by Alex Segura
“I will,” she said, nodding vigorously. “Believe me, I will. But I need to get through this meeting. I need to let these people think I’m still doing what I promised. Otherwise, they will burn down everything to get to me—I’ll be as good as dead if I don’t walk into that meeting tonight. And so will you.”
Pete and Kathy remained silent.
“Help me,” she said, reaching out her hand to Pete. He took it. “Please. Come with me. Scope out the meeting. Call the cops. Let them run a sting. Let them shut it down. That way I’m arrested like anyone else, so it doesn’t seem like I’ve double-crossed anyone. Then I go out, clean. Into the program. Once that’s done, I’ll tell the police—you, anyone—everything. I just can’t have a bounty on my head. I can’t run now.”
“Let’s go,” Pete said, gripping her hand. She leaned forward, the hug awkward and stiff at first, but soon melting into a genuine embrace.
“Oh, God,” she said, whispering, her face wet with tears, the words choked off by sobs. “I feel almost hopeful now. I feel like this weight is being taken away.”
PETE PARKED A block away and nodded to Kathy.
“Do not wait for me,” he said, trying to be stern, but also certain she wouldn’t listen. “If someone comes close to the car, bail, okay?”
“Understood, mon capitaine,” Kathy said. “Is Dave coming? Again, reminder, that place is probably swarming with armed drug dealers and, sorry to break it to you, I doubt your ex is going to do much to save you if things go to shit, okay?”
“Dave’s on his way,” Pete said. They’d dropped Emily off back at her car, so she could come to the meet on her own. Pete leaned in and kissed Kathy. As he pulled back, he snapped the glove compartment open and fetched his gun. He slid it behind his back, resting on the waistband of his jeans, as he straightened up. It felt reassuring to have it back in place, he realized. Kathy exited and stepped into the driver’s side seat.
“Don’t be a hero,” she said, lowering her window. “I can’t barge in there, pregnant, like some Kool-Aid Man, all right? Watch the meet, wait for Emily’s signal, then call the cops. That’s it. Whatever protection spell she’s cast on you is gone, okay?”
Pete nodded, the sound of the window whirring back into place the only noise he could hear as he walked toward the abandoned building.
“MY BOSS IS not happy,” the man said, his voice booming through the empty event space.
The place was dark, the only light coming from a weak bulb in the middle of the room. There were no usable chairs, either—all the furniture was covered by cloths and nothing was on display or ready for use. It felt like a room in transition, which made it ideal for this kind of meet.
The man speaking was tall, well-built, his dark, leathery skin covered with intricate tattoos. His head was clean-shaven and he wore a dark blue muscle shirt to showcase his thick, contoured shoulders and arms. His eyes were black—the irises almost eliminating the white that surrounded them. He was flanked by four men, each one carrying a large submachine gun. Across from them was Emily—looking thin, shaken, and very afraid.
Pete had come in through a side entrance—a door left open, which he then locked from inside, to thwart any curious thugs looking to secure the perimeter. He’d found his way up to the second level balcony via an unguarded stairwell, giving him a clear view of the proceedings. But he wasn’t guaranteed a passage back—eventually one of the men would open the door, do a walk-through, and Pete might have to blast his way to freedom. If that was even an option. But, for now, he had a good view, a loaded gun, and time to think—and listen, his phone at the ready.
“You promised us a connect,” the man said. “A reliable one, too. Like we had with Los Enfermos. Instead, we get a dead FBI agent, the Italians breathing down our neck because one of their made guys is dead and no money. She is not happy, and when La Madrina is not happy, she throws a tantrum.”
Even from his perch, Pete heard the sound of hands and fingers tightening around weapons, the clearing of throats that implied something dire. He didn’t have a lot of time.
“We’re working out some ... problems,” Emily said, her voice raspy. She was out of her depth. The nerves she’d shown in the back seat of the car seemed amplified, even from a distance. She wasn’t a gangster. How had it come to this? Pete wondered.
“Not our problem,” the man said.
