STAYING ALIVE (Book Three of The Miami Crime Trilogy)

by Don Donovan

  "Who's here?" Fuzzy said. "Who?" He gave her shoulders another small shake.

  Her head swiveled from side to side, sweeping the bedroom. Everything in place, no lights on, nothing out of the ordinary. Her muscles relaxed, her curly hair matted down. Sweat stood glistening in small beads on her face.

  "Oh … uh … uh, the living room."

  "There's no one here, baby." Fuzzy released her. He lay back down to go to sleep, but she angled herself into her wheelchair.

  "Laura Lee," he said. "What are you doing?"

  "Just going into the living room. I thought I heard something … something by the front window."

  She wheeled into the living room. Fuzzy lifted himself out of bed and followed. Straight to the window overlooking Tenth Avenue. She carefully scanned first the small yard, then the street in front of her house, then up and down in both directions. A passing taxi was the only movement. She pointed at something she thought might have moved, but saw nothing and put her hand back down.

  "What did you hear, honey?" Fuzzy asked.

  "I, uh … I guess I didn't hear anything." She started back for the bedroom, then turned to him and said, "Are you sure they aren't watching us? Staking us out? Maybe breaking in while we're gone?"

  "I'm sure, baby. Very sure."

  "If they broke in, they could've installed listening devices, microphones! All through the house. To catch our every move. Or … or maybe even tiny video cameras! I've seen on TV where they use those now. They're onto us."

  He rolled her into the bedroom. "There are no cameras, honey. No microphones. We're okay, believe me."

  She pulled him down so she could whisper in his ear. "I can't even say out loud what it is we did. You know that, right? If they're listening, they'll have us cold."

  He nodded and helped her back into bed. She lay on her back, sweating, with her eyes wide open, listening for the slightest sound.

  51

  Silvana

  Miami, Florida

  Sunday, September 9, 2012

  9:45 PM

  THE VERSAILLES WAS PACKED for a Sunday night at this hour. Even though it was the most popular Cuban restaurant in all of Miami, this was still a pretty healthy crowd. The Dolphins and the Marlins were both out of town, so Vargas was unable to explain the rush, but the restaurant's staff was nimble and they handled it beautifully. No one waited for too long, the food poured out of the kitchen accompanied by the irresistible aroma, and it was always tasty and perfect.

  Vargas and Silvana had taken their customary table, the one they had every Sunday night for their late dinner, but on this night they were damn lucky to get it. In addition, Ray Acevedo joined them tonight for the first time.

  They downed the last of their dinner and were on their second beer when Silvana said, "Ray, after last weekend's incident with that Russian in Allapattah, you've proven yourself. Bobby and I are cutting you in."

  "Cutting me in?" he said.

  She pulled out two envelopes and pushed one to each man. "Inside this envelope is one thousand eighty-three dollars. Now that there are three of us," she said, glancing at Vargas, "the amounts are going to be odd."

  "What's it for?" Acevedo asked.

  "We get a thousand a week from Maxie Méndez, another thousand from this slimy pimp G-Man up in Brownsville, yet another grand from this guy who took over Desi Ramos' coke route at Dolphin Mall and MIA, five hundred each from three nigger street dealers in Overtown, five hundred from a Cuban in Little Havana, and we just reeled in the operator of Magic City Suites, a high-end escort service downtown. We're hitting her for fifteen hundred. That's sixty-five hundred a week. Santos gets half. That's —"

  "Captain Santos? Half?" Acevedo said.

  "Right. He's got a wide network out there. We have to kick up to him. We don't and he finds out, our careers are in jeopardy."

  Vargas said, "Besides, now that he's a captain, he can give us good cover if we ever need it." Acevedo nodded in understanding.

  Silvana went on. "So that leaves thirty-two fifty a week for the three of us, or ten eighty-three each."

  Acevedo grinned. A broad, handsome grin. "Thanks, Lieutenant. Thanks a lot!"

  "You've earned it, Ray." Silvana thought, The girls must love this guy. Big shoulders, pretty face, white teeth … if I went for guys myself, I might just …

  "Damn!" he said, still gazing at the envelope and thumbing the bills inside. "This is really gonna come in handy."

