Who'll Stop The Rain: (Book One Of The Miami Crime Trilogy) (10 page)

Little
Petey and I had left our innocence behind in those few minutes on the corner of
Bertha and Venetia, knowing what we were going to do. There was really no
choice, now that I look back on it. At that tender age, we had arrived at our
date with destiny.

Finally,
after a few seconds, I said, "Let's grab 'em." Hell, one of us had to
say it. It might as well have been me.

We
ran up to the bikes and looked around. No one in the vicinity. I got on one and
Little Petey grabbed the other. As I took off, I looked over my shoulder and
saw him struggling to get on the bike in front of the house. He was shorter
than I was and his feet barely reached the pedals. He wobbled on it, trying to
get forward movement. Meanwhile, kids ran out the front door screaming and
confronting him. I kept pedaling as fast as I could, but he never got away.

So
happens he ratted me out, just like I thought he might. The cops came by our
house the next day, but I'd already ditched the bike, so they couldn't make
anything stick. Next time I saw him, I beat him up.

I
was ten years old.

I
heard Little Petey died a few years ago, killed in a knife fight in prison.
Raiford, I think it was.

≈ ≈ ≈

Trey Whitney's plea penetrated this memory, like a dismal whine deep
in the mist, snapping me back to the present.

"I
said I don't have that kind of cash." he repeated.

"Motherfucking
welcher," I snarled.

I
grabbed him by the arm and jerked him off his stool. The tall table shook,
causing Sharma's drink glass to overturn and shatter on the floor. Margarita
stuff splashed onto Trey's expensive slacks. A couple of heads at the bar
turned at the sudden disruption.

As
I led him to the door of the men's room, he said, "No, wait. Logan.
Wait."

I
pulled him inside, and he almost tripped as he flailed through the door. The
men's room was empty.

"Waiting
time's over. Mambo wants his eighty-one K."

"Jesus, Logan. That's a lot of cash. I
don't have —"

"Fuck you. You've had plenty of time.
You've owed him for at least two months. I'm here to collect and no
bullshit!"

I looked him straight in the eye, waiting for a
reply. He knew the score. You don't pay your gambling debts, you take a
beating. Simple as that. And at this point in my life, I didn't want to have to
be the one giving him the pounding. But it had to be done, and I was the only
one there to do it. I mean, that's the way it works.

Why did I
agree to do this? Why?

Because Mambo
asked me to. How could I say no?

I could see in his eyes he was looking for a way
around the beating. Frankly, so was I, so I gave him plenty of time to think
about it. Unfortunately, nothing came to him, so I unloaded a solid right to
his gut. It was better than one to the jaw, which would do more serious damage.
He was soft and he took the full brunt of the shot. A loud grunt and he doubled
over, then down to one knee.

With the wind knocked out of him, he waved a
hand and tried to say, "All right, all right." Pulling him to his
feet, I cocked my big fist, aiming it right at his mouth. I prayed he wouldn't
make me go through with the rest of this. I paused in that position and he
started talking, anything to prevent me from knocking his teeth out.

He wheezed and said between gasps, "I'll …
make you a … a deal. Get LeeRon to give … Sharma a r-regular shift … over at
the Wi-Wild Thing … and she'll give you five hundred a … a week. That should …
buy me some time … with Mambo."

I pasted my most menacing look on my face. It
worked, like always. Fear moved into his eyes and he started shaking as I held
him up by the collar of his expensive linen shirt. "Five hundred a week
won't buy you
shit
with Mambo. The
vig alone is over three grand a week. And the clock is ticking."

"No, no." He coughed and gasped,
trying to get some of his wind back. "I mean … the money … for you.
Personally. Mambo doesn't have to know about it. You just … just give him some
story. He'll believe you. It'll put five hundred a week in your pocket."

A weekly income? Could Trey have had an
arrangement of some kind with the stripper? I took the idea for a spin around
the block.

Put him on
a plan. That's standard procedure anyway whenever a guy gets in too deep. He
pays the vig every week and still owes the principal. Pretty soon, he's paid
off the equivalent of the principal in vig alone. The stripper gives me an
envelope every week and Mambo gets his vig.

Best of
all, I can stay retired while showing some money every week to Dorothy. The
dough I got from the bank score can be our nest egg. We won't have to spend it
if I have a guaranteed income. We can have a decent life with this money when
you add it to what I'll make when I can get that landscaping business up and
running. Maybe take a little vacation every once in a while. You know, run up
to Miami or something. Maybe even Disney World. She'd like that.

And then
maybe I can forget about that teenaged girl …

I loosened my grip on his shirt collar and
smoothed it out a little.

