by Sam Jones
“Have you met Velasco before?”
“No.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told Victor to tell Velasco that a couple of players were looking to push some yeyo. High purity levels. Just like you said.”
“And then?”
“He said that he had two guys working for Rico who were looking for some pure product. You said you had the purest stuff available. He called them, they confirmed with Rico, and then I set up the meet.”
“And then?”
Dizzy practically jumped out of his chair. “And then nothing! I told you, man, all I did was set up the meet. I didn’t know it was going to go bad. I didn’t know they were going to shoot your partner, I swear!”
To Billy, it felt like everything was coming to a grinding halt.
He stood up. “That’s not good enough, Dizzy.”
Dizzy held his hands out. “What more do you want from me, man?”
“More than what you’re shoveling. This doesn’t get me anywhere. Maybe I should just bust you right now.”
“Come on, man!”
After a few seconds, Billy got down in front of Dizzy and looked him square in the eyes. “You hear about that FBI agent that got killed last year? The one who infiltrated Castillo’s network? His name was Sykes.”
“Yeah,” Dizzy said. “Yeah, I heard…”
“Do you know who pulled the trigger?”
“No one knows.”
“Was it your cousin?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know!”
Billy caught the slight twitch in Dizzy’s left eyelid. “Are you lying to me?”
Dizzy paused. “No way, man…”
Billy inched closer and carefully examined every twitch, sniffle, and micromovement that Dizzy made, sniffing the guy out like a human lie detector.
He knew when someone was full of shit.
After a thorough visual exam, Billy said, “You’re lying to me.”
Dizzy flashed a nervous grin. “Look, Price—”
Billy grabbed Dizzy violently by the collar and started hauling him up the stairs that led up to the deck, throwing his weight around easier than a small sack of groceries, which made Billy look like the Incredible Hulk.
“What are you doing?” Dizzy pleaded.
They were on the deck, Billy practically dragging Dizzy toward the edge before slamming him into the waist-high railing on the port side that looked out toward the water.
“What the hell?!” Dizzy shouted.
Billy swept Dizzy’s legs out and landed him on his side with a hard thud. “They said someone wanted me alive. Why?”
“I said I don’t know!”
Billy then utilized every sinew in his body to pick Dizzy up off his feet and slam him against the railing, Dizzy nearly spilling over the side of the boat and into the water, his limbs flailing and doing their best to keep a grip on the railing.
Billy removed his Colt, disengaged the safety, pressed Dizzy as hard as he could into the railing, and jammed the muzzle into his forehead. “You’ve got five seconds to tell me the truth,” he said, “otherwise I’m going to blow your sad excuse for an IQ all over the deck and toss your ass overboard.”
Dizzy was sweating, clutching his stomach, and trying to catch his breath. “Yo! Yo! Yo! Wait! Hold on!”
Billy was red in the face and completely on edge, ready to do what he had to do. “Four seconds,” he said.
“You’re a fed, man! You can’t kill me!”
“The hell I won’t—two seconds.”
“Price—”
“One!”
“Rico Castillo is dead, man! He’s dead! He’s been dead for months!”
Billy paused, the gun still pressed into Dizzy’s head. “Say that again.”
Dizzy took a breath before repeating it: “Rico Castillo is dead, man. He’s been dead for a long time.”
Billy holstered his Colt and turned Dizzy back around. “Make it make sense, Dizzy. I’ve been working my way to this guy for nearly six months, and you’re telling me I’ve been chasing a ghost?”
“I guess,” Dizzy said.
Then Billy asked, “Then whose lackeys was I dealing with during that deal? Who did you set me up with?”
“I don’t know his name, but what I do know is that he took up all of Rico Castillo’s business after the guy died. Hector, Castillo’s partner, he made a deal with the devil, man. He sold out to the new guy and pulled a Judas on Castillo.”
Billy shook his head.
How did we not know?
Castillo is dead?
Then who’s calling the shots?
“How is that possible?” Billy asked.
