by Alex Segura
Pete shook his head.
“Yes,” Rosen said. “Look, you’re the detective here, not me. Who’d you talk to, Meltzer?”
Rosen didn’t wait for Pete to respond.
“Dan Meltzer was a good cop,” Rosen said. “But that ended long before your mother was killed. Hell, it was long before you were even born. Context is important, Pete.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then why did you call me?” Rosen asked. “Just to hear me pontificate? Just to ignore me? I don’t think so. Look at the pieces, Pete. Think. This isn’t about finding a person with a painting. My boss, he can buy a museum’s worth of old Cuban paintings. But what can’t he buy? What can’t he get? Knowledge. Your friend, Emily, she has that. And he wants it.”
“What does Emily know?”
“The truth,” Rosen said. “All of it.”
A sharp breeze cut through the humid Miami night, and the park felt much less desolate to Pete.
Rosen looked around, his cool demeanor wiped away by nerves.
“You came alone, right?”
“Yes, why?”
“I shouldn’t be here,” Rosen said, pacing around, hands in his pockets. “You’ve put me in a really bad spot. Again.”
“Wait,” Pete said, grabbing Rosen’s arm as he started to walk away. “You can’t just leave.”
“Oh?”
“I need to know, Eddie,” Pete said, trying to keep his voice from pleading but failing. “Who did this? Who killed my mother? Why are they after me now?”
“You’re the detective, Pete,” Rosen said. “Shouldn’t be hard for you to figure out.”
Rosen pulled his arm free and walked toward his car. He didn’t look back.
DIANE CROWTHER CLOSED her Cadillac’s driver’s side door and walked toward her front porch. Her footsteps clack-clacking on the concrete walkway. It was well past midnight. Crowther clutched her bag as she scanned the dark, empty front lawn. She stopped a few feet from the front steps when she heard the voice, low, menacing, but familiar.
“You lied to me.”
She turned around, a short gasp escaping her mouth. She could barely make the figure out, but she knew who it was. Had been expecting him for some time.
“I had to,” she said, her voice breathy and hesitant, as if waiting on her brain to send the right signal. “I’m—look, of course I’m sorry.”
Pete stepped forward. Crowther gasped. He knew why. He looked bad. Ragged. Sleep had become a side gig, something he did between movements. He couldn’t remember the last full, sit-down meal he’d had. The bloodshot eyes more red than white.
He’d kept moving after his run-in with Rosen. Moving and searching. Digging. Retracing the steps he’d taken before—the ones he could. It all went back to Graciela. Graciela and Diane—her best friend.
“Crowther isn’t your married name,” Pete said. “Is it?”
“Of course it is,” she said. “I met my husband—started over. Got away from that life.”
“How is he?” Pete asked. “Or, better said—where is he?”
Crowther hesitated. Pete kept going.
“He doesn’t exist,” Pete said. “You never married. You changed your name. It’s the kind of thing most people wouldn’t check. But when a nosy private eye—the son of the woman you knew decades ago—comes sniffing around, you had to think fast, right? Give him just enough so he’d leave you alone and not put this whole, cozy life in jeopardy. How am I doing?”
“How dare you—”
“You hid your tracks as well as someone with your means could,” Pete said. “But I’ve been doing this a while. Maybe five or six years ago, this would have slipped by. But not today. Back in the day, you were struggling to get by—barely paying rent on your tiny place, sharing it with a roommate. Spending the rest of your money on booze and coke. Then suddenly your last name’s Crowther—very fancy, by the way, a nice touch—and you can buy all the things you wanted. Nice place—too rich for your career, lawyer or not. When people asked, if they asked, I’m sure you had a good story. You married an older businessman. He took care of you. Then he died. Was that the way you chose to play it?”
“Fuck you.”
Pete ignored the insult.
“Who’s paying you?”
Crowther turned away.
“I don’t have to listen to this.”
