by Don Donovan
He lightly passed a beefy hand over slicked-down hair. "Well, Sergeant Machado," he said in a gravelly voice. "Long time, no see."
"And a hello back at you, Maxie. I don't suppose you could tell us where you were this past Friday night."
He grinned from beneath his thick mustache. "Oh, I don't know, lemme see, uh … Friday? Oh, yeah. Friday night. That's right, I was at Honey Buns Show Lounge."
"Until what time?"
"I can definitely tell you. I was there all the way up to closing time. Five AM. And there are plenty of witnesses, in case you were wondering."
"I'm sure. Did you happen to see Yolexis Molina anytime that night?"
"In fact, I did. Say, Sergeant, what are you after here? Do I need to call my lawyer?"
"I don't know," Silvana said. "Do you?"
"I always like to cooperate with the police. Only you're not Hialeah PD. You're Miami. Out of your territory."
"But we're here for something that happened inside our territory. And Yolexis Molina was part of it."
Maxie raised the side of his upper lip. It made for a pretty effective sneer. "You got no right to get in my face like this, Machado. I'm a good citizen. I pay my taxes. I cooperate with the proper authorities."
Vargas spoke up. "Then cooperate now and tell us what you were doing with Yolexis Molina Friday night."
Maxie eyed the two carefully. Silvana engaged her entire body to appear relaxed, although her insides were at hair-trigger level, senses strung tight. Part of her was begging Maxie to get careless and give her an excuse to blow his sorry-assed brains all over the wall, but part of her knew if that happened she might never make it out of that store alive. And yet another part of her knew if she lit Maxie up and managed to make it out alive, she'd have to leave Miami immediately to avoid retribution from the Dávila brothers, Maxie's loyalist crew chiefs. She stayed calm.
After a short, silent pause, Maxie said, "Not until you tell me what this is all about."
Silvana stepped closer to the desk. From the corner of her eye, she caught the guard reflexively inching forward, hand going under his guayabera toward the bulge.
She said, "Chicho Segura and two others were shot to death late Friday night not long after he gave Yolexis Molina a large amount of money to deliver to you in payment for a gambling debt."
Maxie's eyelashes fluttered for a second. Silvana caught it. A tell. He was an old hand at keeping his cool under pressure, but telling him she knew about the money, this was a big surprise to him, throwing him off his game. Advantage: cops.
"What of it?" he said, trying to hide his unease with a smile. "Guys pay their debts. It's the American way."
"Yes, but it's not so American when they get smoked right after paying. Especially if your boy Yolexis knew one of the victims. What do you know about it?"
"Nothing."
"Listen to me, Maxie. I whisper your name around the department in connection with a triple homicide, I mention that one of your boys was in that murder house a half-hour before the shooting, you're gonna have so much fucking heat on you, you'll lose fifty pounds of that fat in sweat alone. And once the department comes down on you, imagine what fun the Miami Herald will have. Detective Vargas and I will dedicate our lives to making you miserable if you don't come clean with us right now."
This was all scoring. Silvana noticed a few beads of sweat forming around Maxie's hairline. "I told you, Machado. I don't know nothing about this. Nothing about no triple murder."
"Bullshit!" Her arms flailed around a little. The guard was ready to pull his piece. Vargas readied himself for combat. Maxie was all defense now. "Think about it, Maxie," she said. "Front page for days, maybe weeks. We will bust your bookie joints, your poker games, your coke and H dealers on every street corner, your fences, your shy operation, your inside crew of thieves at MIA. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in your organization is gonna feel it."
"You two can't do all that."
Her eyes turned fiery and she showed more of her teeth when she spoke. "That's right, we can't. But can you say 'Task force,' motherfucker? Because that's what will be crawling up your fat ass every hour of every day and night. The department's been looking for a way to go after you for years. And this is it."
Maxie softened his tone. "Okay, look, Machado. I'm tellin' you for the last time, I don't know about no triple murder. Now what's it gonna take to get you to believe that?"
