Who'll Stop The Rain: (Book One Of The Miami Crime Trilogy) (3 page)

Logan

Saturday, June 25, 2011

8:20 AM

A
S SOON AS
SHIMMY AND ZAZ
LEFT
,
I
took the coffee cups out to the kitchen and placed them by the sink. Back in
the living room, I looked at my end of the take nestled next to my gun.

There
it is, big guy. That's what you wanted. What it's all about, right?

Well,
isn't it? Come on! Twenty-two fucking big ones and a dead teenaged girl who is
right now staring up at Chicho's ceiling while a cop with a camera is
photographing her bloody corpse from all angles, and other cops in latex gloves
are picking her over, hoping to find some kind of forensic evidence, hairs or
some shit.

Before I turned off the
floor lamp, I picked up a stack of bills and riffled them near my ear. The
soft, rapid leafing of the currency whispered to me. Words of love.

Another quiet riffle of the
cash. Back into the bedroom, gun on the nightstand, money in the drawer. Peel
the clothes off, pile into bed.

Dorothy, awake and waiting,
opening her arms. Kissing me, kissing, kissing.

Oh,
yes.

Kissing, kissing …

Much as I wanted to do this
for the rest of the day, I squirmed.

I said, "Wait, baby. I
want to say something."

"You go ahead,"
she said. "I want to
do
something." More kissing. She reached between my legs, searching for an
erotic salute. She got one, of course, but I gently guided her hand away.

"No, I'm
serious." I sat up, and she froze.

"What — what's
wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. In
fact, right now, it all feels so right." I ran a hand through her velvety
brown hair. "I made a decision on the trip back down here tonight. Well,
actually, I just really made it final a few minutes ago. I'm quitting."

She jerked herself upright,
exposing generous breasts dangling over the width of her stomach like ripe
fruit on a thick tree. "Quitting? You mean —?"

"Quitting. No more
jobs." I figured I couldn't make my point any more clearly.

A big grin settled onto her
face and she raised her arms in the air. "Well, hallelujah! The young man
has seen the light!"

The sarcasm was her way of
covering up her ambivalence. On a certain level, Dorothy really did want me to
go straight. She wanted to know I was earning a regular paycheck and sitting
home with her every night watching TV or some such shit.

On a different level,
though, she liked the things she could buy with the fruits of my criminal labor
— the lifestyle, all the rest of it. We didn't live large, but we each
had a nice SUV, she wore a Lady Datejust Rolex — okay, I didn't really
buy it, it was swag
— and we've
got this nifty little apartment right on the edge of Old Town.

She knew but she didn't
know — or didn't
want
to know —
all the exact details of what I did. She knew I worked outside the law and
often went a long time between paydays, but I never troubled her with the
specifics. Not much point to it, you know? She was happy in her current state
when it came to knowing what I did, which was like being in that gray
half-light between sound asleep and fully alert.

Dorothy was sort of like a
Key West version of Carmela Soprano from the TV, who was your typical New
Jersey gangster wife. Carmela loved the big house Tony gave her — and the
Porsche and the diamonds and all the rest of it — but didn't really care
to know where it came from, even though on some level, she knew, just like
Dorothy knew. And like Dorothy, Carmela could push it way back into the shadows
of her mind. And that made her okay with it.

But unlike Dorothy, Carmela
couldn't bring herself to openly admit that every penny — every single
fucking penny — of what Tony brought home stemmed from hard criminal
activity. Not that I'm Tony Soprano, mind you. Far from it. I'm not any kind of
big-shot kingpin, into gangland rackets or drug dealing or murder or any of
that kind of shit. I'm more of a working stiff. You know, like on a much
smaller scale
.

If you saw the show, you
knew Carmela had this genteel side to her, a side that Dorothy lacks. Carmela
didn't want to think about hollow, skeletal eyes of junkies addicted to Tony's
drugs, or pulpy, mangled faces of guys who didn't pay him their protection
money on time. She didn't want to know how many innocent lives were destroyed
so she could slip into her long, soft mink, so she could wear her
five-thousand-dollar designer silks, so she could sip fine wine and jabber with
Rosalie Aprile about how hard their husbands work.

