Kill City USA

by Warren Roberts

Tomas drove like a knight on a quest towards Virginia Key and Miami. His hands were clamped to the Chevy’s wheel and his shoulders leant forward. He was mains-operated, electrified with nerves, pulsing veins striping his neck. His heartbeat raced like a televangelist’s in a topless club on bottomless night.

  I assumed that Jonah was safely back on the boat. He was the site foreman in charge when we left, and Quaranto would not have dared to start a firefight with the ‘Feds’ at his home.

  We sped past families on their way to Sunday family lunch and tourists off to the beach and drivers off to the mall because they didn’t know what else to do. Tomas was silent, eyes gelid, his mouth opening and closing like a guppy, a man possessed. He turned to me as if I was the hatted priest with the briefcase under the streetlight.

  I finished dressing and broke the silence. ‘You OK?’ Ask a silly question.

  ‘Course I’m not fucking OK. You’ve really started something. You any idea what these guys are capable of? What you’ve begun?’

  ‘With all due respect Tomas, it wasn’t me that started this little matter.’

  My remark took a moment to sink in. He blew rapidly into his closed hand. Then, ‘You know what I mean. This is now getting… this has got… out of control.’

  ‘Sure. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.’

  He wasn’t impressed. ‘Explain that to me slowly. In simple words I can follow.’

  ‘Look. You can’t pay them, that’s point one. Two: they set you up in a stock scam where you sold worthless stock for them. So you’re in the shit there. Three: they’re about to set you up in another one. More Shit City. Four: they’ve made threats to your family. Five: we do nothing, your life as you know it is history.’

  ‘Thanks for stating the fucking obvious. But now these guys will want to play hardball. Christ. A giraffe don’t stick out his neck like you did mine. And you’re right there in shitsville with me.’

  I said, ‘I’m touched by your concern.’

  My sarcasm finally kicked in. ‘Sorry,’ he said. He didn’t mean it.

  ‘So they’ll come after me and I’ll be prepared,’ I said.

  ‘And what’s that going to achieve?’

  ‘I’ll hope they make a mistake. And let me tell you, they don’t want to go back to the federal joint. So you stir them. Then you rattle ‘em. So they get shaken. Then they’ll hopefully make one almighty fuck-up. These guys are naturally self-destructive. Especially that Moresco. So I’m being the shit-stirring fairy. Soon there’ll be pixie poo flying everywhere.’

  ‘And what good will that do? Besides us getting shit-strewn as well.’

  ‘Things happen when you give food for thought to morons with uncultured palates. They’ll throw up, or choke. Do something we hope to make them live to regret. Or not live, as the case may be.’

  This last remark Tomas did not enjoy. He almost missed a red light, and we burned rubber as he braked to within an inch of the black Lincoln Town Car stopped at the intersection in front of us, its senior citizen driver blithely unaware of her lucky escape.

  We shot ahead on green and Tomas said, ‘They think I’ve gone to the Feds,’ as we veered around the Lincoln, whose driver kept her blue rinse above the steering wheel clutched to her body, peering fixedly through thick bright orange diamanté-rimmed glasses, focusing on the challenge ahead. Her white-haired husband was seat-belted beside her in the comfort of his leather upholstered passenger seat, his chin resting on his chest, either asleep or recently deceased.

  ‘No. They’re not sure about that, now that they’ve seen Jonah up close. They sniffed his street air – the scent of Armageddon in Armani. They know that Feds don’t pick up that karma in basic training at Quantico, so they’ve now figured he’s no government man. And Quaranto knows he’s now got crap on his hands.’

  Tomas absorbed this awhile. ‘So what happens next?’

  ‘It’s Sunday afternoon. Your brother-in-law promised to take Jonah and me out for a little target practice. I’ve now got a feeling we may need it,’ I said. ‘Wanna join us?’

  A bad thing to say. Tomas declined with a long shake of his head as he kept his eyes fixedly ahead. Me, I love an afternoon on the range, exercising those Second Amendment rights. It’s as American as apple pie and schoolyard slaughters.

  We drove awhile. Then he said, ‘Milo –’ looking at me as he drove. ‘You must think I sound like an ungrateful son of a bitch. But I appreciate what you’re doing for me. Thanks. Thanks a lot.’

