Shot Down

by Steven Sheiner

  Tell me about it, I thought.

  “And I knew it would only end one of those two ways. They gave me forty-eight hours to come up with the money, which was impossible. But if I didn’t, they’d kill me. If I tried to rob the bank, the cops would kill me. Of course, I didn’t know about their plans for you,” he said with a smirk. “So I came crawling back to Uncle Luis on my knees. I told him what happened, what the twins were up to, and begged for his help. ‘Why the bank?’ he kept asking. ‘Why the bank?’ And then it hit him. This is where it begins. He knew they were up to something, and it all started that day.”

  “He came up with the idea of sending a duplicate to the bank in my place. So he sent his men out to scour Miami Beach and find someone that looked like me. He only had to resemble me. Height and weight were all that mattered. Everything else was manageable. The next day, they came back with a guy that could have been my brother. He was a few years younger than me, but so similar in look and build. We got his hair done to look like mine, dressed him in my clothes, and paid him ten thousand dollars cash to shoot up the bank in Boca. He didn’t even ask why. He was desperate for money. Something about his wife being sick. We told him we’d hire the best attorneys to defend him after he got arrested. That was before you came along and shot him in the head. He was in the coffin at my funeral. It was necessary to maintain the illusion for Enrique and Gustavo, who didn’t even show up. Pendejos.”

  I put my head in my hands and tried not to throw up on the beautiful Persian rug beneath my feet. I’d shot an innocent man. Killed him. I didn’t know what to do or say. All the guilt from that day welled up inside me and I wanted to scream.

  As if he could read my thoughts, Carlos said, “Don’t beat yourself up, Doc. You had no way of knowing. We sent him in there to find out what the twins were up to, and you were the answer. They wanted me dead.”

  He was right, of course, but that didn’t change the way I felt. I killed someone who didn’t even know why he was there. All the angst, all the guilt, all the horrible feelings that had finally started to fade came rushing back. I wanted to throw up. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself. I tried my best to think rationally about it. When I looked back on that day, did I really have a choice? Enrique and Gustavo had threatened my family. They showed me pictures and videos of Sara and the boys. They told me there was no place they were safe. Carlos or no Carlos, I did what I had to do to protect them. I took another sip of my awful drink, hoping it would settle my nerves. After the burning in my throat subsided, I asked, “What was his name?” I interrupted.

  “Who?” Carlos asked.

  “The guy from the bank. The one I shot.”

  “Who cares?” he replied snidely.

  “I do!” I snapped back, and looked over quickly at the two large men to my right.

  “¡Oye!” Luis snapped, looking agitated.

  Carlos turned to him and spoke quickly. Luis responded sharply, pointing at me as he spoke. Carlos turned back to me and said, “My uncle said you’ll have his name before you leave here today.”

  His words were like music to my ears. I would be leaving here today. If my mouth didn’t get me killed first. I breathed a sigh of relief and moved on.

  “Why does everyone think you’re dead? They all thought it was you in the bank. The police, the FBI, everyone.”

  Carlos smiled. “Oh, that was easy. After we made him up to look like me, we gave him a new set of fingerprints. Mine. As it turns out, it’s really not that hard. There are even YouTube videos that show you how. The ironic part is, the twins used to do it all the time.”

  The irony was not lost on me, but my mind was still reeling from all of this.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “after you shot my replacement, we suspected the twins were behind it. Luis was livid, and we knew Enrique and Gustavo had set their plan in motion. But they were smart. They stayed mobile, hard to locate. And they kept hitting our deliveries, kept us spread thin trying to protect our shipments.”

  “Why did they want you dead?”

  “For a few reasons. First, one less sibling to contend with for the throne. Not that I ever wanted it, and I certainly wasn’t in any kind of shape to run the business back then. I couldn’t even take care of myself. I was a mess.”

  “You seem to be in pretty good shape now,” I said carefully. He did. And listening to him talk, he actually sounded pretty intelligent. I didn’t know why I was surprised, but I was.

