The warehouse was cavernous, piled high with goods from dozens of countries. Crates of foodstuffs-cereals, canned vegetables, bottled juices-filled several acres along the western wall. You could feed a starving country with the inventory. In another section, boxes of bicycles from Taiwan were piled to the ceiling, and nearby, thousands of concrete fence posts from Colombia were crisscrossed in stacks that resembled a house of Popsicle sticks. The open doors, the width of a tractor trailer, admitted the brackish stench of Biscayne Bay and the thick smell of diesel fuel from the river. I heard three toots of a horn, then the coughs and sputters of a tugboat nudging a barge under the Second Avenue drawbridge.
I retraced the steps, starting with the grappling hook attack, ending with the forklift. The layout was just the way Crespo described it. Once Crespo-or whoever-mounted his trusty steed of a forklift, Smorodinsky never had a chance to get to the exit. I heard an electric buzz behind me, and whirled just in time to see a forklift approach the intersection of two aisles. The machine carried a pallet of dog food cans, and the driver, a young Hispanic with a mustache, expertly steered the load around a corner.
The concrete floor was remarkably clean, but as I neared the cartons of beach towels, I saw the black spots. Concrete is just porous enough to soak up blood and ugly it. The drips continued down the aisle to the corrugated metal door, where a dark puddle of Vladimir Smorodinsky’s innards left their spot for the ages. On the door itself, two indentations, at just the width of the forklift’s prongs, just as Francisco Crespo said there would be.
There was a small office near the rear loading dock that led to the parking lot and a larger office overhead that could be reached by metal stairs and a catwalk. From above, you could see into every aisle. There were no witnesses to the fight, at least none I could find. None of the workmen in the warehouse or the office knew anything about it. No one admitted calling the police. No one knew much about the two workers, except Crespo was a hothead, always causing trouble. You want to know anything else, come back when Mr. Yagamata, the owner, is here.
Hothead was right on the money. I first met Francisco Crespo in his mother’s house in Little Havana. He was a skinny Marielito just out of Castro’s prisons who arrived in Miami barefoot and sopping wet. I remember thinking he must have been just off a raft, but it had been a rainy day, and he arrived at the little pink house off Calle Ocho in the back of a pickup truck.
I rented a room from Emilia Crespo in what had been the garage, having arrived in Miami-undrafted and unheralded-after a steady but unspectacular college football career. I wanted to live close to the Orange Bowl, not realizing the team practiced and virtually lived at the other end of town. It didn’t matter. I never figured to make the Dolphins, and when I did, earning the league minimum, and hanging on a few years because of a willingness to sacrifice my body on kickoffs, I stayed put.
Emilia Crespo was a sturdy widow who always seemed to wear an apron. She cooked me picadillo and platanos and taught me a smidgen of Spanish. She also asked me to look after Francisco, who refused to live with her, saying he wanted solitude. He rented a first-floor apartment on Fonseca, just east of Ponce de Leon Boulevard, and kept to himself.
To please her, I got him a job in the locker room, tossing jockstraps and towels into a washing machine with ample quantities of bleach and disinfectant. Just as often, he was brawling. I remember him flailing away at the assistant strength coach-a two-hundred-thirty-five-pound weightlifter-who smacked his lips at Crespo, suggesting he was one of the maricones who recently washed up on the beaches courtesy of the Jimmy Carter flotilla across the straits. The coach slapped Crespo around, then tossed him into the whirlpool.
Crespo was reassigned to the groundskeeping crew. He got in less trouble outdoors and soon knew the vagaries of Kentucky bluegrass, fine fescue, and perennial ryegrass, as well as everything worth knowing about aeration, seeding, sodding, and mulching. Ignoring the automatic sprinkler system, Crespo hosed the field by hand, watering dry spots and patching the divots with patience and care. He seemed to like grass more than people, but then, most people he’d known the last ten years had worn boots and kicked him around.
I kept an eye on Crespo, slipping him some sweat socks when I saw his bare ankles sticking out of secondhand shoes. He returned the favor by giving me mangoes he filched from a South Dade farm. Then I gave him some old jerseys that could be turned into cash at swap meets. He sold Griese’s, Csonka’s, and Warfield’s, but kept mine, hanging it in the front window of his apartment. It was not so valuable as to provoke a burglary or a call from the Smithsonian.
Once, in a close game against the Jets, I was in my usual position on the bench and Crespo was handing out Gatorade and towels.
“ Ves al numero setenta y nueve?” he asked me.
“I been watching him all day. Their weak-side tackle, a Pro Bowler.”
“Why does he rock back on his heels when they’re going to pass the ball?”
“What!”
“When he is crouching down in como se llame…”
“The three-point stance.”
“ Si, he leans forward when they are going to run, and rocks back when they are going to pass.”
“Holy shit, Francisco, you oughta be a coach. We got thirty hours of game films plus Polaroids of every snap of the ball and nobody noticed that.”
He shrugged and ambled down the sideline, carrying a tray of drinks to some guys who deserved them more than I did. “When you fight, must watch your enemigo’s every move,” he called back at me.
Two plays later, we lost a starting outside linebacker to a hip-pointer, and I had a chance to get my uniform dirty. Two sacks and three tackles for losses in the fourth quarter. The only game ball of my career.
The year I retired-which is a nice way of saying I was placed on waivers where twenty-five other teams managed not to notice me-Crespo left, too. I spent the next year engulfed in booze and blondes, and by the time I started night law school, I had lost track of him. I figured he was either in jail or contending for the welterweight championship.
Then, a few years later, Emilia Crespo called me. I was in my last days as a public defender, copping pleas for guys too poor to buy a decent defense. Did I want to stop by for some picadillo con frijoles negros y arroz bianco? Did I ever! The years had added a few white streaks to the black hair pulled straight back, a little heavier maybe, but the apron was crisply starched and her greeting was the same. A hug that could knock the wind out of Dick Butkus. I ate heartily, and she watched in silence, nibbling at a plantain. I sipped a mojito, the rum and soda drink with fresh mint leaves from her garden. I asked Emilia Crespo about Francisco, and her dark eyes filled with pain.
“I don’t know what that asesino, Castro, did to him in prison, but he has never been the same. Angry all the time. Violento. It is as if my son cares about nothing.”
“He cares about you. And so do I. What can I do?”
Her answer was a tender plea. “Will you be his friend?”
“I tried in the old days. He isn’t easy to get close to.”
“Will you try again, Jake? For me?”
She knew I would. In my life, I have Granny Lassiter, who raised me, Charlie Riggs, who taught me, and Emilia Crespo, who put a roof over my head and meat on my bones. There was something else, too, a path of obligation that ran straight from Jake Lassiter, ex-football player, to Francisco Crespo, ex-preso politico, and it was something neither of us would ever tell his mother.
Two days later, I tracked Crespo down at the jai alai fronton where he sat in the back row, his feet draped over the seat in front of him, a program balled up in one hand. He was alone and seemed to like it that way. I sat to one side, watching him through the first three games, listening to the plonk of the pelota against the front wall. Nobody talked to him, and he reciprocated. Finally, I went up and said hello, how about a drink and a sandwich later. He said, fine, but if he was pleased to see me, it didn’t show.