The Last Savage

by Sam Jones

  The woman locked onto the guy with one of the fiercest death stares Billy had ever witnessed. She leaned in. “I’ve got two questions for you, you dumb ape,” she said, a smoky timbre lining her sultry voice.

  Billy didn’t bother hiding his grin.

  “And be honest with me,” the woman continued as she leaned in closer to the bartender. “How often does that bullshit line work, and how shriveled are your balls from all those ’roids you’ve been shooting into that swollen tree root you call an arm? Seriously, I’m all for physical fitness, but you look like a damn cartoon.”

  The bartender frowned and took a step back.

  The woman said, “Mojito. On the house.”

  The bartender lowered his head sheepishly, turned, and went off to make the drink.

  “Atta boy,” she said. “Chop-chop.”

  The DJ changed the track.

  The Greg Kihn Band started to sing about being in jeopardy.

  Billy took a moment to glance at the people boogieing to the beat on the dance floor before asking the woman, “How often does that happen?”

  The woman glanced at Billy and took a moment to decide if he was worth the time. “Idiots like him?” she said as she motioned to the bartender.

  “Yeah.”

  “More often than not,” she said, neither she nor Billy making any kind of eye contact.

  Billy clocked her wardrobe: jeans, high heels that accentuated her toned calves, and a leather jacket to top it all off, giving her a kind of Madonna vibe.

  And it worked.

  Billy fiddled with his beer. “Too bad I don’t have your gusto. Maybe my wallet wouldn’t be as light every time I go to a watering hole.”

  “Referring to bars as ‘watering holes’ isn’t going to help you much.”

  “Too outdated?”

  “Just a tad.”

  Billy turned his head.

  The woman did the same.

  “Billy,” he said.

  “Maria,” she said.

  The two shook hands.

  For a brief moment, Billy got lost in the smoky-blue hue of her eyes that pierced through him quicker than a bullet.

  Maria asked, “I suppose you’re going to ask to buy me a drink now?”

  “Afraid not,” Billy said, “Unfortunately, I’m waiting for a friend to show up.”

  “From the sound of it, I’d say they’re running late.”

  Billy checked his Casio. “Terribly.”

  “Social call, or business?”

  “Bit of both, I suppose.”

  “Yeah? And what’s a guy like you do for a living?”

  Billy felt a familiar tug in his gut.

  It was the way she was speaking to him, like she was killing time, no real interest behind her questions or a genuine desire to get to know him better.

  Billy looked at her with a squinted expression and said, “You’re awfully inquisitive.”

  The bartender returned and placed the mojito down, making sure to avoid eye contact with Maria before quickly moving toward the patrons on the other side of the bar. “My apologies,” Maria said to Billy as she pulled the drink toward herself, “I’m just making conversation.”

  Billy took another look around the bar.

  And then he came to a profound realization.

  He then looked at Maria—staring at him with a honed-in gaze and eyes that were now refusing to blink.

  And then he saw it…

  Oh, crap.

  Billy waited a beat, weighed his options, and called out what he spotted.

  “What kind of gun is that?” he said as he gestured at the blue metal Maria was pointing at his groin from underneath the countertop.

  Maria downed her mojito with aquiline ease. “Beretta,” she said.

  Dizzy perked up as he caught the glint of the gunmetal under the light, his eyes wide and stomach dropping. “What the fu—”

  Billy grabbed his arm. “Shut up, Dizzy.”

  Several seconds passed.

  Billy shook his head at his lack of vigilance.

  Calculation.

  “Some piece of hardware you got there,” he said as he glanced at the Beretta Maria was clutching onto with his peripherals. “Ears are gonna ring if you start popping off shots in this cramped-up hell hole.”

  Maria pointed to the back door. “Maybe we should talk outside then.”

  Billy took the last swig of his beer and placed down the bottle. “That sounds sublime.”

  “Get up,” Maria ordered. “Slowly. Tell you friend to follow behind you. Move toward the rear exit to your left. Three paces ahead of me and one to the right as you walk. Got it?”

