by Don Donovan
"M-money?" Angel said, nervousness now replaced by fear.
"Diecisiete mil dolares," the man said. "We want it now."
"Sev-seventeen thousand dollars? It was only ten thousand or-originally!"
"The interest," said another man, this one speaking in a much lighter, airier voice. "The interest is compound. It adds up very quickly when you don't pay on time."
"L-look," Angel said, the fear in his voice graduating to desperation, "I'm doing a deal tomorrow night. A big deal, you know? I'll have it for you then."
The husky man said, "No more bullshit, Angelito. No more tomorrows. We want it now."
"N-no lo t-tengo ahora, muchachos," Angel said. "Pl-please give me until tomorrow. I promise I'll have it for you tomor —"
The sound of a fist hitting flesh was followed by the sound of a body hitting the floor. The pounding began, drowning out Angel's cries and pleas for time. Soon they were just cries, then grunts. And then, nothing. But still the pounding continued.
Eventually, they quit, satisfied Angel had gotten the message. The husky man said in a growl, "You don't pay us tomorrow, you die, ¿me entendés?"
Angel gave a moan in the affirmative and they left. Silvana did not hear the door shut, but she heard two car doors right outside the apartment open and close, followed by ignition and driving away. She waited a few moments to make sure no one else remained in the apartment, and then she moved out of the closet into the living room.
Angel Canelas lay on the floor clutching his gut, his face bloodied from ugly, open gashes. He groaned a few times, but she ignored it as she shut the front door. She sheathed her machete and walked around his prone figure, did a three-sixty, and nudged his ribs with her foot. He yelped. A rib or two broken, she estimated, and then she bent down close to his head. With her mouth inches from his ear, she murmured, "Angel, do you want some water?"
With great effort, he nodded once, still groaning, trying to speak. She went to the kitchen and filled a dirty glass with water, holding it with a dish towel. She brought it back to him and raised his head gently so he could slowly take in the water. After a couple of light sips, she took the glass away with the dish towel.
"You can't drink it too fast, now," she whispered. "It's not good for you in your condition."
More groaning, but the water had helped. His attempts at speaking were paying off. "Wh-who are you?" he said.
"I'm a friend," she said, now with wickedness in her voice. "A friend who's going to give you what you need."
"Who — who are you?"
"Now, Angel, don't worry about who I am. You should be thinking of what you are. And all that you have been." She began unbuttoning his shirt.
"Wha — what do you m-mean?" He was coming around now, able to finally open his eyes and see his water-bearing savior, this Aquarius of Southwest Fourth Street. As his vision slowly returned, he trained his gaze on her as she yanked his shirt off. He moaned in pain at the sudden jerk. She was still bent down, near to him and he looked at her closely as she unbuckled his pants and slid them down over his hips, causing him a great deal more pain. No glimmer of recognition in his eyes.
"I mean," she said, "that I am here to make you see what you are."
"What I am?"
She pulled his pants off, along with his shoes, socks, and underpants. The socks she jammed into his mouth, causing him to yelp. Pulling out two pair of twist-tie cuffs, she bound his wrists behind his back and then his ankles. Still reeling in pain from the beating Maxie's boys had given him, he was unable to resist.
She said, "Yes. I am here to make you see yourself for the cocksucking motherless faggot that you really are. I am here to make you understand you are lower than crab shit, to make you understand you are the most worthless piece of fucking shit that ever walked the earth! I am here for Blanca Nuñez!"
Standing over his naked body, she put one foot on his throat and pulled the machete from her scabbard. The scream he tried for never came, shoved back down inside him by the choking socks in his mouth. Instead, his eyes widened in terror, very nearly bulging out of his head. She lowered the machete, and with all the grace and dexterity of a Renaissance sculptor, she slowly went to work peeling off his blood-encrusted face.
26
Silvana
Hialeah, Florida
Monday, August 3, 1998
7:35 AM
TIA TERESA'S BRUISES HAD HEALED somewhat over the weekend, bruises she received Friday afternoon following a particularly brutal session with Señor Lara back in the box factory storeroom. In addition to her usual black eye, she came home with a slash on her lip and a cut over her eyebrow.
