by Don Donovan
"We have to get this done no later than Saturday afternoon," I said, providing enough time for the Miami Herald to get the story and go to press for the Sunday morning edition.
"Do you know this guy? This Méndez?"
"No."
"You know what he looks like? What his habits are? Where he might be vulnerable?"
"I've got a photo. I know where he lives and where he operates out of. That's all. The other stuff we're going to have to figure out ourselves."
"I don't know, Logan. It's seems shaky. I don't know anything about Hialeah. I've never even been up there."
"Shimmy, I need you with me on this." My eyes told him the truth. "I really need you. Not just for your gun, but maybe for your Spanish, too. Are you in?"
He ran his hand through his dark hair. "Okay. I'm in."
"Now, I want to know how you see it. You think we can pull this off?"
"I don't see why we can't. We'll have to get up there today, though, to get the lay of the land. Not waste any time."
"Agreed. How soon can you be ready?"
He said, "Let me run back home and get my gear. Pick me up in twenty minutes."
≈ ≈ ≈
A soft rain soaked US 1 all the way up the Keys. Not much traffic, so we took it easy. Shimmy drove our plain midsize rental, and we passed the time with small talk. Until we got to Islamorada.
Then I said to Shimmy, "You ever done this before? You know, clipped a guy?"
"You mean, for money?"
"Yeah. Or, maybe just because someone else wanted him dead."
"Well," he said, "I guess you could say so. How about you? You ever done it?"
"Mm, not exactly in those terms."
"How, then? What terms?"
I hesitated, looking for an answer. "Well, uh … I mean … I have killed people, but always while doing another job. You know, like that night up in Little Havana. With Chicho and them."
The windshield wipers slowly slapped the rain back from the glass. We came up behind a guy towing a boat. He was crawling along, doing about thirty. The Islamorada speed limit is forty with no passing for nearly fifteen miles. Shimmy bitched a little before slowing down.
"Let me ask you, you ready for this?" he said.
I chuckled. "I guess I better be. Yeah, I'm ready."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure, man. That's that."
He seemed to accept it. We slugged along behind the boat, which spit a good deal of water up at us from the highway. Shimmy fell a little farther behind and that put a stop to it.
A few miles later, I said to him, "You want to tell me about it?"
He looked at me for a second, taking his eyes off the road. "About what?"
"About the time — or times — you say you've done this before."
"I don't know," he said, looking back toward the road in front of him. "It was a long time ago."
"Anybody … I might know?"
"You're getting pretty nosy here, Logan. What's up with that?"
"I don't know," I said. "Normally I don't ask about a guy's history, not in specifics, anyway. But this isn't a normal job. I thought I'd like to know what you did and to who."
"Well, to answer your question, yes, you know him. Or in fact, you probably didn't really know him, but you know of him."
"Now I am being nosy. What do you mean by that?"
"I said it was a long time ago. You were just a kid at the time, probably not even a teenager yet. But you have heard of this guy, no question."
"Shit, man. Who was it? Some movie star? Or … or … famous athlete or somebody?" I turned in my seat to face him, my eyes opening to their widest position.
"Wilson Whitney," he said, his voice betraying no emotion.
"Wils —" My voice trailed off at the mention of the name. Win Whitney's father and mayor of Key West for God knows how many years. He was one of the most powerful men in all of Key West history. Killed some twenty years ago with several others in a violent episode inside his own home. I'd always heard that he —
I said, "I'd always heard he was shot by wacked-out Cuban exiles."
"Yeah, that was the story. That's what got put out there. But it was me. Me and one other guy, whose name I will not reveal."
"Why not?"
"Because he's still around, that's why. And I'm not spilling his name to anyone."
"Okay, I get it." The rain was starting to let up.
"I mean, I'm telling you I was there, I did it. But I'm taking the other guy's name to the grave. Truth is, we both did it, the two of us. We both fired deadly rounds. And we each took some lead, too."