“You don’t, I guess,” Pete said. “But the police might be interested.”
Crowther stopped, her head snapping back to look at Pete.
“I haven’t broken any laws.”
“The people who wired you the money—that nice salary—for years have, though,” Pete said. “My partner got your bank records. Pretty fun reading. Gallant Enterprises, right? Sounds so vague it has to be innocuous, huh? The company’s fairly under-the-radar, and if anyone got that deep, they’d see a Rob Crowther listed as the CEO. Dots connected, nothing to see here.”
“Exactly.”
“But there is no Rob Crowther,” Pete said, shrugging his shoulders. “There is no rich husband. Just you and the money, which started appearing in your bank account after my mother died. After you changed your name.”
Crowther sagged. She ran a hand over her eyes. “What do you want?”
“The truth,” Pete said. “All of it.”
She looked around before returning her gaze to Pete. “Follow me.”
Crowther’s place was sparsely decorated, sprawling, and Pete felt lost despite having been in her house once before. The woman who’d been his mother’s best friend led him across a wide living room and through a short hallway that ended in another loft space, this one more packed: bookshelves, photos, older furniture clustered in corners. More lived-in.
“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to a large sofa that was positioned next to a few large bay windows. “Anything to drink?”
“No.”
She nodded to herself and sat across from Pete in a small desk chair.
“I thought I’d gotten past you,” she said, a wistful smile on her face. “Thought I’d given you just enough to keep moving.”
“You had,” Pete said. “But I came back to it. It made me wonder what wasn’t fitting. You didn’t fit.”
“Why not?”
“It was too light, too easy,” Pete said. “I believed you were my mother’s—Gracie’s—friend, but there was no follow-up. You didn’t pester the cops about her death. You didn’t have a life in mourning.”
“I mourned for her,” Crowther said, her tone hard and defensive. “I lost my friend.”
“But the checks softened the blow, right?”
Crowther dropped her head into her hands. “I had no choice,” she said, her voice muffled. “I had nothing else.”
“Who came to you?”
She looked up at Pete. “It was never one man,” she said, pleading, her tone begging for some kind of forgiveness. “Some days it was one guy, then another. Eventually, it just showed up in my account—like a direct deposit.”
“What did they ask of you?”
“Just ... just to be quiet,” Crowther said, her voice cracking. “Even then, I told you more than I should have. About her boyfriend. About our life.”
“Who was he?” Pete asked. “Who was she seeing?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
Crowther shook her head. “I wish I knew,” she said. “It was more the—uh—the after they were interested in.”
“The after?”
“Her death,” she said, pausing to catch her breath. “They needed it to go away—to cover it up. I know they had people ... cops that would work for them. To cover it up.”
Pete stood up. “But why?” he asked, his volume rising. “Why go to such lengths—go as far as paying you a healthy salary for decades—to hide what happened?”
“Your mother knew a lot, learned a lot,” Crowther said. “She was in a dark place, a mess—but she was smart. She k
new what to look for.”
Pete turned to face the large windows, which provided him with an expansive view of the Miami skyline.
“You’re dying, aren’t you?”
Crowther didn’t respond.
“Kathy and I could piece together a bit—frequent medical visits, that sort of thing,” Pete said. “But this seals it. Why would you reveal anything, even what you told me before, if you had no fear of the end?”
“You’re right,” she said, staring off toward the far wall, as if she were looking for a missing item. “It’s cancer. Pancreatic. I don’t have a lot of time.”
Pete said nothing.
“I don’t expect your sympathy,” she said. “I cashed in my friendship with your mother for security. I regret that. But I also wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t? Dead at thirty? No way those people would let me live, and it’s not like the Miami police weren’t rife with their own problems.”
“My father,” Pete said. “You knew him.”
“It was too much,” she said, waving him off. “It’d sign his death certificate, too. These people—they don’t play nice. They would’ve killed us all.”
