Who'll Stop The Rain: (Book One Of The Miami Crime Trilogy) (33 page)

Logan

Monday, October 10, 2011

9:15 AM

I
GOT OUT OF BED
and for the first time in nearly
three months, I didn't need my crutches. A little wobbly at first, and I had to
lean on the bedpost for support, but after a minute or so, I got my equilibrium
and stood up without any assistance. There was a light throb in my leg, up
around my thigh where the wound was, but the doctor said that would go away in
time.

The
doctor. Well, he wasn't exactly what you'd call a real doctor, more like a guy
with medical training and some confusion over a license to practice. Shimmy
knew him from the old days. He was the guy, in fact, who sewed Shimmy back
together after that violent incident he told me about where he and another guy
took a couple of bullets while they smoked Wilson Whitney and a few Russians.

Anyway,
he put my leg back together and here I am, standing up on my own. I sometimes
thought I would never do that again. I called Dorothy at work and told her. She
was ecstatic.

Mambo
the Third paid me the forty thousand without complaint, and The Original Mambo
took it all like a gentleman. He'd told me to get Maxie Méndez or else, but I
guess when he saw I'd taken a serious hit, and after hearing Shimmy's account
of what happened, and then reading the article in the Miami
Herald
, he let it go. Told me I'd done
good, and not to worry. He said he told Win Whitney that Trey's real killers
were these two no-count brothers from Miami, that they were sent down here to
clip Trey after he spirited Sharma away from Méndez, their boss. As it turned
out, he told Whitney, the brothers were killed by Miami police in a separate
incident outside his grandson's bar. By eerie coincidence, killed the same day
as our showdown with Méndez and his bodyguards.

When
I asked The Original Mambo if Whitney was willing to put it all aside and get
on with the big North Roosevelt project, he said yes. Said they were scheduled
to break ground sometime next year.

By
the way, speaking of Shimmy, I owe him my life. The way he jumped out of that
car to load my wounded ass into it when we were totally exposed in that parking
lot. I mean, anything could've happened. Lucky for us it didn't, but he still
went above and beyond. I suppose I would've done the same for him, but in any
case, I rearranged the split of Mambo's money with him. He was originally
supposed to get fifteen grand and I was getting twenty-five. So what the hell,
I turned it around and gave him the twenty-five.

I
walked around the apartment, still feeling a little give in my leg. I had to
lean against a wall every few seconds or so, and I knew it would be a long time
before I did any real walking around town. Still, I was thrilled to be moving
under my own steam.

I
put some coffee on and dropped an English muffin into the toaster. Sitting at
the table, I took stock of things. I had another fifteen dimes from this job
plus the nineteen from the bank job back in June, making thirty-four thousand
altogether. I know it's not exactly a ton of money, but it'll give us enough of
a cushion until I can find a straight job and move permanently into my
retirement from crime. After stopping that bullet, Dorothy insisted on it. For
that matter, so did I. Anyway, I know I'll find something, some good, honest
line of work.

The
muffin popped up and the coffee was ready. I sat sipping and munching and
pondering my retirement until I was disturbed by a thud at the door. No need to
wonder. It was cops.

I
slowly got up and made my way to the door, leaning on one thing or another. I
opened up and saw Ortega, our friendly local neighborhood cop, standing there
with his sidekick, whose name I forgot.

"Lieutenant
Ortega," I said. "How are you doing today?"

"I'm
fine, Logan." He looked down at my legs, propping me up all by themselves.
"Looks like you're doing okay yourself."

I
didn't know how the fuck he knew there was anything wrong with my leg, but I
smiled anyway. Nothing in this town stays a secret for very long. "Come on
in."

The
two of them came in. Ortega said, "You remember Sergeant O'Neil."

"Sure.
How're you doing, Sergeant?"

"Fine,"
he said.

We
went into the kitchen where I revisited my coffee. "Care for a cup?"

They
shook their heads. "Logan, you're aware of the police shooting over in
front of Mambo's a few months ago? Two Miami cops killed a couple of slimeballs
from up the road in a shootout."

I
nodded. "I read about it, yes. And other people told me about it. Pretty
strange."

"Strange
indeed," Ortega said. "Stranger still is the idea that those two
dirtbags killed Trey Whitney and then wasted that stripper along with the
Pinksmith brothers back in July, not long before you … uh, injured your
leg."

"I
heard about that, how they killed Trey, something about their boss having a
major hard on for the stripper and hating Trey for stealing her away. And then —
what was it? — they offed the stripper 'cause she was a witness, she saw
them clip Trey."

