In the dim light, I could see that the man was a bearded fellow of average build. He was holding a small lantern and staring down at something he held in his hand – a picture maybe. The woman was tall – almost as tall as the man – and leggy, but I couldn’t tell much more that that. The only other feature I could detect, and what caught my attention most about her, were the two gun-holster straps that ran around her shoulders and across the back of her form-fitted white t-shirt.
I pushed the bedroom door open with a foot, my gun still held out in front of me, my finger on the trigger. The door creaked on its hinges as it swung open into the room. I could see the bearded man glance over to the door and the woman start to turn around toward me.
“Get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head,” I said.
It was weird hearing the words come out of my mouth. The uttered phrase was something I never thought I’d say. I sounded like such a bad guy. I guess now I was a bad guy. I had to be, I tried to justify it in my mind. The events of the day had made me desperate, and the events of the past year had hardened me. I felt like Jean Valjean stealing bread to feed my family. But I was determined to do what I had to do to save my wife, whatever it took.
I walked further into the room, clicking my flashlight on to get a better view. A small single bed lined one wall. A few scattered tables sat beside a long window that faced out toward the beach; otherwise, the space was largely devoid of furnishings.
The bearded man and woman knelt in the center of the room as I had commanded.
I walked over to the pair and pulled a handgun from the man’s waistband, sticking it into my own. Then I moved to the woman. I could see now that she was a young, very attractive Hispanic woman. I reached down and pulled the two handguns from the holsters strapped across her chest. I felt my hand brush against an ample bosom shoved snuggly into her tight t-shirt.
“You don’t want to do this,” she said as I moved away from them and set the guns down on the bed.
“I know,” is what I wanted to say. And, “What should I do next?” was my desired follow-up question, but I resisted. “Yeah…why not?” Was what I said instead, in the deepest, most “I don’t-give-a-shit” tone I could muster as I tried to play the badass. I figured the best thing I had going for me was that neither of these people knew me, my background, or that I certainly was no badass. “I’ve got nothing to lose,” I said, trying to bluff them.
“You’ve got everything to lose and you don’t even know it,” the woman responded coolly and matter-of-factly.
“Lie down face-first on the floor and put your hands behind your back,” I commanded, trying to ignore her return threat.
I began to look around for something to tie their hands with. My plan, which was coming together as I stood there, was to incapacitate the two strangers by taking their weapons and tying their hands, and then take them out to the road and tell them to take a hike.
I had to admit that it wasn’t much of a plan, but I wasn’t exactly expecting to find myself in such a situation.
The two strangers did as they were told. “You’re going to get yourself killed for a couple guns?” the woman asked. “It’s not worth it. Just let us go and there won’t be any trouble.”
There were several planters hanging from the ceiling by the window. I walked over and ripped them down, using the rope that had held them to ceiling hooks to quickly bind the pair’s hands.
Once they were tied up, I felt I could speak more freely. “I’m not a bad person,” I said. “My group and I have just encountered some bad luck.”
“Who hasn’t?” the bearded man scoffed.
“Shut up,” the woman said to him.
“Listen,” I said, for some reason feeling that I needed to justify my actions to these two people who I didn’t even know, “I didn’t make it all the way down here from Chicago just to let my wife die because I can’t afford some fucking insulin,” I said with a bit more venom than I intended. I was overcome with the emotion of the situation and what I’d gone through over the past several days. That, paired with the intense pressure of my wife facing a life or death situation, had me a little rattled. “I’m sorry I had to take your guns, but just know that they’re going to help keep someone alive.”
“Cubs or Sox?” the woman asked after a few seconds.
“What?” I said, bewildered by the question.
“Cubs or Sox? It’s a simple question,” the woman said, turning her head to the side to speak while watching me from the corner of her eye.
“Uh…Sox,” I said, still somewhat confused.
“Well that’s a relief,” she breathed. “For a minute I thought we were in trouble.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the moment of levity she offered, and found myself surprised that she could be so calm as to find some bit of humor in such a situation. It made me realized that even after all that had happen to the world and what society had become, we were all still people linked by a common background. Her question struck a cord in me, and it reminded me that we weren’t so far removed from our former lives that we couldn’t be united by that past and even by small talk regarding sports teams that no longer existed.
“Your wife’s a diabetic?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” I nodded.
“Type one or type two?”
“One,” I said.
“My father was type one,” she said. “He had the pump…or did until the flu hit at least. What’s your wife use?”
“She had a pump, but it broke a while back. She’s been on shots ever since.”
“Tough,” the woman said. “Got to be hard for a diabetic these days.”
Her voice was hard, direct, but yet there was a hint of compassion in her words.
“More than you know,” I answered, sitting down on the bed.
“Those are my lucky guns,” the woman said, looking over to where I’d set the handguns on the bed. She was silent, and then said, “Tell you what, you give me back my guns and let us go, and I’ll get you your insulin.”
