by Alex Segura
“Mr. Rosen,” Pete said. “You seem nice enough. Well-mannered, that sort of thing, so I won’t be rude—but, first off—why would you expect me to get in a car with you and go somewhere at this time of night? Second, I’m retired. I’m not taking new cases.”
“I’m aware of your status, so I won’t beat around the bush, Mr. Fernandez,” Rosen said, absentmindedly cracking the knuckles on his left hand. “I represent Alvaro Mujica. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”
Pete had. Mujica was an old school bolitero—a numbers guy who ran illegal lotteries around Miami, plus who knows what other illicit activities. Though the landscape of Miami’s underworld was an ever-changing beast, Mujica had managed to carve out a constant place for himself. The former Bay of Pigs infantryman claimed to the press that he was just a humble, retired mamey fruit farmer. But the truth was very different.
Pete sighed and let his keys drop back into his pocket.
“I know your boss,” Pete said, his voice flat. “If that was your trump card, then I’m gonna ask you to leave. It’s late. I’m tired. And I’ve spent too much of my time working for bad men. It usually ends up with me beaten or shot. Kind of done with that for a long while. Nice to meet you, though.”
“Dismissing me would be unwise,” Rosen said. “Like I said, Mr. Mujica is looking for some help with a very delicate—and personal—matter.”
With that, Pete turned around and started to open the door again. As it closed behind him, he could still see Rosen standing there, watching him through the smudged front door glass.
PETE KNEW SOMETHING was off the second he walked in. For one, a light was on—near the back, where the bookstore office was. The space Pete sometimes used for clients and his investigative work. “Used” being the key word. It was late and he knew he’d turned the light off. He heard noises, too. Thumping. A muttered curse word.
Gonna be one of those nights, he thought. He wasn’t carrying his gun. He didn’t do that anymore. And for the first time since he’d decided to permanently tuck his father’s old firearm in a lockbox, he felt regret.
Pete walked slowly through the darkened bookstore, the layout of the small space imprinted in his brain, trying to keep his footfalls silent. As he got closer to the noise—and the person causing the ruckus—he was able to make out a few words.
“This is unbelievable,” said the voice, sounding tired and put-upon. “There’s no end in sight.”
A few more paces and Pete let out a short sigh of relief. He was glad he didn’t have his gun after all.
He found Isabel Levitz in the SCI-FI/FANTASY aisle, sitting on the floor, surrounded by mass market paperbacks from every decade—Star Trek and Star Wars novels, Asimov, Herbert, Tolkien, and more—moving one book onto another pile and then moving it back, hypnotized by a mission only she seemed to be aware of.
“Isabel?” Pete asked.
She jerked, and her glasses rattled to the floor. She glanced up at Pete, squinting as she tried to grab for her fallen bifocals. She put them back on her face before responding.
“Pete? Oh, hi,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you this late.”
“I could say the same to you,” Pete said. “Is something wrong?”
“Oh, well, no,” she said, her shoulders slumping slightly as she looked around at the various piles of books, placed in an order only she could comprehend. “I was lying in bed and realized our organizational system for this aisle is a mess, so I figured I’d come by and fix it before we opened tomorrow, and, well, that became its own mess.…”
Pete laughed. A genuine laugh—not laced with sarcasm or snark. It felt nice.
“Are you sure this has to happen now?” He knew the answer. Isabel was retired. Books had been her working life and now, alone with no children and little family, books were all she had. He was lucky to have an employee who was this committed to the store.
She chuckled. “I guess not, but here I am.”
“Well, don’t stay too late, all right?” Pete said. “I just came by because I needed to pick something up from the office.”
She waved at him as he made his way to the back of the store. He walked past the shelves of books and related paraphernalia with no shortage of nostalgia. It was in this store that he’d gotten his footing after the bottom fell out. His friend, Dave Mendoza, had offered Pete a lifeline of sorts: part-time work with full-time pay, and a place to call home that wasn’t dimly lit, playing bad classic rock, and reeking of gin. That felt like a long time ago. Pete had a few years under his belt. Plenty of bad decisions. He hadn’t envisioned himself walking through these doors again, much less running the place. But skating past death tends to change your perspective.
