Leala lay in her hideaway, the muted light telling her the sun was fading. It was hot and Leala had shed her dress to keep from spoiling its freshness. She wiped her brow with the scarf, ate her last banana and waited until night arrived.
The door creaked open and her eyes checked the house, still black, still safe. Cars and motorcycles roared on nearby streets and when a vehicle swerved into the alley Leala slipped into shadows, grateful for trash cans to squat behind.
She slipped to the house with the pool and slid into the cool blue water. It was bitter on her lips but delicious against her skin. She was submerging when the night exploded into light, hard and white and everywhere.
“Someone’s out there!” a voice screamed from the house. “Someone’s in the pool! YOU! GET OUT OF HERE!”
An alarm was tripped and a sonic blade knifed the air. Zeee-yup, zeee-yup, zeee-yup. Leala grabbed her dress, running naked across the grass and out the gate. Shaking uncontrollably, she threw the dress over her head and shook it into place, sprinting across front yards before dashing toward the alley. Dogs were barking now, each alerting the other to an intruder in the neighborhood.
Orzibel and Morales were crisscrossing the grid of blocks forming Little Havana and searching for Leala. Orzibel grinned. “Did I tell you, Chaku? Cho called Amili an hour after our match man left, probably while the flames were highest. Said she’d like to continue our business relationship.”
Morales snorted and slapped the steering wheel in delight. Orzibel went back to scanning the street. He paused and canted his head toward the window.
“What is all that noise, Chaku? Roll down the windows.”
Hot air poured into the cool vehicle. Orzibel stuck his head out the window, listening. “Head down the street. Toward the sounds.”
Morales turned onto the cross street. His eyes stared in disbelief as a flash of blue crossed a hundred meters ahead.
“Her!” Morales yelled. “There, by the white house.”
“Go!”
The big engine roared, tires squealing as it spun and headed in the reverse direction. “She’s jumping that fence,” Orzibel said. Morales stood on the brakes, Orzibel’s feet hitting pavement before the vehicle halted.
“Come here NOW or I will kill your madre!” he screamed, seeing a small body tumbling over a fence and disappearing between a house and a garage.
“She’s going for the alley. Head her off, Chaku!”
Morales burned rubber around the end of the block. “Come to me, bitch!” Orzibel howled. “Or I’ll SLICE OFF YOUR FACE!”
Lights flicked off in nearby houses. Doors were locked and residents scurried to central rooms where bullets couldn’t reach. There had been gang wars and gunshots were familiar. The police were rarely called, for fear of retribution. Orzibel pushed at shrubs and bushes, checking for a crouching girl. Nothing.
Morales nodded across the street, an old man brave enough to step to his porch. “Someone’s gonna call the cops, Orlando. They might get to her ahead of us.”
The pair retreated into the vehicle. “She’s here, Chaku,” Orzibel said, staring out the window. “She found a garage, an empty house, a boat in a backyard.” They passed a corner holding a closed and shuttered grocery, three junkies jittering on the steps. The wretches were everywhere. Orzibel stared at the junkies as they passed, a fingertip tapping his lips as he thought.
“I’m doing this all wrong, Chaku. Go to the local junkies. Tell them the right information buys a month’s worth of the finest scag.”
Morales wheeled around the corner, checked his rearview. “The junkies hear many lies, Orlando. It would be best to have the drug in hand. And give a taste to a select few so they might tell others of the quality.”
Orzibel grinned and pulled out his cell phone. “Brilliant thinking, my large friend. I will schedule a meeting with Pablo Gonsalves. Dangle pure H before the junkies and they will scour the streets like starving rats.”
Leala sat shaking in the corner of the shed. One knee screamed in pain from a fall over fence to a brick patio. Her left palm hurt from a cut, left by the ragged top of a metal gate. Her hair was still soaking wet.
“Come here NOW or I will kill your madre!”
It had been so terribly close. One time Leala had been beneath a van as the huge man’s feet had slapped past. Had he slowed in his run he would have heard Leala’s ragged, gasping breaths. When he turned past a corner she had continued to run, jumping from shadow to shadow until she had reached the shed.
“Come to me, bitch. Or I’ll SLICE OFF YOUR FACE!”
She couldn’t hide much longer, the pool proved there were eyes everywhere, even behind darkened windows. Leala clutched herself tight, but even though the night was as steamy as a jungle, she continued to shake. In the morning she would call the woman from the poster again. Her only chance of escape was in trusting someone.
It would have to be Victoree Johnson.
