Читать книгу The Last Flight of the Ariel - Joseph Dylan Dylan - Страница 8

The park was a triangular patch of grass and flowers surrounded by a ring of palm trees in a resurrected section of gentrified downtown Miami. Forming the park’s perimeter were newly built apartment buildings and office towers. The park bench where he’d been sitting with Townsend was at the base of the triangle.

A teenage Hispanic couple took their place. When they sat down, they were holding hands, but progressed to thigh stroking, neck nibbling and full tilt French-kissing. It never occurred to them people or watching or if it did, they didn’t care. They progressed to heavy petting. Jake kept watching the show to see how far they’d go. But Paul was watching a young man throwing a frisbee to his pet Border Collie. The collie was festooned with a red handkerchief about its neck. When he was but a child growing up in Miami he had one, too. Never had he tied a red kerchief about the Clancy’s neck.

Evidently the couple had limits because Townsend was now strutting back to the office. Townsend walked as though he was on the dusty, dangerous streets of Dodge as an extra on the movie set of a Western. He felt a little bit like the Border Collie when it came to Jake; he felt as though he was constantly herding Jake, herding him and keeping him out of harm’s way.

Located at the apex of the triangle of the park was a payphone that he always used for his less than legal activities. This is the one from which he called Rosario. The phone would ring four, five and then six times. Before Rosario’s secretary and bodyguard finally picked up the receiver.

There was simply a “herro” in a gravelly voice. It always came out as “herro” because the present secretary, factotum and bodyguard for Rosario was Mr. Li Xiaoping, a former member of the triads of Guangxi Province on the mainland of China. As Rosario told him late one night, when they were putting a deal together, Li killed the wrong man — wrong in the sense that the victim was in the upper echelon of a competing triad — in a barroom fight in Shenzhen. He killed the man with his bare hands. Since then, he’d been in hiding. He’d killed the first man who came to kill him, again using just his bare hands. Then went on the lam. How he washed up on the shores of Miami was anyone’s guess. Like a Chow, he would remain loyal to only one man — Rosario. Telling Rosario that he was safe in the States as long as he stayed with him, Li was like a shadow to the man. From his many fights, his fingers and hands were gnarled, and he limped from an injury incurred while kickboxing during some altercation, an altercation that Li had probably won anyway.

“Paul Hewlett for Mr. Rosario.”

Without so much as another word, Li put the receiver of the phone down. In a minute or so, Rosario came on the line. “Mr. Hewlett. Do you believe in ESP?” Before he had a chance to answer, Rosario said, “I had the strangest feeling that you’d be calling today. Is there a problem? Tell me there’s no problem with our new project.”

“No. No. Not as I see it. I need to see you, the sooner the better.”

“So there is an issue?”

“No. Just something that needs to be taken care of.”

“Six o’clock. The usual place.” Having said that, he hung up. The usual place was Mort and Saul’s, a twenty-four hour eatery only a couple of blocks from the offices of the investment firm. For a man with such a diminutive frame, Rosario had a cavernous leg. Every time they met at Mort and Saul’s they both would have the Key West omelet followed by what most considered the best item on the menu: the Coral Key lime pie. On rare occasions, Rosario would have pasta, some of the best in the city, but almost always he settled for the omelet. Each time they met Rosario would add a carafe of coffee, two glasses of orange juice before downing the key lime pie. Despite the generous calories that the offering provided, despite the fact that they met there at least once a week for at least a year, Rosario remained as lithe as a lynx, not gaining a pound.

By six-thirty, Rosario still hadn’t shown. Hewlett ordered a Heineken draft. Every five minutes of so, he’d glance at his Rolex Submariner. At twenty of seven, Rosario arrived. He strode in the door, limp and all, as arrogant as if he owned the establishment. Rosario was an adherent to arrive sociably late.

“Mr. Hewlett, have you been waiting long?”

“No longer than usual.”

With him, was Li Xiaoping, whom Rosario called Marco in the only hint he had a sense of humor. Unlike most Cantonese from the south mainland, he was a good six feet and a master of a number of the martial arts. Rosario liked to refer to him as his Oriental houseboy, a term that Li pretended not to hear, but most certainly understood each time his boss referred to him in those derogatory tones. Neither eating nor drinking, Li sat by himself at an adjacent booth, scrutinizing those who showed the temerity of walking past his boss’ booth.