  “Thanks for noticing, Doc!” he said with a wide grin. “That’s what nine months of intense rehab will do. That was one of the conditions if Luis was going to help me. But I’m clean and sober now, and I’m never going back. No more drugs, no more gambling, no more hookers. Nothing but clean living and lots of water for me,” he said with a smile, and raised his bottle of water up in a toast before taking a sip.

  “Carlos!” Luis prodded.

  “Okay,” he replied. “Anyway, I was Christina’s favorite.” The mention of her name made my stomach lurch. Did they think she was dead, and that I killed her? I’d find out soon enough. “We were very close growing up,” he went on. “She looked out for me, and when my addictions consumed me, she did what she could to help me. The twins wanted to use her feelings for me against her. They knew if something happened to me, she’d stop at nothing to exact revenge. They counted on it.”

  “So why not just kill you themselves?” I asked. “Why me?”

  “Well, from the sounds of it, you’re a pretty good shot, Doc,” he quipped. But I was less than amused. “Believe it or not, we Escalantes believe in family over everything else. Killing one of our own is the greatest sin, punishable by an agonizing death. The twins knew that. That’s why they never went after Christina directly, and that’s why they sent you to kill me. They had to make it look random, and not like something they orchestrated.”

  “But then why would they want Christina to find out they were behind it?” I asked, still confused.

  “Ah. Because if she came after them seeking revenge, it would give them the perfect excuse to kill her too. If she provoked them, they would defend themselves. With both of their siblings dead, nothing would stand in their way of taking over the family.”

  I shifted in my seat, terrified to ask my next question. “Do you, umm, know about Christina?” My eyes quickly shifted to the two large men still standing off to my right.

  Carlos looked at Luis, who gave him another nod.

  “You mean, do we know you pretended to kill her? We do now, yes.”

  The look on my face must have given away my surprise.

  “Very little happens that we don’t know about,” Carlos said. “We have people loyal to us everywhere, including the police and the FBI. As soon as they arrived at the Fisher Island Club, we got a call. Someone, obviously you, staged a shooting to make it look like Christina was dead.”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Care to explain?” Luis asked.

  “It was Christina’s idea.”

  “You met with Christina?” Carlos exclaimed. “And survived?” he said with a laugh.

  “I was just as surprised. She asked for my help. She was having trouble finding Enrique and Gustavo. She wanted to lure them out into the open, and she knew her funeral would do the trick. So we arranged her death.”

  “Very good,” Luis said.

  As I sat there, a thought occurred to me that I couldn’t get out of my head. No one was actually dead. Well, none of the Escalantes anyway. Carlos was still alive, and so was Christina. And here I was, caught in some kind of sick family power play involving one of the most dangerous crime families in the country.

  “What is she planning?” Luis asked.

  I walked them through what Christina, Ingo, and I had come up with for the funeral. I also told them about William and the role he’d played up until now.

  “That scumbag? H
e’s a real piece of work, that one,” Carlos said.

  “Who? William? You know him?” I asked, surprised.

  “Of course. He’s been representing us for years. He’s helped me out a bunch of times. He first represented Christina years ago when she shot some guy because he hit her car. He came up with an unimpeachable alibi for her. Produced a dozen witnesses who said she was miles offshore, partying on her yacht at the time of the shooting. After that, we used him for almost everything.”

  That son of a bitch, I thought.

  “So why do you say he’s a real piece of work?” I asked.

  “He’s been playing both sides against the middle since day one. He works for us, for Christina, for Enrique and Gustavo, and he’s constantly ratting on one to the other. If he wasn’t so good at what he does, he would have been dead a long time ago.”

  I thought about what Carlos said. Then I tried to remember all the things William had told me, and wondered how much of it was true. While I was lost in thought, Luis said something that brought me back.

  “You took a big chance coming here today. Why?” he asked.

