Miami Midnight

by Alex Segura

  Alter looked at Kathy and then Pete, as if to ask what was going on. Pete wasn’t sure he had much to add.

  Footsteps echoed down the hallway, and Pete turned toward the sound.

  Eddie Rosen approached the group, looking sharp in a tan suit, a black briefcase in his hand. “Mr. Fernandez, Ms. Bentley,” he said. “I don’t know your friends.”

  Harras shrugged.

  “The police asked me to come down here,” Rosen said, looking at Alter. “So, here I am.”

  “You’re Eddie Rosen?” Alter said. “The owner of the house?”

  “That is correct, Ms.—?”

  “Alter,” she said. “Miami PD. I’m usually on the Cold Case Unit, but they asked me to come down here—staffing’s not as robust as you’d think. Do you have a minute to talk? We need to get a sense of what was happening and why—”

  “Am I a suspect of any kind?”

  “No, we just—” Alter said.

  “Then I’m not sure why I’m here,” Rosen said.

  Hudson positioned herself in front of Alter, her confusion over the cold case detective’s appearance impossible to hide.

  “I’ve got this, Rachel,” she told her colleague. “Mr. Rosen, I’m Nisha Hudson. I work in Homicide. As I’m sure you’ve been informed, there was a shooting on your property and we’re going to have to ask you some questions.”

  “Ms. Hudson, a woman broke into my house, surely followed by some gangland thug who tried to kill her,” Rosen said, before motioning toward Pete. “This man—Fernandez—happened to be there in time to stop it. Case closed. Now I hear the woman—de Armas—is missing. She’s the one you want to talk to. I don’t see how I can add much to this.”

  “That’s for us to decide,” Hudson said.

  Rosen shrugged. “Ask away, then,” he said. “I can’t go home, since my house is now a crime scene.”

  “Why was Emily at your house, Eddie?” Pete asked.

  Rosen narrowed his eyes at Pete. “I have no idea,” he said, eyebrow raised. “I wasn’t there. I don’t know the woman. She must have broken in.”

  “Pete says she opened the door from the inside, pal,” Harras said. “Does that make much sense to you? What kind of break-in artist decides to hang out for a while?”

  “Who are you, may I ask?’ Rosen said, looking at Harras. “What authority do you have here? This doesn’t concern you, Fernandez, or his lady-in-waiting over here. I have no idea why Beatriz or Emily or whatever she’s called today was in my house. I have even less of an idea why Pete was there, or why a man like Isleño Novo came in, guns blazing. Needless to say, I’m very concerned for my own safety. I merely came to let the police know where I’ll be staying until this blows over.”

  “Again, Mr. Rosen, we need to sit down and talk for a bit,” Hudson said, exasperated. “Either here or at the precinct.”

  Rosen looked at Hudson. “I’ll meet you at the precinct, then,” he said. “Hospitals make a germophobe like me nervous.”

  Hudson nodded. “I’ll see you there in a bit, then,” she said. “I’ll talk to my people first. Let me warn you now, Mr. Rosen—do not play games. You are expected. Show up with a lawyer if you like, but I will not be stood up, you hear?”

  Rosen responded with a sly, humorless smile. “Wouldn’t think of it.”

  The older detective walked off without responding, shaking her head—clearly displeased with how the evening was shaping up.

  “What’s Mujica think of all this?” Pete asked Rosen. “Can’t be a good look, huh? Gangland killer comes gunning for his number two? Hearing rumblings that things are a little unhinged out there.”

  Rosen tilted his head slightly, like a predator sizing up slow-moving prey. “I haven’t asked him,” he said. “Nor will I. Can I speak to you for a moment—privately?”

  Pete nodded and followed Rosen as he strode toward the elevator bank down the hall.

  “What was that all about?” Rosen said, the words tumbling out like a long, sharp hiss.

  “You tell me, Eddie,” Pete said. “Seems like the Mujica organization is taking some heat.”

  “Isleño Novo was a mercenary, a hired assassin who does whatever the highest bidder wants,” Rosen said, his voice not rising above a whisper. “And now, the highest bidder wants to take out me and Alvaro.”

  “For what?” Pete asked. “For Salerno? You think it’s the Italians?”

