by Alex Segura
Pete sprinted behind him. “Dave!” he called. “I just want to talk!”
Dave Mendoza was thinner. The beer belly and healthy cheeks were gone. His face was marked and scarred by scratches and festering scabs, with dark bags under his eyes. He wobbled a bit, and it was clear that the run had ruined whatever high he’d been riding. He looked half-dead.
“Dave.”
“Go,” Dave said, his voice ragged, as if these were the first words he’d spoken aloud in days. “Go away, Pete.”
“You have to let me help you,” Pete said, taking a step toward his friend. “You’re in trouble. I’ve been there.”
Dave was no stranger to the wrong side of the law. He’d run drugs and been a part-time thug and gangster through most of his twenties, only reforming recently, when he’d retired from the street to run The Book Bin—and where he met Pete, who was spinning out of control from late-stage alcoholism and desperate for a lifeline.
Now the roles had been reversed, and Pete knew he had to reach out his hand to Dave, even if his friend saw it as a menacing claw, grasping for what remained of his life.
“Just leave me be,” Dave said, backing up. “Just let me do what I need to do. What I deserve.”
Pete took a step toward him, stopping when he saw Dave reach into his coat. Dave’s shaky hand appeared again, this time holding a small Smith and Wesson, the barrel pointed down as if to say, “I have this, but I don’t want to use it.”
“Put the gun down—”
Dave took a step in Pete’s direction, this time pointing the gun squarely at Pete’s chest.
“This bring back memories?” Dave asked. “You cut it close last time, huh? You really want to push it again? Just leave—”
Pete didn’t wait. He stepped and turned forward, his training kicking in. He grabbed Dave’s gun hand and yanked him forward, moving his body toward Dave and chopping at his arm in one smooth motion. The gun clattered to the floor as Pete yanked Dave’s hand behind his back, grimacing as his friend yelled in pain. Pete shoved Dave down to the floor and picked up the gun.
“Aughh! Dammit—dammit,” Dave said, still on the floor, holding his bruised arm. “What the hell was that?”
“Aikido,” Pete said. “You were right. I did cut it close last time. That won’t happen again.”
Pete slid the gun into his waistband and walked over to his fallen friend, who was moaning softly to himself.
“You need help,” Pete said as he crouched down. He slid his hands under Dave’s arms and hoisted him up, grunting as he propped him against the alley wall. Dave didn’t respond, but didn’t fall, either. He sagged against the grimy brickwork and refused to make eye contact with Pete.
“I’m here when you want to come back, okay?” Pete said. “Like you were there for me. I know what you’re going through. You have to want it. You have to see what you’ve become. Push through that hate you have for yourself, man. Because you can. I can’t force you to want to live. I can’t make you want to scrape together a life. But I’m here.”
Pete pulled out a business card and stuffed it in Dave’s shirt pocket. He patted it tenderly before stepping back and turning toward his car, hoping he hadn’t seen the last of the man who’d once been his friend.
OSVALDO VALDEZ LIVED in a battered house in Little Havana, a few blocks off of Calle Ocho. As Pete parked, he noticed the lights in the house were off. Osvaldo was either sitting in the dark, asleep, or not home. There was a faded blue Pontiac in the driveway. The Miami sky was turning a purple gray as the sun set, giving the street a quiet, pensive feeling.
Pete walked up to the front door and buzzed. The ring echoed through the house. Pete didn’t hear any sounds coming from inside. He gave it a few minutes and rang again. Nothing. The door was slightly ajar. He pushed it with his fist and stepped inside.
“Hello? Osvaldo?”
Past the entrance was a small foyer, with a door to the left and a bigger living room at the end of the hallway. Pete flicked on his cell phone flashlight and took a few cautious steps forward.
That’s when he saw a hand, splayed out on the floor of the living room, as he looked around the doorframe that divided the hallway from the rest of the house.
“Fuck,” Pete said, and rushed into the room.
Osvaldo Valdez lay sprawled on the ground, mouth agape, with a single bullet hole in his temple. The stream of blood had run over his forehead and over his nose. His eyes were open, a look of surprise still on his face. The retired cop had been blindsided.