“This new guy bought out all of Rico’s people. Everything. Started paying them all double what they were getting paid before, after Hector helped him take over.”
“Keep talking…”
“After I met you and your partner, I called my cousin Victor. I told him your names, said you wanted to set up a deal, and then he tells me to wait by the phone. Three hours later, he calls me and says that the new boss wanted you brought in.”
“What else did he say? Did he know I was an FBI agent?”
“He didn’t say. All he said was that he wanted you brought in alive, if possible.”
Billy tried to go through the list of the people in his life that he had slighted.
There were a few.
He asked Dizzy, “You get this guy’s name? Your cousin’s boss, the guy who wants me?”
Dizzy swallowed and began fiddling with his hands. “No, man. Seriously, I don’t know.”
Billy clenched his fist. “Someone knows…”
“Try Velasco. He’s the guy that runs the restaurant I was telling you about. He stayed on after Castillo was killed. That’s the only other person I know of. I swear.”
Down on the slipway, two women in bikinis stopped at the stern of the Greed Equals Good, concerned looks on their faces as they watched Billy manhandle Dizzy.
Billy saw them. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re theater actors. Just working on some Shakespeare.”
The two girls, alarmed but not looking to get involved, quickly shuffled away, their high-heels—a poor choice to pair with the bikinis for sake of “fashion”—causing them to trot away in an awkward manner that forced them to carefully calibrate each step they made as they ran off.
Billy holstered his Colt and stood back. “Okay, Dizzy,” he said. “I’ll bite.”
Dizzy stayed on the ground—waiting for whatever was coming next.
He asked, “Now what?”
“Now,” Billy said, “You’re going to do what you do best—set up a meeting.”
“With Velasco?”
“No, Phil Donahue.”
Dizzy squinted—he didn’t know who that was.
Billy rolled his eyes. “Yes, jackass,” he said. “Velasco.”
7
DURAN DURAN’S “THE Wild Boys” was playing at a wall-thumping volume throughout the dance hall, accompanied by a vibrant and resplendent laser light show that cut through the smoke-choked establishment.
Hips were swaying. Shoulders were popping and locking. Lines were being snorted at a gratuitous volume in the dark corners of the South Florida hot spot as Billy Reese, hanging with Dizzy by the bar, awaited the arrival of his next lead while Duran Duran’s bass levels echoed inside his skull like a headache with rhythm.
Billy wasn’t a big fan of the song when it came out.
Still wasn’t.
But—and he couldn’t remember how or why—the tune had gotten stuck in his head like a bad habit about a month back. Any time he had a down moment, he would think of that damn song, playing it on repeat in his head during stressed-out moments or sleepless nights when his brain was too fried or worked-up to think straight.
Is what it is.
He whistled along with the chorus as the tune trickled out through the house speakers
set up throughout the building he and Dizzy were in, a packed-in and public place off Purdy Avenue near the water—packed-in and public being the key phrasing. It was the wee hours of the evening, and they were there to meet with “Velasco,” and public places like this one discouraged a blitz.
Somewhat.
People had been treating South Florida like the Wild West as of late, so there were no guarantees that more bodies would decrease the chances of someone having a tantrum with a firearm.
Billy took another look around. The entire infrastructure of the bar was made from the material of junked airplanes: wings, tires, engine cowlings, et cetera. The entire establishment had a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max aesthetic, all of it coated in green and red neon tubing. The patrons were dressed like they were in a hard-rock music video, and smoke, sweat, and the stench of booze clogged up the air.
A poster directly in front of Billy and Dizzy over the bar showed a girl with big, blond contemporary hair proudly holding up a Budweiser with a perky smile and a puffed-out chest. Billy recognized her face. She was some famous actress, but he couldn’t place her name. His mind was too preoccupied focusing on two things: the exits—one in the front, one in the back—and his Colt, safety disengaged and right hand ready to draw it out.
