Who'll Stop The Rain: (Book One Of The Miami Crime Trilogy) (9 page)

Logan

Monday, June 27, 2011

2:05 PM

M
AMBO DIRECTED ME TO TREY WHITNEY'S
OFFICE
, which was
headquarters for one of the local land development companies, one of many
enterprises owned by the Whitney family. It sat in a nondescript one-story
building in Key Lime Square, a little courtyard hidden away off Duval Street,
the island's main drag. Next door in the same row of that building was his
father's office. The center of power in Key West.

Trey's
company office was only two or three rooms. Nothing fancy. His secretary looked
me over. She wasn't crazy about what she saw, I could tell. Maybe it was the
tattoo on my bicep, or maybe she got her idea when she checked out my face,
which always had a sort of menacing look to it. I never tried for that look, it
just developed that way, you know?

Maybe
it was my eyes. People always told me they were cold. I don't know, they don't
look that way to me, but I guess they do to other people. I guess I've heard
that so much over the years, I've come to believe it myself. Or maybe it was
the way I square my shoulders to people when I first encounter, legs slightly
spread apart, as though ready for a brawl. Whatever it was, I always gave off
an intimidating vibe. Even back in grade school I had it.

The
secretary was about to tell me to get lost when Trey Whitney came out of his
office holding some papers. The second he saw me, he knew.

"Logan."
His voice dropped in pitch from the first syllable of the name to the second.
The secretary picked up on it.

"Yo,
Trey. I need to see you for a minute." I glanced at the secretary slash
gatekeeper, then back at Trey. "It won't take long."

He
directed me into his office. It was larger than I would've thought, given the
junior size of the building. Trey shut the door behind us and I took a seat in
front of his desk without being asked to.

He
sat in a brown swivel chair behind an old desk which looked pretty expensive,
although I had no way of knowing. It could've easily been some yard sale reject
and I wouldn't have known the difference. Attractive paintings hung on the wall
and the carpet was beige and clean. The air conditioning cooled things down to
perfect level. Trey was a handsome guy, all right, with the high Whitney
forehead underneath a lot of wavy brown hair. Overall, he was a good fit for
the office.

"Mambo
wants his money," I said without any preliminaries.

"He
will have it, I promise," he said, placing his forearms on the desk. He
wore a white golf shirt with the development company logo on the breast pocket.
I put him at about thirty-four, since I remembered him as having been two years
ahead of me in high school.

He never knew me then. I wasn't
important.

But
over the years, and during my dealings with The Original Mambo and Mambo the
Third, Trey and I ran across each other here and there.

"I
know he'll get it," I said. "He just needs it today."

"Ah.
You may assure him I'll have it for him tonight." Trey's confidence leaped
across the desk at me like a hungry panther. Not bad for someone who's got to
get that much cash together.

"Tonight?"

He
nodded and said, "Every last dollar. All eighty thousand."

I
raised my index finger, moving it twice from side to side in a no-no gesture.
"Eighty-one."

"Right,"
Trey said. "Eighty-one. Of course." He shuffled a few papers around,
making it look like he had important shit to do. He said, "Meet me this
evening, if you would, at the Grand Café. Back in their delightful little bar.
Ten o'clock."

I
got up and left without a sound.

≈ ≈ ≈

The Grand Café is a nifty little spot in one of the more active
blocks of Duval Street. The food is outstanding and so is the service, and the
bar is cozy. Not one of my regular hangouts, because I don't like to go
downtown too much. I'd been there a few times, though, and I liked it. I didn't
know if Trey's father owned the building, but it seemed like he owned
everything along there. They didn't call Winston Whitney the Duke of Duval for
nothing.

I
made my way to the bar in the back of the place. Ten sharp. No Trey.

I
took a stool and ordered a beer. Trey arrived behind me at the same time as the
beer in front of me, with a woman at his side. He had changed clothes, shedding
his golf shirt for a dressier blue linen shirt. He looked refreshed. The woman
looked a little older than he was, but probably wasn't, and she was definitely
not his type. Nor was she his wife.

Her
impossibly blonde hair didn't come from her genes, and was most likely
refreshed very recently by something purchased at Walgreens. Her
eyes were overly-round and raccoon-like,
thanks to a shitload of eyeliner encircling them, and her nose was straight and
small.
The full lips
looked like they were loaded with collagen, forming a dirty-looking wide mouth
through which a lot had undoubtedly passed, in both directions. A clinging,
low-cut gold sparkle top showed max cleavage, a bejeweled lightning-bolt strung
around her neck plunging downward between the spillover of big tits. They
looked soft and round and did a good job of masking the fifteen pounds she
needed to lose. I didn't even notice her shoes.

Trey
gestured me over to a nearby tall table, where we all took stools.

He
said, "Logan, please say hello to Sharma."

She
held a hand out for me to gently shake, which I did. Then she said, "Nice
to meet you, Logan." Her voice was breathy and without accent, and when
she spoke, she squeezed my hand a little tighter than she had to. Her smile
looked genuine.

I
looked back at Trey. "This isn't a social occasion."

"I
know," he said, "but this lovely lady is in town for a few days and
I'm just showing her around our wonderful island. A few places, a few local
characters. You know."

What
I knew was, he brought her along to this public place so I wouldn't lean on him
too hard. Or maybe he brought her as a witness in case I did.

Regardless,
I said, "We have business to take care of."

"And
we shall," he said. "We shall indeed. But first, we must have a
beverage." He swiveled his head around to catch the bartender's eye. She
came over and he ordered a vodka tonic. Sharma mumbled something about a Key
West kind of drink. After a brief chat with Trey, she settled on a frozen
margarita.

