2M 'What do you think, Eldon? He's never seen this kind of shit first hand before,' Max said, 'so he's kinda confused.'



'Confused?' Eldon frowned.



'Yeah, you know. His right and wrong compass is all fucked up.'



'He gonna be a problem?'



'No.' Max shook his head. 'Joe's a hundred per cent solid.



With you all the way. I mean, he ain't got a death wish, right?'



Eldon smirked at that. 'You're upset, ain't you?' he said.



'You could say that, yeah,' Max said, drawing hard on his Marlboro. 'What went down today was wrong.'



' Wrong? No, it wasn't wrong, Max. It was right. Wrong was that guy. He was a piece of shit. Brought young Colombian girls over here and gutted 'em like they was kingfish. Hell, why am I even tellin' you this? You know. It was you who picked him outta the book.'



'It's still murder.'



'Huh?' Eldon stepped closer to him and craned his head down a little, looking Max right in the eye. 'I can't believe I'm hearin' this. From you, of all people. You a little shell shocked, Max? You got amnesia? Macon PD have three unsolved murders on their books — three kiddie rapers with double tap entry wounds in their heads.'



'That was different.'



'Oh? How so?'



'They were guilty but you made me let 'em go because their faces didn't fit whatever political agenda you and the Turd Fairy were workin' to that month.'



'But you still popped 'em.'



T was doin' the job you wouldn't let me do the right way.



Those guys? They preyed on defenceless children. I gave the kids and their heartbroken families justice. Justice you denied 'em!'



'denied them justice? Bullshit! Those families got fucken'





216 I justice, Max! You see them complainin' in court? They didn't give a flying fuck it was the wrong guy.'



“Cause they didn't know?



'Rutyou got the real perps, Max. And the creeps we put away? They hurt kids too. So what's the fucken' problem?



Two for the price of one. And you're talkin' to me about justice? I say what we're doin' here is justice — justice at its purest. Those fuckers all deserved to go down. Octavio Grossfeld sliced girls up, Max. Young girls, with families too. He was a scumbag. He got what was comin' and good fucken' riddance!'



We weren't even gonna arrest him for that,' Max said bitterly but weakly, feeling the protest drain out of him.



Eldon was right: he wasn't in any kind of position to protest, and there was even a warped truth in what he was saying.



'Look, Max,' Eldon put his hand on his shoulder, all fatherly and concerned, 'you're upset 'cause I didn't keep you in the loop. Is that it? It was a last-minute call. You and Liston'll get the credit, don't worry. It's still your baby.'



Fuck that, Max thought, looking away, over to the sea.



'What about Marisela Cruz?'



Who?'



'The mule who was gonna testify against Grossfeld?'



'What about her? Things have changed, so the deal's off.



She'll be charged and go to prison.'



'But I promised her . . .'



'Not in writing you didn't. Verbal promises ain't worth shit. Who was with you when you talked to her? Pete?'



Max nodded yes.



'He'll deny the whole thing.'



'What about her baby?' Max almost whispered. He felt sick and dizzy. He dropped his cigarette on the ground and stamped it out.



'Her kid'll be born here and fostered or adopted. Best



thing for it. Would you wanna grow up in Colombia? I wouldn't.'



'That's fucked up,' Max said, disgusted. 'Can't you at least deport her?'



'Not my call.'



'Bullsbitr Eldon was taken aback by Max's fury, but only for a second.



'We send that girl home, know what'll happen? She'll be back on the next plane over, and the one after that too.



And then maybe she'll bring her baby along for the ride.



You know they use babies to get coke in here, right?' Eldon said.



'Forget it then,' Max said. 'I want off this case.'



' What did you just say?' Eldon's face tightened.



'You heard me.' Max looked him straight in the eye.



'Ain't gonna happen.' Eldon shook his head.



'No? Then I'll quit.'



'The fuck you will!' Eldon snarled.



'Watch me,' Max said coldly and turned to go.



Eldon grabbed him by both shoulders and spun him around so fast he lost his balance and stumbled, and his cigarettes and Zippo fell out of his breast pocket.



'Now you listen Eldon seethed, face flushed, eyes small and fierce, wart turquoise going on purple, index finger jabbing at Max's face. ' run this division. You work for me. I decide who stays and who goes. Not you. The only place you go is where I tell you.



'You wanna walk outta here, Max? Fine, fuck off. But you'll be taking Liston with you. And I'll make sure he knows that his arrogant little prick of a partner was willing to wreck his life over some spic mule.



'That girl? She's surplus to our requirements. She broke our laws. She goes to our prisons. End of fucken' story.



You got that?'



Max didn't reply. The thick veins in Eldon's muscular neck had sprung up like a nest of snakes and his face was beet-red. Max hadn't seen him so mad at him since his boxing days.



'I didn't fucken' hear you,' Eldon said, getting right up in his face, so close their heads were practically touching.



'I got it, Eldon.' Max backed off a step, feeling pathetic and whipped and all kinds of small. Back when he was training him, Eldon had used one of two approaches to get results. Patient, friendly encouragement when he'd lost confidence in his abilities, or full-scale public verbal bombardments when he'd lost sight of his ambition. Eldon had known him so long he knew exactly which buttons to press and how hard.



