by Alex Segura
“AN ARCHANGEL?” Harras said as they drove down Oakland Park Boulevard in his black Escalade. Kathy was in the front passenger seat with Pete in back. It was past six in the morning and the sun was beginning to peek through the clouds to launch its daily assault on Miami and Broward.
“Not just that—but the Jewish archangel of death,” Kathy said as she looked out the passenger side window. They were all working on a few hours of sleep, none of it gained after the encounter with Trabanco. They’d spent most of the early morning hours at the Lauderhill police station, explaining why they were in someone else’s storage unit with a known felon, and why said felon had been beaten severely.
Harras had smoothed most of it over and Trabanco was detained—but that would only last for a short time, and soon they’d be back where they’d left off: with no new leads on the murder weapon, Gaspar Varela still on the loose, and the deadliest gang in South Florida looking to put Pete and Kathy six feet under. Happy Monday.
“Whatever,” Harras said. “Whoever this guy is, Varela or someone else, knew Whitelaw had that storage space and they put two and two together when they realized you talked to his widow. It was too easy. A trap you two walked right into.”
“Luckily, you knew where we were going,” Pete said. “And trap or not, I’m pretty sure it’s not Varela who wants us dead.”
“The second you mentioned what you two were doing, I knew it was a bad idea,” Harras said. “But I didn’t need you thinking I was part of your Scooby gang or whatever.”
The first gunshot shattered the car’s front windshield and sent Harras backward, clutching his right shoulder. Kathy dove in front of him and tried to steer the car, but the big SUV veered into the left lane of traffic, followed by honking horns and scrambling commuters.
Pete ducked. His ears were ringing and he felt glass on his face, blood trickling down. He couldn’t hear. The car had screeched to a stop. Through the smoke, Pete saw that the car in front of them, a black Jeep Wrangler, had also stopped.
“What the fuck?” Kathy yelled, crouching down below the windshield. “What was that?”
Pete crouched behind Kathy’s seat, but not before sneaking another peek at the Wrangler—and the two men stepping out of the car with guns in their hands.
“Ambush!” Pete said. “Stay here.”
Harras was gasping for air, his hand trying to stem the bleeding from the wound in his shoulder. Pete prayed the bullet hadn’t hit anything vital.
“Stay here?” Kathy said. “Where are you…hey!”
Before she could protest any further, Pete had opened the right backseat door and bent down next to the SUV’s rear tire. He could see the four feet approaching the car as traffic whizzed around the accident scene. The cops would be here any second. He slid the gun from his back and rolled away from the car, getting two quick shots off. One connected—he knew this because he heard the thug yelp in pain. The other hit the Wrangler.
Pete scrambled back behind the car. The man he’d pegged was on the ground, but not down—he could still fire. Fuck. These guys worked fast. Just a few minutes out of the police station and they were already getting heat.
He heard more gunshots, coming from Harras’s car this time.
He looked through the Escalade’s back windshield and saw Kathy—holding Harras’s gun—firing at the approaching thug. Her delivery was good but her aim wasn’t anywhere near where it should be. All she was doing was keeping them at bay—and serving as a distraction.
Pete slid around to the left side of the car and onto his belly. He was out of their line of sight. He could hear sirens in the distance. He needed to disable these assholes before things got more treacherous. His top priority was making sure Harras got through this alive. He inched down and stretched out his arms, holding the gun upright. He sent off one shot at the more mobile gangbanger and connected with his shin. The scream he let out was unlike anything Pete had ever heard.
The other disabled hoodrat was now scrambling away from his fallen comrade, aware that Pete was coming at them from below. Thug #1 was down for the count. Pete got up and moved toward the two men—his back against the left side of the car, his gun held up and out, pointed at the downed gang members.
“Put your guns down and kick them away,” Pete said, his voice loud and slow. He didn’t want to be misunderstood. The second one, the one who’d been hit first, complied. The other one was passed out—from shock or blood loss.
Pete heard rustling behind him and saw Kathy in the car, hovering over Harras, her hands pushing down on his shoulder, trying to keep the pressure on. His eyelids fluttered closed.