What others preferred to do with a knife or a gun, Li preferred to do with his powerful hands or deft and devastating feet. Hewlett had seen the end result of his vented anger at dealers who fell behind in their payments to Rosario. No longer was there the pretense that the dealers were paying Hewlett and Townsend and their group the money at the end of each month. To each and every one, they now knew they were dealing with the mob. But just what they knew, they kept to themselves. Before, when it was just Hewlett and Townsend and company dealing with the dealers, they’d let a dealer slide for a month or two before getting serious about their intention of being paid. Then, they would send one of their old football friends by the dealer’s house to reason with him. They’d give the dealer another week or two to come up with the money. Not until months had passed without having been paid would they resort to physical violence. Through the years, Hewlett could recall only resorting to this in the past. But they would only go so far. Rosario seemed to know no bounds.

With Rosario at the helm, a dealer could go no longer than a week before having to answer to Li or one of Rosario’s other “business associates” about the payments that were in arrears. Whereas Hewlett and Townsend and their group had befriended the dealers, the dealers lived in terror when it came to working with the likes of Rosario. Li’s particular MO was to grab their arm dragging their body over his extended leg, tripping them up, sending them to the floor while simultaneously breaking their wrist over his outstretched leg. There was not a dealer who at one point had not come to Hewlett to see if he could intercede with Rosario. There probably was not a dealer who hadn’t shown up at one point with a cast on their right or left wrist. Plead with Rosario as he might, in the end, there was nothing Hewlett could do.

As soon as they had ordered, and the waiter was no longer in hearing range, Rosario turned to Hewlett and said, “So what is this little issue, Paul.”

“Well, it’s not so little and it involves money.”

“Then it is a problem. How much are we talking about?”

“It can be viewed as considerable”.

“How much money?” Right then, the waiter brought in a family with two kids. The waiter was going to set them at the table adjacent to the table that Hewlett occupied with Rosario, but Li said, “Next table,” to them. The waiter and the family looked a little more startled than puzzled, but settled into an empty table further away. One look at Master Li, and anyone would move on. Tonight, as usual, the family did not put up a fuss.

“We put more up front than is normal but can make much more on the back end.”

“Goddamn it, Paul. Stop talking around this thing and come to the fucking point.”

The waiter brought the carafe of coffee over and the cup of decaf. Placing the carafe in front of Rosario, he poured him a cup of regular coffee. The decaf he placed in front of Hewlett. “You sure that’s decaf?”

“You sure that’s decaf,” said Rosario in a mocking tone, imitating Hewlett. “Answer my fucking question.” Pivoting, the waiter hurried back to the kitchen.

“The pilot wants a million dollars for the haul and a percentage of the profit.”

“That’s complete horse shit. You know it, and I know it.”

“There are considerations. He’s got a Helio Super Courier. It’s a very unique plane that can go into strips none of the other planes at Miami International or any of the other regional airports use. I’ve checked. That plane can haul thirteen hundred pounds of product. Of course, in the payload you have to figure out the weight of the passengers and the weight of the fuel. A pilot with Davis’ experience can get in and out of airstrips as short as four or five hundred feet. The pilot has made some modifications so that it can haul an additional couple hundred kilograms of product. Not only that, but he has the range in that plane to make it to Colombia with one stop to fuel up. Right now, you’re talking about transporting what, about three thousand kilograms. By hauling extra product, Davis feels he deserves the increase in flying fee. He wants this to be his last trip. He wants one last run, then he wants out of the business entirely.

“The extra product is welcome. But it’s still one flight. A standard payment.”

“I’m just telling you.” He waited for Rosario’s indignation to bleed off. “The airstrip in Colombia is no more than a couple hundred feet long. There’s not a plane in these parts that can touch those numbers. A Helio Super Courier can get in and out of a strip that size, and they can haul that sort of freight and then some. A DC-3 can certainly haul that much, but they can’t get out of a strip that small. There’s no other plane that can do what the Helio Courier can do. Only the Pilatus Porter comes close, and they need almost a hundred percent more runway to take off. It’s that simple. To me it’s a no-brainer. We pay a little more. We make a lot more. I know you don’t want to hear anything about my calculations, but think about it: an extra one hundred kilograms of product. Furthermore, the pilot has a lot of experience in flying contraband. In fact, he’s flown into this very strip. He flew some in for Townsend back in January...”

