“No, it doesn’t,” Hurst agreed. He poured whiskey into a pair of glasses and pushed one toward Sheridan. “It doesn’t, but sometimes those attempts aren’t fruitful. If it weren’t for you, perhaps someone else would have arrived in your place.”
“Why them? Couldn’t you have achieved the same end goal without taking a life in the process?”
“That’s not important. What matters right now is you soldiered on, pushed yourself to a level you didn’t know you could reach, and got shit done. That’s good. In due time, you’ll be in the field, doing this sort of thing to people who deserve it. In your own way, you’ll be making damn sure they can’t hurt anyone like the perfect little family whose deaths you’re so troubled by.”
Sheridan gulped the drink. He could feel the walls drift back as the copper liquid scorched his esophagus. An overwhelming sense of dread took hold. His life was no longer something he felt in control of. He was a weapon to be pointed wherever Uncle Sam needed him. All he could hope was that he could one day get a bit of retribution.
Chapter 37
Four months later…
“Hey, sweetie,” Valerie said as she walked into the apartment, her arms full of groceries. Over the course of the few weeks they had lived together, she discovered a rather silly fault in the man she unexpectedly fell for: an insatiable appetite. She’d stock the pantry and the refrigerator full of nourishing options for the week’s menu. Inevitably, they’d be out of something within a day or two that should have lasted them the entire week. At first, she joked that purchasing stock in their local grocery chain wouldn’t be a bad idea. The more time passed, the more reasonable to idea became.
Micah gave her a kiss and grabbed what bags he could. “Good evening, beautiful. How was work?”
“Thanks,” she replied. “It was exhausting. Seemed like everyone in South Beach decided today was the day they had to get their hair done. Couldn’t get together and figure out a way to spread things out across the week. Just non-stop from the moment we opened the doors.” She let out a sigh. Exasperated.
“Sounds rough. Well, hopefully I can make things better.”
“They’re trending that way.”
“Good,” Micah said. He smiled and checked his wristwatch. “Okay, dinner should be here any minute. Nothing fancy, just pizza, but I’ll pour you a drink while you get settled in.”
“No complaints here. If I don’t have to cook, especially after the day I just had, this night is already perfect,” Valerie said as she walked into their bedroom.
Micah rummaged through a few cupboards, momentarily forgetting where they kept the wine glasses. Stemware located, he placed the glasses on the bar top and poured chilled merlot into both. Life was good. There were so many ways it could have taken him when he came to Miami, but this route was low on the scale of probabilities. Micah always assumed he would spend much of his time working. Any chance to coexist with the fairer sex was something he had expected to take place as a transaction more than a mutual choice. It felt like a bit of yang to the yin of all the terrible things he’d been a part of since he started running with Castillo and Medina. He often felt like it was really someone else pulling the trigger; or otherwise forcing these complete strangers to meet their maker. The scene would unfold before him, and he felt helpless to stop it but, he knew the fault still ultimately lay with him. It made him wonder if…
The sound of his phone ringing brought Micah back to reality, to the present. The reflections, memories even, weren’t going anywhere for long, just pushed back into a recess until another solitary moment arose. He looked down at the phone and saw ‘Unknown’ across the middle of the screen. It didn’t take long for him to figure out who the caller might be.
“Val? I’ve gotta step outside for a minute. If the pizza guy gets here before I come back in, my wallet is on the counter.” Micah walked out onto a small balcony and slid the glass door behind him. The city looked different at dusk, away from the lights of downtown. Instead of neon and gigantic high-rise condominiums, the world became a maze of concrete and palm trees packed much more tightly together. As if the thought of green space sickened the city planner responsible for cramming the masses into their own small section of the world. “What’s up, Jimmy?”
“You busy?”
“Figured your trained eye would have that answer for you.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Castillo said. “I’d still like to hear it from you directly.”
“At this precise moment, no, not really. Just on the phone with you.”
“Hilarious, wiseass.”
“I’m about to eat dinner with Valerie. What’s going on?”
There was an odd pause, as though Castillo hadn’t planned on this option and had to consider how best to pivot. “Okay, no worries. I’ve come across an interesting business opportunity for us. Could be pretty lucrative.”
A multitude of questions swirled about in Micah’s head, but the best he could come up with in that moment wasn’t even remotely close to thought provoking. “Oh, really?”
“Yep. I’ll need your expertise to be sure it goes off without a hitch, but it should be a piece of cake. Meet me at the spot in the morning. Say 10-ish.”
“All right, Micah said. He hung up the phone and walked back into the apartment, lost in even more thoughts than before.
Chapter 38
Vivian sat in front of a rather plain headstone at Flagler Memorial Park, a cemetery in the heart of Miami. A bottle of cheap whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other, it would be easy to dismiss her as just another vagrant out to get some cheap thrills, drunkenly hunting ghosts. The dark night sky and dismal lighting hid the tears that had dried on her face. They buried Osteen months ago, what remained of him anyway. But losing someone close, someone who has changed you for the better, is no simple thing to move past. She still listened to the voicemail he left her.
