Dangerous Ends

by Alex Segura

  Martin would never have the chance to realize that. He’d been struggling before Pete left Miami—getting a few days dry, then falling into bad habits. But Pete had been hopeful. Now Martin was gone, his body shattered in a spray of gunfire. Something had pulled him into Pete’s other world, the world that dealt with murderers and kidnappings and violence. Pete needed to find out how that happened.

  “… or anyone just coming back?” The question from the middle-aged man sitting at the table hung over the room. Pete realized a few people were looking right at him. He raised his hand. The speaker nodded in his direction.

  “My name’s Pete, and I’m an alcoholic,” Pete said. “This is my first time at this meeting.”

  A slow, sloppy round of applause hit, followed by a collection of “Hey, Pete!” and “Welcome” greetings. The speaker continued. Pete looked around the room. This had been Martin’s home group. None of the faces looked familiar to Pete. He felt strange, blending his half-baked day job with his sobriety, but he’d learned over the last few years that few things were absolute. Life was gray—sometimes darker, sometimes lighter, but always gray.

  PETE WALKED through the parking lot to a quiet corner that was maybe two degrees cooler, thanks to the shade from a few banyan trees. There were two younger guys talking and smoking—fast. Pete knew the type. Early twenties. One was lanky, with a buzz cut and acne scars. His friend was heavier with longer hair and crooked teeth. Both were Latino but native. Their English was impeccable. Pete figured their Spanish was rusty or nonexistent, like his. They were new to the AA game and still not sure it was theirs to play. It was the kind of lesson you either learned right away or discovered after a lot of bumps and bruises, if you learned it at all.

  They both pivoted as Pete approached. He tried to smile, but it came off wrong.

  “Good meeting,” Pete said.

  “Yeah,” the lanky one said.

  Pete extended his hand to the lanky one. “My name’s Pete.”

  “Eric,” he said, then pointed to his beefier friend. “This is José.”

  “Hey,” José said.

  Pete cut to it before the awkward silence could set in.

  “You guys come here a lot?”

  “Depends,” Eric said. “I try to come to the afternoon meeting.”

  “This place is open all the time,” José said. “So, yeah, I try to, like, be here once or twice a week.”

  “How much time do you guys have?” Pete asked.

  “Not long,” José said, looking at his shoes. “Been in and out.”

  “I hear you,” Pete said, looking from José to Eric. “It takes a while sometimes.”

  They nodded but offered little else.

  “Do either of you guys remember Martin? Martin Colon? He used to come around here.”

  Eric and José backed up a bit.

  “You a cop?” Eric said.

  “No, just a drunk like you guys,” Pete said. “Looking for info on my friend here.”

  “Sure sound like a cop, though,” José said.

  “I’m an investigator,” Pete said. “He came to this meeting. Did you know him?”

  “I don’t think that we can talk about him,” Eric said, looking at José to back him up. “I mean, that would hurt his, like, secret or anonymous-ness.”

  “His anonymity,” José said, nodding in confirmation. “We can’t out him, even if he did come to this meeting.”

  Pete appreciated the brain trust’s adherence to the rules of the program, even if it did slow him up a bit.

  “Martin’s anonymity doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “He’s dead.”

  AFTER TWENTY minutes, Eric and José had burned through a pack of Marlboro reds and had given Pete very little to work with. They both recognized Martin from the meeting and had spoken to him a few times, but not much else. The daylight was fading and the temperature was going from surface-of-the-sun hot to somewhat stuffy. Pete wiped his forehead with his arm and felt it get slick with his own sweat.

  “Did he have any friends?” Pete asked. “People he talked about?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” José said. “I mean, like I told you, man, I spoke to Martin maybe three, four times in my entire life. Guy was cool and all, but we weren’t best buds or anything. I didn’t even have his phone number.”

  “I’m trying to figure out who he may have pissed off,” Pete said. “Or if he knew anyone who might want to hurt him.”

  “He kept to himself, mostly,” Eric said. “Only spoke up when it was a round robin, where the mic gets passed around and you have to share. He was really shy, I guess.”

