by Don Donovan
I turned to see Trey Whitney, anwith two no-necks I knew to be Whitney family muscle standing a step or two behind him. Trey wore a summery, mint green sport shirt while the other two were bursting out of their regulation tight, black T-shirts. Fuckers were built like tree stumps.
"That's right, Trey," I said. "A nice little night out. And what brings you here? A quiet dinner with your friends?"
"To tell you the truth, you brought me here. Something has come up and I was wondering if I may have a word with you. In private, that is."
"Can this wait? You came at kind of an intimate moment here."
"Actually, it can't. I must ask you to grant me an audience. As a courtesy. It's most important we speak now."
I dabbed at my lips with my napkin. Not because there was anything on them, but because I'd always seen guys do that in the movies when they knew something unpleasant was about to go down.
"This'll just take a second," I murmured to Dorothy. The wary look in her eyes told me she didn't like any of this.
"Oh, yes," Trey said to her. "Be assured I'll have him back to you in no time."
I rose from the table and went outside with the three of them, off to the right, toward the Duval Square parking lot, away from the restaurant window.
"Okay," I said when we stopped walking and faced each other. "What's so important?"
"Just this. Now that Mambo and I have reached an equitable understanding regarding my debts, you're not to extort any more money from Sharma."
"What is this bullshit? Extort money? Whatever deal I have with her doesn't affect you at all."
"Oh, but it does," Trey said with the tone of a guy who's holding aces. "It affects me very much."
"And how is that?"
"Well, you see, it's like this. I brought her down here for, shall we say, personal reasons. I often go to see her perform and, as you know, I usually tip her rather generously. So generously, in fact, that it nearly equals what you think she should pay you every week. So you see, I simply can't have her handing over to you the equivalent of what I might give her out of the goodness of my heart. I would feel like I am the one paying you, and we can't have that."
I wondered how his wife would feel about all this. I didn't think she would admire the goodness in his heart. "Forget it, Trey," I said. "Just because Mambo canceled your debt doesn't let her off the hook with me."
"I'm afraid it does," he said. "And if you don't believe me, perhaps Morgan here and his associate, Stanley, can persuade you to become a believer." The two squinting apes moved a step closer to me, right on cue.
I chuckled. If rough stuff was what Trey Whitney wanted, he would not be disappointed. But I wasn't going to call off my deal with Sharma. A grand a week was way too much to give up. Besides, she owed it to me, plain and simple.
"Like I said, she's not off the hook. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going back to my table where my girlfriend is waiting." I stepped around Trey and between the two apes. One of them — I think he was the one Trey referred to as Stanley — grabbed my arm and tried to spin me around.
"Hold it, asshole," he said. "Mr Whitney said the girl no longer owes you —"
I went with the spin and landed a solid roundhouse right hand on his jaw. My feet were firmly planted, so my whole body went into the punch from the legs up, as hard as I've ever hit anyone. It knocked him back but not down. That was not good.
Morgan cold-cocked me from behind with a smash to the side of my head. My balance faltered while Stanley recovered from my punch and let me have one of his own. I went down fast. One of them picked me up and held me while the other one went to town on my face and my gut. Somewhere in the middle of it all — I don't remember when, exactly — Whitney said, "He's had enough" and they stopped. I dropped to the pavement like oranges spilling out of a downturned bag. The three of them walked away, crossing the parking lot.
The warm taste of my own blood swirled around in my mouth before it dribbled down my cheek and formed a little river on the black pavement of the parking lot. A few onlookers had gathered. A couple of them came over to me, standing over my prone figure, not sure if they should help me or steal my wallet.
Before they could make up their minds, I spit out what blood remained in my mouth. That backed them off. I tried to get to my feet, but didn't quite make it. By this time, Dorothy, who had apparently gotten worried over my absence, came rushing over to me.
She pushed the rubberneckers aside. "Get the fuck away from him," she snarled, and they dutifully took a few steps backward. Kneeling with my head cradled in her arms, she cried "You motherfucker!" in Whitney's direction. He couldn't hear her, though. He and his apes were already in his big blue BMW, pulling out of the parking lot. Dorothy took my arm and wrapped it over her wide shoulder to hoist me up, to balance me while propping me up with her other arm around my waist. "Who the fuck does he think he is?" she said.
