“Who the hell are you?”
“Fuck you,” the man seethed.
“Fuck me?” Sheridan replied, stunned that the man had the gall to answer like that after what he had done. He aimed at the man’s left knee and pulled the trigger. The nine-millimeter hollow point round escaped the barrel of his gun and made its way into the man’s kneecap, shattering it. The man yelped and fell to the ground. He clutched his knee and writhed about on the floor as blood poured out from the wound. Tears flowed freely, and he whimpered.
“Answer my question, asshole,” Sheridan snarled. “Who… the hell… are you?”
The look on Sheridan’s face told the man that if he didn’t answer the question in the expected manner, there would be much more pain to come. The now hobbled man was out of his element against a foe who wished nothing but death upon him. He would undoubtedly suffer. The man composed himself and said, “you don’t know me. I don’t know you. I was told to come here.”
“Who sent you here?”
“The Hamburgler,” the man responded in what felt like an unintentionally deadpan manner.
Sheridan fired a warning shot that narrowly missed the man’s other leg. “Don’t get cute. I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
“Shit! Calm down, dude!”
“Tell me what I want to know,” Sheridan said. His voice had taken on an eerie tone. Anger wasn’t present, not in the traditional sense, at least. In its place was an awkward calm with a hint of thunder.
“Castillo. Ji… Jimmy Castillo,” the man said feebly. “Now and then, when he’s got a job, he needs done that his normal guys don’t have the knowhow, or balls, to take on, he calls me.”
“What the fuck does any of that have to do with me?”
“I told you that already. I don’t know you. Alls I know is Castillo told me there was a lockbox in the master bedroom here that had a few grand in it. He said the guy who lived here owed him and his people some money.”
“That’s impossible,” Sheridan stammered, letting off the throttle a tad. “I don’t know anyone named Castillo.”
“Well, he must know you.”
Sheridan stood with a look of utter confusion on his face. A man he had never heard of had ordered some street punk to come to his house and steal money from a lockbox he didn’t even own for a debt he bore no responsibility for. He nearly missed the man reaching for the knife, grabbing the handle, and turning it slowly to the optimum angle for a quick slice. Sheridan waited for the man to turn and face him before he pulled the trigger and fired the remaining rounds into the smoke-filled chest.
Chapter 3
Detective Dan Osteen was the type of person who had been born past their prime. Despite living in the most technologically advanced time in history, he longed for moments where technology’s grasp failed to take hold of him. He was a sarcastic, yet improbably genial soul who focused on doing the right thing, no matter the cost. There were times others misunderstood his jokes, but he was always cognizant of the way they received each gag and acted instantly if it appeared as though the subject of his verbal blows hadn’t gotten the memo about his antics. This sort of attention to detail had gotten him out of a hairy situation or two, but he relied on sarcasm a bit too much.
He had worked in the Homicide Division of the Miami Metro Police Department long enough that seeing gruesome displays of human emotion was a regular occurrence. So much so that if he went over two days without a mention of a grisly crime scene, he wondered if he had passed in his sleep. He had once come across a young woman in a spread-eagle position with a machete stuck in her crotch, a ball gag in her mouth, on the floor of a crummy apartment with a shrine to her in a nearby closet. The sicko who had stalked her created that same shrine and, eventually, took her life. To say a rich guy in Key Biscayne with a knife protruding from his neck didn’t rank high on Osteen’s list of most shocking murders would be the understatement of the century.
Odds were good that it was nothing more than a mugging gone awry. He expected they would only find the culprit through sheer dumb luck. If the mugger were smart, he would have concealed his identity from the watchful eyes of security cameras in the area. Considering the early morning hour at which his phone rang, Osteen doubted there were any witnesses. Anyone who commits murder without a subconscious desire to end up like their victim or caught typically attempts to do a passable job at stalling any potential progress by the detective in determining whodunit.
Of course, it was even possible the killer would turn themselves in once the guilt became too much to bear for whatever bit of conscience they had left. Regardless of the motive, Osteen’s primary role in the investigation would probably entail extensive authoring of a crime report; something he looked at with the same type of longing he associated with his annual prostate exams. The longer he could pass on that inevitability, the better.
-#-
Vivian Jackson was at the scene of the crime, assessing the situation when Osteen pulled up in his unmarked but still painfully obvious squad car. They had been partners for just two years, Osteen showing her the ropes about what it took to last as a detective in Miami, the Magic City, as those who held it dear affectionately referred to it. Vivian was green at first. Coming to the position after handing out traffic citations for a few years would unsettle just about anyone.
What helped her adjust to the massive shift in expectations was her upbringing. Her father had been a beat cop in Overtown, a rough neighborhood situated just north of Downtown Miami. It had once been the pinnacle of nightlife in the area, but the construction of various highways for the thriving metropolis severely fragmented the neighborhood, sending it spiraling into a serious economic decline it never quite recovered from. During his time on that beat, Vivian’s father witnessed firsthand the lengths people will go to survive when the deck becomes stacked against them. He kept what he had seen from his family until the day his oldest said she wished to follow in his footsteps. It was then that he told her a brief bit about the sort of things she could expect to see if she were to follow his lead even remotely close.
