The little man motioned for the guard to lean down. Micah had to stifle a giggle at the absurdity of the situation. He watched the guard do as the little man bid and listened to a quick order from his apparent superior before returning to something resembling attention as the duo passed by.
Micah entered the room and took a mental picture of his surroundings. It was an oddly shaped space, to be sure. Constructed like an engagement ring with the entrance at the diamond, he stared out at a collection of tables which appeared to have been crafted from the same tree as the front doors. Each table had four chairs, spaced just far enough away from one another to provide a feeling of exclusivity to all who had the chance to dine in this lounge.
Jimmy Castillo was sitting at the far end of the primary room in a semi-circular booth with a beautiful woman on each arm. They looked as though they may have just stepped off a runway–not outside the question in the Magic City–but Micah had a hunch they operated most often on the type of runway that wasn’t featured in the pages of a Victoria’s Secret catalog. He looked down at the little man for assurance before walking over to the booth.
Castillo leaned close to each woman and whispered something in their ears. They giggled softly, an obnoxious, robotic chuckle that suggested the giggles were anything but natural and excused themselves from the table. He then picked up a half used Cohiba and placed it in his mouth. He lit the cigar and took a couple puffs from it as he studied the man approaching his table. “Sit,” he ordered in a stern voice. One thing he liked to do most when he met someone for the first time was to assert his dominance. There were to be no questions about who the Alpha dog was in this equation. Micah reluctantly followed the instructions and sat directly across from him. “So, Victor tells me you’re looking for work.”
“You could say that.”
“I hear you’re the guy I can thank for taking care of my problem in Crandon Park.” Micah nodded. “Good. Listen, I’ve been thinking about adding some more sophisticated muscle to work with me on a more regular basis. Is that the sort of thing you’d be interested in?”
“If you’ve got the funds, a certain level of interest may exist.” Micah’s face showed no emotion and gave no tell about what went on inside his head.
“All about the money, eh? I can respect that. We all do it for some reason or another. Me? It’s a tie between the money and the pussy. I bet you can’t guess my two favorite colors,” Jimmy said. He let out a hearty laugh and took another puff of the cigar before returning it to its resting spot in the ashtray. “Listen, before a partnership can take place, there’s one more thing I need you to do.”
“Crandon Park didn’t ease your concerns?”
“That simply let me know you could be the right person for the job. However, I also need to know if you’re dependable. Loyal, really. All the talent in the world don’t mean dick if you can’t be trusted. Comprende?”
“What do you need me to do?”
“That’s the spirit,” Jimmy said, a smirk not at all hidden at the corner of his mouth. “There’s a pizza parlor on Miami Beach that needs some work done to it.”
“To be honest, I’m not exactly a handy-man,” Micah said.
“Let’s just say some switches need to be flipped, permanently. The owner of the place has been holding out on paying for some merchandise that one of my guys gave to him a couple weeks back. I’ve given him more than a few chances to pay up, but he’s got more excuses about it than a guy with erectile dysfunction.”
“You want me to just torch the place?”
“I want you to send a message,” Castillo said. He took one last long drag on the stogie and snubbed it out in the ashtray, a look of longing in his eyes. “There’s a catch, though.”
“I figured as much.”
“The job’s going to be pro bono. As in no money leaving my hands and entering your wallet.”
Micah kept his face devoid of emotion, but a slight bit of anger welled up inside of him like someone had just clicked on the main burner of a gas range. He had just killed a man without leaving a shred of workable evidence in his wake. Why did he need to prove himself further? Not to mention the fact that it was hardly the first time he’d done such a thing. His exploits were well documented.
“That going to be a problem, pal?” Castillo seemed slightly annoyed at the delay in Micah’s response. Part of being an Alpha dog is commanding respect. Expecting those beneath you to ask how high when told to jump. Not to flail about without a clear desire to agree to his demands.
“Nope,” Micah said. “Anytime in particular you want this message delivered?”
“The minute you leave here. That way, I’ll know by morning whether you’re the guy I’m looking for.”
“How will I know?”
“Don’t worry,” Castillo assured him, “you’ll know.”
-#-
The pizza parlor was on a side street that got little traffic after the early evening hours, once the dinner crowd had left to the confines of their own homes. That unfortunate fact is a large part of why it closed each night at nine instead of catering to the whims of the plethora of drunken people mere blocks away. The parlor was surrounded by small commercial buildings whose inhabitants left well before the last light of day touched their exterior.
This provided Micah ample angles with which to do his deed. It could be as simple or creative as he wanted to be. Castillo didn’t seem to care much about the specifics of the task, just that the loose ends in question were knotted beyond recognition. As far as Micah was concerned, he could have a little fun with this. It was highly unlikely the owner of the parlor wouldn’t notice his handiwork by the next morning.
A feeble-minded vandal would choose something simple, to the point, and merely toss a Molotov cocktail or two through the window. Hope for the best, though, and you must expect the worst outcome to follow soon after. Not only would it bring about unwanted attention from the sound of breaking glass alone, but it also couldn’t guarantee to produce the desired result. A simple problem, to be sure, but complexity was the answer to solving it.