My voice was in the same place as my brain. Limbo. I struggled to find it. Eventually, I said, "He thinks he's a Whitney. And he is."
"It's not right. They think just because their name is Whitney, they can push people around like this. Motherfuckers think they're God or something."
She sat me down on a nearby concrete bench and pulled a couple of tissues from her purse. Wiping the trickle of blood from my chin, she got more and more agitated. She said, "The fuck was this all about?"
"He doesn't seem to think I should collect any more money from the stripper. Thinks I should go without."
I rubbed my temple with the heel of my hand.
Fuck! The side of my head really hurts. That ape could hit.
Her nostrils flared and her voice stirred up a notch. "Trying to take a thousand a week out of your pocket? Out of our pocket? That son of a bitch has got some fuckin' nerve! You ought to waste his sorry ass for this."
For a minute there, I was shocked by this call for bloody revenge. I'd never known Dorothy to be the outwardly violent type, not even close, and for years she's tried to look the other way whenever she knew I had to use any rough stuff. But now, the crazed look in her eyes told me she meant what she said. I wondered if she'd finally been pushed over the line.
Or if maybe she'd been there all along.
"Take it easy," I said. "No one's gonna waste anybody. I'll straighten this out." I managed a half a smile through my bloody mouth, then said, "Wasn't quite the birthday celebration I had planned. Sorry it got ruined."
She calmed, but only a little. "That fucker should still pay for what he's done to you."
"I'll handle it, I promise. But for now, let's pay the restaurant tab and take it on home, okay?"
I reached in my pocket for my money. I handed it to her and she peeled off a few bills and quickly returned to the Pasta Garden. She was back in a minute, helping me up from the bench. As we slowly moved toward the car, I really didn't know how I would handle this, or even if I would, but I knew one thing for sure — no way could I let a thousand dollars a week slip through my fingers.
24
Logan
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
7:05 PM
IT TOOK ME ALL NIGHT, all the next day, and most of the day after that before I recovered to the point where I could leave the house. During that time, Dorothy made me take it easy while she dumped plenty of TLC on me, cleansing my wounds, bringing me lots of hot soup, and generally stroking me in every way imaginable. To tell you the truth, I loved the attention. Hell, if getting the shit beat out of me wasn't so painful, I might want to do it more often, just to get the TLC.
But I needed to take care of business. The cuts near my mouth were healing nicely and the bruise on my jaw was fading. People could still tell I'd been in a scrape, but at least I looked a lot better than I did the other night. Time to go out. I needed to get to Mambo's.
The evening was pleasantly warm with lower-than-usual humidity, so I walked rather than drove. When I got there, the beginnings of the evening crowd had not yet formed. No one playing pool yet, the
bar nearly empty. A couple of the booths were occupied with guys I knew planning the details of their upcoming scores, and I could smell the yellow rice and beans simmering in the kitchen. I went into the back to talk with Don Roy Doyle.
Don Roy was just over sixty and tough as a two-dollar steak. He'd overseen The Original Mambo's gambling operations for twenty years or so, and when Mambo the Third took over last year, he kept Don Roy on. But before he started working here, he was a world-class confidence man.
Born and raised here, he was long known as the King of the Swindle. His mind always operated in that direction, toward extracting money from suckers. He wrote the book on a lot of grifts that are commonplace today, and he made them pay off big until he went down for a diamond con in Las Vegas back in the late eighties. After a few years in prison, he came back, eventually married his longtime girlfriend, and settled into the straight life.
I found him in his tiny office, his brawny figure at a cheap desk, clear blue eyes focused on two laptops yawning open in front of him. A wooden chair sat empty against the near wall. From the look of things, he was adjusting the lines for tomorrow's baseball games on one of the computers and doing bolita accounting on the other. Two color photographs decorated the wall behind him: one was of the 1997 Key West Conchs high school baseball team, on which Mambo the Third was a star pitcher. The other was of Ronald Reagan.
