Who'll Stop The Rain: (Book One Of The Miami Crime Trilogy) Read Online Free Page A

the fruits of my criminal labor
— the lifestyle, all the rest of it. We didn't live large, but we each
had a nice SUV, she wore a Lady Datejust Rolex — okay, I didn't really
buy it, it was swag— and we've
got this nifty little apartment right on the edge of Old Town.
    She knew but she didn't
know — or didn't want to know —
all the exact details of what I did. She knew I worked outside the law and
often went a long time between paydays, but I never troubled her with the
specifics. Not much point to it, you know? She was happy in her current state
when it came to knowing what I did, which was like being in that gray
half-light between sound asleep and fully alert.
    Dorothy was sort of like a
Key West version of Carmela Soprano from the TV, who was your typical New
Jersey gangster wife. Carmela loved the big house Tony gave her — and the
Porsche and the diamonds and all the rest of it — but didn't really care
to know where it came from, even though on some level, she knew, just like
Dorothy knew. And like Dorothy, Carmela could push it way back into the shadows
of her mind. And that made her okay with it.
    But unlike Dorothy, Carmela
couldn't bring herself to openly admit that every penny — every single
fucking penny — of what Tony brought home stemmed from hard criminal
activity. Not that I'm Tony Soprano, mind you. Far from it. I'm not any kind of
big-shot kingpin, into gangland rackets or drug dealing or murder or any of
that kind of shit. I'm more of a working stiff. You know, like on a much
smaller scale .
    If you saw the show, you
knew Carmela had this genteel side to her, a side that Dorothy lacks. Carmela
didn't want to think about hollow, skeletal eyes of junkies addicted to Tony's
drugs, or pulpy, mangled faces of guys who didn't pay him their protection
money on time. She didn't want to know how many innocent lives were destroyed
so she could slip into her long, soft mink, so she could wear her
five-thousand-dollar designer silks, so she could sip fine wine and jabber with
Rosalie Aprile about how hard their husbands work.
    Dorothy, on the other hand,
isn't afraid to face that shit head-on — the violence, I mean. She
doesn't press me for blow-by-blow descriptions, but she doesn't shrink from
them, either. She knows the money I bring home was taken from people who didn't
want to give it up and did so only under threat from a deadly weapon. Money taken
from people whom I sometimes have to get rough with in order for them to give
it to me.
    Yes, there were a couple of
similarities between Dorothy and Carmela Soprano, but Dorothy's from Key West,
not New Jersey, and she has a job. Works over at the City Hall annex processing
traffic tickets. Doesn't pull down much money, but the health insurance makes
it worthwhile.
    "You have seen the light, haven't you?"
She repeated it mostly to make herself believe it. I could hear it in her
voice.
    "Come on, knock that
shit off. I thought you'd be happy. You've hinted at this before. You know,
about me quitting, about how you think it'd be a good idea."
    "That's because I
didn't want to get a phone call in the middle of the night asking me to come
down and identify your fucking body. Yes, I've dropped a hint or two, and
you've been resisting it like I was asking you to cut off your dick. What
changed your mind all of a sudden?"
    "Tonight was too
much," I said. "When I was parked outside Chicho's house, before I
went in, it all came to me, in full, splashy color. I suspected what I might be
up against. There was a real chance I might walk into that house and never walk
out. I thought about the possibility I might never see you again. Never hold
you. And then, when … when …"
    "When what?"
    My eyes turned away from
her and my voice lowered a level or two. I didn't want to say it, but shit, it
was too late. She was onto me and she wouldn't let up till I spilled it.
    "Tell me," she
said. "What."
    "I … I killed a young
girl tonight. She couldn't've been more than