'You what?



'I said I got it. I understand,' Max said more loudly, keeping a firm hand on his wounded pride so it wouldn't turn to anger.



'Good.' He stood glowering at Max, soaking up his protege's capitulation. And when he'd had his fill, he packed the anger away, smiled, and put a firm but friendly arm around Max's shoulder and walked him over towards the edge of the roof.



'A littie disagreement's always healthy, huh?' he said.



'Clears the bad air.'



Max replied with a noncommittal, 'Hmmm.'



The and Abe, God, we used to fucken' disagree all the time. You know why? Abe was extra efficient when it come to dealin' with his own people. He was rougher and nastier iincl more intolerant than any o' those Klan-affiliated Patrol :ops ever were. Whenever we was interrogatin' nigras, he “lad this bat he used to take out, intimidate 'em with. Thing ivas filled with lead shot. One tap'd turn bone to powder.



Know what he used to call it? His “nigger knocker”. Can you imagine that? Abe was a great cop, one of the best ever



had a badge, and the finest I ever worked with. But, you know, sometimes he went way too far trying to prove he was bluer than black, one of us. Boy did we argue! Things he used to say. Close your eyes and you woulda sworn that was some redneck talkin' to you.'



Max had heard all the stories about Abe, although never direcdy from him. Abe didn't talk about the past much. Joe despised Abe, called him a self-loathing sellout - and that was when he was being polite.



Eldon took a deep breath of the dense dead air and sighed.



'I love this fucken' city, don't you?' Eldon swept his free hand across the view of the flat landscape, his tone now warm and friendly.



'It's all right, I guess.' Max shrugged his shoulders. He wanted to get Eldon's paw off him.



'It's “all right, you guess”?' Eldon laughed. 'You're Miami born and bred, Max. You don't know no better. Me? I love this city more'n I love most people. That's the honest truth.



Always been that way, always be that way.



'First time I came here, I was ten years old. Came here with my daddy, Eldon Burns the First. He was a sheriff in Mississippi. Caught himself a fugitive wanted by Miami PD.



So we drove him down. Guy was in the back seat. I was up front with Daddy. We handed him over and went down to Miami Beach. The first sight o' that was so fucken' beautiful.



The beach, the sea, them rows of art deco hotels. Those places were really somethin' back then, you know? Not like the dumps they are now. To me they were little palaces and everyone stayin' in 'em was royalty. I made myself a promise that when I grew up I'd be sheriff of Miami. Look at me now, huh?'



Yeah, look at you now, Max thought bitterly. Your daddy woulda been real proud of you, Eldon Burns the Second.



I





'There ain't no place like Miami,' Eldon continued. 'We got it all here. Back in my days in uniform it was whites, tourists, Cubans, kikes and nigras who knew their place and were happy to stay there. Now we got World War Three going on out here with these Colombians and the street gangs. They're bringing this shit into our city, right under our noses and fucken' it up for everyone. They're walkin'



into our courtrooms killin' people on national fucken' television!



Tourism's down, money's dryin' up. Breaks my heart to see what this place is comin' to.



'Only, you know what? Miami ain't gonna get no lower than this. Things are gonna stop and things are gonna change. Like it or not, Max, we're at war. They're winning right now, but we're fightin' back. We're like a guerrilla unit.



We're the Miami Resistance. We're outnumbered, outgunned, outfinanced. And we're fighting not one but fifty invading armies, and they're all at war with each other, and they're all at war with us. The Cubans are fighting the Colombians. And the Colombians are fighting each other.



But we're gonna win. 'Cause this is our city and our country.



We're gonna reclaim Miami, bullet by bullet. We're gonna help turn it around, give it back its looks, its glamour and its money. We're gonna make it beautiful again.



'And you, Max, are gonna help me do it.' Eldon looked him hard in the eye and squeezed his shoulder. 'You're the next best cop it was ever my honour to know. And I mean that. Together, you, me and this division — we're gonna make a real difference. And when the smoke clears and the dust settles, Miami won't be Murder Capital USA no more.



It'll be the greatest city in America, the place everybody wants to come to and be part of. Just like it used to be.



'And do you know what the best part about it is? After I'm gone, one day, this'll all be yours. Everything you can see. What do you think of that, Max?'



I think you're full of shit, Eldon, Max thought. Bullet by bullet? Are you totally fucken' insane?



'I think that sounds real great, Eldon,' Max said flatly. 'Real great.'



1 2-4



' “One day this will all be yours”. Kind of fucked up shit is that?' Joe laughed sourly and then took a pull on his Miller.



He was sitting on Max's balcony looking out over Ocean Drive. The balcony was wide enough for Max to stretch out in, but Joe was so tall the only way he could sit anywhere near comfortably was by resting the backs of his ankles on the iron railing.



It was late afternoon, but the sky was so dark and thick with cloud it felt like night had come early. The beach was the colour of graphite, while the sea had the tone and stillness of mercury. There was going to be one hell of a storm.



