by Alex Segura
Dave’s words seemed directed to someone else. That’s when Pete heard a voice he never thought he’d experience again.
“What—no hello, or how are you?” the voice said.
The living room lights flickered on. Pete turned toward Dave to see that his friend was not alone. He was being shadowed by a dead man.
“The fuck is this?” Pete said.
“I can explain,” Harras said, moving toward Pete, his hands out, palms up.
Pete took a few quick steps back. He felt in his belt for his gun, but remembered he wasn’t carrying it anymore. His head was spinning. First Emily, now Harras. It was too much. He felt off-balance. He felt Dave’s hands on his arm, trying to hold him up.
“Everyone said you were dead,” Pete said. “I saw you dying. I figured you were as good as dead, or you were never coming back.”
“I didn’t die, but I wasn’t planning on coming back, either,” Harras said. “Let me explain.”
“How is this …” Pete said. He moved his eyes to Dave, who was still trying to keep Pete from falling over. “You … you knew about this? Why?”
Dave could only muster a nod.
The visions came back. Holding Harras’s limp body, blood gushing from his neck. The smell of gunpowder and smoke in the air as the Silent Death slipped away. The sirens and questions as Harras was rushed off. The funeral. The driving obsession he’d embraced to dull the pain of another lost friend. All for what? He didn’t know whether to cheer or scream.
“I know you’re still processing this,” Harras said. “Come with me.”
Pete, with Dave a few paces behind, followed Harras into the living room. Pete got a closer look at the older man’s face, now dusted with shrapnel wounds that would never heal right. It gave the already rough-and-tumble looking man a deeper edge. He’d seen some shit.
“You look pretty good for a dead guy,” Pete said, his voice wavering.
“Sit,” Harras said, taking the love seat across from the couch. The place was lightly furnished and looked like it’d been decorated via Amazon and IKEA online. When you move in a hurry, you don’t have time for mementos.
“I know you have questions.”
“You’re goddamn right I do,” Pete said, refusing Harras’s offer of a seat. Choosing to loom over his friend instead. “Why would you do this? To me? To Kathy? To your life? No one even gave me the time of day—I knew you could be alive, but everyone acted like you’d died on the operating table. Eventually, I started to wonder if I’d lost my mind.”
“It couldn’t be helped,” Harras said, genuine regret flashing over his face. “Now sit the fuck down and let me explain.”
Pete sat. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Dave. Not yet.
“The Bureau saw an opportunity when I got wheeled into that operating room,” Harras said. “A chance to figure out what the hell is going on.”
“An opportunity?”
“Once they realized they could save me, but no one really knew I was being saved … they acted,” Harras said. “Put me into deep cover, short-term. They have systems for this. I was given the works—death certificate, obit, funeral … you saw it.”
“But for what?” Pete asked. His head was buzzing, white noise behind his eyes. Emily was back, pretending to be someone else. Harras was alive, hiding in plain sight. Pete felt himself being stretched in a million directions, with no sense of when it’d stop.
“There’s a war coming,” Harras said. “And someone in Miami is the spark plug. Someone is sowing the seeds for a big gang war. Unlike anything we’ve seen. I’m not just talking Los Enfermos shooting up a street corner. I mean, mob families sending hired guns down here to throw down with someone just as big, just as bad.”
“I don’t understand,” Pete said, head in his hands. He should be happy—Harras was back, sitting right in front of him. Why did he feel like everything was falling apart?
“Let me simplify it first,” Harras said, rubbing his chin. “The guy who attacked you? The new Silent Death? He didn’t want you dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was gunning for me,” Harras said. “Because I figured him out before he wanted to be seen.”
“The new Silent Death?” Pete repeated to himself. “Why am I even saying that sentence?”
“Just let him finish, Pete,” Dave said, placing a hand on Pete’s shoulder. “He’s got an—”
“Fuck you, man,” Pete said, pulling away from his friend’s grip. “You’re complicit in this—after all I’ve done to help you? How could you two just keep this under wraps for months?”