  "Really?" she said.

  "Oh, yeah. Tanya — that's my wife — is pregnant right now with our second baby. Our first was born premature, and she was born with a problem. Her little heart isn't working right. I don't know, congenital, they said. You just don't know how we … Lieutenant … this money …" He squeezed the envelope as his voice broke.

  She took his hand. "We're glad we can help out, Ray. You use this money for your baby. It'll be coming every week from now on, ¿entendido?"

  "Sí. Entiendo."

  They drank their beers in silence, then Silvana twirled her index finger at the waitress, signaling another round.

  She turned to Vargas. "Now, Bobby, when I told you we were going to clear the Nuñez murder, you didn't want to bother with it, remember? Said he was just a 'scumbag drug dealer', I think was how you put it." Vargas agreed. She said, "Well, I got this in the mail today."

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a Christmas card-type envelope. It was addressed to Silvana in a crude hand, complete with misspellings. She pulled the card out. It said "Thank you!" in colorful tilted letters on the front. The inside had no printing. Instead, the sender had written in pencil, "Silvanita, muchisimas gracias por entregar justicia al asesino de mi hijo. Que Diós te cuide." And it was signed, "Marisol Nuñez."

  Silvana said, "I called her last Monday to tell her the killer of her baby boy had met justice. That he would never leave another mother without a son. She sent me this little card, all she could afford, I'm sure."

  She passed the card to Vargas and Acevedo. They lingered long over it, thought about its implications, thought about Marisol Nuñez's pain, how she never imagined her little boy would be shot dead in a shitty hotel room, how he would never see her again.

  They handed the card back to Silvana and Vargas said with a choke in his voice, "Now I get it, Silvi. I really do get it."

  52

  Jimmy

  Hialeah, Florida

  Monday, September 10, 2012

  8:30 AM

  THE PNEUMATIC DRILL WOKE HIM UP. Some kind of street work, ripping up the pavement or something, sounded like it was two feet outside the fucking window. He'd just fallen asleep, it seemed, not a half-hour ago, and now this. Jimmy cursed his situation, having to lay low in one of these fucking safe houses.

  He was deep in East Hialeah, a dumpy little one-bedroom crib over on East Ninth Avenue with a rickety wooden fence around it. The fridge held what items he stockpiled from a supermarket on his way over here on Tuesday night, and they were becoming scarce. A few clothes, a shitload of throwaway flip phones, bare rations in the kitchen, and a list of restaurants that deliver. Basic cable, flimsy water pressure in the shower, and a noisy window air conditioner. That's all he had. That and a burning desire to shed some fucking Russian blood.

  He could take small comfort knowing Maxie and the rest of the boys were enduring similar hardships. Flaco and Renato buried themselves in a cheap apartment up in Opa-Locka. Dunbar and Sierra bunked together in a slightly larger house a few blocks away from Jimmy. Maxie took a halfway decent house on the edge of Little Havana.

  He checked the notebook on his smartphone. It had all the different cell numbers for each of the guys. Rotate the phones. That was the routine. Call each guy with a different phone today, then use another set of phones tomorrow, and so on until they've all been used once. Then for the next set of calls, mix up the order of the phones. That way, no firm signal triangulation can be made with any assurance as to who's making the calls.

  Every
night since he'd been here, he called Nora. Every night she had tried coaxing, begging, pleading, demanding … anything she could think of to make him retire. He kept telling her once they settled this Russian problem, things would go back to normal and Miami would be Shangri-La By The Sea once more.

  He shuffled into the kitchen and threw together a kind-of breakfast: oatmeal, toast, the last of the Tropicana OJ — "some pulp".

  His regular cell rang. Alicia.

  Without a hello, he said, "Call me back. I'll text you the number."

  He selected a phone and sent her the text. Within moments, it rang.

  "Jimmy, listen. We have to meet. Right away." He heard the urgency in her voice, a rasp in her tone.

  "Why? What's wrong?"

  "Meet me on South Beach in thirty minutes," she said. "Ocean Drive. Right across the street from the Park Central Hotel. I'll be sitting on a bench."

