Lonesome Point (8 page)

He exited the highway onto 49th and was counting down streets, lowering the music to concentrate, tapping the brake in the morning traffic. Street vendors at one corner hawking plastic bags of limes; at the cross street one guy walking down the cen
ter stripe selling churros from a box slung around his neck. One woman in the median under an umbrella selling frosty bottles of water from a red cooler. Horns blared, people yelled to each other in Spanish. Leo slowed for a yellow light and watched a city bus belch exhaust as it ran the red, then braked for two jaywalking girls in plaid Catholic school skirts.

Hialeah always confused the hell out of him. He eased into the right lane, reading the even storefront numbers, counting down. When he saw 260 on a Spanish-style iron fence he knew he was close, so he turned right onto Fourth Avenue and parked in the first empty space streetside, deciding it was easier on foot.

He got out and headed west along the sidewalk, undoing his top shirt buttons in the heat. Right off, he knew something was amiss. There were no homes on his side, the even-numbers side of the street, only doctors’ offices and stores and fast-food joints. He found 252, a small office building behind a low concrete fence, no gate. He strolled up the walkway to an iron-grille door. A sign on the door: DR. ALFREDO GARRIDO, M.D., PSYCHIATRY. The door was locked. He rang the bell. After a minute, he walked around to the side of the building, all the frosted glass louvers closed. The place looked abandoned, the grass patchy and brown in spots, pages of a windblown newspaper against the fence. He hit the bell again. He checked his watch—9:05. The good doctor should’ve been in by now, or at least a receptionist.

Leo headed back to his car, thinking maybe Massani was homeless and the only address the old man knew offhand was his doctor’s. Crossing Fourth Avenue to his car, he saw a towering black guy, head perfectly shaved, lumber out of the Cuban
bakery on the corner, carrying two steaming Styrofoam cups of coffee. Holding them out, away from his sharp sportcoat, bright blue tie, and natty black slacks, the spiffy clothes and careful grooming probably the reason Leo’s attention had swung to him in the first place. Guy reminded him of Freddy, a few threads overdressed for any gritty urban experience. Leo tracked him as he walked to a car three spaces up, a black Mercedes.

Leo stood still when he saw the person in the front passenger seat.

The big man had stopped at the car and was handing one of the cups through the window, and Freddy Robinson reached out and took it. He said something to the big man, who put his cup on the car’s roof and crossed Fourth Avenue toward a convenience store.

Leo kept walking, thinking no way this could be a coincidence. But relax, he told himself, relax, this might be a good thing. Maybe Freddy would let him know more now. He walked over to Freddy’s side. “Yo, Fred. What you doing around here?”

Freddy finished sipping coffee, put the cup on the dash. “What’s up this fine morning, Lee?” Real casual, no surprise to see him. Which made Leo pretty certain they’d spotted him a while ago, maybe even trailed him. If not, they’d been hanging around the doctor’s office, waiting. Hunting someone.

Leo gestured to the bakery. “My fiancée, she likes the pastries. Sometimes I stop by, get a few.” He watched Freddy reach for his coffee, blow on it, take another sip. Put the cup back on the dash and adjust his yellow necktie. The man looked completely
GQ
, cool blue long sleeves, diamond earrings in both ears.

“
Pastelitos, café con leche
, man, that’s some good shit. I’d like me
some a that myself, only I got to watch the weight.” Freddy touched his stomach. “Yeah, boy. We getting older, Lee. Used to be I could wolf down any ol’ greasy-greasy and get away with it. How about you? Still could eat whatever?”

“Not so much anymore.”

“Bet you don’t even have to run or nothin’.”

“Only when people are chasing me.”

“You’ve always been skinny like me, though. But watch this face now.” Freddy puffed out his cheeks, patted them. “All this weight I been putting on. One sixty-five now. For somebody my height? Never would a thunk it. High cholesterol, too, the doctor told me the other day. And diabetes runs in my family so I got to watch that, can’t eat too much sweets, got to exercise more.”

Leo looked off down the street. “Just tell me when. I’m ready whenever you are, awright?”