"Well, look what the cat dragged in," he said as he saw me enter. "Last I heard, you were getting shot at in Miami." His voice was like a fine grade of sandpaper, a little scratchiness to it, but not all that abrasive.
I threw him a grin. "A move they came to regret." I took his hand in a hearty shake and dropped myself into the wooden chair.
He checked out the damage to my face. "They do all that to you, too?"
I shook my head. "Just a little problem I had the other night. Nothing I can't handle."
He shifted away from the laptops and toward me. "What's on your mind?"
"Did Mambo tell you I'm getting out? Looking to become an honest man?"
"He did mention something about it." His voice was accommodating, level in tone.
I leaned a little toward him. "You once said you could put me together with your cousin. Said he wanted to pump up his landscaping business. I got some money handy and I'm ready to go. Does the offer still stand?"
"Ahhh-hhh," he said, and I knew there was a problem. "Ordinarily, it'd be a no-brainer. But my cousin, genius that he is, got pinched last month for twisting his landscaping business model into marijuana growing. He's out on bail, but he can't take on anything new right now. All his money's going to lawyers."
My shoulders wanted to sag and I really had the urge to sigh at this big letdown. But this wasn't the time or place for it. Don Roy would've done me the favor if his dipshit cousin hadn't gotten busted, and now I didn't feel I could lean on him any further. His cousin had the know-how and the client leads. I had money and enthusiasm.
"Do you think he'll beat the charge?" I asked.
He ran a hand across his close-cropped hair. "If he does, it'll be on a technicality, because he's totally fucking guilty. They caught him redhanded, harvesting the shit in a vacant lot up on Rockland Key. He's probably looking at a two-year bit, minimum."
Trying not to sound sorry for myself, I said, "Well, I hope he beats it."
Don Roy picked up on it. He reached to the small table behind him and produced a bottle and two rocks glasses. Bushmill's Malt, ten-year-old single malt Irish whiskey. Choice stuff. He splashed a couple of fingers worth into each glass and handed me one. Then he said, "I get the feeling you were counting on this."
"I was, in a way. I wanted to make a clean break. I figured this would be my bridge into the straight life and I wanted to hit the ground running." I sipped at my drink. It was some smooth shit. Went down real well.
Don Roy drank from his, draining it by half. "You got any income? Any action at all?"
I said, "Yeah. But it requires a once-a-week collection."
He nodded, knowing it kept me with one foot in the life. "S'that this thing I heard about with you and Trey Whitney? And some stripper?"
You can't keep anything down low in this town. "Affirmative."
Don Roy said, "Mambo's cut Trey loose from his marker, you know."
"I know," I said. "He told me last week." I glanced up at the photo of the Conchs baseball team. Mambo the Third was in the center of the seated row, his trademark smile lighting up the whole shot.
Don Roy polished off the rest of his drink and set his glass down. He didn't refill it.
"What about the stripper? You still gonna collect from her?"
I raised my eyebrows a little and threw him a trace of a shrug. "A guy's gotta earn."
"Is Trey fucking her?"
"Far as I know," I said.
"Listen to me, Logan." His clicked his voice downward to confidential level. "You know who the Whitneys are. Do I have to remind you that Win Whitney's the Duke of fucking Duval? That his brother was mayor twenty years ago? His father, Trey's grandfather, was mayor for decades before that. They've been running things on this island forever."
"I know, I know."
"I'm not sure you do. Trey's a worthless punk, to be sure. But his father's the most powerful guy in town. And those gorillas Trey's got working for him? Morgan and Stanley? Those are two badass motherfuckers. You've gotta tread lightly."
My hand ran across my healing facial cuts. "I've already done a little treading with those two."
He leaned back in his chair. "So that was it. Trey sicced them on you to get you to lay off the stripper?"
I nodded. "Like I said, nothing I can't handle."
"Don't be too sure," he said. "Those are two guys you definitely don't want to fuck with. I remember when they came down here from Marathon about five or six years ago. They were barely old enough to drink, and they got busted for murder almost right away. You remember that?"