"You — you were shot? I didn't know you'd ever been shot."
"I took a round near my collarbone. Told people I got hit by accident in a drive-by up in Miami. Wrong place at the wrong time was my story."
"Was it serious?"
"Fucking right it was. I lost a shitload of blood. Fortunately, we got to a doctor that night and he took care of both of us. I still can't use my left arm quite so good as my right."
"W-well, what the fuck happened, man? I mean, that night, what happened?"
"I don't want to go into it all, because it's pretty complicated, and it involved Russian gangsters, these Russian mob guys from Fort Lauderdale, and money Whitney stole and all kinds of shit relating to the other guy I was with. But I can say Whitney's other son, BK — Win's brother — was there, too. He took a bullet but survived."
"BK Whitney," I said softly, conjuring up a memory. "I remember that name. He was mayor, too, wasn't he?"
"For a short time right after his father retired. He was mayor when all this went down, in fact. But afterward, he left town and never came back. I heard a couple of years ago that he died somewhere out west, but I'm not sure that's true."
I collapsed back into the passenger seat.
"Holy shit, Shimmy! I had no idea. Absolutely not the slightest fucking idea!"
"It's all true, bubba. I swear on my mom." Then he turned his head, burning his eyes into me, and added, "But it all stays right in this front seat."
I nodded, and right then the sun peeked through the clouds.
≈ ≈ ≈
Hialeah looks a lot like Miami, the commercial areas, anyway. Kind of spread out and flat, only with more signs in Spanish. The ones in English are merely a come-on. You'd have a hard time finding anybody who speaks English in a lot of those places. It's a heavy Cuban enclave. I read where something like ninety percent of all the residents of Hialeah speak a language other than English at home. And it's a good-sized city, too. Over a quarter of a million people.
The residential areas are what sets Hialeah apart. I saw an awful lot of barred windows and doors, even more than you might see in Little Havana. Not many people out and about in those neighborhoods. Looked like most of them were staying inside. Also, even though we drove around a few of these areas, I didn't see any what you might call nice homes. They were all squat concrete block type houses or small apartment buildings. Shimmy and I agreed, Key West was much nicer. Miami too, for that matter.
We motored up the Palmetto to 49th Street, which pretty much bisects the center of the city and looks exactly like every other suburban main drag, again except for the signs in Spanish. Standard businesses all up and down: restaurants, strip malls, gas stations, big box stores, even a sprawling retail complex called Westland Mall. Eventually, we came to the strip center that surrounded Lolita's Liquors.
Shimmy swung the car into the center's parking lot and crawled past several medium-end retailers. Dry cleaners, send-money-to-Cuba joint, shoe store, Cuban restaurant, beauty salon, dance studio, CVS. Right in the middle, Lolita's.
"Hey, pretty big for a liquor store," Shimmy said, not used to anything beyond Key West-sized businesses situated mostly on expensive real estate.
"Yeah. The Original Mambo said his office is in here, probably in the back."
We drove around to the back of the center. Among the rear entrances and employee parking
areas was a small Lolita's sign over a loading dock. Slowing way down, pretending to be careful around some men loading onto a neighboring dock, I caught a big, imposing Mercedes parked directly behind Lolita's. It was painted two different colors, and it looked like a bombproof tank.
"That's his car," I said. "I'd bet on it."
Shimmy gasped. "Maybach," he whispered in awe. "The very top of the Mercedes line. Over four hundred grand for one of those."
The automobile gleamed in the afternoon sun. I thought about what it must be like to afford something like that. Four hundred thousand dollars. Four times as much as I got for risking my life with Chicho and his friends. And all four hundred for one car.
Some of the workers cast suspicious glances our way as we had practically come to a stop. We sped up a little and left the rear area of the center.
"Where to now?" he said.
I pulled out my cell phone. "Let me find The Original Mambo's text with Méndez's address. Then we plug it into the GPS."