After helping her wash away the blood and dress her wounds, Silvana led her limping figure to the bedroom. As Silvana lay her on the bed, Teresa sobbed in shame as she sometimes did when Silvana would see her like this, and this time a tear even squeezed its way out onto Silvana's cheek as she remembered the maulings — including the fatal beating — her own mother suffered at the savage hands of her father.
Following an early Monday morning rain, the temperature along East Eleventh Avenue shot up, maybe into the nineties, Silvana figured. The air, dense with subtropical humidity, made it difficult to catch a clean, full breath. The sun threatened to fry everything within range as it loomed large and menacing, smothering the east side of Hialeah in a blanket of damp heat — covering all the world, Silvana thought. A few Cubans, men and women, trudged with their heads down to their meager jobs in the warehouses and small, dirty factories. Mosquitoes flew in great numbers, proclaiming unchallenged rule over the forgotten neighborhood.
Outside her jeans she wore a long T-shirt, which wrapped loose around her thick, hardened body, and she started sweating the moment she left the house. Along the tracks that ran parallel to the street, a train came chugging slowly by, wheezing and clacking along the old tracks. It was a long train — but Silvana thought they were all long and took forever to pass — carrying whatever it was trains carried to wherever trains went. It seemed to her every train on earth rumbled past her house at all hours of the day and night, providing an annoying, unwelcome soundtrack to her life.
The train was still rolling past her when she arrived at a row of squat, connected buildings a couple of blocks from her house. The row was fronted by a long unpaved parking area, and divided into several businesses, each one with its own set of concrete steps leading to a platform and an entrance. Squarely in the middle of the row, overhanging the platform and the door, was a sign which read, "Hialeah Box Co.". Silvana stood in the shade of a sprawling poinciana tree across the narrow street, facing the building, her back to the tracks and the crawling train. Sweat had now stained great portions of her T-shirt.
There were no cars parked in front. But almost immediately, a slate-gray car pulled up and parked in the dirt. From across the street, Silvana saw the Cadillac emblem on its trunk and readied herself. The car breathed a sigh of welcome relief when the fat man worked his way out of it. As he shut the door, she called out to him.
"Señor Lara!"
He turned. Fat motherfucker, thick mustache. That's him.
She started walking toward him. "Señor Lara, I wanted to speak with y —" At that moment, she turned her ankle slightly — just as she had practiced — not enough to injure herself, but enough to send her to the pavement. She hoped it looked real.
Lara quickly crossed the street. "Deja que te ayude, señorita." He came to her side to offer assistance as she struggled to get up. He took her arm and gently helped her up. "Are you all right? Can you stand up?"
"Yes, yes," she said. "I think so." Then she said, "If I could just lean against this tree for a moment."
He helped her the few feet to the poinciana, to a spot shielded from view by neighboring brush. She caught a fleeting glimpse of the surroundings. No one on the street right now. Not close by, anyway. Two blocks down, a few people walked slowly in the opposite direction.
He said quietly, "You say you want to
speak with me?" Pretending to be composing herself, she nodded. He smiled and his voice became sly, oily. "Are you looking for work? I think we could use someone like you." He put his hand on her hard bicep, the one that bore the Cuban flag tattoo, and gave it a light squeeze. His hand began to roam from the bicep. "Yes, I think we can find a spot for you, seguro. You have the right kind of body for —"
He never saw it coming, he may have only heard the whssshhht as she yanked the knife from its sheath under her long T-shirt. The blade entered his massive stomach, deep and hard. She twisted it with all her strength and he hacked. Finally, with one mighty effort, she raised it upward, slicing everything in its path, until it found his heart. Another hard jab and he collapsed to the ground, blood flowing onto the base of the poinciana tree. A rattle or two and he was gone.
