AGAINST THE WIND (Book Two of The Miami Crime Trilogy) Read online

  AGAINST THE WIND

  by

  DON DONOVAN

  BOOK TWO OF

  THE MIAMI CRIME TRILOGY

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is unintended and entirely coincidental. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any means not yet known, without permission in writing from Don Donovan.

  Published by Don Donovan

  Copyright 2016 by Don Donovan

  Edited by Tony Held

  http://heldeditingservices.blogspot.com/

  Thank you very much for reading my novel. If you'd like to be eligible for a free ebook copy of Book Three of The Miami Crime Trilogy, and to learn about future releases,

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  ALSO FROM DON DONOVAN

  WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN

  Book One Of

  The Miami Crime Trilogy

  "I slowed way down for the speed bumps on the narrow, wet street. The cemetery loomed in its eternal silence on our right, and I felt the eyes of the dead opening under heavy lids to watch us pass by in the rainy night, somehow knowing we were on our way to do murder, to send them some company."

  For Ken Rijock,

  who had to live an incredible life

  so I could get through this book

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PLACEMENT, Friday, March 30, 2012

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  LAYERING, Sunday, April 8, 2012

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  INTEGRATION, Monday, December 23, 1996

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  PREVIEW OF STAYING ALIVE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PLACEMENT

  FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2012

  1

  Silvana

  Miami, Florida

  Friday, March 30, 2012

  2:25 PM

  SILVANA MACHADO'S CELL PHONE WENT OFF while she was pistol-whipping a street punk. He'd gotten up in her face when she and Vargas confronted him after they spotted two hookers slipping cash into his palm. She eyed the caller ID on the bleating phone. Headquarters.

  She holstered her weapon and opened the call. "Machado." Bobby Vargas held on to the punk.

  "Sergeant Machado, Lieutenant Santos here. What's your location?"

  Silvana stepped away from her partner and the punk, just out of earshot. "Brownsville, sir. Northwest 26th Avenue, just off 50th Street."

  "What are you doing?"

  "Questioning a suspect, sir."

  "A suspect?"

  "Yes, sir," she said. "Possible involvement in last week's drug murder in this neighborhood."

  "Forget it. The two of you get over to 75th and Biscayne, the Sea & Sand Motel. On the double. The manager found a body in one of the rooms."

  "Yes, sir." She swiped the call off and turned back to the punk, now sniveling. His lip was slashed open. A dark bulge was forming over his swollen left eye. She pushed a heavy lock of mousy-brown hair back from her face and held out her palm. "Give." Two snaps of her thick fingers.

  "Gi-give what?" the punk said.

  Vargas landed a hard knee into his skinny back. He buckled.

  "The money, dipshit," Silvana said. He resisted no more, reaching into his pockets and pulling out a wad of cash, maybe twelve or thirteen hundred. She snatched it from his hand.

  She said, "Now, I understand they call you G-Man." His head went up and down fast a couple of times. "Okay, G-Man, get this straight." She held up the cash, close to his bleeding face. "This is your initiation fee, any talk of which goes no farther than this sidewalk. Got it?"

  G-Man gave off a discouraged nod.

  "I can't hear you," she said.

  "Y-yeah. I got it. N-no … no farther than the sidewalk."

  He wasn't particularly well turned out, wearing an ordinary polo shirt and jeans — but with the required AJ 2012s — otherwise lacking the gaudy glitz popular in pimpdom. She made him as a newbie, just getting his enterprise off the ground. He'd gotten out of a black Dodge Charger, not a bad car, but it sported a large dent in the passenger side door, and as such was a far cry from your typical pimp's tricked-out ride.

  She said, "From now on, it'll cost you one grand a week to run your whores in this neighborhood. You understand?"

  He said, "What? A grand? Man, that's a —"

  Another whack across his face, this time with a closed fist. Blood flew from his mouth, nearly hitting Vargas's sleeve. She was well-muscled and that one had to hurt.

  "You're making at least that much every day. So don't give me any poor-boy shit." She knew just by looking at the quality of the girls who had just passed him the money that he couldn't possibly be making a thousand dollars a day. These girls, even more just like them, would be lucky if they brought him half that much all told. They were strictly in the twenty-dollar blow job league. By saying G-Man was making a grand a day, Silvana gave him something to shoot for. Gave him a goal.

  G-Man wiped what blood he could onto his shirt collar while Vargas still held him. Silvana continued, "One thousand. Every Friday. Seven PM, right here at this corner. You miss a payment or if we don't find you on Friday, we'll find you on Saturday and you won't see Sunday. You hearing me?"

  He nodded.

  "Say it!" she said, thoroughly wiping blood residue from her gun on G-Man's polo shirt.

  "One th-thousand. Every Friday. Sev — seven o'clock. I-I hear you."

  She gave Vargas a head signal and he shoved the punk to the pavement. His squeal of pain faded as they got back in the car.