She got up and turned toward the hall. “I don’t need your forgiveness,” she said. “I didn’t expect it. But I have something else that might be of use to you.”
Pete followed her into a large bedroom, waiting in the doorway.
She walked into an adjacent closet. He heard rustling noises, a few drawers opening and slamming. A moment later, she’d returned, a small slip of paper in her hand. The paper had once been glossy, but now it was faded and torn. The text across the top was blocky, neon: ART PARTY. Below, just above the tear was a subheadline—START 1984 IN STYLE!
“A party flyer?”
Crowther nodded slowly. “It’s where your mother went,” she said. “Before she was killed.”
“Why do you have it?”
“She wanted me to come with her,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know why I didn’t. I just didn’t. The festivities started at Terraza, and I was having fun there. I didn’t want to get in a car and go somewhere else. I told her I would, and then ... it was too late.”
“That’s not everything,” Pete said. “You’re still hiding the truth. The whole thing.”
“No, that’s it—what do you mean?”
“You knew what was going to happen,” Pete said. He was guessing, but took a shot. “You knew she was going to die that night, didn’t you?”
The shot landed.
She crumpled to the bed then, her head in her hands. The sobs came fast and loud, guttural and painful, like someone trying to exorcise something from deep inside, something she hadn’t even known was there until right now. By the time Pete walked away, she’d curled into herself, her cries muffled by her soaked sleeve as she rocked herself back and forth.
“IT’S ME.”
Pete knew the voice on the phone immediately. The familiar lilt. The breathy delivery. A voice that had once enchanted him now sent a shock through his system.
Emily.
He slid into his car and started to back out of his space in Crowther’s parking garage. He waited for more.
“We need to talk.”
“Where are you, Em?”
“Don’t call me that,” she said, her voice flat, emotionless. “I need to see you. I need to clear everything up before I go away.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Of course,” she said, her veneer cracking a bit, panic creeping into her voice. “I will be for the rest of my life. But ... I don’t know. I need help, Pete. I need some help.”
“Where are you?”
She told him. His tires screeched as he pulled his car into a sudden U-turn.
“This is not syncing up with the whole ‘I promise to stay alive’ idea,” Kathy said a few minutes later, through the car’s Bluetooth speaker.
“It’ll be fine,” Pete said as he pulled off the expressway and toward the Mujica compound.
“It is not ‘fine,’ Pete,” Kathy said. “You’re heading into the belly of the beast with no idea what you’re doing. Haven’t you learned any—”
He didn’t realize he’d pushed the button until after he’d hung up on her. Pete felt a burst of shame, but knew it was the right thing to do. He could mend that fence later—if later was a thing that happened. For now, he needed to focus. Clear his mind and figure out what the hell was going on.
All the evidence pointed to Mujica as the man behind it all—but Pete was unsure. Why did the aging gangster hire him to investigate the murder of his son if Mujica was behind it? Was it a power play to take over Los Enfermos and get into the drug trade? Or something more complicated? Did Mujica know his mother? Did he kill her? And Harras, too? Was Emily on the other side? Had he captured her? Was she using her connection to Pete as a last-ditch effort to save herself?
Pete couldn’t answer any of those questions definitely. Not yet. But he at least knew the questions. He had to find Emily. He had to talk to Mujica.
The large, ranch-style house was dark aside from a few exterior lights. Pete saw a figure standing near the winding driveway. He pulled the car up to the front door. The figure approached—hesitant at first, then moving with more purpose.
Pete lowered the passenger side window.
“You don’t quit, do you?” Rosen said.
“It’s not in my nature.”
Rosen let out a quick sigh. “Why are you here?”
“Where is she, Eddie?”
“She?”
“Emily,” Pete said. “She said she was here. I need to talk to her.”
“Pete, what are you talking about?” Rosen said.
“She called,” Pete said. “Sounded desperate. Is he holding her, Eddie?”
Rosen shook his head. He motioned for Pete to park the car. “Come inside. This is absurd.”