She wiped the blade on his shirt and sheathed it. Still no one in sight. She stayed along the shaded side of the street, walking through the underbrush. By the time she arrived at her home two blocks down, the train had passed.
≈ ≈ ≈
Silvana used the remainder of that day for reflection. She embarked on the long walk over to Eighth Avenue and down to El Malecón for breakfast. Her life, while not brimming with promise, had nevertheless been one of accomplishment, a source of pride, exceedingly rare in that part of Hialeah. The raw determination she needed when she made the trip from Mariel to Florida on a raft at the age of eleven. Her conquering an alien language and the accompanying culture, so unlike her own. Doing what it took to get through these foreign schools, all the while being immersed in surroundings of crime and drugs. Las Brujas. Angel Canelas. The fat pig Lara. Yes, she'd done quite a bit in her eighteen years. She'd closed the book on quite a few things. She'd done what was necessary.
Necessary.
But what now? What about her future? She was gripped by the need to meet necessity with action. It permeated her nature. How could she incorporate this need into the rest of her life?
She'd never actually considered it. When other teenagers she knew should have been mulling over the question, "What do you want to do when you grow up?", most of them never considered it. They had very little grasp of the future, of growing up, which they saw as hazy concepts at best. The majority of the other young people in her circle, including almost all of Las Brujas, were doomed, she thought, doomed to short, violent lives and death under dark, nasty conditions.
On the other hand, Silvana had felt like she had been grown up all along, the present and the future melding into one another, belonging to one another, nearly indistinguishable.
Now, however, as she arrived at El Malecón, she realized they were separate entities. The present was like a tiny dot moving inexorably from the past into the future. You made your future, she believed, by what you do in the present. And you better do it right because the future will be in your face before you know what hit you, and it is very, very unforgiving. Eventually all of the future becomes the present momentarily and then slips forever into the past. But what of the future that still lay before her? What can she make of it? How can she shape her life to welcome it?
She sensed at that moment she would have to leave Hialeah.
The tiny table she chose faced the window. As the café's air conditioning rolled over her, she relaxed, the tenseness of that morning's murder flowing out of her body. Outside, all traces of the morning rain had vanished, burned off by the sun, which had now moved higher into the sky, blazing brutal yellow down upon the street. Her thoughts turned to Miami. Big, big Miami. The capital of Latin America. The center of everything. The reason for everything. Almost as if Miami were the wellspring of all life itself. Just a couple of short miles over there to the east, but it might as well have been across the country, such was the gulf between Miami and Hialeah. She felt it might be necessary to be there in order to properly greet her future.
And then she saw it.
It pulled up and parked outside El Malecón. The white car with the blue and gold trim.
And the big word on the side. Police.
LAYERING
SUNDAY, APRIL 8, 2012
27
Alicia
North Miami, Florida
Sunday, April 8, 2012
6:30 PM
FROM THE BACK SEAT OF HER BENTLEY, Alicia punched up the number in a hurry. She knew it by heart because this was about the twentieth time she'd tried to call since yesterday when she got the word. There was never an answer nor a reply to the numerous angry voicemails. She was about at the end of her —
"Hello," came the voice on the other end.
"Desi, what did I tell you?"
"Alicia, I — I —"
"Shut the fuck up!" Alicia hadn't been this angry in years. "What did I tell you about not pulling any shit during the deal? What the fuck did I tell you?"
"Y-you told me not to do anything while your guys were there. B-but Alicia, I didn't have —"
"Shut the fuck up! Meet me there right now."
"Th-there? Where?"
"The fucking place where you were last night! Only in front of the building, not behind it. Get your ass over there now!"
Alicia swiped the call off. "Berto!" she said. "State Road 7! ¡Al noroeste Calle Cientoveintisiete! ¡Ahorita!"
The big car was rolling south on 95. Berto made a fast lane change and exited at Northwest Eighth Street. He U-turned at the feeder intersection and got back on the Interstate heading north. A little while later, they were getting off at 125th Street, and moments after that, onto State Road 7 and in to the parking lot in front of the lumber yard at 127th. Desi was waiting in a remote section of the large lot.
