by Don Donovan
"Okay," Desi said. He wanted desperately to please his father. That's the way it is with first-generation Cuban Americans. They want to please their exile parents, make them feel it was all worthwhile. Dad had come over as a small child with his parents in the early 1960s, when Cuba started sliding down the toilet, but while Cubans could still leave the island legally. He later met Marianela in their Hialeah neighborhood. Her family had been here for a few years already and her English was getting pretty good, so they became friends while she helped him with the language. They were inseparable as they went through elementary school, junior high, and high school. He was drafted, served a year at the tail end of Vietnam and then a year stateside, after which he came back to Marianela. They were married a couple of years later and nine months after that, Desi Junior arrived.
Dad threw his arms around his son. "Buena suerte, mi hijo." Desi returned the hug with a couple of pats on his Dad's shoulder.
They got into the Durango. Desi handed Alicia the keys. "Here, you drive, hermana, but be careful. Don't fuck my car up."
She chuckled. "Don't worry. I can drive these things."
"Yeah, you can drive these things. You sixteen, girl. You can barely drive at all. I'm tellin' you, don't fuck up my car."
Truth was, Desi was worried about a lot more than his Dodge Durango. The driver on these deals had to be quick-thinking and able. Had to squeeze that car through the tightest of spots if the occasion suddenly called for it. Alicia had the heart, Desi knew. He wasn't worried about that. He only wondered about her ability to handle a car under tough circumstances. Could she do a sliding 90? Or a high-speed drift? You never knew what was going to happen on these deals. Or so Dad had told him in preparation for this one.
He hoped it would never come to that.
≈ ≈ ≈
The drive to Liberty City took forever. An eighteen-wheeler had rammed a minivan causing a multi-car pileup on I-95, funneling the great freeway down to one northbound lane. Cop cars and ambulances were everywhere, their flashers washing over the whole scene as they sorted through the wreckage for bodies. Desi and Alicia sat in what amounted to a parking lot for nearly twenty minutes, cursing the seemingly unmanageable Miami traffic every one of those minutes. By the time they got to the 62nd Street exit, they were already a couple of minutes late.
Not a good start for my first real job, Desi thought.
Alicia knew the way and found the apartment complex on 61st Street without incident. The Lexus stood alone with its lights on at the dark end of the lot, parked in getaway position.
"Pull up facing them," Desi said. "About fifty feet from their car."
Alicia placed the Durango perfectly and pointed it directly at them, leaving the lights on. Desi, Alicia, and one of the Lexus occupants got out of their vehicles at the same time, and Desi noticed the breeze that refreshed the Port of Miami had died before it reached these humid bowels of Liberty City.
He saw two more niggers get out of the Lexus, and prickles ran up his spine. Those two stood behind the first one, silhouetted against the bright lights of their parked vehicle. Desi squinted — in fact he very nearly put his hand up to shield his eyes from the intense lights, but he immediately knew squinting was a rookie mistake, showing weakness. He was positive the first guy had seen him do it and immediately hated the fact he'd given him this advantage.
As they approached each other, Desi got a better look at him. He saw right away the guy was about six feet tall, black, bald, and built wide, with a neatly-trimmed goatee around his wide mouth. He wore a red Busta Rhymes T-shirt, a bulge clearly visible under the shirt on the right side of his waist. He also appeared to be in excellent shape, with thick biceps stretching the short sleeves of his T-shirt. Desi also made him to be older, like maybe middle twenties. No kid.
"Where Desi at?" he said in a deep voice that made Desi uncomfortable. Desi made it as a Caribbean accent, probably Jamaican.
"I'm Desi. Er — Desi Junior. My Dad couldn't make it. I'm here instead."
The big man chuckled. "You late, Junior."
"Big accident on I-95 near 36th Street. Sorry, couldn't be helped. You Bebop?"
"Yeah. Who de girl? You Cubans runnin' wid girls now?"
Desi was already standing ramrod-straight, but he somehow managed to stand a shade more erect. "Don't worry about her," he said. "She knows what time it is."
