Who'll Stop The Rain: (Book One Of The Miami Crime Trilogy) by Don Donovan

dare. Up till
then, I'd never tried anything like that, never ventured into the shadowed,
chancy depths of the underworld, although I'd seen it portrayed in countless
movies on our VCR at home. It was a seductive world, the world of Tony Montana,
of living and dying in LA, of a thousand cheap crooks and feared bosses.
    The world, Chico, and everything in
it.
    Back
then, I was too young to grasp the real meaning of those movies, but they
nevertheless carried me away with their images and their in-your-face attitude.
They excited me, thrilled me like nothing else ever did. Taught me if you want
something, you take it. You don't take no for an answer. And you can never have
enough, because the more you get, the more power you have. And power is the
real aphrodisiac.
    Those
unguarded bicycles were like another man's horse in the Old West. His most
valued possession, and God help the man who steals it. The idea of boosting
those bikes was a big step, an open portal into darkness, beckoning us to slide
across it and commit to a life on the other side.
    We
looked back at the bikes, then once more at each other, each of us waiting for
the other to take the initiative. However, we'd already crossed the line. Mentally, that is, even though we weren't
aware of it at the time.
    I
knew instinctively I didn't want to end up on a dead-end street like my father —
or rather, like my mother told me about how he ended up — digging sewers
for the city, scraping together a few bucks a day to survive, just so he could
abandon his pregnant wife and go off and drink himself to death. What I didn't
know, though, was how I'd been pointed in this dark direction almost since
birth.
    Little
Petey and I had left our innocence behind in those few minutes on the corner of
Bertha and Venetia, knowing what we were going to do. There was really no
choice, now that I look back on it. At that tender age, we had arrived at our
date with destiny.
    Finally,
after a few seconds, I said, "Let's grab 'em." Hell, one of us had to
say it. It might as well have been me.
    We
ran up to the bikes and looked around. No one in the vicinity. I got on one and
Little Petey grabbed the other. As I took off, I looked over my shoulder and
saw him struggling to get on the bike in front of the house. He was shorter
than I was and his feet barely reached the pedals. He wobbled on it, trying to
get forward movement. Meanwhile, kids ran out the front door screaming and
confronting him. I kept pedaling as fast as I could, but he never got away.
    So
happens he ratted me out, just like I thought he might. The cops came by our
house the next day, but I'd already ditched the bike, so they couldn't make
anything stick. Next time I saw him, I beat him up.
    I
was ten years old.
    I
heard Little Petey died a few years ago, killed in a knife fight in prison.
Raiford, I think it was.

 
    ≈ ≈ ≈

 
    Trey Whitney's plea penetrated this memory, like a dismal whine deep
in the mist, snapping me back to the present.
    "I
said I don't have that kind of cash." he repeated.
    "Motherfucking
welcher," I snarled.
    I
grabbed him by the arm and jerked him off his stool. The tall table shook,
causing Sharma's drink glass to overturn and shatter on the floor. Margarita
stuff splashed onto Trey's expensive slacks. A couple of heads at the bar
turned at the sudden disruption.
    As
I led him to the door of the men's room, he said, "No, wait. Logan.
Wait."
    I
pulled him inside, and he almost tripped as he flailed through the door. The
men's room was empty.
    "Waiting
time's over. Mambo wants his eighty-one K."
    "Jesus, Logan. That's a lot of cash. I
don't have —"
    "Fuck you. You've had plenty of time.
You've owed him for at least two months. I'm here to collect and no
bullshit!"
    I looked him straight in the eye, waiting for a
reply. He knew the score. You don't pay your gambling debts, you take a
beating. Simple as that. And at this point in my life, I didn't want to have to
be the one giving him the