Work Text:
Bacardi 151
It was late. Long past the casual stop-for-a-drink crowd. Those left were the hard partiers, the serious drinkers, the drunks, and the devastated. The canned music was in high gear since the blues guitarist had left the small stage and the volume was pushing the sound system to distortion. The night’s drinking had been a dark, calm pool of quiet. Three of us drinking, talking about work, trading stories of past exploits, busts, the guys that couldn’t cut it, and the ones that didn’t make it out alive. It was the kind of night I expected. Nothing new – just burying the past In solidarity and alcohol. Like a friend of mine says: “when the water’s high and the waves are big sometimes all you can do is be with.” We, my partner, Rico Tubbs and I, were being with our commanding officer.
Lieutenant Martin Castillo had only been with the department a few months when shit suddenly got weird. Intensely weird. There was a ‘bad wind blowing’ thing that came with him. Or… that’s not right… it was like shooting pool with the normal players and then this guy in black walks in -suddenly sharks come out of the woodwork. The sharks were always there in the bar but they overlooked you. They'd decided you weren’t in their league so they left you to play your game on that table next to the bathroom while they went about their business on the big slate in the back. Yeah, Marty came to town and the fish got bigger, kilos hit triple digits, the cash rolled into the sixes and sevens, and the knives came out. A lot of the blades were pointed directly at our new boss - who mostly swatted them away like mosquitoes. But this last one… shit!
Any case that starts as one thing and becomes something completely different is never, ever a good thing. You gotta know who you’re fighting – otherwise you’re in the ring with Larry Holmes wearing your party shoes and you’re punched out. Working undercover and keeping a reign on drugs, prostitution, and gambling in a 2700 square mile jurisdiction was never a cake walk. It was always a day at the circus with way too many clowns but the past week could only be called a successful disaster. We’d been looking to clean up a washtub of bad cops, when we ran smack into a big old Maytag of CIA backed Organized Crime with dirty laundry flapping on the line. One of those pieces was Marty’s ex (presumed-dead) wife.
It gut punched him. We all knew it, saw it in his actions – the telling preoccupation with his watch, heard it in his voice – smoothly controlled, never falling out of a coy tenor. While the photo of his ex-wife had been on the Ops-Con table, his eyes flicked to it with a stopwatch regularity, the knife – tick – sliding further – tick – with every – tick – glance. I wanted to get my hands on the bastard that would play such a game with lives. Sometimes, Martin’s eyes would find mine… and I knew he knew… and I think my outrage gave him solace. I hope anyway.
So, I came out of the john to find Rico making eyes with a cutie at the end of the bar. Swear to God – leave the man alone for five minutes and every babe in the bar will flutter by and take up residence beside that lighthouse smile. He was so deep into the flirt I had to tap the bar beside him.
“Hey,” I laughed, “where is he?”
Without leaving the cocoon of intimacy with the red-head, he said, “Outside on the deck. Claimed he wanted some air.”
I rapped my knuckles on the bar again, rousing the sleepy bartender, “Got coffee, pal? Throw some in a to-go will ya? Put it on his tab.” I nodded at Tubbs, who glanced up and smiled.
We’d discussed it while Marty was out of the car seeing his Ex and her family onto the turboprop. A private plane – yeah there was a story there but we weren’t gonna get it. Not tonight. Anyway – we decided to offer a trip to the Keys, just the three of us. Rico would card the tab, then he and I would split it later. Marty fussed at first but shut it down when Tubbs quoted some Buddhist BS about giving and taking, then called him “Mar-teen” – which melts that Chicano resolve for some reason – and we got our way.
‘Caesar’s Lost Pier’ was the perfect place to get your blue-yahs out without an audience; tourists did not frequent dives like this. Tourists and The Beautiful People could smell glitz and this place didn’t have a speck of glitz anywhere. One side of the boxy building faced the Intracoastal and had a deck that stretched the length of the building with a walkout to a dimly lit pier. Pier… hell… it was an old fishing dock with six berths turned into railed, customer friendly look-outs. People always wandered out to the water on the plank walk because the beach here was that limestone rocky shit that juts out all over the Keys.
I went out the side door and made my way down the walk; if he happened to be wrapped up in some honey I didn’t want to interrupt that flow. God knows, that’s what I did when I found myself on the other side of a verified Ex-Wife. For a while, the Bikini League saved my sanity. The regular hookups helped me forget how lonely I was and how much I’d lost until I could deal with reality and let go of being married.
