Miami Midnight

by Alex Segura

  “Los Enfermos mandan sus saludos, cabrónes!” he said as he fired two shots into Harras’s head.

  Pete watched as his friend’s skull snapped back, blood and brains splattering the car’s dusty back windshield. Before he could move toward his friend, the driver had swiveled, pointing the gun at Pete’s head.

  Pete gripped the man’s arm with one hand, then sent his free palm speeding into his elbow, repeating the motion until he heard a wet crack, followed by a high-pitched shriek. Then he pulled, yanking the driver into the backseat. As the driver screamed, Pete sent a flurry of quick, focused punches into his face and throat—leaving the man’s mouth and eye red with blood, a low groan escaping his lips.

  Pete felt himself panting. His vision blurred. He looked past the fallen driver, whose head was lolling back and forth on the seat, car horns honking in the background as vehicles wove around their stopped cab. He yanked him up by the collar, pushing everything else—Harras, dead in the backseat, Emily, Cuba, everything—out of his mind. For now. For a minute.

  “Who sent you?” Pete said, teeth gritted. “Who do you work for?”

  The man, blood gurgling out of his mouth, eyes half-open, grinned. Smiled. His tongue slithered out, as if checking for missing teeth, then he spoke in a slow, curdled voice. “Tu puta madre, Pete Fernandez,” he said. Your bitch mother. “¿Listo para morir en Cuba, hijo de puta?” Ready to die in Cuba, son of a bitch?

  No. Pete wasn’t ready to die. He punched the man again, this time in the middle of his face.

  The man responded with a reflexive whimper, then slumped back, unconscious.

  Pete felt his body sag forward in response, as his eyes drifted left, toward the fallen, destroyed face and body of his friend. It didn’t feel real. Surely this was a trick. Another mirage. Another FBI ploy to get Harras off the grid. But Pete knew that wasn’t the case. Harras had gotten out. Managed to close the book on his career. But his own hubris—his refusal to accept defeat—had brought him back. On this trip, on this case that felt more and more complicated the deeper they went. And now, here he was, in a beaten-up old cab on the streets of Havana, his head blown open by an assassin’s bullet, with no one around to help or even give a shit.

  “Fuck,” Pete said. “Fuck.”

  The adrenaline seemed to will him out of the car, his knees buckling as he stepped out, the blood in his head pounding, screaming to get out. His eyes welled up with stinging, godforsaken tears as he looked into the car, at the broken body of the killer, a man he’d never know, and his friend—a corpse now, a dead man. Murdered in a foreign country for who-knows-fucking-why.

  Then, sirens. Different from the ones he was familiar with, but the message was the same. Less than an hour after landing on the streets of Havana, Pete was in the crosshairs of the police. The same police and government that had chased his family off the island.

  He ran.

  ANGEL PADURA LIVED a few miles from El Capitolio, Cuba’s capitol building—which was modeled after the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.. But, Cubans being Cubans, they built theirs a few feet taller.

  Padura’s apartment was near the key Havana plazas, in a cramped one-bedroom that, like most of the country, seemed to have seen better days. The furniture was sturdy but worn out, the small living room anchored by a deflated-looking brown couch, two mismatched rocking chairs on either side. The bulk of the room was taken up by books—stacked on tables, double-stacked on shelves, and almost covering the flimsy table stationed in the living room’s far corner. He lived simply. He’d had adventures. Challenges. But now he was tired. He found joy in his books and his routines. When the doorbell rang, he knew something was wrong. He felt himself tense as he walked toward the door.

  Padura opened the door slowly. He found a man, his T-shirt covered in blood, eyes wild, shaking on the other side.

  “¿Quién eres?” Padura asked, his Spanish slow and thoughtful, before shifting into a terse, but functional English. “How did you come here?”

  “Help me,” Pete Fernandez said, his voice shallow and strained. “Robert Harras sent me. He’s dead. I need your help.”

  PADURA SAT PETE down on the tattered couch. He left the space for a moment and returned with a large glass of water, which Pete drank down hungrily. When he finished, he handed the glass back to Padura. His words came out slow and labored.

  “¿Qué te pasó, hijo?” Padura asked, sitting in a rickety looking chair across from Pete. What happened to you?

