by Alex Segura
“Keep the food warm for me, Ruth,” Pete said, his voice raised. “Tell Jon to keep the coffee warm too, alright?”
He walked out the front door and stopped outside the restaurant. The night air felt good on his face, the small town silence was disrupted for a moment by feet stepping on dried leaves. Someone in a hurry hoping to get away unseen.
Pete didn’t head for his car. That was where this person was coming from, not where he was going. The parking lot was mostly empty and each car could be accounted for. He turned and walked toward the back of the Waffle House, toward the garbage dump and employee exit. He was banking on his target not being as familiar with the terrain as Pete was. He was right. Whoever had been following Pete didn’t know that while you could park your car behind the Waffle House, you had to come out the way you came in. If someone followed you there, you were stuck.
He kept close to the wall of the Waffle House, his eyes on the back area. Whoever was there was moving around now, pacing. He knew he’d been caught. Pete felt for his gun, tucked behind him. He couldn’t risk the man getting in his car and speeding off. Pete picked up the pace.
When he reached the back exit of the restaurant, he saw a man leaning over a Hyundai sedan, trying to unlock the door. He was young, small, and seemed nervous. Pete couldn’t get a good look at him in the dark parking lot. But he recognized the shape as the man who’d been around Pete’s car a few minutes earlier. He was also certain the man had followed him here. Either way, Pete’s secret life wasn’t so secret anymore. He pulled the gun out and pointed it.
“Step away from the car,” Pete said. “Right now.”
The man stepped back, and that was when Pete saw him, the light from the restaurant illuminating his young face. Pete had expected a nameless thug. Someone sent to finish him off, to complete the job the man in the basketball jersey had not. He hadn’t expected to see someone he knew.
“Arturo Pelegrin?” Pete Fernandez said. “Holy shit.”
“You’re alive,” Pelegrin said.
“I am,” Pete said, gun still locked on Pelegrin as he walked toward him.
“Didn’t know you was living up here, man,” Pelegrin said. “What a weird thing, I was just—”
“Cut the shit,” Pete said. He motioned for Pelegrin to move away from the car. “Sit down.”
“Dude, what is this?” Pelegrin said. “Do you always pull guns on people?”
“How’d you find me?”
“I didn’t, uh, I didn’t know you were here,” Pelegrin said, his voice rising in pitch. Pete noticed a bead of sweat forming on the younger man’s brow. He’d fucked up. He wasn’t supposed to be seen. “I’m just driving through, was gonna get something to eat.”
“Why would you?”
“What?”
“Why would you know anything about me?” Pete asked. He’d reached Pelegrin now—one hand pointing the gun at his head while his free one did a quick and rough pat-down. He wasn’t armed.
“Hey, listen, don’t get defensive,” Pelegrin said. “I’m not trying to blow up your spot. I was just leaving. I wouldn’t have even known it was you if you hadn’t shown up with a gun, though. The beard’s new. Glad to see you’re alive, I guess. I heard you got fucked up pretty bad.”
Pelegrin was talking fast, his eyes darting around, looking for any kind of way out of the situation.
“Arturo, I’m going to give you one more chance,” Pete said, clicking off the safety. “I’ve had a bad year. I’ve been shot at. I was almost killed. So, I can’t say I’m excited to see you. Now, are you going to tell me who sent you after me?”
“They know,” he said, following the words with a quick intake of breath. He was sweating now, breathing hard. He wasn’t sure what Pete was going to do next, and that worked to Pete’s benefit.
“Who knows?” Pete asked, his hand on Pelegrin’s collar, the gun in the other. “Who sent you?”
“I can’t go back empty,” Pelegrin said. “And I know you’re not gonna kill me. That’s not you. But listen to me, man, they know you’re here. Los Enfermos. And they’re after you. He is after you. They’re not going to stop until you, your partners, and everyone you care about is dead.”
KATHY WAS in a black robe when she opened the front door. Pete walked in before saying anything.
“We have a major problem,” he said.
“Hello to you too,” she said, closing the door and following him into the living room.
