January 22, 2016, Prescott-

“You should never have come back to this town, Eddie.”, Marco hissed.  Eduardo Figueroa was not exactly many girls’ idea of Mr.Right.  A large, ungainly man of 36, he had never quite made first base, and wouldn’t even have been a candidate for Ballet Voluminosa.  Marco Soso-Blanco, on the other hand, was El Jefe, with several exquisite ladies keeping tabs on his every move.  This was Little Havana, and Marco had come in on the ground floor, all swagger and confidence, from the moment he stepped off the Mariel boat, at the age of 10.

Marco ruled his schools, from then on, getting his first kiss at 11 and the rest unfolding as he wanted it.  Upon graduation, it was all business for Marquito.  Eddie, on the other hand, as previously noted, had his work cut out for him.  He struggled in school, physically, socially and academically.

Nonetheless, there came a point in Senor Figueroa’s life, age 22, to be exact, when the intellectual part of life started to come together.  He learned skimming.  He mastered numbers, and made a bundle.  This took Eddie away from Miami, and brought him to Atlantic City.  Marco, by contrast, found the day-to-day grind a bit nerve-wracking.  He relied on a crew of sleazy accountants, muscle men and abogados to keep him atop the food chain.

The thing about Atlantic City, though, is that it started to go downhill, sliding ever towards Miami, figuratively and literally.  People began to move to brighter climes, and for Eddie, the lure of home, as harsh as that home had been, back in the day, proved irresistible.  Eduardo visited a few untethered muscle men of his own, and had no trouble recruiting them for what he had in mind.

For the first time in his life, Eddie Figueroa sauntered into a room that wasn’t his bedroom.  He had been driven out of Atlantic City, true, but he had left nothing behind.  The dinero had gone to the Cayman Islands, close enough to Cuba that he could take it out in a series of day trips, should the need arise.  He was set, and so, Eduardo, “El Gordo”, hissed back at Marco Soso Blanco, “Maybe I shouldn’t have, but here I am.  So, Marquito, how about you watch-and learn.”

Eduardo had taken pains to make sure his men had pennied the front and side entrances “to the nondescript “furniture store” and bodega, across from Copacabana.  There was only the rear entrance available for quick egress.  Marco and his two immediate bodyguards were thus transported out of the office, horizontally and feet first, twenty minutes after Senor Eduardo Figueroa took control of Little Havana.  Eddie looked down at his now lifeless former tormentor.  ”  It’s a lucrative game, Marquito. It’s just not suitable for present company.

(Not suitable for present company is a prompt in the Winter Scavenger Hunt)