“People are animals,” he had told her, “but it’s almost hard to blame them for it. You take a man’s ability to provide for his family, you can’t expect him to act civilized. All the stamps in the world won’t make up for the fact that the man won’t hire him because he don’t look a certain way. Some men figure out a way around that problem within the confines of the law. For those who the education system failed, however, the result is grimmer. The way they get around it often involves a willing separation from the morals they once knew. They strap themselves every moment they’re awake, they slang dope, whatever it takes to keep the money rolling in. They all meet their maker in the end. Sadly, it don’t seem to matter which choice they made along the way because their last moments on this earth are rarely peaceful.”
That talk, among others, had instilled within Vivian a deep sense of passion for the less fortunate among her. It shaped much about the woman she became and how she approached her job. She was fearless, and demanded respect, but she was always willing to give every perp the benefit of the doubt — even if she didn’t come right out and say it. There’s always more to the story than the page the book is open to when she first arrives. She just had to sift through it all and find the parts worth reading.
-#-
Osteen parked and fished his badge out from the seemingly endless depths of his coat pocket. He reluctantly made his way to the yellow tape, flashed the brass at the officer stationed on crowd control, and ducked underneath. He scanned the area briefly before walking over to where Vivian stood, examining the body.
“What do we have here?” Osteen asked quizzically, in his most official tone.
Vivian turned, smirked, and replied, “Some poor schmuck took a Gerber to the throat last night. Left quite the mess all over the parking lot.”
“Seems like there’d be easier ways to turn a guy down.”
�
��Some guys just can’t take no for an answer.”
“This is true,” Osteen muttered. “What do we know so far?”
“The victim’s name is Edgar Jennings. He was a real estate lawyer who enjoyed the finer things in life; hence the Armani.”
“Anything more interesting than his fashion sense?”
“Not particularly,” Vivian lamented. Truth be told, the victim’s fashion sensibilities didn’t resonate with her. Fashion was always a passing interest to her, but never something that made her drop what she was doing to experience. “Single knife wound to the neck. Appears to have happened in this spot and, judging by the odd break in the blood on the ground here,” Vivian said as she pointed at an empty spot of asphalt between the main pool of blood and some splatter a few inches away, “we can probably assume he was attempting to enter his car.”
“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a vehicle to find,” Osteen said.
“According to the insurance card in his wallet…”
“His wallet… it was still on him?” Osteen could not hope to contain the incredulous look on his face the moment that puzzling information registered in his brain.
“Yes. It seems the killer just wanted a new set of wheels, and our victim’s last act may have been to weakly attempt to foil his plans.”
“Why go through the trouble of killing a guy and stealing a car without also taking his wallet? You take everything of value when the opportunity presents itself,” Osteen said, shaking his head in disbelief. “That’s street thug 101. Was there any money inside? Cards?”
“A few hundred dollars cash, a black card, and a few store cards. It was untouched. Resting in the back-right pocket of Jennings’s pants.” Vivian realized how odd it seemed, but she had hoped it was nothing more than the theory she posited. She was having the type of week that could benefit from an open-and-shut case.
“Something tells me this may not be as cut and dry as it looks. Let’s get the goods to the lab and see what the techs think. In the meantime, I’m going to grab some coffee.”
Chapter 4
Miami is a simple city to lose yourself in; both accidentally and deliberately. A relative maze of neighborhoods scrawled out along the tapestry of the coastline merely invites it. After a while, buildings in the inner city of any major metropolitan area look the same. Many of those same structures that seem to exist as the strange by-product of a copy/paste experiment gone wrong exist within areas that are less than savory to most. People in these areas simply don’t ask questions. Sometimes the less you know, the better off you are. They’re always aware of strangers, but limit their concern to watchful glares from porches and barred windows.
Those same glares greeted Micah as he drove through Little Havana in his eight-cylinder Mustang, in search of a specific canary yellow colored building. The thing that made the building in question noticeably different from all the others of a similar hue was that no one ever seemed to go in or out of it. Nearby residents sometimes joked that the doors had otherwise been lost to time and weren’t likely to go down except with a battering ram.
Even with its apparent lack of inhabitants, the building never changed. Its walls hadn’t received a fresh coat of paint since the day they went up; the dull tone to what had once been a more vibrant yellow was evidence of that. Micah had only been to the building once before, and it showed when he passed it at ten over the speed limit, forcing him to punch the brake and maneuver around with a haphazard three-point-turn to avoid getting stuck in the traffic leading away from his destination. He parked in a grassy lot across the street and walked nonchalantly to the side of the building.