Pete stooped down. He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wrapped it around his left hand, which he placed on Valdez’s neck. He knew the man was dead, so checking for a pulse was pointless. But he wanted a sense of when Osvaldo Valdez had been shot down—which would help him get to the why of it all.
Valdez was cold, but rigor had not set in, meaning he’d been killed fairly recently. Pete stood up and looked around the dark living room. He saw no signs of a struggle, beyond a nearby chair that had been knocked over, ostensibly while Osvaldo Valdez was taking his last drop.
Pete retraced his steps, wiping the door handles and anything he remembered touching. This was a crime scene, and he wasn’t very popular with the Miami PD. He pondered how much time he had and figured it wasn’t a lot.
He paced around the room, looking for anything that might serve as a clue about Valdez and his demise, but nothing jumped out at him. The house was musty, the shelves loaded with books—legal texts, Cuban history books, pulp novels—and framed photographs, some of a younger Valdez in Cuba, with a woman who Pete guessed was his wife. There were more-recent pictures, probably from around the time Pete’s mother died, of Valdez and his daughter, one of him in uniform with a few other cops.
Pete gave this photo a second look. One of the men with Valdez was Carlos Broche, his father’s partner. The man, who had been overweight and graying when Pete last saw him, slumped over and dying, looked vibrant in the photo. A man at the top of his game. Full head of hair, strong jaw, and a knowing look. Time forgives nothing, Pete thought.
He heard a siren then and knew he wouldn’t be able to leave through the front door. Pete started to make his way to the back of the house, hoping the rear entrance would give him some cover. He found it off the kitchen, using his covered hand to push the door open slowly, making sure to lock it as he closed it again. He cut through the backyard, sticking close to the fence, his body hunched low. Soon, he was walking up Southwest 19th Avenue toward Calle Ocho, the sirens growing louder in tandem with the thrumming in his head.
“DEAD? THAT’S NOT good.” Kathy took a long swig from her glass of red wine before continuing. “Who else knew you were meeting him?”
“I have no idea,” Pete said, his eyes hovering over the wineglass. “No one.”
He looked up at Kathy. She’d made no move to discuss what’d happened between them, aside from a low chill to her mood that made it pretty clear to Pete the encounter would not go beyond an isolated affair. She was wearing a turquoise blouse and black skirt. Business casual. She’d met Pete for lunch. Sugarcane was a moderately fancy sushi place in Wynwood, near Kathy’s—and Marco’s—apartment. She wanted to sit outside, she said. So here they were.
“You look nice.”
“Thanks,” she said dryly, not meeting his eyes. “Let’s focus. What do we know about the murder?”
She wasn’t being completely frigid, not yet. But if Pete had expected things to remain warm and affectionate like they had been at his house, he’d been wrong. She’d greeted him with a peck on the cheek and a stiff hug.
“He was shot point-blank. Not a lot of mess left behind, from what I could see. The Times did a small online piece that just went up, but it was light on details.”
“Shocking, considering the bastion of journalism the Miami Times has been and always shall be,” Kathy said, popping another spicy tuna piece in her mouth.
Both Pete and Kathy had spent time at the paper, though
they hadn’t known each other well then. Pete was well into his metamorphosis from functioning alcoholic to unemployed deadbeat, while Kathy was climbing out of her reporter dad’s shadow to make a name for herself. If her father, Chaz Bentley, hadn’t hired Pete to find her—well, things would’ve been different.
“Why did you call me?” Kathy asked, looking at Pete for what felt like the first time. “Today, I mean?”
“Who else would I call?”
“Hm. You’re still really good at compartmentalizing,” Kathy said, rolling her eyes slightly. “Did you forget the part where we had sex, Pete? Or do I need to remind you that I’m engaged to Marco, thus complicating things like us having sex?”
“I didn’t forget,” Pete said, leaning back in his chair, taken aback by Kathy’s sudden offensive. “I just—I don’t know. I didn’t think you wanted to talk about it.”