'What he said,' Max replied. He'd related the whole conversation to him as soon as they'd sat down.



'Crazy muhfucker,' Joe grumbled.



'What I thought.'



'But you didn't tell him, right?'



'What difference would it've made?'



'Were you serious about quittin'?'



'Still here ain't I?'



“Predate the loyalty man.'Joe clicked his bottle against Max's.



'It was an empty gesture,' Max said.



'Not to me, man,' Joe countered. 'Not to me.'



It had taken Joe most of the day to recover his public composure. After they'd taken him through his statement, he'd gone back to his desk and sat there for an hour with his chair turned away, facing the wall. He hadn't said a word.



The phone had rung and he hadn't answered it. People had



talked to him and he hadn't acknowledged them. Then he'd got up and left the office. When he came back two hours later Max had smelled the booze on him, but he'd been more communicative and had managed to laugh at the way Max got his finger caught in the typewriter keys when he was writing up the report.



They hadn't discussed what had happened and wouldn't for a while. It was too close to Joe. He never talked about traumatic events until he'd got a good distance away from them.



'Emperor Burns was right 'bout one thing though,' Joe said, looking down the street with its still pretty pink sidewalks.



'This used to be one helluva beauty spot. Sure ain't like it now.'



'I hear that,' Max said.



'Why d'you live here, man?'



'So I can tell chicks I gotta view of the sea,' Max quipped and lit a Marlboro. 'Besides, it's cheap.'



The press called Ocean Drive 'the ghetto by the sea'.



They had a point. On either side of Max's building were some of the old exclusive art deco hotels Eldon had talked about — the Shore Park, the Pelican, the Colony, the Carlyle — now exclusively home to Cuban refugees and infirm Jewish retirees living out their last days in the sun. Fifty dollars or less got you a room for a week. The buildings were cracked and crumbling, pastel paint flaking off the walls in chunks, and the neon signs barely came on any more, either because the tubes were burnt out or because the owners were saving on electricity. Washing hung on lines from almost every balcony, and Spanish-language radio playing Spanish language tunes to drown out Spanish-language arguments was all you ever heard. In the daytime, in Lummus Park, on the other side of the road, the old women would sometimes sit out in groups on folding metal chairs. They'd knit and talk in Yiddish about the past, hair covered in headscarves,



drab-coloured dresses down to their knees, flip-flops on their feet. Between the 1940s and 60s the park had been a lush stretch of nature, densely planted with palm trees, but many had been uprooted in storms and never replaced; now it was mostly grass, ratty and clogged with trash. It was a magnet for bums, drifters, runaways, junkies and dealers.



Every day one or two bodies would be found in the park.



Max was playing the album he'd been listening to all week because he hadn't bothered to take it off the turntable — Donna Summer's Bad Girls. The album had hit its dull ballad quarter. He usually skipped these tracks when he was on his own and dropped the needle on the synth-heavy anthems at the end, starting with 'Our Love'.



'I reckon you only like this shit 'cause o' the covers,'



Joe said, picking up the sleeve of Bad Girls. 'You're too embarrassed to go get yourself a copy of Black T V A, so you go to the record store instead.' Joe looked at Donna's half-open mouth, and come-hither stare. 'She sure is fine though.'



'Gimme that.' Max snatched the cover back. 'Fucken'



hypocrite. Get your own copy.'



'Yeah, take it.'Joe laughed. 'Fuckin' disco, man! Shit's over. Thank goodness and good riddance. White man annexed that music soon as he saw how much money it could make.



Same with rock 'n' roll. Elvis was that poster child, same way John Travolta was disco's blue-eyed boy. Hell, they even dressed him up in a white suit to make sure we got the message. Might as well've put a white hood on him too.'



'That was a film, Joe, c'mon!' Max laughed. 'You been smokin' reefer again?'



Whenever they'd smoked weed together, Joe would start talking conspiracy theories about everything from Christianity to the Iranian hostages, and every conspiracy had racism as its prime motive. Some of them had a kernel of debatable truth, but most were utterly ludicrous.



'Nah, man, I'm off that shit for good. I'm just makin' an observation. Hollywood's the best propaganda machine the USA has. See, we do as much if not worse stuff around the world than the commies, but Hollywood always has Uncle Sam as the good guy, always doin' the right thing, savin' the planet; so simple-minded people see it and believe it. You know Birth of a Nation was the biggest recruitment ad the Klan ever had, right? Same with Saturday Night Fever. People see that, they believe the white man can dance!'



'And you can?' Max laughed loudly, remembering Joe's dancing. 'You move like George Foreman on valium.'



'Fuck you, Mingus!' Joe cackled.



ŚYou wanna another brew?'



'Let's talk about our thing first.'



They hadn't had time to discuss how they would go about tackling the real Moyez case, but Max had jotted down a few ideas on a notepad, as had Joe.



Max started.