“Listen, Ordell, you—”
“Call me Mr. Robbie, lady. This is business. We are in business together. We respect each other, okay?” he said. “I’m the messenger, all right? I work the connect. La Madrina tells me ‘get my product to Emily Sprague-Blanco, I trust her,’ I do it. If La Madrina tells me, ‘Give it to the guys dressed as Elmo on Biscayne,’ I do it. And I did it. But then I hear that the money ain’t funneling back, and that’s a big fucking problem. Because that’s my money, too, you see? Part of your payout is mine, and the big money goes back to Co-lom-bi-a,” Robbie said, letting the last few syllables stretch out as he took a step toward Emily.
He grabbed her face, pulling her close to his. She didn’t flinch, but Pete could see her eyes narrow at the invasion of her personal space.
“Now, the boss lady says you two go way back, to Los Enfermos days,” Robbie said, moving in closer to Emily, as if pulling her in for a kiss. “Your dead hubby and her had some dealings. He tipped her off to some bad moves by the crew. Cost him his life. But you were a smart girl. Saved all your dead man’s files. Knew it’d be worth something. And here we are. Lookit you, standing tall, like some kind of Donatella Corleone bitch.”
He shoved her back.
Emily flailed, but regained her balance in time, avoiding a fall. She straightened out her blouse and met Robbie’s eyes as if nothing had transpired.
“My partner and I are fixing the problem,” she said, her tone flat, as if reciting a few lines from a recipe. “You and La Madrina will get what’s owed, plus interest, very soon. We’re sorry for the delay. We had to ... recalibrate our operation.”
“‘Recalibrate our operation,’ I like that, all businesslike,” Robbie said smiling, his big white teeth shining like beacons of light in the darkness of the club. “Real nice. You some serious shit. You may fool a long-distance bitch in Bogota, but you ain’t fooling ol’ Ordell, baby. I know who the partner is, you see. And he’s trying some ballsy shit. No guarantee it’s gonna work. Still early days, yeah? Too soon to tell. I hear some of his contacts are starting to figure out just what the fuck is going on and who they signed up with. His enemies are, too. Mr. Pretty Picture Man gonna step into the light real soon, honey, and let me tell you—sometimes the light stings your eyes. Sometimes you go blind.”
Without another word, Robbie backtracked a few paces, motioned to his men, and stepped to the side. Pete watched Emily—her moves suddenly jerky and confused as the men raised their weapons and opened fire, the staccato sounds of submachine guns cutting loose overwhelming the cramped space.
Emily fell fast, her body twisting and bending at odd angles as they riddled her with bullets.
“Don’t fuck with La Madrina, my dear,” Robbie said, his voice fading as he snapped his fingers, his armed henchmen falling in line behind him like well-behaved school children at the end of recess. “Because then you’re fucking with me. And Ordell doesn’t like to get fucked like that.”
The heavy front door slammed shut, the clang of metal on concrete echoing through the event space, joining the guttural scream bursting from Pete’s second-story perch.
The space felt toxic, poisoned—gunpowder and smoke mixing together to form a noxious scent. He’d remember Emily’s face—bloody and ripped apart by the bullets, her face tilted toward Pete, her mouth half-open, as if asking Pete a question, surrounded by anguish and fear and hate.
“How did you let this happen?”
THERE’D BEEN A time when Pete couldn’t imagine a world without Emily Sprague. Before she became Emily Sprague-Blanco.
She would be Pete’s wife. She wa
s his better half. They shared romance, arguments, and laughter and pain. They’d been in the trenches together. But time has a funny way of widening gaps and dulling emotions. Emily Sprague got into a cab loaded with her stuff, leaving a hung over Pete on the curb. She became Emily Blanco. For a brief period, despite the wedding ring on her finger, they came together again. But that ended in hoarse screams and pain and blood. Then ... nothing. Two people who’d battled and struggled for what felt like an eternity just ... stopped. They became two pieces of flotsam drifting in different directions.
And now she was dead. Four days dead.
The police had found nothing. The funeral was over.
But the secrets remained.