  “Did you ever see him outside the meeting?” Pete said.

  Both got quiet, pondering Pete’s question. José spoke first.

  “Only once, months ago,” José said. He seemed ready to go. “At the movies over by International Mall. He was with some friends. But we didn’t say hi or nothing. What am I gonna say? ‘Hey, did you drink today?’ I didn’t want to blow up his spot.”

  “What’d they look like?” Pete asked.

  “Who?”

  “His friends,” Pete said. “What did they look like?”

  José thought for a second. Eric’s attention span was waning. He lit another cigarette and walked a few paces toward the parked cars.

  “Not great, I guess, you know—tough guys,” José said. “The kind of thugs who go see a movie at International Mall. Shady guys. I was a little surprised that was his crew, but like I said—I never talked to the dude.”

  “Anything else?” Pete said.

  Eric’s gaze returned to the conversation.

  “Yeah, I know who you’re talking about,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking around. “But I ain’t got a lot to say about this. I’m trying to get my shit in order, y’hear?”

  “I’m not quoting you,” Pete said, meeting his eyes. “Just trying to help—”

  “I get it, man, I do,” Eric said. “I ain’t worried about Martin. He was a good guy. I just mean I know who he was running with. Guys like Nestor, Gus, and some others.”

  Pete felt a box being checked off in his head.

  “What about them?”

  “Like José said, they’re trouble,” Eric said. “Not nice people. I saw them a while back, they pulled up here, actually. To pick me up, to hang out. Whatever. No big deal. I still see my friends, even though the AA book says to give up people, places, and things. I don’t buy that.”

  Pete nodded. He wasn’t interested in Eric’s hot take on the program.

  “So they get me, I get in Nestor’s car, and he asks me, ‘Yo, do you know that guy?’”

  “Meaning Martin?” Pete said.

  “Yeah, yeah, exactly,” Eric said. “He points his finger at him.”

  Eric mimicked the movement, his pointer finger directed at Pete, like the barrel of a gun.

  “‘That guy, we got plans for him,’” Eric said. “‘Big plans.’”

  He pulled his hand back, his finger still extended, as if recoiling from a gunshot.

  THE CALL came in as Pete hit the expressway south, his car now sporting a shattered window and a few extra bullet holes. He’d spent too much time out today and it’d resulted in his getting shot at, losing a friend, and wondering what to do next. The car’s Bluetooth picked up the incoming call and routed it through the speakers.

  “Hello?” Pete said.

  “It’s Harras. Where are you?”

  “In the car, heading back to the house,” Pete said. “What’s going on?”

  “Have some intel for you,” Harras said. “Ready?”

  “Yeah, hit me.”

  “They found a clearing near Duffy’s,” Harras said, his words coming out methodically. “Rifle parts, footprints, the usual—whoever was there didn’t care about their shit being found. The rifle being there pretty much confirms it’s where the shooter took Martin out from.”

  “What else?” Pete said.

  “They got some
prints, checked out cell phone records, you know the drill,” Harras said. “And if this leaks anywhere, you are a dead man. More than usual.”

  “Understood.”

  “This Martin kid had a record,” Harras said. “His phone was pretty busy in the days before the murder too. Lots of calls from one place in particular. Ever heard of the Vida Club?”

  “Part of that new casino on 37th Avenue?” Pete said.

  “Yes, that’s the one,” Harras said. “Nice, shiny new casino—also a known hangout for your friends, Los Enfermos. They own part of it, some think. See the dots I’m connecting here?”

  “Almost,” Pete said. “So they sent Martin to take me out?”

  “Doubt it,” Harras said. “Martin was unstable. Seemed like a fringe part of the organization at best. But they knew he knew you. My guess is they asked him to relay a message to you. Probably what they’d had in mind with Pelegrin before you caught it.”

  “But then they killed him,” Pete said. “Just to get to me. Shit.”

  “There’s more,” Harras said. “Like I said, we got prints on the rifle that killed the kid. The person who did this wanted us to know it was him.”