'Here's what we gotta go on — similarities with the Lacour case. Both Lacour and the Moyez John Doe were completely hairless and they'd had their lips sewn up. Contents of stomach: squares of tarot card — the King of Swords — plus a mixture of bone, sand and vegetable matter. The tarot cards were already part digested, which means they were in their stomachs before they did their hits. I'm thinking this was part of a potion, and I'm also thinking these guys didn't know what they were doing. Lacour killing his family was like a dry run, a test to make sure whatever it was he had inside him was working - that he'd kill on command and without hesitation.



'And there was someone else there with him when he killed his folks. And whoever this person was was the same one who did the Wong family.'



'The Candyman,' Joe said. 'I'm gonna contact NYPD, see if they got a print off that wrapper they found. And I'll



226



1 see if North Miami PD came up with anything on their side.'



'Good.' Max nodded. 'Then we'll have to look into gangs who use black magic'



'That's five phone directories' worth — just for Miami alone,' Joe said. 'Seem' that shit more times than not now.



The Mariel crims all got Santeria altars in their homes. Most of 'em offer up prayers and sacrifices to their gods before they go out and commit felonies.'



'I could be wrong, but I don't think this is a Cuban thing,'



Max said. 'I'm thinkin' Haitian.'



'Haitian? If they ain't drivin' cabs or cleanin' floors here, the most they do is muggings and stick-ups in 7-Elevens — strictly small-time shit.'



You gotta keep an open mind, Joe.' Max riffled through a couple of pages. 'Preval Lacour was Haitian. As was his business partner, and so's the only guy he didn't kill — Sam Ismael. And Sam Ismael runs a voodoo store in Lemon City called Haiti Mystique. He was one of the bidders for the redevelopment project Lacour won. Ismael's on my list to interview.'



'He clean?'



'Totally.'



'Moyez wasn't Haitian.'



'Wasn't Cuban either.'



'Best you keep an open mind too.' Joe winked, jotting clown some notes.



'Sure will.' Max smiled and lit another cigarette before going on. 'We don't know who the Moyez shooter was yet.



No fingerprints on file. But he may have killed before — possibly a person or persons close to him.'



'So we gotta check on families or such reported missing (r murdered in city and state,' Joe said.



'If he was from around here. If not, we'll have to do a nationwide search. Shouldn't take long if it's multiple



murder. He used a .357 Magnum with semi-wadcutters. If it's the same MO as Lacour, he woulda used the same piece on his family or friends, so that'll narrow it down some.



Then we'll search for similar-type killings.'



'I got that down too,' Joe said. 'Hairless hitmen with stitch marks on their lips and tarot cards in their guts.'



'Next,' Max flipped over a page, 'the tarot cards. Normally used in fortune telling, but here they were part of a potion.



We'll do a search on the cards themselves. There are literally hundreds of different makes and manufacturers. But these have to be exotic. They've got no faces. Plus we need to talk to card readers too, find out what they know.'



'Check,' Joe said. 'What about de Carvalho?'



'He's on my interview list, along with everybody who was in that courtroom - everybody we can trace.'



'De Carvalho's in a Fed safehouse right now.'



'Know who's in charge?'



'Bill Forsey. He's real tight with Burns.'



'Shit, I know,' Max said.



We could pretend we're talking to him as part of our official investigation.'



'Won't fly. Forsey's a Cutman. Probably knows as much — if not more — about what Eldon's up to than me.'



'What are we gonna do if Eldon finds out?'



'Say we're tyin' up loose ends.'



'You mean cuttin' tripwires.'



'Yeah.' Max nodded. 'We'll just have to make sure we lie convincingly. He gets so much as a hint of the truth and you're done. We can't have that.'



'Let's focus on the positive.'Joe frowned. 'This is gonna involve a lotta paper — reports, lists, photographs. We can't keep it in the office.'



'I've thought of that.' Max grinned. 'Mi casa!



You got the space?' Joe looked back through the window at the untidiness that was Max's living room.



'I got plenty of room,' Max said. 'We'll use here as a base.'



'Dunno,' Joe said. 'Wouldn't put it past Burns to break in here, bug the place, knowwhumsayin? Why don't we rent us somewhere? My cousin knows a couple of places we can use.'



“You gotta point. Let's do that. Other thing is, we're gonna have to fund this all ourselves. I wanna put my informant, Drake, on this, find out what he knows. He don't come cheap. I got some cash put away. You?'



'Some,' Joe said.



'Then there's time. We do this right, it'll mean doin'



double shifts.'



'I know that.'



'Your old lady gonna be all right with that?'



'If she ain't, I ain't . . . with the right girl. She'll be cool.



She already knows how it is.'



'We'll start on this next Tuesday, after the news conference,'



Max said. 'Which end you wanna bite on?'



'I'll look into missing person reports and multiple murders of families.'



'OK. I'll do the tarot cards and deal with the lab. How soon can you get our base camp set up?'



Til call my cousin tonight, soon as he gets home. He should be able to hook us up with somewhere in the next twenty-four.'



'OK. We're on.'



They shook hands.



'How's about that brew now?' Joe asked.



