The Queen of Miami

by Heidi Lowe

  Her powers of perception were second to none when it came to business (not so much lately, however), but in matters of the heart she was blind. Could never read a situation properly, and all the signs went unnoticed. Only she could possibly go two years without knowing that one of her closest friends, who also happened to be her part-time lover, was in love with her.

  Now she felt worse than she had before. “Olivia, I'm sorry–”

  Olivia shoved her hand away, feeling neither comforted nor soothed by it. “What's there to be sorry for? I'm the one foolish enough to fall in love with my fuck buddy.” Her eyes grew cloudy, like the sky about to burst with a heavy rainfall. “I kept waiting, waiting for you to one day turn around and see that we were meant to be together. It was silly, I know, but I'm a romantic. Best friends becoming lovers, I believe in all of that. Believed in all of that. And then I saw the way you looked at that woman, and I knew... I knew. I could be in your life, by your side, for eternity and you would never look at me like that.”

  Tears fell, causing her mascara to run and blacken her eyes.

  “What look? I didn't give her any look,” Willa protested, nonplussed. Wasn't that the sort of thing one would remember doing?

  “The fact that you didn't even know you were doing it says it all.”

  “What does it say?” Willa questioned. Why couldn't she stop talking in riddles and just come out with it already? What look?

  But any answer she sought wasn't going to come from Olivia. “Don't insult me by making me spell it out for you, Willa. That's just cruel.” With that she hastened from the room, wiping away all traces of her frailty from her face, and leaving a stunned, perplexed Willa.

  Willa remained in the room a moment longer, gathering her thoughts and coming no closer to figuring out what had just happened, and what this supposed look she'd given to Layke apparently signified. She couldn't remember staring at her in any special way; and even if she had, was it cause for Olivia's histrionics? It was probably a yearning look, one she'd given to many women over the years. It didn't make any of them more special than the others.

  Except... Layke was special. Annoyingly so. So special in fact, that despite insulting Willa, and yes, upsetting her with the criminal comments a few nights prior, Layke and little more was all she had been able to think about. They'd made love, and Layke hadn't resisted. They'd cuddled, and Layke had allowed it. All this after Willa broke into her home. It could have ended so badly, with her dead or in jail. But she'd taken the risk, praying that this time she'd read the situation properly. Luckily, it had paid off handsomely. If reality hadn't dragged them battered and bruised from their wonderful fantasy, she would have probably stayed the night – her first ever overnight stay.

  She pushed all thoughts of Layke to the back of her mind once she reentered the main club. Total clarity was what she needed now. Guy and Little Johnny were waiting for her at the bar, Little Johnny finishing off a BLT sandwich.

  “You're going to ride with Little J. Me, Ghost and Asher will head out before you, canvass the area, make sure we're not walking into anything. Can't be too safe with the Italians,” Guy said, an austere haze to his expression.

  “That won't be necessary. Everything will be fine. They're not going to try anything. That would be stupid,” Willa said with more confidence than she actually felt. With all the bad blood between her family and Ambrisi, anarchy was almost to be expected. Maybe Trent was right; maybe her power trip was clouding her vision, pushing her onto a treacherous path.

  What would Dad do? she asked herself. Well, for starters they wouldn't have been in this situation had her father still been around to oversee things. Her belief was that his death had been the impetus that started the war. Someone, though she still hadn't figured out who, had seen an opportunity and taken it, effectively ending a twenty-year partnership overnight.

  “Is your favorite redhead going to be joining us this time? It might be better for all of us if she is tailing,” Guy said.

  “She doesn't do that anymore,” she said, then added quickly, so as not to arouse suspicion and unwanted questions about her certainty, “or so it seems. We don't need her.” That sounded much more personal than she'd intended. Guy stared at her with unreadable eyes, but made no comment on the subject.

  “You strapped?” was Little Johnny's first and only contribution to the conversation.

