by Pavia, Peter
Beaumond was calling the dog, his voice getting closer, inside the house now. “Here, Mimi.” He whistled three times. “C’mere girl.”
Leo’s lip was wet with sweat. This was worse than trying to play it cool with Negrito. Way worse. The gun was trembling in his hand, and he couldn’t make it keep still.
He got off the couch and walked into the kitchen, the gun at his hip. He leveled it from about five feet away. He fired and missed.
The shitfaced Beaumond pulsed into stone cold sobriety, his eyes huge, reflecting pure fear. Leo liked that. Beaumond lunged for the gun and Leo fired again, grazing his head, the force of the shot spinning him to the linoleum.
Fernandez dropped a bottle of orange juice. It shattered on the floor.
Beaumond pressed his hand over his wound screaming, He shot me, He fucking shot me, and Leo squeezed off another round that went in above his ear and shut him up for good.
Fernandez was frozen in the refrigerator light, his mouth open, his hand on the door.
Leo said, “Are you gonna help me with this or what?”
Beaumond would’ve been enough of an idiot to hang on to the gun he used to shoot Manfred, and Leo found it wedged between the mattress and the boxspring of the bed JP’d been sleeping in. Also two hundred bucks in tens and twenties, and the latest issue of Ass N’ Bush. Give the boy credit for selecting a unique spot where nobody would ever think of looking. Leo put the money in his pocket and collected the few clothes Beaumond owned and stuffed them into a Hefty bag. That made it one handgun, one garbage bag half-full of uncool clothing, and one body that Leo needed to get rid of.
Leo was spoiled by the tight-turning Jag. In the driver’s seat of the Cadillac, Leo felt like he was piloting a tugboat, the Eldo squeaking and bouncing, badly in need of a front-end alignment. She kept wanting to drift right.
They were headed west on 19th Street toward the Causeway, Alex Fernandez riding shotgun, silent and jumpy, sucking the life out of a Newport. Beaumond’s body was in the trunk.
He guided the car into the right lane, pulling the wheel left to keep it from hitting the restraining wall. He slid down the passenger’s window. “Okay, kid,” Leo said, peeking into the rear-view, “Good a time as any.”
Fernandez got his torso outside, sitting on the door. Displaying the form that turned on so many scouts all those years ago, he brought back his left arm and heaved the gun over the wall and into the Bay.
“Nice delivery,” Leo said. “Good mechanics.”
He was watching his speed, but he thought they’d better get out to the Glades while it was still dark. He hadn’t ditched the automatic he bought from Simon the Bartender, because he wasn’t sure whether he was going to shoot Fernandez or not.
Alex was definitely catching that vibe. He lit one Newport off another and Leo thought, Wow, chainsmoking for real. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anybody do that. Fernandez was about as sober as he got, but he was jonesing for the coke Leo refused to let him bring along. He could sniff himself right into a cardiac when he got back. If he got back.
“This is bad,” Fernandez said. They were the first words out of his mouth since they loaded Beaumond into the trunk. “This is so bad.”
“It isn’t real good,” Leo said. Shit, he was out of Marlboros. “Gimme one of those Newports,” he said. He pushed in the lighter, and surprise, it worked.
Fernandez was fucking with the radio, trying to find something to listen to, all of it shit, until Leo lost patience with his button pushing and snapped the thing off.
The inside of the car went dead silent. Leo listened to the hum of the engine and the whirr of rubber on asphalt.
“He was my friend,” Fernandez said eventually. “I know you didn’t like him, but he was my friend.”
Leo said, “Hey, Alex? What about Manfred, Manfred was my friend.”
He was sweating again. Alex Fernandez was one oily, sweaty Cuban. That chemical smell came off him hard, and between that and the cigarettes, it stunk in the car. Leo peeled down the back windows, got some air in there.
A sliver of moon hung behind them, and the palest strip of violet lightened the eastern horizon, but it was pitch black everywhere, except directly in front of the headlights. Leo pulled onto an access road, but it was fenced off by a gate. Backing up across the highway, he got a running start, and plowed the Eldo through, the car dipping and diving on the rutted gravel. He left the motor running and the lights on and he motioned for Fernandez to get out.
