by David Sayre
"What the fuck is up with Game Boy?"
"He dead," Vernell pointed out with no regard for the meaning of the question. Vernell always had an answer, even to a rhetorical question. He wasn't educated in a scholastic sense, but T-Dub knew that Vernell was one of the smartest people you could find when it came to knowledge of the street.
"No, I know he's dead. I'm saying, what was he doing there?"
Vernell shrugged, no information to give on this one.
"Man goes to a business in the middle of the day, all kinds of civilians around and gets involved in a shootout?" T-Dub's blood raised up with every word, along with his tone of voice. "Takes that shit to a competitor's front door? I mean what the fuck! You know what that is?"
Vernell nodded, "That's bad for business."
"I'm always telling these guys, bad for business ain't worth our trouble. And then they go and . . ." Tisdale shook his head, grunted his displeasure.
"I know it. Some of these boys gotta wise up." Vernell spoke of people who really weren't much younger than him, but in terms of maturity and cunning, he was years ahead.
Tisdale pointed his finger at Vernell's chest and demanded, "We got to get on top of that shit with the quickness. Find out what he was doing, who was with him. What about those other two boys he hangs with?"
"Yeah. Cachorro and the skinny little dude . . . Diego."
"They been seen since that shit went down?"
"Nah." Vernell reached into his pocket, pulled out a pack of Newports and a lighter.
"We gotta find out what the fuck's goin' on, whose idea it was to be out there and all that shit."
Vernell lit his cigarette, took a drag and said, "We got it, boss."
✽✽✽
Yesterday & Today Records, or Y & T, as it was affectionately known, was on Bird Road near the intersection of Red Road. It was just as its name implied, a collection of music from past and present, and available on a variety of formats, be they compact disc, tape cassette or the now going out of fashion vinyl record albums.
Matthew liked to spend his allowance money in the shop, and typically had every couple of weeks since he was thirteen years old. Often Delmon would walk out of the store having purchased more than the boy who had suggested they drop in to the place.
Matthew went to the CDs and searched through the "I" section until he found the latest INXS album Welcome to Wherever You Are. Delmon browsed through the store, occasionally stopping to look at a CD or boxed set. Like his son, he could lose track of time in this shop. And by the time they'd left, once again the younger Sheen left with only a CD, while his father had purchased John Coltrane's Blue Train, Curtis Mayfield's first solo album Curtis and The Band's Cahoots, all on vinyl.
✽✽✽
It wasn't until the next day that Sheen got the opportunity to travel downtown and take a look at his office. When he approached the building that stood at 36 Northeast First Street, he looked up at the windows from the sidewalk. He saw that a number of the windows had been broken. Sheen couldn't be absolutely sure, but he was fairly certain that none of the busted windows on the fifth floor belonged to him.
After taking the elevator up the five stories, Sheen reached into his pocket, pulled out a set of keys and unlocked the door to the private investigations office that used to belong to his father.
Sheen entered the clean, but merely functional office to find that none of the windows had been shattered. He stopped off at the reception desk and pushed the button on the answering machine that steadily blinked a red light.
"Hello, Mr. Sheen," a delicate but unsteady voice said. "My name is Yessenia Calderon and I am looking for someone that can find my son."
There was a pause on the line and Sheen assumed it was a moment taken for the caller to settle her emotions. Her accent was strong, but her English was quite good and no trouble to understand. "I haven't seen or heard anything from him since before the hurricane. Please return my call as soon as you can. My number is 555-3027."
Sheen wrote the number on a notepad as the woman continued, "You can come to my home or I can visit your office. Please, whatever it takes. I have to find my boy."
CHAPTER FOUR
Choosing a Life
Five Days Before the Storm . . .
Eladio lay in bed, his head rested sideways on the pillow, and lovingly watched Maribel's brown nipples as her breasts rhythmically rose and fell with each breath. Her breathing had gradually slowed from rapid to relaxed and her smooth, tanned skin was glistened with sweat.
She noticed Eladio admiring her and she smiled. She was beautiful normally, but more so when she showed joy because she smiled with her eyes. They were brown and full and were left unobstructed by the bangs she kept neatly cut over her forehead.
Eladio kissed her cheek. She turned her head and he took her lips with his opened mouth. They shared several sensual kisses. "I love you, beautiful," Eladio said.
"I love you too," Maribel responded.
Eladio wiped a line of sweat from his brow. He got up on his knees, pulled down on the cord that hung from the ceiling fan and let it blow straight onto his naked body. Maribel raised her legs, resting her feet on the bed and remained laid back. Eladio gently grazed his hand along her black, curly pubic hair. She playfully slapped his hand away.
"No more, you horn dog," she exclaimed.
He grinned at her, lowered his head and licked some of the sweat that had collected on her pelvis.
"You nasty boy," she said with a chuckle.
Eladio gave her a devious laugh. He moved towards his side of the bed, kissed her mouth again before laying face up beside her.