  “Robert Harras,” Pete said, his tongue thick and a cold sweat forming down his back. It was starting to dawn on him. Not just that Harras was dead, but that he was here—in Cuba—alone, with no way back. “Mi amigo. Es FBI. Te conoce … He said he knew you ... he had your address in his pocket. I ... I came here. I didn’t know where else to go. They have my papers …”

  “¿Apellido Fernandez? ¿Nieto de Diego, no? They took your visa when you got in?” Padura asked, seemingly unperturbed. He knew, based on Pete’s name, exactly why they’d swiped his identification. “You should not have come here.”

  “What?”

  Padura cleared his throat. “I told Robert this,” Padura said, standing up and taking Pete’s glass. “Los Enfermos are strong here. They were born here. To come into the hornet’s nest and think you won’t get stung was stupid. Very stupid.”

  Padura started to walk back to his kitchen.

  “I need help,” Pete said, his head in his hands. “I need help finding someone. And I need help getting back home.”

  Padura stopped and wheeled around. “You’re far from home, papo,” Padura said. “This isn’t Miami. I can’t really even have you here for long.”

  “I have nowhere else to go.”

  “Yo sé, yo sé,” Padura said, taking his seat again with a dismissive wave. “Te están buscando. They are looking for you—the police. A former FBI agent, no less—has died on Cuban soil. This is bad. Problematic, to say the least. They will want to keep it quiet, as will your country. They’ll also hear from bystanders that another man—perhaps even that another American—left the scene. You’ll become a person of interest. Then they’ll learn that this dead FBI man came to Cuba with another man, Pete Fernandez. They will put the two pieces together. Then they’ll be looking for you. All of this will happen in the next twelve hours. That’s how much time you have before you need to turn yourself in.”

  “Turn myself in?”

  “I will accompany you,” Padura said, in a low, calming voice. “I can get you in front of the right person. They won’t want to deal with you. They’ll put you on the first plane back to Miami. That’s my guess. But your time is limited. Right now, mi vecina entremetida has probably dialed the police to tell them a madman was banging on my door.”

  “So … so what do I do?” Pete asked. He’d never felt so helpless. Or he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this way. Probably years ago, drunk on who knows what, wallowing in an abyss of his own creation. But this felt different, too. He had to right himself. “Look, I need to find this person.”

  Pete rummaged through his pockets and pulled out the photo—bent and worn. It was an old photo, from New Jersey. Pete and Emily at a party. She was wearing a stylish red dress, Pete in a rumpled brown suit, his eyes glassy and distant. He didn’t even remember what the party had been for.

  “This is Beatriz de Armas, or Emily Sprague,” Pete said passing the photo to Padura. “She has information I need. It ties into Los Enfermos.”

  “Eres terco. If you keep looking for Los Enfermos, Pete, they will find you,” You’re stubborn, Padura said, scanning the photo before handing it back to Pete. “Y te van a matar—like they got your friend. What is she doing in Havana?”

  “I thought she was running from someone, but she might be meeting people here,” Pete said. “Los Enfermos ... or someone like them.”

  “She ran the wrong way,” Padura said. “Why would she come here, to the heart of Los Enfermos? No tiene sentido. It does not make
sense.”

  “I just know she came here,” Pete said, rubbing his temples. “She has a connection—a drug connection … La Madrina, from Colombia. She also has info—information I want. About how my mother died.”

  “La Madrina,” Padura said, looking at his hands. “Always La Madrina, eh? ¿No te ocupas con problemas pequeños, eh?” You don’t deal with small problems, do you?

  “You know her?”

  “Know of her,” Padura said. “Muy diferente.”

  Padura stood up and left the room. When he returned, he tossed something at Pete—a rumpled black T-shirt and faded blue jeans.

  “If La Madrina is here, you may need to stay a bit longer,” Padura said. “You stand out enough as it is. Having blood all over your clothes doesn’t help.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Get dressed,” Padura said. “Then we’ll go meet a friend of mine.”

  EL MUSEO NACIONAL de Bellas Artes de la Havana was a massive, two-building structure on Trocadero Street. It housed art dating to Cuba’s colonial period, with rooms devoted to landscapes, costumbrismo paintings focused on daily Cuban life, and religious pieces.