He imagined it’d be quiet this time of day, but Leo was wrong. He heard all sorts of creatures rustling in the reeds and splashing around in the water. The trees shimmered with a thousand bird voices. It added up to a ton of noise.
Beaumond was wearing a Hefty bag, tied at the waist with some twine they’d found in the carport. This was Alex’s idea. He didn’t want to have to look him in the face, not even with the eyes shut. He was spooked, and Leo didn’t blame him.
Getting Beaumond out of the trunk was a bitch. No way Leo could’ve done it alone. He grabbed the top half of the body, digging his fingers through the slippery green plastic. Fernandez took the legs. With nothing to support it in the middle, the body sagged into a V. Pulling it over the lip of the trunk, Leo lost his grip, and Beaumond’s head smacked the bumper. It would’ve hurt like hell, if he’d been alive to feel it.
They rested for a minute, but Leo got rattled with the screeching birds and the dark all around them, and fieldtrip memories of gators chilling on logs. No guarantee a hungry one wouldn’t come running right up and snatch him. Those fuckers moved quick on their stubby legs.
They dragged Beaumond through the weeds, right to the edge of where the water met the road. Fernandez went in with the feet, him pulling and Leo pushing, until the garbage bag ballooned and the body started to float. Fernandez tore open the bag, dug up a big rock, and fed it through the hole. Leo loosened two more and Fernandez put them inside. He climbed out of the water.
He had his hands on his hips, breathing heavy and watching the garbage bag send bubbles to the surface as it sunk into the muck. Leo stood in his blind spot, his palm on the grip of the gun. If he was going to shoot him, this would be the time.
He thought back to an All-Star game they both pitched in, the stands bulging with pro scouts. Alex Fernandez was the star among stars, a skinny lefthander who overpowered everybody, on his way to a full ride at USC. His mother and his sister — she was the same age as Leo’s sister — cheering from the stands. Fernandez out there, holding the ball, looking in, and at that last instant, when it could’ve gone one way or another, Leo couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t do it.
Fernandez mumbled something about Jesus Christ Almighty and Leo said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
The sun was up by the time they hit West Miami. Fernandez wasn’t talking. Leo didn’t have much to say either, and they were all out of cigarettes, including Alex’s menthols.
Leo said, “We’ve gotta get rid of this car.”
“Drop me off,” Fernandez said, “before you do any other stupid thing.”
Get a load of this guy, smart-mouthing him. Did he realize how close he came to dying back there?
“I can’t believe this is my life,” Fernandez said. “This is so bad.” He was chewing his fingernails. “All I ever wanted to do was have a good time.”
“It’s done,” Leo said. “Stop being such a pussy about it.”
“Turn here for Hialeah.”
“I’m not going to Hialeah. Hialeah’s out of the way,” Leo said. “I’ll drop you off between here and the Beach.”
Leo negotiated the thickening traffic. They were driving into a part of town where the streets seemed familiar, but Leo wasn’t sure where any of them went. The Eldorado was stuck between a tractor-trailer turning left and a milk truck. Some idiot in a mini-van was nosing into Leo’s lane, trying to squeeze between the Eldo and the semi.
“No, fuck you,” Leo said to the driver of the van. He inche
d the Eldo forward, boxing him out.
The light turned green. Fernandez popped his door open and scrambled onto the pavement.
Leo tracked his orange soccer jersey like a visual SOS, his skinny arms flailing as he dashed across three lanes, scary close to getting clipped by a BMW that didn’t look up until it was almost too late. Let the cocksucker live, he wants to go and get himself killed.
Two motorcycle cops flagged traffic around a wreck. Getting the hint, Leo turned north on SW 12th Avenue, cruising past an archipelago of used car lots, purple pennant streamers flapping above the acreage. Forlorn, buffed-out lemons lay in wait, Spanish words scrawled on their windshields. Creampuff! Leo imagined they said. Original miles!