Freddy reached for his coffee, a trace of a smile on his lips. He said, “Hmmm,” and took a slow sip. Put the cup back and straightened his tie before he turned to Leo. “Getting impatient there, partner.”

“I just want this over with.” Leo twirled a finger by his head. “Been thinking about it constantly and I don’t want to do that anymore. I want this thing done. Over.” He beat back the urge to say, And I want to be done with you and your slippery ways, not see your face again.

Freddy gazed into the distance. “Patience is a virtue sayeth the Lord.” He grinned at Leo. “Or something like that. Who said that anyway? Jesus? Or is that a proverb, like out of the Bible or something? Your brother was here, he’d be correcting me right quick, ’member back in the day? Patrick, Mr. Intellectual?”
Freddy sucked his teeth, brushing something off his pants. “That know-it-all mothafucka.” He nodded to himself and scanned Leo head to toe. “Patience, Lee. Things happen when they should happen, not before, and it’s when you force it you encounter serious difficulties. I learned that when I was in lockdown.”

Leo rubbed his jaw. Here we go again.

“Two years to develop patience, concentration. Poise.” He looked hard at Leo. “Probably it was better you didn’t get that opportunity like me. Was rough in there, nigger, rough. Constant threat all day. You feel like violence gonna erupt anytime from one corner or the other. Thick tension, dawg. I seen one dude get knifed, rusty-ass shiv, thirty-two times. Disemboweled right in front a me. Nasty sight. To get through this shit day after day, you don’t push things. You lie low, feel me? Keep your face serious, stay cool, and do your time, with patience. Now I’m out here, liberated, steady doing my thing and gettin’ paid, and I will
not
be rushed. When I see fit to request the go-ahead, then you’ll get the green light. But you got to just chill and let me make that decision, know what’m sayin’?”

Leo threw out his hands. “Hey, I’m just saying, I’m ready when you are.”

Freddy nodded. “Here come Bernard now,” pointing his chin at the big man crossing the street, the big man throwing a look at a car that started slowing way down for him. Freddy said, “Want you to meet him.” He shouted through the open driver’s window, “Yo, Big B, come this side.”

The big man came around, diamonds glinting off several fin-gers, a thick gold bracelet. He reached out for a shake, grinning boyishly.

Freddy said, “Leo, this is Bernard Brown; Big B, this is Leo Varela, used to be my dawg way back when.”

Bernard’s hand swallowed Leo’s like he was shaking with a goddamn first baseman’s glove.

Freddy said, “Big B from Jamaica originally. Trenchtown, for real.”

Leo tried to break the shake, but Bernard held on, maintaining a smile that was fast losing its charm. “What’s up, Lee?” he said, and the familiarity unnerved Leo.

“Not much, not much, nice to meet you.”

The man threw a shadow on you. He released Leo’s hand and Leo took a small step backward to get away from the brutal feel of him. While Leo rubbed his hand, Bernard said to Freddy, “No luck. I’m serious, no spearmint Eclipse. They got Wrigley’s Doublemint, Juicy Fruit, they even got Dentyne in there, but no Eclipse. They got Gummi Bears, though.”

“Gummi Bears?”

“They chewy.”

Freddy said, “Fucking Cuban store don’t got no right to call itself convenience.” He blew into a palm cupped in front of his face. “Now I’m gonna smell like cheese omelet all morning, shit. Get in, forget it, we already late.” He buckled his seat belt, set his coffee in the center console cup holder, and said to Leo, “You got psychiatric problems?”

“What?”

“Don’t bullshit me. I know I don’t look like no fool to you and don’t expect to get treated like one neither, so let’s talk straight. What you had in mind when you come ’round here, it ain’t no doctor visit. Might be for something else, but we’ll leave
it like that for the moment. Stick to the job I want done, my advice to you. Everything will go real fucking smooth you just do that.” He threw up a hand, thumb and little finger miming a phone. “Expect a call in the next twenty-four to forty-eight.” He swiveled his head to the front. “Do it, B. And Lee, enjoy your
pastelitos
. ”

The car pulled out and gunned it north, leaving Leo breathing in exhaust fumes, in a black mood.