“Huh,” I snorted. “How are you going to do that? You know how expensive insulin is these days?”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “But I have connections here. Getting insulin might be hard for you, but it’s not hard for me.”
It wasn’t necessarily the words she was saying, but how she said them that made me believe her. I reasoned that this woman was either extremely stupid – not realizing the danger of her predicament – or tremendously confident; and I was banking on the latter. And if she was that confident, I figured that there must be good reason for it. There was a certain assurance in the way she talked, and a sort of poise and intelligence in the way she spoke her words that her beauty belied. Sometimes you could just tell by people’s manner of speaking whether what they were saying was true or not. And there, in the relative darkness of the small bedroom, the tone of this woman’s voice and her cool, self-assuredness spoke volumes.
“Could you get us a boat and fuel too?” I asked, deciding to press my luck. I felt that if insulin was that easy for the woman to procure, then maybe I had a chance. I mean really, what did I have to lose?
“I can handle that too,” she said, not skipping a beat. “But if you want all that, you have to help me with something.”
I thought about it for a minute. I decided that she might be pulling my leg, but I decided it was worth a couple guns that might only buy us little more than half a vial of insulin to find out.
“Okay,” I said, hopeful, but not overly optimistic at the possibility of getting all that I’d asked for. “Name it.”
CHAPTER 12
Ava was feeling upbeat, almost giddy. They were emotions that she hadn’t felt for such a long time that they almost seemed foreign to her. One by one, the pieces of her well laid out puzzle just kept falling into place. It was as though everything that was happening was preordained by fate. Even when she wasn’t trying, the stars kept aligning. She had her lucky guns back, she ha
d a new hired man, Bushy was on his way north to align the last star she needed in place, and this afternoon, she would be meeting with the heads of Little Havana to finalize everything.
The encounter at the Miami Beach apartment building – even though everything had worked out better than she herself could have planned – had made her a little jumpy and slightly more aware that she should be taking every precaution possible before involving herself in such meetings. The plan was too far along now to let one tiny slipup ruin everything. Therefore, she spent nearly 30 minutes driving the streets of Miami, ensuring that she wasn’t being tailed, before pulling up in front of the pure-white, art deco-style boutique hotel where the heads of the Little Havana enclave worked and resided.
A beefy-looking Cuban in khaki pants and a tight-fitting blue polo shirt was there to greet her, opening her SUV’s door before she could even reach the handle. She wasn’t used to such service and chivalry these days, although she couldn’t help but notice how he ogled her glistening gams as she swept them out of the vehicle and stood. She gave a slight wriggle as she pulled the skin-tight, electric-blue skirt that had ridden up slightly during the drive, down to a more respectable – although still revealing – length.
Ava wore black peep-toe pumps, and a lose-fitting, sheer-armed white blouse to accent the skirt. Her only accessory was a mid-sized black-leather handbag in which she carried her lucky guns and two spare magazines.
She felt that her outfit provided her with the advantage of sex appeal while maintaining the attire befitting a businesswoman. The skirt screamed sex while the wispy-white blouse whimpered sweet little church girl, and the pumps gave her height, adding not only to those lengthy, yet shapely legs, but to the power and confidence she felt growing inside her.
The incident at the apartment building the other day – and how she’d handled it – had only acted to solidify the poise with which she now carried herself and fortified the determination to see her arrangements through to fruition. Her belief that her path was the correct one was impenetrable now, and she was assured that with the help of her contacts in Little Havana, it was destined to be fulfilled.
Another man – similarly dressed but not so beefy – greeted her beside the entry steps to the building. “This way, please,” he gestured to her with a hand and then led her up a short flight of steps that took her inside the hotel’s lobby entrance.
This man also looked to be of Cuban descent and was dressed in blue dress pants and a purple polo shirt. Ava followed him as he guided her through the stylishly-furnished lobby and over to a set of elevators. As she walked, she noticed a set of pocket doors at the far end of the lobby that opened into a small room. A blue neon sign above the doors and that matched the color of Ava’s skirt, read: “Lounge.” Inside, she could see several men and women sitting at the bar, talking, laughing, and drinking.
It was almost as if nothing had changed from years ago.
The rest of the lobby’s interior was dimly lit, the lights turned down for the evening. It was cool inside from the air conditioning; and for a moment, Ava lost herself, pretending that she was back in the Miami of her youth.
For all her confidence though, Ava felt the nerves in the pit of her stomach. They reminder her of that naive, foolish, sixteen-year-old girl she’d been when she’d walked these same streets nearly a decade ago. She hadn’t even eaten before coming, being too nervous to contemplate food. She kept reminding herself of how she’d matured and who she was now.
There was the soft ding of a bell and the elevator door slid open. She followed the man in the purple polo shirt inside the elevator and watched as he inserted a key into a slot on the elevator’s indicator panel beside which was located an engraved “P” – which Ava took to stand for “Penthouse” – and turned it.