Now Dave was gone. Harras was retired. Kathy was spending more time writing about crimes than helping to solve them—not to mention her life with Marco. Pete had almost lost his life trying to atone for the years he’d misspent. Time spent drinking. Doing the wrong things. He felt that he’d atoned for that. It was time to simplify.
Pete turned down the MYSTERY/THRILLER aisle. He grabbed a copy of William Boyle’s The Lonely Witness before making a left at the far wall, and entered a tiny office. He set the book down on his desk, which took up most of the room, along with a small cot that nearly blocked the door. It was in this space that he’d barricaded himself, a few years previous, as a serial killer tore through the city. It was here that he reached for a vodka bottle and embraced the demons that had been scratching at the walls of his mind. It was here that he let them back in.
He heard Isabel’s light footsteps and the click and clack of the front door lock, followed by the jangle of the chime hanging off the knob. She wasn’t big on goodbyes, he thought, and smiled.
Pete, like most alcoholics, had come into the rooms when he’d hit his bottom—the lowest point of his life that also created a moment of clarity, a break in the dark clouds that allowed him to see, for once, that he needed to make a change. He never thought he could sink lower, but he did on that day. His ex-fiancée, Emily, had just been abducted by a bloodthirsty madman named Julian Finch, and he felt completely helpless—and guilty—for the darkness swirling around them. He’d opted out. He chose to dive into the abyss and let go rather than face reality and try to help. Emily survived. She never forgave him.
Emily.
Their relationship had been fraught long before, though. Years ago, she’d left him, his drinking souring a relationship they thought fast-tracked to happiness. Then she’d married, settled into a photogenic, suburban life. When her husband started fucking his assistant, her annual holiday postcard life had been flipped.
Emily lived in Europe, last Pete heard. It’d taken a while, but the parallels between his relationship with Emily and his off-and-on romance with Kathy had not been lost on him. He was trying to course-correct. But often, the heart does what it wants.
He sat in front of his laptop and waited for it to boot up. The idea that Alvaro Mujica wanted anything to do with him could not be good. His gut told him to call Kathy, but he doubted the party was over—or that she’d be interested in talking shop tonight. He gave his email a quick glance. He flagged a query from an investigator he knew in L.A., Juniper Song, and promised to deal with it later. Then he closed the browser and tapped a few keys to load a familiar file. His eyes scanned the text: dates, locations, some grainy surveillance camera stills.
These five pages were all the information Pete had on Vincent Salerno, the man who had nearly killed him. The document was a garbled puzzle of bits of intel—sightings, tips, rumors—cobbled together from Pete working the phones, trying to figure out the “why” behind what Salerno did. The only active case on Pete’s docket.
The lead-in to Vincent Salerno’s appearance in Pete’s Spring Valley, New York, office was fuzzy, but Pete could make out shapes and movement. At the time, Pete had been seeing a woman named Jen Ferris. She worked as a stripper at a club a short drive from Pete’s business. As with Emily and Kathy, the romance ha
d not been healthy, and it imploded due in large part to Pete’s inability to deal with the realities of adult relationships. He wanted something. He knew that. But he wasn’t ready to open himself up to the price of intimacy. Jen sussed him out fast, and was quick to cut him loose.
Jen’s father had been a two-bit mob associate, working on the fringes of the DeCalvacante crime family, the New Jersey satellite to one of the larger Five Families of New York. Something Doug Ferris did got the attention of Salerno, who decided to approach Pete about the man, with a mob pal along for the ride. Pete managed to overpower and shame the two gangsters. Soon after the incident, he was on his way back to Miami, pulled away by a case involving a missing state senator’s son. Upon his return to New York, a trip Pete had taken just to load up his belongings and head back south, Pete was approached by an FBI agent named Amanda Chopp. The agent didn’t mince words—Doug Ferris and his daughter were dead. What did Pete know about it? Nothing. That was the truth. Nothing at the time. Enter Salerno. RIP Chopp, bullet to the head. Pete was close to meeting the same fate, had Chopp’s partner not arrived when he did. Even then, it had been close.
