The

Death
Mask. By Steven Donnini

Copyright 2010
Steven Donnini
DonniniStudio@aol.com
407-645-4705

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Novelist John Faulkner Farnsworth III and Wallace

King a New York Literary Agent are walking through

the Annual Coconut Grove Sidewalk Art Fair in

Miami. They are discussing one of Farnsworth’s

characters in his latest novel “The Beach Bum

Diaries”. The character is based on a real person

who is known as a slick criminal mastermind and

escape artist Dominic Foquade. The nagging

question is “Where is the real Dominic Foquade?” A

Cuban underworld character who has been living in

South Beach Miami since 1966 known to local law

enforcement as a anti-Castro crazy. John answers

Wallace with some trepidation, “I heard from one

source, that he was found sitting in his 1969

Cadillac El Dorado submerged in a canal off the Old

Tamiami Trail, half way to Marco Island on the Gulf

of Mexico. He had been in the water for 7 days.

That’s about when he disappeared from Pumpernick’s

a famous Miami Beach restaurant. The El Dorado was

pulled from the canal after being seen by a local

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fisherman. When the EMT techs opened the car door,

they found a massive, almost recognizable,

gelatinous blob of flesh. The face looked like

some sort of jelly fish and the body was falling

apart. Such a mess, they just closed the door and

left it inside for the Miami Dade Sheriff

Department crew to extract the body. They then

transported the car to the Miami Dade Police

Forensic garage. In a pant pocket was a Florida

Drivers License issued to Dominic Foquade. They

hoped with DNA samples, they would be able get a

positive ID. But only if they have some DNA to

compare the new sample to. Oh yeah, his hair piece

was floating around in the back seat.”

Wallace King asks, “Couldn’t it be just another one

of his slick escapes? Don’t count him out.”

John, “I don’t know. But, I sure won’t be eating

catfish anytime soon.”

Wallace adds, “So, with the possibility of Foquade

being dead, it looks like your landlord Hector

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Villa could be on the hook for all the

counterfeiting rackets.”

John, “He’s a small fry, too petite for a good

meal. A sleazy witness as well. One look at him

and they’ll throw him back. He’d have to kill

somebody to get their attention. Just a punk in

Versace silk.”

The Miami Homicide Squad and FBI are looking into

the missing Dominic Foquade case. As the

investigation progresses they begin to suspect that

a Foquade associate one Oscar Constintine has run

afoul of Foquade. In fact, the body in the

Cadillac is the body of Constintine. A DNA match

with Constintine proves to be conclusive.

So, Dominic Foquade is now a murder suspect.

Farnsworth speculates that Foquade is on the run

and still wants to get his hooks on 600 million

dollars worth of Chinese Yaun John has stashed in

several local Bank lockboxes across Miami. The FBI

are not interested in the Chinese Yaun because its

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real money and belongs to the holder, since no one

else has claimed it. Constintine had found out

about it while sharing a cell with blabbermouth

Hector Villa and was sneaking around his sources

for the whereabouts of the money when Foquade

killed to birds. It was an old score that had to

be settled between Foquade and Oscar Constintine.

Now no one on SoBe is talking.

At the same time Frank Santilia a police Detective

from Philadelphia came down to Miami to retire from

a 25 year career with the Philly Police department.

He had stashed enough street money away to build

his dream home in South Miami and pay cash for it.

A custom built 4 bedroom home with a swimming pool.

He hoped that swimming a few laps everyday would

trim him down from his 400 lb Philly Cheese Stake

sandwich girth. But he had some disappointments in

the construction of the dream home. The Hernandez

Brothers Contractors were always cutting corners

and it was an issue with Frank who is a nit picker.

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The open cathedral great room was designed to have

a 24’ peak in the ceiling and a coral rock faced

fire place. They built it to 22’instead and Frank

got up on a ladder to measure it. With all 400+

lbs of weight on the legs of the ladder, one of the

legs pushed through a paper thin spot in the

concrete slab and Frank came tumbling to the floor.

He was very dismayed to find that the concrete slab

was way too thin to hold any weight in some places.

He called the Hernandez Brothers to complain, but

their phone was shut down.

They had closed shop and moved just before many of

the homeowners filed law suits. Not uncommon in

Miami.

So Frank called a foundation repair company and

they came out to cut away the thin spots in the

slab and pour new concrete to the required depth.

When they cut away the first spot where Frank had

pushed through they discovered something else, the

body of a man face up in the sand under the

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concrete slab. Ants and worms had eaten away the

flesh but embedded in the concrete was a perfect

impression of a mans face. They surmised the man

was hastily placed face up in the sand and wet

concrete was poured over him. When the concrete

hardened it made a perfectly smooth mold of the

face. The police lab technicians poured a plaster

cast but

Frank didn’t know who it was. But he knew that the

Hernandez Brothers ran out of town shortly after he

started complaining about the construction issues

that came up. After a few weeks of trying to find

the Hernandez Brothers, Frank and Miami Dade

Homicide Detectives asked the Miami Herald and

other news media to show the mans death mask to the

public in the hope of identifying who it was.

No one could be sure, but mug shots of Dominic

Foguade and the death mask made a very good

comparison to the likeness of Foquade.

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The Hernandez Brothers had fled back to Mexico and

blended into the population. But why did the

Hernandez’s dump Foquade in the slab?

Heaven only knows. It could be something they were

doing for Oscar Constantine or a double cross over

a Mexican drug deal which Oscar was into.

Anyway, when the police looked closely at the death

mask, they noted a smile on his lips. As if to

say, “You think you finely got me. But you’ll

never be sure.”