After Joe had gone, Max poured himself a shotglass of Jim Beam and sunk it in one. He took Bad Girls off the turntable and put it back in its sleeve. He went to the room where he kept his records. It was supposed to be an extra bedroom, hut three of the walls had floor-to-ceiling shelves with over two thousand albums lined up in alphabetical order on them.



There were more on the floor too — wooden crates of LPs, and 12- and 7-inch singles. He'd won half his collection at a SAW auction. It had originally belonged to a drug dealer called Lovell the Lodger, who'd doubled as a DJ. The rest he'd bought himself, or confiscated during busts and kept, if they were rare.



He took out Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain and put it on. He flopped down on his brown leather couch. The deep-rooted melancholia of Miles' trumpet pierced him to the edge of his soul and made him feel suddenly very alone and empty, as close to vulnerable as he could be.



He closed his eyes. Quickly he fell asleep.



He awoke four hours later feeling a little refreshed. It was dark and hot and the room smelled of rain. The storm had broken in his absence, but there was still more to come.



He stepped back out onto the balcony. The Drive's pink sidewalks were wet but quickly drying. It was full of people, babe-in-the-woods tourists looking to get skinned, lowlifes looking to give or get cheap thrills. On either side of him he heard the usual barrage of Spanish songs and shouting.



Max took a shower, shaved and brushed his teeth. He dressed in a pale blue shirt, black chinos and leather slip-ons and went out.



I



I 25



La Miel was and always had been Max's favourite spot in Miami clubland. It was located in the Airport Hilton on Blue Lagoon Drive. There was no better place for meeting women you'd never see again, because half the club's clientele were travellers on overnight transit, specifically foreign airline stewardesses. He didn't have to bullshit them about what he did. In fact it was an asset in the pick-up game: once they heard he was a cop, they channelled their Starsky & Hutch fantasies and got all starstruck and tongue-tied, and from there it'd be a shortcut from club to hotel room.



Though Max had been going to clubs since 1968, he couldn't really dance for shit - his main moves being either a cracked mirror to what he saw men around him doing, or a sole to sole shuffle that had more in common with defensive boxing footwork than groovy gesticulation. He'd presided over the rise of disco, the 'Theme from Shaft' giving way to quarter-hour long epics with fourfour beats, easy to follow bass patterns and empty, innuendo-laden lyrics.



He'd loved it and he'd loved discos. They'd been a great racial melting pot — whites, blacks and Latinos coming together for the single purpose of having a good time, everyone getting along, Dr King's dream in platforms, satin, sequins and on lots and lots of cocaine; and it had never been easier to meet black chicks, which was his main reason for going to so many, so often. Then Saturday Night Fever had come out and killed it. After that all you ever saw were random assholes in white suits and black shirts aping Travolta, while the women unfailingly wore red dresses and talked in phoney New York accents. He'd been glad when



the backlash had kicked in, with the 'Disco Sucks' campaign and the blowing up of a small mountain of records on Disco Demolition Night: it had cleared the air and the wannabe Tony Maneros had fucked off to Kiss and REO Speedwagon concerts, denying their past dalliance like Peter before the cock crew.



When he arrived, just after eleven, the club seemed strangely empty. The DJ was spinning the kind of salsified disco tune that was becoming all the rage in the city, but there were wide-open spaces on the dance floor and most of the people were standing on the fringes, looking on, barely moving.



Max got himself a beer from the bar. The music was too loud and the song was making him uncomfortable, nauseous almost. The bassy beat made the fluid in his guts slosh around, the squealing brass grated against his eardrums, and an adenoidal girl singer was belting out a two-word lyric — Vamos! Dana! — over and over and over in a shriek both pained and painful. Suddenly this wasn't music any more, but an endurance test in patience and tolerance, and he crashed at the first hurdle.



He lit a cigarette and checked out the women, but it was too dark to tell the shapes apart. Torture-by-saldisco segued into son-of-torture-by-saldisco. The crowd was still thicker at the edges of the dance floor, the vibe in the place curiously dead, frowns instead of smiles, stillness instead of motion.



He began thinking that coming here hadn't been such a good idea and wondered whether it was worth driving to his second favourite spot, O Miami in Miami Springs. He dismissed it as a trek too far and walked over to the dance floor, to see what was keeping the people at bay.



At first he thought it was some kind of competition, or maybe a 'couples only' segment of the night. There were maybe two dozen people getting down to the God-awful shit coming out of the speakers. Nothing special about them



at an initial glance, except for the fact they could all dance quite superbly, their movements at one with the musical squall, not a dip or turn out of time. You always got this at discos, the Cinderella effect transforming the drab into deities, deities to dust. But the longer he watched them, the more he realized what was happening: they were all dancing in the same way, and the dances were an incredibly complex mix of dazzling footwork patterns and unpredictable turn sequences. It all seemed pre-arranged, pre-planned and exclusive. To participate you not only had to know the moves, but know the dancers too. The couples were in a loose, tight circle, but were all interacting with each other, the merest look or hand signal announcing a switch in the pattern: perfect physical telepathy. And nearly everyone around them watched in defeated awe, as if suffering from a collective loss of confidence in their own hipster abilities.



