Who'll Stop The Rain: (Book One Of The Miami Crime Trilogy) (7 page)

"Hey, I don't do that
shit. I —"

"Shut up,"
Silvana said. "It doesn't matter. He'll knock your fucking teeth out, you
know, out of general principle. 'Cause that's what he does. Now why don't you
be a good boy and tell us everything. From start to finish. And save your teeth
while you're at it."

Yolexis drew a deep breath.
"Okay," he said. "But you don't bust me, right?"

"That's right,
kid," Silvana said. "We don't bust you. You got our word."

"Okay." He took
another breath. "Chicho started out bettin' small with Maxie. You know,
twenty here, fifty there. He didn't win very often, but when he lost, he always
paid right away. Pretty soon, Maxie, he let him bet more, like a hundred or two
on each game, you know? And he paid that back, too."

"Where'd Chicho get
the money to pay him?"

"Aw, he was stealin'
shit, you know, like car stereos and shit. Robbin' people on the street.
Sometimes he'd find laptops in cars and take those. He did all right for a
while. Sell that shit and pay Maxie off. That way, Maxie let him up his
bets."

"All the way to two
hundred grand?"

Yolexis scratched his
underarm and sniffled. Sounded to Silvana like the beginnings of a cold. He
said, "He got up to a thousand a game, even five thousand a game. He still
paid off."

"How the fuck did that
asshole manage that?" Silvana asked.

"He went from car
stereos to stealin' the whole fuckin' car, man. But after a while, he landed a
spot in a crew from Key West. They needed a local guy 'cause they pulled all
their jobs up here. Here and in Broward. Palm Beach, too, I think. They were
haulin' in some pretty good shit, or so I heard. Anyway, Chicho always had the
money to pay Maxie. Ten K, twenty, you know. All from those scores."

"So?"

"So Maxie, he figures
why not let him bet more, you know what I'm sayin'? The
pendejo
was losing, so the more he bets the more he's gonna lose,
right? Besides, he was good for it. He made good every time."

"And before Maxie knew
what was happening," Silvana said, "Chicho was into him for two
hundred grand."

"Right."

"Where'd he get
it?"

"When I went there to
collect Friday night, he was stoned out of his mind. He started braggin' about
how him and his Key West crew took down some big score earlier that day. He was
blabbin' his ass off, you know? Said it was the biggest thing they'd ever done.
I think he said it was a bank, but I'm not sure. He was kind of out of it, you
know what I'm sayin'?"

Silvana said, "His end
was two hundred large?" She remembered hearing about a bank in Miramar
that was knocked over on Friday. She couldn't think of another one in the area,
not any day for the last week. But she thought she heard that Miramar job was
only good for two or three hundred thousand. She made a mental note to check it
out.

"I don't know. I guess
so," Yolexis said.

"And you and your
sidekick brought the dough back to Maxie?"

"Right."

"Where'd you take
it?"

"You mean —"

"I mean, exactly where
did you bring it?" Silvana said. "Where was Maxie at that hour?"

"Honey Buns. It's a
strip club up in Hialeah. Red Road and 68th Street."

"I know where it
is."

"But listen, I didn't
hear about Chicho gettin' smoked till the next day. Everybody on the street was
buzzin'. I swear I didn't have nothin' to do with it. I'm
tellin'
you."

"I believe you, Lexi.
Don't worry about it. But tell me, now. Who were these Key West guys? He give
you any names?"

"No.
Nada
. I don't know who they are. I
swear."

"What about your
partner? He know who they are?"

"I don't know,"
Yolexis replied. "He knew Chicho pretty good, though. Better than me. They
used to hang out sometimes, you know? So maybe …"

"Okay, kid. We're
almost done here. Tell us where we can find your buddy, uh, what's his name
again?"

"Flaco."

"Yeah, Flaco. Where's
he usually turn up?"

"You can generally
find him every day — wait a minute, now. He's not gonna be in trouble, is
he?"

"No, no. Don't worry
about it. We just want to talk to him about Chicho. Just like we're talkin'
with you. We're not gonna bust him for anything."

"You sure you not
gonna bust him?"

"I'm sure. Now, where
do we find him and how will we know him?"

"He usually hangs out
at the 305. It's a poolroom right off West Flagler on Sixteenth Avenue. Not far
from Marlins Park. He hustles nine-ball games in there every day."

"And how do we know
him?"

Yolexis chuckled.
"Flaco, man. Whatsa matter, Sergeant? You been hangin' around the gringos
so long you forgot your Spanish? It means
skinny
."
He chuckled again. "You stand that dude next to one of those pool cues, he
looks like the number eleven."

