Capuchin Juiced Jazz
Most people don’t know that Miami has a Capuchin monastery. Such a place of quiet reverence and saintly service seems incongruous in this fast-moving, multicultural city teeming with hustlers and immigrants – all trying to make the American dream into a reality. Yet, hidden from view behind thickets of native trees and shrubbery, the monastery rests off U.S.1 in North Miami, so the tourists and residents crowding by on the highway suspect nothing and see only what seems to be a strip of land inaccessible to the public. Their only wonder may be why it hasn’t been developed yet. If something were to halt the rush of traffic in early morning, kill the engines, stop the music and talk shows on the radios, snuff the air conditioning, so the commuters had to step out of their cars into silence around the mysterious hammock, they would hear a soft peal of bells and ancient chants carried by male voices. But, the city keeps moving and the monastery remains all but invisible.
What people do know about Miami is its history of drugs, corruption and craziness. They’ve heard about the bales of marijuana and packets of cocaine or heroin that are washed upon the beaches by a tide of excess, that are packed into boats and planes, that have trade names and logos from their respective drug lords, whose fantastic fortunes are protected by machine-pistol toting thugs. They’ve heard about the corruption that sticks to the city like tropical rot, infecting the mayors, the commissioners, even the school board members, so anyone in public office is tainted as if they had all been tattooed in the same parlor. And they know about how crazy the city can get, rioting because a boy is returned to his father, anguished because in the one religion of Santeria the boy is a savior who can reverse the course of history; or how ballots cannot be counted even if they’ve been punched, or some people, even the dead, can vote many times.
People also know that Miami is a great place to relax and have fun. It’s famous for sports, music, food and its wonderful climate in winter. People can boat and fish in the Gulf stream, swim and surf in the ocean, lie on the beach and around pools, play golf, play tennis, hike, run and walk almost year-round in the bright sun. If they prefer to be spectators, every sport – hockey, football, baseball, soccer, basketball – is available. When the sun goes down, people can go clubbing and find whatever music they like, from salsa to disco to punk rock to rap to classical to jazz. They can also find any type of food they want – and all under the soft evening breeze.
Yet, in the middle of all the hustle, decadence and wild fun, the monastery of the Stigmata of Saint Francis exists.
Perry Bryan exists, too, and has existed for nearly fifty years, and has worked as a police detective in Miami for over twenty of those years. He’s seen all of the bad that he wants to see. Yet, he holds onto the good, so he’s a bit incongruous himself. He no longer believes in a personal god, but he sometimes goes to a Catholic mass because he finds the ritual soothing and quieting. He quit smoking years ago after many unsuccessful attempts, so he chews unsalted sunflower seeds in the shells for oral gratification. In the pockets of the Guayabara shirts and Hawaiian shirts he wears in deference to the climate, he carries packets of sunflower seeds, but he carries only cash in the pockets of the jeans he wears most of the time in deference to his job on the streets. He’s been married, but his only children are the ones he rescues from the streets. Years earlier he had discovered that his mind had the facility of making connections between seemingly unrelated events and could follow a trail of clues to a successful arrest and conviction, so he became a detective. He is an exceptional sleuth and amateur psychologist. He loves his work as much as he hates the crimes.
He hates no criminal more than the drug pushers, who prosper from the addicted misery of others. When he got a call that some members of a local branch of a Colombian cartel had been found snoozing, laid out like tipped-over barrels, on the floor of a warehouse in which were also found thousands of pounds of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, he felt elation. Such catches usually didn’t fall into the Metro squad’s handcuffs.
He felt good. The sky held a warm April sun, and the heavy summer rains wouldn’t begin for weeks.
When he got to the dockside warehouse, he encountered a mixture of official vehicles: vans into which the contraband was being loaded, a jailhouse transport for the suspects, police patrol cars, an ambulance into which a covered body was being loaded, and some unmarked DEA cars around which the agents were standing in their raid jackets as if they had been invited to a party that had been cancelled. He walked over to the disappointed partygoers and waved at a familiar face.
“Vincent, what’s the story here?”