He kept going north, rolling through the skanky neighborhoods that, if he wasn’t wrong, should take him right into Liberty City. The turf had been poached by the wettest of wetbacks, Salvadorans and Panamanians and Ecuadorians, their pathetic hand-painted letters crammed onto signs outside their restaurants and shops. They ought to be getting a taste, right about now, of what this great country was all about, liquor stores and lottery tickets.
He veered down a street that dead-ended under an overpass. The sun glinted off the silvery key chain that dangled from the ignition. Leo got out of the car.
He noticed a bus stop on the street he turned off of, and he walked back to it, slow, cool, nothing to worry about. It was in front of a building that at one point in its life was the Buenos Aires nightclub. Half its roof was collapsed and the other half had a huge hole burnt into it. The fire that knocked out the club must’ve been an inferno, the kind people died in, but Leo couldn’t remember hearing anything about it. Imagine. Making it all the way from Nicaragua, then getting charred to a crisp, when the only thing you had in mind was blowing your dishwasher money on drinks and the possibility of pussy. It could almost make you sad, if you let it.
A bottle gang was passing the morning pint. They had watched Leo pull down the dead-end street. Now, they were eyeing him up hard. Looking black, talking Spanish, one could’ve had Chinese blood, slashes for eyes that were red and mean, a sinister, odd-looking hombre. Leo lifted his shirt and let the grip of his .25 stick out of his pants, in case anybody was getting any ideas.
The bus drifted to the curb. Leo stood in the stairwell, fumbling with his money. Boarding, he watched the gang fall out in the dead-end’s direction. Buena suerta, he thought. Good luck, amigos.
As a demonstration of his good faith, Leo put out the word that he wanted to return the kilo that was more like two now after Beaumond and Fernandez got done stepping on it. Leo didn’t want to be connected to a batch of blow that was attached to two murders. Way bad karma.
Maybe Negrito felt the same. He didn’t seem too keen on getting it back. But any attempt to think along with Negrito was a lose-lose proposition.
Nestor Alameda contacted Leo and told him El Negrito would meet him in a bar off the Calle Ocho in Little Havana. Leo balked. Two things he wasn’t going to do: Hook up with Negrito anywhere that afforded the slightest bit of privacy, or get into any car Negrito was driving. He countered with a parking lot off Collins. Nestor called him back and said it was a go.
He wasn’t sure why this meeting would be any different than the one they had in the coffee shop, Leo arriving ten minutes early, Negrito already waiting, but he felt weird, a threat in the yellow of the parking lot paint. He got that same throw-uppy feeling he had when he dry-heaved between the cars, and he kept clearing his throat and swallowing, to keep whatever it was down there where it belonged. He really hated to lose the satchel he stashed his film canisters in, but he stayed quiet when Negrito snatched it out of his hand and tossed it in the front seat of his Monte Carlo. The one with the blacked-out back window and the stencil that told you Monte Carlo, in case there was any confusion.
Leo didn’t know what to say that wasn’t going to piss him off, and Negrito didn’t appear to have anything prepared for the occasion. He glared at Leo, wearing no expression at all.
Leo tried this: “I hope you realize I’ve taken care of everything.” He didn’t want to come right out and say what it was he’d taken care of, and anyway, he was pretty confident Negrito knew about it, or Leo wouldn’t be standing here talking to him or anybody else.
“The only reason there was anything to take care of was because you fucked up so bad in the first place.” Negrito’s mouth barely opened enough to let the words out. “That’s what I realize.”
Okay, something had changed since the last time they talked.
“I just want you to accept my apology, that’s all.” A rush of bile shot up Leo’s esophagus. He swallowed hard twice, beating it back.
“I don’t give a shit about your apology.”
Not only did his mouth stay closed, his lips hardly moved. How come Leo never noticed this? The guy had an amazing untapped talent for ventriloquism.
“You did what needed to be done. That’s all that matters.”
Good. Well, then, if that was going to be all, Leo’d be on his way.
“And if I have an ounce of trouble with you again, ever, ever, you can kiss your ass goodbye. You got that?”