She reached over and lowered the driver side window.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” she said. Her face was smeared with blood and dirt, her eyes wild. It reminded Pete of when he first found her years ago—bound and trapped somewhere in the Keys, desperate to survive.
“I hear sirens,” Pete said. “What the fuck just happened?”
“We almost got killed,” she said, out of breath, her eyes on Harras, who was emitting a low moan now. “That’s what happened. Shit.”
Pete turned at the sound of squealing tires, expecting to see a handful of police cars and an ambulance circle around the disabled SUV. Instead, he caught the rear of the Jeep peeling out, one of the two thugs behind the wheel—not interested in sticking it out with his comatose comrade as a sign of Los Enfermos solidarity.
“Shit,” Pete said.
The Jeep was still a few feet away. Pete broke into a sprint and pointed his gun. He wasn’t going to let this bottom-feeding gangster get away so clean. He pulled the trigger. The bullet missed the driver, but managed to make contact with a back tire, sending the Jeep into a tailspin, the car flipping onto its side. The driver managed to crack open the driver side door, enough room so he could slither out and collapse.
Pete started to jog over, gun in hand, but he was intercepted by a Lauderhill police car cutting in front of him. An officer burst out of each door and they both pointed their weapons at Pete.
“Put the gun down,” the driver said. “And put your hands up, asshole.”
Pete complied. He dropped to his knees and said a silent prayer for his injured friend, for his partner, and for himself.
THE FLORIDA Medical Center was a short drive from the scene of the shootout. Once the cops cuffed and disarmed Pete and Kathy, they loaded Harras into an ambulance and got him into surgery. From what Pete could gather, his friend had lost a lot of blood but would survive. The bullet had gone clean through. Harras was lucky.
That had been the easy part. Explaining to the local PD why he had a loaded gun and was shooting at Miami gang members on a crowded street in Lauderhill during the early morning commute was a bit more difficult. The fact that they’d spent hours talking to the same officers about a different incident with a different member of the same gang wasn’t helping their cause. Still, Harras being involved gave them a decent amount of cloud cover. Pete just wasn’t sure for how long.
Pete’s only phone call was to Dave. His friend was sending a lawyer. At least that was going their way.
Kathy, asleep in the police station waiting room next to Pete, repositioned herself, her body inching closer to him. It’d been a surreal twelve hours, and he wasn’t sure they had much to show for it. Maldonado had confirmed that his testimony was false, but they still had no murder weapon, and Varela was still in the wind.
“They’re not pressing charges,” a voice said.
Pete looked up. Jackie Cruz.
“Excuse me?” Pete said, trying not to move.
“I talked to the cops, explained the situation, noted the bad PR that would hit if they arrested a vocal critic like you and that, in fact, you helped apprehend two wanted felons,” she said, rattling off each point on her fingers. “So, you’re free to go. They’re okay with looking the other way on this one. You’re welcome, Fernandez.”
“Jackie,” Pete said, still processing. “What the he
ll are you doing here?”
“Dave called,” she said. “Well, Dave’s mommy called.”
“You know Dave,” Pete said, more a befuddled statement than a question.
“Dave’s parents keep me on retainer,” she said. “Small world, huh?”
“That’s one way to put it,” Pete said.
“Let’s head to the hospital—they got Harras his own room,” Jackie said. “Maybe then you can sneak away from your girlfriend and take an ex-flame out for a cup?”
PETE AND Jackie grabbed two coffees and sat in the hospital cafeteria by the windows. It was early afternoon, right after the lunch rush, and not crowded.
“I’m sorry I was such a bitch to you and your novia when you came by with Harras,” she said.
“Kathy’s my partner, not my—well, not my life or sex partner,” Pete said. He was fried. The words weren’t coming out right anymore.
“Whatever,” Jackie said. “I don’t care. You and I—that was just a summer fling a million years ago.”
Pete nodded and took a sip of his black coffee.
“But it was fun, right?” she said, a sly smile on her face.
