by Don Donovan
After Delgado shut off the engine and the lights, Desi said, "What now?"
"Now we wait. Check your weapon."
Desi pulled his piece from his canvas handbag. A Ruger SR-22, very light, small, fits perfectly in the hand. He retrieved his silencer from the bag and attached it to the threaded barrel. He and Delgado had spent several hours each day practicing at various shooting ranges. Delgado warned against spending too much time at any one range so as not to attract undue attention of the range owner and employees. Turns out, Desi was a natural with a handgun. He'd never owned one before, but his first practice round was a kill shot from five yards. Not bad for a newbie. He routinely hit the chest area of the targets from five, seven, and nine yards. Beyond that, he still hit the body, but not all in the kill zone.
"Don't worry about that," Delgado told him. "These .22s are designed for close-up work. Ten, twelve yards, you'll probably never be in that situation. Not with that gun, anyway."
The hollow-point rounds, Delgado further explained, were so that they would go straight into the body, making a clean entrance wound, but because their tips were irregularly shaped, rather than rounded and smooth, the round stayed in the body, turning and tumbling and twisting and damaging as many organs as possible, all without coming out the other side.
"It's like the opposite of a shotgun," Delgado said. "A shotgun promises a wide pattern of devastation on impact because of its design. The .22 is far more precise, but just as deadly at close range."
Over the last couple of days, Desi had come to like shooting that gun. He realized he was good with it and he wanted to try others, other calibers, other sizes, maybe even a shotgun, but Delgado touted him off it. "You'll get your chance, mi amigo. For now, just get used to that .22, okay?"
With silencers in place, they sat there in the darkened van. Delgado said, "They're in that apartment right over there, across the way. Number 1156." He motioned toward a first-floor unit with barred door and windows. The windows were also draped, but Desi saw light behind them. He rolled the window down and looked around the parking lot. A few cars took spaces, but there were a lot of empty ones. Poor lighting. No people walking around. No sounds. Only cars humming past the entrance back on the street.
A couple of people came out of 1156, two youngish men. Desi sat up sharply. Delgado patted him back. "Not them," he said. The men laughed and jostled each other all the way to their car about twenty yards away. They got in, fired it up, and sped out the exit.
Delgado had outlined a semblance of a plan. They get the drop on the guys — there would be three of them — and hustle them into the van, where Desi would bind them up and keep them covered. Then they would drive to some appointed place and … well … take care of them.
Desi's nerves jangled momentarily. This was for real. They were going to kill these fuckers! Of course, they had it coming, but still! He'd never done anything remotely close to this before. Oh, he'd had a few scraps in his time — he was always a competent mano-a-mano brawler, even when he was outnumbered — but he'd never actually set out to kill someone, someone who was otherwise living his life and not expecting to be killed.
These cocksuckers think they're going to get in their car and go home or wherever and just go on living their miserable fucking lives. They have no idea we're waiting for them, that I'm waiting for them.
The night dragged on. Twelve-thirty came, one o'clock … Desi, feeling his blood pumping, said, "Are you sure they're in there?" Rain began a soft dance on the roof of the van.
"I'm sure," Delgado said.
"How do you know?"
"I know the guy who lives in that apartment. He knows if he lies to me about something like this, he's a dead man."
As soon as Delgado said "dead man", three men and a woman exited the apartment. They all wore T-shirts, and two of them wore black vests over the T-shirts.
Delgado jacked a round into his chamber. "Showtime," he said.
They got out of the van and walked at a normal pace toward the group, with their guns slightly behind them, not easily spotted in the dimly-lit parking lot. The quartet was halfway across the lot when Desi and Delgado came up on them. They raised their guns in unison and Delgado said, "Hands in the air, all of you."
