Little Havana Exile

by Hale Chamberlain

  “For fuck’s sake,” the driver looked at the clueless face of the man next to him, and went gave in. “We’re driving to West Birmingham, where most of the Soho Road trash is waiting for their twat hero. Hopefully, we catch the chavs before they arrive in Lozells. And then, we smoke them like they deserve!”

  The newbie stared at him puzzled and asked, “What if we don’t catch up to them?”

  The driver glanced to his left, brooding, as if he had never second-guessed the fact that they would catch their target. “If we’re too slow, then it’s over. The bloody tosser will go underground and won’t be seen anymore. He’ll never be that exposed before a long, long time.”

  The man marked a pause as he maneuvered the car around Dartmouth Circus’ roundabout, and then added, “Take your gun. And brace yourself. This is no game. We’re getting closer.”

  As they descended from the junction onto Newtown Middleway, the men in the Cortina doubted for an instant that they had taken the right exit. They either took the wrong turn, or Teddy was already far ahead on New John Street. The traffic was unusually sparse for that hour of the day, and the few cars occupying the road were going far too slowly to be either Teddy’s Vauxhall or the Soho Road Boy’s vehicles.

  “We’ve fucking lost him!” the new boy said. “That doesn’t smell good, at all.”

  A voice from the back said firmly, “Will you shut your mouth now. We’re almost in enemy territory. Keep your eyes–”

  His lips froze mid-sentence as a dull commotion was heard from the far end of the motorway. Without a moment’s pause, the road lit up in a red embrace as cars braked and traffic progressively halted to a stop. The rookie’s mouth dropped open.

  The Brummagem Crew men got out of their Ford Cortina and Mondeo, looking ahead for hints of what might have happened. In the cold of the night, a deafening silence slowly set in. Only to be broken abruptly seconds later by the chilling bangs of repeated gunfire.

  The Brummagem henchmen dashed between cars at a standstill as more gunshots purred through the open road. They pulled their firearms, ready to get their hands dirty for their gang and exert vengeance on the filthy scum that took the life of one of their own.

  What they witnessed as they came out of the forest of stationary vehicles would change the face of the Birmingham gang war for the years to come.

  Teddy’s car was positioned across the road, its front bumper, hood, and windshield smashed to pieces. Another car seemed to have been cornered right into the traffic barrier, and crashed into over and over on its side, stamping the occupants repeatedly. The two men inside of the vehicle were dead, their face smeared with blood. Too much blood to have been caused by the accident alone, the rookie reasoned.

  Then Teddy came on sight. He was crouching in front of the passenger seat of an overturned car, gun in hand.

  The men got closer, calling their leader’s name to avoid any friendly fire. They reached his side at last, and the new boy bent over to peek at the interior of the car. Two thugs were hanging upside down, awkwardly held into place by their seatbelts. As he peered through the shattered window, he leaped backward in horror, causing the rest of the crew to startle.

  It was the sight of nightmares. The passenger’s face appeared to have imploded from within, as shreds of flesh and brains were hanging and dripping. The occupant was utterly unrecognizable. At the same time, even the newbie knew that the sick fury that had been unleashed on the corpse made his identity of the victim crystal clear. Even his own gang men wouldn’t recognize the corpse of Kieran O’Connor in its current mangled state.

  The rookie tapped Teddy’s shoulder, visibly nervous but lacking the common sense of the other crewmembers. “Come on, he’s had what he deserved, let’s go, there are too many people around.”

  Teddy gazed at him with empty eyes, seemingly unfazed by the massacre he had just committed.

  They all stood up and made their way back to the two Ford stationed a hundred yards away. Suddenly they were stopped in their tracks.

  A dozen bystanders had gathered right in front of the queue of cars, watching in complete silence and utter disbelief the gruesome, hypnotizing scene, their eyes fixated on Teddy’s mad face. The abrupt and unwanted attention was unbearable, and the new boy finally yielded to the discomfort. He said with a trembling Cockney accent, “Let’s go, guys! Too many witnesses, let’s move!” He shot a bullet in the air, as the crew ran back to their cars, elbowing their way through the unwelcome audience. The passersby took the cue and rushed into their cars in sheer affright, toppling as they attempted to catch one more glimpse of the killer.