The last call he had ever made.
To her.
Or anyone.
“Hey, Viv, it’s Dan. (No shit, she always thought, laughing despite the reality.) I’m about to do something stupid. Kinda glad you didn’t pick up. You’d be telling me what a dumbass I am for going through with this. (You’re damn right, she thought, sniffling.) Anywho, Jimmy Castillo called me up. No idea how he got my number specifically, but he wants me to meet with him at Henderson’s. It’s a junkyard over in Hialeah. Says he’s got information to tie up these murders we keep running into. I doubt I can trust the sonofabitch, but what choice do I have?” Another pause. Vivian could hear the engine in his cruiser gradually quieting, almost like it was reaching idle, before cutting out altogether. “Look, I gotta go. I’ll let you know when I’m headed back to the station. We may need to move quick, get a jump on things.” And then the line clicked. For good.
Based on when she had received the call, and the time of death the Crime Scene techs deduced based on when the car crusher had last run, the call likely ended about the time Osteen arrived at the junkyard, less than an hour before he breathed one last time. He had sounded somewhat calm. As if death was the last thing on his mind. He seemed to believe that something good would come from his walking into the proverbial lion’s den.
“You damn fool,” Vivian whispered. She took a final swig from the bottle and threw it off in the distance. “Who am I kidding? I’m the fool too. Walk down to the Evidence Locker and forget my phone on the desk at the worst possible time. If I would’ve had it on me, you might still be here. Hell, just don’t think about going there at all and you’re alive. But that’s not you. No, you had to see something in these cases. Couldn’t just believe they were random. That maybe, just maybe, life is working the way it always does. Shit happens to everyone. We don’t all get to ride off into the sunset because we don’t like the cards life dealt us.”
She fell to her knees, sobbing. Why was this bothering her so much? Why couldn’t she just bottle it up like she did when her grandmother passed? “J
ust look at you, crushed in a goddamn car. Perfect example that sometimes terrible things just happen. Doesn’t mean they’re connected to another shitty thing that happened to take place in the same city. Especially not when there’s three million of us running around this fucking place!” Angry though she might be, Vivian knew there was something curious about the chain of events that resulted in the death of her partner. The culprit practically stared right back at her in a manner of speaking. It was the motive that seemed to tie back into everything else. It was all so perfectly coincidental otherwise.
But, if she were being honest with herself, she simply wasn’t sure she had it in her to continue pursuing the threads, hoping they would one day come together to form some coherent tapestry. A picture of the inner workings of Osteen’s mind in the past how many months. Something to show that he hadn’t died for nothing. That his sacrifice had meant something for the greater good. For now, all she wanted to do was drink away her sorrows.
Chapter 39
Sheridan reluctantly allowed himself to be strapped down to another gurney and wheeled into the same strange circular room he had been in just a few days prior. Nothing good came from being inside, yet he knew resistance was futile. This must be what destiny feels like, he thought. Or giving up.
“All right, Mr. Sheridan,” came the low monotone voice of an unrecognizable blob of a man. “Let’s get you set up.”
Sheridan wondered what happened to either of the nurses from the other day. And why the odd fellow fumbling with a table full of medical equipment had replaced them. He found it difficult to focus on anything other than what the Blob was attempting at that very moment. Confusion, and a pinch of pity, washed over him as he watched the man struggle to pick up an intravenous line without pricking himself. Sheridan hadn’t the foggiest idea how the Blob had passed through any form of medical school.
Eventually, the Blob hurried over with a medical tray in tow. Laid out on top of it were a pair of intravenous bags with matching lines. Sheridan scrutinized the bags, trying to make sense of the scribble on the labels, but gave up when he first felt a shooting pain in his left arm as a needle pierced his inner wrist.
Sheridan grunted.
“Sorry about that,” offered the Blob. “I don’t get to do this too often. Normally they just have me set everything up in back.”
Can’t imagine why, Sheridan almost muttered. “Must be nice to get out every now and again.”
“Oh, absolutely,” the Blob responded as he pierced Sheridan’s other arm. “Okay, Mr. Sheridan, we’re almost ready. I’m just going to make sure your fluids are running as expected, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Fluids? What fluids, exactly?”
“Oh, you know, the usual cocktail.”
“Care to enlighten me?”
“Err… um…,” the Blob looked around anxiously, as though he half expected a caped hero to burst through the door at any moment and whisk him away to safety. When that didn’t happen, he wiped his brow and attempted to collect himself. “What I mean to say is, uh, it’s just something to keep you hydrated.”
“Guess I’m going to be here a while.”
“You could say that,” the Blob replied. He flicked each bag and watched as the disparate fluids coerced through the plastic tubes, racing toward the bloodstream of the man whose body they would eventually enter.
Sheridan stared hard at the Blob, working toward a line of questioning which may trick some useful information out of the man. His mind slowly drifted in and out of focus, as though he were looking through an old View-Master toy whose reels kept being removed just as he gained clarity on the scene in question. He never saw the Blob reach down to raise the gurney into the upright position. Didn’t notice as the man awkwardly backed away and rushed out of the room.