  I thought this time he maybe meant it. I nodded, and he chain-smoked the rest of the trip back to my hotel in silence.

  Jonah arrived back at the Shelborne an hour after me with Dooley in tow. We decided that it was as safe there as at an apartment, but we upgraded our two rooms to a two-bedroom suite for a little more security.

  Jonah had already told him what he’d seen at Key Biscayne, and we each filled in the blank spaces. The blondes had been despatched after Tomas and I had left, and the wiseguys had retreated indoors with La Viscione, presumably for a sit and talk.

  We decided to wait until the stock scam artist visited Tomas in the next couple of days, and then take it from there. That was plan A.

  Not that there was a plan B.

  Some guys whack golf balls on the weekend. Not Dooley. He had a friend who owned a shooting range an hour east of Miami and he liked to hang out there on Sundays, so today he invited us to join him. Jay decided to join us, having never pulled a trigger in anger. Not even in fun.

  We swung by and picked her up at Dooley’s house while he loaded a small arsenal into his Jeep. I told Jay that it had been a busy morning in the office and she asked no more.

  We listened to a country station on the way to the range, George Jones with the Bartender’s Blues seeing sad faces and bad cases before a five-track Johnny Cash set took us down a generic highway, skirted by identikit McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC’s and Pizza Huts with an occasional subversive Crab Shack giving the finger to the big chains.

  We pulled onto a dusty road with two narrow strips of tar seal. The signs flanking it were pockmarked with bullet holes.

  At a large metal bullseye also used for target practice by the local militia, we turned left onto a road running past a mangrove swamp with watery grasses. The algae was thick and layered on the surface like the overgrown lawn of a country estate. Balding tree stumps rose from the murky waters. Jay was eager about the afternoon ahead. This had somewhat taken my mind off earlier matters but my anticipation level was more prostrate than hers.

  A couple of miles down the road we turned off towards a group of low buildings and pulled into a car parking area. It was pick-up truck heaven where NRA bumper stickers and Confederate flag decals were a prerequisite for the best parking spots.

  Dooley unloaded enough arms to topple the dictatorships of several coffee republics I’ve known, and we signed ourselves in for the afternoon, picking up protective eye and earwear. The prevalent dress code was black-laced hi-top boots and camouflage combat trousers over potbellies – topped off with army surplus caps embossed with gunmaker’s logos. T-shirts bore epigrammatic messages stating that no one messes with the wearer’s constitutional rights. And lives.

  Jonah and Dooley went to the indoor range for a while, while I took Jay to one of the outdoor ranges and explained to her what Annie did after she got her gun.

  I had two Sig pistols, a back-up P-232, a junior member of the Sig family and a more businesslike P-226, the peacemaker of choice of many federal agencies. They were both nines. I also had a small snub-barrelled Smith & Wesson J Round revolver, the Chief’s Special .38, which Jay thought looked cute. A back-up back-up, for short-range work. The sort you wear in an ankle holster and try not to shoot yourself in the foot.

  I showed Jay the difference between a pistol and a revolver, and explained their different calibres, and then how they’re both loaded, and how they work.

  She said, ‘One revolves. The other doesn’t.’ She was rig
ht.

  I showed her the safeties. The trigger retracted hammer lock on the S&W and the lever on the Sig to de-cock the hammer into a safety notch. And how the Sig automatic firing pin safety works by locking the pin until the last pulling movement on the trigger.

  I showed her the importance of a correct stance when aiming a gun and of having a solid stable platform when firing, and about grip and alignment and trigger control and breathing and sighting, and why I like to shoot with both eyes open to increase my peripheral vision, in case someone is sneaking up on me. She was as attentive as if I was explaining some life and death procedure, which I guess I was.

  I told her about survival shooting and running on autopilot in tense situations. And to learn to crouch when pointing a gun, as that is the instinctive reflex position in an emergency in serious gun fighting, Gary Cooper style.

  We tested for her dominant eye, where she held out her gun arm and pointed her finger at a target, first closing her left eye and looking at the object with her right eye. Then reversing the process until she found the eye that saw the finger pointing directly at the target, her aiming eye.

  I fired a few rounds at a stationary target and then demonstrated the double tap with two sighted shots fired in quick succession in case the first round didn’t do its job. Then I did the double-double tap, for belt-and-braces RIP hits.