A few men and a few more women were trying to copy the steps, but they couldn't keep time with the music, or were too uncoordinated to fuse feet and upper body, or simply glanced at the new masters of the dance floor and realized they'd never ever get it right.



Max moved around, beer in one hand, cigarette in the other, trying to find women as bored and pissed off as he was, but their attention was undivided, to the point that the two times he tried to strike up conversations, he was completely ignored, frozen out at the first monosyllable.



He finished his beer and went back to the bar. He didn't want another, but he bought one anyway, hoping the music would change and normality would resume.



Unfortunately torture-by-saldisco had come with her whole fucking family, and after forty more minutes the scene had become so unbearable he began to long for some locked-in-a-timewarp dickheads to stride in in cheap white polyester suits and force the DJ to play the Bee Gees at gunpoint.



m At around midnight he left. He'd had three beers and a shot of bourbon and didn't feel remotely drunk. Things had moved on and he was living out his yesterdays. He wished he'd stayed at home.



Driving back he realized he was hungry and didn't have any food at home. He drove to Cordova's on South West 7th Street, in Little Havana. It was a fast-ish food place with wooden tables outside.



He got himself a plate of picadillo — spicy minced beef with raisins, olives, onions and garlic — on white rice, with a side of fried plantain and a can of Colt 45.



While he was eating, an orange Honda Civic parked next to his Mustang and a woman got out and came towards the restaurant. Latina, about his height, slim but with broad shoulders. She had long curly black hair down past her shoulders, copper-coloured skin, gold hoop earrings, black jeans and a denim blouse tied over an inch of bare waist.



He noticed they were wearing the same colours, only she wore hers better.



She sat down a few tables away from him. When the waiter came over she waved away the menu and ordered in Spanish. He hadn't touched his food since he'd seen her, not even chewed what he had in his mouth. She sensed him looking at her and turned around to meet his stare. She had big round brown eyes, long dark eyebrows, high cheekbones, a wide mouth with large lips protruding in a natural pout.



Then she looked away. She was just about the most beautiful woman he'd seen since he could remember, and that was saying something because Miami was filled with them.



Max weighed up his options. He could try and talk to her, but he was in such a shitty mood she'd probably pick up on it, and he didn't think rejection the best way to round off a lousy evening. So he carried on eating, looking straight ahead of him. Her face stayed in his mind's eye like a retinal



234



1 imprint of the sun, taking its long sweet time to fade. He read her license plate and unconsciously memorized it. She was local. The car was a “I 5 or '76 Civic, reliable not flash.



When the waiter came back with her order, he stole a quick glance at her to see what she was having — a Cuban sandwich with a Diet Coke.



He thought about talking to her again. They were the only people outside. But before he could make his mind up the rain suddenly came down. A handful of huge drops scattered across the table and on his plate and then the sky opened up and spilled a tidal wave.



Max grabbed his beer and ran for the restaurant entrance.



The girl was already there, standing under the awning, eating her sandwich.



'Hi,' Max said.



'Hello,' she returned. Formal and distanced. Close up and in the light she was even more of a knockout. He told himself not to gawp and looked back ahead of him, where the rain was pounding the tables. He saw his paper plate floating away fast.



'There goes my dinner,' Max said. She didn't reply, biting into the sandwich.



He waited until she'd finished chewing and swallowing before speaking again.



'Heavy rain, huh?'



'Sure is,' she said.



'Did you have a good night?' he asked



'It was short. A friend of mine's getting married this Saturday, but I couldn't stay out too long 'cause I got work tomorrow,' she replied. She was holding his stare. There was a seriousness about her under all the beauty. He detected a slight hint of Spanish in her accent which was otherwise pure Dixie.



'What is it you do?' he asked.



'I'm an accountant.'



23 5 'Downtown?'



'That's right.'



'What firm you with?'



'Why?' she asked, frowning, but there was a curiosity in her tone, tinged with amusement.



'I work around downtown too.' Max shrugged. 'I might know it.' He took a pull on his beer.



'Should you be drinking and driving, Detective?' she asked, surprising him.



'That obvious, huh?'



'Clear as if you'd switched a sign over your head saying “poh-lice”.' She smiled and wiped her mouth with a napkin.



'This is my first and only,' he lied. 'I'm under the limit, I'm off-duty and it's Detective Sergeant to you.' He smiled and winked at her. 'We're kinda touchy 'bout rank.'



'Sorry, Detective Sergeant,' she said with jokey sarcasm.



'I'll let you off with a warning.'



She finished eating her sandwich.



The rain hadn't let up at all, still pounding down. The water levels around the tables were rising.



'You local?' he asked.



'Yeah, I live real close to here,' she said. 'Kinda wish I hadn't stopped now.'



'I'm kinda glad you did,' Max said, without thinking, regretting it as he realized how sleazy it sounded. He saw the smile start to leave her face and did his best to mop up the slime. 'I mean I wouldn'a had no one to talk to out here.'



'Right,' she said and looked out towards her car. The rain was coming down so fast and thick it was hard to see more than a few feet ahead. A nearby drain was overflowing, bubbling up at the opening like an overactive tarpool.