Marty could use that release – but he’d never take it. He was so fucking controlled and so fucking righteous – he would cut off a piece of himself before surrendering to such base desires. I hurt for him. And, truthfully, I was pissed at him – just a little. He could have fought for her. He could have been ‘the lesser man’ for once in his goddamned life. At least tell her. Tell her he still loved her; never stopped loving her. Tell her he had never moved past the boundaries of their vows - the scars of his loss. At the very least give her an option that she might choose… but no. Not Martin. Not the steel and stone warrior of law. He had stood, like a shooting range target, in Ops-Con – hands clasp in front of him – “she’s my wife”. A carved Buddha, acknowledging the world’s suffering but never his own. God-fucking-damn him.
Walking carefully with the brim-full coffee, I could see that he wasn’t out on the pier. A line of Bose speakers on the patio hummed the 70s playlist without distortion. Bouncing from America to Zeppelin, music spilled out loud enough to be heard on the docks, muffling my movements. The patio was dim, lit more by the line of lights along the docks than actual lighting from the building. In the shadow next to the building I could just make out a figure at the bottom of the steps on the opposite end.
What light there was caught the white points of his open collar peeking out of the black jacket. He was swaying in time to the music – which shocked the hell out of me. I’d never seen Castillo react to anything as mundane as a song on the radio. But here he was, in the solitude of a pale lit surf – eyes closed, chin slightly raised, mouthing words to the night. The leg on the step flexed… he was tapping time to the song, heel and toe.
In my heart, I knew I should go back inside. Give him the privacy he’d escaped the bar to find, return to interrupt Rico’s ill conceived plans – but I couldn’t. It was like coming across an accident on the Tamiami Trail with bodies shattered across the pavement. It was waiting in the aftermath, wondering who would survive. It was voyeurism, it was indecent, but you couldn’t not look at the bleeding figures.
It was broken men, refusing treatment – I’d seen that in Nam. “No, I’m good. Help my buddy.” Move along – nothing to see here. Guys pretending they were fine until either they buried it all or got buried themselves.
I recognized it from the moment I saw him come down the drive. After we’d tracked her address down, after he’d decided to make contact personally, at the residence, by himself. Rico saw it too, and grumbled, ‘Something isn’t right” as Castillo had walked away from her – back to us, back to reality.
“You okay?” I’d asked.
“Yeah, fine. Just fine…” was the beginning of the lie.
He lied so smoothly, even he believed it for a time – but I saw it. I watched him when he got to the door. I saw the hand twitch in the unconscious pattern of a married man. Even from the end of the drive, I recognized the thumb automatically reaching for the band, the connection, that was not there. His ring-finger fell out of alignment with the others, briefly falling inward but he caught himself, leaving his fingers to dance awkwardly while he waited for a ghost to answer the door.
Man! We all do it. Those of us who made choices that pulled that ring off our finger – we all catch our thumbs looking for a memory of better times. Hell, happens to me all the time, so I know what it looks like – what it feels like. And after the Lieutenant’s driveway pronouncement: “She has a child, she has a husband, she has her own life now” — Rico and I moved into damage control.
Rico likes happy endings. It’s part of his charm – always the optimist, always hopeful - expects good first and shakes his head when bad comes to the party. The times he has jumped my ass for being a cynic … I’ve lost count.
The problem with not being cynical is the fire branding that comes with reality. You can talk all the roses and rhinestone bullshit you want, but if you don’t at least anticipate the bloodletting that comes with – say – losing your partner, you will be wearing hospital jammies and waiting for Chief Broom to break a window when it happens to you. So, like I said: damage control. It was damage control that brought us an hour and forty south of Miami with a majestically silent boss; the brooding Latino who had yet to realize that I was now on the other side of the patio.
Watching him soundlessly mouth the words to ‘Fire and Rain’, I rifled through my file of ‘better judgement’. His eyes were clamped tight. The rhythmic back and forth of his head brought aspects of his deeply scarred cheeks in and out of the light like bitter flags of truce. Glistening streaks flowed from eyes to mustache and disappeared. He made no attempt to wipe them away. The alcohol had weakened his resolve; the music and moonlight had sliced him open. Like an injured cat he had crawled to solitude to acknowledge the battle wounds, lick them dry with tears, and steady himself for a return to the ordinary world where he was required to be extraordinary.
When James Taylor began to amble his way out of his regret at never seeing Suzanne again, I decided to back off – convinced that injured cats preferred to be left alone. As I stepped back to fade around the corner, Mick Fleetwood whacked a hole in his drums, followed by bass and lead guitar of ‘Dreams’ and I froze. What the hell, Karma? I should have remembered how they ratchet down the tunes in preparation for closing. I felt like a fucking idiot.