"Yeah,
that's the idea. My superiors are buying it, so those homicide cases are
officially closed."

I
hoped he didn't see me take a deep breath.

"I
know different, however. And so do you."

"Hey,
Lieutenant, I didn't do —"

"Shut
up! You smoked Trey Whitney because he stood in your way of collecting your
weekly envelope from the stripper. Then you did
her
because she saw you do
him
.
No witnesses. Nice and clean."

"Lieutenant,
you can't come in here and accuse me of this shit when I —"

"Only
thing is, I can't figure out who was with you, who used the knife on the
stripper and one of the Pinksmiths."

"You
can't figure it out because no one was with me. And no one was with me because
I wasn't there!"

"Yeah,
yeah, I know. You're innocent as the morning rain." He came close to me.
Got right in my face. Growled in a near whisper. "Let me tell you one
thing, you piece of shit lowlife. You better stay in a straight line from now
on or else I'm gonna be so far up your ass, you're gonna have to shit out of
your mouth."

"Is
that why you came here today?" I asked.

"You
got it." He and his partner headed for the door.

I
said to their backs, "Lieutenant, when are you gonna realize I had nothing
to do with those deaths?"

"When
the Dolphins leave Miami," he said.

And
he and O'Neil walked out, leaving my door open.

Silvana

Miami, Florida

Friday, March 30, 2012

3:25 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."

"Suspect?"

"Yes, sir," she said. "Possible
involvement in last week's drug murder in this neighborhood."

"Forget it. 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, your payment of which goes no farther
than this sidewalk on this shitty street in this God-forsaken neighborhood. Got
it?"

G-Man gave off a discouraged nod. He wasn't
particularly well turned out, wearing an ordinary polo shirt and jeans, lacking
the gaudy flash 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.

"One thousand. Every Friday. Four 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. Four —
four o'clock. I-I hear you."

She gave Vargas a head signal and he shoved the
punk to the pavement where she heard something crack. 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 cut. 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."

"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. Vargas said, "So, Silvi, you been reading
anything lately?"

That wasn't an idle question. Vargas knew
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. The cover
intrigued her, and she was surprised Vargas was a reader, 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 years in the country from Cuba, her linguistic confidence was low. Sure,
she'd picked up English 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 — 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.

≈ ≈ ≈

"Fleabag" was way
too nice a word for the Sea & Sand, which, by the way, was near neither
ocean nor beach. Peeling paint and fading pastels told the whole story. The
sign, which looked like it dated from the 1950s, was missing a couple of
letters, and weedy growth showed itself around the property in all the wrong
places. The potholed parking lot held a couple of crappy cars from the
nineties, and those baked under a scorching sun. The whole place looked like it
had terminal asthma, like it couldn't catch a full breath.

In front of a room toward the rear stood a much
newer white Lexus sedan, conspicuous amid the despair of the motel. A black and
white blocked it in. Silvana and Vargas drove to it.

The door to room 112 yawned and two uniforms
stood in the doorway. Silvana and Vargas got out of the car, showing tin
flapping from their breast pockets. The taller of the two uniforms, who looked
Cuban, spoke.

"Sergeant Machado," he said.
"Patrolman Acevedo."

Silvana's eyebrows went up at the familiarity.
"Have we met, Patrolman?"

"Sort of, ma'am. You gave a talk on
evidence gathering when I was at the academy."

"We-ell," she said through a chuckle,
"I hope I didn't teach you any bad habits."

"Ha! No, ma'am. None at all."

"Okay, what've we got here?"

"My partner and I took the call. We got
here about twenty minutes ago. One victim, WMA, identified as Robert Harvey,
address listed in Coconut Grove. DOB 3/10/59, two bullet holes in the head,
execution-style. No witnesses."

"Naturally," Silvana said. She looked
around, down the row of worn, grimy rooms. What a dump. "How about any of
the other guests? Or the manager? They hear any shots?"

"The manager says he heard what might have
been gunfire about thirty minutes ago. He came down to investigate and saw the
door was ajar. He pushed it open and saw the body. Then he called 911."

"Anything else?" she asked.

Acevedo said, "Not much. One guest, though,
in room 104, said he thought he might've heard shots, but he also says he saw a
car leave right afterwards. We had him stay till you got here."

Silvana nodded approval. "Any description
on the car?"

"Dark late model sedan. Black, maybe dark
blue. No make. He says all cars today look alike. Can't tell 'em apart."