“WHERE IS SHE, Eddie?” Pete asked as he followed Rosen further into the sprawling house. Rosen shook his head.
“Not here,” he said. “Do you get that you’ve been played? Why would she be here?”
Emily had lied; that was obvious. He hadn’t fully believed her when she called—but his curiosity pushed him to pull the thread a bit more, to see where it lead. Was she just sending him one way so she could escape, or was there more to why she’d told him to come here? Pete’s unease grew. He didn’t expect Emily to have his best interests at heart, but he also held out hope that a piece of the Emily he once knew—once loved—was still there.
“Take me to Alvaro, Eddie,” Pete said. “He and I need to talk.”
Rosen nodded and Pete followed him back down the familiar hall to the dining room.
“He doesn’t like surprises,” Rosen said under his breath as he opened the door. He peeked his head in and Pete could hear him mumbling something to his boss. Rosen turned back to Pete.
“He’ll see you,” Rosen said. “But he isn’t happy.”
“I’m past caring,” Pete said, sliding past Rosen.
The dining room table was loaded with empty plates and glasses, in the wake of what Pete assumed must have been an epic feast. Yet, Mujica was alone—sitting and staring into his hands, a confused—almost sad—look on his face. He nodded as Pete stepped into the room. Pete heard Rosen closing the door behind him.
“Pete Fernandez,” Mujica said. He sounded weaker, defeated—his once strong voice a hoarse whisper. “You have the cojónes to come back here with no news?”
“News of what?
“My son,” Mujica said, as if scolding a young child. “What else?”
“I figured you knew the answer,” Pete said, taking a seat to Mujica’s left.
Mujica straightened, his eyes narrowing as he sized Pete up. He wasn’t used to be defied in this way, in his own home. He picked up a small silver bell next to his now-empty dinner plate and rang it. In a moment, an older, well-dressed gentleman—Eugenio, the butler—entered the room, a tray in his hand.
“¿Sí, señor?”
“¿Dónde está mi cafecito, Eugenio?” Mujica said.
“Ahora mismo, Don Mujica, con perdón,” the butler said apologetically as he backed out of the room.
Mujica turned back to Pete. “So, come again?”
Pete wove his hands together. “I kept banging my head on this case. First Javier, the painting, just—well, everything,” he said. “Then the mess got bigger. My father. Harras. My mom. Emily. But every step of the way, it kept coming back to one person. You pushed me off before, but not again.”
Mujica eyes remained locked on Pete’s. Calm. Patient. Like a predator waiting for his prey to move before pouncing.
“You’re that person, Alvaro,” Pete said. “It all ties back to you. And I’m tired of spinning around in circles. I need some answers.”
Mujica let out a coarse, bemused laugh. “¿Estás loco, mijo? Have you lost your godforsaken mind?” he said, leaning forward, a shocked smile on his face. “You come to my house to accuse me of what? Murdering my own son? Killing your mother? Being a criminal?”
Mujica shook the bell again and yelled. “Y tráeme un juguito, Eugenio, okay?” Bring me a juice, too. He returned his attention to Pete. “Are we done?”
“We’re just getting started,” Pete said, his expression flat. “You hired me to find out who killed your son—albeit indirectly. You said it was because his wife—Emily Blanco, who I happen to know well—stole something that belonged to you. That was a lie.”
Mujica sighed. “Your point?” he said. “I wanted to find this woman. She has something of mine. I hired you. You failed. We’re done.”
“Vincent Salerno died soon after you put me on the case.”
“Who?”
“I’ll humor the playing dumb, because we’re not getting anywhere otherwise,” Pete said. “Salerno was a top lieutenant in the DeCalvacante family in New York. He was also the man that almost killed me a year ago.”
“I’m sorry he failed.”
Pete ignored the jab. “He was also looking for something, information that I think you were looking for, too, in the wake of Los Enfermos falling apart.”
