by Alex Segura
“This was not totally painful, but let’s move on before things get too awkward,” Kathy said. “Plus, I would really like to be inside, where the air conditioning is working and my blouse isn’t sticking to my skin.”
Vance nodded again.
They exchanged pleasantries and moved inside.
“Did you check him off your little resentment list?” Kathy said as they approached the security desk. She knew Pete worked the program, and part of that program involved making amends to people you’d wronged while drinking—or even sober, when not acting soberly. Though Pete wasn’t sure he’d directly wronged Vance, he knew that the man had been affected by Pete’s irresponsible behavior.
“Yeah, I guess,” Pete said. “Never thought I’d see him again.”
“I prayed I’d never see him again,” Kathy said. “He was my dad’s boss on the city desk when he was a reporter. They were buddies. I remember him coming over for dinners at our house a few times a week, when my parents were still married and pretending to like each other. Nice enough, forgettable guy, if a bit power-mad, but he always gave me a creepy vibe, too. Like a car salesman desperate to close out the month.”
They showed the security guard their IDs and explained why they were there. He ushered them toward the elevators and told them to go up to the third floor.
Kathy leaned on the far elevator wall as it creaked up the three flights.
“So, who is this we’re seeing?”
“My old boss, Angel Menendez,” Pete said. “He was the sports editor at the paper when I moved back to Miami. Gave me the job on the copy desk. He probably wouldn’t have fired me.”
“Why did Vance get the shot?”
“Angel was sick, cancer,” Pete said. “He beat it, thankfully, but came back to nothing. His old job had been filled and they treated him poorly. So, they shifted him to a gig with their public radio station. Same pay, benefits, similar work, plus a radio show every night.”
“Could be worse.”
The doors slid open and they walked into the newsroom.
The WLRZ studio was on the far end of the third floor, tucked into a corner, past the advertising and finance departments—a dead zone where most journalists feared to tread. You knew you weren’t near any newspaper-making because the halls were quiet, painfully so. You could hear a phone vibrating if you tried hard enough.
They reached a door labeled WLRZ Studio. Above it, a red sign that read RECORDING was off. Pete rapped on the door.
“Did your grandfather ever bring you to his radio station?”
“Don’t remember, but maybe he did,” Pete said. His memories of his grandfather Diego Fernandez were blurry. Diego, a Cuban exile and Miami radio magnate, had been gunned down by Castro agents—the early members of what would become Los Enfermos—when Pete was very young.
The door opened and a stocky man in his late fifties stood in the doorway. He was tan, a salt-and-pepper beard paired with thinning wisps of hair on his head. His initial reaction to the knock was one of annoyance, but that faded as soon as he realized it was Pete on the other side of the door.
“Well, damn, I thought you were just blowing smoke when you said you needed to talk,” the man said, stepping toward Pete and yanking him into a strong hug. “Good to see you.”
“You too, Angel,” Pete said, pulling back. “This is my partner, Kathy Bentley.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said as they shook hands.
“Likewise,” Menendez said, nodding. “Heard a lot about you.”
“My reputation precedes me, I guess,” she said.
“You guys are in the paper a lot,” he said. “Serial killers, drug gangs, that cult thing—almost feel like we’ve kept in touch all these years.”
It was a veiled jab, and an understandable one. Angel Menendez had given Pete his job at the Miami Times when Pete was forced to rush back to Miami from New Jersey in the wake of his father’s death. What he’d first thought would be a few weeks of mourning and organizing his father’s affairs had turned into a move, with his fiancée Emily in tow. Upon realizing the relocation would be permanent, Pete reached out to Menendez, looking for something less exhausting than the investigative sports reporting he’d done—at diminishing quality in correlation to his alcohol intake—for the Bergen Light. Menendez, an old friend of Pete’s editor at the Light, had seen untapped potential in Pete—a talent he could groom and hopefully revive.