“Don’t remind me. He tossed some of my product out over the Everglades.”

Hewlett was taken aback by the fact that Townsend had told Rosario about the operation, but had not bothered to tell him. What else had they not told him? He needed to get out of this operation as soon as he could. He had to, that was all there was to it. In the meantime, he needed to instill in his cousin the necessity of telling him each and every thing he did in regard to the product they peddled. Each and every thing that affected Townsend with the business affected him, too.

“The pilot wants to get out of hauling contraband as soon as he finishes with this operation. He wants to go straight. All the backcountry strips in and around the Everglades he’s familiar with. Should he not be able to get into the strip we planned, he knows the other airstrips in the area where he can land. He knows everything coming and going. There’s no substitute for experience in this business.”

“The compensation I’ll pay him is more than generous.”

“You know, I might have trouble getting to the point, but your problem is that you don’t listen sometimes. I’ll say it again: there’s no substitute for experience.”

“Don’t lecture me about what you perceive as my faults. Understood.” His voice was raised. It was almost raised to the point that Hewlett might be thrown out of the restaurant by Li. The couple with the family looked over at Hewlett and Rosario arguing. Lee gave them a baleful look, and they turned away.

“There’s no way we can find a pilot with his experience in southern Florida; there’s no way we can find a plane that can handle that amount of cargo on a small strip like the one he’s got. There’s no one we can find that’s better; there’s simply no plane that we can find that’s better. The amount we’re hauling, for god’s sake, is worth more than some of the Latin American countries we’ll be flying over. Hell, if we pull it off, we could buy and sell a few Latin American countries. “

The waiter brought out Rosario’s omelet and orange juice, and as quickly as he came, he left. The omelet looked like the crescent moon he’d just seen in the park before walking to Mort and Saul’s. The office was a smoke-free environment, and when he had the itch to smoke, he’d sneak out and go to the park, where he’d sit on the park bench and light up. For years he’d given up smoking. Since Rosario had come on board, he found that he was smoking a pack a day. Tonight when he looked at the Surgeon General’s boxed warning on the cigarette pack about smoking being harmful to one’s health, he smiled to himself. More harmful fates could befall a man.

Picking up the Tabasco bottle, Rosario splashed the blood red sauce on the omelet. Silently, he took a bite of it. Having tasted it, he wasn’t satisfied. Splashing more Tabasco sauce on it, he took a large bite of the omelet.

“You expect me to give you the go-ahead on spending that kind of money for someone to bring in product?” He spoke with his mouth agape as he was chewing the omelet, small, yellow flakes of egg falling onto his napkin, the corner of the red napkin tucked into his collar.

“Yes, frankly I do. Look, Mr. Rosario, you told me to find the best pilot and the best plane to get the job done. That’s exactly what I did. I’d rather not be spending this kind of money, but there you have it. I did exactly what you wanted me to do. So don’t complain to me.” As he got these last words out, he stood up to leave. Li, like a Doberman that has suddenly sensed that his master has been threatened, rose when he saw Hewlett rise.

Rosario, who had just bitten into a morsel of his omelet, made a motion with his hands, the knife in his left hand and the fork with the morsel of omelet in his right hand, a motion as though pushing down spring-loaded toys, physically insisting that they both sit down. “It’s alright, Li.” A small piece of green pepper was stuck between his teeth. “Now, Paul, sit down. Please, sit down. We’re all civilized men here, aren’t we?” Slowly, Paul eased back into his chair. He was being spoken to as one speaks to a child. A trickle of sweat ran down his forehead and he felt the dampness of the collar of his polo shirt. “You’re being prematurely testy here. Have I ever said ‘no’ to you?” Now he seemed like a wounded father.

“As a matter of fact, you have.”

“C’mon, Paul, when have I said ‘no’ to you?”

“You said ‘no’ when I told you I wanted out. I still want out. I want out of this circus as soon as possible.”

“There’ll come a day when you can walk away, but right now you’re too valuable to our organization. You’re way too valuable. I can’t trust Townsend to make the right decisions like I can you. Slow down. You’re working up a sweat over nothing.”

“Am I?”