  He sighed. "Alicia, I'm just about to have breakfast. Can't this wait."

  "No. Thirty minutes."

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  When you think of "Miami Beach Art Deco", something like the Park Central Hotel comes to mind. A positively gorgeous building from the 1930s, tricked out with all the deco angles and shapes, glowing in several shades of blue and off-white. In keeping with its name, a park sits directly across Ocean Drive, affording a view of the open water.

  Jimmy didn't like the idea of going out, leaving the house. It was counterproductive. That's what safe houses are for, so you don't have to leave, you can stay hidden and no one can find you. He almost blew Alicia off, almost stood her up. But … she was an important person, one to be treated with great respect, so he took the chance and stepped out of his house and into his aging Nissan Altima, hoping no one had made her initial phone call to his real cell phone.

  He arrived at the south end of Miami Beach and found a parking spot a block or so away. He hustled back to the park and within a minute, he found her on a bench facing away from the beach and the ocean.

  She wore a bland sleeveless shirt and loose shorts with flip-flops. Hair pulled back into a pony tail, no makeup. Like she just rolled out of bed. The morning sun danced through some nearby palm fronds and their shadows created movement on her colorless face. He took a seat next to her. Behind the bench was a stone wall about three feet high, running the length of the park, separating it from the beach.

  "I'm in deep shit, Jimmy. The Feds busted me the other day."

  "Busted you? For what?" Jimmy grew very uneasy.

  "Money laundering, racketeering, a variety of charges."

  He said, "Well, you've got Kilgore, right?"

  "Right, but he may not be able to get me off. I may have to do serious time. But listen. It's not only that, your money is gone."

  "What? What the fuck do you mean, it's gone?"

  "I mean they seized the Caribbean-American Automotive account at Tropical Bank. We haven't paid anything yet to Stoudt up in Jacksonville, so all the dough was in the account. And they nabbed it."

  "How the fuck …"

  She said, "Turns out old Tom Thurlow was helping to wash money for a couple of other people, too. They've had their eye on him for quite some time. He finally made a mistake and they nailed his ass. Got him to roll over on me. And a couple of other launderers, too. Showed the Feds where the money was, the account and everything."

  "So you're telling me my money is …"

  "Gone. Every penny."

  Jimmy's heart pounded hard inside his chest. It wanted to burst out and spatter itself all over Alicia's face. "That's over a million fucking dollars!"

  "I know," she said. "I'm really sorry. But it was Thurlow they were watching, not me. He gave me up to them in exchange for saving his own ass."

  "You said my money would be safe, goddamn it!"

  She said, "We didn't count on the banker getting caught. You lose your money, I could go away for forty years. And that's federal time, where you have to serve eighty percent of your sentence, no matter what."

  A morning breeze blew in from the sea and riffled through Jimmy's hair. A cooling sensation washed over him, calming him. He centered himself and inhaled the relaxing salt air.

  "Are they coming after me?"

  "No," she said. "Between you and me, I'm the one they want. When it comes to these financial crimes, the one who washes the money is always a higher priority than the one whose money is being washed. They won't make a deal with me to give you up. They'd rather have me."

  "A million fucking dollars, just … just … gone!"

  "That's right, but you've got more behind it. I can't replace the time I may have to serve. It could be the rest of my life." Tears formed in her eyes and one rolled out, sliding down her cheek.

  Jimmy realized she was really a lot worse off than he was. He remembered what she said that day at the Hotel Croydon tavern: That cash has no value right now. You can't really do anything with it except hide it under your mattress. He looked at her face and saw fear. She was really scared. Scared of going to prison, scared of all she would lose. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to tell her it would be all right. But he couldn't. Because if Reese Kilgore says you may have to do time, you're going down.

  Still, his heart was touched by this girl who was so fearful. With a quick movement, he shifted his weight on the bench and pulled her to him in a big hug.

  The shot rang out and struck her in the back. He saw her frozen face of death as she slumped forward in his arms, a bullet in her back. The one meant for him. He darted from the bench and leapt behind the stone wall. The second shot ricocheted off the bench where he sat one second earlier. He pulled his weapon.

