Setup On Front Street

by Mike Dennis

Doc was full of concern, but still calm, as I knew he would be.

  "Where to, man? We gotta get you taken care of."

  "Turn right down here, then head back toward town. I know a guy who used to be a doctor."

  THIRTY-THREE

  THE guy who fixed us up had one of Yale Lando's medical school degrees, which he'd gotten after they took his real one away. He pulled me and Shimmy through, all right, but we were hurting for many months afterward. Shimmy lost a little of the use of his left arm, but he's right-handed anyway, so there was no real harm done.

  The doctor, meanwhile, may have plucked the bullet out of my thigh, but it was Norma who brought me back to health.

  She looked after me in a way that I wasn't really expecting. You know, she really took care of me. She'd run and get me a drink of water if I was thirsty, she cooked all my meals for me, she waited on me hand and foot, that kind of thing. While I was recuperating, she showered me with love.

  Let me tell you, nothing will bring you back faster than that.

  It meant everything to me, knowing that she really loved me that much.

  I'd gotten a little over four hundred thousand of Whitney's money from his safe. Or should I say, my money. I gave Doc and Shimmy a hundred grand apiece, plus I paid for our doctor bills, about another ten. That left me with right around two hundred large.

  Which is what I had coming from the diamond deal in the first place.

  I gave Doc an extra twenty-five hundred and told him when he got back to Vegas, to mail it to the guy whose Visa card I'd gotten from Yale. Charles Brockaway, that was his name. I figured Norma and I had gone through around fifteen hundred on our little spree up in Miami, so an extra grand worth of vig should take care of Brockaway.

  I don't know, it just seemed like the right thing to do.

  Ryder let Milton get away clean, then he split himself, right before the black-and-whites arrived.

  First, though, he took the Russian papers in the safe.

  Then he made sure to crack open the file cabinet and spread Whitney's files on Sullivan and Caribbean Holdings all over the room. After checking through the files, the cops eventually found out that, after Sully's death, his wife hadn't renewed his lease on the bar, but that the owners, WA Properties, had leased it to Keys Good Times, Inc., with the stated intention of making it into a strip joint.

  They also found what Ryder had showed me, that two Russians had applied for a liquor license to be used at that location. This alerted the FBI to possible mob activity, and Ryder later entered the picture "officially", making sure that Sully's connection to the whole thing was emphasized.

  Gradually, then, the investigation of his murder shifted in that direction, toward the Russians, away from me, and Ortega was finally out of my face.

  BK pulled through, and since he was the only known survivor of the bloodbath, he was heavily grilled by the cops. I'm told he put on a fine show for them.

  His story, which I'm sure Ryder had helped him with that night before he left, was that BK and his father were discussing a legit real estate deal with the Russians, that he was naturally unaware of any of their criminal activities.

  During this meeting, he said, a couple of armed Cubans came bursting in, shooting up the place, shouting "¡Viva Cuba libre!" Something about they knew there were Russians there and they were all pissed off over how the Russians and Castro ruined Cuba. For a couple of weeks afterward, everyone was on the lookout for gun-blasting Cubans.

  The cops ate it up. So did the papers.

  As soon as he recovered, though, BK resigned as mayor and left town. I don't know where he went.

  Rita divorced him and stayed here. She continues to live in the big house on William Street. I see her around town from time to time.

  I don't think she ever remarried.

  As for me, I'm off the grift for good. I got me a straight job running Mambo's sports book and bolita game, generally taking care of things when he's not around.

  Norma and I are back in her place and we've got this nest egg now. Sort of a little, I don't know … a little security … for the future.

  This time I swear I'm not going to blow it, I'm not going near any dice tables anywhere, but I am going to take care of the woman I love, the most wonderful woman in the world.

  Now, just in case you're wondering, I know the score here. I mean, I'm not stupid. I know there's an outside chance the Russians might eventually figure out what happened.

  Most likely they won't, but if they do, they'll probably come looking for me.

  And you know, I can't really blame them. They had big things cooking down here. They were set up pretty sweet, all ready to move into Cuba, until I derailed their whole deal.

  So Norma and I had a long, long talk about it. We talked about moving, like to Miami or somewhere, or maybe leaving the state altogether.

  But in the end, we just couldn't.

  This is our home.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  After thirty years as a professional musician (piano), Mike Dennis left Key West and moved to Las Vegas to become a professional poker player. In November 2010, his noir novel, The Take, was released by L&L Dreamspell. It's a story of human desperation set in Houston and New Orleans.

  His next book, Setup On Front Street, is the first in a series of Key West noir novels. The series, called Key West Nocturnes, will lift the veil on that town and reveal it as a true noir city, on a par with Los Angeles, New Orleans, or Miami.

  The second novel in the series, The Ghosts Of Havana, is now available as is the third book, Man-Slaughter. The fourth, The Guns Of Miami, will be coming in 2013.

  In February, 2011, his collection of noir short stories, Bloodstains On The Wall was released. In addition, Mike has had short stories published in A Twist Of Noir, Mysterical e, Slow Trains, Powder Burn Flash, and the 2009 Wizards Of Words Anthology.