Rosario smiled. He reached for a toothpick from the dispenser on the table and picked at the piece of green pepper that was stuck between his lower incisors. He picked at the small morsel in his teeth. He didn’t bother to cover his mouth as he extracted the piece of pepper. With a flick or two, the morsel was gone. “There’ll come a day when you can walk away from all this, but not now. I can’t replace you. Besides, why would you want to leave? You’re making half again what you were before I came along.”

“When you can replace me, will you let me go in peace?”

“I will. You have my word on it.”

“Will the organization leave me alone?” In his heart, Hewlett knew they never would, no matter how much he wanted out.

“So long as you’re not a threat to them or me.”

“You know I’m not,” Hewlett paused. “How’d you know how much I was making?”

“There’s not a whole lot we don’t know about you. There’s not a whole lot we don’t know about all of you or your partners or your investment firm. That’s just the organization’s way of keeping people in line. Now you don’t want to step out of line, do you?” He took a bite his dwindling omelet and looked Hewlett squarely in the eyes. “Do you?” Whenever he looked Hewlett in the eyes, one seemed to be askew just a hair. Be it the right one, or the left one, he couldn’t tell. He noted that it was most pronounced when Rosario seemed tired. Short, a runt of a man, a crippled by a gimpy walk and a lazy eye, he could just imagine the cruelty that accrued as other schoolchildren taunted him during his formative years.

Hewlett just shook his head.

“Now is there something else I can do for you?”

“No. You know the only thing I want from you, and you won’t give it to me.”

“Oh, Paul. You’re as indispensable as a doctor to a patient who’s just had a heart attack. When I can replace you, I’ll let you go. Not before then. Are we clear on that.”

Hewlett nodded his head. “In the meantime, what do I tell Davis? If you don’t believe me, ask around. Ask Townsend. You might run into a couple of pilots who say they can do it from the list of pilots who’ve hauled for you in the past, but this time, they have no idea what they’re getting into in Colombia. Or the Glades for that matter. Skeeter Davis is special; Davis’ plane is special.”

“Listen, Paul, some of this product is practically pharmaceutical in quality. It’s so pure that it’s in crystalline rocks. You know how much that’s worth? Street prices will sky rocket. It’s of considerable more value than you thought when you spoke to Davis. That’s just between you and me. On the street, cocaine like this goes for one hundred and ten dollars or one twenty. I’ve even seen men of rather meager means cough up one hundred and thirty for it. For this kind of coke, I’ll gladly pay the man. I’ll pay him eight hundred thousand, but that’s it. And he’s not going to get any percentages. I’ve got another big haul coming up I could use him for. I’ll pay him just as much for it. With all that from two hauls, he should be able to retire a wealthy man. I’ll guarantee he can walk away from all this, but not until then. But to help pay for it, I’m going to pay you a point less. For both hauls. That’s what happens when you make decisions without consulting me first.”

“There was no way of consulting you. He gave me an ultimatum. You’re giving me an ultimatum. Just what am I supposed to do? You told me to go with the best, and I did.” In reality, though, Hewlett didn’t mind being on the losing end of things. He could care less about missing a point in the pay-off; what he wanted, what he dreamed of, was having his freedom. As things stood, he was hardly anything more than an indentured servant. He was still going to make a small fortune on the haul, and losing a point didn’t matter to him one way or the other as long as it kept Rosario and Davis happy. Oh, to be out of the business. To be out of the business entirely.

“No, you did the right thing. You’re still going to be a rich man by the time we move this stuff. Talk to Davis tomorrow. I want to fly down to pick it up next week. You’ll go with him. This kind of money needs to be handed out hand to hand. Guess who the courier is, Paul? Got any idea? You’ll be given an attaché case with a million in it, a million U.S. You give it to a man named Carlos. Carlos Buendia. You’re to give the money to Carlos and no one else. The product came to about a mill. For reasons of security, we’re going to handcuff the attaché case to your wrist. Carlos has the other key. He’s got a key to the handcuffs, and he’s got a copy of the key. You’ll also be holding Davis’ money, but it won’t be in the case.”

Resigned to losing money or something else of greater or lesser import when it came to dealing with Rosario, he said, “Carlos Buendia. I won’t forget.”

“How will I know it’s him?”

“Trust me you will.”

“Anything else?”

