by Alex Segura
Pete nodded. He felt embarrassed, but not totally guilty. Drinking was good at eliminating feelings of shame—for a while, at least. He took another sip, finishing the beer, before talking.
“It’s fine,” he said. “We’re drunk.”
“No, it’s not fine,” she said, looking at him. “My boyfriend is dead. My father is dead. And I’m kissing some random person—who, yes, did very brave things today—but nonetheless.…No. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Pete said. He really didn’t care. His head was buzzing and he’d already forgotten the kiss itself. But he did feel a lingering wave of discomfort.
She coughed awkwardly and sipped her beer.
“You’re pissed now, aren’t you?” she said, putting the bottle on the table in front of the couch.
“Why would I be pissed?” Pete said, almost annoyed. “Leave it to me to hit on the girl who’s been tortured for days. I’m an asshole. I’m sorry. I thought I was better at life than I guess I am.”
Kathy laughed for a few seconds.
“Dude, it’s fine,” she said. “This was not the first, nor will it be the last time I awkwardly make out with someone after one-too-many drinks. It happens.”
Pete leaned back on the couch and felt his eyelids drooping.
“Yeah.”
“Any other decent music in this place?”
Pete smiled. He got up and started toward the bathroom.
“Pick something out,” he said. “I’m going to get ready for bed.”
He flipped on the bathroom light and smiled at Kathy as the door closed slowly. He could feel his head begin to hurt. He sat down on the cold bathroom tile and rubbed his eyes slowly. The cool floor felt good against his body. He wanted to stay there forever.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Pete awoke to pots clanging. He turned and saw Kathy, on the other side of the sofa-bed, curled up with the covers bunched up around her. Pete looked up to see Mike preparing himself some breakfast—probably his usual eggs and toast. The room was slowly filling with light. It was early. Pete looked himself over. He felt slightly rested, but still groggy and out of sorts.
He sat up and scratched his head. It was probably a little after seven. They’d have to either hitch a ride with Mike to the TriRail station or get a cab to see Broche downtown. Pete was leaning toward the cab. Lugging around a bag stuffed with money on public transport was not ideal.
“Yo,” Mike said as Pete stood up and started to stretch.
“Good morning,” Pete said.
“Get any sleep?”
“A little,” Pete said. He wasn’t sure what Mike was implying. He remembered the awkward kiss and then changing and passing out. He felt guilty again. He tried to ignore it, and instead shrugged at Mike. He was surprised he wasn’t hung over.
“I’m gonna take a shower,” Pete said. He stepped into Mike’s tiny bathroom after collecting his clothes from the day before from around Mike’s floor. He could tell his friend was upset. He hadn’t considered how Mike felt about last night’s events. His best friend had run off with his car, nearly gotten himself killed, and come back with a strange woman. Instead of silently going to sleep and being thankful, they’d probably been noisy and had drunk most of Mike’s beer. Classy. He hadn’t thought about Mike. The beer was cold and the release of conversation and music was needed, but with the clarity of morning came a sense of shame for Pete. He decided to apologize.
The shower was quick and hot. Pete thought about the news report he’d watched the night before. They didn’t report any casualties. That meant Contreras could still be alive. He knew where Pete lived. A cold chill ran up his spine, despite the scalding shower.
Pete got out abruptly and toweled himself off. He changed into yesterday’s clothes quickly and opened the door. Kathy was on the other side. She seemed surprised.
“Oh,” she said. “I thought you’d run out to get coffee or something.”
“No,” Pete said. He wasn’t sure how to act around Kathy. She had seemed understanding about their awkward kiss, but that didn’t mean anything. People get retroactively weird about stuff like that, Pete thought. He stepped to the side and let her into the bathroom. “All yours.”
“Thanks,” she said as she slinked in and closed the door behind her.
Mike was in his room, already dressed for work and leaning over his computer. He was shutting down. Pete rapped on the door. Mike looked at him.
“Think we can hitch a ride to the TriRail? We’re gonna try to clear the air with Broche,” Pete said.
