Whitney thinks Sharma may have gotten rough with Trey, trying to stave him
off, and he thinks she may have hit him with something. What you have to
remember is, Whitney wants to do this deal he's got cooking with The Original
Mambo out on North Roosevelt Boulevard. I go there and stand around and earn my
five hundred dollars. That's it."

"But
that's only five hundred dollars. That gives us nineteen five. What are we
going to do? What are
you
going to
do?"

"I-I'll
try some of the other landscaping outfits in town. There are more than you'd
think. I'll get Don Roy Doyle to ask his cousin to turn me on to some of them,
some of those other landscapers. That's what I'll do. I'll talk to Don Roy."

"Isn't
there anything out there besides trimming trees?"

"Honey,"
I said, "it's not so bad. It's honorable work. I'll be home every night.
And I don't need experience, only a willingness to do the work. No cops, no
guns, no danger. Think of it that way."

She
didn't say anything. Her head remained on my shoulder. What could I tell her?
The truth was very simple. All I wanted was to start my retirement.

My
retirement. It looked hazier and hazier with each passing day. The landscaping
job: gone. Prospects for other jobs: zero. Most of my end of the bank score:
gone. Other scores lined up: none, unless you count the five hundred Mambo gave
me today to watch over his grandfather tomorrow morning. I hoped my uncertainty
didn't bleed through to where Dorothy would take notice.

I
looked up at the TV.
Jeopardy
was
starting. Dorothy kissed me once on the lips, a full wet one, then turned her
head toward the TV. I clicked on the volume.