  She lifted up her T-shirt just a fraction at the side, showing them her piece – a Glock G42, clipped onto the waistband of her jeans. It wasn't her favorite weapon; she preferred something with better range and more power. But this wasn't a combat mission, and walking in heavily armed, she surmised, wouldn't have sent the right message.

  Little Johnny finished his BLT in two big bites, then they all headed out. The air smelled like smoke. Little Johnny opened the door for her, and upon seeing the pile of empty potato chip packets and chocolate bar wrappers on the seat, he quickly cleared everything off, stashing it on the back seat.

  “Sorry, boss,” he grumbled abashedly.

  “You keep a terrible diet, dude,” Willa said, laughing to herself as she stepped into the car. “Don't I pay you enough to eat better than that?”

  The twenty-minute drive to the rendezvous point was a quiet one, as it often was with Little Johnny, but this time Willa welcomed it. She didn't know what her opening gambit to Ambrisi would be, though she knew it had to be good. She also had big doubts that anything she said or offered would be enough to get him back on their side, though she hadn't expressed these doubts to her people. They were already questioning her judgment – she didn't want to give them more reason to do so.

  “We're here,” Little Johnny announced as they pulled into a relatively busy playground in a commercial area close to the beach. It was the perfect place to meet if you didn't plan on killing each other and getting caught.

  “We're ten minutes early. Have a smoke if you want,” she said.

  Little Johnny lit up while she stood beside him, leaning against the car, enjoying the breeze as it hit her face, and the smell of burning tobacco as it filtered through her nostrils. She wasn't a smoker but loved the smell of cigarettes, only too happy to enjoy them by proxy through their smokers. The suggestion of the cigarette was for her benefit more than Little Johnny's.

  “Hey, got a joke for you,” she said. It was their thing, something they did on their journeys; she would find the silliest jokes online and tell them, knowing it would be the only time he ever laughed. “Why did the cow cross the road?”

  The punchline never came. Willa and Little Johnny both looked up at the same time as a car came screeching down the road in their direction. As the blacked-out windows rolled halfway down, Willa felt Johnny shove her to the ground. And by the time he was able to pull out his handgun, a hail of bullets were already flying in their direction.

  Willa scrambled to pull her gun from her waistband, and felt a brief stab of pain in her arm. She didn't have time to examine it. She slid beneath the Hummer, aimed as best she could and fired in the direction of the vehicle, emptying the magazine just as the car sped off again. All around her children were screaming and running for cover.

  Everything happened in seconds, though seemed to last a lifetime. The damage, however, had already been done. Little Johnny tumbled to the ground in front of her, a pool of blood spreading to meet her beneath the car. Then she felt her own pain again, this time much more severe, and her body grew cold, so cold. The screaming became faint as the world faded into darkness.

  “Sorry about that,” Deputy Chief Owen said to Layke, as he put the phone back on the receiver. She sat across his desk, where she had been waiting patiently for several minutes while he wrapped up his conversation with his superior.

  “No problem. Everything all right?”

  Her dad sighed heavily, leaned back in his chair, loosened his tie. The lines on his face were more pronounced lately, she observed, visually adding ten years on to his fifty-eight. He always seemed older when
he was at work.

  “Nothing I don't hear every day. The chief's on my ass about something. It'll pass.” He didn't sound optimistic. “What did you want to see me about, Layke?”

  “There's something I've been meaning to ask you, something that doesn't quite add up. It's about the massacre in the warehouse?”

  “Layke, don't do it.”

  She looked startled. “Do what?”

  “Whatever it is you're thinking of doing. It's not our case anymore. You need to let it go.”

  “Just hear me out. When the ballistics report came back it showed that all eight bodies had the same slugs in them.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “All eight, including the other guy, the di Blasios' guy. Doesn't that sound odd to you?”

  “So he got caught in the crossfire. So what?”

  “The autopsy report showed that he was shot in the back twice as well as in his chest. But here's the thing, the two in the chest were caused by a different weapon, the Italians' weapons. At close range. If the Italians were that close to shoot him, that would mean that they were close enough to the rest of the opposing gang. So why is Brad Gunner the only casualty on the di Blasio's side?”