  As he jostled through the panicking crowd, Teddy felt the crushing weight of their piercing horrified stare on him. The accusatory gaze of judges about to issue a death sentence. The faces of executioners that show no mercy.

  For the first time since the announcement of the verdict, he understood his predicament with unobstructed clarity. He understood at that moment that this single act of ruthless vengeance would shape the rest of his life. There was no going back from this.

  CHAPTER 6

  When Adam Wilkinson crossed the doorway of Rob Harper’s mansion, every local network and a few national ones were breaking the news of the massive traffic accident on New John Street.

  Teddy was sunk into a couch in the living room, anxiously flicking through news channels to scrutinize media coverage of his moment of madness. The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 were all treating it as a colossal collision. A driver had apparently lost control of his vehicle because of the slippery road, they all explained, crashing violently into a traffic barrier and sending two other cars into a spinning trap. There was no mention of gunshots and gang wars on any of the main networks. Maybe it won’t be that bad after all, Teddy thought.

  Fortunately for him, that section of the road was devoid of CCTV cameras, but at least twenty bystanders had observed bits of the attack.

  When Teddy had turned up at his uncle’s house shortly after the killing, his uncle had been hesitant to open the door, or so it seemed, which in hindsight felt somewhat normal given the circumstances. Who would want to welcome under his roof someone who was about to have half the city’s nastiest gangsters and the police after him?

  His uncle, like his fellow gang members. had panicked upon learning how the ambush had unfolded. The whole murderous undertaking was as high profile an execution as it got. There was no doubting that the Soho Road Boys had been struck at their very heart and that it would be a while until they regain their former might. After all, their leader, along with three of their most experienced operatives had perished. Once the news of the assassination propagated throughout the underworld, Teddy would instantly become the most notorious gangster of the city.

  His low profile, largely predicated upon his relatively hands-off management style, would only contribute to fueling further his legend. He would be hunted to the farthest corners of the region, yet if the right resources were allocated to hit the Soho Road Boys at strategic points, putting an end to the gang itself wouldn’t be such a remote possibility.

  Despite the grievous tone of the news anchor, who was doing his utmost to draw the viewer’s’ attention to him in the freezing cold of the night, Teddy’s focus was only shallowly directed to the blaring TV.

  Another scene playing only ten yards away, across the empty living room, reeked of something even more momentous. The whole bloody world is on my ass, and yet all I fear right now is the wrath of two old men in the kitchen. This struck him as rather ironic.

  Adam Wilkinson and Rob Harper were in the midst of a heated conversation, and Teddy knew that once the patriarchs decided the next course of action, there would be no arguing with them. Teddy attempted to steer his senses toward the kitchen corner, but the television was just too loud. He lowered the volume ever so slightly and noticed that the two men immediately stopped their discussion, throwing suspicious glances at him.

  The car chase had been nerve-wracking, to say the least,
and the actual assault – from the time he had crashed into Kieran O’Connor’s car to the moment he had fired that fifth bullet into the skunk’s skull – had lasted under a minute. Teddy had felt no exhilaration when he held a helpless Kieran O’Connor in his line of sight, and the initial rush of blunt anger caused by the trial’s verdict had soon worn off. What had kept him going during the entire ordeal, what had driven him when the time came to enact vengeance, was a relentless and uncompromising sense of justice for his friend James.

  As the far-reaching implications of his actions that night finally dawned on him, the lingering anguish that had set in on his way back was doubling in intensity. He had to shrug off the unpleasant feeling repeatedly and remind himself that he had done what was right, what he had to do.

  The evening news was interrupted by a short commercial break, which provided the opportunity for Teddy to strain his ears. A couple of words emanating from the kitchen were intelligible here and there, but he couldn’t make sense of any of entire sentences. He couldn’t even make out if they were speaking English, or some weird British countryside dialect. Hell, some of it sounded Spanish.