Billy kept alternating pressing the cold Budweiser against the back of his head and the cut on his lip, a headache beginning to work its way up his neck and into his brain. Whether it was induced by stress or physical pain, he wasn’t really sure. He sipped on the beer. The booze would either temporarily alleviate the pain or make it worse.
It was usually a fifty-fifty shot with Billy.
“Is he here?” he asked Dizzy, sitting directly to his left and drumming his fingers on the countertop.
Dizzy looked around, scanning the bobbing heads and coked-out grins of the crowd, searching for signs of Velasco. “No. Not yet. I don’t even know what the guy looks like.”
Billy exhaled. “This is gonna be another very long night. I can feel it already…”
He was losing track of the hours. Days were blending into an amorphous blob of time, and he was starting to feel a little jaded. The lack of consistent food and sleep wasn’t helping, and this new information about a mystery drug kingpin running Rico Castillo’s operation had really bent him out of shape.
After intercepting Dizzy at the marina, Billy had taken him to a pay phone at a nearby (and heavily congested) shopping mall, Dizzy fearing for his life and ever obedient to Special Agent Billy Reese and his interests out of fear of incarceration.
Or worse.
“Miami-Dade is pretty pissed,” Ferris said to Billy over the pay phone in the mall. “I’ve had about six calls from four of their departments asking what happened in Little Havana yesterday.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That we’re the FBI.”
“Is it a problem?”
“I’m getting some flack, but I have it covered. It’s not your concern. You’re not a ‘bureaucrat,’ remember?”
Billy’s Wayfarer-covered eyes were caught by the pretzel stand in the food court, standing out like a mirage to Billy, who hadn’t eaten in a few hours. The lack of contents in his stomach made the pretzel stand look like three-star, Michelin Guide dining.
Should I eat?
“Billy,” Ferris said.
“Sorry. I gotta get cracking on this lead. I’ll call you when I can.”
He didn’t want to tell Ferris any more than he had to. Technically he had a lead, but it may have been a bullshit lead. Billy trusted that Dizzy was telling the truth about “Velasco” and the new mystery drug lord, but then again, Dizzy lied a lot.
Either way, Billy wanted to feel the situation out a bit more before he really touched base with Ferris, and he certainly didn’t want to mention the fact that Rico Castillo was supposedly dead.
She might just pull the plug altogether.
I need to find out more…
He hung up the phone, grabbed Dizzy by the elbow, and moved toward the pretzel stand. “You’re going to call your cousin,” he said as he took a scan around the mall, on the lookout for anyone suspicious.
“Why?” asked Dizzy, fidgety and agitated, the rhythm of his walk coming off like a mild epileptic episode.
“You’re gonna tell him exactly what’s happening: the dealer who tried to sell Castillo’s boys some dope wants to talk to Velasco.”
“Are you fucking crazy?”
“Maybe,” Billy said as they came up to the order window, two female employees in their teens with blue-and-white zebra-striped uniforms tending the counter. “But you’re going to do it because I told you to do it.”
“Hi, sir!” the girl working the registered greeted. “WhatcanIgetcha?”
“Pretzel dog,” Billy said as he produced ten bucks from his pocket. “And a bottle of water.”
“That’ll be three-fifty, sir!”
Billy handed over the money; the girl broke the change, and moments later his food was delivered. “Keep walking,” he said to Dizzy as they moved away from the stand and started lingering through the mall.
Dizzy rubbed his hands together. “Look, I don’t know about—”
“Dizzy,” Billy cut in, in between shoveling the hot dog down his gullet, “call your cousin and tell him Eddie Price wants to meet Velasco at Roxy’s Hangar at six p.m.”
“The bar?”
“No, the rotary club. Yes, you imbecile. The bar.”
“Don’t call me an imbecile, man.”
“Then quit playing the part. Look, Dizzy, you’re working for me now, and unless you want me to hand you over to my people or let the jackals on the street tear you apart, you’re going to do as I say. Comprende?”