“You’re on this, huh? Well, looks like someone spiked the punch for the cartel. The warehouse security guard looked in and saw these guys laid out on the floor and called Metro. We had a raid scheduled for early this morning, but by the time we moved in, your guys were already here. So we’re standing by for further instructions. We’ve been watching this cartel operation for a while and expected a big shipment with drugs, money and weapons. Looks like most of the drugs are here, but the money and weapons are gone. Puzzling, huh?”
“Suspects?”
“Not competition. They would’ve taken the drugs, too.”
“Sure.”
“So, we’re thinking straight-out robbery by an experienced gang.”
“What knocked out these guys?”
“Some kind of soporific, maybe methaqualone.”
“Delivery system?”
“That would be for your people to figure out since you’ve got the case.”
“Thanks for your thoughts.”
The Miami Herald reported the drug seizure in the next day’s paper. “Biggest Seizure of the Year!” rang the headline. “Five arrested, one dead from unknown causes,” added the subhead. The story said nothing about money or weapons except that none had been found.
Later that day Perry chewed sunflower seeds and drummed his fingers on his desk. The blood tests on all the suspects had registered a mixture of secobarbital and methaqualone. The one death, a skinny Colombian named Gerardo Salazar, had a large percentage of both drugs plus a level of alcohol intoxication three times the legal limit. The criminologists declared that both the coffeepots and water cooler were loaded with both barbiturates. Someone had brewed the cartel boys a sleepy-time surprise.
Cicero “El Puño” Altogracia, the one apparently in charge of the sleepy crew, was depressed. “Oh, man, I’m in a world of shit.” He moaned at the beginning of the interrogation.
Between chewing, Perry said, “Yeah, you’re going down for a long time for all those drugs, Cicero.”
“Fuck the drugs, man. That don’t mean nothin’. I can serve time sittin’ on nails.”
“So, what’s the hard-on for. You in love with Mr. Salazar?”
“You funny, cop. Geri was nadie.”
“Who fed you the sleeping powders?”
“Wish I knew, man. Then I could get outta the shit.”
“What is the shit, Cicero? What shit are you so worried about?”
“It sure ain’t the drugs. You guys nab some once in a while. We can live with that. Drugs we got mucho kilos.”
“Who are you afraid of?”
“El jefe.”
“Who’s that?”
“Yeah, right.”
“Why are you afraid? You missing something else? Money?”
Cicero hesitated, then muttered, “Yeah, money. Big money.”
“How much?”
“Don’t know exactly. Millions . . . five or ten . . . don’t know for sure. They never tell us how much. We just hold it for dealing.”
“What about guns? Why didn’t you have any guns?”
“We had ‘em. We had lots of ‘em.”
“What kind?”
“All kinds – pistolas . . . rifleros . . . escopetas . . . ametralladoras – todos.” Each time he named a gun type, Cicero made accompanying hand gestures indicating how each would be held to shoot it.
Perry questioned each suspect, one at a time, and the basic story was the same. They went to the warehouse to guard the stash and await the next morning’s deal. To pass the time, they played cards. Some of them had a few beers; Geri was drinking rum straight from a bottle with some limes as chasers. Then they got tired, made some coffee, but it didn’t seem to help. Then everyone went to sleep. They came out of their stupor in the paddy wagon, all except Geri, who never awoke. They all knew about the guns and guessed about the money, but only Cicero knew the extent of the financial loss.
“Ten million bucks, you say,” said Perry’s partner Detective Sam Munster. “Well, if it’s that much, it won’t be easy to hide. If we troll the streets, we should be able to pull up news of anyone who’s suddenly spending freely and living large.”
“El Puño didn’t say ten million for sure,” said Perry. “He said five to ten, but he wasn’t sure how much.”
Sam was quite different from Perry. Sam had been happily married for ten years, had two children that he loved, was still a young man, had a degree in criminology. Perry envied Sam’s success both as a quickly advancing detective and as a family man. Sam was bright and focused; he was also respectful of Perry’s status as a long-lived, seasoned detective with numerous serious cases notched on his belt. They held each other in mutual regard.
“What about the guns?” Sam said.
“I’ll notify our friends in the ATF, so they can be on the look out. Maybe they can set up some kind of sting to bring the guns in.
“Which leaves the MO. Pretty unusual. Risky. What do you think?”
“I agree. Lots could go wrong with a plan like that. How could the perps know that everyone would fade?”