'So, your folks, they what? Cuban?'



'My mom's Cuban-Dominican, my dad's black.'



'Nice mix,' Max said. 'You speak Spanish at home?'



z 36



I 'I don't live with my parents any more. But yeah, when I was growing up it was Spanish in the house and English everywhere else. My dad learned to speak Spanish so he could talk my mom into dating him.'



'He musta been real serious about her,' Max said.



'He still is.' She smiled.



'So they still together?'



'Yeah.' She nodded.



'That's nice. How long they been married?'



“You ask a lot of questions.'



What do you expect? I'm a cop.'



'You're off-duty.'



'I'll be a cop again in a few hours.'



She laughed. She had a small gap between her front teeth.



'My parents have been married thirty-four years,' she said.



'Wow.' He'd placed her at her mid to late twenties. She was probably slightly older. 'You got any brothers and sisters?'



'Three brothers, one sister.'



'Five of you? You the eldest?'



'No, third down. I've got two big brothers. My sister's the youngest.'



'Guess you're a tight family?'



'Yeah, we're real close,' she said.



Max took his cigarettes out of his breast pocket and offered her one. She shook her head with a disapproving look. He lit up, but was careful not to breathe the smoke anywhere in her direction.



They were quiet for a while, both looking out ahead of them. She crossed her arms. He noticed her black alligator skin handbag and the fact that she was wearing heels, which would make her a few inches shorter than him.



'You still haven't told me where you work,' Max said.



'Bellotte-Peters,' she answered.



'You're right, I don't know it.'



2 37 'We're corporate accountants. As far as I know we don't break the law.'



'We're not just there for that, you know,' Max said.



“You don't look like the sort that gets cats outta trees.'



Max laughed aloud. 'I don't look that bad.'



'I dunno . . . They say you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but you look like you'd use that book on someone.'



'If I had your attitude I'd be lockin' up everybody whose face I didn't like.'



She laughed, looked at him very direcdy and smiled. His heart beat faster.



'I'm Max, by the way.' He held out his hand.



'Sandra.' She shook his hand quite firmly. She was right handed and wore a ring on her middle and fourth fingers, and another on her left thumb. Her wedding finger was bare.



'Pleased to meet you, Sandra. You got another name goes with Sandra?'



'Your folks stop at Max?'



He laughed again. He was starting to really like her, but to despair a little too. She was as smart as she was beautiful.



Everything going all the way right for her. She wouldn't want him. Anyway, she was probably living with some nice guy, with a nice job, who she was hoping to marry someday and live in a nice house in a nice part of town with some nice beautiful kids — everything he couldn't give her.



'It's Mingus', he said.



'Mingus? Like Charlie Mingus, the jazz guy?'



Yup.' He nodded. 'We ain't related though.'



'I can see that she said.



'My dad changed his name just after I was born. He was a musician, played double bass in a few local bands. He loved Charlie Mingus so much he took his name.'



'What was it originally?'



'MacCassey,' Max said. 'It's Scots-Irish.'



'Max MacCassey. It's gotta nice ring to it.'



'I prefer Mingus.'



'Your parents still together?'



'No. Not since for ever,' Max said. 'My dad split when I was young. He was on the road a lot anyway, so I didn't really see that much of him. Haven't seen him in twenty years. Dunno where he is.'



'That's sad . . .'



'I guess, but, you know, happened way too long ago to get upset about it.'



'What about your mom?'



We ain't too close,' Max said. 'She moved outta Miami.



Went back to Louisiana. Talk once in a blue moon.'



“You married?' she asked.



'Wouldn't be here if I was,' he answered. She smiled at that.



The rain had stopped a good few minutes ago. There was a huge puddle about an inch deep in front of them. She'd be going soon. It was now or never. He opened his wallet and took out one of his cards with his direct line on it.



'Say, seem' as we both work downtown, you wanna meet up for lunch sometime? Or maybe just stand someplace and watch the rain again?' He held out his card.



She took it and looked at it. 'Miami Task Force,' she read out. 'I've heard of that. Aren't you guys supposed to be supercops?'



'Supposed to be.' Max chuckled. 'You got a card? Or a number?'



'They don't like us getting personal calls in the office.'



'OK.' Max couldn't keep the disappointment from showing.



She'd probably liked his company enough to let him down easy.



'But they don't mind us making them, as long as we're cuick. So why don't I call you next week?'



'Sure!' Max said, a little too keenly for his own comfort.



But what the hell? She hadn't said, 'No, my nice boyfriend with a nice job and nice prospects wouldn't like it,' had she?



She took off her shoes and rolled up the cuffs of her trousers. She wore sky-blue nail varnish on her toes.



'So long, Detective — sorry, Detective Sergeant Mingus.'



She held out her hand.



'Call me Max,' he said, shaking it. 'And call me. Please.'



She smiled and tiptoed out into the puddle. He watched her go. He tried not to disrespect her by checking out her ass, but he couldn't help himself.



iQue culo magnificoF The waiter sighed quietly next to him, under his breath, translating Max's uppermost thoughts into the little Spanish he knew.