From outside, a loud truck
interrupted their quiet talk. From the chugging, gurgling sounds, Silvana made
it to be the trash collection. She recalled all the cans out front and knew the
truck would be there a while.

Raising her voice to be
heard over the truck, she said, "The 305 poolroom. Sixteenth off
Flagler."

"Yeah. But hey, I
don't want him knowin' I talked to you guys, okay?"

"Oh, no problem,"
Vargas said. "We won't tell him."

"That's right,
Lexi," Silvana said. "We won't breathe a word about our little talk
here today. But …" She drilled him with her eyes, which turned mean in an
instant. "But … we don't want you telling him either. As in warning him
we're coming."

Yolexis smiled. "Oh,
don't worry 'bout that, Sergeant. I won't tell him. You can count on me."

Silvana didn't say anything
right away. She patted him on the shoulder one more time, then stood up. Vargas
followed. "I know," she said. "I know you'll keep your mouth
shut. Now, how much did Maxie, how much did he give you for making this
collection?"

"H-how much?" He
stood up.

"Yeah. How much? How
much did you get?" She led him by the arm to the center of the room.

"Well, he gave us
fifteen hundred. I kept a grand, you know, and gave Flaco five yards."

"Give." Silvana
held her hand out, palm up.

"Give? Gi-give you th —"

A quick slap across the
face. "That's right, Yolexis. Give me the money. One thousand
dollars."

Sweat rolled down his face
and onto his shirt. He went to the couch and reached underneath it into a tear
in the framework. His hand came out with the money, all crisp hundreds, all
there. Silvana took it and put it in her pocket.

"Hey! I was savin'
that for —"

"Gimme your
cellphone," she said.

"My cellphone?"

"Sergeant Machado, I —"

"The fucking cellphone,
Lexi. Now!"

Vargas moved in, fury in
his eyes, ready to throw another hard body shot. Yolexis backed up. "Okay,
okay, okay. Here it is, okay?"

Silvana took the gadget and
slipped it into her pocket alongside the wad of bills. She bent down, pretending
to tie her shoelace. Instead, she retrieved her throwdown .38 from her ankle
holster and stood up, pointing it at Yolexis. The kid didn't have time to
realize what was happening as Silvana put two in his head. Outside, the truck
continued its loud crunching of garbage.

She wiped the gun down and set it on
the floor. "Now I
know
you'll
keep your mouth shut," she said.

Silvana

Monday, June 27, 2011

12:35 PM

T
HE DRIVE TO
THE 305
was
mercifully short. The Malibu's AC had quit working altogether and the cops'
breathing became audible and labored. Air flowing in from the open windows made
it a little easier, but no cooler. They cursed out loud, feeling the big
temptation to abandon the car altogether and take cabs everywhere. Bill it to
the fucking motor pool. Bill it to fucking Venuti. Make him drag his fat ass
over here and pick it up. See how he likes driving it.

"The
way it reads," Silvana said, "is just how the kid told it. He and his
buddy pick up the dough and head out for Hialeah and Maxie Méndez. Forty-five
minutes later, someone else comes in and blows the three vics away."

"You
think Maxie might've done it?" asked Vargas. "Maybe he was tired of
Chicho's shit."

Silvana
shook her head. "I don't think so. Maxie wouldn't waste Chicho if he's losing
and paying
that kind of money to
him." She grabbed a Kleenex from the box on the seat and wiped sweat from
her forehead, especially around her eyebrows. "No, I think it was related
to the big job they pulled. In fact, I'm almost positive." She allowed
herself a smile.

"How?"

"Check
it out, Bobby. Chicho brags to Yolexis about a bank score he just made with his
crew from the Keys, right? He hands Yolexis two hundred K, which had to come
from that score, right? I mean, where else is that motherfucker gonna come up
with that kind of dough?"

"Okay,
it was from the score," Vargas said. "So what?"

"So
this. The only big bank job happening on Friday that I know about was the one
in Miramar, and if I remember it right, I heard they got somewhere around three
hundred grand from it. Now, we'll have to double-check that with Robbery, make
sure there weren't any other banks taken down that day, Friday, or maybe
Wednesday or Thursday, but I don't think there were."

"And
what if it was the only one?"

"Well
…" Silvana looked over at Vargas with a smile, one that came when she knew
she hit on the right conclusion, "the crew takes down three hundred large,
and that night Chicho pays off
two
hundred large to Maxie. You don't really think that was his legitimate end of
the take, do you? You don't think they'd give that piece of shit a two-thirds
share?"

Vargas
caught on. "So Chicho might've hijacked the entire haul! And … and …"

"And
the boys from Key West came up here to get it. Only they got here forty-five
minutes too late."

