Who'll Stop The Rain: (Book One Of The Miami Crime Trilogy) (12 page)

Silvana

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

6:50 AM

T
HE RADIO-ALARM
FLIPPED ON
.
A calm
bolero
tune played at a low
volume, the vocalist crooning out sexy lyrics over a sugary string section. It
was, however, enough to awaken Silvana Machado. After a few seconds of
gathering herself, she popped out of bed and headed for the bathroom of her
small apartment.

She
bent over the sink and splashed her face with bracing cold water. She turned on
the shower, and while she waited for the water to get hot, she recalled the
events of the previous day.

Yolexis had to go. I wasn't crazy
about doing him, didn't get any particular pleasure out of it, like I might if
he was some fucking child rapist or something. But he had to go. Bobby and I
walk out of there leaving him standing, he's on the phone to Flaco before we
get to the car. Flaco goes into hiding and we never find him. And before we
drive to the end of the block, he's on the phone to Maxie, blabbing about how
we're gonna somehow stir up shit with him.

Nobody's gonna miss him, anyway. He
was just a two-bit punk.

She
took her shower and blow-dried her short brown hair. Brushed it to
presentability and checked out her tats, one on each bicep. The Cuban flag on
one, a particularly creepy-looking pit viper on the other. A flex or two, and
then on with a minimum of face makeup. She hated the damn makeup, but Santos
warned her about it in confidence. Said it was always better to come in looking
more like a real woman than a butch dyke. Said everybody would treat her with
more respect if they saw her as a real woman. Not only that, he said, but the
scumbags would think she was a pushover — just a "girl cop",
beneath contempt — and lower their guard. They'd start thinking she
couldn't handle herself, so that when she did, they were caught off balance,
with no time to mount any kind of defense.

Just like with Yolexis and Flaco
, she thought.
Santos was right. Works every time.

She
still hated the fucking makeup, though.

There
was a lot of stuff she didn't like besides makeup. High heels, fancy dresses,
sappy movies, sweet drinks, Fort Lauderdale, shopping malls … on and on. She'd
never liked any of it, preferred instead to chase bad guys and put hurt on them
when necessary. Cop work was made for her. Get results — like Santos said
— and you're on everybody's good side. Get spectacular results and nobody
asks questions.

Her
Cuban heritage ran deep inside her and that was one reason she loved Miami. The
culture, the cuisine, the language, all of it, and it was a source of great
pride. She found beauty in all things Cuban. Except that shitty part of the
Cuban culture where men push their women around. That fire of hate was lit when
she was twelve.

≈ ≈ ≈

The Special Period had just begun. Worldwide Communism had recently
collapsed under its own unbearable weight. By this time in 1991, the Soviet
Union had disintegrated in astonishingly quick fashion, ending the Moscow gravy
train flowing into Cuba on a daily basis. No more propping up of a decaying
tyrannical regime.

Everyone
in Cuba, even young Silvana, was aware of this. They made it their business to
know in the unique way only Cubans can learn things the government doesn't want
them to know. Fidel declared it was time for everyone to tighten their belts
since many shortages were coming. Severe shortages, he warned, and they may
last for a long, long time.

Juan
Machado hated the government, hated Fidel, all of it. He was old enough to
remember before the Revolution, back when things were good. Back before all the
Fidelismo
bullshit, when everyone had
enough to eat, when the phones worked, when the lights came on every time you
flipped the switch, when you could own property, when you could buy or sell a
car.

At
the outset of the Special Period, Mariel was among the first Cuban cities to
feel the pinch. Without Soviet ships bringing food and other necessities,
activity at the port was winding down, and his stevedore job had disappeared,
throwing his life with his wife and young daughter into chaos. Silvana later
learned his job was in danger anyway, what with his constant criticism of the
government in the presence of his block captain and shop stewards. He never
could keep his mouth shut, about the government or anything else.

Now,
all he did was hang around their dirty apartment and bitch at his wife Ana, and
at his daughter.

Silvana
couldn't remember a day in her life in Cuba when her father didn't slap her
mother for one offense or another. One day he was watching baseball on
television and the power went out. He blamed her for burning the living room
light too long at night. Said she sucked all the power out with that damn light
so there wasn't enough for the next day. That was good for a couple of whacks
across the face.

Another
time, he complained when he told Ana to get him a beer and she had to tell him
they'd run out. As it happened, she had used all of her
libreta
coupons on food, so, no beer.
Whack!

 
When she was a little girl, Silvana
assumed the beatings were justified, that her mother had done something to piss
him off. After all, that was the established order of things. Not only that,
all the other kids said the same stuff happened in their homes, and of course,
it was always the mother's fault. She had it coming. Silvana used to
unknowingly prop up that cultural perversion by pleading with her, "Mámi,
why do you do those things? You know he doesn't like it when you do that."

"One
day you will understand, Silvanita," her mother replied. "Real men
don't do those things. Your father is a cruel person." Over the years,
Silvana got the message.

Then
came the night when the SDE agents came to their door. They bulled their way
inside and grabbed her father and took him away with no explanation. Silvana
and her mother cowered in fear back in the darkest corner of the tiny living
room. They cried all night, with Silvana sobbing the loudest, fearful her
father — nominally their means of support — might never return. Her
mother did what she could to comfort her little girl, but it wasn't much.

Two
nights later, he returned, shirtless and bloody about the face. His torso was
covered in ugly red welts and bruises. Two fingers on his left hand were
broken, the bones sticking through the skin. Silvana rushed to hug him in the
doorway. Ana, grateful for his return, joined in the hug.

Juan
Machado pushed them both away.

"Wh-what
is it, Juan?" pleaded Ana.

"You
informed on me!" he growled through clenched teeth. "They did this to
me because of you!"

