J AMES FINALLY SPOKE. “We don’t know anything. We can’t possibly be any problem for you.”
The jittery man with the greasy hair grabbed my half of the papers and leafed through them.
“Cafe Cubana.” He glanced at his partner then back to us. “What do you know about Cafe Cubana?”
“Nothing. Nothing but what we’ve read. A coffee shop with Cuban coffee.”
“Jesus Christ. What do you have?” He shuffled the papers in front of his gun-toting sidekick. “These are the donors.” He looked back at me. “How the hell did you get these papers?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It was part of the mail that Mr. Fuentes left at his other house. Honestly, we were told to store them in this storage unit.” I watched the gunman the entire time I answered. If he so much as twitched, I was prepared to throw myself on the ground.
“This,” he shook the stack of papers, “this was not supposed to be for your viewing. This was to be mailed somewhere else.” The guy was getting red in the face with beads of sweat dotting his cheeks.
James was frozen. His complexion was almost gray, and I could see fear in his eyes. For good reason.
“The official prospectus calls for Cuban baked goods, Cuban sandwiches, and, of course, the coffee.” The mouth held his gun in front of him with his right hand, pointing the barrel at me. “Maybe the two of you would like to invest in our little venture?”
James’s dad would have invested in Cafe Cubana if he’d had fifty bucks to his name, because it was right up his alley. A new business venture, a new chance to reinvent himself. But he never had the fifty bucks and he wasn’t around any more.
I tried not to concentrate on the barrel of the gun, which started looking more like a cavern than a tunnel.
“I think we’ve invested in one too many businesses already.” I watched James, who was now sitting on the ground and shaking his head.
The greaser, with papers in hand, leaned close and I could smell his foul cigar breath. “You were never to have seen these. This changes everything. Both of you, get up. Pick up all those papers, envelopes, and boxes and put them in the trunk of the Buick over there.” I hesitated, still not believing this scenario. Apparently I was moving too slowly.
“Now!” The gunman shouted. “I’ll shoot you, and your friend will have to clean that mess up too. Do you understand?”
James struggled to his feet, and I tried to fathom a way to knock the gun out of the man’s hand. It was only a dream. This was no time to be brave.
“You won’t shoot anybody. Because if you don’t lay down the gun, I’m going to blow the back of your head off. Do you understand?”
Angel, big, black, and menacing, had a gun in his hand and it was pointed at the back of the mouth’s rather large head.
The big-mouthed man spun around, his right arm stiff and the pistol aimed at Angel’s midsection. It was a split second and it seemed to last forever. Angel squeezed the trigger, and I swear I could see it in slow motion. The explosion thundered in my ears and I thought I saw fire belch from the barrel of his pistol. The Cuban jumped into the air and swatted with his left hand like he was fending off a wasp. He came down on his hip and crumpled there on the asphalt pad outside Jackie Fuentes’s storage unit. Blood ran freely, a stream of the sticky, red fluid heading toward a drain.
“Jesus.” The greasy guy’s head swiveled from Angel to James, back to Angel and then to me.
James didn’t move, but tried to speak. “A…” He said it again. “A…” Finally he got it out. “Angel. You killed him.”
Angel looked down, squeezing his eyes shut for just a moment. Then he leveled the pistol at the other Cuban. “Would you like to try something?”
The man was wide-eyed, frozen in his spot.
Angel shook his head. “I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “James!” He seemed to snap out of his trance. “Pick up the mail. Get it into the back of the truck.”
We threw the mail into the truck in less than sixty seconds, and I pulled down the sliding door. Angel stood still, his gun aimed at the Cuban’s head. The man never moved an inch. He just kept breathing heavily-like he’d run two miles.
James and I jumped into the cab, and Angel backed away from the man, finally climbing into the passenger side.
“What the fuck do we do? Just drive away?” James seemed frozen, his hand clutching the truck key.
I shoved him. “Hey, it was self-defense. And there’s still one of them alive. I’ll like our chances a lot better far away from here, James. Come on.”
He turned the key and stepped on the gas and the truck threw gravel thirty feet from where he spun the tires. I was happy we’d left the gate open. We hit the road forty seconds later and never looked back.