  I told her why two hands should be used on the weapon if the other hand has nothing better to do and I showed her the G-man grip, where the left forefinger is placed in front of the trigger guard for additional stability. And I explained to her the difference between a street mindset and a range mindset when you’re shooting in the big bad outside world, and not trying to win the Queen’s Prize at Bisley.

  We shot a lot of rounds. Jay was having fun. She hit the stationary target more often than not. We graduated to the moving targets as the afternoon wore on and it made me remember my training years ago, when we had to hit a small moving target at a distance of seventy-five feet in two seconds. We would then try to hit a vital spot on six separate targets at the same range in five seconds. In the intensity of combat, emotion, adrenaline and fear changed the reaction times because the targets were shooting back at you. That’s when the hours and days and weeks and months of practice kicked in and you hoped you became a more efficient killing machine than the guy on the other side. You also hoped he hadn’t been trained as well as you had been.

  I was blooded in sniper fire in the days when my resting pulse rate was very low. I would regulate my breathing to its beats, exhaling after each pulse, then I would gently increase pressure on the trigger and fire. It became second nature after a while as did our simple rule of fire: if they had a weapon and were a danger, then they went down. I stopped after I became very good at it, when I wasn’t thinking about my unsuspecting targets as living breathing people, just doing their job like I was. But without a chance to fire back. They never saw my eyes, let alone their whites. Nor I theirs. And I wasn’t sleeping nights.

  I went to the fully-electronic inside range and I practised some safe fast draws from my rig, trying to get two good hits in under two seconds; first the chest then the head, chest head, chest head. Jay went to watch the Uzi shooters, housewives preparing for the day they got caught up in a terrorist uprising while shopping in the Bal Harbor Mall, their machine gun skills needed to help a downed Miami SWAT team member kill the greasy anti-American hordes.

  By late afternoon I was shot out, but I felt more prepared to face whatever lay ahead. Jonah went to make better acquaintance with a Benelli M1, and Jay and I went for some coffee. Dooley was on a Dirty Harry cordite high, having spent the last hour with his Smith & Wesson Magnum, which is to serious handguns what Jerry Lee is to rock ’n’ roll.

  Jonah came back after half an hour, seemingly satisfied with the Benelli, a short matte black combat shotgun sexily designed, Italian style. It was an ideal piece for designer hits, or hold-ups at Versace stores.

  At around eight, we were dropped at the hotel. Back in my room, I showered the gunshot residue from my body.

  We decided on room service and TV. On Showtime was Donnie Brasco, a film about friendship and betrayal. Johnny Depp played the undercover agent who infiltrated the mob, gaining the confidence of Al Pacino’s Mafia character, a mob soldier whose limited career prospects are caught under their glass ceiling. He tries hard to avoid mortal redundancy under lethally capricious termination policies, with no severance package. I felt like taking notes and wondered how many of the characters in the film Quaranto and his apes had known in real life. They’d be cheering for the bad guys as they watched the film as a documentary.

  Around 9.30, halfway through the movie and room service hamburgers, Dooley called. He’d heard from his buddy in the Coral Gables PD – the one he’d spoken to about Maria Viscione.

  We drove to a coffee shop near the University of Miami and waited about forty-five minutes for him to show. It was quiet with the students away on vacation, so we sat at the bar and watched the Florida Marlins game. At 10.30 a stocky guy arrived with cop written all over in indelible aura. Dooley introduced him as Jimmy Pino; they were distant relatives. Jimmy was a detective in the Coral Gables PD drug division. Dooley spent a while talking to him in Spanish, telling him that Jonah and I were OK. He seemed at ease once he knew D and I went back a way.

  He said, ‘We’ve got a bizarre one here,’ shaking his head, while I extended the reaches of my mind to think what could possibly qualify as bizarre in this unhinged town.

  ‘911 received an anonymous call around 5 pm saying a body had been seen beside a road near the university and the Riviera golf course. We sent a patrol to take a look-see.’

  The waitress arrived. Jimmy was cop-hungry and without looking at the menu he ordered a western omelette with bacon, coleslaw and double steak fries. The rest of us ordered beers. Jimmy ordered a caramel shake, double caramel.