I peeked around the corner to check on – well... my friend.
He was stone again – rooted to the spot, head down, expression blank. I couldn’t just let him stand there wandering around between his ears. Marty spends way too much time in his own head and it hurts him. Besides, if he really didn’t want me there, I was certain he’d let me know. Rapping my knuckles on the side of the building I jumped into the fray, coffee first.
“Hey.” I crossed to him as quickly as the sloshing cup allowed. “I go to take a whiz and everybody disappears.” Holding out the cup, I nodded at the building. “They make this by the gallons this time of night. Here - try it. This is from Islamorada Roasters, super mellow.”
He gave me that little ‘pfft’ thing he does when he kinda finds something funny and is about to comment, but he took the cup in his left hand as he wiped his cheeks with the back of his right. He didn’t make a big deal out of it; he simply brushed the remaining tears away. “Where’d Tubbs go?”
“He moved to the bar,” I laughed. “The smoldering redhead finally made contact.”
“Thank you.” He held the cup a loft in salute. “Does he know she’s a working girl?”
I laughed. Every cynical ounce of me had ID’d her as a hooker, too. But Rico, the optimist, didn’t see what he didn’t want to see. Honestly, who does?
“He will by the time we go back in.” Leaning against the wall, I continued to think out loud, “It’s getting near closing and she’s realized he's the guy paying.”
There was a quiet lull as he drank the coffee and looked out past the pier to the setting moon. I could see him clearly in my peripheral vision. His eyes were pink-rimmed in the reflected glow and his blink, uncharacteristically listless. Switching the coffee to his right hand, the left dropped – its traitorous thumb reaching for the spectral ring before falling to stillness at his side.
Turning to the moon, I tried to bury my concerns in a tease, “I’m not gonna ask if you’re okay b’cuz you’d only lie… and, well … Darlin’ … that’ll just cheapen our relationship.”
He laughed softly, a genuine smile rising to his sleepy, brimmed eyes. Martin was completely hammered. Drunk on his ass and yet totally lucid. He had been drinking B151 doubles since we arrived – hitting two for every one of mine for the first three hours before adding a glass of ice water to the order. Tubbs had a rum and Coke then winked the bartender into straight soda after that first one.
Rico’s tolerance for drunk people is legendary. He’d leaned back in his chair, sipping endless Coca-Colas. Listening carefully, laughing at just the right time, offering a hand out of the darkness – all the while he kept the waters and snack basket full. He was the perfect companion for a fried-to-misery friend… except he wasn’t out here in the drifting moonlight with a blitzed, tormented Castillo.
“Pretty sure of yourself.” Marty’s voice was the silky tenor that he buried all shitty shit-messes behind.
“Yeah, Marty. I’m sure. Look,” I said, reminding myself that Crocketts bumble where Angels fear. “Look, what’s happened to you in the past few weeks is fucked beyond a normal fucking. I know…” Now that I was here, I had no idea what I was going to say, supposed to say. I completely fumbled the ball with the 'I know' hanging between us.
For the first time since yelling ‘WRONG!’ in the warehouse arrest of Dale Menton – the ex-CIA agent responsible for the loss of Martin’s wife and the devastation of his life in Thailand – Castillo’s eye flashed hard, black, and focused. On me. His voice dropped to the warning growl, “What? Crockett? You think you know … what?”
In the sudden squalling mood swing my brain whispered something about cats in corners but I was deep into blundering now and wasn’t retreating.
“I know your thumb still looks for your wedding ring. I know when you looked at that little boy – you wondered if he was yours. I know it was one more knife in your gut to put her on that plane with another man. I know… I know what it’s like to want so bad you can taste it in every breath and have it taken away… over and over and over again.” By the end of that little sermon, my voice cracked in a rasping choke.
We stood in the ghastly reflected blush of bar lights - Kansas now whirling out of the deck speakers assuring us both we were nothing but dust - staring at each other. In the silence, I was sure I’d probably bungled myself into a very untenable position with my relatively new boss. When I finally decided the best course was to back down, I opened my mouth but the sound came out of Martin.
It was a catching, click deep in his throat, like an airlock slamming shut. Then there was absolute silence. The cup in his hand fell to the sand at his feet and he closed his eyes. His head simultaneously dropping to his chest. When voice found him, it was barely audible over the music, “I’m done. I can’t… I... it's like laying there on a highway waiting for the next set of tires... I’m so fucking done with this… this… all of this.”