  Frustration was mounting inside Teddy and he bedamned the old men for keeping him in the dark so long. What made him feel even more hopeless though was the total absence of control he had over his own life. He had left his childhood home precisely to regain a hold on the course of his existence.

  At last, he heard a familiar term, as the timing of the TV ads played perfectly in his favor. Adam Wilkinson had distinctly uttered the word Havana. Yet when thinking twice about it, this made even less sense. Havana was Cuba’s capital, Teddy knew that much. Fidel Castro, the island’s charismatic leader, was making the news every couple of months. What the hell does Cuba have to do with any of it?

  He had had enough, and arguably he had given the old men the respect they deserved by staying out of it for over half an hour. In the blink of an eye, Teddy was standing in front of the two men. Before he was able to open his lips, the group’s attention got diverted by the news anchor, gravely conveying breaking news. Teddy spun around, and his heart skipped a beat as he listened to the presenter’s chilling account of the attack. According to witnesses, the accident has been provoked. A man allegedly got out of his vehicle, walked toward another car and shot both its occupants. Yes, there had been multiple concurring reports stating that tonight’s massive accident was, in fact, a gang’s vendetta linked to the O’Connor trial held earlier at the Crown Court.

  As he turned back to face his two guardians, Teddy’s face was pallid.

  “We’ll have to send you abroad for a while, son,” Rob Harper said, his face showing no compassion. “There are no other options here, the heat is going to crush you.”

  Adam Wilkinson placed his hand on Teddy’s shoulder, and said, “Listen, kid, what you did there was foolish, the act of an amateur.” He paused and took a deep breath. “But you had the courage to do what had to be done. And for that, I will be eternally grateful to you. An old friend in the US owes me a favor, we’re sending you there. Thank God for your American passport, the next alternative was Africa. Anyway, it’s just for a few months, a year top, until the pressure here goes down.”

  “The US? Where in the US?” Teddy asked, still struggling to grasp the implications of the decision.

  “You’ll go to Miami, Teddy, in Florida,” Rob said, “There you’ll meet Joaquin Herrera, he’ll take you under his wing and keep you busy.”

  Teddy Harper was unable to speak. He had a million questions, none of which would come out of his mouth.

  “It’ll be a good education, kid, see it as an internship abroad. Your uncle and I will get to work and make sure your name stays clean. In the meantime, you enjoy your time there. But don’t do anything rash, you keep a low profile, got it?” Adam said.

  Teddy nodded in consent, and after a moment’s pause, he finally asked, “I overheard you talk about Havana. What was that about?”

  Rob glanced at Adam Wilkinson and flashed a smile. “Not Havana. Little Havana. You’re gonna live with the Hispanics in Miami, in their neighborhood, with their people. Adam has done a few lucrative deals with a man there who owes him a favor.”

  “Alright, let’s not waste any more time. We can tell you the rest en route the airport.”

  “What? We’re leaving now?” Teddy asked, his voice shaking.

  “Yes kiddo, the cops are already starting to dig. You need to take off tonight.”

  A maelstrom of confused emotions was flowing through Teddy’s body and mind, and for a moment, he wished he had never left the soothing comfort of his parent’s cozy house.

  CHAPTER 7

  As he queued in front of the stupendous Airbus A340 on the tarmac of the Heathrow airport, Teddy Harper remembered he had never embarked on a plane. This was most certainly not the circumstances he had hoped for his first flight. Earlier that night, he had done another thing that was a first for him -– kill.

  Granted, he had thrown some vicious punches. On several occasions, he had relished the opportunity to headbutt skunks from other gangs. He had even broken a few bones, which he was starting to be known for. But none of these physical abuses had been lethal. He pondered this thought for a moment as he boarded the massive airliner. He was a killer, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

  “Sir, what is your seat number?” The flight attendant repeated, pulling Teddy out of his reverie.

  He showed her the ticket Adam Wilkinson had just bought for him. There had been no goodbyes, no last-minute effusion of tenderness. Those old dogs were no emotional beings. It was just another annoyance to tackle, and in his case, the nuisance would be dealt with by pushing him out of the country. And it was better this way. It was awkward enough that two pre-retired local mobsters had shown enough care for him to reactivate lost connections from across the ocean.