  Pete kept his gaze low as he followed Padura past the entrance and into the museum’s ornate and sprawling nerve center. The beauty of the building’s classical exterior and winding, awe-inspiring décor briefly distracted him from their purpose. But not for long. Padura wasn’t much for browsing, leading Pete quickly through the museum’s rooms—past stained-glass skylights, detailed and lush landscapes of Cuban beaches, and a number of different variations of the Virgin Mary—to a large room that was packed with portraits and landscapes that shared the same precise, thoughtful eye for detail.

  They were not alone. Someone was standing at the opposite end of the room—la Sala cambio de siglo, the turn of the century gallery.

  Padura walked over first, then motioned for Pete. He approached Padura’s friend from the other side. All three of them looked at the painting in front of them—Embarque de Colón por Bobadilla, by Armando García Menocal.

  “Pete Fernandez, de Miami,” Padura said, looking around the room, as if he were just another museum-goer and talking to himself. “Meet mi amiga Mariela.”

  Pete glanced at the woman to his right.

  “Quė bien me conoces, Angel,” Mariela said. You know me so well, Angel. Mariela batted her long eyelashes at the rumpled Cuban detective.

  According to Padura, Mariela previously had been known as Miguel. That changed recently, as Cuba’s staunch anti-LGBTQ policies loosened in the wake of Fidel Castro’s death. Mariela wore a long, flowing purple dress, which complemented her strong features, lightly touched with makeup. “And, Pete, to what do I owe this pleasure? Angel doesn’t call on me that much anymore.”

  “You always know what’s going on,” Padura said, switching to his terse English, a wet cough escaping his mouth. “Mi amigo necesita tu ayuda, Mariela.” My friend needs your help.

  “¿Y no puede hablar tu amigo? Is he hiding over there?” Mariela said, pretending to peek over an invisible rock at Pete. “I haven’t seen this boy around.”

  “I’m new,” Pete said, keeping his voice flat and low.

  The gallery they were in was empty, but from what Padura and Pete had seen, the museum was not. Someone was bound to walk in at any moment. They had to keep their conversation brief and innocent-looking. Which meant each word counted. Pete felt naked and raw. Like everyone’s eyes were on him, the stranger. The man out of place. How much of it was true, how much was his own anxiety and fear?

  Visions of Harras—his head jerking back, the cloud of blood and bone spreading—slashed into his mind’s eye when Pete least expected it.

  “Bueno, Mr. New,” Mariela said, walking to another painting, on Pete’s left——“La flor blanca,” The White Flower, a colorful, menacing portrait of a lovely young woman, surrounded by intricate and colorful flowers. Behind her looms a solitary hand—clutching a jagged knife. Mariela tapped a finger to her chin, still acting as if she was just a browser on a humid Havana afternoon. “¿Qué te trae por aquí?” What brings you here?

  “I’m looking for a woman,” Pete said, handing Emily’s photo toward Mariela, the image facedown.

  Mariela snatched it discreetly.

  “She arrived a few days ago. She probably doesn’t want to be found. She has something of mine. Something that belonged to my mother.”

  Mariela scanned the photo, looking around the still-empty gallery before scanning the photo. Her dark eyes lingered over it for a few moments. Her expression remained placid and unmoved. She handed it back to Pete hastily before responding.

  “La conozco, sí. I know her. She looks different now,” she said. “Tiene pelo negro. Shorter. But yes, I’ve seen her. Here and there. No habla español muy bien. She’s keeping a—how do you say—low profile. But I know where she’s staying. She is here on business.”

  “What kind?” Pete asked.

  Mariela looked at Pete, a sharp smirk on her face. She pulled out her cell phone and pretended to talk into it. She was doing her best, Pete admitted to himself.

  “El tipo de gente que matan como si estuvieran cepillandose los dientes,” she said, any sign of humor gone from her voice and face. The kind of people who kill like they’re brushing their teeth.

  Pete looked at Padura. His new friend nodded.

  “Mariela ... you can trust her,” Padura said. “She’s a friend. Ella conoce las partes complicadas de la ciudad. She can help you.” She knows the complicated parts of the city.