"Why would she want to give me five hundred
a week, Trey?"

Another wheeze. "Because I … I'll tell her
to."

"But why would she do it at all?"

"That's my business. She'll pay you. Don't
worry about it."

I slapped him hard, flinging his head backward.
"Don't tell me what to worry about. If she's paying me, it's my business,
too. Now tell me."

Trey rubbed his reddening face. It didn't do
anything for the pain. He hesitated before saying, "If I tell you, you
can't let on you know this, all right?"

"She won't find out. Just tell me. And make
it quick."

His shaking subsided and he got his voice back.
He also got comfortable with the idea of spilling. "I used to go up to
Hialeah to see her every couple of weeks or so. She's so lovely. And so very
talented. You know what I mean?"

I ignored the question, but naturally, I knew
what he meant. "Up to Honey Buns? That's where you went?"

"Right. Honey Buns. Don't you just love
that name? But anyway, before I started seeing her, I was enjoying the company
of one of her dancing colleagues. A gorgeous young lady, name of Cinnamon. She
was quite something, let me tell you. Slender build, long red hair like a fiery
sky, a body that —"

"Save the description. Get on with the
story."

Right then, two twenty-something guys came into
the men's room, apparently energized over two girls they had just met in a
joint across the street. That place was too loud for any getting-to-know-you
stuff, so they convinced the girls to accompany them to the Grand Café. Trey
and I paused while they each took a piss and continued yakking. One of them, it
turned out, was married, but according to him, "It was a blessing Paula
couldn't come down for the reunion. She had two showings this week in St
Petersburg." The other guy swore Paula would never find out about any of this.

We stood around through all of this, Trey and I.
They washed their hands and finally got out of there. Trey used the time to get
his breath back.

He said, "Anyway, as you might imagine, I
was very generous with this first girl, Cinnamon. But when Sharma caught my
eye, I became infatuated with her, too. And just as generous, I might
add."

"You mean you were paying both girls to
fuck them."

"It was … it was more than that. Much more.
They were kind, attentive, and very, very sensual. And I only saw them individually,
never together. Eventually, though, they found out about each other and became
rivals for my attention."

"And for your money," I said.

"Well, yes. That too." His voice was
losing its rasp, gradually returning to full strength. "Sharma urged me to
take up with her exclusively and, recommended that I — for lack of a
better word — dump Cinnamon."

"Dump her?"

"Yes. Sharma was most insistent."

This was beginning to sound like a fucking soap
opera. And frankly, it was pulling me in. "So did you? Dump her, I
mean?"

"Logan, you should've seen this girl. No
man in his right mind could dump her. She was every fantasy come true."

"So what did you do?" He really had
me.

"It's not what I did, but what Sharma did.
I told her I couldn't bear to treat her friend so poorly. She'd been so good to
me. And good
for
me."

"How did Sharma take that?"

Trey said, "One night she made a phone call
— in my presence, I might add — to an individual of, shall we say,
questionable repute. She told this man Cinnamon needed to 'take a long trip',
was how she put it."

"Long trip?"

He gestured with his hands, as if trying to get
it across to me. "Yes. You know. A long trip. You know."

Of course I knew. I just wanted to hear him say
it. "No, I don't know," I said. "Tell me."

He moved closer to me and whispered,
"Sharma wanted him to kill her."

"And you heard her say this?"

"I did. The phone call was over before I
got a proper grip on what was happening, before I could do anything about
it."

I said, "Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Do anything about it."

Pain remained in his gut. He clutched it and
groaned.

I repeated, "Did you do anything about
it?"

"I implored her to call it off," he
said. "I tried to get her to phone him back, but she told me not to worry
about it. She assured me I wouldn't regret it."

"So did the girl go on this 'long
trip'?"

"Yes. A few nights later, I saw on the
local news where she was killed in what the reporter said was a carjacking gone
wrong."

"Did you get the guy's name? The guy she
called?"

"She called him Ranger. That's all I
know."

I cracked a smile. "Just so I'm clear here.
Because you're holding this over her head, she'll give me five hundred a week
in return for a job at the Wild Thing? Provided I smooth things over with
Mambo."

Trey nodded. "That's about it."

I took a long pause. Trey took a full breath. My
voice softened. "Make it a thousand. And you're cut off from any more
betting with Mambo."

He started to straighten himself out, running a
hand through his hair, massaging his hurting stomach one more time with the
other hand. "A thousand?"