T
HEY WERE AT CASA GLORIA’S, Oscar’s favorite Cuban restaurant. Oscar said, “The man’s real name is Osvaldo Herman Massani. His father’s an Italian who settled in Cuba in the 1920s, owned a tobacco plantation. Herman came here in late ’59, after the fall of Batista. He’s been in South Florida ever since, supposedly has family in New Jersey. He’s one of those first-generation Cuban-Americans that came in droves and lived amongst each other and didn’t feel too compelled to assimilate. His family had money back in Pinar del Río but when Fidel took over he seized their lands, most of their assets, they fled. The Massani family is well connected. Herman’s father knew a certain developer’s father, this city commissioner’s uncle, his mother is cousin to the wife of the ex-mayor of Miami, and the relationships go down the line like that. So Herman is like a lot of Cubans in Miami, only, shall I say, further up the ladder than most.”

Patrick said, “So what is he doing in a public hospital like Jefferson?”

“That is what I’m coming to,” Oscar said. “Another drink?” He beckoned the waiter.

“I’m good.” Patrick put a hand around his martini glass, nearly full, three olives in there the way he liked it. He didn’t
feel like drinking, had no appetite. The menu was still open in front of him.

“Bistec de pollo,
” Oscar told the waiter.
“Muchas cebollas,
Ruben. Y
hoy, no quiero arroz blanco, pero congri,
okay?” He raised his empty martini glass.
“Otro mas, por favor.”

“You were saying about Massani?”

“Massani, Massani,” Oscar said. “Eccentric. But well connected. And with all the people he knows he manages to make his political contribution. Which brings us here to you wanting to know who he is, and why he is so important to your campaign.”

Patrick cocked his head. “You lost me there. My campaign? I don’t even know this man.”

Oscar smiled patiently. “But he knows you, my friend.” He turned his head to the left. “You see that corridor over there, by the restrooms?”

Patrick nodded, getting impatient with Oscar.

“It leads to a back door. You take that door, walk a few paces and turn left, and you’re at the back door to El Rincon, one of the oldest Cuban barbershops in this city. That’s the place where Herman Massani used to work.”

“That’s all well and good and quite charming, but who the hell is he? You still haven’t told me.”

“He,” Oscar said, “is the man we’ve been searching for these past two weeks. Two nights before you called me, we found him.”

“We?” Patrick shook his head. “Who is ‘we’? And why are ‘we’ searching for him?”

“Mr. Massani, my anxious friend, is the man who at this moment is the biggest threat to your campaign.”

Patrick tensed up, studied Oscar.

Oscar returned a level gaze.

Patrick reached for his martini and took a deep swallow. Set the glass down and wiped his lips with the cloth napkin, moving slowly and deliberately to conceal his impatience. He ranged the room, a group of men in ties two tables away, two dark-haired young ladies chattering at a center table, silverware clinking all around. A burst of laughter from a far-off table.

Oscar said, “We won’t talk about it here. After we eat, we’ll go for a walk.”

“You’ll explain to me about Massani.”

“Everything, everything. But get something to eat, please. The food here is too exceptional to pass up and I’m paying, so eat.”

Patrick waved the invitation away. “I’m not hungry. I’ll need another drink now, though, that’s for sure.”

One martini later, Oscar had polished his plate and they went for a walk along the concourse of the strip mall. Oscar lit a Montecristo, admiring the smoke rings he sent up into the air. “This is some heat for February, eh?”

“Unseasonable.” Patrick walked, hands in pocket.

“What will the hurricane season bring, I wonder? News this morning said fourteen named storms this season. Four will be major hurricanes, but you know how that goes, those forecasts, always inaccurate. I remember in ’92, right before Andrew, I told my wife, ‘This heat, it must mean something’s cooking.’ Then, boom, next day the birds begin to fly off, my cat starts to behave strangely, and the next thing, I’m driving to the office and on the radio they’re saying the hurricane will hit, the hurricane will hit, landfall expected in two days.”

Patrick said, “I’m beginning to feel a different kind of heat at the moment. Oscar, about Freddy Robinson … Massani?”

“We are tracking that storm named Massani, don’t you worry. As of today, he is merely hovering offshore. Let me tell you, though, your secretary that left, what’s-her-name Morales?”