Up until that moment, I’d been breezing (or stumbling) through the night. Martin Castillo was steel and stubborn silence. He could incapacitate a Thai assassin with his bare hands, stand as a wall to the oozing corruption that plagued Metro-Dade, the CIA, the DEA, and he pushed until the wheels of justice aligned and clicked into place. He had put his Life on a plane mere hours ago because it was purely the right thing to do. He was Honor. He was Ethics. He was Justice. He was on an edge that I recognized – despair – that terrifying ledge of pain and self-destruction.
It may have been sheer emotional overloaded. I mean, it was definitely exacerbated by the alcohol and, hopefully, it was just a bad choice of words — but my brain snapped to white hot attention. Without analyzing further, without adding more words to fuel the fire, or asking permission – I wrapped my arms around him. This was a Crockett thing, too. Hold on. Press the pain into submission. Don’t let go until you’re sure they can make it – if they can’t stand, you carry them.
I pulled him to me hard, whispering into his shoulder. “Don’t. Man… don’t give up. Don’t give in. I know ya feel out there by yourself, but Marty! You're not alone. We’ve got you. I’ve got you. Just hold on – you’ll get through this, too.”
For a few moments Marty leaned wholly into the embrace. His forehead was against my shoulder, his chest flat to mine in a fierce hug and I whispered again, "I've got you."
I meant every word. At that moment – and for as long as it would take – I would be there when he needed that friend, that brother. Like Rico… like Rico was for me. Like Marty was for both of us. We all stood a better chance of surviving together than apart.
“I have no idea why a world player would volunteer to for this backwater crap-fest that's Metro-Dade, but I’m glad you did.” I appeared to be on a roll, so I went with it – hoping I could keep my size 10s outta my mouth long enough to make sense. “Christ! The job’s hard enough without having to deal with friendly fire. And by friendly, I mean those guys... ya know, the we do ‘The Work of a Nation’ dickheads.”
He let me hold him for a solid minute before raising his head and stepping out of my embrace. I let go… mostly. Keeping a hand on his shoulder I teased, “You’ll notice they never say exact which nation the work is for.”
“Details are always in the fine print.” He sniffed, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. And, he was back. The storm front of memory, anguish, and self-pity passed, he was standing on his own two feet.
Giving his shoulder a squeeze, I asked, “You need more coffee?”
“Nah.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “I think my feet have had enough.”
The sarcastic response was heartening. The shadow faded. We were in the clear and he was on his way to normal. Sometimes we need someone be with us if for no other reason than to witness the shit in our lives.
With a metallic thump the patio door opened, depositing a bewildered Ricardo Tubbs onto the boardwalk. Like I had, his eyes swept the outer docks, looking for his companions. When Marty stepped up onto the patio and cleared his throat, Rico spun to face us, his hand instinctively sliding under his jacket, below his arm.
Our slightly weaving boss exploded with an exaggerated ‘pfft’ and visibly rolled his eyes. “You’d be dead before your hand caught grip.”
It was as close as it had ever come to Castillo boasting. Rico looked back and forth between his Lieutenant and me a couple of times sizing up what he saw, making decisions and plans in the snap of a finger. Throwing his head back he laughed. Tubbs has a great laugh. It can include or exclude you – warm you up or leave you cold. Tonight it was throwing a cherry on top of a rum sundae. Without hesitation he grasp Marty’s shoulder in a single clenching hold.
“We gotta get you home.” Rico’s warm voice always put more into the conversation that the words. “I believe you told me you have to be up and about today.” Still holding the shoulder, he added, “Gonna be okay, Mar-teen. We got ya.”
It was like a weird echo – but the repeat was worth hearing in the fading music.
A harmonic duet of acoustic guitar swelled around us before abruptly stopping in the burst of lead guitar, bass, and tik-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik rhythm of Journey’s Wheel in the Sky. It was creepy and not lost on us as we looked at each other.
The night had a quality that, even now I have a hard time describing. It was the beginning of a deeper understanding, an unspoken agreement of brotherhood – the forging of unity that usually only happens in war. The ordinariness of hanging with work friends had faded with the sheer volume of rum and the hide and seek conversations. The emotional riptide that brought us here had churned shit up and left Martin Castillo in bloody tears of regret and longing.
Martin looked back and forth between us, his expression softened to a slight smile, an unabashed tear escaping down he battered cheek. “I know, gentlemen. And I appreciate it.”
From the day he arrived, Martin had shown us time and again that he had our backs. This was the first time Rico and I had been given the chance to stand in solidarity and offer the same loyalty. It was like an initiation; it was a vow between the three of us in plain view of a bloodletting. It is a vow I still honor and one that I always will.