Dorothy, on the other hand,
isn't afraid to face that shit head-on — the violence, I mean. She
doesn't press me for blow-by-blow descriptions, but she doesn't shrink from
them, either. She knows the money I bring home was taken from people who didn't
want to give it up and did so only under threat from a deadly weapon. Money taken
from people whom I sometimes have to get rough with in order for them to give
it to me.

Yes, there were a couple of
similarities between Dorothy and Carmela Soprano, but Dorothy's from Key West,
not New Jersey, and she has a job. Works over at the City Hall annex processing
traffic tickets. Doesn't pull down much money, but the health insurance makes
it worthwhile.

"You
have
seen the light, haven't you?"
She repeated it mostly to make herself believe it. I could hear it in her
voice.

"Come on, knock that
shit off. I thought you'd be happy. You've hinted at this before. You know,
about me quitting, about how you think it'd be a good idea."

"That's because I
didn't want to get a phone call in the middle of the night asking me to come
down and identify your fucking body. Yes, I've dropped a hint or two, and
you've been resisting it like I was asking you to cut off your dick. What
changed your mind all of a sudden?"

"Tonight was too
much," I said. "When I was parked outside Chicho's house, before I
went in, it all came to me, in full, splashy color. I suspected what I might be
up against. There was a real chance I might walk into that house and never walk
out. I thought about the possibility I might never see you again. Never hold
you. And then, when … when …"

"When what?"

My eyes turned away from
her and my voice lowered a level or two. I didn't want to say it, but shit, it
was too late. She was onto me and she wouldn't let up till I spilled it.

"Tell me," she
said. "What."

"I … I killed a young
girl tonight. She couldn't've been more than sixteen."

She gasped out loud through
a wide open mouth. "My God. Sixteen? Why'd you kill her?"

"She drew on me. I got
her before she could get one off, but still …"

Dorothy paused briefly,
digesting that information. We both sat in the dark without talking. The smooth
whir of the central air unit was the only sound. Then her hard center showed
itself. She waved the whole thing off as though it were nothing more than a
pesky fly on a picnic table.

"So you did what you
had to do," she said. "It was her or you."

"I know, but she was
just a
kid
. I've never done that
before."

Her tone inched up a notch.
"You rather she fucking put one between your eyes? Come on. Get a
grip!"

"But … but now, she's
never gonna have a … a …"

She moved close to me, then
pulled me back down on the bed. She ground her doughy nakedness into mine,
murmuring, "Forget it. It's over and you survived. I'm just glad you're
home safely."
My hands roamed her back and my mouth moved
close to her ear. She whispered in a way that lacked tenderness while summoning
up plenty of authority, "Promise me, my love. You're finished. You're
laying down the gun. For good."

"I promise, baby. For
good."

She moaned a little more
and said, "Because I will never let you go to jail. Not if I've got
anything to say about it."

We rolled around on the
bed, kissing and lightly fondling each other's bodies. Then Dorothy curled her
head into my shoulder and ran a hand softly across my stomach.

"Have you given any
thought to what you'll do?" she asked.

"What I'll do?"

"You know, for work. I
mean, you've never really, you know —"

Yes, I knew. I'd never held
a straight job my whole life.

I rolled over onto my side,
facing her, and said, "Don Roy Doyle — I think you know him, he runs
Mambo's sports book and bolita game. His cousin's got a landscaping business.
Mostly private homes, homes here in town and in the Lower Keys. He's mentioned
it to me a couple of times. Said his cousin was looking for someone to come in
with some money, you know, and some labor. He wants to up the ante. You know,
buy bigger equipment, build the business. But he apparently needs a
partner."

"Landscaping? Like
tree trimming?"

"Yeah," I said.
"That … and keeping vegetation looking good and cleaning yard waste. Stuff
like that."

"What's he need your
money for?"

"Oh, I don't know. I
think Don Roy said something about a new truck and some new equipment, maybe a
cherry picker."

"You're telling me you
want to trim trees for a living?"

I looked at her funny. Like
I was beginning to think she wasn't on board. "What's wrong with it? It's
good, honest work."

She said, "What's
wrong with it? What's
wrong
with it?
How about for starters that it's not exactly your lifelong dream, to be
trimming trees and getting filthy dirty all day long."

"It's not just
trimming trees. And getting dirty while you work is no sin. I'll be outdoors
most of the time. I'm in pretty good shape and I can —"

Her voice moved down a
notch. "My love, it's not your cup of tea. You can't make any money doing
that. We wouldn't be able to live this way anymore."