“Oh, I want to talk about it,” she said, nodding. “On my terms. So, when you called me, I thought you had, oh, I dunno, decided you wanted to have an adult discussion about the adult things we did to each other, and the ramifications of it all. Instead, we’re talking dead cops and robbers again.”
Pete hesitated, struggling for a response.
She reached across the table and grabbed his hand briefly. “We messed up, okay?” Kathy said. “It was a moment of weakness for both of us. That’s all I know right now. I need some time to think about everything else. Just … stop with the puppy dog stuff. The, ‘you look nice’-slash-‘please love me’ stuff, all right? That’s what got us into this mess.”
Pete opened his mouth to respond, but she cut him off.
“That sounded much meaner live than it did when I practiced this morning,” she said. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine, I get it.”
Pete noticed her eyes drifting away from him and focusing on something behind his seat.
“Do you know that guy?” Kathy said, motioning toward the entrance to the restaurant’s outside seating area.
Pete turned around to see Eddie Rosen approaching, a creepy grin on his long face.
“Mr. Fernandez,” Rosen said as he approached the table. “Ms. Bentley, I presume?”
“Yes, how very Victorian of you,” she said. “Who might you be?”
“Eddie Rosen. I represent someone who would like to speak with Pete here.”
“Ah, right,” Kathy said. “Alvaro Mujica.”
Rosen nodded, as if surprised Kathy would utter his client’s name aloud.
“Look, I told you I’m not talking to your boss, okay?” Pete said. “So let us be.”
Rosen dropped a folder on the table. “I wouldn’t be so quick to usher me out,” he said.
Pete opened the folder. Inside were a stack of large, glossy photos that featured Pete entering Osvaldo Valdez’s house, and a few of him exiting via the back door. The pictures in between included shots of Pete wiping down the front and back doors for fingerprints. Pete closed the folder quickly and slid it over to Kathy, a blank expression on his face. She scanned the photos fast, realizing immediately that a shakedown was happening.
“What do you want?”
“Oh, just some answers,” Rosen said, his expression smug. “Would be bad if these photos got into the hands of law enforcement, wouldn’t it?”
Rosen was right. Pete had made a name for himself by shining a light on the department’s worst practices—whether it involved rooting out corruption, past indiscretions, or ties to organized crime. Though his dad had been a detective, the Miami PD was not fond of Pete. This would be manna from heaven for them. A chance to take out a pesky fly with a blowtorch.
“Again, what do you want?” Pete asked.
“I want you—and your partner here, if that’s how you want to play it,” Rosen said, nodding toward Kathy, “to meet my client. I want you to consider taking on the case he wants you to look into. I want you to do that with the knowledge that I am in possession of these photos, and I can forward them along to the right—or wrong—people with the click of a mouse.”
“Lawyers, huh?” Kathy said, grabbing another avocado piece. “They get you over a barrel and suddenly you owe them your firstborn. Look, we’ll meet with you. It’s fine. But we don’t respond well to blackmail. So promise to dump those photos and we’ll come to the meeting in good faith.”
Rosen seemed momentarily surprised. He pursed his lips.
“I’m sure we could come to some kind of arrangement,” he said, his attention on Kathy now. “But—”
“We’ll consider the case, okay?” Pete said. “What more do you want? You win. We’ll meet. Just tell us when.”
Rosen shrugged. “No, it doesn’t work that way,” he said. “You’ll meet Mr. Mujica, and—unless there’s some extreme, extenuating circumstance—you will take this case. A car will pick you up outside your house tonight at eight. Be ready. Dinner will be served, too, so come with an appetite and dressed like you give a damn.”
Rosen grabbed the folder and left.
Pete watched as the tall man entered a dark luxury car and drove out of sight.
“Guess we know what our next case will be,” Kathy said.
“You don’t seem worried.”
“I’m not the one in those pictures leaving a murder scene. But, as usual, I will help you.”
“Let’s see what he says. How bad could it be?”