  Pete was quiet. He knew Harras wouldn’t need any prompting to get to the point.

  “It was Varela.”

  “WHAT NOW?” Posada said.

  His deep voice cut through the large Posada & Associates conference room. Most of the seats were empty and Pete wondered why they’d chosen this massive space, inside Posada’s swank offices, to have their come-to-Jesus meeting. Kathy was seated to his left, Harras to his right, with Maya at the far end of the table near Posada. No one looked happy to be there.

  “We can’t really continue to work on this,” Pete said. “I mean, the guy you want us to exonerate is out to get us.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Posada said.

  “I guess you don’t read the newspaper, watch TV, or have an Internet connection,” Kathy said. “Or believe in fingerprints either. I know it’s a relatively new form of evidence.”

  By now, the news that the police were looking for Varela—not just for a brazen prison break, but for taking out Martin in an attempt to kill Miami private investigator Pete Fernandez—was out there, and the city was abuzz. Pete had held onto the news as long as he could, not even telling Maya after Harras called. That had driven a slight, but hard to ignore wedge between them. Pete was okay with that. He and Kathy were in survival mode. They were under siege from the press—even more than before, which Pete could not have fathomed. Martin’s murder made for a fairly juicy story the press wasn’t going to ignore, twenty-four-hour news cycle or not.

  “I can’t believe he would want to do this,” Maya said. She looked disheveled. Her clothes were wrinkled and the bags under her eyes had gotten a shade darker.

  “Well, that’s a real shame, because he did do this,” Kathy said. She pushed off from the table, the rolling chair moving her back toward the meeting room wall. “When we came back into town, we tried to pick things up because we felt like something was off with the case, but that’s not the reality. Varela escaped and he’s gunning for us. We have to side with self-preservation here. This has dragged on for months and we’ve only gotten deeper in the shit. In fact, I’d safely say Gaspar Varela has figured out his own way of exonerating himself—by escaping from fucking prison.”

  “There’s no need for that now,” Posada said, walking toward Kathy, his hands up, trying to be conciliatory.

  “For what? Fucking reality? Because that’s all I’m dropping on this table right now,” Kathy said, her voice rising. “There is zero hope here. Your client-dad-friend-whatever is out, he has a gun, and he wants to kill us. From what it looks like, he’s also the kingpin of some Miami drug gang. So, cool, he can add that to his criminal CV. Excuse me if I don’t think proving his innocence is high on our general to-do list. It’s safe to say you do not need us anymore.”

  “Are you suggesting we’re the least bit happy with this?” Maya asked, her eyes on Kathy. She hadn’t said a word to Pete since the meeting started.

  “No one’s happy with this, believe me,” Harras said.

  “Of course not,” Pete said, looking at Maya. “But this is done. Kathy, Harras, and I have to worry about staying alive now. No one is going to help us investigate a crime from a decade ago when the guy we’re hoping to vindicate just murdered someone in cold blood.”

  Maya’s face was stricken.

  “My father, you mean? You can say it,” she said. “You think my father tried to kill you. And you think he killed my mother.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Pete said.

  “You might as well have,” Maya said.

  “So fucking what?” Kathy said, moving toward the exit. Harras was already up and at the doorway. She shoved Pete’s shoulder and he stood up. “The evidence is there. I’m very sorry reality offends your delicate disposition, but your dad took a shot at Pete and he escaped from fucking jail—because he had no hope of getting released, because he is fucking guilty. Let’s just call it what it is. Now, we’re going to leave, we’re going to stop working on this case, and if there are any financial issues you want resolved, please consult my attorney.”

  They walked out—Pete didn’t meet Maya’s stare. He felt sheepish, but he didn’t have much to add to Kathy’s rant—he rarely did.

  The door clicked shut and they walked down the hall toward the main elevators.

  “That was fun,” Kathy said.

  “Was it?” Pete said.

  “Of course,” she said. “How often do you get to slam your hand on a table and yell—plus keep your retainer?”