It was a meager one bedroom apartment that Eladio rented and Maribel stayed over frequently, though she still resided with her family near Homestead. She had recently turned twenty and Eladio was about six months her junior. They had met at a club on South Beach and Eladio was persistent after she'd given her number. He called the day after they met and asked to take her to dinner. For the first three weeks they saw each other every day. Eladio had never been so enamored of a girl or woman he'd been with and Maribel had never experienced romance this passionate. Most of the guys she'd dated were players or they considered her an object for their pleasure. But Eladio was different.
"Give me one of my cigarettes, baby," she requested.
Eladio reached for the pack of Virginia Slims on the nightstand. His right bicep had a tattoo of the Cuban flag under which read the words "Cuba Libre". On his torso, beneath the left arm, was the tattoo of a cigar ashing onto a broken heart.
He handed her a cigarette and lit it for her with a plastic, disposable lighter. She already had the red ashtray that had "Café Vida" printed on it, rested on her stomach. He wondered, logically, why it was that she always kept the ashtray on her side of the bed and her cigarettes on his nightstand. But he didn't really care. He liked lighting her smoke for her.
Eladio sported a fade, styled like the NBA players who cut a line into their hair in the front. His eyes were hazel and his complexion was a tanned, light brown. He was naturally strong, well-built but not athletically cut.
"I need to shower," he said.
Maribel offered him a drag of her cigarette.
"You know I don't smoke those."
"But you'll smoke those nasty cigars," she replied and distastefully stuck her tongue out from her lips.
"Hey. My Abo was a poet of cigars. I grew up on cigars."
Maribel laughed and joked, "Aw, my little cigar baby."
He smiled and played along, "That's right, Mama. Little Cachorro, in diapers with a Cohiba . . . bad little motherfucker."
She giggled and said, "Shut up. Go shower your funky ass."
Eladio kissed her and walked out of the room.
Eladio let the warm water beat on his neck and shoulders as he stood beneath the shower head. He closed his eyes and thought about the day he had ahead of him. He had one piece of business to tend to, a pickup for the boss. Eladio was maki
ng money, but he wasn't honest with his mother about where that money came from.
Abo would understand.
That's what he often told himself. Eladio's grandfather knew that you had to do what you had to do. He always said that, "money may be evil, but see if anyone gives you the charity of a piece of bread because you disagree with the world's unhealthy obsession with greed." Eladio adored his Abuelo and considered every word of wisdom he passed on to be as valuable as anything the old poets or apostles could have written. After all, Eladio's grandfather was really the man that helped Eladio's mother in raising the child.
Eladio knew very little of his father and he didn't want to know much about him. Eladio's only memory of the man who impregnated his mother was the sound and terrible exhaust smells of the green, broken down Chevy Nova that pulled away from the curb outside the family's house. This wasn't when his father left them. It was the only time that he could remember his father visiting to check in on Eladio. And the only things he took away from that encounter were a pack of Donruss baseball cards and a cassette tape of Motley Crue's Too Fast for Love album. These were the material gifts his father bestowed upon him . . . and the Motley Crue tape wasn't wrapped in the plastic from the store.
Eladio walked back into his room just in time to see Maribel pull a pair of jeans over her wide hips. He liked that she could stretch a pair of jeans, but she didn't have fat around her waist. She was facing the other way and he watched her raise her arms and slip them into the openings of the t-shirt she held above her head. He could see the side of her right breast from behind. Her breasts were not large, but they were full and they were natural. He watched the bottom of her shirt as it slid down to the top of her pants. Even though he had just made love with Maribel, he was aroused again by seeing the beautiful contours of her naked back.
Maribel Flores worked hard as a waitress in a downtown restaurant. She took her share of grief from amorous customers who liked the way she looked. She was clever enough to know the difference between the harmless flirts and the men being pigs that simply wanted to objectify her. She was never one to let her looks be the most important thing about her. She knew there was more to her than only her pretty face and a sexy body. Even if she wasn't a goal-oriented person, she understood the importance of being wise to the world around her, and knew that one had to prepare for their day to day.
She knew that Eladio made good money and she was well aware of how he earned that cash. She didn't particularly like it. She wasn't full of ideological exceptions. She held no moral judgment on the subject. But her concern was for Eladio's safety. His business, in her estimation, was as dangerous as most assumed it would be. And the man she loved was getting deeper into it as the days went by.
"Baby, I want to ask you something but you gotta tell me if I'm getting too into your personal business," Maribel said. Her eyes were sincere with concern.
Eladio replied, "Okay. What?"
"Have you been putting some money aside?"
"What for?"
"I don't know. Some kind of savings. Just, do you spend everything you make?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Don't get mad at me . . ."
"I'm not mad," he interrupted and had the look of confusion on his face. "I just wanna know why you'd ask me something like that."
"Well you're not gonna do this forever, right? I was just wondering if you put some money away. Maybe you can invest it or even start your own business, you know? Something straight. For the future."
Eladio slowly nodded his head, misreading her intentions. His body language formed a defensive posture. "You wanna talk about my future."
"Our future, baby."
"Uh-huh."
She noticed the change in his demeanor and grabbed his hands, furrowing her brow, she asked, "What's wrong, Eladio?"
"Cachorro," he corrected her. "Honey, I told you."