  A fast glimpse above the wall. Scouring the area, all he saw were pedestrians hitting the ground and running for cover. He saw no assailant, no sign of a rifle, nothing. His eyes slowly moved across the upper floor windows of the buildings across the street. From there to their rooftops. A traffic jam on Ocean Drive didn't help. People jumped out of their cars and ran inside buildings in the spreading panic. Soon, he heard sirens.

  With one final glance at Alicia's bloody corpse, he holstered his piece and melted into the frantic crowd running through the park and up the street.

  53

  Silvana

  Miami, Florida

  Monday, September 10, 2012

  11:40 AM

  SILVANA CALLED DOWN TO THE SQUAD ROOM. Acevedo answered.

  "Ray," she said, "you and Bobby get down to my office right away."

  Within one minute, they were standing in her office doorway. She beckoned them in and told them to close the door.

  She said, "I just got word that one of the Colombian cartel's top money launderers, one Alicia López, was shot to death in Miami Beach this morning while she sat on a park bench."

  Vargas shrugged. "What's that got to do with us, Silvi?"

  "Maybe nothing. But think about this." She started ticking off on her fingers. "August sixteenth, Vitali Kovalenko killed. August thirtieth, Damien Kushnir killed." She saw surprise in the two cops' eyes. "Yeah, I didn't know about that one until just the other day. He got it in a hotel room in Las Vegas. Anyway, to continue. September first, Gregor Babich killed. Three Russian enforcers, all of whom were working together here in Miami, killed within about a two-week period. All killed right after they start moving in on Maxie Méndez and his dope operations around town. So if you're sitting up there in Brighton Beach, hearing about three of your biggest and baddest getting smoked, what are you going to think?"

  "That Maxie was behind it," Vargas said.

  Silvana pointed her pencil at him. "Absolutely correct," she said. "Give that young man a prize." She stood up and paced a little, very deliberately. "And remember, these aren't replaceable street level scumbags we're talking about. These are valuable scumbags. Guys who can't be replaced so easily. Executives. Managerial types. Guys with long years of experience, who have worked their way up the ladder."

  Acevedo said, "So they think Maxie gave
the orders. But we know he didn't. At least, not for Babich."

  "Right again," said Silvana, pointing her pencil at Acevedo. "And we like Logan for Vitali Kovalenko. For that matter, the Damien hit in Las Vegas might not have been Maxie. He might, for once, be totally innocent of any criminal wrongdoing."

  "Yeah," said Vargas. "But try telling the Russians that."

  She said, "My point exactly. I would guess he already has tried and they've blown him off. I mean, who else could be responsible? They don't know our connection to Babich, and they damn sure have never heard of Logan, so naturally, they're going to look at Maxie for all of it."

  "So …" said Acevedo, "so … you're saying that maybe the Russians smoked this money honey? This Alicia López? In retaliation?"

  "Makes sense, doesn't it?" Silvana said. "Three of their finest go down. So they're gonna aim high themselves. I bet Maxie and his top boys are all laying low. He probably hasn't been seen around Lolita's Liquors for several days. And Jimmy Quintana has probably been a no-show at that Cuban restaurant of his. Alicia López was probably the only one they could find. And my money says she had no idea any of this was going down."

  "I stopped by there the other night for dinner," Vargas said. "They were closed. Sign said they were on vacation for a couple of weeks."

  "Ha! Vacation is right," Silvana said. "Gentlemen, we're looking at the beginnings of an all-out war."

  "What do we do?" Acevedo said.

  "We don't involve ourselves," she said. "We pick and choose our spots." She went back to her desk and sat down. "Now, do we have anything on any of these Russians? Or any other Russians in the area?"

  "Well," Acevedo began, "you know they're running around Fort Lauderdale like rats. They're all over the place up there."

  Silvana nodded in agreement. "I don't think Lauderdale will play into this, Ray. Those three thugs I mentioned came directly from Brighton Beach, bypassing Lauderdale altogether. It's as if the Russians wanted to set up a 'new' Fort Lauderdale here in Miami. Of course, the drug business is more lucrative here, too, so that probably played into it, too."