“Jackie, it was definitely fun,” Pete said, not laughing, but curious to keep the conversation going. “And, look, don’t get me wrong—it’s great to see you, but I’m really freaking out. I don’t think I can go anywhere without these psychopaths trying to destroy me. I’ve pissed off the biggest gang in South Florida and it doesn’t seem like they’re interested in reestablishing diplomatic relations.”
“Save the whining for the gringa,” Jackie said. “I’m not here to be your pity party coordinator, okay? I want to talk to you about a few things.”
“And I thought you were just here to be my get out of jail free card.”
“That’s a given,” she said. “But you called and asked for something. I haven’t forgotten.”
Jackie looked around the empty cafeteria before turning back to Pete, her voice lowered.
“So I made a few calls,” Jackie said. “I connected Nicole Purdin, the forensic lady you met with a little while ago, with the people investigating the Whitelaw murder. She suggested they compare his wounds to those of Carmen Varela and the attack on your grandfather.”
“And?” Pete said.
“Well, the Diego files weren’t as detailed as the murder books, which is understandable, since it wasn’t a homicide,” Jackie said. “But the knife wounds were too close to have come from different knives. The machete that killed Carmen Varela was probably an antique, and it had a specific crack in the blade that made the wounds unique. That trait was also present in the other two cases. So you’re looking for one weapon—potentially one person.”
“That’s huge,” Pete said. “But what does it do for Varela? I mean, this has got to be enough for a new trial. We got what he wanted.”
“Slow down, kiddo,” Jackie said. “This doesn’t mean shit. Varela is gone. You think Miami PD is going to open up the Carmen Varela case now all of a sudden? Make a plea for her husband to come back? Now, if he were sitting in prison, his fingers crossed for a new trial based on this evidence, I could get him one.”
“Yeah,” Pete said. He’d let his hopes rise too high. “Plus, he could have just been the person using that knife, though I doubt it.”
“He could have been, sure,” Jackie said. “That’s the argument I’d put up if I was the prosecutor. But I checked Varela’s duty record. Which took a lot of digging, but most of it was put in as evidence at his first trial. Gaspar was out on patrol the night your grandfather got stabbed. He was with his partner, Posada. They were in the field, working a case for narcotics, when your grandfather was murdered.”
“Those people could have lied, though,” Pete said. “I mean, the Miami PD doesn’t have a sterling record. I could see the opposition going for that.”
“Maybe,” Jackie said. “But this case has been such a shitshow that I’m not betting on the DA going after his own police force, even if it’s a past, more corrupt iteration.”
“So, if all this lines up, we have someone who wants us to think Varela is running Los Enfermos, killed his wife, and more,” Pete said. “But why? Why pay people like Maldonado to betray Varela?”
“And why pay Janette Ledesma,” Jackie said. “You and your amiguita came by asking about Ledesma, and it got me to thinking—once I got past the white-hot rage I hold in the depths of my soul for that dead junkie whore.”
“I get it,” Pete said. He’d read the transcripts. He wanted to move this along. Talking about Ledesma seemed like small fry compared to Jackie’s news.
“Well, here’s the thing—Ledesma was shit-poor at the time,” Jackie said, pulling out a file from her big brown purse and laying it on the grimy cafeteria table. She opened it up and pulled out a few printouts. “She didn’t have a steady job, most of her money went to the pipe, and she was about to be evicted from her studio apartment.”
She pushed one of the pages across the table to Pete and flipped it over.
“Look at this,” she said, pointing to the middle of the page. “A few months after the trial, she’s suddenly flush. She bought a house—a piece-of-shit house in a piece-of-shit neighborhood, but a house nonetheless. She got a new car.”
“Just like Maldonado.”
“Right.”
“She also got a new boyfriend,” Pete said. “Gilbert Fermin.”
“Yes and no,” Jackie said. “But you’re on the right track. Fermin came later. He beat the shit out of her on the regular. He beat the shit out of her the night she died too. Never charged. But if two dots ever needed connecting, it’s those two: abusive boyfriend and dead girlfriend. Especially after things got suddenly better for her.”