"No, that's the name for your gangster friends to call you! I don't do that. I'm not them. I love you, Eladio. Not the version of you that's out there in that world."
"Well, this is the life I've chosen," he responded.
She squeezed his hand, captured his glance with her beautiful eyes and told him, "You don't choose a life, mi amor. You live one. What kind of life is it you think this is gonna be five years from now? And five years after that!"
"You've seen how the boss lives. What's wrong with that?"
"And how long do you think it took him to get there? How many years did he have to look over his shoulder, afraid someone was gonna kill him?"
"I don't know. Probably he still is."
"Maybe so. Is that how you want to live your whole life, babe?"
Eladio pushed her hands away, took the towel off from around his waist and hung it on the doorknob. He reached for a clean pair of pants, underwear and a Tommy Hilfiger polo. "What is this, all of the sudden? You're the one that always said you didn't care about status and shit like that. That the only real things are between people, not where they are in life."
Eladio was referring to a number of conversations they'd had over time. And he was right, Maribel was a romantic that way. She didn't strive for material things. She didn't choose a partner based on their drive in this world. She never understood women who put status or class consciousness into their decisions about who they loved. She didn't know if she was a fool to believe that all you need is love, like she bought into a fairytale mindset. But she knew she'd rather be foolish with romance than be cold and tie her love for a man to the size of his wallet or the glamour of his career. For her, she wanted a man that loved her, respected her and treated her the way she asked, and appreciated her love of family. And she found that man in Eladio.
"That's not what this is about," Maribel assured him. "I worry, babe. I don't want you to be in a violent business. It scares me."
Eladio had pulled his shirt over his head and onto his body. His insecurities about what she intended drifted away as he realized she was genuine in her concern for his well being. He smiled at her, moved towards her and kissed her gently on the lips.
"My beauty. Looking out for me," he said.
"Of course. I love you. You showed me the world, baby."
"That wasn't the real world," he responded, half-joking. "That was the countries at Epcot, babe."
She snapped back at him, pulling away, "I know that! I'm not stupid!" Maribel would not abide being called stupid. It was the one thing that would get her defenses up immediately and usually in anger, no matter how harmless the joke. She had been called stupid all of her life and she knew she wasn't. For her it was a sore spot. Besides, for a young woman that the trip to Orlando was as far north as she'd ever been beyond West Palm Beach, the theme park's artificial nations might as well have been the rest of the world.
"I was being romantic," she explained. "I love the times we've spent together away from here."
Eladio leaned in closer. "You want me to put some money aside I will. And you want to talk about our future, I would love to. My future is wherever you are, beautiful."
They kissed. Any tension that came from the discussion could not survive their affection for each other and their love and admiration ultimately won. Like it always did.
"I gotta head out." Eladio reached for the keys on top of the small, wooden bookshelf that his grandfather had carved. Abo had encouraged Eladio to read, always telling him "Fill your head with ideas. No matter where you are in life, ideas are what make the world carry on."
Eladio did fill his head with ideas. And those ideas could often be found in the books by José Martí, Richard Wright, Federico García Lorca, Charles Dickens and George Orwell that filled his shelf.
"I'm picking you up at seven, we're going to my mom's for dinner," he reminded Maribel. She smiled at him and he stared at her deep eyes. They kissed and she held his body against hers. Both were warm, both were pleased to hold each other and both were reluctant to let go. Both were in love.
✽✽✽
"My shit was raging for some pussy and I had to get a piece of that sweet ass before I left," Cachorro replied to his friends' interrogation on why he was running so late.
Eladio acted differently out here in this world. And he spoke differently about Maribel, something he felt bad about and it caused him terrible guilt.
His "boys" were with him now. He'd just rolled up on them and they got into his car. Nestor Feliz, a few years older than Cachorro, was generous around the waist. In fact, he always took the passenger seat, the back proving too uncomfortable for his rotund frame. Most people called Nestor "Game Boy", going back to his younger days in the 80's when Nintendo's animated mascot was a character named Nester. A few years back it was actually Nestor that gave Eladio his nickname, Cachorro. He earned the nickname as a fourteen year old that sold a little weed, stole items off trucks and sold them around Little Havana. His feisty spirit and daring attitude had led to him being considered a young pup. He was appropriately called Cachorro from then on.
In the backseat was a slender, younger pal, who seemed to enjoy being with the guys more than the business they conducted every day. This was Diego Sanabria, a kind spirited eighteen year old that was known typically for just going with the flow.
Nestor held out his hand, gave Cachorro the same shake they'd had since they were corner boys, and said, "My mainest man! Gettin' that pussy like it need to be got off that fine piece of tail."
Eladio smiled, nodded his head and played along with the macho exchange. He would never even hint at the way the comment made him feel inside. He knew that the way he treated Maribel in private, like a queen, was not to be shown outside of their relationship. And the fact that she had just been talking to him about their future and asking if he'd saved some money? Shit, that would never fly among the boys. Out here, a man didn't take a backseat to his woman, and it could never be thought that he took any orders from her. Any sign of that would show that he was weak and no kind of real man at all. Being pussy whipped was lower than being a fucking dog.