PETE AND KATHY sat on Pete’s small front porch a few minutes before eight. He was wearing a suit, unsure what attire was expected when you were meeting a reputed mob boss. Kathy was wearing a sleeveless, slinky black dress, with a gray sweater on reserve.
Pete looked at his watch. “What could this guy want with us?”
“With you, you mean,” she said, checking her reflection on her phone. “I’m just coming along for the ride. I’d like to ensure you live, even if you’re going back on your promise to retire. But yeah, it does seem a little strange he’d go to such lengths to get us on a case.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have brushed Rosen off so quickly.”
“Regrets, you’ve had a few.”
“How’s Marco?” Pete asked, trying to change the subject.
Kathy looked up at him with cold eyes.
“He’s … fine, I guess,” she said. “Let’s avoid the topic for now, all right? I still need to work some things out before we can talk. I need to talk to Marco, too. Moment of weakness or not, I made a mistake. If I want to salvage anything with him, he needs to know.”
“Fair enough,” Pete said.
“And for future reference, I am not the type to ever want to have a major discussion about ‘us’ as we wait to get put in a car driven by gangsters. Sorry if that doesn’t jibe with your schedule.”
“That’s fine,” Pete said, his defenses up.
With that, they saw the black town car pull into Pete’s driveway. A man in a crisp black tuxedo stepped out and opened the back door. He motioned for them to slide inside. They walked down the porch steps and got in the car, which was empty.
Eddie Rosen was in the front passenger seat. He looked back and smiled as they clicked their seatbelts in place.
“Glad reason won out,” he said. “This’ll be good for all of us. And, I should add, financially rewarding, too.”
“I can’t wait to swim in a pool of dirty money,” Kathy said.
“The checks will clear, don’t worry,” Rosen said.
“I don’t think that’s what we’re worried about,” Pete said.
“Mr. Mujica is a very busy man. Even in retirement,” Rosen said, as if reading from a prepared script. “We’ll meet with him, have dinner, and then Cunningham will drive you back. You should be home before the eleven o’clock news.”
“Can’t miss Fallon,” Kathy said.
Rosen nodded at the driver, who flipped a switch on the dashboard. A tinted mirror slid up, closing the gap between the front and back seats.
“We’ll be there soon,” Rosen said, his voice muted by the glass separating
them.
THE REDLANDS WAS a long, wide swath of unincorporated Miami–Dade County, southwest of downtown. It was littered with sprawling farms and long, rolling patches of green. The Redlands was named for the large stretches of red clay common to the area. Also common? Peacocks. The large, obtrusive birds were all over. As the dark car sped through the vacant, poorly lit streets, Pete wondered just what he’d gotten himself into.
They pulled into a winding gravel driveway and stopped in front of a tall black wrought-iron gate. The driver touched a few numbers on a phone keypad stationed near the doors. The doors slowly creaked open and the car drove through.
From what Pete could tell, they were off of 167th Avenue, in the high 200s, street-wise. A circular path around a fountain served as an entryway to the estate at the end of a long road. The house driveway was massive—gray and off-white brick, with a central, looming edifice with smaller, similar house-like structures stacked around it. The stars were easier to make out here, but it also made it hard to see much beyond the sheer size of the house. Calling it a mansion was an understatement.
“Our client is not starving,” Kathy said as the car pulled up near the front door.
She had been mostly silent during the forty-or-so minutes the drive had taken. Pete wasn’t sure if she was still stewing over his poorly timed Marco question or merely trying to figure out a plan. Either option left him in the dark.
Cunningham stopped the car and came around to open the door for Kathy. Pete slid out after her and they followed Rosen through the front door, which was being held open by a tan Hispanic man with gray hair and a wispy moustache, in a light-blue guayabera. He nodded at Pete and Kathy as they entered.
Once they were all inside, the man closed the door and walked in front of the group, his hands clasped together.
“Don Mujica will see you in the dining room,” the man said. “He is not a man to be kept waiting.”
The man, whom Rosen called Eugenio, guided them through the house’s cavernous and twisty hallways. The walls were loaded with original art and photos of a younger Mujica and his family.