He fell onto the couch and looked at the large flat-screen TV on the opposite wall. She’d been watching some kind of police procedural on TV. Probably a marathon.
She sat down to his right and produced a bowl of popcorn. She offered it to Pete with a shake. Pete declined with a slight head shake. He’d lost his appetite.
They’d lived in this three-bedroom, prefab house—tucked away on the dead-end Crystal Court, off Cathedral Way, which led you back onto Cheney Highway—for about three months. It’d taken Pete that long to recover from the gunshot wound he had suffered at Maya’s house. It’d taken him five minutes to realize he needed to leave town. Dave had put it into perspective during those first few hazy hours after the shooting.
“You have to run,” Dave had said, sitting by Pete’s hospital bed. “For a little while, they’re gonna think you’re dead. Eventually, they’re going to find out you’re not. When that happens, they’ll come gunning again.”
Things had moved fast after that, starting with a hasty departure from the hospital. After a few phone calls, Dave handed Kathy an address scribbled on a piece of notebook paper and keys to a used truck he’d purchased from an old friend in need of quick cash.
“Throw out your cell phones and get on the road,” Dave had said.
Pete wasn’t in a position to argue, and the next thing he knew, he was on I-95, Kathy at the wheel, riding high on pain meds and wondering where they were going. She was running too. Though she hadn’t taken a bullet, it was clear Los Enfermos viewed her and Pete as a package—one they would deal with together if the opportunity ever arose. She needed a new area code as much as he did. She let certain people—Harras, Maya—know they were alive, but not where they were headed.
Nowhere was the answer: Titusville, FL. The house was one of Dave’s parents’ real estate holdings, though definitely on the fringe of their portfolio. With a quick call, the renters had been booted out and the furniture replaced. Pete and Kathy walked into a new life and had a few months to figure out what to do next. Pete owed Dave—and he wasn’t sure there was a way to pay someone back for this kind of favor.
While Kathy had remained productive, writing well-researched and click-worthy true crime pieces for a number of mainstream outlets, Pete’s days hadn’t amounted to much. The first few months involved hours of physical therapy and stacks of pulp novels. His routine had become fairly set and mundane: wake up, take a run, come home, shower, do some errands, make a simple lunch, catch up on Miami news at the local library, and get home to make some dinner. Some nights, like tonight, when Pete and Kathy were in need of some time apart, Pete would make the short trip to the Waffle House and kill a few hours. Every week he’d head to the basement of the local Methodist church to catch a meeting before swinging back home to maintain some semblance of sanity and to keep his new, record-setting levels of anxiety and paranoia in check.
Kathy pulled her legs up and folded them under her as she tried to get comfortable.
“Would Pete like to share with the group?” Kathy said.
“I ran into Arturo,” Pete said. “Arturo Pelegrin. Well, more like I caught him tailing me and had to pull my gun on the guy. Remember him?”
“Vaguely,” she said. “Janette Ledesma’s son? He didn’t seem keen on helping us.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Pete said, his eyes moving over to the television screen. “He was following me around. I had to stick a gun in his face to get him to talk. We’ve been found out. They know we’re here.”
“Are you sure?” Kathy a
sked. “I mean, I guess it’s a surprise to find anyone here in the butthole of humanity, but could it have been a coincidence?”
“No,” Pete said, his tone grave. “By the end of it he made it pretty clear. Los Enfermos know we’re here and they’re not going to give us a pass. They missed one time. I don’t think they’re going to miss again.”
THE FACT that the email was waiting for him when he closed his bedroom door and turned on his iPad didn’t surprise him much. Today was that kind of day. The kind of day where your past peeked at you from the sewer and reached its hand out to remind you it was still there. Watching.
Pete turned on his nightstand light and slid into his bed—which was really just a mattress on the floor with a few pillows and sheets. He propped one up behind him and checked his email.
The subject line was brief—Hello.
Pete,
I hope you’re well. Our last conversation struck me as pretty final, but I wanted to reach out after hearing about your injuries. While I’m not really sure where you are, Kathy assures me you’re both doing alright. I didn’t think you’d pull through this time.
