“Exactly.”
The door at the front of the room opened, and a pimply faced intern hesitantly peered in. “Excuse me, uh… Detective,” the intern muttered, sounding almost like a child scared to go to bed because the Boogeyman would be there waiting for him.
“Yes?” Vivian answered.
“Dispatch just received a call from a patrol car that found a charred Mercedes abandoned behind a Publix about a mile from Crandon Park.”
Osteen and Vivian looked at each other, surprised by the turn of events, and bolted for the door, nearly knocking the intern on his butt.
Chapter 7
Miami is the epitome of the city that never sleeps. Even in the darkness of night, its citizens remain as active as they would be if the sun had never descended below the horizon. The roles played by this wacky cast of characters changes almost as suddenly as the weather. Every imaginable performer in this production takes hold of their role passionately, never missing a beat, for to do so would mean an unacceptable break from the norm. There are those who thrive on shifting drastically from what some may consider normal. For every person like that, there are twenty who don’t believe in fixing something that isn’t in need of repair.
La Cantina Sucia was the type of restaurant venture that flourished even in the toughest of times. The food was relatively cheap, but the quality was on a level that few eateries could come close to reaching. Rumors abounded that the success was because of a few secret family recipes the owner kept locked away in a hidden safe. Some more frequent patrons liked to spend part of their visits attempting to guess where the safe might be located if, in fact, it even existed. Most agreed that it was highly unlikely to be in the owner’s office, as that would be too obvious. Instead, a few theorized it was likely tucked away not in a safe, but in the drawer of an otherwise nondescript armoire in the owner’s home.
The restaurant had a distinct Caribbean flair to its exterior. A bright coral, with pastel blue accents and enough palm varieties to give a tree nursery a run for their money, it had the effect of walking into a quaint restaurant nestled into the outskirts of a rainforest in Cuba. This provided the citizens who fled Castro’s rein a little taste of the parts of home they remembered most fondly. During the lunch and dinner hours, it was tough to find a seat anywhere in the Cantina without waiting nearly an hour. At the twilight hours, however, the premises shared quite a lot in common with Western ghost towns.
Micah hurried down the damp sidewalk leading to the Cantina. His eyes subconsciously drifted to the plastic ‘CLOSED’ sign hanging behind a window near the front door. He halted in front of the beautiful Cuban Mahogany double doors and stared, dumbfounded. Castillo’s abrupt end to the phone call left him with an uncertainty about what he was to do once he reached the restaurant. Micah thought it would be odd to meet up in front and have a chat, rather than venture inside, but with no one in sight to let him in, his options appeared limited. He grabbed the handle and applied the pressure necessary to open it when a small, almost comical voice appeared behind him.
“What are you waiting for?” The voice was diminutive, as though the person from whom it emanated had no interest in sounding threatening.
“What the fu…” Micah pivoted to face the noise, instinctively placing his hand on the grip of the pistol resting securely in its holster. “Who the hell are you?”
“You Micah?”
The reluctance of the man to react to Micah’s aggressive shifting of his weight caused him to feel uneasy about the pair of eyes staring back at him. Someone that unfazed by the sight of a gun held by a person almost twice their size had likely seen their fair share of shit. “Who’s asking?” Micah kept his hand rested on the grip of the pistol, anticipating a rapid escalation to the situation that never materialized.
“Good answer,” the little man said, cracking an enormous smile as he stepped toward the door. “Jimmy’s in the private room. Follow me.”
Micah relaxed his arms and followed the little man into La Cantina Sucia. Once inside, they walked toward a pair of doors in the back of the main seating area. To most people who frequented the eatery, the doors in question simply led to the kitchen. That was true, to an extent. The little man led him through the kitchen, to another door which opened to a small foyer that was home to a single flight of stairs on one side, and a door that led outside on the other. The stairs eventually ended at a small landing, upon which existed only a door. An armed guard stood in front of it, waiting to make use of his tools.
The little man motioned for the guard to lean down. Micah had to stifle a giggle at the absurdity of the situation. He watched the guard do as the little man bid and listened to a quick order from his apparent superior before returning to something resembling attention as the duo passed by.
Micah entered the room and took a mental picture of his surroundings. It was an oddly shaped space, to be sure. Constructed like an engagement ring with the entrance at the diamond, he stared out at a collection of tables which appeared to have been crafted from the same tree as the front doors. Each table had four chairs, spaced just far enough away from one another to provide a feeling of exclusivity to all who had the chance to dine in this lounge.
Jimmy Castillo was sitting at the far end of the primary room in a semi-circular booth with a beautiful woman on each arm. They looked as though