Silvana didn't move a muscle. She hardly breathed, in counterpoint to her rapid heartbeat. Her eyes never left Maxie's, burning their way into his brain. She waited and waited, then waited a little longer. Maxie wheeled around behind his desk and swiveled a little in his chair, looking for a place to get comfortable.
Finally, she said, "Fifty large."
"Fif — what the fuck?"
"Fifty large. Right now. Plus a thousand a week from now on. That's what it's gonna cost you to make this go away."
"Fifty large? That's fucking blackmail! You can't do that."
"Blackmail? Ha! Call the cops."
"Fifty large? That's way the fuck out of line, Machado."
"Maybe," Silvana said. "But that's what it's gonna cost you. Fifty plus one a week and your name will never be mentioned in the same sentence as the Little Havana triple homicide. It's our case and we will see to it. Nor will we mention that there was another hundred dimes sitting around inside that house. From a bank job Chicho pulled earlier that day. Yolexis might have seen it, phoned you about it, and you sent someone over there to 'collect' that money. And leave a few bodies lying around while they were at it."
"Bullshit! That's circumstantial and you know it!"
"Yeah, but that's also motive. And those circumstances are gonna put you right under the fucking microscope, where it's plenty hot."
He went into deep thought, or as deep as it ever got with him. Silvana lost the badass in her voice and added, "Look at it this way, Maxie. Yolexis Molina brought you two hundred grand the other night. All profit. Chicho Segura lost it to you gambling. Cost to you: zero. We're letting you keep three-fourths of it. And the weekly grand? Hmph! You probably hand out more than that to those sleazy strippers at Honey Buns every week."
After much more thought, he said, "I pay you this dough, this whole fucking thing goes away."
"Let's say it moves permanently out of the spotlight. But that's just the triple homicide. Anything else? Well, that's between you and Vice."
"Just a minute," he said. He got up and went through one of the other doors into what looked like a small dark room. He closed it behind him and came out a minute later holding five packets of banded hundreds. He slapped it on the desk. "Here. Remember … I better not hear any more about this."
Silvana took it and handed it to Vargas, who put it into both his pants pockets.
She said, "I'll be by every Friday for the weekly juice."
They turned and left the office, enjoying the final remnants of the store's beautiful air conditioning on their way out.
16
Logan
Sunday, July 3, 2011
8:40 PM
SUMMER TWILIGHT DREW DOWN over the island in its usual gentle way. Gray dusk silently surrendered to the deep, inky blue of the coming evening. Down by the sea, the darkening water had lost its Caribbean-green shine, slowly turning to black. Early evening rains had washed over the island and everything smelled fresh and clean, just like it was supposed to. I walked out of our apartment, heading down Margaret Street and turned the corner at Virginia.
A slow piano blues tune purred from the back apartment in one of the houses along there. I knew the guy. Joey something. He played down on Duval Street every night. Probably loosening up for his gig later on.
Farther up Virginia, a whiff of dinnertime cooking streamed out the open windows of a couple of kitchens. By the time I turned onto White Street, I caught a slight breeze brushing by me from the ocean down at the south end of the street, and it made me smile. It all reminded me of why I love my homet
own.
Yes, the day was wrapping itself up perfectly. Good thing, too, because I don't know if I could've gone through with this otherwise.
The house sat on Catherine Street, a little ways up from White. It wasn't set back too far, only a few feet from the street itself. Sidewalks hadn't yet arrived in this neighborhood, but the small homes were neat and well-tended. I walked up to the door of one of them. It was unlocked, like always.
I poked my head in. The TV in the cramped front room was on with the volume down, tuned to what looked like a cable cooking show. The couch showed off its 1970s origins without shame, but it always seemed right for the room, even in the later decades. A couple of shelves on the wall displayed a few Key West-y knick-knacks from the Conch Tour Train gift shop. Souvenirs which supplied a tangible memory for the real thing, mostly aimed at tourists. I could never figure out why she had those things, since she was born and raised in Key West, just like me.