“No. You can go now.” No bell had run, but class was over. He was dismissed.

Outside, it was a warm and humid night. A cool breeze blew in from the Atlantic. Overhead, the stars appeared and paled in the presence of a waxing moon. In the underground parking lot beneath the investment firm, he had parked his beloved BMW. There was a hum in the air as he walked down Torrance Avenue, a backwater street that led to his office. With the incidental light from the towering apartments and office buildings and the streetlights, it was difficult to see the multitude of stars in the firmament. There was, however, the luminous skeleton of the moon reflected in the large panes of glass of some of the business establishments as he walked back to his car. It was no more that just a slip of the moon, a thin yellow crescent, rising up over the Atlantic. He looked at his watch: it was a quarter of nine. In a week’s time, he would be staring up at the same pallid moon, surrounded by the darkness of the night in the Colombian jungle.

In the parking garage, there were islands of light from the overhead fluorescent bulbs. His car was parked on the second level of the parking lot in the middle of the cement encasement. Walking down the ramp, there were no cars on the first level of the garage and just one besides his on the second level.

As soon as he saw his BMW, he saw two men trying to jimmy the door of it open. Without thinking, he yelled at them, “Hey fuckheads. That’s my car.” He began running towards them and the car. Wearing hoods, one of them reached down towards his belt, his hand returning with a gun in it. Hewlett was still fifty or sixty feet from them. The man fired his gun at Hewlett, the noise of the pistol sounding like a small detonation of a bomb in the concrete cubicle that was the parking garage. The bullet went far wide of Hewlett, but it was enough to make him stop in his tracks. “C’mon let’s get the hell out of here,” said the man who didn’t have the gun. They ran towards the other entrance of the parking garage, which was the ramp one drove up to get out of the parking lot. As their figures receded, the one with the gun turned towards Hewlett and fired one more time, not even close. After seeing the gun again, Hewlett made no attempt to chase them. Their footfalls echoed within the confines of the parking lot, then he heard an engine start somewhere on the ramp leading to the street. As soon as the car started, he heard car doors slamming shut, and then the squeal of tires as the vehicle they sped away into the fathomless night.

“So did you get a good look at them or not,” asked the police officer, a black man in middle age with receding hair, a peninsula of it left protruding down towards his eyebrows, perspiration gathering at the verge of his scalp. His partner, a young white man took down notes as they spoke. There were just the three of them in his private office at the investment firm, and the only sign of life was the flickering of the ticker tape machine that was on twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, measuring and doling out life in fractions of a dollar. Rust never sleeps; neither does crime nor murder. At least in Miami.

“No, like I told you, they were wearing hoods.” Palpitations from being accosted and being shot at were still present, the same palpitations he had had riding the roller coaster at Disney World when he was but a boy. “No more can I tell you than they were either black or white, tall or short. I just couldn’t see them.”

Hating guns; hating the message they implied; hating the violence they rendered, they were essential in his avocation. Though he dealt with dealers, none were crazy enough to pack one during their many dealings. Why bite the hand that feeds you? This might change all that. For as many guns and types of guns that he’d been around, not once had he ever been shot at. Not till tonight. He wondered if Rosario was in some way responsible.

“Do you have a gun?” asked the young police officer.

“I’ve got a Beretta revolver that I keep in the dresser in my bedroom. “

“I presume you have a permit for it?” inquired the black officer.

“I do. What’s this got to do with someone breaking into my car?”

“Just asking. Could we see the permit?”

“It’s in the same drawer as the gun. Really, what’s that got to do with what happened tonight, or for that matter, the price of corn in Iowa?” The two police officers looked at him as though he was some unusual specimen they’d come across on a field trip to the Glades.

“Was there any appreciable damage to the car?”

“Not that I could see. I think I caught them when they first got there. There’s a scratch on the door that wasn’t there before. But aside from that, I can’t see any damage.”

“You wouldn’t be carrying large amounts of money in the car, would you?”

“Of course not. We deal strictly in paper. We don’t deal in cash. Our clients write us checks. Just checks. They pay us to do their trading just in checks. And it’s only once in a blue moon that I’d have the check of a client in my car.”

“Do you have a safe on the premises?”

“Yes, but we just keep contracts in there. No cash. No jewelry or other valuable items. We’re in the investment business the last time I looked; we’re not jewelers.”