  “Can you take me to her?” Pete asked. “To this woman?”

  “¿Estás loco, papi?” Mariela asked, shaking her head. “No, no, eso no lo puedo hacer. That’s not how I operate. I will try to set up a meeting. That I can do. Pero es muy difícil, entiendes? I’ll call Angel when it’s done. Until then, see the sights. Diviértete.”

  With that, she turned and walked toward another part of the gallery, pulling out a pad from her purse and jotting notes down as she passed the paintings on the wall. Her message was clear: She was done with Padura and Pete.

  THE CALL CAME in around midnight. Padura had gone to sleep, leaving Pete to stew in his own anxiety for hours.

  Pete picked up the phone midway through the second ring. He could hear Mariela’s low breathing on the line, but nothing else. She was waiting. “It’s Pete.”

  “Encontré a tu amiga. She will meet you,” she said, a tinge of humor in her voice. “I didn’t realize your history was so ... colorful. Imagine my surprise when I heard who your abuelito was.”

  “I’m a complicated guy, I guess.”

  “Nos encontramos en La Zorra y el Cuervo, en la avenida 23, entre la N y O,” Mariela said. “Come by yourself. Padura doesn’t need to get into this any deeper. A veces me preocupo por él.” I worry about him sometimes. Mariela hung up.

  By the time Pete put the phone down he saw Padura was standing in the doorway that led to his small bedroom.

  “¿La encontró?” She found her?

  “Heading to meet her in a bit,” Pete said.

  Padura darted back into his room. He came back with something small in his hands, wrapped in a dark towel.

  “Toma, take this,” Padura said, not meeting Pete’s eyes. “Tiralo si no lo necesitas. I shouldn’t have it. But you might need it.”

  Pete unwrapped the towel slowly, revealing a small, snub-nose revolver. It felt worn to the touch, the metal dull and scratched. This gun had lived, Pete thought as he hooked it on his belt, at his back. He draped his shirt over it, only a slight bulge hinting that he might be carrying something.

  “Thank you.”

  “De nada,” Padura said, nodding. “Nos separamos ahora, Pete. Don’t come back. Take this friend of yours and go home. They’ll give you your visa. She probably has hers. Te matan si te quedas en Cuba. ¿Me entiendes, amigo?”

  Pete nodded. He understood. Run if you want to live.

  “Before I go,” Pete said, his voi
ce choked with emotion. “I need a favor … another favor.”

  Padura nodded.

  Pete scrounged in his pocket for the scrap of paper.

  “I need this information sent to the email address I wrote at the bottom,” Pete said. “It’s urgent.”

  Padura took the slip of paper and scanned it. “You are asking a lot of me,” Padura said.

  “It might be my only shot off this island.”

  “Está hecho,” Padura said. Consider it done. He gripped Pete’s shoulder. “Camina con cuidado,” he said. “No dejes que la muerte de tu amigo sea en vano.” Don’t let your friend’s death be in vain.

  Pete started to respond, but found that the words wouldn’t form.

  “Go.”

  Pete stepped out into the sweltering black night.

  LA ZORRA Y el Cuervo was a jazz club, the vibe murky and mysterious—red overhead lights fading into the bar’s dark, dank decor. Even the front door to the place seemed otherworldly—a refashioned phone booth served as the main entry point, which led visitors down a long flight of stairs to the basement venue.

  The band was tight. The quartet running hot, late into the Havana night, the piano coating the backbeat and bass, as the tenor sax player laid it on thick. The crowd—considering the hour—was lively and engaged. Couples dancing. People screaming approval from the bar. The place was pulsing with an energy Pete found comfort in. It reminded him of Miami. He’d only been gone less than a day, but his hometown felt distant and alien.

  He felt a tug at his shoulder. He turned to find Mariela leaning on the far end of the rickety-looking bar.

  “You come here often?” she said, that smirk on her smooth face.

  “Where is she?”

  “Ahy, you’re no fun,” she said, motioning for him to follow.

  She pushed open a door near the entrance that led them down a winding, narrow hallway. They were now in the underbelly of the bar. Pete could hear the kitchen—employees screaming orders, the music dulled by the concrete walls that separated the room from the boisterous dance floor.