Who'll Stop The Rain: (Book One Of The Miami Crime Trilogy) (29 page)

Logan

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

10:15 AM

A
S SOON AS I
GOT HOME
,
I called Shimmy.

"Better
get over here right away," I told him.

"What's
cookin'?"

"Just
get over here. Fast."

He
was there in ten minutes. I briefed him on the job, the fifteen thousand
dollars that was his end, the target, and the possible locations where we could
take him down. I emphasized the time problem.

"We
have to get this done no later than Saturday afternoon," I said, providing
enough time for the Miami
Herald
to
get the story and go to press for the Sunday morning edition.

"Do
you know this guy? This Méndez?"

"No."

"You
know what he looks like? What his habits are? Where he might be vulnerable?"

"I've
got a photo. I know where he lives and where he operates out of. That's all.
The other stuff we're going to have to figure out ourselves."

"I
don't know, Logan. It's seems shaky. I don't know anything about Hialeah. I've
never even been up there."

"Shimmy,
I need you with me on this." My eyes told him the truth. "I really
need you. Not just for your gun, but maybe for your Spanish, too. Are you
in?"

He
ran his hand through his dark hair. "Okay. I'm in."

"Now,
I want to know how you see it. You think we can pull this off?"

"I
don't see why we can't. We'll have to get up there today, though, to get the
lay of the land. Not waste any time."

"Agreed.
How soon can you be ready?"

He
said, "Let me run back home and get my gear. Pick me up in twenty
minutes."

≈ ≈ ≈

A soft rain soaked US 1 all the way up the Keys. Not much traffic,
so we took it easy. Shimmy drove our plain midsize rental, and we passed the
time with small talk. Until we got to Islamorada.

Then
I said to Shimmy, "You ever done this before? You know, clipped a
guy?"

"You
mean, for money?"

"Yeah.
Or, maybe just because someone else wanted him dead."

"Well,"
he said, "I guess you could say so. How about you? You ever done it?"

"Mm,
not exactly in those terms."

"How,
then? What terms?"

I
hesitated, looking for an answer. "Well, uh … I mean … I have killed
people, but always while doing another job. You know, like that night up in
Little Havana. With Chicho and them."

The
windshield wipers slowly slapped the rain back from the glass. We came up
behind a guy towing a boat. He was crawling along, doing about thirty. The
Islamorada speed limit is forty with no passing for nearly fifteen miles.
Shimmy bitched a little before slowing down.

"Let
me ask you, you ready for this?" he said.

I
chuckled. "I guess I better be. Yeah, I'm ready."

"You
sure?"

"I'm
sure, man. That's that."

He
seemed to accept it. We slugged along behind the boat, which spit a good deal
of water up at us from the highway. Shimmy fell a little farther behind and
that put a stop to it.

A
few miles later, I said to him, "You want to tell me about it?"

He
looked at me for a second, taking his eyes off the road. "About
what?"

"About
the time — or times — you say you've done this before."

"I
don't know," he said, looking back toward the road in front of him.
"It was a long time ago."

"Anybody
… I might know?"

"You're
getting pretty nosy here, Logan. What's up with that?"

"I
don't know," I said. "Normally I don't ask about a guy's history, not
in specifics, anyway. But this isn't a normal job. I thought I'd like to know
what you did and to who."

"Well,
to answer your question, yes, you know him. Or in fact, you probably didn't
really
know
him, but you know
of
him."

"Now
I
am
being nosy. What do you mean by
that?"

"I
said it was a long time ago. You were just a kid at the time, probably not even
a teenager yet. But you have heard of this guy, no question."

"Shit,
man. Who was it? Some movie star? Or … or … famous athlete or somebody?" I
turned in my seat to face him, my eyes opening to their widest position.

"Wilson
Whitney," he said, his voice betraying no emotion.

"Wils
—" My voice trailed off at the mention of the name. Win Whitney's
father and mayor of Key West for God knows how many years. He was one of the
most powerful men in all of Key West history. Killed some twenty years ago with
several others in a violent episode inside his own home. I'd always heard that
he —

I
said, "I'd always heard he was shot by wacked-out Cuban exiles."

"Yeah,
that was the story. That's what got put out there. But it was me. Me and one
other guy, whose name I
will not
reveal."

"Why
not?"

"Because
he's still around, that's why. And I'm not spilling his name to anyone."

"Okay,
I get it." The rain was starting to let up.

"I
mean, I'm telling you I was there, I did it. But I'm taking the other guy's
name to the grave. Truth is, we both did it, the two of us. We both fired
deadly rounds. And we each took some lead, too."

"You
— you were shot? I didn't know you'd ever been shot."

"I
took a round near my collarbone. Told people I got hit by accident in a
drive-by up in Miami. Wrong place at the wrong time was my story."

"Was
it serious?"

"Fucking
right it was. I lost a shitload of blood. Fortunately, we got to a doctor that
night and he took care of both of us. I still can't use my left arm quite so
good as my right."

"W-well,
what the fuck happened, man? I mean, that night, what happened?"

"I
don't want to go into it all, because it's pretty complicated, and it involved
Russian gangsters, these Russian mob guys from Fort Lauderdale, and money
Whitney stole and all kinds of shit relating to the other guy I was with. But I
can say Whitney's other son, BK — Win's brother — was there, too.
He took a bullet but survived."

"BK
Whitney," I said softly, conjuring up a memory. "I remember that
name. He was mayor, too, wasn't he?"

"For
a short time right after his father retired. He was mayor when all this went
down, in fact. But afterward, he left town and never came back. I heard a
couple of years ago that he died somewhere out west, but I'm not sure that's
true."