  ‘The officers saw something about ten foot off the edge of the road. One of them is a hunter and said he thought it looked like a deer carcass. His female partner gets out to have a look – she’ll now be getting a sick-note for therapy,’ he said. He looked at all of us in turn, for dramatic effect. ‘It was a male vic, eviscerated from its mouth to its anus.’

  Dooley said, ‘Sorta glad I’ve eaten already.’

  Jimmy acknowledged this by nodding, as he started his just-arrived fries. I declined his offer to help. He shrugged. ‘Just another day in Kill City USA.’ He deliberated as he chewed. ‘I was called after the ME found a heroin pellet inside a condom somewhere in the cold meat. The butchers had missed it. So it looks like our John Doe, or more likely Juan Diaz, was a drug mule who hadn’t completed his business. Hey. Hadn’t done his business – get it.’ He chuckled. ‘Poor fucker’s probably constipated. Heroin does that.’ He talked with his mouth full, using his fork to emphasise points when enunciation became impossible.

  Dooley said, ‘Why tell us?’

  ‘This John Doe had a very distinctive tattoo on his arm. Da Vinci’s Last Supper, in full colour, and it was the first thing that the patrolman noticed, after his initial shock.’

  ‘Apt tatt,’ said Jonah, who hadn’t said anything else since we arrived.

  ‘You’re not kidding there. It mightn’t have meant anything. But I told you we had a patrol visit Quaranto’s funeral home a short while ago after a complaint of a disturbance by a passer-by.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Dooley. ‘I remember.’

  ‘Well, it was the patrolman from the crime scene tonight. When he’s there he sees this young Puerto Rican guy. The first thing he notices is the guy’s scared shitless. The second was the PR had this great tatt and he admires it. So he crosses himself, throws in a few Hail Marys, being a God-fearing kinda guy. So, he swears that it was the vic he found tonight.’

  ‘You contact Viscione?’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘We sent up a patrol, and she was there – Sunday night even.’

  I said, ‘Sleeps there, p
erched upside down from a rafter.’

  Dooley said, ‘What’d she say?’

  ‘She didn’t remember any such tattooed person being at the funeral home when our people had visited. That our patrolman was mistaken.’

  ‘Was he?’ said Dooley.

  A shake of the head. ‘No way José. He’d made a written report at the time as he knew the Feds were interested in her. Done by the book – ‘cos he’s also got delusions of becoming a Fed himself. I’ve checked his report. It mentions the guy was a PR spic and details the tattoo.’

  We ordered cold bottled Guinness.

  Jimmy Pino told us about the local drug scene. How most drugs enter the US via Mexico to the west, with Florida taking the John McCain silver medal for runner-up as an entry point. That since the street price of cocaine had dropped significantly, heroin had become a drug of choice for smugglers. That a kilo of heroin was as hard to smuggle as a kilo of cocaine and the risks the same, but the profit on heroin was far greater. That a smuggled heroin brick one fifth the size of the same amount of cocaine now yielded twice the profit of the coke. How safe and undetected transportation was the key issue for smuggling either drug. QED – it was more cost-effective to smuggle heroin. Ten things that they now teach you at Harvard Business School.

  Jimmy was finishing his omelette. ‘Heroin has moved from skid row to the catwalks. Kids see these super models with black rings around their skeletal eyes so they want to be the same fucking racoon wannabes. We get high school kids injecting between their toes to hide the tracks. Like it’s fucking antifreeze. And it ain’t even cold down here.’ He was on autopilot. ‘Plus it takes less and it’s stronger. Even marijuana is far more potent that it was ten, twenty years ago – all this hydroponic growing increases its THC content. With all this stuff it’s a circle. People get problems and take drugs. Then drugs become the problem.’ He rotated his head. ‘Round and fucking round until we all get dizzy.’

  ‘Body smuggling of drugs,’ I said. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘They’re disposable Bic razor people. The mules get about a grand per trip plus free air miles to purgatory. First, they go through training. They start on swallowing whole small round objects. Once they stop gagging they try larger foods, usually greased with vegetable oil. Then they practise on oiled wrapped pellets put into a condom,’ he said. ‘They’re then in graduate school. With a Masters in Fucking Stupidity from the University of Hell.’