  “Well, let’s see if that happens,” Pete said, pushing the button summoning the elevator.

  “They won’t chase us for money,” Kathy said.

  “And now the path is clear,” Harras said.

  “What do you mean?”

  He turned to Pete and smiled.

  “Now we work.”

  Before they could step onto the elevator, they heard rushed footsteps. It was Maya, looking frantic and rattled.

  “Wait,” she said.

  “What is it?” Pete said.

  “Calvin Whitelaw is dead,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “Orlando just got a call.”

  It took Pete a second.

  “The prosecutor in the Varela case,” Harras said.

  “Yes, yes,” Pete said. “What else do we know? What happened?”

  “There aren’t a lot of details,” Maya said. “But Orlando’s contact on the force said it was bad. One of the bloodiest scenes they’ve seen in a long time. Whoever killed Whitelaw did it with gusto.”

  WALTER’S COFFEE Shop in Perrine, about ten minutes from Pete and Kathy’s temporary compound, was more diner than coffee shop. It was just past ten, so the place was empty, except for what seemed like a few regulars. At least that was how it looked from the outside, where Pete and Kathy sat in the front seat of Pete’s rented car. They didn’t turn around as they heard the back passenger side door open and close.

  “What do you want to know?” Harras asked.

  “Whitelaw,” Pete said, meeting Harras’s eyes through the rearview mirror. “What happened? Did you hear anything from your people?”

  “Messy,” Harras said, his eyes scanning the car. “Knifed in the stomach as he was leaving his office for the night. Throat slit after that. He bled out in the hallway. Whoever did this was not fond of the guy.”

  “Varela?” Pete asked.

  “The forensics team was able to drill down on the murder weapon,” Harras said. “Which we can either look at as a lucky break or intentional on the part of the killer.”

  “What was it? A Los Enfermos machete special?” Kathy asked.

  “Yes and no,” Harras said. “According to my guy on the scene, it was a machete, but a specific kind, an antique from World War II—a Bolo machete. This version is not extremely common. So, it’s similar to the one
used to kill Rick Blanco, but so are all the machetes the gang uses.”

  “It might be the same one used to kill Carmen Varela, though,” Pete said. “Or to stab my grandfather.”

  Kathy nodded. Pete had updated her on what his father’s files contained after going over them with Harras. That impromptu research session seemed like it’d happened years ago, Pete thought.

  “Or someone wants us to think that,” Kathy said. “Someone may want us to think Varela is settling old scores.”

  Harras cleared his throat.

  “We can’t presume,” Harras said. “What we do know is whoever killed the man who put Gaspar Varela in jail really didn’t like him and also knew how to use a knife. The wounds were messy and the crime scene was a horror show.”

  “Meaning?” Kathy asked.

  “They were going for a kill,” Harras said. “They weren’t just poking the piñata, hoping it’d burst. This one was as much for show as it was for effect. The scene was as important as the murder itself.”

  Pete gripped the steering wheel.

  “Something’s not working for me,” Pete said. “Does Varela have any pro-Castro track record? If we’re trying to line this all up, then he took out my grandfather, Martin, and now Whitelaw, in addition to killing his own wife.”

  “We don’t know he did each kill,” Harras said. “But the motive is there for Whitelaw, at least.”

  “Oh, you mean the fact that Whitelaw put Varela in jail?” Kathy said.

  “But that’s no longer relevant,” Pete said. “Varela’s free.”

  “Do you erase all resentments when they stop being relevant?” Kathy asked. “Is that the AA way?”

  “It’s a valid point—doing something like this puts him, as an escaped convict, at risk,” Harras said. “But no, I have no idea if Whitelaw had anything else on Varela that would give him reason to slice and dice him.”

  “What else?” Pete said, turning to look at Harras for the first time. The exchange lacked the verve or energy of the last few days. They’d cashed out whatever humor they had left. Things were not looking good.

  “I have an address for Whitelaw’s now-widow,” Harras said as he passed a folded piece of yellow notebook paper to Kathy. “Why don’t you make yourselves useful?”