The elevator began to move slowly, smoothly, almost imperceptibly upward. Ava watched the floor indicators light up and then darken as they reached and then passed each level. They rode in silence up past the fourth floor until the “P” illuminated on the panel and the elevator stopped. The doors slid open and the man stepped out into a hallway and turned to face Ava, gesturing to an open door at the end of the hallway.
“They’re waiting for you inside,” was all he said.
She left him standing there before the now closed elevator and walked steadily – trying not to rush her entrance in excited anticipation, but at the same time not wanting to dawdle – toward the end of the hallway, reminding herself the whole time to continue to breathe.
Ava hesitated only slightly as she reached the penthouse suite’s open door, largely out of habit. She was used to doing a quick, yet cautious scan of any room before entering it to look for signs of potential danger.
As she examined the room, she saw that doorway entered into the living room of the palatial penthouse suite. At the far end of the room, she noted floor to ceiling windows and closed French doors leading out to a rooftop landing where heavily-cushioned patio furniture sat in abundance.
Inside the living room, a huge mirrored bar was set near one wall, its top covered with an array of assorted cocktail glasses, a silver ice bucket, shakers, and mixing accessories. Behind it, the wall was lined with dozens of bottles of alcohol, mixes, and liqueurs. A large portion of the opposite wall contained a massive plasma screen television. Beside this was a wide arched doorway led to the rest of the suite.
The center of the room had largely been cleared of furniture and replaced with a large conference table. Comfortable black-leather office chairs ringed the table. A solitary silver urn, overflowing with fresh fruit, sat in its center.
Adjacent to the table, two men – both of Cuban descent, both in their early-30s – sat on a voluminous white sofa. Drinks were set before them on a glass coffee table.
Ava recognized them both.
They rose from the sofa and approached as she entered the room.
“Ava,” a tall man with cropped black hair and dressed in a khaki suit and sporting a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once, greeted her. “Good to see you.” He held his arms open wide.
“Good to see you, Rico,” Ava smiled.
They hugged and kissed both checks.
Then the other man, a shorter, stockier man who almost bordered on pudgy, wearing a mauve suit with blue shoes, stepped up and the greeting was repeated.
“It’s been a long time, Ava. I’m sorry to hear about your father,” he smiled sadly at her. “He was a good man.”
“Thank you, Pepe,” Ava nodded.
“Would you care for a drink?” the first man, Rico, asked.
“No, thank you,” Ava shook her head.
“Then please…” he motioned to one of the leather chairs at the conference table, “…have a seat.”
They all sat down at the table, Rico and Pepe on one side, Ava on the other. They exchanged a few more pleasantries before Rico took a breath and said, “Okay, now down to business. Your boss…”
“He’s not my boss…he’s my partner.” Ava quickly corrected him. While Jake would certainly have disagreed with her interpretation of their relationship, Ava didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings with others about who was calling the shots or whether she had the ability to negotiate or make decisions that affected their organization.
“Well, whatever he is, he’s being unreasonable,” Rico continued. “He expects too much too fast.”
“Don’t get us wrong,” Pepe jumped in. Ava remembered Pepe as always the little peacemaker in the neighborhood, never wanting any trouble. But sometimes his willingness to please got in the way and he talked when he should have listened. “We’re willing to play ball here…because of you,” he smiled. “But this guy, he has to understand that he’s the new kid on the block here, and while we respect what he’s been able to do in the brief time he’s been here, we were also the ones who backed off to let him do it…and that was really only because of you and your long-term plan for things.”
Now it was Ava�
��s turn. She wasn’t the little girl across the street anymore, and she wanted these two to understand that before they began thinking that they could call the shots for her like they did in the old days.
“First of all, we were going to take Miami with or without your compliance,” Ava assured them. “Your willingness to go along with the process just made it easier, and it allowed us not to have to kill you…that’s all; and I appreciate that. But don’t deceive yourselves. Miami would have been ours eventually; it just might have taken us a little longer without your cooperation.”
The two men sat silently, surprised and maybe somewhat miffed that the little chicken-legged girl they once knew had not only grown up to become a beautiful woman, but an apparently intelligent, confident, and powerful one as well.
“It might have taken you longer than you think,” Rico eyed her.
“Maybe, but that’s not the point. The point is that we allowed you to retain control of your neighborhood, something we didn’t let anyone else do. And now you have to pay to keep it that way…at least for the time being. Just think of it as an investment in your future, a future that tends to look a hell of a lot brighter in a very short period of time if you play ball. Second of all, I don’t think you’re the ones calling the shots for Little Havana. Am I correct?”
The two men looked at one another and then back at Ava. She stared at them patiently, unperturbed.
“We understand what you’re saying, Ava,” said Rico. “Don’t get us wrong, we appreciate what you’ve done for us so far, and we look forward to continuing our relationship with your outfit. You’re right though, we aren’t calling the shots. We help, and we advise; but the final decisions don’t fall to us. You’ll have to explain it to the boss.”
The Systemic Series - Box Set Page 90