“Right. So, I’m thinking that maybe Vincent was off target. Maybe these weren’t pros. Maybe they were just lucky amateurs with a wild scheme that happened to fall into place.”
They trolled. The streets yielded nothing. None of the usual suspects were on a spending spree. The usual pigeons said, “If I run across any wad of cash, I’ll call ya.”
Right.
Sitting in his unmarked car at the corner of Biscayne and 79th Street, chewing a pinch of sunflower seeds, Perry watched a familiar old, beat-up white van pull up to the curb. He thought, Why not? Never hurts to ask.
He crossed the street, spitting husks as he walked. He reached the van just as a brown-robed, middle-aged, dark-haired priest opened its driver’s side door and stepped down out of the van. “Father Paul,” Perry said, “how’s charity this morning?”
Father Paul’s hazel eyes looked up. “Lieutenant Bryan. Haven’t seen you in our chapel for a long time.”
“Crime never sleeps, never waits for my pleasure.”
“Nor charity for mine.”
“Father, are you missing any of your regulars? Anyone not showing up for handouts?”
“No, they all have to eat.”
“Did you hear about the big drug seizure?”
“I’m sorry. We don’t read the papers or watch television.”
“Just serve God,” Perry said, but regretted the hint of cynicism in his voice.
“And man,” Father Paul said, and Perry thought he caught a hint of sarcasm. “But then you do that, too, don’t you?”
Perry smiled. Yes, he did in a way, at least the laws of man, and, he hoped, by doing so served the greater humanity. Although. . . .
“Exactly what do you want to know, Lieutenant?”
“We seized a lot of drugs from a Colombian cartel.”
“That’s good.”
“But, some other crooks beat us to the scene and made off with money and guns.”
“That’s too bad.”
Perry smiled again. “You’re a good listener.” He was sincere.
“We have training, and I’ve been at this a long time.”
“So, keep an ear out for any news that might be of use. Can you do that?”
“Of course, and we’ll pass any news along, as long as it doesn’t come through the confessional.”
“Of course.”
Sam’s luck had been no better than Perry’s. “I took in Sobe, thought something might turn up there. Nothing. Then I probed some downtown clubs, some Grove clubs. Nothing. So I activated some snitches. Told ‘em to nose about.”
“I ran into Father Paul from the monastery. Told him to keep an ear open,” Perry said.
“The drummer monk?”
“The what?”
“'Drummer Monk' is his nickname on the street. Sometimes he goes to a jazz club and sits in on the drums.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah, the bartender at Tobacco Road told me that before Father Paul joined the priesthood, he had been a musician.”
“Never heard that.”
“I guess it’s his only vice.”
“Better that than some others that priests have been nailed for in this town.”
Nothing broke for weeks. The ATF in Miami turned up none of the missing weapons. Perry polled all the area banks for any suspicious deposits – the IRS requires that all deposits over $9,999.99 be reported as a matter of course – but nothing significant revealed itself. Even the DEA, which had been watching the known members of the cartel since the bust, reported no activity. Evidently not even the cartel members had any idea who had hit them and where the weapons and money might be. They seemed to have written the loss off as a cost of doing business.
Then the ATF called. Someone had unloaded quite a few weapons at a gun show in Arkansas. The variety of pistols, machineguns, rifles and shotguns reminded someone of the notice out of Miami, so the ATF had been notified. They had a Florida auto tag number, but it was stolen and attached to a red pickup truck. They would try to stop the truck on its way back to Florida.
The summer rains had begun. Perry hung up the phone and looked at the rivulets snaking down the window opposite his desk. Every few minutes a wind gust would splatter the rain against the pane and rattle it. The rhythm of the rain was hypnotic, and Perry felt drowsy. The city should replace that pane before a hurricane hits, he thought.
Then he stood up, stretched, and strolled to the coffeepot, poured himself a cup. He approached Sam’s desk. “Looks like we’re going to catch a break on that cartel case.”
Sam looked up without a lot of enthusiasm. “Great. I hope that doesn’t mean we’re going out in this storm.”
Perry smiled. “I suppose we could wait until it blows by and the heat returns along with the mosquitoes.”
“How did anyone live here before air conditioning and pesticides?”
