Player's Vendetta

Book excerpt: Willie Cuesta, former Miami Police Department detective-turned-private investigator, is swinging in his hammock, estimating the number of mango daquiris he can squeeze from a ripe piece of fruit about to fall from his tree. He’s also waiting for a prospective client who refused to discuss her case over the phone. Ellie Hernandez hasn’t seen her fiance, Roberto “Bobby” Player, in ten days, and she wants Willie to find him. Bobby has been obsessed with the suspicious death of his parents more than thirty-five years ago in Cuba, and he recently went to the island to find their killers. Only six years old when they were murdered, he was living in the United States, where they were supposed to join him. He was one of the “Peter Pan” kids smuggled out when Fidel Castro took over. Willie learns the Players controlled one of the most successful casinos on the island and a large sum of money—half a million dollars—disappeared with their deaths. His investigation reveals an assortment of suspicious characters who were in Havana when the Players were killed, including a former Cuban spy now living in Little Havana, Mafia gangsters involved in gambling institutions and even an undercover US intelligence agent. Were they murdered by the Cuban government for being involved in the counter-revolution underground movement? Did the Mafia kill them to steal their fortune? Or did anti-communist Cubans believe they were traitors and execute them? Rumors and questions abound, but when men in rubber masks firing machine guns turn up, Willie knows someone is trying to keep a long-buried secret under wraps!