We did it, and the instructions flowed out of the car dashboard. They led us back the way we came to US 27. We headed north into Hialeah Gardens, a small, separate city tucked away in a corner of Hialeah. Following the GPS's orders, we made our way to Northwest 133rd Street, an isolated, narrow street with an enclave of large homes, places you could call "estates". Almost all of them were gated and they featured long, serious driveways leading to pillared homes designed to intimidate. Méndez's place was the most formidable of all of them. Shimmy slowed down and I took a good long look.
Secured behind tall iron gates, the main house rose ghostlike over a brick driveway ending in a circle by the covered front entrance. A porte something or other … I forget what they call it. Carefully landscaped vegetation lined both the driveway and the wall that surrounded the property. Grabbing a glimpse down the driveway, we saw a Cadillac SUV and a big BMW parked under cover by the front door. We kept on going.
I turned to Shimmy. "This place is like a fucking medieval castle. We can't get him here."
"Unless we take him on the street while he's coming or going."
I shook my head. "The glass in that car is probably bulletproof. A guy like him is not going to drop four hundred dimes on a car and then settle for standard factory glass. Let's head back to the liquor store."
≈ ≈ ≈
We got a room at a nearby motel and then spent all that day and all Wednesday scoping out the liquor store. Front, back, parking lot, street view, we even walked inside and pretended to browse around. Behind the rear delivery area where Méndez parked his car were dumpsters and behind them, a chain link fence separating the strip center property from a weedy vacant lot, occupied by carcasses of three or four old cars. Two ways in, two ways out of that rear area, one on the east end of the center, the other on the west end.
There was a standalone restaurant next to the center with a good view of the east entrance. We ate our meals in there, and I had my binoculars on the table in front of me. We made a note of every car going in and out. After watching Méndez leave in his chauffeured Maybach Tuesday night, we followed him to Hialeah Gardens. Not all the way home, not down 133rd Street, only far enough to know he was heading for that walled fort. From the restaurant's window seat, we saw him return at eleven the next morning, and he used the same entrance each time.
Wednesday evening, over cheeseburgers, we got to talking.
"So exactly why are we doing this?" Shimmy asked. "Besides the money, I mean."
Shimmy was a tall, hard-shouldered guy with big hands. His age, which I made to be crowding fifty, hadn't affected his good looks any. His face was still sleek and high-planed, his bearing erect. The women loved him, had always loved him, ever since I'd known him, which was about ten years now. Nor had his advancing age affected his drive. He had all the will and the heart of someone in his twenties.
"Well," I said, "you're doing it for the money. I want to make up for the short payday on that bank job."
"Aw, man, that's not necessary. I just lost it for a minute that day. I didn't —"
"No, no, you were standing up for yourself. You felt you were entitled to a third share when it got down to three of us. You made your point. But I took a bigger piece and now I want to make it up to you is all. So I'm cutting you in on this."
"Man, you were the one who went up there and got our money. You don't do that, we wind up with zero." He sipped his coffee. "I gotta tell you, in the end, when I got home that morning, I was happy to get the twenty-two grand."
"Well, just so you know," I said, and I patted him once on the shoulder.
He returned the pat, a brotherly gesture I'd never felt from him before. "Happy to be here with you, Logan."
"Anyway, like I said, you're doing it for the money. I'm doing it for The Original Mambo. And for Mambo the Third, I guess."
"What's their beef with this guy?"
"I'm not sure, but I know that — hey! Check that out!"
I snapped to attention and pointed out the window at the entrance to the rear of the shopping center. A red Mercedes sports model slowly pulled in, weaving around an exiting truck. I got a good look at it. The one I'd seen at Mambo's that night. The Dávila brothers.
Shimmy said, "That's an SL-63! Great fucking car."
"It belongs to one of the Dávila brothers, I think Yayo. Méndez's top crew chief and enforcer. I saw him and his brother in Mambo's one night."
"Mambo's? What the hell were they doing there?"