"That's the deal I'm offering. She pays me
one grand a week from now on. And here's the story I'm giving Mambo. You're on
a payment plan. The vig is four points a week. That's a little over thirty-two
hundred. You miss a payment and it's added to the principal. Believe me, Trey,
you don't want to miss two in a row."

I even managed a sincere smile as I said that
last thing. I didn't like saying this any more than he liked hearing it, but I
had to come back to Mambo with something, and this was a pretty typical plan,
given the circumstances.

"Shit, a thousand dollars is a ton of money
for her. I don't think she —"

"Listen to me, Trey, I'm cutting you a
break here, so work with me. You know what happens when you don't pay Mambo.
I'm trying to allow you an easy way out. One where you can keep your
teeth."

He nodded, mostly out of fear that I meant what
I said. I added, "Besides, she'll pull down three or four dimes a week in
that joint if she's any good at all. And judging from the looks of her, she
won't have any problem scraping it together. And with what you've got on her,
she'll do whatever you say."

This is
it. The ideal solution. Mambo probably saw it all coming, anyway. He won't
mind. Now just nod your head in agreement, Trey, and we can all go home happy.

Then he said, "I just don't know if I can
swing it, you know?"
No, Trey. Don't
go there. Don't!
"She said she'd go five hundred if I got her the job,
but I'm not sure —"

Another right to the gut, just as he was getting
his wind. He wasn't expecting it and it sent his ass all the way to the floor.
Shit, I hated doing that.

Just like I hated saying, "She better go
along with it. And if you try to sneak her out of the Wild Thing before you're
paid up with Mambo, you can kiss your kneecaps goodbye."

I had to show him I meant business, that there
was no turning back, so I reached into his pocket and came out with his money
clip. A quick glance at the cash showed me around seven, eight hundred. I put
it in my pocket.

Trey was still on the floor. I saw a small pool of
piss nearby. His pant leg was soaking it up. I threw his empty money clip down
at him and said, "I'll speak to LeeRon. He'll start her next week. You
tell her I'll be by every Saturday night for my money."

Logan

Monday, June 27, 2011

10:45 PM

O
N MY WAY OUT
OF THE GRAND CAFE
, I decided to take Sharma with me. Rather
than let Trey break the news to her about her new deal with me, I figured I
could make the case better. She was giving herself a touchup out of her compact
when I got back to the table. Not that she needed any more makeup on her.

"Come on, let's go." I took her arm
before she could drop her compact back in her purse.

At first, she didn't put up any resistance. I
felt like she was almost glad to be leaving with me. I led her toward the front
door where she pulled me to a stop. She said, "Where we going?"

"We're going to find you some work down
here."

She looked back toward the bar. "Where's
Trey?"

"He took sick. He won't be coming."

"Sick? Is he okay?" Her worry came
across as sincere, like she really cared about Trey's health. She still looked
back toward the men's room as we moved toward the exit.

"He'll be okay. But he asked me to take you
to this club we were talking about earlier."

"I don't know. I think we should wait for
him."

"Don't worry about it," I said,
maintaining my grip on her arm.

I hustled her out and headed down Duval Street.
Things were pretty busy. After a short time, she finally got it that Trey
wouldn't be joining us. She settled down and went with it.

Lots of people in town for the upcoming Fourth
of July weekend. A group of noisy college kids on rented mopeds stampeded down
the street like screaming rats running toward a restaurant dumpster. The clear
night and warm temperature made for a pleasant walk, even though we had to make
our way around groups of slow-strolling tourists. The street was awash in
bright light from shops and restaurants. Music poured from the bars. Night
action filled the air. Sharma checked it all out and smiled.

"Wow, Key West is one pretty cool
place," she said. "I should've been coming down here all along."

I threw her a smile. "Hard to believe
you've never been here."

She returned the smile. I liked it. "I
don't know. Maybe because it's so close to Miami. Whenever I wanted to get
away, it was always, you know, someplace like New York. Or Vegas." She
spoke while we walked and she soaked up the pulsating surroundings, only
looking at me every now and then.

"Vegas? Not a bad little getaway," I
said.

"Well, it was always with someone, you
know? Usually a guy."

"A guy? You mean, like Trey?"

"Oh, no. Trey never took me out of town. It
was always other guys. But you know, I wish he would have."

"Why's that?" I asked.

"I don't know. I guess because I like him.
He's very sweet and kind. And very generous, too."

We continued our leisurely walk down Duval.
"Do you actually have feelings for him?"

Her eyes turned upward in a faraway gaze and her
face relaxed. "I don't really know. Maybe I do, you know?"