“In Dave’s defense, he found out a few hours ago,” Harras said. “My operation’s over, but—believe it or not—it isn’t easy to come back from the dead.”
Pete felt a pang of guilt but buried it. He didn’t want to feel bad for Dave. Didn’t want to be arguing with Harras. He had to figure out why his ex-fiancée was back in Miami sporting a dye job and using another name. He had to figure out what she had to do with the death of Osvaldo Valdez, the man who claimed to know something about Pete’s mother. Instead, he was talking to a ghost.
“Harras updated me on what he was working on, or had been working on,” Dave said. “I set him up here, until he gets his life in order.”
“I guess I’ll just sit here patiently until you explain what it is you were working on, then,” Pete said. “If you get around to it, that is.”
“You have a bounty on your head,” Harras said. “Or had. A big one. Seems the DeCalvacante family is not a big fan of Pete Fernandez.”
“You mean Vincent Salerno’s crew?” Pete asked. “That’s not surprising.”
“It should be,” Harras said. “This wasn’t your typical ‘kill ’em next time you spot him,’ deal. They wanted you gone, as quickly as possible and in the worst way possible.”
“Why?”
“Not sure yet,” Harras said. “But it was enough to motivate the DeCalvacantes to dust off the Silent Death motif. The Death has always been a rented gun any gang of note could use to solve a problem. They hadn’t thought of it in years, but suddenly the crime families and gangs felt they needed a new Silent Death, so they put word out on it, and this guy—well, he stepped up. Had a flair for the theatrical already, so he relished the chance to be this kind of urban legend, a killer of killers. And he’s built a good rep for himself, mostly in New York and New Jersey, doing freelance work for different drug gangs when things get heated between organizations.”
“Got a name?”
“Isleño Novo,” Harras said. “Cuban. Older. Based in Union City in New Jersey, but came down here with his sights on you. That backfired. No idea where he is now.”
“So much for the Silent Death being shrouded in mystery.”
“Novo’s a killer, tons of bodies to his credit—but he’s not young,” Harras said. “My gut says he was looking at this as a final gig. A retirement fund.”
“You said he was gunning for you, though,” Pete said. “That doesn’t line up.”
“I was onto him,” Harras said. “Well, not exactly—but I’d turned up enough rocks for him to think I was onto him before he wanted to be seen. I’d been working with the Bureau freelance—trying to figure out what had all the gangs and crime organizations rattled. Why they were spinning around. Why things felt so off-kilter. Novo came up. He’d done so much work for so many different people, it made sense to check him out. And he was on the move. I noticed he’d come down to Miami recently, so I flagged it to the Bureau. I didn’t connect it to you, didn’t tab him as the new Silent Death, didn’t think it’d blow back to me. But it did. He’d followed me to your house. Saw an opportunity to get me and the Bureau off his back and get that nice bounty on your head, all at once.”
“But why me?”
“I’m sorry, have you not scanned your CV lately?” Harras said, scoffing. “You’ve pissed off the mob, Los Enfermos, and pretty much everyone that was using the Silent Death years ago.�
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“Right, but Reyes went down years ago,” Pete said. “Before we even met. Why take so long to come at me?”
“That’s a good question,” Harras said. “I’m getting the sense that while offing you was definitely on his to-do list, Novo also had other stuff to take care of.”
“Like Salerno?” Pete asked. “But Salerno’s a DeCalvacante made guy. They don’t just off their own people, do they?”
“Not often, no,” Dave said. “But they can make exceptions.”
“Salerno went rogue, remember,” Harras said. “Word on the street was he had a lead on something big.“
Pete nodded.
“That jibes,” Pete said. “Salerno was hungry to get in on Ferris’s deal—whatever it was, so much so that he killed him, then his daughter, and tried to kill me to try and get the info. Could it be he got what he wanted?”
“Maybe?” Harras said with a shrug. “But whatever that was, and whatever that did to piss people off isn’t clear. Drugs, is my guess. The mob frowns upon their made guys dealing in drugs, though everyone does it. So, if Salerno had a lead on a big score, it must have been huge enough to push him to risk everything.”