"Can he describe the driver?" Vargas
asked.

"Negative."

Silvana said, "Let's have a look
inside."

They walked in. The body was naked, face down on
the bed, a wide red stain surrounding the head. He was a large man, Silvana
noticed, probably forty or so pounds overweight and his hair was — wait a
minute —
wait a minute!

She slapped on her latex gloves and bent down
for a closer look. Turning his head to one side so she could see his face, she
gasped. "Holy shit!"

"What?" said Vargas. "What is it,
Silvi?"

She gently placed the head back on the pillow
and turned to Vargas. "This is Harvey the County Commissioner, for
Chrissakes."

"The guy who gave us all that shit that day
in Santos's office?"

Silvana nodded. She remembered it too well. Bob
Harvey, Miami-Dade County Commissioner, swung a lot of weight around town, including
high up in the department. His wife's teenage niece was killed in a bloody
triple homicide in Little Havana last summer and Harvey was all over the Chief
to find the killer. The Chief leaned on Santos and one day Harvey himself
showed up in Santos's office to rattle a few cages. Gave her and Vargas all
kinds of shit, threatening them with this and that.

Her attention turned back to the corpse. Visible
bullet holes, one above the left eye, the other a couple of inches to the left,
toward the temple. Acevedo had it right. Execution.

"Stay here," she told Acevedo and his
partner. "Forensics will be here before long. Nobody gets in till
then."

Room 104 sat a little way down the row. Silvana
and Vargas went straight to it. A man stood in the doorway, observing the
proceedings. Unruly hair and rumpled clothes suggested a hurried attempt at
making himself presentable. Age: crowding sixty.

Silvana spoke. "Police officers, sir. I
understand you heard shots?"

"Not sure, officer. Not sure they were
shots, that is. Could've been someone banging on a door or a wall a couple of
times. You know, with some kind of hard instrument. Or maybe a car
backfiring."

He struck Silvana as distinctly middle
management. Make no waves. Used to taking orders and not giving them, merely
passing them along to what underlings he had. Definitely not an alpha male.
Maybe taking off work a little early for a quick shot of pussy on his way home
to the little woman and dinner. Silvana looked past his shoulder into the room.
A strikingly-beautiful girl in her twenties lay on the bed with the TV remote
in her hand and a bored look on her face, smoking a cigarette. Her black hair
was splayed all over the pillow, as though it were carefully arranged. She wore
only panties. The TV was almost as loud as the window air conditioner.

"Patrolman Acevedo says you saw a car
leaving. That right?"

"Yes, ma'am. That's right."

Vargas said, "According to the patrolman,
you don't know the make or model of the car?"

"Naw, these cars today, can't tell the
difference one from another. Used to be, you know, you could tell a Chevy
Impala from a Chevy BelAir. Nowadays, you can't even tell a Ford from a damn
Tie-ota."

Vargas nodded. "And you didn't see the
driver?"

"Nope. Didn't see him at all. Say,
Detective, I won't have to testify or anything, will I? You know, I'd hate for
my wife to find out about my being here, or —"

"Right now, I wouldn't worry about it,
sir," Silvana said. "But give Detective Vargas here your name and
phone number in case we need to ask you a few more questions. We'll be
discreet, I promise."

He exhaled and gave Vargas the information off
his driver's license.

They found the office. The manager snapped to
attention at the aging desk when he saw Silvana and Vargas come in. Silvana
wasn't sure which was older, the manager or the motel.

"Glad to see you two," he said.
"This is just awful, I'm tellin' you." Silvana spotted an accent in
his voice, maybe Southern, but she wasn't sure. Although she left Cuba for
Miami twenty years ago, and although her English was impeccable, she still had
a hard time placing accents.

They showed him their IDs. "I'm Detective
Sergeant Machado, sir. And this is Detective Vargas. We understand you heard
the shots."

He ran a hand across his stubbled face.
"Thass right. I's watching Judge Judy on TV here in the back when all of a
sudden I heard two loud pops. Sounded like they came from down the end of the
row, you know? I turned the volume down on the TV, but I didn't hear any
more."

"Then what did you do, sir?" Silvana
asked.

He looked at her through red eyes. "Well, I
got up, of course. An' I went to the window an' saw this dark sedan driving
past the office at a pretty good clip. Comin' from that end of the row, you
know, where I heard the pops."

"Can you describe the car?"

"Looked like it mighta been a Nissan.
Black, or maybe gray. Hard to tell. It went by pretty fast, you know?"