There
were other people in the little bar, so I couldn't get too aggressive just yet.
Instead, I folded my hands in front of me on the table. We didn't say much
before the drinks arrived, but when they did, Whitney sipped his and spoke up.
He was a lot more upbeat than he seemed when I was in his office. He said
through a smile, "Sharma's down here from the mainland. Her first time ever
in Key West. How about that?"

I
looked her over. The slash of her slightly-parted lips showed a darkness
inside, one my mind was working on. Wet, hot, and beckoning.

"What
do you do, Sharma?" I asked.

She
cocked her head at just the right angle, showing confidence. "I'm an
entertainer at a gentleman's club."

A
stripper. What a surprise. "Which one?"

"Honey
Buns Show Lounge. It's in Hialeah."

I'd
heard of it. "You … looking for something down here?"

She
gave off a coy shrug along with a playful hint of a smile. "Maybe.
Something."

Sharma's
confident, suggestive posture was the wellspring of what had to be her
considerable drawing power in the strip joints. Curvy in all the right spots in
this age of stick-figure women, she almost seemed to be a throwback, as if she
would be more at home in the 1950s, headlining under a spotlight in one of the
old burlesque houses. You know, peeling off elbow-length gloves one at a time
as she slinked around the stage in a full-length gown, grinding in front of a
tired five-piece band, one that churned out a hard, thrusting rhythm.

Trey
broke in. "Do you think LeeRon might find an appropriate spot for her
talents? Over at the Wild Thing?"

"I
think we better get down to brass tacks, Trey. I can't hang around here all
night."

He
looked at Sharma. "Honey, would you please excuse us for a minute. Logan
and I have some business that requires our immediate attention."

She
knew exactly what to do. I could tell she'd been there before. Time for her to
take the lawn and leaf bag she called a purse to the ladies' room for a few
minutes of introspection.

When
she was gone, I narrowed my eyes at Trey and said, "You don't have the
money."

"I
have it, I have it. I just don't have it … at this very instant." He
slammed back the rest of his vodka tonic and signaled for another.

"You
don't have the money."

"Yes,
I have it. But not here. Not now."

"Well,
let's go get it."

Come on, Trey. Tell me we're going to
go get it. Please.

He
squirmed. "It's … it's not that easy. I don't have that kind of cash just
lying around."

I
really wanted him to have the money so I could be done with this last bit of
action. So I could collect my eighty-one hundred and talk to Don Roy Doyle
about investing in that landscaping business with his cousin, and get on with my
retirement. Maybe spend a little of the commission from Trey's debt on
something nice for Dorothy. But if Trey didn't come across, I knew what I had
to do. The thing was, so did he. Turns out he wasn't leaving me any room at
all.

Shit, Trey, don't let it come to
this.

I
should say right here that I'm not especially proud of what I do, but operating
on the other side of the law was the only thing I ever made any money at. It's
how I always got by. Like that's how it was all supposed to happen, as though
there wasn't really anything I could do about it, even if I wanted to. It was
the only real choice I ever had.

I
thought back to that hot day a long, long time ago. My first heist.

≈ ≈ ≈

We were coming back from Smathers Beach, my buddy Little Petey and
I. We had just gone for a swim and were clowning around as we made our way down
Bertha Street, snapping our towels at one another. I even snapped mine at a
couple of cute teenaged girls who passed us on the sidewalk. They jumped and
cussed at me. Little Petey howled and so did I.

We
passed by Venetia Street, a small intersection off Bertha. Little Petey glanced
up the deserted street and said, "Look. Bikes!"

A
couple of doors up Venetia, two bicycles sat on the sidewalk in front of an old
concrete block house, kickstands down. They didn't look particularly new, or
even in very good shape, but to Little Petey and me, they were like a lost
treasure of Spanish gold, glittering in the broiling summer sun. Waiting to be
found.

To
be taken.

Neither
one of us had ever had a bike of our own, being poor as we were, but on this
day, at this moment, those bikes belonged to
us
.

We
stared at each other through widening eyes with the shiver of a dare. Up till
then, I'd never tried anything like that, never ventured into the shadowed,
chancy depths of the underworld, although I'd seen it portrayed in countless
movies on our VCR at home. It was a seductive world, the world of Tony Montana,
of living and dying in LA, of a thousand cheap crooks and feared bosses.

The world, Chico, and everything in
it.

Back
then, I was too young to grasp the real meaning of those movies, but they
nevertheless carried me away with their images and their in-your-face attitude.
They excited me, thrilled me like nothing else ever did. Taught me if you want
something, you take it. You don't take no for an answer. And you can never have
enough, because the more you get, the more power you have. And power is the
real aphrodisiac.

Those
unguarded bicycles were like another man's horse in the Old West. His most
valued possession, and God help the man who steals it. The idea of boosting
those bikes was a big step, an open portal into darkness, beckoning us to slide
across it and commit to a life on the other side.

We
looked back at the bikes, then once more at each other, each of us waiting for
the other to take the initiative. However, we'd
already
crossed the line. Mentally, that is, even though we weren't
aware of it at the time.

I
knew instinctively I didn't want to end up on a dead-end street like my father —
or rather, like my mother told me about how he ended up — digging sewers
for the city, scraping together a few bucks a day to survive, just so he could
abandon his pregnant wife and go off and drink himself to death. What I didn't
know, though, was how I'd been pointed in this dark direction almost since
birth.