I thought for a moment, it came to me. "Didn't they smoke some guy … some guy who tried to move in on Trey's businesses?"
"Right. Guy from Lauderdale. Thought he could come down here and throw a lot of money around. Tried to intimidate the Whitneys. Biiiiig fucking mistake."
My memory shot into overdrive as details came into focus. "Brutal murder, wasn't it?"
Don Roy poured himself another shot of Bushmill's. He offered me one, but I declined.
He then said, "Beat the guy to death in his hotel room down at the Ocean Key and gouged his eyes out. While he was still alive. They were convicted on a lesser charge and wound up doing a short bit in Raiford before Trey's lawyers got 'em off on appeal. Word was, the inmates up there were scared shitless of them. And, as I'm sure you know, Raiford is the hardest of the hard-time joints in the whole goddamned state. It's where they send the incorrigibles."
When Don Roy Doyle tells you something like that, you'd better listen. This guy hasn't just been around the block. He built the fucking block. Ignore him and you do so at your own risk. Be careful around Morgan and Stanley, he says, and I pay attention.
I downed the rest of my whiskey and stood up.
"Thanks for the heads-up, man," I said.
We shook hands and he said, "Just watch yourself. You're on the Whitneys' radar now."
≈ ≈ ≈
On my way out, I detoured to the bar for a cold one. I plopped onto a stool and wondered what I was going to do. Don Roy's cousin getting busted really threw me a curveball and left me twisting in the wind. It wasn't like I had a lot of choices. I mean, I never had a job and I had no connections whatsoever in the straight world. My mother may have been onto something when she said it wouldn't be easy for me as a lifelong criminal trying to get regular work. I weighed my chances.
The bartender dropped my beer off in front of me. Right after I took the first tasty swig, they sauntered in. I didn't know who they were, but I knew what they were, and that was trouble. I also knew they weren't local. You walk into Mambo's, either y
ou're from here or with someone from here.
A pair of them, Latinos, probably Cuban. One had a shaved head, accentuating his protruding nose, his thin, short little beard running around his face from sideburn to sideburn. He wore a blazing orange Hawaiian shirt, patterned with pineapples and hibiscus. The second guy with slick, black hair and unforgiving eyes, in a yellow guayabera. Their tattoos were regulation, but the teardrops under their eyes, the symbol for killings they'd done, stood out above the rest, as they were intended. Four tears each. Both somewhere around my age, both swaggering around doing their best to look Miami dangerous. I caught a bulge under the back of the Hawaiian shirt. I couldn't see the back of the guayabera, but I figured it hid one as well.
Everyone noticed them as they eased up to the bar a couple of spots down from me. They might as well have carried ringing sirens with them, announcing their presence. From my stool, I watched them talk softly to the bartender. He picked up the phone and pressed one button, apparently ringing Mambo in his office.
Black Hair caught me staring at them.
"Who you lookin' at?" he said in heavily accented English.
My gaze never left his. "I could ask you the same thing."
Right away, Shaved Head jumped in, itching for action. "You got a fuckin' problem, my man?"
"I'm not the one with the problem. You two are." I took another pull at my beer.
Shaved Head's nostrils flared and his lips tightened around his teeth. He said something about a puta and came around his partner toward me. I steeled myself for the action.
The bartender, a pretty tough guy himself, reached his big arm across the bar and gestured at Shaved Head. He said, "¡Basta, muchachos! ¡Basta! ¡Cálmense!" In his other hand he held a firm grip on an upraised baseball bat. The two of them eyed the bartender, then the bat, and reluctantly settled down. He then waved them toward Mambo's office in the back.
Sidelong, I glimpsed the street through the plate glass window. Twilight was drawing down over the island. A Mercedes SL-63 loomed in the no-parking zone directly in front. Red convertible. About a hundred and fifty grand worth of speed and flash. Definitely not a Key West car. I looked around the joint at the sparse crowd. I knew everyone in there and none of them could afford that ride. Grabbing my longneck from the bar, I got up from my stool and headed back to Don Roy's cubbyhole.