Part of me wanted to believe her. Wanted to
think she could actually put aside her stripper cynicism — whereby every
man who walked into a strip joint was an irredeemable sucker, not to be taken
seriously, just to be taken. But part of me knew she'd been around the track a
few too many times to believe in romance and its endless possibilities.

"Have you always been a dancer?" I
said.

She nodded. "Since I was around
eighteen."

I took a good look at her. Here was a girl far
beyond the prime of stripperhood. The trade primarily attracts young girls,
eighteen to twenty-five, who are often looking to become prostitutes, but don't
want to work the streets. It's through the strip joints they make valuable
contacts in the escort business, and every so often, one of them will score a
good spot with a high-end service. That's the brass ring. The big-money clients
can provide a girl with enough dough to sock some away, so that when retirement
beckons, they're not destitute.

And that retirement beckons long before Social
Security time — in fact, long before the girls know what hit them. Around
thirty or so, delicate wrinkles make their first ever-so-subtle appearance. The
skin around the face shows slight signs of loosening, and all those hours in
the gym can't seem to get rid of that tiny bit of weight gain, those three or
four pounds.

Worst of all, the newer, younger girls in the
service catch the attention of the high-roller clients and the thirty-year-old
moves silently down the list without ceremony. Pretty soon, the phone stops ringing
altogether. At that point, the lower-end services are her only out, and when
that ride is over — and it's over spectacularly fast — it's either
the streets or back to the strip joints on a one-way ticket down the slide. The
big "gentlemen's clubs" won't take them, because all the young hot
girls want those spots, so only the lower end, rough trade joints will open
their doors to them. Even then, the end is clearly in sight.

And all this presupposes the girls are able to
stay away from drugs, which many — if not most — are
not
. The speed, the coke … it all
promises to make them feel good again. To make them feel like, yes, they can
still do it all. To allow them to turn their backs on reality, to pretend they
can vanquish Father Time.

The girl might think,
Sure, I had a good ride with that big escort service, and I can damn
sure get back there again. I can get these two-thousand-dollar-a-night guys
again. I'm still pretty. My figure is still hot. My tits aren't drooping —
well, not so you'd notice. I see a couple of tiny lines around my eyes, and
there's that teensy bit of looseness on my neck, but a little plastic surgery
and I'll be good as new. Sure, I can get back there again.

Then the drug wears off and she has to take
another hit. Eventually, heroin is always waiting for her right around the
corner. Some girls are able to avoid it, but not all. Its alluring call is, to
some, simply irresistible.

For some reason, though, I got the clear
impression Sharma missed out on the escort service train ride, or maybe she
never went to the station at all. Maybe stripping was what she always wanted,
you know, being on a stage, under lights, having a bunch of drooling guys throw
money at her. Whatever, I didn't know. In any case, here she was north of
thirty — so I supposed — certainly looking older, and a little
overweight. How much longer before her face and figure waved the white flag and
caved in to advancing age?

I returned to our conversation.

"So you always went out of town with other
guys?" I said.

"Oh, there was a couple of times there when
me and Cinnamon went up to Destin together."

She looked at me while I raised my eyebrows as
if to say, "Oh, really?" and then she added with a note of
reassurance in her voice, "You know, they got the best beaches up around
there."

I gently pulled her to one side to avoid getting
plowed into by a couple of loud, stumbling drunks. "So you went to Destin
with … who again?"

"Cinnamon. She was a dancer, too. At Honey
Buns. We were best friends a couple of years ago. Actually, I met Trey through
her."

"Oh, really?" That one just popped out
without the eyebrow-raising.

"He was one of her regular customers, you
know? Came in for two or three nights every time he was in Hialeah, which
toward the end there, was about every two weeks or so."

"Toward the end? What end?"

Sharma hesitated. She tried to cover it up as
though she were clearing her throat, but it didn't work.

Her eyes went down to the sidewalk and she said,
"He … he quit seeing her."

"Quit seeing her?"

She slowed down her walk and didn't take her
eyes off the sidewalk. "Trey became
my
customer. Truth be known, he'd been leaning in that direction for a while.
Leaning toward me, you know? Cinnamon introduced us one night in Honey Buns and
I could tell right away he liked me, liked the way I looked. You know how a guy
gets when he sees a girl he craves?"

"I know."

"Well, that was Trey. He craved me. Used to
come in, tip Cinnamon a couple of hundred, then turn around and make a date
with me for afterwards." She slowed her pace of walking and looked at me
directly. For the first time, I saw the hustle in her eyes, the desire to drain
wallets. "Pretty soon he started coming up to Hialeah when he knew
Cinnamon would be off. He'd come in just to see me. Always got a lap dance, tip
me a bunch, then we'd go back to his hotel, you know, after my shift."