  January, 2012 saw the debut of Temptation Town, a novelette, and the first installment in the new Jack Barnett / Las Vegas Series. The second entry, Hard Cash, also a novelette, is now available. The third book, a full novel called The Downtown Deal, is also currently available.

  In addition, Mike has an experimental rockabilly novel, Cadillac's Comin', a hard tale of the early days of rock & roll.

  In late 2010, Mike moved back to Key West, where he enjoys year-round island living with his wife Yleana, whom he married on a warm December night in 2012 on the rooftop of an apartment building in Havana, Cuba.

  http://mikedennisnoir.com

  Please leave a review on Amazon.

  OTHER BOOKS BY MIKE DENNIS

  The Key West Nocturnes Series

  SETUP ON FRONT STREET

  THE GHOSTS OF HAVANA

  MAN-SLAUGHTER

  THE GUNS OF MIAMI (coming soon)

  Available in digital and paperback

  The Jack Barnett/Las Vegas Series

  TEMPTATION TOWN

  HARD CASH

  THE DOWNTOWN DEAL

  Available in digital and paperback

  BLOODSTAINS ON THE WALL

  Three stories from the dark side

  Available in digital and paperback

  THE TAKE

  A novel of human desperation

  Available in digital and paperback

  CADILLAC'S COMIN'

  A rock & roll novel

  Available in digital only

  BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND

  THE DEEP BLUE EYES

  A Las Vegas noir short story

  Available in digital only

  THE SESSION

  A short story of broken dreams

  Available in digital only

  HERE IS AN EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW FROM

  THE GHOSTS OF HAVANA

  The second book in the Key West Nocturnes series

  by Mike Dennis

  NOW AVAILABLE

  THE GHOSTS OF HAVANA

  © Mike Dennis, 2011

  1

  BLAINE’S voice on the other end of the phone sounded urg
ent, out of breath.

  "Robbie, it's me. Listen. She's dead."

  My knees buckled. I had to sit down.

  "Dead? Dead?"

  I spoke the words, but I only heard a pathetic squeak, as though it were someone else's cartoonish babble coming off the TV. Like it was all made up.

  Blaine caught his breath. "We got there at ten of eleven, right on time. The joint was crowded, just like you said. We slipped back to her dressing room."

  He sparked a cigarette. I knew he needed it. As a matter of fact, I was going to need one myself here pretty quick.

  "Go on, already. What happened?"

  "Shit, man! We went back there and she … she …" He swallowed, then dialed his voice way down. "Her throat was cut, Robbie. Damn near took her head off."

  My stomach tightened into a hard knot.

  Was I really hearing this?

  Perching my cellphone between my ear and my shoulder, I grabbed at the fresh pack of cigarettes on the table. Made a couple of awkward stabs at opening it, but my trembling hands wouldn't let me tear off the thin cellophane strip. After a few fumbling seconds, I just ripped the damn thing wide open. The little white sticks flew all over the floor.

  I reached down for one by my shoe, made an attempt at dusting it off, and fired it up.

  Then I said, "Where's my money?"

  "It wasn't there. We looked as best we could."

  "What the fuck do you mean by that?"

  "Carlos wanted to leave right away, but I pulled him back. The stuff from her purse was scattered around on the floor, and we didn't see the money, so we split out the back door. We had to get out of there!"

  "So you left without the money?"

  "Man, we couldn't linger. She was lyin' there dead! She hadn't been found yet. There was blood all over the fuckin' place. We damn sure didn't want anybody walkin' in on us."

  "Who did it? Was it Victor?"

  "Hell, I don't know, man. But they're gonna think we did it for sure. I mean, people saw us. The bartender, one of the musicians backstage. They can ID us!"

  A quick shot of nicotine, then: "All right, all right, calm down. Nobody's gonna ID you. Just lay low for a day or two till I sort this out." I swiped a finger across the phone, ending the call.

  A suffocating stillness drew down over my living room, making it hard to catch a full breath. For a second there, it felt as if there were no hands on the clock. Like the whole world fell silent, flicking all the sound off, waiting for something.

  Or maybe I just went deaf for a minute. I didn't know.

  After a short, difficult drag on my cigarette, I walked over to the window. The winter night hung heavy over Key West, with thick clouds promising more unseasonable cold. A hard wind sliced through the coconut palms out in front of my house, twisting their soft fronds into stiff, angry silhouettes.

  A few blocks distant, the downtown lights of Duval Street barely glowed above tin rooftops. You can bet the night action would tail off once the ambulance and black-and-whites arrived. They'd cordon off the whole damn street in front of the Havana Club.

  Then all you'd have would be a shitload of confused partygoers running for their cars, the deadly calm of a silent cash register in their wake.

  Nothing like bloody murder to ruin a night's business.

  A draft slithered through the thin window pane, calling a damp chill into the room, the kind of chill that eats right through you if you're not ready for it. Gnaws at you, hacks away at you, laughs at you, gets right inside your head if you let it. Outsiders are always shocked when these brief little cold snaps sweep down on us, driving the temperature down into the fifties, but those of us who were born and raised here, we get it.

  And we're ready.

