“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,”