Blood Dues te-71 Page 6

  10

  The bolita handler shook his burlap bag filled with numbered Ping-Pong balls. He swung it twice around his head and let it fly. In the audience a planted "catcher" shouldered two smaller men aside and snatched the tumbling bag out of midair, holding it aloft and shaking it in triumph. Then he untied the bag and reached inside, drawing out one of the balls and barely glancing at it, tossing it up to the handler on the dais.

  The handler made a show of staring at the ball, as if he had some difficulty reading the single digit painted on its surface. Finally he raised it between a thumb and forefinger for the small crowd to examine.

  "Nueve. Number nine."

  Down on the betting floor two or three patrons gave a halfhearted cheer; the rest stood silent or groaned softly, crumpling the numbered betting slips they held in their hands.

  Three winners, maybe twenty losers. It was just about the right proportion for a crowd this size, Ernesto Vargas thought.

  At thirty-six, Vargas was the boss and operator of a moderate but lucrative bolita territory covering Coral Gables and surrounding neighborhoods. Some three years off the boat, he was already doing better than he ever dreamed was possible in Cuba.

  Connections had got him started in bolita and staked him to his first successful parlor — a debt that he had long ago repaid with interest.

  Common sense would take him to the top in time, if he did not step on any lethal toes along the way.

  Ernesto Vargas had been learning from the moment he set foot upon the mainland of America. Studying the people who had come before him, and the Anglos who were there before them all. He made a special study of the native laws and how to circumvent them with a minimum of risk.

  It was simple, really. You bought a franchise from the Mob, you greased the cops... and generally speaking, you were free to operate in peace around south Florida, as long as you did not attract undue attention to yourself.

  Ernesto Vargas knew the art of living inconspicuously. He might be known within Coral Gables as the man to see for certain favors, but his name had not been splashed across the headlines like the goddamned cocaine cowboys with their fast cars and machine guns, killing people in the streets like rabid dogs.

  If Vargas needed someone taken care of... perhaps roughed up a little, or perhaps a lot... he took care of it privately, without the fanfare that attended so much of Miami's recent violence. A kneecap here, an elbow dislocated there. His debtors paid, for the most part on time, and life went on.

  It was the American dream.

  He had already learned to screw the peasants on bolita and the Cuban lottery he dabbled in, nickel and diming them out of a cool one hundred thousand a year. Not bad for an ex-convict who had been loaded on a boat at gunpoint, in Mariel harbor, not so long ago.

  Seated on the dais, back behind his handlers, Vargas scanned the little crowd of players. It was daylight yet, with hours to go before the darkness brought the real money in, but for a morning shift the crowd was far from disappointing. With any luck at all, Vargas would clear an easy grand before lunchtime, half for himself, the rest divided up between his handlers, catchers and the muscle he maintained at every game to watch for trouble.

  They were meeting in a private dwelling, one of half a dozen Vargas rented for his floating games. He rotated locations on a regular schedule, helping the Vice cops save face, keeping up the charade. For their trouble and the inconvenience of having strangers, often drunks, arrive and gamble in their homes, the actual tenants made a hundred dollars daily.

  It was cheap insurance, a damn sight cheaper than his pad with the local sheriff's department. If there had been a way to eliminate the cops and politicians with their hands out, Vargas was convinced he could rake off another twenty-five percent of gross each month to keep for himself and to invest in other projects.

  He dismissed the thought, half smiling to himself. The system had existed for two centuries, and it resisted the way a slab of granite stood against the wind and rain. In time, it might be altered, but to observe the changes in a single lifetime....

  The handler was shaking his bag again, and bets were going down around the room. The writers were working quickly, pretending the handler was likely to throw before they had a chance to siphon every nickel from the audience. The all-male audience was noisy now, each man calling out his bets, some of them digging deeper for the cash than they had earlier, but still coming up with it just this one tune.

  And the next time, right. And the next.