He only saw the walls burst to life. Each screen showed something different. Some were simply images. Others had videos. The one constant was the man Hurst had sent Sheridan to kill. He was going about his life, through various phases of it, and eventually reaching a point Sheridan wasn’t sure had ever existed. The screens all ran concurrently, with no regard for his ability to keep any of what he saw or heard as more than just a fleeting memory. Just as his mind threatened to quit for a moment, and to let slumber take hold, something shocked him in the back. He was awake again, watching as the cavalcade of memories from another person’s life slowly became his own. His mind felt like it was turning to mush, incapable of discerning between his own thoughts and the words that kept coming out of the room.
“Come on, sweetheart, wake up for daddy.”
“Who the hell is that girl?”
“Castillo. Ji… Jimmy Castillo. Every 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 in the actual fuck is happening? I think I’m going crazy.”
“That’s impossible. I don’t know anyone named Castillo.”
“Well, he must know you.”
Gunshots always signaled the end. The moment before, the same shock pierced Sheridan’s back and forced his eyes open. Peaceful slumber was kept at bay and the repetition all but ensured he would not forget the visions playing out before him into infinity.
Chapter 40
Micah had his hand on the front door of La Cantina Sucia, instinctively ready to open it and walk inside, when a familiar voice stopped him. He turned, hoping his apprehension wasn’t so obvious as it felt.
“Let’s head somewhere with a bit more privacy,” Castillo said behind the veil of a plastic grin.
“O… k,” was about all the reply Micah could muster. The sudden change in location for their meeting set off alarms in his mind, but he complied with the demand without the faintest hint of protest. Truthfully, there wasn’t much cause for concern other than a nagging feeling of paranoia. The pair walked down the street, toward an unremarkable diner with a paint-by-numbers interpretation of what life in the fifties must have been like. A hostess dressed to the nines for a sock hop ushered them over to a cozy booth near a corner window.
Castillo eyed Micah, working his angle. He opted to start things out chummy rather than jump straight to the point. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Slept terrible.”
“You going to be okay to help me out today?”
“Should be. Just need something to get me going.”
Castillo motioned for the server and positioned a couple of mugs before his arrival. “Just coffee, thanks,” he said before the server talked up their specials for the day. A look of abject despair crept across the server’s face. He walked back to the counter after filling the mugs, a sullen look on his face, and glanced around for another set of customers.
Content with their seclusion, Castillo returned his gaze to Micah. “All right, so that business opportunity I mentioned.” His voice trailed off as he fiddled with the paper wrapping on the silverware that he had no intention of using. The gears moved in his head, ideas swirling about as he zeroed in on the optimal way to make his proposition. “I met some guys who do a bit of trafficking. Not coke, but something with a similar payout if you know the right people.”
Micah kept his face blank, devoid of emotion, and took a sip of his scalding hot coffee. “What do they move? Guns; girls; pills?”
“Guns, primarily.” Castillo replied. His tone was evasive, as though he were holding something back. “I’m sure they do something else on the side. It’s difficult to be successful in our world if you don’t diversify your offerings.”
“You want to buy these guns, then turn around and sell them? Look, man, I’m willing to do a lot, but I’m no dealer. Guns or otherwise.”
The moral high ground was not somewhere Castillo expected Micah to venture, considering all he had done for the Cartel. “Don’t you worry, Boy Scout,” he chided. “We’re not dealing. I called up my guy and told him to meet me at the motel on 8th in a couple
of hours. He thinks that it’s just going to be a typical purchase. I’ll show up, fork over the stacks, and walk away with enough munitions to take out a small army. That’s where you come in. Once he shows the goods, you take him out. We keep the cash, the guns, and anything else interesting we find.”
Micah stretched out for a couple seconds, feeling a good pull in the muscles of his upper back, before bringing his hands together, one over the other and resting his chin on top. He stared straight ahead, knowing full well how absurd the whole situation felt. How likely it was that something so ill prepared for would fail. But something tugged at him deep inside. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was he was feeling, or why he seemed so intent on listening, but he trusted what he assumed was his gut. The strange pull to follow Castillo, to continue to get closer. To eventually take care of things once and for all. Whatever the hell that meant. “Fuck it, let’s do it.”
Castillo looked at Micah like a proud parent watching their child walk across a stage for their college graduation. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” He stood up, placing a hundred on the tabletop. “Though I’m now just a slight bit surprised you’d agree so easily, considering your newfound morals.”
“Oh, believe me, buddy, it’s going to cost you.” Micah said as he jokingly patted Castillo on the back.
-#-
Micah rolled the Impala to a stop across the street from a shabby motel in a rather neglected part of the city. Grass overgrown, where it still existed, and there were bars across every window. Even on the third floor. Do they think Curious George is going to break in? At first glance, he assumed it more than likely a place for one-night-lovers to mingle. The sign out front didn’t help to detract from that notion. It read Magic City Motel—Where the Magic Happens One Night at a Time.
“They run their entire operation out of this dump?”
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