I
collapsed back into the passenger seat.

"Holy
shit, Shimmy! I had no idea. Absolutely not the slightest fucking idea!"

"It's
all true, bubba. I swear on my mom." Then he turned his head, burning his
eyes into me, and added, "But it all stays right in this front seat."

I
nodded, and right then the sun peeked through the clouds.

≈ ≈ ≈

Hialeah looks a lot like Miami, the commercial areas, anyway. Kind
of spread out and flat, only with more signs in Spanish. The ones in English
are merely a come-on. You'd have a hard time finding anybody who speaks English
in a lot of those places. It's a heavy Cuban enclave. I read where something
like ninety percent of all the residents of Hialeah speak a language other than
English at home. And it's a good-sized city, too. Over a quarter of a million
people.

The
residential areas are what sets Hialeah apart. I saw an awful lot of barred
windows and doors, even more than you might see in Little Havana. Not many
people out and about in those neighborhoods. Looked like most of them were
staying inside. Also, even though we drove around a few of these areas, I
didn't see any what you might call nice homes. They were all squat concrete
block type houses or small apartment buildings. Shimmy and I agreed, Key West
was much nicer. Miami too, for that matter.

We
motored up the Palmetto to 49th Street, which pretty much bisects the center of
the city and looks exactly like every other suburban main drag, again except
for the signs in Spanish. Standard businesses all up and down: restaurants,
strip malls, gas stations, big box stores, even a sprawling retail complex
called Westland Mall. Eventually, we came to the strip center that surrounded
Lolita's Liquors.

Shimmy
swung the car into the center's parking lot and crawled past several medium-end
retailers. Dry cleaners, send-money-to-Cuba joint, shoe store, Cuban
restaurant, beauty salon, dance studio, CVS. Right in the middle, Lolita's.

"Hey,
pretty big for a liquor store," Shimmy said, not used to anything beyond
Key West-sized businesses situated mostly on expensive real estate.

"Yeah.
The Original Mambo said his office is in here, probably in the back."

We
drove around to the back of the center. Among the rear entrances and employee
parking areas was a small Lolita's sign over a loading dock. Slowing way down,
pretending to be careful around some men loading onto a neighboring dock, I
caught a big, imposing Mercedes parked directly behind Lolita's. It was painted
two different colors, and it looked like a bombproof tank.

"That's
his car," I said. "I'd bet on it."

Shimmy
gasped. "Maybach," he whispered in awe. "The very top of the
Mercedes line. Over four hundred grand for one of those."

The
automobile gleamed in the afternoon sun. I thought about what it must be like
to afford something like that. Four hundred thousand dollars.
Four times
as much as I got for risking
my life with Chicho and his friends. And all four hundred for one car.

Some
of the workers cast suspicious glances our way as we had practically come to a
stop. We sped up a little and left the rear area of the center.

"Where
to now?" he said.

I
pulled out my cell phone. "Let me find The Original Mambo's text with
Méndez's address. Then we plug it into the GPS."

We
did it, and the instructions flowed out of the car dashboard. They led us back
the way we came to US 27. We headed north into Hialeah Gardens, a small,
separate city tucked away in a corner of Hialeah. Following the GPS's orders,
we made our way to Northwest 133rd Street, an isolated, narrow street with an
enclave of large homes, places you could call "estates". Almost all
of them were gated and they featured long, serious driveways leading to
pillared homes designed to intimidate. Méndez's place was the most formidable
of all of them. Shimmy slowed down and I took a good long look.

Secured
behind tall iron gates, the main house rose ghostlike over a brick driveway
ending in a circle by the covered front entrance. A porte something or other …
I forget what they call it. Carefully landscaped vegetation lined both the
driveway and the wall that surrounded the property. Grabbing a glimpse down the
driveway, we saw a Cadillac SUV and a big BMW parked under cover by the front
door. We kept on going.

I
turned to Shimmy. "This place is like a fucking medieval castle. We can't
get him here."

"Unless
we take him on the street while he's coming or going."

I
shook my head. "The glass in that car is probably bulletproof. A guy like
him is not going to drop four hundred dimes on a car and then settle for
standard factory glass. Let's head back to the liquor store."

≈ ≈ ≈

We got a room at a nearby motel and then spent all that day and all
Wednesday scoping out the liquor store. Front, back, parking lot, street view,
we even walked inside and pretended to browse around. Behind the rear delivery
area where Méndez parked his car were dumpsters and behind them, a chain link
fence separating the strip center property from a weedy vacant lot, occupied by
carcasses of three or four old cars. Two ways in, two ways out of that rear
area, one on the east end of the center, the other on the west end.

There
was a standalone restaurant next to the center with a good view of the east
entrance. We ate our meals in there, and I had my binoculars on the table in
front of me. We made a note of every car going in and out. After watching Méndez
leave in his chauffeured Maybach Tuesday night, we followed him to Hialeah
Gardens. Not all the way home, not down 133rd Street, only far enough to know
he was heading for that walled fort. From the restaurant's window seat, we saw
him return at eleven the next morning, and he used the same entrance each time.

Wednesday
evening, over cheeseburgers, we got to talking.

"So
exactly why are we doing this?" Shimmy asked. "Besides the money, I
mean."

Shimmy
was a tall, hard-shouldered guy with big hands. His age, which I made to be
crowding fifty, hadn't affected his good looks any. His face was still sleek
and high-planed, his bearing erect. The women loved him, had always loved him,
ever since I'd known him, which was about ten years now. Nor had his advancing
age affected his drive. He had all the will and the heart of someone in his
twenties.