Micah slithered down an alley leading to the side door of the parlor where the owner accepted deliveries and employees stepped out for their smoke breaks. A gas canister in hand, he kept a steady, quick pace. The last thing he needed was to spill a few drops on his clothes before taking care of business inside the parlor. He set the canister down upon reaching the door and retrieved a lock picking tool from his pocket.
He worked the hook into the deadbolt and fiddled with the mechanism until the tumbler fell into place. He returned the tool to his pocket and opened the door. A stale burst of air greeted him as he stepped inside, stifling if not entirely unexpected. The restaurant had been closed for five hours and there was no reason to keep the temperature cool with no bodies.
The parlor housed a plethora of flammable goods for a place who chief function was to make food that required a high level of heat to achieve proper results. Tacky red and white tablecloths draped every table, and they plastered the walls with stock wallpaper depicting various scenes of the Old Country. Micah briefly wondered if anyone believed the tales the wallpaper told about life in Italy in those days. Or if they associated any of it with the staff.
Not keen to waste any more time than he had already, Micah quickly worked his way around the parlor, dousing every bit of space with gasoline. Although he knew he could achieve his end goal without this extra work, he felt like giving the act a bit of flair, being creative. Most of all, he wanted to create doubt with the Fire Marshall who would eventually investigate the fire to determine the cause. Rather than make it obvious that foul play had been involved, he figured it would be more interesting to make the task extra challenging with a dose of negligence and an Act of God thrown in for good measure.
Once he was content that enough of the interior had been home to at least the vapors of the crude cocktail, he walked back to the side door and pulled out a Zipp
o with a U.S. Army logo on it. He ignited the lighter and tossed it into the building. The fire started slowly, as though there was some uncertainty around whether it could develop into more than a few stray sparks. It erupted in flames a moment later.
By the time he heard the first explosion, Micah had reached a pier that stretched out from the beach for what seemed like a mile. The old, well-traveled wood creaked underneath his weight with each step as he walked to the end and stopped. He stared at the water and thought about the events of the past twenty-four hours, telling himself it would all be worth it in the end. Amongst only the darkness, Micah heaved the gas container into the tranquil waters of the Atlantic and walked away as though he had simply tossed a couple pieces of bread into the water for a nearby group of seagulls.
Chapter 8
The Mercedes was no longer silver. Two-plus hours of constant heat from the flames had turned it to a color more closely resembling soot. At a quick glance it looked like Santa had found an extra naughty boy or girl and, instead of a small piece of coal in their stocking, he had given them a boulder that they could display on their front lawn for all to see as a reminder of how not to act. All that remained of the windows were tiny shards along the edges of the doorframe. The license plate was also missing.
Osteen and Vivian reached the scene of the aluminum s’more just in time to see the fire crews spraying it down to prevent any further sparks from popping up. The detectives made their way past the yellow police tape that blocked off the perimeter and found the crime scene technician that made it to the blaze first. She was briefing the responding officer of her findings to that point.
“Afternoon, detectives,” the tech said. The way she carried herself, calm and confident, belied the fact that she hadn’t done this as often as Osteen would have guessed. In fact, the green light to assess crime scenes on her own was a more recent development; she was only a few months removed from graduation. It would be a little while yet before she could move forward into the glamourous side of the role, if such a thing existed, but she was content to earn her chance to step into the big leagues.
“Find anything yet?” Osteen had been hoping for a juicy lead that could make solving the case much quicker than his gut suggested it could take. He had crossed his fingers that the incessant feeling emanating from his gut was all just a matter of indigestion from some undercooked tacos.
“Unfortunately, there’s not much physical evidence that anyone other than the late Edgar Jennings drove this vehicle more recently than the past few days,” the tech relented. “We pulled a set of prints off the steering wheel, and another set off the door, but both matched the set we had from the victim’s body.”
“He wore gloves,” Vivian said, as much to herself as to Osteen and the tech. “That would explain the lack of fingerprints on the knife and on Jennings’s head.”
“It would seem likely. At any rate, we’re still looking over the car. If we find anything, I will give you guys a call.”
“Thanks,” Osteen said as he and Vivian turned and walked back to his car. The tech waited for that exact moment to let out a sigh of exasperation. “This just isn’t adding up to the simple carjacking it initially appeared to be.”
“No, it isn’t,” Vivian agreed. “Why would someone carjack a man and kill him, only to bail from the car just a couple blocks away, then torch it before fleeing the scene? Never mind the fact that they just left the vic’s wallet.”
“I suppose the possibility exists that our perp was simply overcome with emotion with the way things with South on him.”
“I don’t buy that. And I sure as hell know you don’t,” she said, opening her door and sitting down.
“No, I don’t. But until we have something more substantial to stand on than my gut, we’re going to have to place this one on the pile.”
