Em nodded. “But we’re involved. You’ve opened two pieces of Rick Fuentes’s mail and every time you do you just get deeper.”
James threw his hands up. “Okay. Let’s get rid of his fucking mail. Take it back to him, dump it, tell him it blew out of the truck-”
“James, settle down.” I wanted time to think. This wasn’t a time to make irrational decisions. “Those two bruisers would have shown up regardless. Angel would have had to shoot one of them, even if we hadn’t opened the mail.”
“Yeah. But, Skip, we take his mail back tonight. That stuff is bad luck.”
Angel kept his steady gaze out the window. “Do you need Angel anymore tonight?” he asked.
I thought about it. Obviously the man made one hell of a bodyguard. “No. We’ve probably got you in enough trouble for one night.” I went to my bedroom, pulled down Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. One of my favorite childhood poems is in that book. It’s about a magical eraser. When a young girl makes fun of the poet for thinking he has a magical eraser, he erases her. I needed that eraser right now. I pulled fifty bucks from the inside of the dust jacket, checked to make sure I still had two hundred dollars left, and went back into the living room, handing the bill to Angel.
He tucked it in his pocket and nodded to us, walking out the door and never looking back.
I shouted after him. “Do you want a ride?”
He just shook his head and kept on walking.
“Strange dude,” James said.
“Thank God for the strange dude,” Em said.
“Amen.” I said it softly, but with feeling.
CHAPTER THIRTY
W E DIDN’T CALL AHEAD. We both decided it was better to surprise him, and given the fact that we had some very pertinent information, I assumed he’d see us. We got to the guardhouse and he wasn’t home.
“I believe they are out for the evening.” The stone-faced guard dismissed us and we pulled out of the drive.
“Now what?”
“Maybe they went to dinner. Maybe they’re shopping.”
“A late dinner maybe.”
The only bar close by served cracked crab and at first James refused to go in. “Isn’t it bad enough I have to live with that stench eight hours a day?” Finally he relented and we went in and ordered two drafts. A handful of patrons around us used small forks and crab crackers to extract the meat from the crustaceans. James shuddered.
“We need a plan.” I put a dash of salt in my beer. I’ve found it gives cheap beer more flavor.
“Things are not good, my friend. I’m usually the one with the plan. When you have to come up with the plan, things aren’t good.”
“I don’t care who comes up with it. We need one. Listen to me, James. We’ve involved Em and Angel. It’s up to us to get them-and ourselves-uninvolved.”
“Dude. We were there when someone was killed. It was our guy who did the shooting if you remember. You don’t get uninvolved from a killing.”
“We don’t know anything. The shooting was to save our asses. We can make that case.”
“What if no one believes us?”
“We try, James.”
“But after tonight, if we meet with Rick Fuentes, what then? What if he tells us something? You see? We’re headed into the belly of the beast. We’re constantly involving ourselves further and further. It’s like we want to know what we’re involved in. And after you find out what kind of a mess this is, you can’t pretend you don’t know anything.”
He was right. I was afraid for Em, for James, for myself, and even for Angel. And I was afraid for Vic Maitlin. I didn’t want to make too strong a case to James or Em, but I had an opportunity to return a favor, and I prayed Vic was still alive so I could at least have the chance. I really wanted to keep going. This was like a really good Hardy Boys mystery, except it involved people I knew. And it involved me.
“What do you want to do?”
He stared at the beer, then took the short glass and downed it in one single gulp. “I want the rest of our money. And I guess we’re just going to have to see Rick Fuentes to get it. This is a business, Skip. I lost sight of that. Somebody is trying to screw with my business before it’s even off the ground. It’s time to show a little backbone. Let’s see what the Cuban financier has to say.” He smiled at me and ordered two more beers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
He was home when we called.
“You’ve got more information?”
I hesitated. “We do, but we’d like to see you personally.”
“No problem, I’ll alert the front gate.”
“Mr. Fuentes?”
“Yes?”
“No gun this time.” I said it firmly, but felt like it was more of a plea. I couldn’t deal with another gun tonight.
He was silent.
“This visit involves our business. We’re business people. There’s no point in waving a gun around.”
“Okay. No guns.” The man sounded exactly like the Fantasy Island guy, Ricardo Montalban.
“Oh, and one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“We’d like to collect the rest of our money.”
“Your money.”
James was right. It was our business. “The $2,500 you owe us. We did watch the building.”
“The gate will let you through.” He hung up the phone.
“He didn’t sound happy about the money situation, James.”
“Skip, there are going to be a lot of things he’s not happy about tonight.”
We pulled through the gate and parked the truck.
“Do you think the big guy with the greasy hair is up there with him? What if he’s up there just waiting to kill us?”
I’d considered it. “James, if Fuentes wanted the rest of that mail, he could have asked us for it. We told him we had it. Instead, these two goons went to Jackie and asked about it. If they’re in with Fuentes, he would have told them we had all the mail. I think they were by themselves.”
He thought for a moment. “Skip, they obviously are part of this Cafe Cubana thing. The guy was really upset, finding out we had the donor list. Fuentes and these two guys are involved, and just going up there tonight could put us in a world of shit.”
“Yeah.” I knew we were possibly walking into the lion’s den, but there was no other choice. We were being hunted and we had to find out why. “Jackie Fuentes said that the two overweight Cubans had visited her house a number of times when her husband lived there. Somehow they were connected with Fuentes.”
We got out of the truck and James and I retrieved two boxes of mail from the back. I started to pull the back door down as James yelled.
“Hold on. We can’t give him the Cafe Cubana envelope.” He held it up like it was slimy and untouchable. “Come on, amigo. It’s torn open. Christ, we cannot, cannot go to this guy with another piece of opened mail.”
“We didn’t see a problem with this when we opened it. Ah, fuck it.” I took the offending manila envelope from his fingers and tossed it in the back of the truck. “Hell, he doesn’t know what mail came to Jackie’s house. Now, pick up the box and let’s get rid of this other stuff.” I pulled down the back door of the truck, leaving the brown envelope lying by itself in the middle of the floor.
We entered the magnificent lobby where an entirely new arrangement of hundreds of flowers blossomed from the vase in the center of the vast room. I glanced at the vivid painting on the wall and marveled at the details. Seahorses and clams, neon fish with flashing eyes, and wispy strands of plant life all worked together in a potpourri of colors. We rode the elevator in silence, neither of us wanting to concentrate on what or who might be behind Rick Fuentes’s door.
He answered the door looking as if he’d stepped off the cover of GQ. Gray linen slacks broke over highly polished black alligator shoes. He wore a black silk shirt, open at the collar, and a narrow silver necklace with a simple mother of pearl cross. In my jeans, Dive Bahama T-shirt, and sandals, I felt woefully underdressed.
“Gentlemen.” He let us in. “You’ve brought something?”