  Vargas knew his people, knew they loved bolita and the lottery the way black people were supposed to love the numbers, or the rich old Jewesses their slot machines up north, around Atlantic City.

  Everybody gambled, and the fact that it might be against the law would never alter human nature. In the back of his mind Ernesto Vargas saw himself as part of some great public service, giving men and women what they wanted, something that the heartless politicians had decreed was out of bounds.

  He was a hero, right. A man of his community, of the people.

  The handler swung his bag overhead, released it, aiming with precision at a different catcher, salted in another corner of the room. Vargas watched the burlap sack as it was airborne, tumbling gracelessly, a dark misshapen blur against the backdrop of the parlor windows.

  Windows that were suddenly imploding, collapsing inward in a shower of fractured glass. Someone screamed, then everyone was babbling at once, turning to gape at the windows.

  The catcher was turning with them, missing the bag and never really noticing as it struck him on the shoulder and tumbled to the floor. Its ties became unfastened, and the numbered balls were spilling everywhere — all except unlucky thirteen, fastened to the burlap with a tiny patch of Velcro for the catcher's convenience.

  A wasted play now, but Ernesto Vargas had his mind on other things, momentarily forgetting lost profits as he stood up, kicking over his folding metal chair and shouldering past his handlers toward the front of the dais.

  "What the..."

  And he saw an oval object in the middle of the parlor floor, still spinning from the force of impact, spewing colored smoke now in a blinding cloud. The bettors were scattering away from the grenade, seeking out the available exits as they ran. Some of them were dropping money all along the way, and Vargas made a mental note to pick it up as soon as he could get a handle on exactly what the hell was happening.

  It could not be police, he was confident of that. They had been greased, and anyway, they always called ahead. Whenever it was necessary to sacrifice a game for the sake of appearances, Vice made certain that Ernesto was not in, and that the lion's share of his daily take was safely evacuated before they rolled in, arresting handlers and bettors on various misdemeanor charges.

  No, it would not be the cops.

  But who?

  A burst of automatic fire erupted from the direction of the home's adjacent kitchen. There was a sudden scream, cut off abruptly, and Vargas imagined that he recognized the voice of his back-door lookout, Esteban.

  He saw his gunners, Ramon and Paco, moving fast in that direction, digging at the handguns they wore underneath their jackets. They were young and quick, and whoever had the frigging nerve to crash this party would regret the day that he had met them.

  Vargas circled, putting the wooden podium between him and the kitchen doorway, sliding one hand down in the direction of the pistol that he carried in his belt. Ramon and Paco were almost to the door when it burst open, to reveal a tall dark figure dressed in camouflage fatigues, a smoking Uzi submachine gun in his hands.

  The gunners peeled off to either side but the intruder was faster, and his weapon cut a blistering arc across the smoky room.

  Vargas saw Ramon and Paco twisting, pummeled by the stream of 9mm parabellum rounds. Neither one of them got off a shot before he died, and now the master of bolita in Coral Gables was alone.

  He took a breath and, half gagging on the smoke, made his move. The commando saw it coming,
pivoted, and stroked another short burst from the Uzi. The podium took most of it, but Vargas caught a bullet in his shoulder, then another in the hip, spinning him around like a blow from some giant fist, dumping him facedown upon the dais.

  His gun was gone, consciousness fading fast. He felt the rough hand on his shoulder now, turning him over onto his back. He clenched his teeth against the pain but made no sound beyond a whimper.

  The barrel of the Uzi was inches from his face, and he could feel its heat, see little tendrils of smoke curling up from the flat, staring eye.

  The gunner loomed above him like a giant in the colored, swirling smoke, bending over and speaking softly, barely loud enough for Vargas to make out his words.

  "I'm back. Somebody knows why. Spread the word."

  Something dropped onto Vargas's chest, making him flinch and close his eyes, ready for death, but when he opened them a moment later, he was all alone.

  Alone with the dead.