  “Could be,” Rosen said, reaching the elevator bank and pushing the DOWN button. “That’s my guess. They think we took Salerno out, Lord knows why. We gain nothing from luring that fat fuck to Miami just to ice him.”

  A moment of silence passed between the two men before Pete pressed again.

  “Emily Sprague is Beatriz de Armas,” Pete said. “When were you going to tell me?”

  “You’re the detective,” Rosen asked. “Aren’t you? Oh, wait. You’re retired. My mistake. Well, look, you figured it out. Now go find her and maybe you can get back together. I need to look after myself and my boss. It was nice knowing you.”

  The elevator doors pinged open and Rosen stepped in, turning around to face Pete.

  “That’s it?” Pete asked. “What about Javier?”

  “He’s dead,” Rosen said. “I mourn him in my own way. But you couldn’t figure out who killed him. I’m worried about the living Mujica now. And you should be worried about yourself.”

  The doors started to close.

  “Is that a threat?” Pete asked, reaching out, trying to hold the doors open.

  Rosen took a step back, a bemused smile on his face. “Oh, Pete, come on,” he said. “That’s not a threat. It’s a fact. Do you really think Isleño Novo was gunning only for me? I’d be dead ten times by now.”

  Pete released the doors and watched them close.

  “HE COULD HAVE been working for anyone,” Harras said, sipping watered-down coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “If Novo was the new Silent Death, he was a freelancer. And a pretty damn good one, from what my intel says, recent slip-ups notwithstanding.”

  They were seated at a small four-top in the hospital cafeteria—Kathy, Harras, and Pete. Alter had gone home to relieve her babysitter and Hudson was on her way back to the PD. With Emily on the run, their usefulness to the police was nil, Pete mused.

  “I think you’re right about Emily having some kind of connection,” Pete said, laying his hands on the table, palms down. “I traced her movements after I last saw her—around the time of Varela/Posada case, when we first ran into Los Enfermos.”

  “You’ve brought stalking your ex to a whole new level there, Pete,” Kathy said. The joke was sharp and mean, a sign that they were still on shaky ground.

  “When I saw her in that building, I knew right away who she was, even with the new dye job and Rosen trying to avoid saying it outright,” Pete said. “Emily made it out of the country with a lot of Los Enfermos’s money. But what if that wasn’t all she had? What if she had info on Los Enfermos’s drug connect?”

  “La Madrina,” Harras said.

  “But where does Ferris come in, then?” Kathy said. “How did a low-level goon like that get the info?”

  “Not sure,” Pete said. “But my guess is, at some point, you need to start ... well, shopping around, you know? Letting people find out that you have this connect.”

  “Good logic, good assumption,” Harras said, nodding. “So you think Ferris was deputized with the info, or a hint of the info—and that tipped off Salerno?”

  “Right,” Pete said. “Enough that he knew it involved me and enough to get him back to Miami to hunt me down, or try to.”

  “Not to burst your ego bubble, but what if he was after someone else down here?” Harras asked.

  “Emily?” Pete said.

  “Right,” Harras said. “And that got him on someone else’s radar.”

  “Then he gets killed,” Kathy said. “But who took him out? And why?”

  “I’ve got another question,” Harras said, turning to face Pet
e. “What in the hell were you doing at Eddie Rosen’s house at that time of night?”

  “Yes, that is an excellent question,” Kathy said. “I woke up to—” She hesitated.

  Harras noticed and smirked. “You two gonna clue me in on something?” he asked.

  “Shush, let’s not lose focus,” Kathy said. “Pete, go. You’re on the spot.”

  Pete gave his friends a quick recap on Osvaldo Valdez, his mother, her friend Diane Crowther, and Terraza.

  “Jesus, hasn’t been a quiet time for you,” Harras said. “So your mother leaves your dad, starts living the swinging Miami life with her friend, then ends up dead in an Overtown hotel. And you’re trying to zone in on this spot where she worked?”

  “Right,” Pete said. “A bar owned by Alvaro Mujica, Eddie Rosen’s boss.”

  “WHAT’S YOUR POINT?”