  “Maybe they sent him in ahead to negotiate. When they heard gunshots, they went in after.”

  Layke leaned forward, now truly pumped. “I thought about that too. But why the bullets in the back? Wouldn't he have already been down by the time his team busted in? And why would the Italians shoot him knowing he wasn't there alone, and the others must have been close by?”

  Her father shook his head, a wry smile teasing his lips. “I'm guessing you have an answer for that. So out with it.”

  “What if he wasn't caught in the crossfire? What if he was executed by his own team?”

  “For what reason?”

  She shrugged, slightly deflated. “That I haven't figured out yet. But I'm working on it.”

  “Well stop. This is the FBI's case now. You know how much they hate people weaseling in on their cases.”

  “This was my case,” Layke said fervently.

  “I didn't say it was fair. Everything's ours until it's not anymore. I'm afraid that's the way the game works.”

  “And you're all right with that?” She narrowed her eyes at him, both filled with the same reproach that resonated in her voice. This wasn't like her father. In the last couple of years he'd come across less passionate and more complaisant when it came to work. It was as if the fight had gone from him, as though every day he simply went through the motions.

  “Doesn't matter one iota what I think. You do this as long as me, you learn to live with it. Move on. Not like there aren't plenty more dead bodies to play with.”

  “So what are you saying, I just walk away, even though I might find something useful to the case?”

  “That's exactly what I'm saying. If it makes you feel any better, the FBI probably considered what you're suggesting weeks ago. It wouldn't be the first time gang members have turned on each other. Who knows what that beef was about?”

  She left his office feeling deflated and dissatisfied, and more than a little affronted by her father's blasé attitude.

  Maybe he's right, maybe the Feds figured this out already, she mused as she returned to her department. As soon as she stepped into the room, Corman shoved her blazer at her.

  “We gotta go. Just got a call about a shooting at Fairmont playground. Two fatalities.”

  “Oh God, I hope it's not a kid,” Layke said as she hurried after him, trying to keep up while simultaneously pulling on her blazer.

  “Don't know about that. The officer did mention something about the di Blasio girl, though.”

  The blood drained from Layke's face as the elevator doors slammed shut. She gawked in horror at her partner, as though by looking at him what he'd said would change.

  “Willa di Blasio?” The words could have come from another mouth, not her own. They sounded so hollow, so far away. There was only one di Blasio girl, only one that mattered. The question was irrelevant, but she needed to ask, to be sure.

  “That's what I heard,” Corman said.

  FIFTEEN

  “Fuck!” It was the third time Willa had uttered this since arriving at the hospital. A searing pain shot through her left arm when she moved it. She twisted her head to look at the damage again; a dressing covered the wound, and a patch of blood had seeped through the fabric. She turned away again, disgusted by the sight of her own blood.

  “She's back to normal I see,” Guy said, having just stepped into her hospital room. With him were Noah and two of their crew members, Ghost and Asher.

  “Hey, sis, how are you?” Noah said. “Does it hurt?”

  “What do you think?” she asked tiredly and grumpily. “I got shot in the arm, for God's sake.”

  Noah didn't appear to take offense at her tetchiness.

  “You know it's pretty much just a scratch, don't you?” Guy pointed out. “Didn't even hit a muscle. Someone's looking after you.”

  “The only person who was looking out for me was Little Johnny. How's he doing? Have you guys seen him already?”

  A sombre, melancholy shadow drifted across the faces of the four men in the room. They looked between each other, everyone refusing to meet Willa's gaze. She saved them the trouble of delivering the news. She knew those looks, had seen them several times in her twenty-eight years. They'd lost another soldier.

  “Goddamn it!” she shouted, and her arm hurt again. It must have been the painkillers that prompted them, but tears escaped, and she shielded her face with her hand, crying behind it.

  “I'm sorry, Willa. He was dead before the paramedics arrived,” Guy explained.