  “I need your help.”

  Chapter 90

  The drive back was exhilarating. I was alive. That in itself was amazing. I had sat down with Luis Escalante and lived to tell about it. More importantly, he’d agreed on the plan Christina and I had devised, and would do his part to help.

  As I drove, I started to feel something I hadn’t felt in a long time: Hope. Someone was finally on my side, and one way or the other, this would all be over tomorrow. Or would it? Even if things went as planned, my trial started on Monday.

  One day at a time, I reminded myself. Just get through tomorrow. Which would be no easy task.

  I pulled into Ingo’s driveway and was about to get out of the car when my phone buzzed. I looked down and saw a missed call and voicemail from Sara. I pressed play. In the message, she told me that debt collectors had been calling more and more frequently. I had been texting with Jordan and Brock more each day and neither of them had mentioned it. Sara was most likely protecting them, just as I would have. Our bills had been piling up for the last few months. I’d gotten a similar message from Vera the other day about overdue bills at the office, including the mortgage. I hadn’t worked in a long time and money had stopped coming in. Since I’d bought the building and opened my practice, Sara and I had been slowly building up our savings. Much of that had recently been used to cover our regular monthly expenses, and to pay William’s exorbitant legal fees. That scumbag. He’ll get his.

  I shot Sara a quick text and told her not to worry, I would take care of it. That everything was going to be okay. I tried to convince myself of that as much as her. I didn’t know how I would take care of it, or how everything would be okay, but I had hope and I wasn’t going to let it go. Not after the day I’d just had.

  When I went inside, Ingo was both relieved and surprised that I was still alive. He’d called me several times, but my phone had been turned off until just a few minutes ago. The guards had taken it from me anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered.

  James was nowhere to be found. When I asked Ingo where he was, he said he’d gone out early in the day and hadn’t come back yet. I texted him to let him know I made it back alive, but didn’t get a response. I couldn’t worry about it right now. Ingo and I had things to discuss that didn’t involve him.

  We went out for a quick bite and a diner off the beaten path. We needed to go over everything one more time. As we ate, we tried to imagine every possible scenario for tomorrow and how we would handle each one. There were so many variables, so many what ifs, it was impossible to consider them all. At midnight, we stopped trying and decided to call it a night. I thanked him profusely for all of his help. I would never be able to repay him for everything he’d done.

  “Let’s just make it through tomorrow,” he said. “That will be payment enough.” I nodded in agreement, and we headed back to his house. James had still not returned. I checked my phone one last time. Still no reply from him.

  Going to sleep that night felt different. Normally I would lie in bed, fearful of what nightmares would haunt me while I slept. But as I stared at the ceiling of Ingo’s guest room, the fear was gone. Carlos was alive and my psyche had given his ghost the boot. All that remained was the guilt of shooting an innocent man. He was never going to hurt anyone in the bank. He was only there because he needed the money for his sick wife. And now he’s dead. The guilt weighed heavily on me. It may not have been Carlos that I shot, but a man was still dead. I closed my eyes and tried to shake the images from my head. I had his name, now. If I didn’t wind up in jail or dead, I vowed to make it right.

  Stretched out under the covers, flat on my back, I waited for sleep to take me. My mind wasn’t having it. I thought about everything that had led me here. I went over it again and again in my head, but no matter how I spun it, I always arrived at the same conclusion. Enrique and Gustavo were to blame. Now it was finally time for them to pay.

  Tomorrow couldn’t get here soon enough. It would be the culmination of a year in which I’d lost almost everything that mattered to me. If I was going to get my practice back, my family back, my life back… it all came down to tomorrow. If history was any indicator, I should expect the worst but I tried to think positive.

  On top of everything else that kept sleep at bay, one nagging question continued to tug at me: Where was James?