“Lots of clothing and tobacco.”
The next day the ATF called again. “We’ve got him, but we can’t hold him long. Claims he drove someone else up in the truck. The other guy had the guns and paid him to drive him to Arkansas, but the dealer flew back. The truck seems to be his. Claims he borrowed the tags because he’d lost his. So, misdemeanor. That’s all. He only had a little over $500 in the truck. His fee plus expenses, he says. Do you still want him?”
“Yeah, hold him. We’ll be there soon.”
The driver Brad Huston was a little, wiry blue-collar unemployed. His only other arrest had been for marijuana possession a few years previously. He hadn’t had a regular job for half a year and had been presenting himself at pick-up areas for day laborers. That’s how he had hooked up with the gun dealer he called “Dave.”
Brad squinted and blinked a lot as he sat and talked opposite Perry and Sam. Brad said, “He walked up and asked if I had wheels. I said, ‘Yes.’ He asked if I would drive him to Arkansas for $500. I said, ‘Sure.’ I mean that money looked good for a few days driving, especially after all those minimum-wage, sweaty jobs I’d been doing. I got a wife and kids.”
Sam said, “What’s Dave’s last name?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Did he use a credit card?”
“Nope. Cash only.”
“Weren’t you worried about the cargo?”
“I didn’t ask. Beggars can’t be choosy. But I could tell that it wasn’t drugs. That’s all I was worried about.”
“What’d he look like?”
“Like you. I mean he was about your height, but skinnier. And he had black hair like you and dark eyes and dark skin. He was in his thirties.”
“What else?”
“He wore sunglasses most always and had a gold earring in his right ear and a tattoo on his left arm.”
“What was the tattoo?”
“I don’t know what you call it, but it was some kind of music symbol.”
“Could you draw it?” Sam said and pushed paper and pencil toward him.
“I could try.” He drew roughly what looked like a treble clef.
“Good. What did he talk about?”
“He didn’t talk much. He had some weed, which he shared, so he was stoned most of the time. But he had a pair of drumsticks. He’d find a music station that he liked and he’d drum along on the dash.”
“You didn’t mind?”
“His money was good. He paid for everything. Beside my truck’s pretty old. He wasn’t gonna harm it none.”
“What kind of music did he like?”
“Blues, jazz, I guess. It’s not my preference, but he . . . .”
“Was paying.”
“Right.”
Driving afterwards through the drilling, battering rain, Sam said, “You know, it occurred to me that we have a contact who might know this drummer.”
“Father Paul,” Perry said. “I was thinking the same thing.”
They detoured by the monastery, dashed in out of the downpour, showed their credentials and were ushered into a small, not-air-conditioned conference room, sparely furnished with a wooden table and five wooden chairs and a large crucifix on the wall. Outside one deep window, the rain splattered. Father Paul soon came in and sat down opposite the two detectives. “Gentlemen, I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
Perry said, “Father, we have a small break in the case.”
“Good.”
“I hear you’re a bit of a musician.”
“A bit.”
“Hear you sit in sometimes in the jazz clubs.”
“Occasionally.”
“Do you know a jazz drummer with a treble clef tattoo on his left arm, wears an earring?”
“Sounds like Freddy Gallego. He’s good, can really pop the chops.”
“Seen him lately?”
“No, but I really don’t play that often, haven’t in nearly a year, since before last Christmas.”
“Where does Freddy play usually?”
“Oh, anywhere really. But he was in a band that had a long gig at the Purple Parrot.”
“Still there?”
“Don’t know, but I doubt it.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because the leader of that band called me this week, asking if I could fill in.”
“Will you?”
“Of course not. My job is here, as much as I love music.”
Sam said, “What’s that quote, ‘If music be the food of gods, play on’?”
Father Paul said, “I believe that’s ‘If music be the food of love, play on.’ Shakespeare. However, in my humble opinion, there’s nothing closer to heaven on earth than music.”
Perry said, “A heroin addict might dispute that claim.”
“Only when he’s high. After, he’s in hell again.”
“Touché.”
By the time the detectives reached the Purple Parrot, the rains had ended, leaving the twilight world glistening. They had to jump a few puddles to reach the door of the club, where a bouncer met them. Their credentials got them through the door and into the manager’s office. He was an old man who smoked cigars; Perry envied his long-lived persistence. He directed them to the leader of the band, whose members were just beginning to warm up for the evening’s first set.