  Straining, fighting off the pain from his shoulder, he craned his neck and glanced down, squinting at the object glittering on his bloodstained shirtfront, trying to make recognition through the haze that fogged his mind.

  And in an instant Vargas knew precisely what it was, although he could not hope to grasp its meaning.

  The object on his chest was a marksman's medal.

  * * *

  LeRoy Withers — alias Mustaffa ben-Keladi — lounged behind a battered desk in his back-room office of the Club Uhuru. He studied the briefcase on his desk top as he cracked his knuckles nervously.

  He was waiting for a man that he had never seen before to take the satchel off his hands... and to leave something else in return.

  The Club Uhuru was closed and one of his men was positioned out front to meet the contact when he showed. Another gun was close by Withers, in the office — just in case.

  A guy had to be careful these days, he mused, what with all that bad shit going down in Miami. It was getting so that businessmen could not conduct their deals without an escort any more. As a man with many deals in progress, he had much to fear.

  The hit on Tommy Drake had been a shock, but Withers was used to rolling with the punches as they came. He learned that early, growing up on ghetto streets, and he had been an avid student of survival. There were new connections everywhere, and it had not taken long to find a new supplier.

  Not long at all.

  In fact the hit on Drake might wind up being good for business — at least for his own business. A resourceful man could move up quickly in a vacuum, and LeRoy had been considering for some time now that all that Cosa Nostra crap had outlived its usefulness. It might be time for a righteous brother to assert himself, kick some ass and bring in the respect he had deserved for so damned long.

  Of course, he would have to show a little style along the way. A little steel and muscle, if it came to that.

  And LeRoy Withers knew that he was equal to the task.

  A sharp knock sounded on the office door. Beside him, LeRoy's man slid a hand inside his velvet jacket, finding iron beneath his arm. Satisfied, Withers kicked back in his swivel chair.

  "In!"

  The door swung open to admit a tall white dude, decked out in sharp expensive threads, aviator's shades and carrying a briefcase.

  LeRoy grinned.

  And the grin became a beaming smile as he thought about exactly what the white man would have inside that briefcase, bagged and ready for him. "Snow" in the middle of summer, damned right.

  "What is it, my man?"

  "It's business," the stranger replied, unsmiling, and Withers reflected once again that whites seemed not to have a sense of humor.

  The new arrival placed his case on top of Withers's desk, then glanced around, found LeRoy's backup watching from the open office doorway with his hand braced on a hip, six inches from gun leather.

  "You got what I need, man?" LeRoy asked him.

  And LeRoy noticed for the first time since the dude entered the office, he smiled — a chilling, icy grimace,

  "Right here," he replied.

  The briefcase latches sounded like explosive charges shattering the stillness of the room. The lid was up, the dude was reaching inside — and LeRoy craned his neck, anxious for a look at the cocaine that he had bargained for by phone but had not sampled yet.

  Perhaps a couple of snorts, just to make certain it was good enough for his high-priced clientele.

  But no white powder, no plastic bag emerged from the briefcase. Instead, the man was brandishing a long silver handgun, looking better than a foot long as it hung there, a yard from LeRoy's face. He gaped at it for what seemed like a lifetime, but in fact mere seconds passed before the still life burst into explosive action.

  The tall stranger swiveled, reaching out with his blaster and almost touching the muzzle to the nearest gunner's cheek before he pulled the trigger. A thunderous explosion echoed through the Club Uhuru, and the gunner's face and head disintegrated, dispatching tiny fragments all over the room. His headless body tumbled backward, hitting the floor with a resounding thud.

  Beyond the door, LeRoy's other backup gun was already digging for hardware, backpedaling and looking for cover. The cannon roared again, lifting him off his feet, the force of one heavy round impacting on his chest, hurling him back several yards. He touched down by the empty bar with a single twitch before he came to final rest.

  LeRoy was wearing a pistol in his belt, with another in the desk drawer for emergencies like this. Except there had never been such an incident, and in the panic of the moment he could think of only one thing.