"You'd rather I risk
my life every time I strap on my gun?"

"You know that's not
what I mean. It's just that … that, well … you know, we don't live real high,
but it's higher than what I ever had before. And I don't want to go back to
that."

"Okay, so what do I
do?"

"My advice is to find
something else. Forget about trimming trees."

"There's more to it
than trimming trees! And I'd be a part owner in the business. You know, not
have to answer to anyone. We can still have our lifestyle! I'll bring in the
money, I swear."

"What about this …
cousin? You'll have to answer to him, won't you? Or at least coexist with
him."

"I can handle
it," I said. "And Don Roy said whatever I need to learn about the
business, his cousin can show me."

She wasn't buying it.
"You're gonna hate it. I know you. You won't be able to stand it after a
while. And I'm not gonna be able to stand seeing you come home every day all
dirty and with no money."

"Well, I think I'm
going to give it a shot anyway. See what happens."

Rolling her eyes like only
she could do, she tossed an exasperated hand into the air and let it flop palm
up on the bed. "Suit yourself."

"I will. But first, I
want to take a few days off." I gathered her in my arms. "The main
thing is I'm done with the outlaw shit. I just hope you give me a little leeway
on this. Once I get up and running, you and I … we can put together some kind
of real life for ourselves."

I rubbed up against her and
planted a few kisses on her neck and cheek. Her resistance slowly fell away. Or
at least, I thought it did.

"Okay," she whispered.
"A new life." A little more nuzzling, then she reached between my
legs and said, "Mmmm, now where was I?"

Mambo

Sunday, June 26, 2011

6:45 AM

T
HE SLEEK, YELLOW-GOLD TRANS AM
swerved off Duval
Street, tires squealing, and headed into Bahama Village, one of the older
neighborhoods of Key West. The three men inside swerved with it. Mambo DeLima,
aka Mambo the Third, straightened out the wheel and screamed down Petronia.

"Whoa, bubba! What's
the rush?" said Big Felo from the shotgun seat. He was Mambo's cousin and
easily the largest of the three men. "We're only going right down here,
just a couple of blocks. Ease up."

A slight smile moved onto
Mambo's handsome face. "Yeah, yeah, I know, man. Don't worry about it.
Just listen to her wind," he murmured as though he were one with the car,
winding with it.

"Hey, we don't need no
ticket," Felo said.

Arturo, the third man,
spoke up from the back seat. "Ain't no local cop gonna do that, gonna give
Mambo a ticket." His oblique reference to the DeLima family's position in
Key West rang solid. They all knew the DeLimas, who could trace themselves back
over a hundred and seventy years on the island, were beyond the reach of little
things like reckless driving through downtown at dawn, Sunday or any other day.

Mambo the Third tossed a
glance to the back seat as he slowed down for the Emma Street intersection.
"God damn right, they're not," he said. "But you have to admit,
she moves pretty good for an '85, don't she?" The others grunted their
yesses. He added, "You're not gonna find too many cars this old that hold
up, hold up as good as this one has. Smooth." He ran his hand across the
meticulously preserved leather and smiled. He was only six years older than the
car itself, and like the car, he was in very good shape.

Arturo asked, "Why we
doing this at this hour? I could be home gettin' my beauty sleep."

Mambo leaned his head
toward the back seat. "Because you want to get him while
he's
getting
his
beauty sleep. When he's not ready. When his guard is totally
down."

A quick left onto Emma
Street and he slowed his growling machine to walking speed. Despite a slight
breeze, the morning was hot, even at this hour, with the sun only just now
peeking out over the island. The street was quiet, the pristine Trans Am and a
few swaying palm fronds the only moving things. Mambo's dark eyes scanned the
surroundings, eyeing each house.

"Which one is
it?" he asked.

Felo pointed out the passenger
side window. "Right up here. This one, the one with the Jeep in
front."

The car jostled into a
parking spot behind the Jeep and the men climbed out into the morning
stillness, heading for the sun-baked, one-story house.

Mambo tried the front door
with a quiet turn. Locked. "Felo," he said, standing aside and
throwing a nod to his cousin. Felo, about six-four and carrying two hundred
forty-five hard pounds, moved in front of the door. He kicked it with the sole
of a heavy boot, right next to the knob, and it flew open. The men rushed in,
drawing guns from holsters beneath their shirts. A fast look around showed
nobody in the front room. They froze, listening for a footstep, a gasp, any
sound at all. A stink hung over everything. Like garbage or something. They all
sniffed it and made faces of disgust.