A steel door with a nondescript switchboard next to it halted any forward progress. In fact, the only thing truly odd about the door was its lack of a handle. It would take a vigilant eye to appear as what it was rather than just another part of the wall. Micah checked his surroundings and pressed a button to signal his arrival. The sound of multiple locks followed disengaging followed soon after. Micah waited a moment for the door to swing open and stepped inside.
-#-
The interior bore a striking resemblance to the outer walls of the building. Aside from a dingy chandelier, the only thing in the primary room was a poker table placed oddly in the center. Sitting behind that table, glued to a laptop with the sound of sweaty flesh smacking together emanating from it, was a man named Victor Perez. He was the type of person who enjoyed a good, home cooked meal, chased by a few bottles of Bucanero; and it showed. He muted the sound of the video as Micah sat down in a chair across the table from him.
“How’s things, compadre?” Perez posed the question in a manner that betrayed just how much his mind had become one with the drink in his hand.
“Bueno. I took care of that thing for Castillo.”
“That is good news, amigo.”
“Good enough to get me a sit down with the man?”
“Perhaps,” Perez answered abruptly. He took a swig of the amber beer and straightened himself up a bit, attempting to appear somewhat official. “Give me a couple hours to check around with my people. No promises, but I’ll let you know what I find out.”
A helpless smile formed on Micah’s face. Although it was no guarantee, even a distant glimmer of hope was better than the all-encompassing emptiness of nothing. “Gracias, Victor. I owe you one.”
-#-
Micah drove down the street aimlessly, racking his brain for every iota of information it could recall from the previous night’s events to ensure himself that he hadn’t slipped up and left incriminating evidence of his involvement at the scene. He stopped at a light and let his eyes drift up toward a gigantic billboard with two topless women, pink stars hiding their most coveted assets, beckoning him to join them at the hottest club in South Beach.
What the hell? I earned it.
Loud electronic dance music filled the early evening air as Micah approached the club. He looked up toward the roof as he neared the entrance and saw a large, cheesy neon montage of a cartoon cherry in a never-ending explosion. The words ‘Cherry Popper’ lay underneath in predictable red. At least it’s not Comic Sans, Micah chuckled to himself. He opened the fur-lined door and stepped inside to the potent smell of sweat, booze, and desperation.
The owners had set the club up like many of its kind: a primary stage which ran parallel to the bar with a few smaller stages situated strategically nearby. Each section had plush leather chairs that rarely went further than a foot or two from the stage unless a dancer came down to give the patron the dance of his or her life. Micah made his way over to the bar which housed the sole empty seat in the building and motioned for the bartender as he commandeered his seat.
“What’ll it be?” The bartender wasted no time with silly things like meaningless chit chat. He knew better than to bother with it since most of the clientele was mesmerized by the gigantic bags of silicone bouncing every which way from the moment they paid their cover charge until the moment they realized they had blown their whole paycheck in a matter of hours because of the blossoming of a love which existed only in their minds.
“Liquid Cocaine; a double shot.” The last twenty-four hours had been anything but relaxing for Micah. What better way to unwind than to drink some hard liquor and watch supposedly loose women parade around in their birthday suits for a couple bucks-per-shake of the twins?
“You got it.”
Micah swiveled around on the stool and faced the primary stage. A slender, yet voluptuous, brunette dancer stepped onto the platform with the sort of demeanor that demanded the attention of every man and woman in the room. They introduced her as Citron. Apparently, the club wasn’t one to follow the norm of naming its dancers after luxury automobile manufacturers. That or she was one to break the mold from time to time. The music began somewhat abruptly, and Micah watched as her clothes came off in a set cadence, to the changing beat of the song, with the sole purpose of getting the men around the stage to loosen wh
atever grip they still had on their money.
The beat picked up, and she was down to a thin strip of fabric that might pass in some places for actual underwear. Her dance was hypnotic, locking Micah into a trance. The bartender placed the drink next to Micah’s arm and walked away. As though it were second nature, Micah slipped a twenty under a nearby napkin holder and grabbed hold of the drink; all without taking his eyes off Citron. He stood up, careful not to miss a moment of the action, and walked over to a recently vacated seat at the primary stage. Some poor sap had chosen an inopportune moment to relieve himself.
He took a sip of the drink and, despite the potent mixture, his mind failed to register the burning sensation as the liquid meandered down his esophagus. The beat of the track gradually picked up and Citron removed the last piece of fabric rather casually before tossing it into some seats near one of the smaller stages, drawing an angry glare from the other dancer still moving about on the platform. Citron’s eyes bounced from one gentleman to the next until her gaze locked onto Micah’s. she took a couple steps over to where he was sitting and kneeled, smiling.
“Hey, sugar,” she said. The words came out like a whisper amongst the pulsing bass of the speakers overhead.
“What’s up?” Micah didn’t do this sort of thing often enough to have a pre-made line at the ready, so he just went with his go-to for conversing with just about anyone.
She leaned in, pressed her breasts against his face, and said, “You can be. If you want a special session once I’m done up here, that is.”
Murder in the Magic City Page 2