  "Who was on the phone, Silvi?" Vargas said as he sparked the engine.

  "Santos. He wants us to check out a homicide call at a motel up Biscayne Boulevard." She counted the punk's money. Twelve hundred eighty. She peeled off six-forty and stuffed it in Vargas's shirt pocket while he drove. No point in kicking any of this up to Santos, she thought. He'll never find out. The grand a week, though, he'll have to get his fifty percent. Word might well leak out about it and Santos has a wide network on the street.

  "Which motel?" Vargas asked.

  "Sea & Sand. 75th and Biscayne."

  "I know that pla
ce," Vargas said. "It's a fleabag. Hourly rates, strictly for the hooker trade in the area."

  Silvana shrugged. "Probably some trick got rough and wasted a whore. Let's find out."

  Vargas drove. They wended their way out of Brownsville and down 54th Street where they picked up the I-95 feeder. They entered the freeway at 62nd and quickly reached cruising speed. Vargas said, "So, Silvi, you been reading anything lately?"

  That wasn't an idle question. It was no secret Silvana had never read much until one day last year when she came to pick him up at his apartment for an off-the-books job. While he was getting dressed, she browsed his modest bookshelf and found a Michael Connelly novel. She was surprised Vargas was a reader, and the cover intrigued her, so she later bought the book. On her way out of the bookstore, she held it very protectively, as if it were a bar of gold she found in a back alley.

  Because she was an immigrant, twenty-one years in the country from Cuba, her linguistic confidence was low. Sure, she'd picked up English as a spoken tongue very handily on the streets of Hialeah, but reading … that was a different deal altogether. That required a deeper, more profound feel for the language. Despite her anxieties, however, she tackled the Connelly book, and although it was rough going at first, she got through it and fell in love with the magic of reading. Several Connelly novels later, she decided to spread her wings.

  "Yeah," she said. "I've branched out from Michael Connelly."

  "What're you on now?"

  "I wanted to get something closer to home, you know? 'Cause all those Michael Connelly books take place in LA. I still wanted cop fiction, but closer to home. I got this book, from like way back in the eighties, Miami Blues by Charles, uh … uh … I forget his last name, but it's about this Miami cop, a detective, just like us. He's got false teeth and he's kind of strange, you know? Not like any cop we've ever known, but the book is pretty good so far. I'm about fifty pages into it."

  "Miami Blues? Wasn't there a movie called Miami Blues? Years ago?"

  "I don't know," she said. "I don't go to many movies."

  "The book, is it good?"

  "So far, yeah. It starts off, he's investigating the murder of this Krishna something, whatever the fuck they are, and there's this credit card grifter fresh out of the joint who's charging all kinds of shit on stolen plastic."

  "Sounds like another day at the office," Vargas said with a grin. Silvana tossed one back at him and spiced it with a laugh.

  2

  Silvana

  Miami, Florida

  Friday, March 30, 2012

  3:10 PM

  "FLEABAG" WAS TOO NICE A WORD for the Sea & Sand, which, by the way, was near neither ocean nor beach. Peeling paint and fading pastels told the whole story. The sign, which looked like it dated from the 1950s, was missing a couple of letters, and weedy growth showed itself around the property in all the wrong places. The potholed parking lot held a couple of crappy cars from the nineties, and those baked under a scorching sun. The whole place looked like it had terminal asthma, like it couldn't catch a full breath.

  In front of a room toward the rear stood a much newer white Lexus sedan, conspicuous amid the despair of the motel. A black and white blocked it in. Silvana and Vargas drove to it.

  The door to room 112 yawned and two uniforms stood in the doorway. The detectives got out of the car, tin flapping from their breast pockets. The taller of the two uniforms, who looked Cuban, spoke.

  "Sergeant Machado," he said. "Patrolman Acevedo."

  Silvana's eyebrows went up at the familiarity. "Have we met, Patrolman?"

  "Sort of, ma'am. You gave a talk on evidence gathering when I was at the academy."

  "We-ell," she said through a chuckle, "I hope I didn't teach you any bad habits."

  "Ha! No, ma'am. None at all."

  "Okay, what've we got here?"

  "My partner and I took the call. We got here about twenty minutes ago. One victim, Caucasian male, identified as Robert Harvey, address listed in Coconut Grove. DOB 3/10/59, two bullet holes in the head, execution-style. No witnesses."

  "Naturally," Silvana said. She looked around, down the row of worn, grimy rooms. What a dump. "How about any of the other guests? Or the manager? They hear any shots?"

  "The manager says he heard what might have been gunfire about thirty minutes ago. He came down to investigate and saw the door was ajar. He pushed it open and saw the body. Then he called 911."

  "Anything else?" she asked.

  Acevedo said, "Not much. One guest, though, in room 104, said he thought he might've heard shots, but he also says he saw a car leave right afterwards. We had him stay till you got here."

  Silvana nodded approval. "Any description on the car?"