I just wanted to let you know that the police have brought in a suspect for questioning in Rick’s murder. His name is Gus Trabanco and it looks like someone who was at Duffy’s that night can peg him as one of the two guys who walked Rick out of the bar and eventually killed him.
The other guy who killed Rick is a man named Nestor Guzman. You killed him in self-defense the night you were shot.
I know Rick was laundering money for bad people—shell accounts, false names, fake companies. I had my lawyer and his people look it over and he agreed it was not kosher. I don’t know the specifics, nor do I want to. But just spending some time going through his paperwork shows me he was moving a lot of money from one place to another, with a cut going into his own pocket. Maybe more than he was supposed to? I can’t tell. I’m not an accountant.
I’m leaving the country in a few days. I don’t feel safe here. I don’t think you are either. Whoever wanted Rick dead is also tied into whatever you’re working on. They were upset with Rick and killed him for it. Now they’re targeting you and Kathy.
Anyway, I don’t expect a response. I just wanted to warn you.
Emily
Pete placed his tablet on the nightstand. He leaned back on the pillow. He wasn’t sure what to make of Emily’s note. He wasn’t sure what to make of Emily, period. But her email confirmed two things Pete had suspected. First, that Rick was cleaning cash—lots of it, like six- or seven-figure sums—for Los Enfermos and pocketing some for himself. Once the gang discovered this, he was gone. It didn’t help that he was probably privy to way too many secrets. Second, it confirmed—at least in Pete’s mind—that the Varela case and the Los Enfermos situation were one major problem. He just hadn’t worked out the details yet. Was Varela running the gang now that he was out of prison? Did he have his sights on Pete? Did his relationship with the gang date back to before the murder of his wife?
He thought of Stephanie Solares and the yelling she’d overheard. Had Carmen Varela discovered that her husband wasn’t the clean-cut cop he wanted the world to think he was? That he was actually tangled up with a band of murderers and drug dealers?
The police had been clear: a man named Nestor Guzman had been sent to murder him three months ago. Someone knew that he was at Maya Varela’s house that night and wanted him dead. The fact that Pete was alive was pure luck. Doubly lucky that he managed to get off a few shots to kill the guy while falling backward. Pete had no idea who Nestor Guzman was then and he had less of one now. But he no longer felt safe here, in the wilds of Titusville, in this secret house, living a secret life. He hadn’t spoken to Maya since those first days immediately after the shooting—which he regretted, but also realized was a necessity. Pete knew she hadn’t been shot that night, at least. He hoped she was fine otherwise too.
The AC window unit rumbled into action, startling Pete for a minute. He still hadn’t gotten used to the quiet. The birds chirping. The wind. He missed loud car horns and fast, pitter-patter Spanish conversations. He missed Cuban coffee. He hated this weird limbo and hated himself for living in self-imposed exile.
He almost missed the call. He heard his phone vibrating. The display wasn’t a number or contact he recognized. No one but Dave and Harras had this number, besides Kathy. Pete picked up.
“Hello?”
He heard muffled breathing on the other end.
“Who’s calling?”
The voice came to life, low and creaky.
“We see you, Pete.”
“Who is this?” Pete said.
“We see you.”
The line went dead.
“GOING BACK?”
Kathy was a few sips into her first cup of coffee. It was not the best time to bring up the fact that he was leaving, Pete realized.
“Our cover is blown,” Pete said. “Varela is still missing, and we’re as safe here as we were in Miami. We need to touch base with Harras and get this going again, or we’ll just be sitting here in fear, waiting for them to hit us first.”
“Harras is probably having a monthly party to celebrate us being gone,” Kathy said. “And I haven’t heard a peep from Maya in months. Maybe she’s glad her dad is AWOL, or maybe she’s pissed you haven’t told her where you are, being her secret boyfriend and all. I mean, it’s not like Varela had a lot of hope in terms of the judicial system. I’m impressed he got away, though.”
“This is all connected somehow,” Pete said. “Varela, the attempt on me, Rick’s death.”
