Murder in the Magic City: A Micah Brantley Story

substantial to stand on than my gut, we’re going to have to place this one on the pile.”

Chapter 9
Carlos Medina was a man everyone in Miami knew of, but few had ever met. He was the type of person who kept to the shadows for a myriad of reasons, mainly because he simply didn’t care for the hassle that came along with notoriety. He was content to let his men do the heavy lifting. Over the years, his actions had been enough for the Medina surname to command respect across the Sunshine State.
Medina came to America as a young boy, fleeing Castro’s Cuba with his parents on a small raft that barely held up during the 90-mile trip to Key West. His childhood was anything but lavish. His family lived in a small shack near the beach. To be fair, it was a bungalow that had looked rather quaint early in its history. Alas, the previous owner had been up to no good and gotten himself murdered inside the home. This led to the bungalow sitting on the market for far longer than it may have otherwise. Though they purchased it for pennies on the dollar, the elements had their way with the home because of overall lack of care while it sat vacant, which led to a long period of stretching ever dollar just to get it back to something resembling functional.
The elder Medina provided for his family by fishing the local waterways each day and selling what he caught in a nearby fish market. The money was enough to survive on, but it didn’t allow for them to enjoy some creature comforts many Americans cannot live without. The school kids picked on young Carlos for always showing up dirty, in tattered clothes, and speaking with an accent his fellow students thought was hilarious. He was slow to develop a firm grasp of the English language, further stunting his emotional growth.
As he grew older, he began hanging out with a different crowd. His parents had always tried to push him along a specific track, one which would see him going to a university and earning a degree. But Young Carlos had other plans, as did his new crew. They smoked pot in the school bathrooms and cut classes more often than they attended.
When he was seventeen, he befriended Darren Wilcox, an equally troubled teen who did some work for a local drug dealer. Medina quickly gained the trust of his new friend and, before long, the two were inseparable. Eventually, Medina ran drugs with Wilcox. They would take a small boat out a couple miles from the island and sit with exactly three fishing poles resting on the sides. Two of the poles were red and rested on the port side, while the other was blue and rested on the starboard side. Eventually, another boat would pull up alongside them and toss a couple black duffel bags onto their boat. Wilcox would then toss the other boat a brown leather briefcase while Medina stowed the duffel bags in a locker built into the deck of their boat.
Once the exchange was complete, Wilcox would return to the island and tie up the boat at the rickety dock they had departed from. The boys would then load the bags into Wilcox’s pickup truck and head to a stash house. Once there, an armed guard would give them each a couple thousand dollars for their efforts. Medina never questioned how Wilcox got mixed up in the drug business. He just tried to learn all he could about it. Within a year, the two began dealing their own merchandise. Medina proved to be a natural at it. After some time, and a few big sales, had passed the dealer, a man by the name of Miguel Santos, set up a meeting with the young pusher.
Santos was starkly different in appearance from Medina. Where Medina was lean with taut muscles from a workout routine he had done since the beginning of high school, Santos was flabby and unable to walk up a flight of stairs without running out of breath before reaching the top. Medina was clean shaven with a crew cut while Santos had thick, greasy hair and a bushy, black mustache that would have made Juan Valdez proud.
Despite their differences, the two shared one important thing in common: an affinity for drugs. This enabled them to share many exceptional years together supplying South Florida with all the white powder it could snort. Things weren’t always on an even keel between the two, though. As Medina became increasingly familiar with the product and proved he was adept at raking in a great deal of income from it, Santos felt threatened.
If it weren’t for me, this culo would never have even been in this position, Santos often lamented. I made that hijo de puta. Without me, he’s still groveling on the street for scraps!
Medina didn’t even have the decency to thank him for all he had done. As far as Santos was concerned, though he tried to contain it, Medina was a no-good piece of shit and was not to be trusted. Santos couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Medina was his right-hand man. Open conflict with those stakes would send the wrong message to those beneath them. Not that it would do him any favors to stir things up with his men. Furious though he may have been, even Santos couldn’t deny the gravitational pull that Medina had on the rest of the men. They had grown to love him like a brother. Boss or not, a familial bond is hard to break.
Days passed, and drinks consumed without even a remote sense of moderation. Before long, Santos was laying into Medina, letting him know how he really felt. This went on for a few weeks before Medina’s patience stretched past the breaking point. Even the most tolerant of men can only take a certain amount of verbal berating before their