  Dizzy buried his head in his hands. “God damn it. This is not my day…”

  “Move,” Maria commanded.

  Billy and Dizzy stood up, Billy having to shove Dizzy in the back to get him moving.

  “Billy—” Dizzy began.

  “Easy,” Billy assured him. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “She’s got a gun, man!”

  “Just stop talking and move.”

  Patience.

  The trio weaved through the crowd and toward the rear exit, Billy never once looking back as they made their way to the door with the red “exit” sign that led to the alleyway out back.

  They arrived at the door. Billy and Dizzy stopped walking and waited for the order.

  “Open it,” Maria said.

  Billy pushed the door open, and they moved outside. The alleyway—like most in this part of town—was heavily littered. The street was off to the left, docks and water to the right.

  Not another soul in sight.

  “Up against the wall.”

  Billy guided Dizzy by his elbow, and the two men spread themselves against the brick.

  “Where’s your gun?” Maria asked Billy.

  “Front of my pants.”

  Maria moved forward, her Beretta trained on Billy’s back as she felt around his waist, her breath hitting him on the back of the neck as she wrestled the gun from his waistband. “Please don’t shoot my genitals off,” he said. “I might’ve forgotten to engage the safety.”

  Maria looked at Dizzy as she continued to pat Billy down. “What about you?”

  “I’ve got nothing,” Dizzy replied.

  “You sure?”

  “Fucking yes!”

  Maria frisked him anyway and confirmed his claims. She then stepped back and held the Beretta with two hands, Billy’s Colt and wallet now stuffed in her pockets.

  “You work for Castillo,” Billy said. “Right?”

  Maria nodded. “That’s right.”

  Billy took a long look at Maria. “And I suppose you’re Velasco. Correct?”

  “Circle gets the square.”

  Billy tapped a finger on the brick in front of him. “Okay then, Ms. Velasco…what happens next?”

  “The two of you are going to come with me. Mr. Castillo wants to have a chat with you.”

  “That’s odd,” Billy said as he pointed a thumb at Dizzy. “My buddy here said that Rico Castillo has been dead for months.”

  Maria said nothing for a few moments as she adjusted her grip on the Beretta. “That’s a bullshit rumor,” she said.

  “I disagree,” Billy said. “In fact, I think you should lower the gun and cut us loose.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Take a second and look at the inside of my wallet. I think it might blow your mind.”

  Maria took another step back and removed Billy’s wallet from her pockets. She flipped open the leather with one hand and found herself staring at an FBI shield.

  All she did was sigh.

  Billy shrugged. “Your move, Maria…”

  She took a moment. Then she clicked her teeth, engaged the safety on her Beretta, and tucked it in the back of her pants.

  Billy slowly turned around but kept his hands raised, worried that the woman might be a quick draw.

  “Leave it to the feds,” she said
, “to completely and utterly ruin the program.”

  Billy could hear an adjustment in her tone, her accent slightly dropping and her posture becoming a little more loose, almost like a faux persona was being shed and the real Maria was now coming out to play.

  “Who the hell are you?” Billy asked. “Really?”

  Maria reached into the back of her pants, produced a wallet of her own, opened it, and displayed the contents: a gold Miami PD badge complete with a photo ID.

  “Maria Delgado,” she said. “Vice.”

  Dizzy threw his hands up in the air and spun in a half circle.

  “I’m done with this shit, man. Take me to jail. Seriously.”

  9

  AN HOUR later. Seven thirty p.m.

  Maria, Billy, and Dizzy were inside the headquarters of the Organized Crime Bureau, a former jewelry shop gutted out and converted into a covert lair for the law, headed up by a weathered but stern woman by the name of Lieutenant Camille Calabrese. She was standing in the corner office—hers—arms crossed and staring out the window that looked out onto 22nd Avenue, a bleak and run-down part of town that was home to a couple of bodegas, a few families, and a handful of vagrants, her mind racing and her patience officially being tested to its limits.