“Shit,” Kathy said, getting up. “I need a cigarette.”
“Come with me,” Pete said. “You can work from anywhere.”
“Working isn’t my top concern now,” Kathy said. “This is very bad. I know you hate the urban tumbleweed that is Titusville, but we snuck away in the dead of night because you were ‘at risk’ in Miami. Now we need to go back? It doesn’t scream ‘stability’ to me.”
“I’m at risk here too,” Pete said. “We both are. They know we’re here.”
Kathy turned around and opened the fridge. She grabbed a diet soda and dropped it in her purse, which was resting on the counter.
“Emily says the guy who tried to kill me was one of the guys who killed Rick,” Pete said.
Kathy paused for a second. She turned toward Pete, who was leaning against the far wall near the coffeemaker.
“Explain.”
“Nestor Guzman,” Pete said.
“Yes, the man who thought it’d be cool to turn you into Swiss—or should I say, Cuban-American—cheese while you were sleeping with the boss,” Kathy said. “That has been established.”
“I wasn’t sleeping with her.”
“About to, just finished, whatever, bro,” Kathy said, emphasizing the last word. “You wanted to get with that. Real professional, you are.”
Pete ignored her.
“He and an associate, Gus Trabanco, murdered Rick,” Pete said. “Emily confirmed that Rick was moving money around for Los Enfermos. She’s leaving the country now.”
“Goodie for her,” Kathy said. “I’m sure she’s being really indecisive about that too.”
Pete loved how protective Kathy was of him in regard to Emily. She said the things he couldn’t let himself speak aloud.
“I think we need to figure out where all this stuff stands,” Pete said. “How it all relates. If Varela is still around, orchestrating this, he’s much more dangerous than we thought—and showing his true colors more and more.”
“That’d be easy, now wouldn’t it?”
“Easy?”
“The Big Bad Villain breaks out of prison to take the throne of his evil Los Enfermos criminal empire,” Kathy said. “That’d be easy.”
“It makes the most sense.”
“Why would he want you dead, Pete?” she asked. “He hired you. Haven’t you learned by now? The easy answer is very rarely the answer. I don�
��t disagree, though, something does seem to be going on. I apologize for not joining your chorus of panic immediately.”
“I appreciate your humble recanting,” Pete said.
“So what shall we do if, say, I join you on this random trip back to the bong-water swamp that is South Florida?” Kathy said.
“You’re coming, then?”
“I can’t let you dive back into this by yourself,” she said, trying not to smile.
“I CAN’T believe I drove to Florida City for this shit.”
Harras yanked off his sunglasses and wiped them on his shirt. The shade from the tree in the house’s front yard provided little cover from the sun, which was at full blast. It was early afternoon and Harras’s white dress shirt was already mottled with sweat. Pete sipped his giant glass of water and sat up straight in his chair. Kathy looked like she was asleep, leaning back, her eyes covered by giant sunglasses and a straw hat casting a long shadow over her face. They didn’t bother to get up for the new arrival.
Pete motioned for Harras to take the empty seat across from them, also in the shade. He sat.
“Can you please tell me why you and Bernstein over here invited me down to the Everglades?” Harras said as he wiped his brow. “What is this place, anyway?”
“It’s one of the many properties in the Dave Mendoza family portfolio, apparently,” Kathy said. Once they’d decided to come back to Miami, Pete’s first call was to Dave. They needed a base of operations that was as off the grid as you could be in Miami. Pete’s second call had been to Harras, who let them know that Los Enfermos had put a bounty on their heads and were spreading the word through the Miami underworld. “His parents use this as a summer house, when they’re bored of their Brickell apartment or Gables mansion. Who needs a summer house in fucking Miami? But hey, they’re rich and didn’t seem to care about us using it, so I’m grateful, as they say. Also, we’re not in Florida City. Your geography is rusty. We’re in the unexplored pocket of Miami known as South Miami Heights. Which is perfect, because it seems like Pete wants to stay incognito for as long as possible. Go figure.”