Chapter 9
Carlos Medina was a man everyone in Miami knew of, but few had ever met. He was the type of person who kept to the shadows for a myriad of reasons, mainly because he simply didn’t care for the hassle that came along with notoriety. He was content to let his men do the heavy lifting. Over the years, his actions had been enough for the Medina surname to command respect across the Sunshine State.
Medina came to America as a young boy, fleeing Castro’s Cuba with his parents on a small raft that barely held up during the 90-mile trip to Key West. His childhood was anything but lavish. His family lived in a small shack near the beach. To be fair, it was a bungalow that had looked rather quaint early in its history. Alas, the previous owner had been up to no good and gotten himself murdered inside the home. This led to the bungalow sitting on the market for far longer than it may have otherwise. Though they purchased it for pennies on the dollar, the elements had their way with the home because of overall lack of care while it sat vacant, which led to a long period of stretching ever dollar just to get it back to something resembling functional.
The elder Medina provided for his family by fishing the local waterways each day and selling what he caught in a nearby fish market. The money was enough to survive on, but it didn’t allow for them to enjoy some creature comforts many Americans cannot live without. The school kids picked on young Carlos for always showing up dirty, in tattered clothes, and speaking with an accent his fellow students thought was hilarious. He was slow to develop a firm grasp of the English language, further stunting his emotional growth.
As he grew older, he began hanging out with a different crowd. His parents had always tried to push him along a specific track, one which would see him going to a university and earning a degree. But Young Carlos had other plans, as did his new crew. They smoked pot in the school bathrooms and cut classes more often than they attended.
When he was seventeen, he befriended Darren Wilcox, an equally troubled teen who did some work for a local drug dealer. Medina quickly gained the trust of his new friend and, before long, the two were inseparable. Eventually, Medina ran drugs with Wilcox. They would take a small boat out a couple miles from the island and sit with exactly three fishing poles resting on the sides. Two of the poles were red and rested on the port side, while the other was blue and rested on the starboard side. Eventually, another boat would pull up alongside them and toss a couple black duffel bags onto their boat. Wilcox would then toss the other boat a brown leather briefcase while Medina stowed the duffel bags in a locker built into the deck of their boat.
Once the exchange was complete, Wilcox would return to the island and tie up the boat at the rickety dock they had departed from. The boys would then load the bags into Wilcox’s pickup truck and head to a stash house. Once there, an armed guard would give them each a couple thousand dollars for their efforts. Medina never questioned how Wilcox got mixed up in the drug business. He just tried to learn all he could about it. Within a year, the two began dealing their own merchandise. Medina proved to be a natural at it. After some time, and a few big sales, had passed the dealer, a man by the name of Miguel Santos, set up a meeting with the young pusher.
Santos was starkly different in appearance from Medina. Where Medina was lean with taut muscles from a workout routine he had done since the beginning of high school, Santos was flabby and unable to walk up a flight of stairs without running out of breath before reaching the top. Medina was clean shaven with a crew cut while Santos had thick, greasy hair and a bushy, black mustache that would have made Juan Valdez proud.
Despite their differences, the two shared one important thing in common: an affinity for drugs. This enabled them to share many exceptional years together supplying South Florida with all the white powder it could snort. Things weren’t always on an even keel between the two, though. As Medina became increasingly familiar with the product and proved he was adept at raking in a great deal of income from it, Santos felt threatened.
If it weren’t for me, this culo would never have even been in this position, Santos often lamented. I made that hijo de puta. Without me, he’s still groveling on t
he street for scraps!
Medina didn’t even have the decency to thank him for all he had done. As far as Santos was concerned, though he tried to contain it, Medina was a no-good piece of shit and was not to be trusted. Santos couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Medina was his right-hand man. Open conflict with those stakes would send the wrong message to those beneath them. Not that it would do him any favors to stir things up with his men. Furious though he may have been, even Santos couldn’t deny the gravitational pull that Medina had on the rest of the men. They had grown to love him like a brother. Boss or not, a familial bond is hard to break.
Days passed, and drinks consumed without even a remote sense of moderation. Before long, Santos was laying into Medina, letting him know how he really felt. This went on for a few weeks before Medina’s patience stretched past the breaking point. Even the most tolerant of men can only take a certain amount of verbal berating before their pride takes over and they snap. When that happens, the result is never something anyone longs to see.
The morning after the last incident, Medina made some calls and set up a deal. He and Santos were to meet one of their contacts in the middle of the Everglades. It had been years since either of them had made a deal like this and both felt a certain level of excitement as the moment drew closer, albeit for vastly different reasons. They rented an airboat and Medina piloted the craft out to a desolate area where all that met their eyes was blade upon blade of saw grass. Medina slowed to a stop and informed Santos that they were to wait there for their contact to arrive. Santos reached down to grab a beer from a cooler they brought with them. His head parted ways with his body as Medina’s machete ripped through meat and bone in a perfect slice.
Murder in the Magic City Page 4