The leader was a thin, but with a slight potbelly, middle-aged, pale, blond jazz warrior. His hair was slicked back. His mustache was trimmed. He didn’t smile. “Cops.” He said when they showed their badges. “I smelled ya when ya came in.”
Sam said, “Got a good nose, do you?”
“Yeah, tells me you’re looking for Freddy Gallego.”
“Why would you think that?”
“The big cartel fade away.”
“Freddy’s idea?”
“So he said.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“Freddy blows a lot of air.”
“If not Freddy, who?”
“Don’t know. Freddy’s got lots a shady friends.”
“When’s Freddy due back?”
“Not. Said he’s going north, Windy City, Philly, Big Apple.”
“Sit down. Tell us what you know, then we’ll let you go.”
Freddy had told him a wild tale. A bunch of amateurs – just like Perry surmised – had cooked up a scheme to get the cartel’s money. Most were lower level musicians not destined for stardom, but someone had told one of them about a warehouse full of drugs and money. They pooled all the downers they could come up with, mixed them and spiked the water cooler and coffeepots in the cartel’s storage site. They took all the money and guns and a little of the drugs, just for personal use. They got away clean. Only one thing had gone wrong. The guy with most of the money in a sports bag had subsequently been pulled over by the police, but before that happened he had managed to ditch the money somewhere where no one would find it. Freddy said he didn’t know where, but he didn’t really care because the doing of the deed was the thing that mattered.
In the car, Perry said to Sam, “If this story gets out, all those guys are dead men. The cartel will get them, one after the other.”
“True.”
“So, for now, let’s make it our secret. I want to check traffic stops for the night of the heist.”
The only musician stopped the night of the heist was a black trumpeter named Brewster Wright, pulled over for erratic driving and a busted taillight. The next day when Perry and Sam found him at the address given on his DMV identification, he was reluctant to talk.
“I have no idea what you guys talkin’ ‘bout. I was jus’ drivin’ round that night.”
“April 16th?”
“Tha’s right.”
“How come you’re so sure of the date?”
“Didn’t you say the sixteenth?”
“But why are so sure it was that night?”
“You tryin’ t’ confuse me.”
Perry said, “Listen, Brew, we don’t want to bust you. We know what happened. We know you and Freddy Gallegos and some other bums got the best of the cartel. That’s cool, ok. We don’t mind that at all. We know what happened to the guns. They’re no longer in Miami, so that’s cool, too. The only thing we don’t know is where did all the money go? That’s what you got to tell us if you want us to leave you alone. Otherwise, we keep poking around, and if we do that, the cartel will catch on eventually. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah, sure, I know.”
“So, where’s the money?”
“We each took all we could and put it in our pockets. I guess we all had tens of thousands on our persons. The rest we crammed in a bag. I put that in my car and drove off. We were gonna split it later.”
“So, where is it?”
“I don’t know. You see when the patrol car started shadowing me, I got scared, so I zipped down a side street and tossed the bag over a wall. When they pulled me over, I got the ticket. That’s all. It was dark. I was scared. I can’t remember exactly where I tossed it. If I could, I would go back and get it.”
That day Perry checked a map of the neighborhood where the traffic stop had taken place. He was looking for a big wall. He found several. One, especially, was interesting. Then he checked his bank sources for accounts that wouldn’t be audited by the IRS. One had had a deposit of over three million dollars. That was very interesting.
The next morning, he called on Father Paul again at the monastery hidden behind the native foliage and the wall. Again they sat in the small conference room, which was surprisingly cool without air conditioning.
Perry smiled and said, “Have you had any large contributions lately, Father?”
“We do get some unusual donations here.”
“Where’d it come from?”
“Anonymous.”
“No check?”
“No, cash only.”
“Sort of dropped out of the sky?”
“God works in mysterious ways. Do you think it’ll rain again today?”
“Of course, Father. Like clockwork.”
END
"Capuchin Juiced Jazz" was first published in A Collection of Nickel-plated Angels, 2006. It has been slightly revised. It is my first attempt at writing a mystery. Below are some items related to this blog.
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