the body, digging his fingers through the slippery green plastic. Fernandez took the legs. With nothing to support it in the middle, the body sagged into a V. Pulling it over the lip of the trunk, Leo lost his grip, and Beaumond’s head smacked the bumper. It would’ve hurt like hell, if he’d been alive to feel it.
They rested for a minute, but Leo got rattled with the screeching birds and the dark all around them, and fieldtrip memories of gators chilling on logs. No guarantee a hungry one wouldn’t come running right up and snatch him. Those fuckers moved quick on their stubby legs.
They dragged Beaumond through the weeds, right to the edge of where the water met the road. Fernandez went in with the feet, him pulling and Leo pushing, until the garbage bag ballooned and the body started to float. Fernandez tore open the bag, dug up a big rock, and fed it through the hole. Leo loosened two more and Fernandez put them inside. He climbed out of the water.
He had his hands on his hips, breathing heavy and watching the garbage bag send bubbles to the surface as it sunk into the muck. Leo stood in his blind spot, his palm on the grip of the gun. If he was going to shoot him, this would be the time.
He thought back to an All-Star game they both pitched in, the stands bulging with pro scouts. Alex Fernandez was the star among stars, a skinny lefthander who overpowered everybody, on his way to a full ride at USC. His mother and his sister — she was the same age as Leo’s sister — cheering from the stands. Fernandez out there, holding the ball, looking in, and at that last instant, when it could’ve gone one way or another, Leo couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t do it.
Fernandez mumbled something about Jesus Christ Almighty and Leo said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
The sun was up by the time they hit West Miami. Fernandez wasn’t talking. Leo didn’t have much to say either, and they were all out of cigarettes, including Alex’s menthols.
Leo said, “We’ve gotta get rid of this car.”
“Drop me off,” Fernandez said, “before you do any other stupid thing.”
Get a load of this guy, smart-mouthing him. Did he realize how close he came to dying back there?
“I can’t believe this is my life,” Fernandez said. “This is so bad.” He was chewing his fingernails. “All I ever wanted to do was have a good time.”
“It’s done,” Leo said. “Stop being such a pussy about it.”
“Turn here for Hialeah.”
“I’m not going to Hialeah. Hialeah’s out of the way,” Leo said. “I’ll drop you off between here and the Beach.”
Leo negotiated the thickening traffic. They were driving into a part of town where the streets seemed familiar, but Leo wasn’t sure where any of them went. The Eldorado was stuck between a tractor-trailer turning left and a milk truck. Some idiot in a mini-van was nosing into Leo’s lane, trying to squeeze between the Eldo and the semi.
“No, fuck you,” Leo said to the driver of the van. He inched the Eldo forward, boxing him out.
The light turned green. Fernandez popped his door open and scrambled onto the pavement.
Leo tracked his orange soccer jersey like a visual SOS, his skinny arms flailing as he dashed across three lanes, scary close to getting clipped by a BMW that didn’t look up until it was almost too late. Let the cocksucker live, he wants to go and get himself killed.
Two motorcycle cops flagged traffic around a wreck. Getting the hint, Leo turned north on SW 12th Avenue, cruising past an archipelago of used car lots, purple pennant streamers flapping above the acreage. Forlorn, buffed-out lemons lay in wait, Spanish words scrawled on their windshields. Creampuff! Leo imagined they said. Original miles!
He kept going north, rolling through the skanky neighborhoods that, if he wasn’t wrong, should take him right into Liberty City. The turf had been poached by the wettest of wetbacks, Salvadorans and Panamanians and Ecuadorians, their pathetic hand-painted letters crammed onto signs outside their restaurants and shops. They ought to be getting a taste, right about now, of what this great country was all about, liquor stores and lottery tickets.
He veered down a street that dead-ended under an overpass. The sun glinted off the silvery key chain that dangled from the ignition. Leo got out of the car.
He noticed a bus stop on the street he turned off of, and he walked back to it, slow, cool, nothing to worry about. It was in front of a building that at one point in its life was the Buenos Aires nightclub. Half its roof was collapsed and the other half had a huge hole burnt into it. The fire that knocked out the club must’ve been an inferno, the kind people died in, but Leo couldn’t remember hearing anything about it. Imagine. Making it all the way from Nicaragua, then getting charred to a crisp, when the only thing you had in mind was blowing your dishwasher money on drinks and the possibility of pussy. It could almost make you sad, if you let it.
A bottle gang was passing the morning pint. They had watched Leo pull down the dead-end street. Now, they were eyeing him up hard. Looking black, talking Spanish, one could’ve had Chinese blood, slashes for eyes that were red and mean, a sinister, odd-looking hombre. Leo lifted his shirt and let the grip of his .25 stick out of his pants, in case anybody was getting any ideas.
The bus drifted to the curb. Leo stood in the stairwell, fumbling with his money. Boarding, he watched the gang fall out in the dead-end’s direction. Buena suerta, he thought. Good luck, amigos.
As a demonstration of his good faith, Leo put out the word that he wanted to return the kilo that was more like two now after Beaumond and Fernandez got done stepping on it. Leo didn’t want to be connected to a batch of blow that was attached to two murders. Way bad karma.
Maybe Negrito felt the same. He didn’t seem too keen on getting it back. But any attempt to think along with Negrito was a lose-lose proposition.
Nestor Alameda contacted Leo and told him El Negrito would meet him in a bar off the Calle Ocho in Little Havana. Leo balked. Two things he wasn’t going to do: Hook up with Negrito anywhere that afforded the slightest bit of privacy, or get into any car Negrito was driving. He countered with a parking lot off Collins. Nestor called him back and said it was a go.
He wasn’t sure why this meeting would be any different than the one they had in the coffee shop, Leo arriving ten minutes early, Negrito already waiting, but he felt weird, a threat in the yellow of the parking lot paint. He got that same throw-uppy feeling he had when he dry-heaved between the cars, and he kept clearing his throat and swallowing, to keep whatever it was down there where it belonged. He really hated to lose the satchel he stashed his film canisters in, but he stayed quiet when Negrito snatched it out of his hand and tossed it in the front seat of his Monte Carlo. The one with the blacked-out back window and the stencil that told you Monte Carlo, in case there was any confusion.
Leo didn’t know what to say that wasn’t going to piss him off, and Negrito didn’t appear to have anything prepared for the occasion. He glared at Leo, wearing no expression at all.
Leo tried this: “I hope you realize I’ve taken care of everything.” He didn’t want to come right out and say what it was he’d taken care of, and anyway, he was pretty confident Negrito knew about it, or Leo wouldn’t be standing here talking to him or anybody else.
“The only reason there was anything to take care of was because you fucked up so bad in the first place.” Negrito’s mouth barely opened enough to let the words out. “That’s what I realize.”
Okay, something had changed since the last time they talked.
“I just want you to accept my apology, that’s all.” A rush of bile shot up Leo’s esophagus. He swallowed hard twice, beating it back.
“I don’t give a shit about your apology.”
Not only did his mouth stay closed, his lips hardly moved. How come Leo never noticed this? The guy had an amazing untapped talent for ventriloquism.
“You did what needed to be done. That’s all that matters.”
Good. Well, then, if that was going to be all, Leo’d be on his way.
“And if I have an ounce of trouble with you again, ever,
Leo was about to give him a one-word answer like “Understood” when he heard a crack and saw some things that weren’t there. He glimpsed Negrito through tearing eyes. The guy just had a thing for slapping people.
Then Leo caught a punch. The second dug into his kidney. The third connected with his jaw and sent him to