"Ha! I bet she do. You got de goods?"
Desi kept his cool and said, "You got the money?"
Without taking his eyes off Desi and Alicia, he hand-signaled one of his boys behind him, who moved up with a briefcase of his own. He opened it, showing banded packets of hundreds. Desi nodded to Alicia, who opened their briefcase containing two kilo-sized packets of white powder. Bebop looked it over, then reached a hand into his pocket. Desi flinched, only a little, but he saw it register in the big man's eyes.
"Easy, Junior," Bebop said with a smile. "Just gonna look at de merchandise."
Bebop's hand came out with a knife handle. One loud flick and the long blade appeared, shiny and corrugated, designed for maximum damage, glistening in the Durango's headlamps. Desi hoped Alicia stood ready to draw her monster revolver at a moment's notice. He noticed she held the briefcase with her left hand, the open lid resting against her body. Her right hand was free.
Bebop lifted one of the packets partway out of the briefcase and sliced it open, about an inch-long cut. Ladling out a tiny amount of the powder on the tip of his knife, he turned to one of his associates who was waiting with a small vial filled with clear liquid. The powder went into the vial, and after a little shaking, he held it up to Desi's headlights. It had turned a deep reddish-brown.
"Yeahhh. Dat what I'm talkin' 'bout, mahn," he said to his partner. Then to Desi, "Dis be good shit."
"Damn right it is," Desi said, not sure what his answer should have been, or if he should have answered at all. He decided in the future, when in doubt, shut the fuck up.
Bebop threw his partner a head signal and they passed the money to Desi, who handed the coke over. He dutifully removed one of the money packets, flipped through it to make sure they were all hundreds, and put it back, snapping the briefcase shut. Everyone nodded at each other and backed away toward their respective SUVs. Desi was surprised at how Alicia expertly backed the Durango around and exited the property.
They hustled back to 62nd Street, a chancy-looking thoroughfare running through Liberty City, and made their way back to I-95 in a hurry. Once they were safely on the Interstate, they both exhaled and started whooping and high-fiving. Amid all the excitement of having completed their first major drug deal, they made sure to tell each other how confident they were the whole time, how they weren't afraid of those niggers. Bebop's intimidating presence, the headlights, the fact they were outnumbered three to two, the flick of the switchblade — the whole thing. None of it bothered them, they said. You just got to stay cool. And baby, we were cool!
Twenty minutes later, they drove down Panama Way by the warehouse near the port. Desi Sr's red Escalade waited under a bright security light hung from the side of the building. Desi Jr and Alicia drove up next to it and got out. Dad stayed in his vehicle.
"How'd it go?" he asked.
"Great," Desi said. "Just like you told us, they had the knife and the money and we asked to see it and they tested the coke and —"
"Where's the money?"
Alicia held up the briefcase. "Right here, Mr Ramos," she said.
Dad took it from her through the open window. He looked at Desi. "And the gun?"
Desi yanked it from his waistband. "Here, Dad."
Dad took the piece and laid it on the passenger seat, then opened the briefcase. He flipped through the packets. All hundreds, everything looked good. He unbanded one of the packets and counted out fifty of the hundreds. He handed it to Desi. "This is for you two. You did good. Now go home and get some sleep."
Desi's eyes widened at the money in his hand. It was more money than he'd
ever had in his life. Five thousand dollars! He couldn't speak. He could only look at his father for a split second before the Escalade pulled away from them, leaving them standing under the warehouse light. He hoped his Dad had seen the thank-you in his eyes.
Alicia stuck a hand out. "Dame veinticinco," she said.