I spotted her back in the little veneer-walled den she used as an office. Her back was to me. She wore a halter top and shorts, sitting at what passed for a desk, hunched over her laptop, furiously clicking away. I approached the den.
"Hi, Ma," I said.
She snapped up straight from her slumped posture, as if she'd suddenly sat on a thumbtack. Her figure resumed its girlish form, filling out her halter top nicely. I had to admit, she looked pretty good for her age, which I think was somewhere a little north of forty-five.
"Hoo! God damn, son! You startled me. Don't be creeping up on me like that. You know I don't like it."
"Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."
"You scare me just by showing up here. You only live a few blocks away and you never come to see me. I could be dead in here and you'd never know. But then, you don't give a shit."
"Ma, that's not true. I came to see you, I came to see if you had any plans for tomorrow night. I —"
"You don't care. You spend all your time with that fat whore and you never come visit your mother."
Same old shit. How long had I been hearing this? I tried another angle.
"Hey, you're a blonde now. When'd you do that? Looks good on you."
She ran a quick hand through her new color, cut stylishly with soft waves tumbling down the sides, hugging her still-pretty face.
"Oh, now you notice." But it was her hair, so she wanted to talk about it. She softened. "I got tired of the red. So many years. I didn't have the right clothes to go with it anyway. Two or three weeks ago, Emily — you know her — she suggested I try blonde."
"Well, you can tell her I think she did a great job. It looks really good on you."
She preened again, lightly pushing up the hair in the back of her head. "You think so?" Finally, the beginnings of a smile. "Mariela down at Fausto's liked it, too. She said I should've done it years ago."
"Mariela?" I wanted to put this off as long as possible, so I continued the discussion of Mariela, the girl at the food market. "Do I know her?"
"She's that cute little Cuban girl who used to be a cashier but now she works back there in the deli section. She's been there a long time. Now there's someone you should take up with. She's about your age, and she'd certainly be a lot better for you than that fifty-year-old sweathog you've got now."
"Ma, don't talk about Dorothy that way. And she's not fifty. She's just turning forty next week."
"That Mariela's real cute. Single, too. And she's Cuban! You know those Cuban girls. They know how to take care of a man."
I brushed aside her clumsy stab at matchmaking. "Well, I think she's right about your hair. You should've changed it, like, years ago. Makes you look younger, you know?"
Her old face came roaring back, pushing the smile away. Intensity returned to her cold, blue eyes. Her voice skidded into a downturn. "Okay, that's it. When you start telling me I look younger, something's up. You either want something out of me or, or you got bad news. Which is it?"
"Ma, come on. I can't pay you a compliment? Tell you you look nice?"
"No, you can't. Not without you wanting something. Now, what is it?"
I sighed. "All I was doing was —"
"Tell me now."
"I only wanted to see what you —"
"Hurry it up. I got work to do."
"Work? What, your latest Internet scam?" I gestured toward the computer screen, which showed a long database-type list of names and personal information, no doubt designed to separate a lot of suckers from their money.
"Never you mind what I'm doing. Tell me why you're here."
I spied the folded metal chair leaning against the wall, probably stolen from someplace God knows how long ago. It had always been there, that chair, as long as I could remember. Gray metal chipped away from its edges after decades of use. Indelible black wear marks smeared the wall where it touched. I unfolded it and sat down.
I recalled her husky voice telling me years ago in this very room, right in these very chairs, "Crime is in our genes, sonny boy. Yours and mine. My brother's. My father's, too, worthless son of a bitch that he was. It's what runs through our blood. What we were born to do." I heard it the first time at the age of eight, and God knows how many times since.
I believed her. Shit, who else did I have to listen to? Where else was I going to find inspiration? Between her and the slam-bang crime movies we watched on VHS, it was all I ever saw or heard. I never knew anything else. Never knew the world could be any other way. So, hey, I did the crimes.