“To what do I owe the honor of a visit from such a successful businessman?” Pablo Gonsalves said. “Sit, Orlando Orzibel, and tell me why I am so favored.”
Gonsalves was dark-skinned, in his forties and hugely obese, his small bright eyes peering over cheeks like bags of pudding, his outsized lips wet and floating over a frog’s chin that became his chest. His black silk shirt opened to display a golden crucifix as large as a saucer nestling in a cleavage many women would have envied.
Gonsalves hunkered at a back table on the balcony of the club in Miami Beach, the cavernous room almost empty, another hour before the trust-fund babies queued at the front door. Three cholos sat at the round table, gophers and bodyguards, large, but not as large as Chaku Morales, who stood a dozen feet away and watched as Orzibel neared the table. Gonsalves seemed high on something, Orzibel noted, the man’s eyes glassy and his words carefully controlled.
Orzibel saw the tiny glass half-filled with a green liqueur, absinthe, the real deal. On the floor below a smattering of dancers gyrated to thudding techno-pop as lights flashed pink and orange and green. The DJ sat in a booth in a corner, a black man in a white and sequined suit with a Miami Dolphins ball cap slung sideways on his head. The music was loud, but the upstairs speakers were turned down, allowing normal conversation.
“I need something, amigo,” Orzibel said, bowing a millimeter as he sat. There were protocols and though he, Orlando Orzibel, bowed to no man on his turf, this was the turf of Pablo Gonsalves and respect was to be shown. That’s why Orzibel allowed himself and Chaku to be patted down. It was not disrespect, only caution.
“We are friends?” Gonsalves said. “I am not complaining, of course. But how comes this alliance when we have never spoken to this day?”
“We have not spoken in words, Don Gonsalves, but in business. Our enterprise purchases various business supplies from Tiny Chingala on Bastion Street. Tiny is an employee of yours, no?”
An enigmatic smile from Gonsalves. The fat fingers picked up the miniature glass and brought it to the outsize lips, sipping as delicately as a mosquito. He set the glass down and raised an eyebrow.
“Tiny Chingala has many offerings, Señor Orzibel. Why do you not go to him?”
Orzibel laced his fingers and leaned forward. “His heroin is diluted and necessarily so. It extends the product for a clientele of limited means.”
“Purity is expensive. Go on.”
“You have higher-quality products, Don Gonsalves. Items for those whose wealth is so vast prices cease to matter. I wish to purchase … let’s say ten grams of the best heroin, uncut.”
Gonsalves regarded Orzibel for a three-count. “Para una dama?” he asked. For a lady?
Orzibel did not understand the question. But perhaps the absinthe-soaked elefante was addled. He shook his head. “I seek information and wish to enlist eyes on the street. Junkies: The eyes that wander endlessly.”
Wet laughter from Gonsalves. “The product you seek is something street users only touch in their dreams. When do you wish your goods?”
“Time is of the essence, Don Gonsalves.”
Gonsalves quoted a price and Orzibel nodded. The fat man gestured and one of the hulking minions disappeared as Gonsalves emptied the glass of absinthe. Orzibel resisted the urge to scowl; he never allowed himself to be affected by substances when working. Gonsalves was weak.
The cholo was back a minute later. The fat man pocketed money, Orzibel drugs. “Gracias,” Orzibel said, standing from the table.
“Momem-to,” Gonsalves slurred, a fat hand rising. “I know that you work with the beautiful Amili Zelaya. The rumors are that you two are … involved.” Gonsalves said it strangely, as if suggesting there was something curious at play.
They weren’t, not physically, though not due to lack of trying. Still, Orzibel knew of the street-level rumors and did nothing to dissuade them. It made him look good. He flashed his brightest smile. “Amili and I are … even more than co-workers.”
“So you know her every secret?” The fat man’s eyes seemed even more glazed, his lips more engorged.
What is this fat, impaired fool getting at? Gossip?
“Amili and I have one blood,” Orzibel lied, crossing index and middle fingers beside his face. “There are no secrets between us.”
Gonsalves gestured a bodyguard near and whispered in his ear. The man was gone for scant moments. Orzibel saw something dropped from behind into Gonsalves’s hand. When it rose, there was a tiny parcel in his fingers. It was the size of an earring box and wrapped in the paper of one of West Palm’s most exclusive jewelers.
“Señorita Zelaya is a very busy lady, I think, and you can save her this month’s trip, Don Orzibel. Please deliver this to your amiga. As you know, the pretty lady needs her dreams, too.”
Orzibel’s hands closed around the package. He bowed just enough to satisfy protocol and backed away.