The file had become a totem of sorts for Pete. The thing he thought about when his head hit the pillow, or when he was stuck in traffic. It filled the empty spaces between the life he’d scraped together in the wake of the attack. What would drive a mid-level mobster like Vinnie Salerno, who was probably making a decent if illicit living for himself, go rogue and murder three people and gravely injure a fourth? Every time Pete got a bit of info, a photo, a tip, or a whiff of what might tie it all together, it disappeared as soon as it popped up, leaving conflicting ideas and jagged, confusing strands of thoughts in its wake. Pete had no idea where to go from here.
He got up with a start at the sound. He’d been so immersed in the file that he hadn’t recognized the familiar front door buzzer. Had Isabel lost her keys or forgotten something? He walked back toward the door and saw a figure standing outside, backlit by streetlights on Bird Road. Rosen again?
As Pete got closer, he realized he did not know the man—older, gruff-looking, and overdressed—wearing layers of clothing that didn’t fit the perpetually humid Miami weather. A man out of place.
Frightened.
Pete opened the door.
“We’re closed.”
The man looked up to meet Pete’s eyes, as if being awoken from a deep sleep.
“Pete Fernandez?” he said, his voice a hoarse croak. “What do you know about your mother?”
June 12, 1983
“HE DID IT. Un-fucking-believable,” she said, dragging the large trash bag packed with clothes, toiletries, and who knows what else behind her as she approached the door to D’s apartment. “He finally did it.”
She jammed her finger into the doorbell and let it ring for much longer than she should have. Even that little bit of release felt good. Her head spun. She leaned on the wall adjacent to the door and waited. It was early. D was probably asleep. Jesus, she hoped she was asleep. Which at least meant D was at home. She had nowhere else to go.
The door creaked open and D’s head popped out into the hallway, dark purple circles under her eyes. She scanned in both directions until her gaze fell on her friend and the bag of belongings she’d brought with her.
“He finally did it, huh?” D asked with a frown.
D ushered her into the small apartment, which was tidy and well decorated despite the crappy neighborhood and deteriorating building. D took care of what she had. It was one of her most admirable traits.
I guess she has me now, she thought, taking a seat across from D on the tiny couch. Can she take care of me?
“What happened?” D asked. “Do you want a drink?”
“Yes, oh yes,” she said. “Maybe twelve.”
D wandered a few feet away to the apartment’s small kitchen. She heard D preparing what she hoped would be a strong, tangy screwdriver. D returned with a giant glass that was more yellow than orange.
D never goes light on the vodka, thank God.
“Tell me everything,” D said.
“I should have seen it coming,” she said, her voice clear. But that strength wavered almost immediately, as the details rushed into her mind’s eye, pulling her back to the confrontation, the nightmare her life had become in less than a few hours. “I got home—it was around two in the morning, I guess. I don’t know for sure. He’d packed all my stuff in this garbage bag. The only reason I saw him was that he’d gotten up because the kid was crying. Awkward way to run into your husband.”
“Oh, honey,” D said, patting her hand gently. “It was bound to happen, you know?”
She ignored her friend. She didn’t want the judgment. She pressed on, wiping the tears from her face with a rough motion.
“Well, it was a surprise to me, okay? I mean, I usually manage to sneak into bed, all clear, right? At least crash,” she said. “Doesn’t dodge the passive-aggressive attitude in the morning, or the doe-eyed, concerned looks—but it lets me sleep off the worst of it. Some nights I just need to let off some steam, you know? I can’t just sneak sips from the bottle all week, pretend to be June Cleaver, hiding in plain sight. I’d go insane, D.”
“I know,” D said, nodding, waiting for her friend to continue. “I know.”
“Anyway, so he busts out with the usual shit. He said I had a problem. That I knew it. Even the kid could tell—which, is bullshit, okay?” she said, her voice rising. Was it too early to be making this kind of noise? She wasn’t sure what time it was. “Look, that baby—toddler, whatever—just wants to eat, shit, crawl around a little, and sleep. More power to him, I say. Kid is after my own heart. I love that boy. He knows that, too. So, he’s trying to get to me. He’s hitting me where it hurts.”