Then they heard the creak.
All heads turned toward the hallway.

Down the hallway and into
the first open door. A man and a woman, both in their twenties and both naked,
had leapt up to a sitting position in the bed, the man fumbling in the
nightstand drawer. The woman yelped and was on the brink of a full scream. The
rising sun crept into the room through partially-open blinds, casting gray,
slatted shadows over the figures of the three armed men.

Mambo pointed his
semi-automatic at the man in the bed, less than a foot from his shaved head.
"If I see a gun come out of that drawer, Kiki, I'll blow your fuckin' head
apart." His eyes moved to the whimpering woman. "And you. Shut the
fuck up!"

Kiki withdrew an empty hand
from the drawer. Mambo shoved him away from it and stuck his own hand in. It
came out holding a revolver. He swatted Kiki's face with it. Blood flew from
his mouth onto the girl's tits.

"What, you thought you
were gonna get us all with this fucking peashooter?" Mambo smiled at Felo,
the big man, and Arturo, who looked on through cruel eyes. They both chuckled
on cue.

"M-M-Mambo, I didn't
know it was you! I swear! I thought it was a burglar. Somebody breakin' in or
somethin'. I swear!" He sprayed blood through his words. "Wh-what're
you doin' here, anyway?"

"What am I doing here?
What am I
doing here
? What the fuck
you think I'm doing here? You start up your own little gambling operation in
this town, you don't think I'm gonna find out about it?"

Blood dribbled down into
Kiki's goatee. "Man, I'm not tryin' to move in on —"

Another stiff revolver
swipe across the face. The startled girl yelped again and lurched to one side,
but not before more of Kiki's blood landed on her, this time a glob on her tattooed
shoulder.

"Don't lie to me,
motherfucker! I'm sitting in my joint the other night and T-Bone Suárez tells
me he don't bet with me no more, he's giving all his action to you. The fuck
does that sound like?"

Kiki's whimpering prevented
any real kind of an answer. His head dropped into his hands as he tried to
speak.

Mambo spoke instead.
"Sports book! Bolita! You start that shit up in this town, you movin' in
on
me
, my man. Now, I know you
couldn't do this by your own stupid self. So who're you working for?
¿Quién es tu jefe?
"

"
¿M-m-mi jefe?
"

Mambo grabbed Kiki's neck
and pulled him out of bed. Another loud squeal from the girl as Kiki fell to
the floor. Mambo planted a kick in his gut. Kiki grunted and more blood dripped
from his mouth, a little faster now.

"Who is it, Kiki?
Who's behind this?" Another kick. "Come on!"

Kiki rolled around on the
floor, clutching his stomach and howling in pain. After a few seconds, he
managed to stutter, "M-Maxie M-M-Méndez."

"Who? Maxie who?"

"Méndez," said
Kiki. "Maxie Méndez."

"That fat fuck from
Hialeah?"

"Y-yeah. He —
ooowww! My stomach!"

Mambo holstered his gun. He
pulled Kiki's head up by the neck. "You're not gonna have any stomach left
by the time I get through with you if you don't start talkin'."

"Max … Maxie's a … a
big shot up there, up … up in Little Havana. Hialeah. Got a lotta shit going.
Drugs … gambling … whores. Everything."

"I know who he is. So
where'd he find you?"

"His brother got … got
…" He doubled over and coughed twice. From his position on the floor, he
reached for a Kleenex up on the nightstand and spit into it. Mambo thought he
caught a flash of red fly into the tissue.

"What about his
brother?" Mambo growled, impatience all over his face.

"… got married down
here a few weeks ago. At the Casa Marina Hotel. I tended bar at the reception,
and one of the — the whaddya call, you know, those guys on the groom's
side that show you to your seat? The — whaddya call 'em?"

"Ushers," said
Mambo.