Things didn’t work out that way. Soon after Pete took the job on the Miami Times sports copy desk, Menendez went out on an extended sick leave. By the time he returned to the paper, Pete had been fired and had stumbled into a new, more dangerous calling. They’d spoken off and on over the years, but this was the first time they’d seen each other.
“Pete manages to find trouble on a regular basis,” Kathy said, smiling. “I just ride along.”
Menendez nodded, a signal he was done with pleasantries. The man was glad to see them, but that didn’t change his usual demeanor: no-nonsense, blunt, and to-the-point. They had come and diverted his workday, and he wanted to get on with it.
“I need some information on a jazz pianist, guy by the name of Javier Mujica,” Pete said.
“Investigating his murder?”
“Not exactly,” Pete said.
“Step into my office, let’s talk,” Menendez said.
They followed him down the hall.
Menendez’s office was a tiny space at the other end of the floor, just enough room for a small desk and two chairs. It was sparsely decorated; an Ornette Coleman poster hanging on the far wall was the only sign that this room was actually assigned to a particular person.
Pete and Kathy took their seats.
“So, if you’re not looking into the kid’s murder, what else is there?” Menendez asked, popping a piece of Nicorette gum in his mouth. “I mean, he was a good player. I saw him live a few times. Kid had a lot of baggage, that’s for sure, beyond just playing music.”
“You know his dad, right?” Kathy asked.
“Mujica? The bolitero?” Menendez asked. “Yeah, of course. Ask people around Miami and he’s either a patriot for trying to topple Castro, or a drug-running scumbag. I’m thinking it’s somewhere in the middle, but what do I know? I just do radio now.”
“What about Eddie Rosen?” Pete asked.
“He’s harder to pin down,” Menendez said. “Been Mujica’s right-hand guy—consiglieri, basically—since it all started. Runs a pretty successful art dealership, too. One of those Art Basel bigwigs. Doesn’t do many interviews or stuff like that, keeps his profile low. But he’s basically another limb for Mujica and his organization.”
“Were you on the news desk when he was coming up?” Pete asked. He knew Menendez when he got to the sports section, but the journalist had hopped around the Miami Times newsroom earlier in his career.
“For a bit, yeah, I was an ACE,” Menendez said.
ACE stood for Assistant City Editor, a slot reserved for capable local news reporters who wanted to run around less, work with copy more. It was also the first step up the ladder to management, if that’s what you wanted. It’d apparently worked for a while with Menendez. Then life happened.
“Mujica was a big fish. It was him, Los Enfermos, and the various other ethnic gangs—Colombians, Albanians, Italians ... but mostly Mujica and Los Enfermos. But Mujica focused on bolita, he came from Cuba via Union City, in Jersey. So, they left each other alone. Los Enfermos ran drugs, a lot of drugs, and Mujica played the numbers. The peace was fragile, but lasted.”
“So what changed? Why would someone take out his kid?” Kathy asked.
“Not sure, really. But that’s assuming this was gang-related,” Menendez said. “And I thought you weren’t investigating his death?”
“We’re not,” Pete said. “We’re trying to locate his wife.”
“Wife?”
“Yeah, he was married,” Kathy said. “To a woman named Beatriz de Armas. Except, the only women who exi
st in Miami with that name—and it’s a long list—don’t fit the bill. We’ve spent the last few days going through public records trying to pinpoint who she might be.”
“Assuming she had a Florida driver’s license with a Miami address,” Menendez said, not missing a beat. Pete appreciated the man’s quick brain and knowledge of how investigations work. “Which isn’t a lock. Millions of people filter through the city, with papers, without papers—whether our esteemed presidente wants them to, or not.”
“So we’ve hit a dead end,” Pete said.
“You’ve hit them before, you’ll hit them again,” Menendez said. “I’d just retrace Mujica’s steps in the months before he was killed. You said he married this woman recently? What does she have that’s of interest to your client?”
“Can’t get into that,” Pete said. “Just know it’s something of great monetary and personal value.”