“Okay,” D said.
“What was I going to do? I took my stuff and left. Used my last twenty to hop into a cab and come here, D,” she said, her head shaking, the dust beginning to settle around her new world. “This is insane.”
“You just need to rest,” D said, standing up. “You know you always have a place here. Take the couch. Sleep it off. You still smell like weed and cheap rum, okay? Just being honest.”
She let out a wet laugh as D hugged her.
“Fuck him,” she said. “Right, D? I’m not a mess.”
“Of course not, sweetie,” D said, giving her forehead a slow peck. “Just rest, all right?”
“He’s not going to take that boy from me,” she said, lying down on the couch, resting her body and mind for what felt like the first time in years. “I packed my bags, but I’m not gone. He knows that.”
D walked toward her own bedroom, nodding her head in agreement.
“Just rest,” D said. “We’ll talk more later. We can get lunch at that Cuban place you like, all right? But you need to sleep.”
D closed her bedroom door.
She heard the click of the lock and wondered what D was scared of. Her head felt heavy and soaking wet, like she’d almost drowned but managed to survive at the last possible moment. She started to doze off, embracing the blackout she knew was waiting for her.
“I’ll see my son. I’m an adult. People split up all the time,” she said, her voice jagged and choked. “I’m a good mother. I love my son.”
PETE HANDED THE older man a glass of water, then sat down behind his desk. The man’s hands shook as he took a long sip.
“You really know how to make an entrance,” Pete said. “Though people popping in on me unannounced is starting to get annoying, Mr.—?”
“Osvaldo,” the man said. “Osvaldo Valdez.”
The name felt familiar, but the face was not. Pete waited a beat.
“I worked with your father,” Valdez said. “Not directly, but we were both in Homicide together.”
Pete cleared his throat. “So you knew Carlos Broche, my dad’s old partner?”
“Yes, yes,” Valdez said. “I know he died ... not long ago.”
Broche ha
d been like an uncle to Pete, and partnered with his father for most of Pedro Fernandez’s time on the Miami Homicide team. But it had ended badly for Carlos. On Pete’s first case, trying to find a missing woman named Kathy Bentley, he’d uncovered the truth about Broche: that he, like many cops on the force, was corrupt—on the payroll of the Silent Death, a mob killer of killers who had his sights set on Pete.
“Varela, Posada, Smith, Vigil, I knew them all,” Valdez said. “Some were good, most weren’t that good. Your father, though, was a good man. An honest man. That’s why this shames me.”
“You mentioned my mother,” Pete said, leaning back. “What about her?”
“What do you know of your mother?”
“Nothing, really,” Pete said, not hesitating.
It was true. His mother had died while giving birth to him—leaving his father to raise him alone and deal with not only the death of his wife, but the murder of Pete’s grandfather, Diego, a few months prior.
“She died in childbirth,” Pete continued. “My dad had a few pictures around, and he talked about her. But she was an only child. Her parents were gone. I didn’t know that side of my family too well.”
Valdez grimaced. He didn’t want to be having this discussion. It made Pete uneasy.
“This isn’t the place,” Valdez said. “Or the time. But soon. We have to talk. I have things I need to show you … to prove what I know is true.”
Valdez stood up abruptly, as if just realizing he had somewhere else to be, and was running very, very late.
“That’s all I can say now,” he said, his gravel-fueled voice wavering. “I made a promise to an old friend a long time ago, but I’ve grappled with that for too long. He is dead now. You deserve to know this truth. I just need some time to organize it.”
The rush of memory came then—a barrage of images and pieces of his life that Pete couldn’t remember experiencing before. A hand wrapped around his tiny fingers as he crossed the street. A warm kiss on his forehead as he slipped to the floor. The sweet smell of tart sweat and the feel of her skin. Then screaming, muffled by walls. Arguing. Slammed doors. Darkness and tears. Her face was a blur, a shape that was familiar but incomplete—like a figure under muddy water. He knew what she looked like, of course. He knew of her, from stories and pictures and things he assumed must have happened—how she fell in love with his father, how she lived, how she died.