  "Dark late model sedan. Black, maybe dark blue. No make. He says all cars today look alike. Can't tell 'em apart."

  "Can he describe the driver?" Vargas asked.

  "Negative."

  Silvana said, "Let's have a look inside."

  They walked in. The body was naked, face down on the bed, a wide red stain surrounding the head. He was a large man, Silvana noticed, probably fifty or sixty pounds overweight and his hair was — wait a minute — wait a minute!

  She slapped on her latex gloves and bent down for a closer look. Turning his head to one side so she could see his face, she gasped. "Holy shit!"

  "What?" said Vargas. "What is it, Silvi?"

  She gently placed the head back on the pillow and turned to Vargas. "This is Harvey the County Commissioner, for Chrissakes."

  "The guy who gave us all that shit that day in Santos's office?"

  Silvana nodded. She remembered it too well. Bob Harvey, Miami-Dade County Commissioner, swung a lot of weight around town, including high up in the department. His wife's teenage niece was killed in a bloody triple homicide in Little Havana last summer and Harvey was all over the Chief to find the killer. The Chief leaned on Santos and one day Harvey himself showed up in Santos's office to rattle a few cages. Gave her and Vargas all kinds of shit, threatening them with this and that. Typical big shot politician trying to shove everyone around. She had to admit, she wasn't too sad to see him go.

  Her attention turned back to the corpse. Visible bullet holes, one above the left eye, the other a couple of inches to the left, toward the temple. Acevedo had it right. Execution.

  "Stay here," she told Acevedo and his partner. "Forensics will be here before long. Nobody gets in till then."

  Room 104 sat a little way down the row. Silvana and Vargas went straight to it. A man stood in the doorway, observing the proceedings. Unruly hair and rumpled clothes suggested a hurried attempt at making himself presentable. Age: crowding sixty. Vibe: meek.

  Silvana spoke. "Police officers, sir. I understand you heard shots?"

  "Not sure, officer. Not sure they were shots, that is. Could've been someone banging on a door or a wall a couple of times. You know, with some kind of hard instrument. Or maybe a car backfiring."

  He struck Silvana as distinctly middle management. Make no waves. Used to taking orders and not giving them, merely passing them along to what underlings he had. Definitely not an alpha male. More like an epsilon male. Or zeta. Most likely taking off work a little early for a quick shot of pussy on his way home to the little woman and dinner.

  Silvana looked past his shoulder into the room. A strikingly-beautiful girl in her twenties lay on the bed with the TV remote in her hand and a bored look on her face, smoking a cigarette. Silvana thought, A girl this gorgeous, what's she doing in this fucking hole? She should be getting on private jets for Vegas, not flopped on a cheap bed in this place. With this douchebag.

  The girl's silken black hair was splayed all over the pillow, as though it were carefully arranged. She wore only panties. The TV was almost as loud as the window air conditioner.

  Silvana turned her attention back to the meek little middle manager. "Patrolman Acevedo says you saw a car leaving. That right?"

  "Yes, ma'am," he said. "That's right.
"

  Vargas said, "According to the patrolman, you don't know the make or model of the car?"

  "Naw, these cars today, can't tell the difference one from another. Used to be, you know, you could tell a Chevy Impala from a Chevy BelAir. Nowadays, you can't even tell a Ford from a damn Tie-ota."

  Vargas nodded. "And you didn't see the driver?"

  "Nope. Didn't see him at all. Say, Detective, I won't have to testify or anything, will I? You know, I'd hate for my wife to find out about my being here, or —"

  "Right now, I wouldn't worry about it, sir," Silvana said. "But give Detective Vargas here your name and phone number in case we need to ask you a few more questions. We'll be discreet, I promise."

  He exhaled and gave Vargas the information off his driver's license.

  They moved around him into the room. The girl never moved to cover herself, nor did she unglue her eyes from the TV.

  Silvana said, "What about you?"

  "What about me?" she said in a sassy, nasal tone. She took a deep drag on her cigarette.

  "Did you see or hear anything?"

  "Nah. I didn't hear nothin'." Another drag.

  "You sure?" Vargas said.

  "I told ya, didn't I? I didn't hear nothin'."

  Silvana slapped the girl's hand. The cigarette flew across the room and the girl yelped. "Look at us when we're talking to you, bitch!"

  She sat up immediately, rubbing the sting out of her hand. Her knees drew up to her chest in an attempt to cover herself.

  "I didn't see nothin'," she said with a little more humility, "but I heard the shots. They was shots, all right. Two of 'em, coming from down there." She pointed toward room 112, then toward the middle manager still in the doorway. "He jumped right offa me and headed for the window. He opened the blinds a crack, but I don't know what he saw."

  "Take her name and address," Silvana said to Vargas. He did and they left the room.

  They found the office. The manager snapped to attention at the aging desk when he saw Silvana and Vargas come in. Silvana wasn't sure which was older, the manager or the motel.