  Detective Rachel Alter’s shoulders were hunched slightly, her posture defensive, as Pete formulated a response. She probably regrets letting me know where she lives, he mused. Once he realized she’d exited the hospital, Pete left Kathy and Harras and made for Alter’s Kendall townhouse. He had some questions.

  “Don’t you see?” Pete asked, stepping toward the half-open door, which was being blocked by Alter. “Alvaro Mujica owned the bar where my mom was working before she died. That’s a big clue. Mujica is one of the most recognizable crime figures in Miami. Don’t you think this is substantial? Enough to at least bring him in for questioning?”

  Alter sighed, then looked inside her home before turning back to Pete. She appeared worn down, but her sharp features and dark brown eyes cut through the day-to-day exhaustion.

  He reached for the door, stopping as she started to speak. His adrenaline rush had crashed, leaving him feeling spent—emotionally and physically. He was pushing himself too hard. But that didn’t matter. This was new evidence. A step toward figuring out who took his mother away before she could become more than a faded photograph for Pete. He had to press. Hard.

  “It’s late. Ella is asleep. I’ve had a long day,” she said. “And, sorry to be so curt, but your mom’s case is not the only thing on my docket. I realize it’s important to you—so important. But it’s one of hundreds of cases that are freezing cold in Miami, and while it’s great you’ve found new information, I don’t think I have the juice to disrupt whatever case the Vice team is putting together on Mujica just to drag him in and ask him about how he maybe knew a woman thirty years ago at a jazz club he owned, okay? It’s easy when you’re a PI, or whatever you call yourself. You don’t have to answer to anyone. But I’m not in the Wild West, Pete.”

  Pete nodded.

  She gave him a sympathetic smile in return as the door closed.

  Pete reached out his hand and stopped the door.

  Alter’s eyes widened.

  “Did you talk to Mosher?”

  “The cop on the scene?” Alter said. “Yes, of course. Years ago, but yes. Why?”

  “Do you have a lead on him?” Pete asked, moving his hand back as Alter’s shoulders sagged. She was tired. Tired of him. He got that a lot.

  “No, I mean, not right on me, okay?” she said, the door moving now.

  “Anything could be helpful, just let me know where—”

  “We’ll figure it out, don’t worry,” she said softly. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “I don’t want to ‘figure it out’ later,” Pete said. “My mother—her death—feels very real. Very present. It’s like she was gunned down today. And finding this information—information that, look, I’m not one to tell you how to do your job, but … information that you should have known. This shouldn’t be a surprise to you. Why wouldn’t you check to see who owned the bar where she worked? Why didn’t Valdez? It’s sloppy. And I need to know why. She was my mother. Every bit of info, even the trivial, brings me a little closer to figuring this out. Help me.”

  “Good night, Pete,” she said, her tone flat and emotionless. She was done.

  The door clicked shut, followed by two locks sliding into place.

  Pete clenched his fists. He felt a mild gust whisk by him as he watched the lights flicker off in Alter’s home. He let out a long breath and pulled out his phone. He shot Kathy a quick, two-sentence text.

  Rachel Alter was done, certainly. But Pete wasn’t. He wasn’t done pressing on his mother’s case. He never would be. And, now, he was thinking that cold-case detective Rachel Alter might be much more than what Pete first imagined.

  “I WASN’T EXPECTING to hear from you,” she said. “But I’m glad.”

  “Thanks for picking up,” Pete said. “I—well, I needed to talk to someone.”

  “That’s my expertise,” Allie Kaplan said. “I’ve got some time to talk now.”

  Pete slid into his car and turned it on, but waited before backing out of Alter’s driveway.

  “It’s about my mom.”

  “You never talked about her much,” Kaplan said. Pete could tell she was flying high, giving Pete room to fill in the space.

  “I was told as a kid she’d died in childbirth,” Pete said. “But now—I’ve learned ... I’m—well, I’m investigating her death. And now I know that wasn’t true. That many people lied to me about it, including my own father.”

  “Wow.”

  “It’s really unmoored me, I think,” Pete said. “My father was my rock. And now, to think that there was this person, my own mother, who I could have known if not for someone else—for some killer. It really eats at me.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Choked out in a hotel room,” Pete said, his words gruff and distant but his delivery almost childlike. He was getting close to the pain, and he was trying to be standoffish. But he couldn’t keep his defenses up forever. “She was a drunk.”