Mike closed his laptop and turned to Pete.
“I’m late already, so, no.” Mike said, not meeting Pete’s eyes. “What are you going to tell Broche?”
“The truth.”
“The truth?” Mike said, spitting out the words. “That’ll go over great.”
“Mike,” Pete said, raising his arms in surrender. “What do you suggest we do, then?”
“It’s not about ‘we’—it never was,” Mike said, moving past Pete and into the living room. “This is all about you, man. You’re just dragging us along with you because we’re stupid enough to still be your friends. You stole my fucking car, got into God knows what, and then come back here—you were on the fucking news, bro. All over it. You should be in jail now. Instead, you come here to hide out and think you can have a casual chat with the police about how you left the scene of the crime and basically ran some dude over. Great thinking, man. Grade-A planning on your part. You’re really on a fucking roll. You know—I’ve tried to be patient with you. You’re like my brother, but you keep fucking up and doing the exact opposite of what makes sense. You have no job, you can’t go back to your apartment. You’ve lost your mind. I don’t even know what to tell you anymore, and that makes me really sad.”
Pete followed him to the door.
“You don’t mean that,” he said.
“Like hell I don’t,” Mike said, turning to face Pete. “Explain how any of this is not your fault. Please. Enlighten me.”
Pete’s shoulders sagged. He could hear Kathy exiting the bathroom and hovering behind them.
“I’m sorry.”
Mike ignored the apology and opened the door. He turned around briefly.
“Keep me out of this,” Mike said, his tone low and calm but pulsing with anger. “Do whatever you need to do, but do not—I repeat—do not talk about me to the police. I don’t want to see either of you here when I come back.”
“You’re right,” Pete said. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I can say or do.”
Mike didn’t respond.
He turned around and closed the door as he walked out.
“He’ll calm down,” Kathy said. “Just let him blow off some steam.”
“No,” Pete said, heading toward the window opposite the front door in the living room. “I have to talk to him.”
Pete opened the window and saw Mike—across the street, his Focus parked near the curb where Kathy and Pete had left it the night before—getting into his car. Pete waved and yelled Mike’s name, but got no reaction. He heard Mike start the car engine and his heart sank. He began to step back from the window, but lingered for a second, hoping Mike would have a sudden change of heart. Maybe he forgot something, Pete thought.
Pete winced at the intense flash and grabbed his ears.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Pete knew he was screaming. He felt his throat burning and vibrating as his fists banged on the window and the wall. He felt his body begin to shake as he fell to his knees. He saw Kathy run up to the window and cover her mouth in shock. Pete felt himself lean over, his palms on the carpet of Mike’s apartment, trying to stop himself from collapsing fully. He tried to get up. Maybe Mike was alive, he thought. Maybe he survived. Maybe it was someone else inside that car. His peripheral vision picked up Kathy darting away from the window. He saw smoke rising in the early morning air. He couldn’t bring himself to look o
ut again. No. If he didn’t, Mike would be OK. This was a nightmare, he thought. He was still in bed, curled up, warm. Things were not allowed to get this bad.
He was still on the floor. Shaking all over. He felt his eyes begin to water. He got back to his knees. He heard a siren in the distance.
He was still facing the window when he felt movement behind him. He turned around slowly to find Kathy, clutching the bag full of money with one arm, a gun in her other hand—pointed at Pete. Not his father’s gun, Pete thought. Another one.
“The hell?” Pete said. “Where the fuck did you get that?”
“It was in the bag with the money,” Kathy said, holding the gun calmly.
“But…” Pete was having trouble thinking. There was too much going on.
“But what? You don’t know me, Pete. Don’t act like you do,” She said, motioning to him with the gun. “Get in Mike’s room. I don’t have time for this. That explosion probably alerted every cop in Fort Lauderdale.”
Pete did as he was told, his eyes locked on Kathy. She was in Mike’s doorway.
“Did you have something to do with this?” Pete said.