"Beats me. But Don Roy Doyle says they're some kind of distant cousins to Mambo."
Shimmy polished off the last of his French fries and said, "How do you want to do this?"
I drank from my coffee refill. It needed more cream. "I'd like to take him when he comes out the back there and before he gets into his fucking tank of a car. Between the back door and his car. It's about twenty, thirty yards. He's vulnerable. And he won't be expecting it."
"Tonight?"
"No. Not while Yayo Dávila's around. He may have his brother with him. Those two, plus Méndez and whoever he's got shadowing him, that's too many people to deal with in that little space. We wait till tomorrow and hope for a better scenario. I want to take him clean. Tomorrow night. That's when we nail him."
41
Mambo
Wednesday, July 20
12:00 Noon
THE PHONE RANG IN MAMBO'S OFFICE. He had just come through the door, having finished settling a squabble among the cooks in the kitchen.
"Mi nieto," said The Original Mambo.
"Abuelo. ¿Cómo está?"
"Bién, gracias. Listen, I need you to come to my house right away."
His voice turned urgent. "Is everything all right? Are you all right? Is Abuela —"
"No, no, no. We are fine. But I need you here. I cannot speak on the phone. ¿Me entendés?"
"Sí. Ya vengo."
Mambo the Third showed up at his grandfather's home within five minutes. He parked the yellow-gold Trans Am in front of the house and headed up onto the porch. Before he could knock on the door, The Original Mambo opened it and beckoned him inside.
They went into the den, a room dominated by the big desk. The young Mambo remembered it from his childhood. That desk had always been there and, he supposed, it always would. The two men took seats on the sofa occupying most of one wall.
The Original Mambo dispensed with any formalities of offering lunch or even coffee. Instead, he opened the conversation. "Did Logan call you? Anytime this week?"
"No. Why?"
"He's gone up to Hialeah. I sent him up there to do your job for you."
"My job? Wh-wha —"
"Your job. Taking care of Maxie Méndez."
"Logan's going to — to —"
"That's right. He's going to pop that fat, greasy fucker. And you're going to pay him the money you promised him."
"Well … sure I'll pay him," Mambo the Third said. "But how did you get him to go along with it?"
"Don't worry
about that. But listen. Like I told you the other day, Win Whitney is postponing the North Roosevelt deal until he finds out who killed Trey. He knows the stripper didn't do it, and he thinks whoever killed Trey did the Pinksmith brothers, too. "
"So how does that play into Logan and Méndez?"
"I found out Méndez is the hidden owner of Honey Buns, this strip joint in Hialeah where that stripper used to work, the one in the middle of all this, before she came down here. Turns out he had a big, big hard-on for her. When Trey pulled her out of Honey Buns and brought her down here, Méndez went crazy."
"You think he'll believe that?"
The old man's nod accompanied his wily smile and he said, "We've got relatives in Hialeah. They've arranged for witnesses who will say they heard Trey insult Méndez inside his own club, telling him shit about the stripper. They'll say they heard Trey telling him how she thought Méndez was a disgusting pig, and so on. They will also say they heard Méndez threaten both Trey and the stripper that night, and a couple of days later they heard him give someone the order to come down here and waste the two of them."
"So the stripper was the target that night? The Pinksmiths just happened to be in the wrong place —"
"At the wrong fucking time," said the Original Mambo. "I will give Win the names of the witnesses and he'll probably send someone up there to question them. They'll stay with their story, believe me, and by that time, Méndez will be dead. I will show Win the article in the Miami Herald, and the deal will be back in motion."
Mambo the Third broke out into a wide grin. "Abuelo, you are a genius!" He threw his arms around the old man's wide shoulders in a big, tight embrace. "I have much to learn from you. So much to learn."
"Sí, mi nieto," replied his grandfather. "Yo sé."
≈ ≈ ≈
On his way back to his restaurant, Mambo the Third called his wife.
"Palmira," he said when she answered. "The deal is back on! Or, it will be very soon."