“What’s Fermin’s background?”
“That’s the blind spot,” Jackie said, collecting her pages and putting the file away. “I never got a bead on him. By the time Janette Ledesma died, I was done with Varela and wanted to move on. But your call got me thinking.”
“Jackie, this is really helpful, on so many levels,” Pete said. “I’ll check in on Fermin.”
Pete started to get up. He needed to stretch his legs and check on the rest of his wayward crew. His brain was at full-speed now.
“I’ve got a line on Varela,” she said, turning her head to look out the window.
Pete sat down again.
“What did you just say?” Pete said, trying to keep his voice down.
“You heard me,” she met his glare. “I can reach him. I will never admit to having had this conversation with you. But he wanted me to tell you. He also wanted me to tell you to be careful what you believe.”
“Holy fuck,” Pete said. “Is that the real reason you’re here?”
“That, and I take weird pleasure in bailing you out of shit,” she said.
“Where is he? Can you get me in touch with him?”
“You’re not understanding me,” she said, leaning across the table. “Be careful about your information—about Varela, about how it relates to you, about anything. Even the twists are twisted up.”
“Cryptic much?”
“Look, it’s not like I’m on Gchat with the guy all day,” she said. “I’ve spoken to him once since the shit hit the fan and I don’t have a number where I can text him emojis. He made a point of asking me to come to you and relay that message. What you do with it—that’s up to you.”
FOLLOW THE money. If, like Juan Carlos Maldonado, Janette Ledesma had been paid off to botch her testimony, then Pete had to find out where that money came from, and how far it reached. He knew the money probably had been moved around by Rick Blanco, but what mattered was the source. That was how Pete would find out who was really in charge of Los Enfermos. The only link to that info—and it was a stretch—was Gilbert Fermin.
He was alone. Harras was recovering in the ICU at the Florida Medical Center and Kathy had rented a hotel room nearby, not comfortable with going home to await a gang of wild cri
minals looking for blood. Pete couldn’t blame her. She needed to rest after the last forty-eight hours. So did he. But something was gnawing at him.
After an awkward ride home, courtesy of Jackie, Pete stuffed a duffel bag with his essentials and a few of Kathy’s—clothes, toothbrushes, laptops, deodorant, and credit cards. The rest was expendable. They’d be able to move quickly now. They were officially on the run again.
He didn’t like making the call, but he couldn’t think of another way. Miranda Whitelaw had been friendly enough when he rang, peppering their conversation with references to Pete and Kathy’s recent string of bad, violent luck. She’d dug up the info Pete needed fast from her dead husband’s files. Fermin’s last known address was a tiny studio apartment on Sunset and 137th. Peak West Miami suburbia. Where restaurant chains went to multiply and comingle with hair salons, gyms, and pharmacies.
The apartments at Kendale Lakes were nice enough—each building in the complex was painted the same tan and brown and the trees and hedges were well kept. But beneath that was a layer of dirt and shoddy craftsmanship that hinted at a decaying structure. These apartments had been nice once, Pete thought. Now they were just places to live. Faded was the word that came to mind.
He pulled into the small lot adjacent to the address Miranda Whitelaw had given him and walked toward the elevators. There wasn’t a main entrance—it was open-air and you could enter at any time. There was little breeze to speak of, Miami’s stifling, year-long summer in full swing today. Pete pushed the up button.
When he got to the third floor, he made a right and knocked on Fermin’s door. He heard some rustling inside and then a muffled voice.
“Yah?”
“I’m looking for Gilbert Fermin,” Pete said.
“Who is it?”
“This is Pete Fernandez,” Pete said. “Let me in, Gilbert.”
Before he finished the sentence, he knew the door wasn’t going to open—the rustling grew louder and Pete heard what sounded like a balcony door opening.
“Fuck.”
He had a decision to make. He could either run down the stairs and try to intercept Fermin—a man he’d never seen or met—on the other side, or he could take a more direct route. That would involve going through his apartment.