AGAINST THE WIND (Book Two of The Miami Crime Trilogy) (4 page)

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!

Desi Junior

Miami, Florida

Friday, March 30, 2012

5:45 PM

T
HE 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 mirror 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."

"Sure it's a lot of money. But you're making a lot of money. I know
what a gram sells for and I know how much you pay for a kilo. You step on the
shit however many times, you're making at least ten times what you paid for it.
So save the sob story. A grand is a drop in the fucking bucket."

"But every week! It's gotta stop."

"Stop?" she said. "You want it to stop? You can stop it
any time you want,
cabrón
. Just tell
me you're not going to cough up anymore and it'll stop. Of course, you might
want to rethink that, once you realize how even more fucked up that face of
yours is going to look when Vargas and I get through with it. And that's before
we take you in on several felony drug counts. I think with mandatory
sentencing, you'd be looking at, oh, fifteen years or more. Each count, that
is. And of course as you know, there's no parole in Florida."

Desi said nothing. She said nothing. She clearly wanted him to respond.

Finally, he said, "Yeah, okay."

"Okay what,
motherfucker
?"

A deep breath, and he said, "Okay, see you next week."

Josh

Brooklyn, New York

Monday, April 2, 2012

8:15 AM

D
AYLIGHT
COULDN'T BLAST THROUGH
the dark curtains
in the apartment on Fulton Street,
so it peeked around them. It slithered right through that little crack where
the curtains weren't totally flush against the window, where they separated
just enough for the sun to stream directly onto Josh Daigle's closed eyelids,
rousing him from an unpleasant dream. Even though classes were out for spring
break and he didn't have to get up this morning, he still couldn't grab a
decent night's sleep.

As was his habit, he groped the nightstand for his
cell phone. Flicking it on, he saw what he'd been waiting for: a text from
"Roberto", a Latino guy he knew from around. He was pretty sure
Roberto was not his real name. Not that it mattered, of course, because Josh
didn't really care. All he cared about was getting the instructions Roberto had
promised to text him.

Josh had met Roberto not in his classes at LIU,
but over at the Brooklyn Brewhouse a few blocks away, a student hangout. It was
a couple of weeks ago, during March Madness, and Josh had a primo seat at the
bar to watch Syracuse play Kansas State. He had two hundred on Syracuse to win
it all, which promised a nice payday if they did.

Roberto, a pretty ordinary looking guy with dark
hair and not in very good shape, took the seat next to him. He began chatting
Josh up, and pretty soon, they were talking like old friends — their
favorite little restaurants in the area, the hotness of Brooklyn girls, the
Mets' chances. A couple of beers later, Roberto dropped one right in his lap:
would Josh like to take a trip for some serious cash?

Serious cash always got his attention. That, and
women. He knew he was good-looking. At an even six feet tall, his smile was his
most winsome feature. Broad and bright, he could light up a dull conversation
just by flashing it. He could cause stirrings deep in female loins by combining
it with a few well-chosen words. And since he arrived at college from his
hometown of Westbury, further out on Long Island, there were more than a few
women here in Brooklyn, younger — as well as much older — who had
become entranced by him and his wicked smile and those well-chosen words.

A degree from the School of Business at Long
Island University, Brooklyn Campus, in which he was enrolled, was theoretically
his ticket to a better life and, even more theoretically, to that serious cash
that he loved, but Roberto offered it right now and with a lot less work.

"There's nothing to it," Roberto told
him that night at the Brewhouse. "All you have to do is drive a car to
Florida over the weekend and leave it there. The address will be on a piece of
paper in the glove box."

"How much do I get?"

"Five grand," Roberto said.

Josh's eyebrows shot up. "Holy shit! Five
grand?"

"Cash money."

Josh said, "What about gas?"

"Keep your gas receipts. I'll reimburse you
when you get back. You'll have a plane ticket back to JFK on Sunday. You're
back in the Big Apple in time for the Mets game."

This was sounding pretty fucking sweet. "When
do I go?" he asked.

"Wait for my text. It will tell you when to
leave and when and where to pick up the car."

They went over the rest of the instructions right
then.
Always
drive five miles an hour
under the speed limit, never more. No drinking. No drugs of any kind. Take a
female with you. Pay her out of your end. Only stop for gas and food. No
motels. Drive straight through by taking turns.

"Do this right and you can do it again,"
Roberto said, patting Josh's broad football shoulder. "Several more times
if you want. Same good money each time."

"Why can't you do it?" Josh said.
"Is there something illegal going on? Like a stolen car deal or something?"

"That's not your problem," Roberto said.
And right then, Josh knew it was illegal. With a capital "I".

≈ ≈ ≈

Lying in bed, holding his
cell phone in his limp hand after reading the text, he gave this a lot of
thought. This was actually going to happen! The text told him to pick up the
car this coming Friday, a white 2005 Hyundai with New York plates, in a parking
lot a few blocks down Fulton Street from his apartment. There would be a
twenty-dollar bill in the console to pay the attendant. He was to leave on Friday
and arrive in Florida no later than nine o'clock Saturday night.

Following a full-body stretch, he shambled over to
his laptop and checked the driving distance from Brooklyn to Miami. Thirteen
hundred miles, give or take, nearly all of it on interstate highways. Given the
restriction of five miles under the speed limit the entire way, Josh conservatively
calculated the trip would take nearly twenty-four hours. Add another four or
five hours for gas and food stops and traffic around big cities, and he pinned
his departure at around two o'clock Friday afternoon. That should put him at
his destination with time to spare.

Toni Chenoweth had been hanging around him more
than he would have liked for a couple of months now. She was sort of cute,
although not cute enough to where he would waste any time with her. But …
Roberto had said to take a girl with him on this trip, and he figured it best
not to take some girl he had his eye on. Such a girl would be a distraction the
whole way, what with him probably wanting to fuck her at every rest area.

 
No,
this was business and he would be wise not to screw it up. At least he'd
learned that much in his two years at LIU's Business School.
Don't screw it up.
If this was going to
turn into something regular at five thousand dollars a pop, like Roberto said,
then he's got to take someone along who he doesn't give a shit about. Someone
like Toni Chenoweth.