Her apartment was barren, much like “Beatriz’s” place a while back. A small two-bedroom on South Beach near Alton Road had served as Emily’s temporary base of operations. Pete had sweet-talked the landlord, an elderly woman named Fran who’d probably been born when Miami Beach was incorporated. She’d let him into Emily’s faded digs, but Pete had come up mostly empty. A few boxes of books, a closet full of clothes, and a filing cabinet loaded with newspapers and press clippings from Javier Mujica’s final performances and European tour. Pete had been over the place at least three times, and he was starting to push his luck. Fran would be back—it was close to sunset, presumably her bedtime—and he’d have nothing to show for it. The same questions lingered.
“I don’t have a partner. Not anymore.”
Emily had been playing both sides. She’d brought someone in to help her manage the relationship with La Madrina, and she was trying to extricate herself from it. But she’d been too late, and had paid with her life.
He went back to the file cabinet. He pulled out the stack of clippings and started to flip through them—more slowly now, spending time on each. Concert reviews, a profile in Tropical Life spotlighting Javi, tour coverage from different locales in Europe—Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, London. Pete had seen this all before.
He was tired. His body ached. He had a pregnant woman waiting for him at their makeshift home in Dave’s condo. A voice in his head reminded him it was okay to rest, okay to stop. But something pushed him on. He unfolded a tabloid sheet and caught it midair. Another clipping. From the Miami Times. A short spread on Art Basel, the annual art festival that had become an international destination for the art community elites. The story seemed out of place until Pete took a closer look at the piece’s main photo—a nondescript shot of a small art space participating in the event, hosting a gallery of notable works. One painting, in particular, stood out—and sent every piece of the puzzle sliding into place.
December 27, 1983
GRACIE WAS GOING home.
Well, soon. She just needed to tidy a few things up.
The realization—the final, damning one—had come in a mundane way. Not while curled up in the fetal position on the bathroom floor, not while getting dumped into a patrol car. It came one morning, after Diane had once again left for work without her. She’d dragged herself out of bed, head hammering, mouth dry, lips cracked. She stumbled to the kitchen, poured herself a cup of lukewarm coffee, and looked outside, onto Diane’s small balcony. The sun was shining—a typical Miami day, but the kind of day residents take for granted. A radiant, bright and, well, beautiful morning. The sunlight felt new—like a knife slicing through the haze and grayness that was the apartment … her life. How had she not noticed it before?
“Do I want to always live like this?” she said out loud.
And she realized she didn’t.
She needed to fix herself.
And she wasn’t going to get anywhere like this—with drugs and drink and every vice imaginable a few inches away from her. She needed to go home. She wasn’t sure if Pedro wanted her back. If their marriage could be saved. But she needed to be with her son. She needed time to heal.
“That’s all I know,” she’d said to Meltzer, later that same day.
“You can get out now, Gracie,” he’d said, worry in his voice. “You don’t have to press.”
But she did. She had one more thing to do. One more thing for her own peace of mind before she gave up the man she’d been sleeping with for months. Then she could go dark. Then any belief that this man loved her, had any plans to be with her—that he was anything more than a twisted sugar daddy—would disappear, like ash in a breeze. He just wanted to fuck her. He didn’t love her. He didn’t know Graciela’s dreams or hopes. She was just someone he had sex with and roughed up and left alone, to sleep off the drugs and drink and whatever else he helped put inside her.
“I heard him last night, talking on the phone,” Graciela had told Meltzer. “He thought I was passed out on the bed, but I wasn’t. I always listen.”
“Dangerous,” Meltzer said. “But smart.”
“There’s something—some kind of deal going down on New Year’s,” she said, voice hushed, even though the apartment was empty. “He’s meeting some people at a hotel—same one we meet at usually. There’ll be a party there, some kind of art-themed event. They’re going to start some kind of arrangement—a new business relationship. He called it ‘something different, but important to benefit both organizations.’”
“They’re just meeting him at the hotel?”
“There’s gonna be a party at the bar first,” Graciela said. “I invited D as my date. She seemed hesitant. New Year’s is a big deal for her, so, I dunno. But she’s coming. I won’t be alone and she’ll have fun once the liquor starts to flow and the salsa kicks in. We’ll party together one last time, you know?”