≈ ≈ ≈

Silvana pulled into a loading zone directly in front of the shabby
pool hall and they got out. She looked the place over. It was a rattrap from
top to bottom. The windows were covered with grime, a grayish kind of grime,
the kind that takes decades to form. The kind that won't come off no matter how
much Windex or elbow grease you put to it. From the sidewalk, she couldn't see
the inside too clearly, but she made out shadowy human forms, some circling
tables or hunched over them, others standing with their cues upright in front
of them.

As
she opened the door, the scene in
The
Color Of Money
drifted into her memory, the one she saw on TV a few years
back where Paul Newman and Tom Cruise were going into a similar type of
low-grade joint to hustle up a game. Cruise asked Newman how he rated the place
on a scale of one to ten. "Ten," Newman replied without hesitation.
Silvana figured he would likely give this place a similar rating.

First
thing she noticed, the AC was working — well, "working" might
be an overstatement, since it was warm and everyone looked like they were
sweating. But even though the unit made loud, dubious noises through the vents,
it still represented about an eight to ten-degree drop in temperature, and it
was inside, away from the brutality of the avenging sun. Relief? You take it
where you can get it.

The
no-smoking tidal wave hadn't yet hit this place. Almost everyone in the joint —
and she counted about a dozen — had cigarettes going and the smoky fog
saturated the whole room. There was even the annoying hint of a cigar
somewhere, though she couldn't tell just where yet. The whole joint was a
monument to smoke and dust. The only thing missing was mud.

One
thing was certain: she and Vargas attracted a lot of attention just by walking
in the door. It was pretty plain by the way they were dressed they weren't
looking to hustle up a game of nine-ball.

Silvana
looked hard around the dimly-lit room. Five tables and a bar with a TV. Two
tables occupied, money sitting on the rail of each. Various other losers stood
around for no good reason. Nobody at the bar, the bartender working the TV
remote. Through the smoke, Silvana saw what she wanted in the rear of the room,
leaning against a cue rack, playing with his cellphone, oblivious to everything.

"Skinny"
was hardly the word to describe Flaco. He looked like he'd have to try hard to
coax the scale up to a hundred and ten pounds. His ultra-dark skin and Latino
facial features told of Cuban-black parentage. He stood a few inches taller than
either cop, and his shaved head made him look like he was about twelve years
old. To Silvana's practiced eye, however, he looked more like early twenties.
Twenty-two, twenty-three, somewhere around there. Even so, she had a hard time
imagining this punk as any kind of serious "backup", as Yolexis put
it, in a situation involving guns and money. What this kid needed was a few
good fucking meals.

"Flaco,"
she said. The kid looked up from his phone. Silvana noticed some kind of video
game setup on the screen.

"Who
the fuck are you?" Flaco asked through a sneer. Silvana figured him to
have practiced long hours in front of a mirror for just such an occasion. You
know, getting all the lip-curling just right and the tone of voice squarely in
the fuck-you range.

Silvana
grabbed his arm and dragged him into the corner. "Police officers,
asshole. And we want to talk to you. Let's go outside."

"Hey,
fuck you! I ain't goin' outside wit' you! Lemme see your badges!"

Vargas
slammed the heel of his shoe down on Flaco's Air Jordan. He ground the point of
his heel in, hard. "Fuck the badges, fuckhead," he hissed. Flaco
yelped in pain. "And you're comin' with us now." More grinding, and
the kid caved.

"Awright,
awright!" he cried. "Outside." He head-gestured toward the back
door.

They
slipped out into the narrow alley, guiding Flaco's limping figure. Garbage was
all over the place — rotting pizza slices, a few empties of cheap wine
and forties, Mickey D bags, even a hypo or two. Silvana held her nose at the
pile of human shit a few steps away. Just beyond it was the probable source, a
wino sleeping on the pavement, facing the building. Or maybe he was dead.

Silvana
threw Flaco against the building. He grunted in pain.

"We
want to know what you know about Chicho Segura."

"I
don't know nobody by that na —"

Vargas
landed a left hook to the kidney. Flaco yowled.

"One
more time," said Silvana, knowing the kid was required to disavow all
knowledge — at first, anyway — of whatever they wanted. "What
do you know about Chicho Segura? Or do you want to piss blood for the next two
weeks?"

"He's
— he's dead."

Vargas
landed one flush on the kid's nose. Blood spurted out all over his sport coat.
Flaco's head whipped back against the brick wall of the building. His shoulders
dropped and his knees buckled momentarily.

"Don't
get smart with us," Vargas said. "Tell us what you know or I'm gonna
open up your fuckin' head."

"Awright!
Okay! I'll tell you!"

Silvana
said, "Go ahead. And I'll tell you right now that we know you were in that
house in Little Havana right before he got clipped."