  “Was she in recovery?”

  “No … I mean, I don’t know, but I don’t think so,” Pete said, his right hand clutching the car’s gear shift. “But I just feel like so much … potential … so much help was lost. We could have been there for each other. My dad, I loved him, but he never understood why I drank. He was a ‘one glass at dinner’ guy. If that. But it explains the way he looked at me. It explains the defeat in his eyes when he’d see me hung over or drunk. It wasn’t just worry. He saw my mother all over again.”

  There was silence on the other line.

  Pete pressed on. “I have to close this case,” he said. “I have to find out what happened to her. I can’t imagine leaving a child to grow up without a parent. I can’t do that myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Pete relayed the news and updated Kaplan on his situation with Kathy.

  “Well, it’s been an eventful few months,” she said, not joking. “Why don’t you come in and see me tomorrow? It’s late, but I do want to keep talking, okay? I think it’d help.”

  “What do I do?” Pete asked, not responding to Kaplan’s question, not even asking Kaplan—he was almost talking to himself. To the universe.

  “You’re the detective, so that’s up to you,” she said. “But if I see a problem, I try to solve it directly. I think you need to face up to whatever you think that is as it relates to your mother. I don’t know what that entails, and I certainly don’t condone violence or law-breaking of any kind … but there’s some catharsis to be achieved by tackling things head on. And I think you could use a little of that right now.”

  Pete thanked her and hung up. He pulled the car out of park and headed west, the Oscar Peterson Trio’s “I Got It Bad” weaving through the speakers, Peterson’s dangling piano lines telling a somber tale of loss and regret.

  “WHERE ARE YOU?” the text from Kathy beeped.

  Pete tapped out a quick reply: “Be back soon.”

  Allie Kaplan’s words, her peaceful intent aside, hung over Pete like a mission statement, a religious calling. He had to face the problem head on. She was right. And the time for dancing between the raindrops was through.

  Who killed my mothe
r?

  Pete scanned the crowd, which was lurching closer to the makeshift center ring. The barn, at the far end of a large, acres-wide field littered with abandoned farming equipment and a wide sprawl of parked cars—ranging from large, luxury SUVs to rusted, decades-old Buicks—reeked of shit and poultry, like a moldy petting zoo. The air felt heavy and toxic, fat with chemicals and dirt.

  Getting in had been easy enough. Pete, dressed in a faded Jenny Lewis shirt and a black, retro Florida Marlins cap and jeans, stuck out from the mid-sixties, guayabera-wearing male majority, though there did seem to be a few FIU or UM frat boys wearing tight black workout gear and sporting Chinese symbol tattoos.

  Pete had heard of the cockfights, of course. It was a staple of the Miami underworld. Illegal animal death matches that happened on the edge of the Redlands, closer to the Everglades than to downtown Miami. It was the next-level haven for two-bit bolita players okay with watching two animals snipe and claw at each other, until death do they part.

  Few people aside from Mujica could risk running such a regular gambling operation. Few people had the funds to grease the locals and the police—convincing neighbors not to call the cops, convincing the cops not to bother coming down if and when someone did call.

  For all his play-acting, Mujica was far from a mild-mannered local fruit farmer. He was a criminal, and quite busy for one claiming to be retired. Alvaro Mujica had built his fortune running an illegal gambling—or bolita—operation, first in New Jersey, then Miami. He’d maintained control through violence and a no-tolerance policy when it came to potential competitors.

  And now, if Pete’s guess was right, he was trying to expand—trying to move into the more lucrative drug trade that was in a tailspin after the implosion of Los Enfermos. But those kind of moves required manpower, guns, and—most importantly—a connection to product. Mujica had two out of three, but the piece he was missing was the most important.

  “¿Con quién vas?”

  Pete turned. The older, larger man seemed to be looking in Pete’s general direction, his movements slow and dazed. Pete saw the half-empty Corona in his hand and the weeks of stubble on the tanned man’s face. It took Pete a minute to realize he was asking him who he was betting on.