"No,
Juanito! No! I did nothing!"

With
his good hand, he punched her in the face, hard, and Silvana saw a tooth fly
from her mouth, carried aloft by a hefty squirt of blood. Ana fell back into
the lamp, knocking it to the floor, shattering the bulb, a precious item during
the Special Period.

Juan
grabbed her before she went down and punched her again, getting all of his
stevedore muscle into it. A gash opened over her eye. Another punch, her cheek
opened up. More and more and more. Silvana cried for it to stop, but he just
kept it up. Finally, he grew tired as Ana lay defenseless on the floor, a pulpy
mess. Silvana screamed when she saw what was left of her mother's face, a flap
of flesh hanging off tissue and bone, blood everywhere. When Juan collapsed on
the bed from exhaustion, Silvana sucked up every ounce of strength she could
muster and bent over her mother's horrific corpse. With trembling little hands,
she gently unclasped the chain holding the crucifix her mother wore around her
neck and put it in her pocket.

The
funeral was brief and sparsely attended. The priest put out only the minimum
effort, giving the very short version of his boilerplate funeral eulogy. The
day was sunny, though, and this somehow lifted Silvana's spirits from the
grimness of the occasion, if only a little. She turned her thoughts to her
mother's sister in Miami, her
Tía Teresa
,
and then to the neighbor boy, Vladimir. She recalled his incessant talk of
heroic
bolseros
and how he would soon
join them in their daring escape to freedom across the Florida Straits.

Miami
called and Silvana answered. They left on a raft, about eight by eight with
makeshift oars, under cover of darkness. There were three of them. Silvana,
Vladimir, and his cousin Greta. Vladimir and Greta were both seventeen and at
first they balked at the prospect of taking on this young recruit, but Silvana
appeared husky and fit for eleven years old, and they needed a third, so they
signed her on and shoved off.

The
food, difficult to obtain in the first place, ran out quickly. Much of the
water spilled when they were passing it back and forth in rough seas. Days
passed and still no promised land. When the water was gone, they felt all was
lost. They floated, occasionally rowed.

So this is what happens when they
don't make it,
Silvana thought.
All those people who
tried this trip and didn't get to the US. They run out of water and just die.
Well, I don't want to die. Not like this. Not out here.

The
sun burnt their skin, bubbling it up into revolting pink blisters on their
faces and arms. The raft bobbed constantly, making them seasick, further
dehydrating them. They sang to each other at night in fading voices, trying to
bring what little comfort they could to themselves. During the day, they rowed
and rowed till they could row no more. One day, under a high and particularly
merciless sun, Silvana passed out. The last thing she heard was Greta urging
Vladimir to keep rowing. Their singing faded to shaky humming.

Hours
later, Silvana awoke in darkness on the gently rolling raft. Lying on her back,
she looked straight up. Clear skies showed an array of stars and a sliver of a
crescent moon. She turned her head and saw she was alone. Vladimir and Greta
were gone. The raft gave no clues as to their whereabouts. She snapped her body
upward. Frantically looking around her in the impenetrable water, she called
their names in the night. No answer.

Her
first instinct was to surrender, to jump off and let the Florida Straits claim
her for its own. She thought perhaps Vladimir and Greta had done just that —
capitulated and voluntarily given themselves to the deep. Hovering at the edge
of the raft, she gazed into the eternal blackness of the sea. The cruel
certainty of a waiting death frightened her. She moved back to the center of
the raft where she reached into her pocket for her mother's crucifix and chain.
It felt warm in her grip, a kind of warmth that slowly cleared her mind and
renewed her spirit. Then she cried for a long time.

≈ ≈ ≈

Into her car and off to the station. Moving through the choking
morning rush hour traffic, she took stock of herself, where she was.

I've done all right for myself,
haven't I? I came up from nothing — from nothing! — to become the
first woman to make homicide sergeant in Miami PD history. I'm good at what I
do, I don't take any shit, and I'm feared and respected, so I must be doing
something right. Granted, other women usually don't do anything like what I do.
They're just not like me at all, so I can't really broadcast any of my
activities. I mean, I do have to try hard to keep everyone from seeing how
different I am from other women, even from other women cops. But as long as I
can keep the veil on that, everything will be okay.

She
parked in a remote area of the station lot. Minutes later, as she entered the
door to the homicide bureau, one of her colleagues said, "Yo, Machado,
Santos wants to see you. Pronto."

Lieutenant
Santos beckoned her through his open door at the end of the hall and asked her
to sit down. She did and he said, "You're aware of this Yolexis Molina
situation?"

"No,
sir. What situation is that?"

"He's
the material witness you uncovered in the Little Havana triple homicide case
and he was found dead last night. Shot twice in the head."

"I
wasn't aware of that, Lieutenant."

"You
said you and Vargas were going to question him yesterday. Did you?"

"Yes,
sir."

"Would
you care to tell me about it, Sergeant?"

The
sarcasm again.
Easy now. Just give it to
him the way you're supposed to. Don't fuck it up.

"Sorry,
sir. Of course. Detective Vargas and I arrived at his home a little before noon
yesterday, not long after we left your office. We questioned him in regard to
his being spotted at the murder scene shortly before the crime occurred. He
said he and a friend were there to collect money for Maxie Méndez. According to
Molina, they got the money from Chicho Segura and left. He claims they had no
part in the murder itself."

"Maxie
Méndez? What's his connection to this?"

"Segura
apparently owed Méndez some money, money from gambling debts. Méndez sent
Molina and his friend to collect. They did and they left. It appears to be
unrelated to the murder, sir. As I told you the other day, the neighbor across
the street positively stated that they left at least forty-five minutes before
the shooting started. Detective Vargas and I could not find any further
connection. Just a case of coincidence that Molina showed up right before the
murder."