“So, Novo comes after you, you fake your death to find out more—What did you get?” Pete asked. “And why’d you come back? Not that I’m unhappy to see you, but—”
“Novo’s off the grid, gone under—maybe dead,” Harras said. “The DeCalvacantes aren’t fond of people failing on their contracts. The mafia doesn’t use outside killers often. When they do, they don’t want to be found out. My guess is he’s going underground until he can regroup or make good on his note. Not an auspicious start to the new Silent Death. But the moves—one of the Five Families using a hired gun, Novo gunning for me—were enough for the Bureau to pull me in and put me to work.”
“So,” Pete said, looking from Dave to Harras. “What’d you find out?”
A strange silence draped the room for a few beats. Dave cleared his throat.
“You didn’t get anything, did you?” Pete asked.
Harras hesitated. His friend looked broken, battered. Better than the last time he’d seen him, but not by much. Had Harras awoken from his near-death experience to learn his life had been ended for him, with a new, covert mission dropped onto his lap? How must that have felt?
“I failed,” Harras said. He looked away, unable to meet Pete or Dave’s gaze. “I couldn’t crack it. There are too many threads. Too many strands that don’t fit. The Italians are going wild, the cartels are buzzing—talking, making moves—like never before and things here in Miami are too quiet. After a few months of this, tapping phones, watching surveillance footage, trying to work every contact and informant I had … I stopped. I pulled the pin.”
“I’m sure that went really smoothly,” Pete said.
Harras responded with a gruff laugh.
“They were not pleased,” Harras said. “But they had little choice. Either they figured out a way to make my transition back to the land of the living smooth, or I’d be creating a lot of problems for parts of our surveillance state that people didn’t even know exist. That was a few weeks ago. Spent the rest of the time just … recovering. The blood, the shot. All that was real.”
“So where does that leave us?” Pete said. “What are we walking into?”
“Into the crossfire of something big,” Harras said. “Something that we can’t begin to brace ourselves for.”
“ARE YOU SURE it was her?”
Dave’s question was delivered softly, probably to not stoke the fires of Pete’s lingering anger toward him and Harras and partially because he couldn’t believe it. But tonight was the night for the unbelievable, it seemed.
“It was her,” Pete said.
Once the dust had settled from Harras’s abrupt return, Pete decided it was time to get back to work. He was glad his friend was back, fuzzy on the how, but also facing a number of other, more confusing and dangerous situations. The murder of Osvaldo Valdez. The Javier Mujica case. And, last but not least, the return of Emily Sprague-Blanco, in the guise of Beatriz de Armas.
“Why would she be pretending to be someone else?” Dave asked.
“She left Miami on bad terms, if I remember correctly,” Harras said.
“Ran, is more like it,” Pete said. “Her husband had been cleaning money for Los Enfermos. Then they found out he’d been skimming, so they killed him. He left her everything, so she took it and ran to Europe.”
“How do you feel about all this?” Harras asked. “Emily? Your mom? Where’s your head at?”
“Honestly? I think if you’d asked me this a year ago, I’d have pretended everything was fine, that I could power through it all,” Pete said. “But I’m done with shielding myself from what’s going on. I feel like everything’s coming apart, and I’m tied to a chair, forced to watch it. Emily being back, bounties on my head, this black cloud you’re hinting at—all of that is insane. But I also need to find out what this cop wanted to tell me. He died before he could get it to me, but I can’t believe he died with that info. That he didn’t share it.”
“Valdez?” Harras said. “When Dave mentioned what was going on, I made some more calls on Valdez. Not a lot there. No idea why he’d have that de Armas lady’s card. Or why he’d be trying to contact you. I mean, he knew your dad. But so did everyone on the force then.”
“He mentioned my mom, specifically.”
“Right,” Harras said, scratching his beard. “Well, I don’t have any intel on that. But I do have a name.”
Harras dug into his back pocket and produced a slip of notebook paper. Written in clear handwriting was a name: Nisha Hudson.