  I wasn't ready for what happened tonight, though, and Olivia damn sure wasn't ready for it either.

  I scrolled through my cellphone directory for Elena's number. Crushing out my cigarette, I punched it up and within moments, she answered. I switched to Spanish.

  "Elena, it's Robbie."

  "Hola, Rob —"

  "Get hold of yourself. I mean it. Tengo una mala noticia." A brief pause, giving her a second. "Olivia's dead."

  I'd never had to make this kind of call before. I wasn't prepared for the deathlike gasp crawling through the phone line. She struggled for words, anything.

  Instead, I spoke, deciding to leave out the details of the butchery of her sister.

  "She was murdered tonight. Down at the club."

  Finally, the strangled words came out. "Mur– murd– Robbie, quién … por qué … wh —"

  "I wish I knew, baby. But I will find out. That's a solemn promise. And when I do …"

  "¿D-Dónde está ahora?"

  "She's still in the dressing room at the club. Don't you go down there, though. It won't do any good. The place is probably crawling with cops by now. Lab guys. Everybody."

  She spoke through a tear-drenched voice. "Was … was it Victor?"

  "Maybe. I'm gonna find out."

  She sobbed long and loud, just like I knew she would. I let her have her cry.

  Eventually, though, her voice returned, and when it did, it came from the dirtiest part of her insides, where there were thoughts that she dared not even think.

  Where her most vile fantasies resided.

  Where we all go on rare occasions like this one.

  As she cursed Victor, her voice spat out like mucus mixed with snot and shitwater, lowdown, foul, dripping with venom. I could practically smell it on my end of the phone.

  "Yes, Robbie, find out. Find out and cut his fucking balls off! Will you do that?"

  "I'll take care of it, honey. You have my word on it."

  2

  THE drive downtown only took a couple of minutes, and just like I thought, the ambulance odd-angled itself to the curb outside the Havana Club. Cop cars everywhere, parked helter-skelter, choking off the entire street, drowning the storefront lights in an annoying wash of twirling red and blue flashers.

  A crowd milled around in front, craning their necks for a peek inside. Over their steady murmur, I could hear speculation on what had happened.

  'Murder' was the word I heard most.

  Blue-uniformed cops all over the damn place, standing around, holding back the crowd, running in and out of the club. They were ringing the immediate area with yellow tape when I got out of my car.

  I stole a glimpse through the window. No customers left inside.

  Then I heard, "Hey, there's the owner." from somewhere near the rear of the crowd. It was a kid who used to work for me a year or so back. "Hey, Robbie. What happened, man? They said someone got killed in there."

  Right away, about half a dozen people standing near this kid peeled off from the main crowd and rushed over to me. They surrounded me in about two seconds, peppering me with all kinds of questions and shit, but I couldn't deal with it right then. I mumbled something about not really knowing the story, then made my way through them to the door. There was tape across it.

  "Robbie." The voice rose behind me.

  I turned to see Ortega talking with a fellow cop, while jotting something down into a small notebook.

  He stopped writing, then pushed back the drape of his leather coat a little, showing his badge dangling around his neck. I glimpsed his piece buckled into a well-oiled shoulder rig.

  I had gone to high school with him. He'd been on the force nearly thirty years, the first twenty of which he was a real asshole. You know, running around playing at being a cop, just like he'd seen on TV. He had all the tough talk down.

  But it eventually cost him. One night, when he was playing big man in the bad part of town, he took a bullet and he almost didn't recover. It mellowed him out considerably.

  Sometime after that, he made lieutenant, and now, even though you don't want to be alone with him in an interrogation room, he bordered on being okay.

  "I got a call about this, Lieutenant. What the hell happened?"

  "It's pretty
bad, man. Somebody got your singer in her dressing room. Did an OJ on her. All with more than fifty people drinking and carrying on just a few feet away."

  "Any idea who did it?"

  "Not really. We're questioning everybody, though. Everybody who didn't go running out the minute we walked in."

  I pulled out my cigarette pack, shook one partway out, and offered it to him. He waved it off.

  "Yeah, well," I said, lighting one for myself, "somebody had to see something."

  I wasn't kidding anyone. We both knew that nobody was going to admit to seeing anything. The only ones left in there were my employees and the band, and they damn sure weren't going to step in this shit.

  Ortega ran a hand through thick mud-brown hair, straightening his frame. He was only average height, but like myself, very solidly built.

  He closed his notebook and returned it to his coat pocket. "This kind of thing doesn't usually happen down here, you know. Too bad it had to happen in your joint. It's gonna fuck up your whole weekend, probably."

  Fuck up the whole weekend, he says.

  Try the last two years, pal.

  The trap door opened on our local economy back then, and my ass fell right through it. Fewer tourists, fewer planes landing at the airport, fewer weekend warriors from Miami, fewer dollars in my pocket, not enough of every god-damned thing I need to stay above the waterline.

  Taxes go up.

  Cost of liquor goes up.

  Migraines come for dinner and stay all fucking night.

  Two years of low numbers, two years of increasing thievery by my employees, two years of eating shit, and no relief in sight.

  The weekend, he says.

  I pointed toward the front door. "Is she still in there?"