"Back to his hotel?"

"Yeah, but hey, I'm no fucking hooker. I
liked the guy, you know? I still like him. And why not? He's been very good to
me. But just because I give it up doesn't mean … well, doesn't mean there's any
kind of, whaddya call, a … pro quid arrangement, you know what I mean?"

"But now Trey is all yours."

"Well, yeah, you could say that."

"Let's turn down here."

We turned a corner onto a quiet side street. All
the Duval Street racket faded into the background and a few steps later, we
turned again into a dark, sticky alley. A chain link fence and some tall,
thorny vegetation ran along one side, facing a row of aging one-story
structures on the other. They were a couple of rooming houses and a few shabby
apartments and whatnot in these low, dirty buildings, but you'd never know
exactly what they were because you couldn't see shit back here. The
indifferent, yellowish glow from the nearest streetlamp didn't even bother
trying to penetrate this darkness. The only light came from a small, flickering
sign, exhausted from years of unappreciated use, its pink neon announcing the
entrance to the Wild Thing.

"This?" She made a face. "This is
where you're finding me work?"

"Don't jump to conclusions. It may not look
like much on the outside, but it's a good spot. You can pull down serious money
in here."

We opened the metal door and AC/DC music bled
out into the alley. We went in. The anorexic girl inside the door said,
"Five dollars each."

"We're here to see LeeRon. He back in the
office?"

She looked over at the black-clad bouncer,
Alexander. I knew him. Big, tree-stump arms folded in front of him, spotted
with tattoos. Jailhouse tats, inked with a primitive needle, posing as art. The
customary spider web, someone's name I couldn't make out, and what looked like
an attempt at an Iron Cross were only a few of them. Eyes like tiny blue ball
bearings peered out of slits cut into his oversized shaved head. He nodded at
me and waved us through.

The stage was well-lit and two girls pranced
around on it, nearly naked. Both had rubber tits and too many tattoos, and the
music was entirely too loud, but the big crowd didn't seem to mind any of it.
Those near the stage held cash in their fists, leaning forward and trying to
position themselves to stuff some of it in the girls' G-strings. When they
couldn't reach the girls, they just threw the money at them, cheering as the
girls bent down to pick it up. The two female bartenders, both cuter than the strippers
and far sexier-looking in their revealing two-piece outfits, kept the watery
drinks coming as fast as they could. Sharma surveyed the place with care and
took it all in approvingly with the watchful eye of a seasoned pro.

"Laid out nice," she said over the
music. "Lots of room for the guys to tip you."

I leaned into her ear and said back at her,
"You can do real well here." She looked around again and nodded.

"How does anyone ever find this place? Way
back in that alley and everything."

"Everybody knows where it is. The locals
all know. Taxi drivers, pedicab drivers, hotel people … they all know."

She made a sweeping gesture with her arm.
"They have this kind of crowd all the time?"

"You figure it out. This is the end of
June. Very slow time of year. And they're packed."

She smiled. I could almost hear her calculating
the money she would make.

We walked past the bar to a red door. I opened
it and we entered the office, a drab but clean room with a couple of couches
and a big metal desk. Bullet holes studded the wall behind the couch, the
result of a bloody incident one night about a year ago. An old safe stood
behind the desk and a flat-screen TV on the wall was tuned to the Marlins game.
LeeRon sat at the desk doing paperwork.

He looked up. "Hey-hey, Logan. Been a
while. What brings you down here?"

LeeRon was a big hulk of a guy, no stranger to
pickup trucks and twelve-packs. He was about my age, but he wasn't from here.
He moved down here with his parents sometime during middle school. I want to
say they came from somewhere up in the Redneck Riviera — someplace like
Apalachicola maybe. We got to know each other pretty well back then and even
made a couple of minor scores up the Keys together when we were in high school.
Not long after that, he joined the Army, was mustered out, and drifted off into
other pursuits, the latest being his job as general manager of the Wild Thing.
Point man for the true owner.

We shook hands and exchanged grins. "Got
somebody here I think you could use. This is Sharma."

Sharma smiled. She put one hand on her hip and
led with her tits. LeeRon got up and walked around to the front of the desk, a
big grin on his face. He took her other hand and shook it gently.

"Well, hel-lo Sharma, darlin'. Why haven't
I seen you before?"

"I'm new in town," she said.
"Just in from Miami."

"You been working up there?"

She nodded. "Honey Buns Show Lounge. You
know the place? In Hialeah?"

"Oh, I know that place. Yes I do. And
you're looking for work down here?"

"If I can find a good spot, I'll take it."