“More valuable than the truth about his son?” Menendez said, scratching his chin. “Color me curious.”
“You said you saw him play a few times,” Kathy said. “What was that like?”
“I go down to the club—Le Chat Noir—a few times a month,” Menendez said. “It’s nice. Very un-Miami. Cool, dark, good music. They mix it up, too, not just Latin jazz fusion. Mujica was old school—you could pinpoint his influences in a second. Bill Evans, a little Dave Brubeck, some Ahmad Jamal, and a dash of Bud Powell and Lennie Tristano, too. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Just names to me,” Kathy said.
“Right, right,” Menendez said. “Well, the kid had chops. He could play well with others—he’d make his solos count, and he also knew how to defer to his bandmates. He could also carry the load with his keys if he had to. Very versatile. He could do classy, pinkie-in-the-air stuff but also get down and dirty with the keys. I’d never seen anything like him, really. He was a talent.”
“How did he rate with other players on the scene?” Pete asked. “How did he fit in?”
Menendez sighed and leaned back in his chair.
“He was in demand. Other players respected him, other instrumentalists wanted to play with him. That’s the top line. There’s no time to give you a more extensive jazz piano tutorial, but maybe pick up a few records and get a sense of what this guy dedicated his life to,” he said. “I know Mujica had a Soundcloud account and posted his records there, too.”
“I checked out a few clips,” Pete said. “But I’ll dig into that later.”
“There are worse forms of research,” Menendez quipped.
“No record deal?” Kathy asked.
Menendez shook his head. “The days of artists—well, new and unknown artists—getting a big label deal are done,” he said. “At least when it comes to jazz. Most try to scrape together a living playing live and selling music directly. From what I could tell, Mujica was doing that—regular residency at the club, some decent-selling albums put out on his own label, and a few bigger tours to fill out the gaps. Packages, mostly.”
“Packages?” Pete asked.
“Yeah, a bunch of artists pool together and create a bill, and that’s what the tour organizers shop internationally,” Menendez said. “They put together package tours of Europe and places where jazz musicians actually make money, and there’s an audience beyond hardcore fans.”
“What can you tell me about his group?” Pete asked. “Was he still playing with them at the end?”
“For a while, yes,” Menendez said. “Until recently, when he decided to fly solo at Le Chat Noir. He was the lead of the Javier Mujica Quintet—with a bassist, sax, trumpet, and drummer.”
Menendez pulled out his phone and started scrolling.
“I don’t have the drummer’s info, guy named Jamie Cacace,” Menendez said. “He’s pretty good, if a bit overpowering. But good. The bassist I know. A veteran of the scene, if there is such a thing. I just texted you his info. Name of Rugova. Matt Rugova.”
“Is that Spanish?” Pete asked.
“Mattias Rugova,” Menendez said, putting the phone away. “Cuban-Albanian, if you believe it. Helluva bassist. Plays trumpet, too. It was hot gossip when Javier disbanded the trio and went solo.”
“Do you know if he had a manager?” Kathy asked. “Someone handling gigs and stuff like that?”
Menendez rubbed his chin, then began rifling through a desk drawer. He pulled out a business card that had seen better days. He tossed it at Pete.
“This guy,” Menendez said. “At least for a few years. He got the boot not long ago, which makes me think Mujica’s new wife took over the business side for the rest of the kid’s life. Lots of change for musicians who tend to like consistency—new manager, no band. A stark breaking point.”
Pete looked at the card. Devon Owens—Artist Management. He slipped it into his pocket.
“Anything else?” Pete asked.
“Haven’t seen you in years and that’s how it is?” Menendez asked.
Pete could tell he was joking. The man knew what it was like to chase a story, for print or not.
“When our boy Pete has a bone in his mouth,” Kathy said, getting up, “it’s hard to distract him for too long.”
“Let me know what Devon has to say,” Menendez said as Pete and Kathy made for the door. “He was pushing really hard for me to interview Javier on the show, up until he got fired. Desperate, I would say.”