  To her right was Ferris, perturbed and weary. On the worn-out couch near the filing cabinet was Billy, amused and irritated. Leaning against the door was Maria, frosty and stoic. Dizzy was being held out in the bullpen, a couple of detectives watching over him as he dried his sweat via the metal fan resting on the desk he was cuffed to.

  Calabrese uncrossed her arms and did an about-face, her gaze directed toward the linoleum floor. “I know,” she said, “that the FBI has a tendency to keep local law enforcement in the dark with their operations, but you really screwed us over not giving us the heads-up that you were here looking into Rico Castillo.”

  Ferris said nothing.

  Billy rubbed his stubble.

  Calabrese started pacing. “Detective Delgado has been working on getting a line on Castillo for the past eight months. She managed to not only infiltrate his organization but put herself in a position where she was operating as one of his top employees.”

  “Doing what?” Ferris asked.

  Maria said, “I’m currently the name-only manager of a restaurant Rico’s distributing product through. I run distribution for some of the dealers out of the kitchen and handle the cash that comes in. I count it, give the dealers their cut, bag it, and deliver it to the moneyman to be cleaned.”

  “We’ve been looking to find out who that is,” Ferris said.

  “The guy laundering the cash?”

  “Yeah. It was the reason we sent Special Agent Sykes undercover before he was killed. We were trying to tie this launderer to Rico Castillo and a New Jersey mob boss we’ve been working on. Obviously that hasn’t happened.”

  “Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but it turns out that the moneyman has been missing since last Tuesday. Name was Tony Arcaro. You can try looking for him, but he’s a ghost. I’m pretty sure someone got to him already.”

  A collective sigh from Billy and Ferris.

  Maria said, “I’ve been trying to get as close as I could to the new boss that replaced Rico to get an ID.” She turned her attention to Billy. “And then you come sauntering in and start stirring things up. Between this botched deal you guys got involved in and arresting my guy Rodriguez, you’ve not only risked our entire investigation but my safety as well.”

  Billy draped his arm over the couch and took a sideways glance at Dizzy out in the bullpen, well accustomed to the ear beating he was enduring and not moved by it in the slightest. He admired Maria’s candor more than anything. And the fact that her lieutenant was easy enough to let it slide.

  Calabrese looked at Ferris. “I think it might be wise if the FBI backs off from this.”

  Billy showed her a subtle smile soaked in sarcasm.

  “From what I’ve heard,” he said to Calabrese, “your investigation is already dead in the water. Rico Castillo allegedly bit the bullet a few months back, according to you and Dizzy.”

  Ferris turned her attention on Billy. “When did you find that out?”

  “Not long ago.”

  “When were you planning on telling me?”

  Billy shrugged. “I just did…”

  Ferris clenched her fist and jutted her jaw like a mother who just got a call from the school principal about her troublesome kid for the millionth time. “Is this true?” she asked Maria. “Is Castillo really dead?”

  Maria nodded her confirmation. “It’s true. I don’t know how or why, but someone eighty-sixed him. I got wind of it about two weeks ago. A new guy is running the operation now, but I’m not sure who. My orders were to bring Agent Reese in to be delivered to this man. Today. The more time that passes and I don’t, the more anxious Hector is getting.”

  Billy squinted. “What were you planning to do with me once you found me?”

  “Exactly what I was told to do: turn you over to Hector so he could take you to the boss. This came straight from the guy running the show, whoever he is.”

  “Do they know I’m a fed?”

  “Not sure,” Maria said. “Again, I’ve been kept in the dark about most of the details.”

  “Well, what do you know?”

  “I know that Castillo was killed several months ago. Timeline is a little shaky, but he’s dead. Hector told me all about it. Said that someone fed Castillo to a damn alligator…”

  Billy grimaced. “That’ll fuck up your weekend.”