“No drugs in the car?” asked the black officer.

“Officer, do you think I’d tell you even if I did. For that matter, do you think I’d call you if I thought that was what they were after?”

“Well, this is a bit of a puzzle,” said the older police officer. “What year is your BMW?”

“It’s a ’64. My wife took the Mercedes in our divorce.”

“That must have been pretty painful,” said the older officer, with little empathy in his pronouncement. Looking at the holes of corrosion on the sides of the vehicle, the man said, “You should seriously think about getting rid of this beast before the engine block falls out.”

“It was painful enough to lose the Mercedes. And yes, I need to get this to the junkyard. It’s of some sentimental value.” Divorce! No one is left unscathed. “I’ll say this though: I met a man the other day who said never trust a man who’s not been through hell. He’d been married and divorced five times.” Suppressing a grin, the younger officer looked at the older officer who just kept staring at Hewlett like he was some long lost soul that he’d known in a previous lifetime but couldn’t place him in this one. Seeing that his senior partner saw no humor in what Hewlett said, he looked away and continued writing his report.

“One has to wonder why two thugs would want to rob an older vehicle, unless they thought there was something in it?” said the younger officer.

“What my partner was saying makes sense,” said the older officer. As the younger man kept taking notes, his partner stared at him with the intensity of a doctor who has just stumbled on a rare disease he was not expecting. The outer rings of the black officer’s irises were beginning to turn dark bluish-grey the way that only the irises of some elderly blacks do.

“Is there anyway we can wrap this up fairly soon? I’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

“Just one last question. If you have a gun, why weren’t you carrying it?”

Replying that he no longer felt a need to pack a piece; replying he hadn’t carried a piece in years; replying that he had thought of selling the gun, both officers left. Before they left, though, they reassured Hewlett that a police cruiser would start coming by on a regular basis to check for any vagrants or other types who might be breaking into vehicles. The younger officer told him that he should contact the building supervisor in the morning to see if there was something they could do to enhance security at the building. In the morning, they’d send a forensics team out to look for the bullet. Finding it, they might be able to match it to some other crimes that had taken place in the city. Thanking them as they left, Hewlett couldn’t help but feel that they thought he was lying to them in some fashion. He was almost sorry that he called them in the first place. When he finally arrived back home at his condominium, it was shortly before midnight.

As soon as they had left, Hewlett called Rosario from his office. Rosario had just returned from Mort and Saul’s. “You didn’t send anyone by to tinker with my car, did you?”

“What are you talking about Paul?”

Explaining to him that he had caught two robbers trying to break into his old BMW, Rosario said, “Paul, you’re getting delusional. I’ve been straight up with you.”

“You mean straight with you. Not straight up.”

“I told you once never to correct my English. I didn’t just get off the boat. I’ve been straight up with you. You have been straight up with me. Though you want out of this business arrangement, I’ve never threatened you in any way, have I? Well, have I?” Hewlett admitted he hadn’t, even though the threat was inherent. “Just why would I have anyone break into your car?”

“You tell me.”

“Be a man. You’re always such an old woman. Things happen. Talk and act like you have balls, for god’s sake. You’re just being paranoid. Ever since that first morning when I walked in your office, you’ve been as nervous as a girl caught in the act of losing her virginity. I’m a bit weary of it. At some point, you have to trust me. I’m sending Big Ben over to your office tomorrow. I want him watching the place for a week or so. Have you ever thought it might be somebody else? Somebody like the DEA?”

“No, that hadn’t crossed my mind just yet.”

“Well, think on it. The DEA. The FBI. They haven’t even got the integrity of my organization. It’s not beneath them to break into your car.”

“You’ve got a point.”

“Like I said, I’ll send Big Ben by tomorrow.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“I want to make sure that the DEA, or some other federal agency, isn’t watching us. Tomorrow, I’ll make the requisite calls for the extra product. Paul, you made the right call with Davis and his plane. I made a few calls. They all agree with you.”

“Big Ben, what’s he going to do?”

“He’ll be there just to observe things. Maybe one of your people has become suspicious. Tomorrow, I’ll make the calls to Colombia to get more product.”

“No one’s got a clue. It’s just Jake and me.”

“You can’t be too sure.” Without waiting for a response, he hung up the phone.