“What do you mean?” Pete asked, his hand on the doorknob.
“He was begging me to do it,” Menendez said. “Emotional. Pleading. He said it just might save Javier’s life.”
“To get on a public radio station?” Kathy said, incredulous.
“To get him away from the pills, from the needle,” Menendez said. “For a second. To remind him of why he got into the music to begin with. He was worried the kid had forgotten, and that he would never pull himself out of the darkness.”
May 5, 1983
SHE KNEW SHE was laughing too loud. Swaying too far. But she didn’t care. She was free. She felt good. The coke had kicked in. Formed a chemical reaction with the four whiskey sours. She was good. Not too high, not too low. Just right. Fairy tale time. She felt it pumping through her—like a turbocharge. An electric burst in her mind and body. The bar’s dim lights made it all feel off somehow, like a dream.
She reached over to him, this man, and palmed his neck. She pulled him close. He seemed surprised at first, but that faded fast. The kiss was quick, dirty, not romantic but sexy. That’s what she thought, at least. He seemed into it, too. They kissed for a while. She fell forward, almost collapsing onto his barstool. The jukebox was playing Dylan. “Tombstone Blues.”
God, she hated Dylan.
The bells jangled and she heard footsteps behind them. The bar was empty aside from them, the bartender—a middle-aged Marielito named Juan, and an older man passed out in his beer at a booth near the bathroom. The place smelled of cigarette ash and wet clothes. It was close to midnight and they were on the fringes of suburbia on a weeknight. Most of the world around them was asleep. This man, this person she met and conned into giving her a few bumps in the bathroom, he’d probably be at home with his wife right about now. He was handsome, she guessed. Not ugly. She couldn’t really tell, she admitted to herself, as her tongue slipped into his mouth, tasting the cheap beer and pretzels that made up the man’s diet.
She felt something on her shoulder. It took her a second to pull back and away from—Steve? Stan?—this guy, through the haze of the cocaine and the drinks, and figure out what the hell was happening. A hand. Then she saw him.
She saw her husband, his hand on her shoulder, and eyes as black as any hole she could ever imagine. A burning anger she’d never seen on his face before. A look of pure rage that made her feel shame and disgust all at once.
“This is how you’re living your life now?’ he asked, his voice monotone, like a phone operator asking you to please wait on the line. “This is how things are for you?”
Stan or Steve or Stew st
irred, turning his attention from the broken kiss to the man who interrupted him. He started to get up, but her husband raised a hand.
“What the fuck is going—”
He raised a hand with a Miami Police badge in it.
Stan or Stew sat down. Then slid off the chair, shrugged his shoulders and went to take a piss. Not worth the fight. She didn’t think less of him for it. She couldn’t really think less of him, anyway.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “You should be home. With your son. Not out on the street, drunk, high, doing who knows what with anybody you find—”
“You’re just a high and mighty asshole,” she said, her voice loud and hoarse. She heard the bartender backing away behind them. “Who the fuck do you think you are? What, are you following me now? Trying to make sure I never see our kid again? Hijo de puta. That’s what you are.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. Remained calm. The seething anger a faded memory.
“You never call me,” she said, her voice still loud, but less confident. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself of something. “You kick me out of the house and the only time I hear about you or our son is when I call you. I’m living on a fucking sofabed, man. I don’t have a job. I don’t have any money. Is that what you want for me? Your wife? Do you even give a shit? Doesn’t seem like you do.”
“When you’re ready, you can come home.”
“Fuck you,” she spat.
She could see the veneer crack. See the stoic cop exterior go brittle. Was she ashamed? Sure. But fuck him. She’d made him mad. She’d won. And yeah, fuck him. She needed some time. Time to herself. To have some fun for once. To relax and breathe, coño.
Did his eyes burn red when he saw the man’s hand on her leg, sliding up past her skirt, his other arm draped over the chair—like an animal claiming ownership. Well, fuck them both, she thought. Neither of them had a stake in her. They just thought they did.