Alicia leaped out of the car and rushed up to Desi, the click of her stilettos on the pavement resembling great pounding thuds. She got right in his face.
"I told you not to shoot this fucking place up!" she said. "And what do you do? You go and shoot the fucking place up. What the hell is the matter with you?"
Desi said, "Alicia, I'm r-really sorry. I didn't m-mean to fuck it up."
"No, you didn't mean to fuck it up, but you fucked it up! You know how much bullshit you have caused?"
"I swear to God, Alicia, I had a clear shot at him. I was in a perfect spot." He tried to describe the cinderblock piles. "I was right there, and I-I didn't want to follow him back to Niggertown or wherever the fuck he lives. I didn't think I could take him clean if I did that. But there, behind those cinderblocks, I had a clear shot!"
"Yeah," said Alicia. "A clear shot. So what do you do? You hit his fucking girlfriend. Hmph! Clear shot, my ass."
"Alicia, I swear to God, I had him right in my scope. She jumped on him at the last second, right when I fired. I would've had him otherwise."
"Hey! I don't want to hear any more of your bullshit! I ought to have you wasted for this. That fucking nigger knows someone crossed him, and now he's out for blood. You know what that means?"
"Shit, I'm s-sorry."
Alicia went on, overlooking Desi's apology. "That means he'll probably think my clients were behind it, and once word gets out, they'll have to send someone up to North Miami."
"Send someone …"
She still couldn't calm down. "Yes! Send someone up there and find him in the middle of all those fucking Jamaicans up there and put him down. And it's not gonna be pretty. There will probably be casualties. And then the Jamaicans will have to send somebody down here to even the score. And so on back and forth. You know how much shit you've stirred up? Do you?"
"I'm tellin' you, I had him in my scope. It was a freak accident that she got in the way."
"Fuck you and your freak accidents! Now somebody's gotta clean up after you. After I told you about him, and him being out on the street. I didn't have to tell you, you know. I could've let you go on without ever letting on about it."
"I know, hermana. I appreciate you telling me about him, more than you know. I've been waiting for, like, fifteen years to get justice. I know I let you down, and I feel real ba
d about it. I mean, real bad."
"Not half as bad as you're gonna feel if he ever finds out it was you who shot at him," Alicia said.
"Let me get him, Alicia. Let me make it up to you."
Her eyebrow raised. "Let you —? Are you fucking kidding me? You couldn't get him when you had him clean in your sights at forty fucking yards."
"I'll get him. I swear to you, I'll get him. Or die trying. You have my word. I want to make it right for you."
Alicia didn't answer right away. She thought about it. First, she knew she had to settle down. You can't make any sensible decisions when you're hot, when your blood pressure is on the rise, she always told herself. And her doctor had told her just last week to cut down on the excitement in her life, to get her blood pressure down to manageable levels. Otherwise, she might collapse to the floor one day, without warning. Never see Nick again, or her little Francesca, the light of her life. Their sweet faces came to her in the parking lot of the lumber yard as she stood next to her luxury automobile.
Her ability to remain calm in times of crisis was one of her very strongest suits, and she remembered it now. Even though she had temporarily lost it with Desi over the phone and she was falling off the edge right here, she never would have acted on that anger. Never would have let it control her to the point where she made stupid decisions.
This trait served her well during her days selling coke on the streets. Many times her suppliers were overcome with anger over some slight or some other wrongdoing by a rival dealer, but Alicia's cool presence and steady hand always prevailed, sidestepping many violent confrontations and quite likely, a few deaths as well.
A couple of deep breaths, leaving Desi hanging on the other end, and then she considered everything.
The problem was not that he missed Bebop, but that he disobeyed me and shot up the scene of the deal. I believe him when he says the woman moved into his sights at the last second. That kind of thing can happen when there are other people around your target. Also, he knows he did wrong. Not only that, we go back a long way. A very long way. We were together when his father was killed. There's no way I won't forgive him. So how about I give him a second shot at Bebop?