  As he sat at the back of the plane, Teddy’s attention was drawn to the screen five rows ahead. The long-haul flight would last almost ten hours. Stuck in that stuffy metal box of death, I don’t like this. Wilkinson! I did this to avenge your son!

  The interior of the aircraft increasingly resembled a cluttered mess of unprepared vacationers overwhelmed by their multiple bags. Peering over his should, Teddy watched in bewilderment a man shoving his way through the motionless line of passengers and finally plunging into the seat adjacent his.

  “Bloody wankers! Penguins! The morons can’t find their seats in an orderly manner,” the man growled. “Never going back to economy class after that, mingling with uneducated punks. No, thank you!”

  Teddy was bemused, but also strangely entertained. A welcome respite from the bleak thoughts that were running through his mind.

  The man looked every bit like an old British aristocrat – bespoke three-piece suit in Prince Of Wales checks, round spectacles expertly hiding sagging eyelids, and an advanced stage of baldness. His overall appearance definitely conveyed a sense of refined class that only distinguished English luminaries could pull off. That is, until he opened his potty mouth. Even we don’t speak like that, Teddy thought.

  “Forgive me, kid, I’ve had a rubbish day,” the man said, as he wriggled his wide backside to find his seatbelt. You had a bad day, really? I’ll show you a bad day.

  “The punk salutes you,” Teddy joked. “I hope the next ten hours will be enjoyable despite the screaming gap in education levels.”

  “That wasn’t addressed to you, you seem like a decent bloke, straight in your seat,” the man said, wiping his sweaty forehead with his handkerchief. “What’s your name, son?”

  They exchanged brief introductions, and Teddy reckoned that this unexpected encounter with a chatty Englishman might just be the perfect opportunity to take his distressed mind off his current predicament.

  It turned out the man was the heir of a shipbuilding empire that almost went bust when the Koreans conquered the global market in the sixties. Keith Price was a resourceful man and his first de
cision as he took over the family business had been to switch the focus of the company from behemoth cargo ships – supertankers – to much smaller recreational yachts. Almost twenty years later, his company was prospering, selling luxurious boats across the globe. The businessman lived half the year in Miami, where the company’s regional headquarters were conveniently located. There, he was servicing the billionaires from Florida, Mexico, and even Brazil.

  “But enough of me, what are you going to Miami for?” Keith asked. Teddy was thrown off by the ever-so-obvious question.

  I’ve just murdered four men, and I’m fleeing the police and the rival gang that probably wants to slaughter me. My life’s been turned upside down completely in the span of a few hours, and I’m off to an unknown land where I’m supposed to meet someone I don’t even have a picture of. That’s what brings me to Miami.

  “I’m going to visit my uncle,” Teddy said innocently. “I don’t really have any ties to the UK, so I figured I might as well seek my fortune across the Atlantic.”

  “I applaud the boldness, kid. I wish I was your age. Miami is the perfect city for a young buck like you, it’s all about business there, you’ll enjoy it.”

  “I’m sure I will. The Yankees can’t be that bad.”

  “No, no, no. Miami isn’t the America you’ve seen on TV, that’s bollocks. It’s a different land entirely, an urban jungle surrounded by swamps. But it’s a land of opportunities if you’ve got the right mindset. It’s full of Cubans, Mexicans and other South Americans. Hot-blooded Latinos. It’s not called the Gateway to the Americas for nothing, kid.”

  Teddy found the conversation pleasant, but the madness of his day was starting to take its toll, and the man wouldn’t shut up.

  “Well Keith, that doesn’t change a thing. If those wide-hip Latinas are anywhere near as fine as what I’ve heard, the trip will be worth the pain of being your neighbor,” Teddy joked.

  Keith Price sighted, “Nonsense, don’t get overexcited about the Latinas. You probably couldn’t handle them.” He shuffled his position awkwardly and lowered his seat in sleeping position. Pretty odd from a flamboyant British millionaire CEO, Teddy thought, he probably can’t get it up anymore.