Flaco
swallowed. He tried to settle himself down. "Chicho was an okay dude. A
street guy, you know what I'm sayin'? Never took no shit, not from
anyone."

Silvana
moved between Flaco and Vargas, serving as a barrier from Vargas's itchy fists.
"How long did you know him?"

"About
two, maybe three years. Somethin' like that."

"Where
did you meet him? Tell us all about it. And about him."

"I
was working in Yayo Dávila's crew. Makin' pickups, collections and all."

Silvana
stared at this kid in disbelief. How the fuck this punk could ever make any
kind of collection, with its unspoken threat of force, was completely beyond
her imagination. Especially in a crew as tough as that of Yayo Dávila.
"And …?"

Flaco
continued. "And one night, I hadda get rough with this guy, a guy who
owned this bar over in Miami Springs. His envelope was light, you know what I'm
sayin?"

"
You
got rough with him?" Silvana
asked with a not-quite-there shake of the head.

Flaco
picked up on it. "Yeah. I know it don't look like it, me bein' so skinny
and everything. But I can take care of myself pretty good, you know what I'm
sayin'? I mean, y'all are cops, so I'm goin' along here, but anybody else that
gets in my face like you just did? They better guard their grill."

"Okay,"
Silvana said. "You got rough with him."

"Yeah.
I shove the guy around a little bit and he eventually comes up with the rest of
the jack he was holdin' back. I turn to leave the joint, and there's Chicho
sittin' there on a barstool. He's like, 'Yo, dog. What's your name?' and I'm
like, 'Who wants ta know?' So we start talkin' and shootin' the shit, you know
what I'm sayin'? He buys me a drink and then I buy him one. Next thing you
know, we're friends."

"Awright,
so you're BFFs. We want to know about Chicho. He ever do anything with
Yayo?" Yayo Dávila and his brother Camilito were feared all over Little
Havana and Hialeah as top crew chiefs and enforcers for Maxie Méndez.

"No,
never. Yayo's got all his slots filled. Chicho was too small-time for anything
like that."

Silvana
allowed herself an inside chuckle. This fucking mook calling someone "too
small-time", as though cloaking himself in the highest echelons of
major-league crime.

She
said, "Well, what was Chicho into, then?"

"Oh,
man, he was goin' around stealin' radios out of cars and shit. Mickey Mouse
shit, you know what I'm sayin'? He did that kinda thing for a while till he ran
into these dudes from Key West. A crew. You know, street guys."

"What
about them?" she asked. "The Key West guys."

"These
dudes were down, lemme tell you," Flaco said. "They pulled jobs all
around this area. Up in Lauderdale, too. They took Chicho in 'cause they needed
somebody who knew the territory up here. Knew his way around, you know what I'm
sayin'? Somebody who … well, you know … like … their man in Miami."

 
His dark eyes grabbed Silvana's and told
their own tale. The tempo of his voice picked up and his tone rose by about
half an octave. Excitement flew off him like the sweat from his head, and he
was contagious with it. Silvana bought into it, started nodding, and was
surprised to see how anxious she was to hear the rest of it. She was slowly
according Flaco a little bit of respect.

"What
Chicho told me was, everything they did was golden. Never got caught. Man, I
mean their jobs were tight! Like a fucking gearbox, you know what I'm sayin'?
Where everything meshes perfect?" He clasped his fingers together to
emphasize the perfection of meshing.

"You
know anything about any recent jobs he might've done with these guys?"

"Yo,
I saw him last week, you know what I'm sayin'? Like around Tuesday or
Wednesday. He said he had a big one comin' up. Real big. Didn't tell me any
more about it, though."

"A
big one?" Silvana questioned. "With the Key West crew?"

"Yeah.
Or, well — I guess it was. I mean, he didn't come right out and be like,
'I'm gonna do this big job with my Key West boys,' you know what I'm sayin'?
I'm just guessin' it was them. Far as I know, he never worked with nobody else
in that league."

"You
ever meet any of these guys? Any of the Key West guys, I mean?"

"Well,
there was one. About two, three weeks ago. I ran into Chicho outside of La Luz.
This bar over on Northwest 12th Avenue. He was with this dude I never seen
before. Real stocky, tough-lookin' motherfucker. Mustache. Mean-ass look on his
face, you know what I'm sayin'? Tells me the dude's from Key West."

A
chill took hold at the base of Silvana's spine. She could feel the info she
needed taking shape somewhere beyond the horizon, juuuust out of sight.

"What'd
you talk about?"

"Nothin'
much. Jus' 'what up' and that kind of shit. Then they go in the bar and take a
booth. Gettin' down with each other over a coupla beers."