Don Florida was thinking about a number of problems as he rolled the delivery van up toward the loading dock of La Luna Negra’s warehouse. There was the problem of Anastasia, for one. He could see that Tito was nowhere around. Tito was probably in the front office trying to talk to Anastasia. That was one of the problems on Don Florida’s mind, this thing with Tito and his niece. Tito was a good worker, but he was in no way the kind of suitor his sister was going to accept for Anastasia. They had discussed the matter that morning on the phone. Don Florida had called her as soon as Anastasia arrived in that little skirt.
Tito, Don Florida had told his sister, is only human. Anastasia is teasing him, leading him on. Of course his sister saw it differently and wanted Don Florida to fire Tito, something he did not want to do, since removing Tito from the job meant getting Tito safely out of the country and back to Guyana, a place to which Tito would be quite unwilling to return. If Tito refused to go back to Guyana, then something permanent would have to happen to Tito since he was familiar with a number of Don Florida’s import items, including the Brazilian nine-millimeter semiautomatics that were one of his most profitable items and for which many local businessmen had paid many thousands of dollars. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms would be only too happy to provide Tito with alternative housing in exchange for his testimony.
The sodium-arc streetlamp was shining on his windshield, sending filaments of dusty yellow light all over the glass, following the cracks in its wind-blasted surface. He could see the steel door of the warehouse, see through the web of light the crates lying around outside on the concrete dock. The day was almost over, and there was a lot to get done.
And there was another issue, the issue of this Gardena. Roderigo Gardena was not a countryman, had been born here in the South Bronx actually. His manner around Anastasia was insolence incarnate. He would not have been anywhere near one of Don Florida’s relatives if it were not for the fact that he was well connected. Don Florida had been informed that he was going to provide employment for a man named Roderigo Gardena. The people who controlled Hunts Point for the Hispanic organizations, in particular Manny Obregon, who was the jefe for the area bounded by the Cross Bronx Expressway, the Bruckner, and the Harlem River, had allowed Don Florida to operate under their protection in return for whatever services they might ask of him.
Normally, Don Florida would simply do what he was asked to do, but this Roderigo Gardena—his manner toward not only Anastasia but Olga, Don Florida’s wife—was intolerable. Don Florida had made some private inquiries and had discovered that Gardena was an alias, and that whatever his real name was—his source either did not know or was afraid to say—he was apparently wanted by several federal agencies for things he had done in Washington, D.C., and also for something he had done to a prison guard in New York State. Something sexual. Sheltering a man like that could only bring ruin upon Don Florida’s business and his family.
Something would have to be done about him.
Exactly what, Don Florida did not know. It was a problem.
Today Roderigo was bringing the five-ton truck. It would take another hour, at least, to load the five-ton with the cane furniture. Then Roderigo and Tito would have to drive it all the way to the TraveLodge in South Ozone Park and get it there before the hotel manager had to open up the lounge for the tourists who were coming in from Kennedy. The traffic right now was hopeless, but it would clear up by seven. He looked down at his watch as he rolled the van up to the ramp at the rear of the warehouse. It was a quarter to six. He smoothed his shirt-sleeve down over the gold Rolex watch and looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He ran a chubby brown hand through his thinning gray hair, saw the lines on his face, the dark shadows under his eyes. Once Don Florida had been a good-looking man—the best-looking man in Ciudad Bolívar, everyone used to say. Not now.
Parking the van, he climbed out with some difficulty, stiff and tired from fighting the traffic all the way from Canarsie. He was working too hard, he thought. His heart was giving him trouble. If he went on like this, he’d die before his fiftieth birthday. He climbed up the short staircase and hit the buzzer twice with the fat edge of his fist.
A full minute passed. He looked around at the narrow laneway, at the closed-up rear gates of the fruit store across the lane, at the garbage piled up and spilling over from the Dumpster. The strange fleeting warmth of the day was gone, and now he was suddenly cold. The sweat on his cheeks burned him like snowflakes.
“¡Tito, abre la puerta! ¿Tito? ¿Donde estas?”
Where was the boy? If he was in there romancing with Anastasia, if he had done anything to offend—Tito would have to go, he would have to return to Guyana or disappear, and that was that.
Another brief wait.
Angry now, Don Florida fumbled for his keys and thrust them into the lock that opened the little rear door. He jerked it open, let it slam against the frame, and strode quickly through the warehouse toward the closed office door. By now, he was cursing softly to himself. A man stood up in his way, a thin beam of light cutting across the man’s cheek.
“Tito!”
But it was not Tito.
The man moved into the beam completely now. He was a big man, a yellow man. He had a bad face, and something in it frightened Don Florida.
“¿Cual es su nombre? Que—”
The yellow man came much too close. His eyes were dead black.
“Where is Gardena?” he said.
“Who are you?”
“You know me.”
Don Florida’s voice had gone away. His question came out somewhere between a whisper and a bleat.
“Where’s Anastasia? Where’s Tito? Who sent you? Did Manny send you? I can talk to Manny. If there’s some way I offended—let me call him. Please? ¿Por la virgen?”
“Roderigo Gardena. He works with you?”
“Sí. Let me—”
“But why?”
Don Florida’s practiced Spanish baritone had developed something of a squeak. The yellow man reached out a huge hand and gathered in a section of Don Florida’s sweater.
“You have a bad time paying attention, Don Florida. I will have to help you with your attention problem.”
The yellow man with the bad skin pulled Don Florida down the narrow aisle between the shipping crates and the stacked cane furniture that was supposed to be on its way to the TraveLodge in South Ozone Park this evening, the timely delivery of which now seemed a matter of rapidly diminishing importance to Don Florida.
When the door to the office was kicked open and the yellow man shoved Don Florida through it, stumbling, falling, his breath coming in short painful gasps, into the office room, and Don Florida saw what had become of Tito and Anastasia, all other considerations flew up into the darkening Bronx skyline. One of these vanishing considerations was the normally routine necessity of disarming the silent burglar alarm whenever he came in through the little door beside the loading gate. The electronic pad, usually visible, was concealed this afternoon behind a large wicker bedstead, part of the shipment bound for Ozone Park. As Don Florida looked down at the terrible ruin that had been Anastasia, his sister’s middle daughter, as the yellow man stood above him with his deadman stare and that little hatchet in his hand, as the first question was put to Don Florida, the tiny LED on the alarm pad out in the warehouse cycled silently from blinking green, to steady amber, and finally to a bright ruby red.