The years of growing up in this house with this woman-child, those years hung over the two of us, swirled all around us loosely, like spun cotton candy around the paper cone in its center. We always needed money, so one of my earliest memories is of her getting a job dancing down at the Wild Thing. Her lying about her age and learning how to pry the customers loose from their dollars while she writhed naked on a stage in front of them. Or lap-humping them in the back room and giving them blowjobs for a few extra bucks, as I later found out.
And me? I learned how to steal.
I remembered our great uncertainty during those times when City Electric cut off the lights or when food was in short supply, leaving us with what few things we could shoplift. Our fears showed their ugly selves during those times, and I often wondered why other kids didn't have the same problems we had. We always seemed so different.
During my early years, all we had was an old transistor radio to entertain ourselves when we didn't have power. But later on, I boosted this portable blaster along with a few old cassette tapes down at the beach one day while the owner was swimming. I can hear those singers now, crooning off the cassettes softly in the black, humid nights. Bryan Adams, Mariah Carey, Randy Travis, and her favorite, Reba McEntire. Just the two of us listening to battery-operated taped music, sitting, staring off into the dark, not knowing if we would eat the next day or what would happen to us. What was I then, twelve? Thirteen?
That was what made this so difficult.
I said to her, "I'm getting out of the life. Going straight."
"Hmph! Don't make me laugh."
"No, I mean it, Ma. I'm going to play it straight from now on."
"Straight? Hah!" Her tone turned hateful. I flashed on an old song, something about a mean, spiteful, straight-razor-totin' woman. I half-expected my mother to whip out the razor any second and start waving it around. "Who you trying to kid? Your line of work's the only thing you've ever made any money at."
"That may be so, but I'm getting out just the same." I didn't want to go into what happened in Miami and I definitely didn't want to have to explain the temporary thing with Trey Whitney and Sharma.
"And just what do you plan to do now? Run for governor?"
"Run for — what are you talking about? I can earn a living."
"Yeah. You can earn a living all right. But how you gonna do it, my boy, at — what are you now, thirty-two? What're you gonna tell them when they ask for your experience? That you went straight from high school into a life of crime?"
"Outdoor work, my ass. You gonna want to get up at six AM so you can go pick up palm fronds all day? Trim fucking trees? In ninety degree heat?"
When she talked this way, with that snotty tone in her voice, it made me feel like total shit, I'm telling you. Especially at a time like this when I felt I was doing what I needed to do. The right thing.
"I'll get up early," I said. "I've been giving this a lot of thought. It's the right thing to do, you know? Dorothy and I can be —"
She said, "I knew it! It's that fucking bucktoothed cow, isn't it! She talked you into this. Was that it?"
"No, that wasn't it. She didn't —"
"She prob'ly buried your face in those big ol' titties of hers till you caved in! Was that it?"
"No, Ma. And I told you, don't talk about Dorothy that way. She's the only one who —"
She made a sweeping motion with her arm. "You're giving up all that you've worked for to satisfy her. You been with her what, ten years now? And she's still got you by the balls. She never wanted what's best for you."
"Yes, she does." Although I have to admit, at that moment, I did wonder for a split second.
Her face reddened and her tone moved upward. "Bullshit! She's been leading you around by the nose for years now. I've told you that a bunch of times. But you never listen to your mother. What do I know? I only gave birth to you. I only raised you up."
I said, "Come on, you know I'm grateful to you. You know I love you."
"All right, look. I'll admit I don't know what happened to make you lose your mind like this and frankly, I don't want to know. But you've done all right by yourself over the years. You're living pretty good. Don't throw it all away just because you had a queasy moment with that whore."
"It's not a queasy moment. And she's not a whore! The life just drained everything out of me. You gotta understand that! It was all these years with my head under the dripping faucet, one drop of water at a time. There just comes a day, you know, when you can't take it anymore. You can't take it!"