Desi snapped back to reality. "Sí, sí. Cómo no." He counted out twenty-five hundred and placed it in Alicia's outstretched palm. They looked at each other and grinned. They knew — or at least Desi knew, and he was pretty sure Alicia knew — their life on the other side of the law had truly begun, that by moving this much dope, there was no turning back. Desi considered the new life that awaited him, a life of flashy clothes and big cars and eager women and —
The loud shots exploded through his dreamy state. Desi threw his gaze a hundred yards or so down Panama Way and saw the red Escalade careening crazily from side to side before smashing headlong into a light pole. The black Lexus appeared out of nowhere, stopping next to it, and a well-built black man got out wearing a red T-shirt. He reached into the wreckage, fired another two shots, and retrieved something, Desi couldn't tell what. He got back into the Lexus, and it vanished around a curve.
Desi and Alicia rushed to the scene. Desi Sr had at least two bullets in the head that they could see, along with a couple of more in the chest, which had gone clean through the SUV's door. The blood flowed freely from the head wounds and covered much of the front seat's leather. The briefcase was gone.
Alicia tugged on his shirtsleeve. "Come on, hermano! We gotta get out of here. Now!"
Not wanting to turn his head away from his father's corpse, Desi stood firm for one more second. He reached in and carefully removed the Springfield .357 SIG from the passenger seat. It was coated with his father's blood. He finally gave in to Alicia's urgings and, still looking back at the bloody scene, allowed her to pull him into the Durango. As they sped away, the realization flowed over him, the realization those fucking niggers followed them back to the Port of Miami and they never caught on. He and Alicia were so relieved to have made it away from that parking lot and out of Liberty City, they forgot they could still be followed on I-95. The cost of his carelessness lay in the twisted, bloody ruins of the Escalade.
That motherfucker knew we would get back to 95 as quick as we could, Desi thought. So they just hung back and followed us. Motherfuckers!
5
Desi Junior
Miami, Florida
Friday, March 30, 2012
5:45 PM
THE LOADING DOCKS AT DOLPHIN MALL came alive in late afternoon. The last trucks of the day emptied out, the merchandise brought into the stores, and dock workers began to punch out for the day. Tired and with muscles aching, a few looked forward to going home to their wives and families for a well-deserved quiet dinner. Others streamed into nearby taverns, looking to lose their pent-up misery in a few beers, or something stronger. Still others awaited Desi Ramos to show up with his party goods to wipe clean the bullshit of the day, to allow them to soar, to be something far more than lowly dock workers — somebody they've always really known they could be.
And just as sure as a Castro rules Cuba, Desi arrives at Dolphin Mall every day, except Sundays, when he sends Wilfredo or one of his other worker bees to handle the activity. His work ethic demands he show the flag every day, or his customers might get the notion they can get their shit somewhere else. The nature of the business required you to be there for your customers on a regular basis. You were the face of the product. That was the funny thing with this business. Your customers depend on you almost as much as they do the drugs.
A new guy? That would take some getting used to.
A rare springtime rain had blanketed the western area of the county on this day and traffic around the mall had slowed considerably. Rather than get out of his car and look for his customers, Desi said fuck it, I'm not getting wet. Let them come to him. They all knew him anyway by his shiny new red Escalade, and they knew where he parked it.
Within twenty minutes, he'd made a few sales, not as many as he would have in better weather, but all in all, not bad. Still made it worth his while to come out.
The dead time between customers gave him occasion to reflect on where he was. Twenty years in the business — if you count his first job as a lookout in his old East Hialeah neighborhood — and he's still moving the shit a gram at a time at age thirty-two. Oh sure, he's got a few boys working for him, staking out the airport and the surrounding area, but four or five guys don't make an organization. Not a real one, anyway. He knew others who were a lot farther along.
Take Alicia, for instance, he thought. She came up same time I did. I became a dealer, and she could've done the same. Instead, she quit hanging around all those drug dealers and started paying attention in school. Next thing you knew, she was in college and not long after that, got into money laundering.
Some of the bigger dealers in South Florida today, they came up with me and Alicia. Back then, we were all just scuffling around for a few bucks here and there. Most of those guys — the ones who are still alive, anyway — are moving serious weight nowadays. I even buy my shit from them. But Alicia … Alicia's got it by the ass. She takes their money and washes it for them. I remember, she was always good with money, always knew how to handle it, what to do with it. I guess that's why she has so much of it now.