“All right, man,” Dizzy said with a somewhat juvenile reluctance. “Whatever you say…”
A pretzel dog, a phone call, and several hours later, Billy and Dizzy were hanging at the bar in Roxy’s Hangar, waiting for Velasco to show up after a bit of hesitation and chain jerking.
Dizzy leaned in toward Billy. “What’s the move for when this guy shows up?”
Billy said, “Let me worry about that,” as he took another swig of his beer, his stomach having fully digested the pretzel dog he consumed over an hour ago and grumbling for more.
“That’s a shitty plan, man,” Dizzy said. “What if he tries to kill us?”
“Then we’ll deal with it,” Billy said.
Dizzy threw his hands up in defeat. He was stuck in a shitty situation, and only the fed to his right could dictate the way out, and right now, he didn’t like the moves that were being made to get there.
“Just take it easy, Dizzy. If this guy makes a move, I’ve got you covered.”
“Psh,” Dizzy spit through pursed lips, “that’s really comforting to hear, white boy. You think flashing the badge will mean shit to him?”
Billy did, despite the fact that he knew he should have left the thing behind. He was undercover. It was a sour move to let too many people know he was a fed. But the plan was to keep scaring anyone he could into thinking that federal charges were in store for them in lieu of their cooperation, and that federal badge tended to make even the hardest of criminals cringe.
The music in the club changed over: “Sensation,” Bryan Ferry.
Billy looked at the digital Casio on his wrist: 6:20 p.m.
This is taking way too long.
Patience…
“Is this guy going to show up, Dizzy?” he asked with a thick undercurrent of spite.
Dizzy, for the briefest of moments, took on a relaxed composure. He casually—
and somewhat coolly—turned his head and smiled.
Billy looked the chump square in his eyes and squinted.
What do you got for me, you little weasel?
Dizzy said, “Take it easy, gringo. I’m sure he’ll show.”
No sooner had Dizzy said it than the doors to their right opened up, daylight spilling in from the outside like an incoming
tide and bleaching the club for several seconds.
Seconds later…she entered the room.
8
AS THE HARSH yet heavenly glow from the light outside subsided, Billy saw the outline of a woman. The laws of physical attraction usually didn’t distract him—for the most part—but something about this particular female stood out. Something about the way she stood. Her posture, to be more specific. Her left hand was resting on the small of her back, and the way she was tilting her head made her look like she was surveying and judging whether this place and the denizens inside were even worth her time.
As the doors closed, her face was fully exposed in the neon lights, and for a few brief seconds, Billy had forgotten that he was on the clock.
“Too bad that’s not my cousin, right?” Dizzy whispered into Billy’s ear, snapping him back to reality.
Billy looked away. “Play back what you just said, dipshit.”
Dizzy thought about it.
He squinted to show his displeasure. “Damn, man, I didn’t mean to say it like that.”
The woman approached the bar and cozied up alongside Billy to his right. It was dark, but Billy could see that her skin was licked bronze by the sun. Her dark hair was thickly curled and tied up in a ponytail that canted to the right. Her facial features were sharp yet pleasant, the woman bearing a good resemblance and a similar vibe to a Nixon era Grace Slick but with olive skin and a pair of exotic eyes that only exotic women sported.
Exotic or dangerous.
I’ll take either.
She reached into her purse and pulled out a crisp twenty-dollar bill like it was nothing more than a tissue, nonchalant, with an attitude that if she lost the money, she had plenty more left to spend. Every movement she made, even the simplest gesture of slapping down a Jackson on the counter was filled with a confidence and demeanor that indicated she wasn’t the kind of woman to take any flack.
She was loose. Laid back. Just as ready to cut up the dance floor as she was to throw a punch.
Janis Joplin when she busted that bottle over Jim Morrison’s head.
The bartender, some over-jacked and overworked buffoon with biceps like softballs, posed in front of the woman with a cringe-inducing smile. “Hey, babe,” he crooned, “what can I get you? Beer? Cocktail? My home address?”