"Yeah, ushers …"
He coughed again when he said that word. More spitting. This time, Mambo saw
the blood pool up in Kiki's goatee. Kiki took a shot at wiping it off with the
Kleenex. Most of it stayed in the goatee. "One of the ushers, he hung out
at my bar and we were just, you know, shootin' the shit. Pr-pretty soon, he
starts tellin' me about Maxie's operations and how he's such a big shot up in
Hialeah, and it's Maxie this and Maxie that, and then a few minutes later,
Maxie himself comes over. Me and the usher, we keep talkin' and then Maxie
joins in. A coupla minutes after that, he made me an offer. Said … s-said he
wanted to get something goin' down here, here in Key West, you know? He was
like, I could maybe make some money if I could help him out."

"Help him to muscle in
on
me
! Right, mother
fuck
er?" Without waiting for an
answer, Mambo slapped the side of Kiki's head and said, "
¿Dónde está tu banco?
"

"My b-bank?"

"Where do you keep it?
Come on!
Where
?"

Kiki struggled to his feet,
gasping for air. He staggered naked down the hallway. Mambo looked over at
Arturo and pointed at the girl. "Keep an eye on her," he said. Mambo
and Felo followed Kiki into the kitchen.

This was where the stink
came from. Dirty dishes piled high in the sink, looked like they'd been there
since the house was built. On the countertop, a McDonald's bag lay on its side,
its contents overrun with big, ugly ants spilling out onto the counter.
Grime-coated drinking glasses were everywhere. Mambo recognized the odor of
stale coffee. His nose twitched. An open plastic trashcan showed rotting grounds
on top of days-old garbage. He didn't want to look beneath it.

"You live real good,
don't you?" Mambo said. "Real high class."

Without answering, Kiki
opened the cabinet beneath the sink and retrieved a box of Cascade. Powdery
residue covered the area where the lid had been opened. He peeled the top back
all the way and started to reach inside. Mambo grabbed the box from him in a
fluid motion.

"Mambo," said
Kiki. "Pl-please. That's n-not my money."

Mambo drew back the lid and
saw a Glad sandwich bag sticking out of the detergent inside. Pulling it out,
he looked at the money it held. He sneered, "You fuckin' right it's not.
Not tryin' to move in on me, huh?" He unzipped the bag, extracting a hefty
wad of bills. A quick look through them told him it came to at least five or
six grand. All of it into his pocket.

"
M-M-Mambo
!" Kiki cried. "Don't take — I mean —
that's all I got. I got to pay off the winners and — and Maxie,
too!"

"Tough shit,"
said Mambo. "You shoulda thought of that back when you decided to move in
on me."

"Mambo, please! I —
"

Mambo grabbed Kiki and
shoved him against the wall, holding him there with a tight grip on his throat.
Kiki hacked and gasped.

"I hear you doin' this
shit again, you're dead.
¿Me entendés?
"
A sweating Kiki nodded lamely. Mambo let up on his neck and slapped him hard
across the face. "I said do you understand! Tell me you do."

"I — I
understand, Mambo," Kiki said in a wheeze, blood now flowing freely down
his chin through his goatee and onto the filthy floor.

"You want to keep your
operation going, I get my cut. Starting tomorrow, Arturo is going to come
around every day for my thirty-three percent."

"Thir —
thirty-three percent? Mambo, that's a lot. Maxie's —"

Another backhand slap,
almost a punch. Teeth loosened. Kiki's naked figure staggered backward, hitting
the counter. "Every day. Thirty-three percent.
¿Me entendés?
No more talk! Come on, Felo."

They headed down the hall
toward the door. As they passed the bedroom, Mambo saw Arturo sitting on the
edge of the bed, fondling the girl's blood-soaked tits and whispering into her
ear. Cringing, she turned her head away from his filthy whispers and Mambo saw
fear covering her face. Arturo leaned in closer, his lips pulled back in a foul
grin.
Fucking pervert,
Mambo thought.

She tried pulling away from
him but he snatched her arm and jerked her closer. Now revulsion swept her
face, competing with the fear. Twisting her body, she pushed him away with an
elbow, mumbling something in Spanish that Mambo couldn't make out. He grabbed a
handful of her hair and wrenched her neck downward and to the side, into a
grotesque position. A scream escaped her throat.

"¡Arturo!
¡Vámonos!
" Mambo cried. Arturo
wiped his blood-smeared hands on her gorgeous brown hair and slapped her face,
snapping her head back with a crack against the headboard, then got up to leave
the room. On their way to the car, Mambo pulled out the sheaf of bills and gave
each man five hundred dollars. Within thirty seconds, the yellow-gold Trans Am
roared out of its parking spot.