  Survival.

  Clearly, drawing down on this bad-ass dude was certain suicide. And Withers was not feeling suicidal. Not in the least.

  The cannon's muzzle was directly in his face now, looking larger than an oil drum at point-blank range. Withers half imagined he could crawl inside it if he tried, and hide there from the man who plainly meant to kill him.

  But the gunner did not fire. Instead he fished around inside a pocket of his flashy jacket, coming out with something small and silver, which he dropped in the middle of LeRoy's cluttered desk top.

  "Spread the word," the man growled, his voice graveyard cold. "I'm back. Somebody knows why."

  And LeRoy watched him retreat out of there with the satchel — LeRoy's goddamned satchel full of twenties and fifties — the blaster never wavering off its kill zone as he cleared the doorway, backing right across the club room on his way to the exit.

  Withers kept his eyes riveted on that pistol until the dude was out of there and clear. He made no move to follow, never seriously considering going after him and trying to retrieve the cash.

  LeRoy glanced around at the wasted bodies of his soldiers, then down at the spreading moisture in the crotch of his own maroon slacks.

  Some damn fine mess, yeah. Hell! But he was alive, still kicking, and now his job would be to stay that way. His hand was shaking as he reached for the telephone and started dialing.

  Spreading the word.

  11

  The ten-year-old Cadillac cruised slowly eastward along Eighth Avenue. The driver kept a careful eye on other motorists and the flow of erratic pedestrians around him, while his three companions took in every detail of the boulevard.

  Eighth Avenue.

  The locals called it Calle Ocho, and it ran right through the heart of Miami's Little Havana district. It was the artery that fed the Cuban community's pulsing heart, alive with color, sound and movement.

  The Cadillac rolled slowly down the avenue, the four occupants inspecting sidewalks jammed with cigar-chomping men in their crisp guayaberas— the white cotton shirts of the tropics — and women in bright-colored skirts and blouses. The street was lined with shops and family businesses: boutiques and factories where underpaid employees rolled cigars by hand; sidewalk counters selling aromatic Cuban coffee and churros, long spirals of deep-fried sweet dough.

  They passed the Bay of Pigs monument, st
anding tall and proud in Cuban Memorial Plaza, and one of the men in the back seat crossed himself, muttering a hasty benediction. In the front seat, riding shotgun, his companion merely frowned and looked away.

  It was so long ago, so many years and wasted lives, but still the memory was sharp, painful. He wondered if it ever would recede, give up its power to bring a lump into his throat.

  Someday, perhaps. When all the debts were canceled out, repaid in full.

  Someday.

  But not this day.

  They turned off Calle Ocho into a residential side street, rolling along past neatly kept houses, many of them with shrines on the lawns, devoted to Saint Lazarus.

  Only a parable now to the Catholic church, Lazarus was a living hero to the exiles for his ability to persevere through poverty and pain. They saw themselves in Lazarus — and shared the hope that broken lives might one day be revived in Cuba libre. Saint Lazarus was the living symbol of rebirth, of the human spirit's stubborn refusal to stay down.

  A few more blocks, the houses smaller now, devoid of shrines, still neat but no longer picturesque. Beside the driver, Toro scanned the houses, searching for a number, finally picking out the one he sought.

  A curt instruction to the driver, and they cruised past the target house, not even slowing. Nothing in their posture would have told a watcher that the men were hunting, and that they had found their prey upon this quiet street.

  The driver took a right at the next intersection, parking out of sight and killing the engine. They unloaded, Toro taking time to readjust the pistol in his waistband, waiting for the others to form a tight semicircle at the curb. The four men were alert, trying to watch every direction at once, as if expecting an ambush on this placid residential boulevard.

  In recent years the Cuban community had become fragmented, different factions violently at odds. Little Havana had assumed the atmosphere of a city under siege — but from within. There was no enemy outside the gates; the city's people had engaged each other in a silent — sometimes deadly — war of ideologies.