Desi considered his own situation, buying his shit half a key at a time from some of the guys who started out with him years ago in East Hialeah. He didn't mind. He was happy for Alicia, too. Happy she could stay away from the dangers of dealing and just worry about washing the cash. Happy she was living high, living in that big house on Star Island, tooling around town in her fleet of snazzy cars, her handsome husband on her arm everywhere she went.
Yes, he was very happy for Alicia, way up there, living the high life. Alicia and he were homies from the beginning — but never lovers. They loved each other, but like family, even though they weren't related. He was closer to her than he was to his own sister. They even called each other "brother" and "sister". All through childhood, they had each other's back, so he was pleased to see his hermanita follow her grand ambitions and rise to a position of importance.
And he was equally happy about his own place in the flow chart. Down here at street level, you're practically invisible. There's none of that constant looking over your shoulder shit. You don't live in a big mansion, you don't drive a flashy car, you wear a ten-karat gold chain instead of a Hublot, you fuck cocktail waitresses with aching feet instead of glittering models whose pictures appear on magazine covers. The cops, the DEA, they don't have you in their sights. They don't give two shits about you. Busting street dealers isn't going to make anyone's career. Plus, you've really got nothing that those few other guys in your little organization would want. Maybe the Escalade, but that's about it.
If you're a money launderer, however, dealing only in cash, that means you've got plenty of it. It also means you own all that high-end stuff, and you've got guys working for you, guys who you're taking real good care of and who have a lot themselves. And you know, there's probably one or two of those guys who will look at what you've got — or in this case, what Alicia has got — and they'll start seeing themselves swaggering around in that big house, guzzling the Cristal, lounging at the big pool with gorgeous chicks, millions stashed in the Caymans or wherever, everybody bowing and scraping to them. Some of Alicia's guys might one day lust for what she has, maybe think, Shit, she's just a girl. A few of them — maybe even only one — might want it so bad, he'll try to take it. And it only takes one.
Desi was close enough to Alicia to where he knew how she thought. I'm sure she knows all this. She knows some of her guys are envious and might try to move in on her. I don't have to worry about her, though. She's a lot smarter than they are. Book smarts and street smarts both.
And she's a lot tougher than any girl they've ever known.
A glance in the rear view mir
ror showed a car approaching from behind. It swung a little to one side and pulled up on Desi's right. He looked. Sergeant Machado. She signaled him to lower his window.
Fuckin' dyke bitch comes out rain or shine to get her fuckin' money.
He slid the passenger side window down. Fucking rain was really coming down now, blowing in and getting all over his nice leather interior. Her window was down, too, but what did she care? That piece of shit she was driving? Some fucking regulation Chevy or some shit, with raggedy-ass cloth seats.
"Happy Friday, Desi," she said.
"Yeah," he said, with absolutely no enthusiasm. "Happy whatever."
"You know what I want."
"Yeah, I know," he said.
"Well, get out of the fucking car and come over and give it to me. I'm not getting out in this rain."
Desi grumbled something to himself and got out of the SUV. Lots of warm rain covered him in a second. He went around to Machado's driver's side window, which was only about one-eighth of the way down, and reached in his pocket. He came out with an envelope which he slipped through the opening and rushed back to his Escalade, dripping water all over the driver's seat.
Machado carefully counted the money. One thousand dollars. All hundreds.
"Thanks, Desi. See you next week." She put her car in gear.
"Hey, wait a minute!" he said as she started to pull away. She stopped and backed up a couple of feet.
"What?"
"You know, you been rippin' me off for a long time now. Too fuckin' long."
"Ripping you off? Flip on your brights, faggot. You and your crew are operating around this mall and the airport and other places because we let … you. Don't you ever forget that."
"Yeah, but this grand a week shit's gotta stop. That's a lotta money."
"Maybe you'd rather expand into Hialeah and have to kick up to Maxie Méndez."
"That ain't what I'm talkin' about. A grand's a lot of money for this small area."