  “All the people inside his operation,” Maria continued, “myself included, get word down from Hector that a new guy is running the show. He tells us that business is to continue as usual. Nothing changes. It’s odd, considering the fact that most of the business is built on reputation. But the new guy wanted none of it. He even tells us to keep carrying out business in Castillo’s name. But the people on the inside knew the real scoop—Castillo was dead, and somebody else was running the program.”

  “What about Hector Fuentes?” Billy asked.

  “What about him?”

  “We were trying to work on Hector. We were trying to get to Rico through him. Wasn’t he a big factor in this new guy taking over the business? Dizzy said he was partners with Rico before he sold him out.”

  “He was.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  Maria paced. “Hector was Castillo’s partner. The new guy running the program got him to turn on Castillo for a bigger chunk of the profits, putting it succinctly. Hector sold out Castillo, Castillo was killed, and now Hector runs most of the South Florida operations on behalf of the new management. Rumor is the relationship between him and the new boss is strained, though. Some people think he’s going to be…demoted soon. So does Hector. He’s been acting a little on edge lately as a result.”

  Billy jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the bullpen. “How did Dizzy know this? He’s nothing but a street urchin, and even he knew that Castillo was six feet under.”

  “Someone must have said something to him.”

  “What about the new boss? Who is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Maria said. “Rumor is he’s Cuban. And I’m pretty sure no one but Hector Fuentes has actually seen his face.”

  “And where do I come into play?”

  “One day Dizzy calls me up. Says that there are a couple of guys looking to supply for the operation.” She looked at Billy. “You.”

  Billy flashed a grin. “Me.”

  “Dizzy gives me your aliases,” Maria continued, “and I pass it up the ladder. Two hours later, I get a call from Hector Fuentes. He tells me that the new Cuban guy running the show wanted Reese here brought in. Well, he wanted ‘Price’ brought in, but you get what I’m saying.”

  “Why?” Billy asked.

  “Hector didn’t say,” Maria said. “He just instructed me to have the two guys you were striking up a deal with earlier today brin
g you in alive. Then the deal went south, and you got away. I told Hector. He ordered me to find you and bring you in myself; otherwise I was going to have to answer to the big man himself. There’s a power shift happening in Castillo’s operation right now. Whoever this Cuban guy is that’s handling it is up to something. I’ve just been trying to figure out who he is and why he’s been hiding in the shadows.” Maria looked to Ferris, teeth slightly snarling. “And then FBI comes barging in, and now I’m stuck with a dicey situation I may have to walk away from before I find myself dealing with fatal consequences.”

  Ferris had no reaction.

  “You’ve endangered my detective by involving your people,” Lieutenant Calabrese said. “Now she’s two steps shy of getting some kind of hit put out on her as a result. You should have given us a courtesy call so we could have avoided the crossover. Both of our people were compromised because of it.”

  Ferris had nothing to retort.

  Calabrese was right.

  Maria pointed a finger toward the bullpen. “When Dizzy out there called a few hours ago looking for me,” she said, “I was planning on bringing him in and sweating him to pinpoint Reese’s whereabouts.” Her lips curled into a shit-eating grin as she looked at Billy, “And then bozo here had Dizzy call in and set up a meet—the exact guy I was looking for, knocking right on my door. It was my lucky day.”

  Billy clapped his hands, amused and impressed that a local detective would straight-up insult a fed. “Kudos to you, detective,” he said.

  Calabrese moved toward her desk. “The question is where to go from here,” she said, “seeing as this whole thing has turned into a complete shit show.”

  “The solution is simple,” Billy said. “Can’t you see it?”

  Everyone waited for the answer.

  Billy rolled his eyes.

  “Maria takes me to Hector, and I go right to the big man himself. We may not have anything to arrest him on, but we’ll be able to ID him.”

  Maria waved him off. “That’s incredibly stupid.”

  “Why, because you didn’t think of it first?”

  “No, genius, because if I bring you in, you’re gone the second I hand you over to Hector.”