The men were startled, but their instincts told them to put their hands up. The woman moved to one side and shrieked. Desi reflexively put two in her chest from about six feet away, the muffled pops from the .22 barely audible. She crumpled to the pavement, blood spilling out of her small entry wounds. The other three gazed at her corpse with wide eyes and slackening jaws. Their hands shot higher into the air. The rain fell harder now.
Delgado and Desi herded them toward the van. Delgado opened the rear door out of the men's line of vision. He jerked a baseball bat from inside the van and said, "All right, everybody inside." They moved around to the back of the van and began to enter, but Delgado, with astonishing speed, whipped the bat around three times and caught all three squarely in the head. They collapsed, and he said, "Come on, help me get them into the van. Take their guns when they're inside."
Desi did as he was told. He loaded them into the rear of the van, which had a large painter's dropcloth spread over it to absorb the blood. All three were strapped and their guns went into the glove box. Two of them had knives as well. Delgado threw these into the narrow landscaped strip behind the van. Desi tied them up with ropes Delgado had brought.
Once they were secure, Delgado slid into the front seat and started the engine. Off toward the exit and out into the street. Still no other activity in the lot. The whole thing took less than ninety seconds.
31
Desi Senior
Hialeah, Florida
Friday, December 29, 1989
1:05 AM
THE THREE MEN LAY ON THEIR STOMACHS, bound and bleeding from head wounds. A couple of them had regained some semblance of consciousness, alternately groaning and howling in pain. Desi sat with his back to the locked rear door, .22 trained on them. Delgado had returned the bat to the rear of the van, and Desi saw for the first time what looked like a rectangular hard shell guitar case propped up along the wall.
Up close, he could see they were all young, maybe eighteen, nineteen. One of them, the one without the vest, looked to be about twenty-two. Two Latinos ¾ probably Cuban ¾ and one, the youngest, was black. The two Cubans were well-built, wide at the shoulders and hips, the black kid wiry and hard. Desi fished through their pockets.
None of them had wallets, but they all had cash in the front pockets of their jeans. Desi took it and flipped through it. Looked to be close to four grand. "Tenemos cuatro mil en caja," he said to Delgado.
"Muy bién, hermano," came the reply from the driver's seat.
Desi couldn't see where they were going, since there were no windows in the van, not even in the rear doors, but they were going at normal speed, so they weren't on the Palmetto Expressway. Not many turns. One right turn out of the parking lot, then a left a little ways down. Delgado got up to about thirty or thirty-five on that street with no red lights to slow him down. From where he sat, Desi saw no commercial-activity lighting through the top of the windshield. That means residential. Probably West 37th Street. By now, the rain was exploding out of the sky, pounding the roof and defeating the namby-pamby windshield wipers. Frequent thunder bursts told Desi the rain wasn't quitting anytime soon.
Some minutes later, they turned right and Delgado picked up speed, up to maybe forty-five miles an hour. Desi saw brief flashes of commercial lighting. This had to be Red Road. Not too long after that, he felt the van go over railroad tracks and turn left immediately. East 21st Street. Deep in East Hialeah. After that, one more turn which could've been anywhere. A few minutes later, Delgado turned into a paved lot and stopped. He killed the engine and doused the lights.
Desi unlocked and opened the back door. He stepped out into the heavy rain and saw they were in a small, empty parking lot at the end of a row of long, squat one-story industria
l-type buildings, which looked like they housed a trucking company. He saw several uncoupled trailers backed up to loading docks about fifty yards down. Railroad tracks ran behind the worn buildings, and on the opposite side of the tracks, the flat, windowless backs of more such buildings. A bawling wind swept hard rain across the lot.
Delgado came around to the back. He said, "I'm going to haul them one at a time to the back of the building. You stay here and watch them and watch for cops."
Desi had to chuckle. He knew this neighborhood. No cops ever came around here. If they did, people would think they actually gave a shit.