“Come on, Pete,” she said. “What do you think?” She swung the bag over her shoulder and moved in closer to him.
“These guys are after me…They want to kill me and they’re not going to stop because you’re looking out for me…” Kathy said. “I have to go. I hope you can understand that, OK?”
She backed out of Mike’s room, closing the door behind her. He heard noise on the other end. She was propping something to block the door, Pete thought. After a few minutes he tried the door, but couldn’t open it. He walked over to Mike’s bedroom window, which overlooked the street. The flames were reaching higher into the air. A crowd had formed around what used to be Mike’s car—what used to be Mike, Pete thought.
He laid down on Mike’s bed and curled up into himself tightly. Then, finally, he began to cry, his body racked with a violent bout of sobbing. He couldn’t hear himself. He could only hear the explosion. Of Mike’s car. Of Mike. Of everything that used to make sense.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The interrogation room in the Fort Lauderdale police station was unfamiliar to Pete. But he knew what it was used for. The air smelled of cigarettes, sweat, and coffee.
But he wasn’t looking around now. His head was buried in his arms, and they rested on the wobbly wooden table near the back of the room, opposite the main door. He’d been in the room for going on five hours, and had met with a handful of different detectives. The barrage of questions had Pete’s ears ringing. He could smell the cheese fries devoured by the last cop, a bovine detective named Solares. From what Pete could tell, based on the questions he’d been asked, the police had not found Contreras. Meaning he was still alive. Meaning Pete—and everyone around him—was still at risk. They did, however, want to know how his best friend came to explode earlier in the day, and just what Pete was doing in his friend’s apartment, barricaded in the main bedroom.
The Fort Lauderdale cops didn’t care about what happened in the Keys—they wanted to clear the murder case that happened within their jurisdiction. But all they had was smoke and rubble and an unemployed newspaper editor who had little to say.
He told them everything, though. About Kathy, Chaz, Contreras, and his own ill-advised trip south after being pounded to a pulp. They jotted down notes studiously, nodding their heads at Pete to keep talking. But he didn’t know what, if anything, they’d do with the information. He also didn’t know how far north Contreras’ powers reached, and if this department was as soiled and corrupt as the Miami-Dade PD. Solares had seemed almost sad for Pete, wondering aloud why a guy with no detective experience, no license and no connection to Kathy Bentley would take it upon himself to be her last hope and savior.
“I had nothing else,” Pete remembered blurting out. “And now I’m fucked. I’m totally fucked. I have nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one who’ll talk to me.”
Pete would never forget the sad eyes that met those words, and he felt shame. Shame for pulling his friends into a mess of his own creation, shame for losing his job, shame for ruining everything around him and still wanting more. Mike was dead, and it was his fault. Had Pete not taken Mike’s keys, had he not driven south on a wild hunt for Kathy Bentley, Mike would be alive. Pete wouldn’t be in this room, and things would be better—not great, but not this bad.
He took a deep breath, soaking up the terrible stench of the interview room as the main door creaked open. He didn’t bother to look up. He heard heavy, tentative footsteps approach, followed by the squeak of the chair across from Pete being pulled back. The soft thud of a heavyset figure taking the seat.
“They’re gonna let you out in a bit.”
Not even Broche’s voice could make Pete look up. But gradually, he lifted his head and gave the room a once-over. He probably looked like shit, he thought. His eyes red from crying, his clothes rumpled, his face and arms bruised and cut from two skirmishes with Contreras. Pete didn’t care. He deserved worse. He didn’t deserve to live.
“They gonna charge me with anything?”
“The Keys police may cite you for leaving the scene of a crime,” Broche said, scratching his chin. “But Fort Lauderdale doesn’t care about that. As far as they’re concerned, you were cooperative and you can go.”
Pete nodded. He had nothing to add.
“I don’t really think you’ll get even that, though,” Broche said. “Proving, once again, what a lucky fool you are.”
“I’m not lucky.”
Broche slid a cigarette into his mouth and met Pete’s eyes with a cold stare that Pete had never encountered from the detective before.
