“So if you don’t have stuff, you learn how to leverage everyone else’s stuff?”
“I should have the business degree.” He watched the street signs carefully and finally jerked the truck to the right, following a winding road. “Skip, you lack vision. With you it’s all nuts and bolts. I like that, don’t get me wrong. Someone has to sound the alarm once in a while, right or wrong. Someone has to ask about the fiscal responsibility of a certain project. But-” he braked for what looked like a low-riding, racing-yellow Maserati that came popping out of a side street, “but someone has to have the ideas. If we can’t afford stuff that people will buy, we’ll haul and store people’s stuff. The guy who started Waste Management started with one truck, Skip. He hauled people’s stuff. He’s now worth about a gazillion dollars.”
“Body parts, James. Who would have thought that body parts would be part of people’s stuff?”
He didn’t say anything. We’d been avoiding the subject for a while. It was weird enough to have the finger riding in the rear of the truck, but the class ring made it even stranger. And I was feeling a lot of guilt about not calling Em. She had arranged the job and probably should be aware of what had happened.
“It’s through those gates.” James pointed at a guardhouse to the right. There was another side business. The security companies that guard people’s stuff. The problem with my company was that in my assigned territory, Carol City, no one had stuff worth guarding. I needed to be selling security systems in Bal Harbor or Indian Creek Village. Someone was making a fortune right here.
The guard called ahead and got approval. He handed James a small map and pointed out the condo about an eighth of a mile back. “Mr. Fuentes informed me you were delivering some mail to this address. We’ll expect to see you back at the gate within, let’s say, half an hour?”
James bristled. “That depends on Mr. Fuentes.”
The elderly, uniformed guard stared at him under the shiny bill of his blue cap. “Half an hour, sir. If it’s longer, please ask Mr. Fuentes to call the guardhouse.”
We pulled away. “Mr. Fuentes-half an hour. Fucker practically threatened us.”
“Just protecting people’s stuff, James.”
He was silent and sullen. We pulled up in front of a pale stucco and brick building and parked in a guest-only spot.
“Well, pardner, who’s going to carry the mail?”
It was a moonless night, bright lights bouncing off the water on the shore side of the towering structure. I could only imagine what it looked like from thirty stories up.
James opened the sliding truck door and I picked up the box with most of the mail, the opened manila envelope with the severed digit lying on top. I shuddered.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night…”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s just get this over with.” I never would have done this by myself. There’s courage in a crowd, even if the crowd is only two.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
T HE DOORMAN POINTED US TO AN ELEVATOR on the far side of the spacious lobby. A gigantic vase of multicolored fresh flowers sat on an onyx table in the center of the vestibule, and luxurious couches and rich mahogany-colored leather chairs surrounded the table. On the wall was a painting that had to measure fifteen by ten feet. Thick textures of muted greens, yellows, and blues formed an underwater collage, with plants and tropical fish etched on canvas for eternity. I’m not a big fan of art, but I stopped to admire the sheer expanse of the piece.
“Come on, man. Half an hour, remember?” James was at the elevator, pointing at his watch.
“We’re just going to hand him the envelope?”
“I think we owe him a quick explanation.”
“What? We’re hauling your stuff to be stored and in the process we opened some of your mail?”
The door slid silently open, and we stepped inside. Plush carpeted walls hushed the sound of doors closing and cables shooting us to the top. In less time than I hoped for, the doors opened and we looked out on a birch-paneled hallway.
“This is going to be very strange, James.”
“Very.”
We walked down the thick, heavy carpeting, looking for his door. There were four units per floor and Fuentes’s was the last. James pushed the buzzer on the door and we waited. An interminable amount of time passed. Finally the door swung open and we were face to face with Rick Fuentes.
“You have mail for me?”
I was immediately taken with his angular face, his deep green eyes, and his steel gray hair. The man looked like a matinee idol a couple of years past his prime. His Latin features and deep tan added to the look as he studied us, a puzzled expression on his face.
I looked at James, and he had his mouth half open, nothing coming out.
“Apparently your mail isn’t being forwarded.” I shrugged my shoulders, the envelope heavy in my hand. “We were asked-hired to take it to a storage unit, and-”
“You decided to bring it my attention instead?” There was no denying a Cuban accent. “And this is all the mail you were hired to pick up?” He motioned to the envelope.
James was staring at me, waiting for my next move.
“No. There’s a lot more in our truck. This package, this envelope seemed to be leaking something and we thought maybe something had broken. So we opened it.”
“My mail? You opened it?”
“Yes.”
“And was something broken?” He made no move to invite us inside. I was glad. There was still a chance to race down the hall, jump on the elevator, and make a clean get away.
“Mr. Fuentes, we found a finger. Here.” I thrust the envelope into his hands. I desperately wanted to walk away from it all. I motioned to James who still appeared to be frozen.
“A finger?” He peered into the envelope, then reached in, pulling out the severed digit. His eyes grew wide. Dropping it on the marble entranceway, he backed into his condo. “What do you want? How could you do something this hideous?”
“Mr. Fuentes, we didn’t do anything. We thought it was something you should see. There’s a letter-”
“What do you want?” His voice was higher, louder than before. James shifted his gaze between Fuentes and me.
“Nothing. What I want to do is leave.”
I turned and grabbed James by the arm.
“Young man?”
I turned back. He had a revolver in his hand and it was leveled about crotch high.
“Please come in. Now.”
I should have kept on walking, but I didn’t. We followed Rick Fuentes into his condo.
CHAPTER TWELVE
W E SAT AT A CARVED MAHOGANY TABLE in ornate chairs. He’d deposited the finger somewhere else, but the letter and the class ring sat in front of us, a reminder of how our first job had become a lot more complicated than we anticipated. The girlfriend had served coffee-deep, rich, stay-awake coffee that you could almost chew. There was no chance I was going to sleep tonight, coffee or not.
“So you see,” James had finally found his voice, “we’re on our first hauling job. That’s it. And we seriously know nothing about your mail. If we did, we’d tell you.” The handgun lay on the table in front of Fuentes, another reminder that we certainly weren’t out of the woods yet.
“And Jackie knows nothing of this? She was to open all my mail.”
“We can only speculate. She didn’t seem to.”
He frowned and picked up the blue-stoned class ring, rubbing the jewel with his thumb. “Do you know whose ring this is?”
“No. I only know that Skip and I graduated that same year from the same school.”
He took a deep breath, squinting at us. He didn’t know whether to trust us or not, but I could sense he needed to trust someone.
“It’s my son’s ring.” There was a tremor in his voice.
“Your son?”
“Victor.”
Victor. There was no Victor Fuentes in our class. I didn’t know everyone personally, but the name certainly rang no bell. I looked at James and he shook his head.