“Just be careful, okay?”
Graciela thought back to the moment the man had gotten off the phone and gently shaken her awake. He invited her to the party. Asked her to be his date. For a moment, her plan seemed to wobble. Did he love her, she wondered? Was she misjudging him? Part of her wanted that to be true. Part of her really wanted his affection. His love. Something.
“I’ll get you as much info as I can at the party, see if I can scope anything out from the meeting itself,” Graciela told Meltzer.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Meltzer said. “Too dangerous. It’s time to pull the pin, okay? Let us know who this guy is, the details on the meet, and we’ll take it from there.”
“No, look, it’ll be fine—he trusts me,” she said, brushing him off. “If I bail now, there’s no evidence of anything. The meeting could go south and we’ve got nothing, and then I’m in his sights.”
“I repeat—leave now,” Meltzer said. She could feel his tone change from police contact to friend. He was genuinely concerned, and that worried Graciela. It was the first time he’d broken character. “If we don’t know who this guy is, we can’t protect you. It’s too big a risk. What if he knew you were listening in?”
“Dan, I’ve been doing this with you a long time,” Graciela said. “Let me close this out the right way. Leave you guys in a good spot.”
“Your call,” Meltzer said and hung up.
She called Pedro the next day, the bright sun and Florida morning as lovely as the last. She had a plan now. He seemed surprised to hear her voice.
“I want to come home,” she said. “I want to get help. I’ll go to a doctor, rehab, AA—whatever. I want to fix this. Fix myself. I want to be there for Pete, okay?”
Silence on the other end.
“I want to see him grow up,” she said. “Ride a bike, learn to swim, everything. I want to be his mother. I want to tuck him in and be there in the morning when he wakes up. I don’t want him to know that his mother was…a mess. Like this.”
“What about us?” Pedro said. “Are you coming back to all of us?”
“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know yet. Maybe I can be a good wife, too. I need to clear out this mess I made, Pedrito. I need to figure things out. Find a way back. I feel like I’m dying.”
“When?”
“Soon,” she said. “Soon.”
She hung up. She felt a light
ness around her, like she was floating, or being pulled by a strong wind.
“I want to live,” she said to herself softly.
KATHY LET OUT a long sigh as she reached the door to the Cernuda Arte Gallery on Ponce de Leon Boulevard in Coral Gables. Though the main hub of Art Basel was in South Beach, the city of Miami took the event as a chance to show off anything even mildly artsy, giving free rein to galleries from SoBe to Broward to spotlight local artists and visiting ones looking for any kind of buzz.
Kathy loved the idea, but loathed covering the event. It was sprawling, overwhelming, and, most annoying, she couldn’t drink. Being pregnant was not something she planned on doing again. At least in the past, she could knock back a few glasses of free wine, grab some vapid quotes from whomever looked like they knew the difference between Pollack and Basquiat, and call it a day. But now she was stone cold sober. This was hell.
She texted Pete again. She hadn’t heard from him since the early afternoon, when he’d mumbled something and left Dave’s apartment. She knew that tone. He was onto something.
Normally she’d want to tag along. Experience the rush that came with figuring out just what the hell was going on. It was one of the reasons she loved their dynamic and, she had come to realize, loved Pete. They played off each other well. They helped each other get to the answer. Even now, homeless, on the run from a gang of unknown killers, and desperate to figure out who had taken out two of their friends, she felt a warm comfort, a coating of faith that she couldn’t shake.
But she wasn’t up for the chase tonight. Her back ached. She had to pee every five minutes and she felt winded just walking across a room. No. Let Pete run around the city. When he found something, she’d know. Then she’d help. For now, she was fine with working up a few Basel sidebars for the New Tropic and calling it a night. She wouldn’t even be here if she didn’t need the money. Funds were close to nil, and the private-eye game wasn’t very lucrative when you were running for your life without a paying client. And, well, maybe she needed some fresh air. Some time outside and not looking over her shoulder.