  It always hurt to lose one of her guys, but Little Johnny's death stung more than any before him. Especially as she'd escaped with nothing more than a graze. Such an injustice.

  “To get to the udder side,” she said to no one. She laughed, her eyes moist, her nose runny, then said it again. The blank faces of the men surrounding her bed only made it more funny. She didn't believe in the afterlife, or Heaven, or Hell; but she knew that wherever Little Johnny was, he would appreciate hearing the punchline. So what if everyone in the room thought she had lost it.

  “I've already called his wife,” Ghost said.

  “Was anyone else hit?” Willa asked. The pang in her heart for her loss had the effect of numbing the pain in her arm now.

  “A little girl,” Noah said, eyes downcast. “Caught a stray bullet in the neck. She didn't make it.”

  Willa swallowed, but the feeling of nausea in her stomach wouldn't shift. Every breath she took then was done bitterly, furiously. Getting shot at, though it had never happened to her until now, was a part of the life she lived. It came with the territory. Every day presented a new day to become target practice. Little Johnny had known it too. But this innocent kid hadn't signed up for the life, and now she was dead. Two lives taken and nothing achieved. Although the playground hadn't been her idea, she should have chosen a different location. This was on her.

  Suddenly her face contorted into something inhuman. “I want Ambrisi's head.”

  Her voice sent a shiver down the spines of the four men.

  The ride over to the hospital was one of the longest Layke had ever experienced, and not surprisingly, the most harrowing. Everything Corman said went in through one ear and out the other.

  The car hadn't fully stopped outside the hospital before she jumped out and raced inside to confirm what she feared about Willa. The ball in her throat wouldn't lodge, only grew bigger, thicker. If she'd been in her right mind she would have dialed it back, at least made an effort to appear detached. Detectives dealt with dead people all the time – what made this one so special? But she wasn't in her right mind, and this wasn't just anybody.

  As she dashed across the hospital corridor to the reception desk, Corman hurrying to catch up to her, she couldn't help but think about the lost opportunities. Over before it h
ad even begun. She wasn't ready to say goodbye. They hadn't gotten to know each other properly. Their last encounter was contentious, with Willa storming out of her apartment, mad at her, unaware that she didn't mean the things she'd said. How could life have been so cruel?

  She practically shoved her badge in the receptionist's face. “We're here about the victims of the shooting.” She tried to say more, to get something concrete out of the woman, but her tongue wouldn't form the right words, and her brain didn't know what the right words were.

  Corman stepped in. Good old, objective, non-invested Corman who still managed to look somewhat cheerful given the circumstances. This was just a regular day for him.

  “We heard there were two fatalities. Can you confirm who they were?”

  A sadness enveloped the receptionist's face. “One guy was dead on arrival. And the girl, she died in theater.”

  The world began to spin around her. She gripped onto the desk to support herself, afraid she would collapse due to dizziness. It was just as she'd feared: Willa was dead.

  “The lady who was shot is awake, if you wanted to see her?” the receptionist added hopefully.

  Layke wanted to sit down, wanted to tell Corman to go ahead without her while she hung back and mourned a woman she barely knew, but had meant a lot more to her than she'd realized.

  “Come on, Owen. Let's go talk to her, see if she knows anything,” Corman said, destroying her plans to wallow in her sadness.

  Her body trembled, her heart ached, her feet felt numb as she trekked along the corridors. The last thing she wanted was to see survivors. It was as if their survival was there to mock and tease her, to remind her of what she'd lost. She hated everything for the two minute walk to the room, and she just wanted to sit in a dark corner and cry. So when Corman knocked on the door, didn't wait for a reply and entered, she walked in with her head down, hoping to hide her distress from the survivor.

  “I was wondering when you guys would show up.”

  Layke looked up. There she was. Not some random woman she had no connection to, but Willa di Blasio, as alive as she had been the last time she'd seen her. Although the smile didn't reach her face, it spread throughout her body. She let out the breath she was holding, and finally noticed the other people in the room: two of the di Blasio brothers and two others she'd seen a couple of times around Yum Yums.