“Oh, you’re lucky,” he said. “Lucky to be alive. Your friend? Not so lucky. And that’s on you now. You—you get to go home, or somewhere similar, to rest, look for a job. You get to start over, if you want. Or, if you don’t, you can keep drinking yourself stupid, keep getting in trouble, keep embarrassing me and the memory of your father. But you can keep doing something. You’re alive.”
He was right, Pete realized. And that made it all the worse.
“You want to talk to me?” Broche said.
“What is there to say?” Pete mumbled. “Mike’s dead. I went down to the Keys to find Kathy, and I did. Contreras spotted me. Followed me, caught me in his place cutting Kathy loose, and he chased me down. I thought he was dead.”
“Dead? When?”
“Kathy backed Mike’s car into him,” Pete said, taking no pleasure in ratting on Kathy, despite her untimely exit. “She saved me from getting shot. Then we went to Mike’s—to return the car. I didn’t even think that he’d follow us. Or would know where we’d be going. That’s what I don’t get.”
“What’s that?”
“He knew what I was doing—twice—before I did it,” Pete said, his voice clearer now. He was thinking out loud. “He knew I was going to the Keys. He knew where I’d be sniffing around. Then he knew I’d be heading to Mike’s.”
Broche cleared his throat and placed his palms on the table.
“Kid, you’re not dealing with some equal here,” he said. “This is not some random thug. This guy knows his shit. You ruffled his feathers. You’ve pissed him off and lived longer than most people. Did you really think he was just going to forget you existed after he put you in the hospital? I told you to get out of this, to lay low. Then I hear you’re leaving Baptist without the doctor’s sign-off to go do who-knows-what. Jose Contreras is not to be fucked with. You’d be lucky if that girl had killed him, because it would have bought you some time.”
“What do I do now?”
“What do you mean?”
Pete cleared his throat. His eyes met Broche’s for the first time.
“How do I stay alive?”
“This is not going to blow over for a while.” Broche counted off on his fingers as he leaned back slightly on his chair, “I’d move if you could. Sta
y at your dad’s for a bit. Look for work. Quit doing stupid shit, and let all this go the fuck away. Keep me posted on what’s going on and I’ll keep my ears to the ground for you—if we hear about Contreras or any of his people, I will let you know. I’m going to do my best to keep you safe.”
“Yeah?”
Broche nodded. “Someone’s got to, right?”
• • •
Pete winced as he walked out of the station. He rubbed his neck, his entire body sore from the last week. He turned around and saw Emily opening the station’s front door, a few steps behind him.
“You’re lucky,” she said, walking past him toward her car. He followed without saying anything. “That’s all I’m going to say about this.” She was upset. Her face was red. Though Mike had always been more like Pete’s brother than Emily’s, they had become friends nonetheless, and the idea that he was gone hit them both hard.
Pete nodded as he opened the passenger side door to Emily’s Jeep. They got in. She gripped the wheel and looked ahead. Pete remained quiet. She turned and scanned him.
“You look like shit,” she said.
Pete sighed and tussled his hair. He’d spent two more hours in the interrogation room and a holding cell before all the paperwork was cleared and he was given the OK to leave. All he wanted to do was to curl up in a dark hole and disappear—forever, if that was an option. Still, Contreras was out there. Kathy was out there—with a bag full of money, no less. Javier was dead. Mike was dead. Too much had been lost to leave this be, he thought. And though he’d told Broche he would take his advice, he wasn’t sure cowering in the shadows was the best plan. In fact, it was the opposite of Pete’s plan. He didn’t even stop to think about how awkward he should feel, sitting in a car with his ex-fiancée, hours after his best friend exploded in front of him. He didn’t care about that anymore.
“I feel like shit, too,” he said, looking out his window.
“I’m not going to lecture you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said, still looking at him. “I don’t care anymore, Pete. And that’s the saddest part. Mike’s dead. I don’t know what to make of all this anymore.”