Leo was about to give him a one-word answer like “Understood” when he heard a crack and saw some things that weren’t there. He glimpsed Negrito through tearing eyes. The guy just had a thing for slapping people.
Then Leo caught a punch. The second dug into his kidney. The third connected with his jaw and sent him to the pavement, three punches before he figured out he was being hit. He went down thinking, Man’s pretty fast for a fat guy.
The ringing in his ears had just about quit when Negrito stomped on his neck. Leo heard a voice from somewhere far away say he wasn’t fucking around, but Leo didn’t think he was.
Chapter Seven
By the end of the month, Sailor Randy’s slowed down. Bryce Peyton cut back security, and Harry only worked the money nights. He still had the money he’d gotten from Sven and Javier, though, and with only half his pay going to the Wind N’ Sand, he was, in fact, accumulating cash.
The big news was, he had a genuine thing going with Aggie. She lived in an apartment complex in Sunrise, and they shopped for groceries and rented videos of blackand- white gangster movies. Harry slept at her place a couple of nights a week.
Aggie liked to cook, and Harry couldn’t get over how cheap you ate when you made your own food. For eight or nine bucks, the two of them were stuffed and had things left over besides, to eat another night.
Aggie’s dream was to be a writer. Harry could identify with wanting to be something other than what you were, but a writer? There was no money in the writing racket unless you hit big with something they turned into a movie. Otherwise, you were wasting your time. And writing took up a lot of time.
She was the theater critic for a weekly arts rag. The gig paid next to nothing, but she did get to see a lot of mediocre theater for free. Harry went with her once, but he was snoring before intermission, and Aggie didn’t invite him again.
The paper had a predictable “anti-establishment” point of view, a way of looking at the world that Aggie didn’t share, but since she was only critiquing bad plays, nobody cared about her politics. As a matter of fact, Aggie was quite the little capitalist, investment newsletters in the mailbox, on the phone with her broker in the morning.
Besides her newspaper duties, Aggie was hard at some secret project stashed in her computer files. Harry bugged her to show it to him. She said it wouldn’t make sense to anybody but her, and when he pressed it, she changed the subject. He guessed this made them about even. She was in the dark about a big chunk of his life, too.
Harry was lounging around one morning, leafing through Aggie’s hundreds of CDs, and she was trying to get rid of him so she could get some writing done, but since Harry didn’t have anywhere to go or anything to do, he was stalling. The TV was tuned to some cable business show and something came up about one of Aggie’s many stock picks. She clic
ked off the music and un-muted the TV.
“These fucking guys,” Harry said. “Cheerleaders.”
The screen flashed to a dark-haired good-looking guy extolling the virtues of some company Aggie was long in. Buy, the guy said. That made Aggie feel good.
“Harry,” she said, “this guy looks just like you. It’s uncanny.”
His name flashed under his image. Arthur Healy.
“You think you two could be related?”
Harry said, “Uh, yes, I think we could be. He’s my brother.”
“Your brother.”
“I think you heard me right.”
“You never said a word about him.”
“It never came up before. What’s the big deal? He’s on TV all the time. They gotta put somebody on these shows, right?”
“How come you two have different last names?”
Harry was about to say, What are you talking about? But he pulled himself up and said, “That’s a longer story.”
She said, “I’ve got time.”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” Harry said, and when she didn’t say anything, he said, “I just don’t, okay?”
Aggie looked at him like she wanted to say no, but what she said was, “Okay.”
It was a Wednesday night. Aggie had roasted a chicken with garlic and carrots and potatoes, and they were sitting around the remains of the meal, discussing that night’s rental, Dog Day Afternoon.
Aggie was a huge Al Pacino fan, but it was the plain-looking guy who played the sidekick, John Cazale, who made the movie worth sitting through another time. Aggie couldn’t picture him, but Harry told her she’d know him for sure once she saw him, he was the one who didn’t go to Vietnam in The Deer Hunter.
Aggie was clanking dishes around in the sink and Harry said, “I’ll get that,” because that’s what he always said, but she went on washing and he didn’t argue. Back in the living room, he found the remote control between two couch cushions and pinched the TV to life.