Together, they pulled the first one out of the van. This was the one who had never regained consciousness the whole trip. Delgado dragged him through the rain, sloshing around to the rear of the building and returned quickly for the black kid, the Groaner. The Howler, who remained, was now silent, maybe unconscious, probably worn out from all that howling. When Delgado came back, he and Desi took the Howler to join his friends. Desi saw Delgado had arranged the first two in sitting position, backs against the rear of the building. The third one was placed next to them. The Groaner, who sat in the middle, continued groaning.
Rain pelted their heads, washing the blood away almost as soon as it flowed out of them. The thunder was nearly continuous. Desi saw no security lighting behind the building. None from the buildings across the tracks, either. Only a street light a block away on 21st Street. No traffic anywhere in sight.
Delgado kicked the Groaner hard in the stomach. "Shut the fuck up!" A glance at Desi. "I'll be right back." He ran back to the van and returned with the guitar case. Carefully setting it on the ground in front of the three men, he said to the Groaner, "Can you hear me?"
More groans.
Raising his voice to rise above the sharp rain, he said, "Can you hear me?"
Delgado's hair hung in wet strands across his forehead. His eyes brimmed with fury. He raised his fist into punching position when the Groaner said, "Y-y-yeah. I-I hear you."
"Who sent you to the Ace Pawn Shop on East Fourth Avenue two weeks ago?" No answer. The fist hit the face, cracking the back of the head against the building. A yelp from the kid. Even back here behind these buildings, in the darkness, Desi could see blood squirt from behind his head. Or he thought he could, anyway.
Delgado repeated the question. The Groaner opened his big, dark eyes and tried to say something. A stutter or two, a gasp, and a couple of groans … Delgado leaned in and said, "Yes, yes. Who was it?"
Blood flowing from his mouth, the Groaner put his quivering front teeth over his lower lip and finally managed to say, "Fuck you."
Another punch from Delgado, this one harder than before, making a louder crack and a scream from the Groaner. Delgado opened the guitar case to reveal a long, sheathed machete. He carefully removed the sheath and slipped the machete out. It was almost as long as a sword, but whose blade was much wider and showed a gentle, fluid curve. He turned the Groaner's head to the left, facing the one who had never regained consciousness. He held that man's head by the hair and with one deadly swipe of the machete, the head came off, sliced off as clean as the end of a carrot on a cutting board. Blood spurted upward from inside the headless corpse like an oil well in a wildcatter's wet dream. Desi realized Delgado had done this before.
Delgado tossed the head on the ground. The Groaner's eyes widened in horror. Delgado asked him again, "Who sent you to the Ace Pawn Shop?"
With what had to be all the energy he could muster, the Groaner replied in a voice barely audible above the pounding rain, "Fuck you, motherfucker!"
Moving over to the Howler, Delgado repeated the bloody scenario with the machete. This time, Desi heard the clang of the blade as it took the man's head off and collided with the concrete building. He couldn't remember if he'd heard it with the first man, but figured it had to be there, he was just too stunned to realize it.
"Once more, pinche puto, who sent you?"
The Groaner just smiled, forcing a laugh over bloody teeth. Desi wasn't sure if the man could even see his attackers through the blood and the rain. Delgado handed the machete to Desi.
"Here. Take this nigger's head off."
Desi stepped up and took the long weapon. He saw the heavy rain had washed the blood from it, the wet blade softly gleaming in the dim light cast by the faraway streetlamp. A knot formed quickly in his stomach, causing him to flinch. But then he realized, These fucking pricks were going to take my life, leave my wife a widow and my children without a father.
He pulled the Groaner's head up by his 'fro and chopped his head off. One furious stroke. When the blade went through the neck, it hit the building with such a force, the vibration backed up through the weapon and into Desi's body. He felt it all the way down to his balls, causing him to very nearly drop the machete. He held the head for a moment, gazing at it. The Groaner's big eyes remained open, staring in blank death back at Desi. He was surprised at how calm he felt. The rain still fell hard and loud, but it soothed him as though it were a gentle spring shower, cleansing him of this sin which he so perfectly justified to himself.