“She’s good police, believe it or not,” Harras said, aware of Pete’s opinion of the Miami PD. “Been around a long time. If anyone knows anything about your mom, it’s her. She’s survived every shake-up and scandal that’s come down on the PD. She’s a few steps from retirement, but I imagine she’d see you.”
Pete pocketed the piece of paper and looked up at his friend. “You’re leaving.”
“How’d you figure that?”
“If you weren’t, you’d have chased this lead down yourself,” Pete said, a wry smile on his face. “But you didn’t. You’re passing it on to me. You’re going into the wind, aren’t you?”
“Can you blame me?” Harras said. “I’m spent, Pete. This case took the last bit of my reserves, and I failed. Not great for my ego and—well—maybe a sign that it’s time to ride off into the sunset. Enjoy a few years without guns pointed at my head, you know? Don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
“No, I guess not,” Pete said. “There’s no better time to disappear than when you’re already believed dead.”
“Exactly.”
Harras extended his hand. “I’d say keep in touch, but where I’m going ... it’s all about, well, not doing that.”
“So this is it?”
“This is it.”
They hugged. Awkwardly at first, their bodies stiff and unsure of the embrace, two men who had maybe shared a half-dozen handshakes in their years working together. But that soon melted away, and Pete found his eyes watering as he buried his face in his old friend’s shoulder. They parted slowly.
“You’ve done well,” Harras said, his voice catching a bit. “You don’t need me around anyway. Send Kathy my best.”
“Not gonna swing by on your way out of town?”
“I don’t think I’m one of her favorites,” Harras said with a smirk. “But I’ve never been the best judge of character.”
“I’m not exactly on her phone favorites, either.”
“You’ll find your way back to each other,” he said. “You always do.”
Pete thought back to Harras and Kathy’s brief dalliance. It felt like a lifetime ago, but had actually been only a few years back.
Pete gripped his friend’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’ll see you again.”
“If you do,” Harras said, “s
omething’s probably gone very, very wrong.”
“ROBERT SENT YOU? Now that’s a story I need to hear.”
The stocky black woman leaned back in her chair and sized Pete up. Nisha Hudson had kept him waiting for almost twenty minutes and didn’t seem mildly apologetic. She nodded toward the sole seat in front of her small, overloaded desk inside the Miami PD offices on the Northwest side of Second Avenue.
Pete didn’t like coming here. Hadn’t since as far back as he could remember. When he was a kid, it was because it meant long hours of sitting at his father’s desk, waiting for him to finish work. In his adult years, it usually meant some kind of trouble—a detective berating him for interfering in their case or, now and again, an arrest. His old lawyer friend, Jackie Cruz, had been masterful at getting him out of those kinds of binds. But she was dead, and Pete hadn’t felt this alone in a long time.
He took a seat. The nameplate in front of her desk read: Nisha Hudson – HOMICIDE. Pete could tell it’d been in that spot for some time.
“Thanks for seeing me.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said with a dry laugh. “I’m just doing a favor for an old friend. And for another old friend’s kid.”
“You knew my dad?”
“I knew your father very well. Good man,” she said. “We have a lot of mutual friends, like they do on Facebook—Carlos Broche, Gaspar Varela, Orlando Posada, Paul Brownstein, Graydon Smith, Tino Vigil. All cops, some good, some pretty good, some very bad. I knew them all. They came in, came out, I stayed. Now I’m on my last lap and, lo and behold, you show up at my desk. Can’t be good, I think. But I can spare five minutes if Harras asks me to.”
“He’s dead ... did you hear?”
“Pretty chatty for a dead guy,” she said, a sly grin on her lips. “But yeah, he’s dead. I get it. I’ll miss the guy. He was always quick with that FBI corporate card at the bar. Now we’ll all have to fend for ourselves, overtime or no overtime.”
Pete waited for Hudson to slow down the banter. But she just sat there, clicking on her mouse as if Pete were just another flagged email she could deal with later. After a few minutes, her eyes darted to him, the only part of her body that seemed to move or recognize he was still there.