  Chapter 91

  Light peeked through the window, announcing morning’s arrival. I woke up nervous and queasy around four a.m. and hadn’t been back to sleep since. Christina’s funeral was scheduled to begin at eleven at the Gesù Catholic Church, located in downtown Miami. Even with little to no traffic, it was still an hour drive. Ingo and I left early enough to make sure we got there with time to spare. We packed up our gear, got dressed, and hit the road. I didn’t feel much like eating, but Ingo scarfed down a breakfast burrito the size of my head. I envied his iron constitution.

  The whole drive down we talked about best case scenarios. We had both already spent too much time dwelling on the worst ones. We calculated odds, reviewed the floor plan, and quizzed each other on exits and escape routes. As prepared as we were, more things could go wrong than we cared to count.

  Neither of us were particularly religious, but we both prayed silently that we would make it through today.

  We arrived an hour early and backed into a shady spot facing the church. We expected to be leaving in a hurry, so we chose a spot as close to the main doors as possible. The church was a rectangular steel frame building with a large portico and central tower. It was on the corner of a relatively urban block. It was an impressive structure that I hoped would still be standing after today. We got comfortable and waited for people to start showing up. As the clock ticked, guests began to trickle in. Eleven o’clock approached and the stream of mourners intensified. As did my anxiety.

  For someone with Christina’s temper, she had a surprising number of friends. We sat in silence as we watched them park their cars, stroll across the parking lot, walk up the steps under the portico, and enter the church.

  “What the fuck…?” Ingo said, breaking up the monotony.

  I stared through the windshield, not sure who or what he was looking at.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s that fucking git, Peter Blunt,” he said, pointing.

  “The Attorney General?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What the hell is he doing here?”

  “Apparently he’s closer to the Escalantes than we originally thought.”

  We watched him walk across the parking lot in a traditional black double-breasted suit. Accompanying him was a red-headed tartlet in a shiny blue mini-dress and high heels.

  “He brought an escort to a funeral?” I asked.

  “Classy,
” Ingo mocked.

  A few minutes later, another mourner I had not expected parked and got out of his car.

  “William,” I said.

  Ingo turned and we both watched him hustle up the steps and inside.

  “I should be shocked, but I’m not,” Ingo said. “Who’s next? The FBI Director?”

  People continued to pour into the church well after the funeral was scheduled to begin. “Latin time,” Ingo called it. Since the first guests had arrived, we’d been keeping a close eye out for two guys that could be Enrique and Gustavo. Carlos and Luis had shown me pictures, but we never saw them. Maybe our little ruse had not worked after all. Or maybe they found another way in.

  As the last of the mourners entered the church, we jumped out of the car and headed for the front door.

  “You ready for this?” Ingo asked as we walked.

  “Not even a little bit,” I replied, without looking at him.

  We put our heads down, blended in with other late arrivers, and took seats in the very last pew closest to the door. We looked around to make sure no alarms were raised by our presence.

  “I think we’re good,” I whispered.

  Ingo nodded in agreement.

  The Gesù Catholic Church was enormous inside and smelled of rich oils and burning incense . There were a few hundred people spread out among the pews, but the massive church was not nearly full. It held seven hundred people at max capacity, but we weren’t expecting anything close to that. The floor plan we’d studied indicated there were seventy-six pews in total, divided into four rows. Twenty-one in the middle two, seventeen in each of the outer two. The floor was made from reinforced concrete and finished with marble that had been polished to a bright shine. The walls incorporated terracotta blocks made from clay with a stucco finish. Thanks to the wide span of the steel truss roof, there were no interior columns, providing us with an unobstructed view of the entire church, including the altar. Dozens of lights hung down from the vaulted ceiling, while stained glass windows illuminated the church with natural light from every direction. Balconies hung over the main floor from both sides of the church as well the back wall near the entrance. The two side balconies provided extra seating for the major holidays. Easter and Christmas masses were the big ones, Ingo had told me. The balcony behind us had two massive pipe organs that were separated by a large, circular stained glass window.