With a sense of ritual, Delgado took the head from Desi with both hands. He carefully arranged a three heads in front of the corpses. He then reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved three playing cards. They were all the queen of spades. He left one in the mouth of each victim.
"Do you play hearts, Desi? The card game?"
Desi shook his head.
"The queen of spades," Delgado said. "The head bitch. Griselda Blanco."
32
Alicia
Miami, Florida
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
6:30 PM
THE FAMILY HAD JUST SAT DOWN TO DINNER when Alicia's cell phone rang. The caller ID revealed one of the Miami cell phone numbers of Rafael Flores, the top money man for her principal Colombian client.
She had never met Flores and had spoken to him only on two other occasions. Furthermore, she knew he made periodic trips to Miami under false passports specifically to make calls on his throwaway cell phones so there would be no record of any international calls. This was a call she would have to take.
Rising from the table, she said to Nick, "This'll just be a minute, honey. Let me take this." She answered it and headed into the seclusion of her home office. She slid the door shut behind her.
"Alicia, ¿Cómo estas?" said Flores, his thick, growly voice dripping with the heavy brogue of western Colombia. He had been around since the days of Pablo Escobar and could command respect with very few words.
"Bién, Señor Flores. Muy bién. ¿Y usted?"
"I am well. Thank you for asking." Instead of further pleasantries, he got right to the point. "Alicia, I have a favor I must ask of you."
"Of course, Don Rafael. Anything you wish."
"I understand you will be traveling tomorrow, is that right?"
Naturally, Flores knew when all the money arrived in Miami, knew Alicia had shipped it to Panamá, and knew she had texted a contact in Miami, telling him the date she was flying to Panamá.
"Yes, that is correct."
He said, "I would like a certain young lady to accompany you on this trip. She already has her ticket and she can meet you at the Miami airport right before your flight. Would you object to this arrangement?"
Alicia was stunned. She had always worked alone on these money-laundering trips. You bring anyone else along, you run the risk of them leaking information, which would undoubtedly end in disaster. She had heard of situations where launderers brought along girlfriends or wives or husbands or whatever and they would go back home and start blabbing to their country club friends all about the swell time they had watching their significant other launder millions of dollars in dirty drug money.
"What … what is the purpose of this, Don Rafael, if I might ask?"
"Ahh, haa. Good for you, Alicia. I knew you would want to make sure of everything. I knew you wouldn't just go along without knowing who this gi
rl is. This is why we trust you so much, mi hija. Why we trust you with all our money."
"I'm only trying to protect your interests, Don Rafael. Your interests and those of your associates."
"That is good. That is very good. Ha! All right. I will tell you. Her name is Amy Xing" — he pronounced it "shing" — "and she is going to eventually take care of the money that goes to Taiwan and Hong Kong. She is from Taiwan and knows the area very well. Her father was involved in the heroin trade over there until … until he passed away very suddenly two years ago."
Passed away very suddenly: cartel code for executed by one of his rivals or by local law enforcement.
"What does she know of our operations so far?"
Flores said, "She knows who you are and who we are, and that we work together. She knows the trade and she has deep contacts within the banking systems of Taiwan and Hong Kong. She speaks perfect Spanish as well as English. I want you to take her with you, show her what she will need to know."
"I — I would be happy to assist in any way I can. I'm planning a pickup and several deposits tomorrow, so she should get a good dose of information."
"I want you to show her how the packages arrive, how they are opened, how their contents are arranged. I want her to go with you to the bank so she can see everything that happens. ¿Me entendés?"
"I understand. She will never leave my side."
"Ha! Muy bién, Alicia. Muy bién. I knew I could count on you."
"How will I know her?" Alicia asked.
"She will know you. She has your photo and she will meet you at the gate."
"Consider it done, Don Rafael."
He said, "Que tenga un buen viaje."