'Hey! Watch your manners, fuckhead!' Max snapped at him. He doused his cigarette in the beer can and tossed it to the waiter before wading out through the puddle in his shoes.



Sandra waved at him just before pulling out into the road.



He waved back and then stayed where he was until her tail lights had disappeared. He had a huge smile on his face.



I 26



Carmine didn't immediately recognize Risquee when he saw her waiting for him outside the shop. She wasn't wearing her street clothes. She was dressed in blue denim dungarees, white sneakers and a white T-shirt; her hair was tied back and she was carrying a rucksack. Maybe she was splitting town as soon as he gave her the 50 Gs he had in his trunk.



He hoped so.



He wasn't going to kill her. Sure, he'd considered it as a cheaper option, but, when it came down to it, he couldn't see himself doing it. Murder wasn't him.



He parked three blocks down from the store. He wasn't gonna give her the money here. He was gonna walk up to her, take her for a drive, sweet talk her like he'd done the first time he'd seen her; he'd apologize from the bottom of his heart for leavin' her in jail and betrayin' her and then try and get a guarantee from her that she wouldn't say nothin' to his mother. He'd make her see sense, see his way.



He knew he could. Plus he even had another 2 5 Gs in the glove compartment as a token of his appreciation. No way could that bitch resist the combination of green and his smooth charms. They never could. Everyone had their price.



It was dark in the road, with the only light coming from the few passing cars that were around and the one street lamp that hadn't got shot out by kids.



Carmine started walking up slowly, getting his words straight.



'Hey, baby,' he'd say. 'Sorry I kept you waitin'. Traffic was a bit—' No, not 'bitch'; couldn't use no pimpspeak.



'Traffic was hell.' That's what he'd hell.'



say.



'Traffic was







'Hey, baby,' a man's voice behind her made Risquee turn around. It wasn't Carmine.



She couldn't quite make him out. He was close by, walking up to her from the right side of the street.



'You waitin' on someone, suga?' the man asked, voice all deep, comin' from inside his stomach like he was imitating Barry White.



'You talkin' to me, mistah?'



'Sure am. Ain't no one else out here on this night.' The man got closer. He had a kind of bounce in his voice, like he was finding shit funny.



'Zzamatta-o-fak I am waitin' on someone — suga? she said, putting plenty of boot in her tone, so he knew she wasn't interested. 'An' I don't need no company while I'm doin' it.'



He was close enough to see now. Tall and slim, short sleeved black shirt and loose slacks, a hint of gold in his mouth, gold chain, shiny gators, aftershave - damn, if it wasn't Ole fuckin' Spice! Her pops used to put that shit on his dick after he'd been fuckin' around, so's her moms wouldn't smell another pussy on him. Another no-good dumbass.



' Whoooohl Ain't you the feisty one, huh?' The man laughed.



There was something off about him, the way he was standing real close to her.



'Yeah, I'm feisty as fuck, you mess wit' me,' she snarled.



'An' you a inch from catchin' that shit! Now, I'm a waitin'



on someone and it ain't yo' ass, so why don't you take a long walk outta mah face, OK?'



'Oh, I'm sorry, mam — I do apologize,' he said with exaggerated politeness, but then turned pure nasty, 'but I thought you was some cheap ho' lookin' to make a quick five.'



I





'Oh, I'm sorry, sah,' Risquee snapped back sarcastically.



'I remine you o' yo' momma? Or is it yo' daddy like to dress up in women panties?'



He hit her in the mouth. She felt metal in the punch.



Brass knuckles.



She staggered back into the shop door. She was dazed, head spinning, blood pouring down her throat and out of her mouth.



She felt the man reach through the fog and grab her arm.



He started dragging her up the street, in the direction he'd come.



Her rucksack was gone.



Carmine saw it all. At first he'd thought the brother was a john or some guy out tryin' his luck, but then it occurred to him that only trouble or an idiot walked these streets at night, and, right at the instant he hit her, Carmine realized the man was someone Sam had sent.



Fuck that bitch, had been his first and only thought as he'd quickly turned around and started walking back to his car, more relieved that Risquee was really being dealt with for good, than he was mad at Sam for disobeying him. Hell, Sam had only wanted to look after his best interests anyway, so- Behind him, he heard a scream — a man's scream.



He turned around to see what had happened, but couldn't see shit 'cause it was too far away.



The man was yellin', 'You bitch! You bitch! Youfuckin' daidY Then, behind him, an engine started and, as he turned back around, headlights came on full beam and blinded him.



()nly her mouth hurt. Her head cleared in seconds.



()le Spice was dragging her up the road to where his car was parked and the passenger door was open.



That fuckin' piece-of-shit-pussy-cocksucker-lowlife Kahmyne had set her the fuck up! She shoulda known. She juss didn't think he had the nutsacks to get her smoked.



She could smell those cheap shit aftershave fumes comin'



offa Ole Spice, and stale sweat too. Lazy nigga probably didn't shower regularly.



He had her by her left arm.



She was right handed.



She reached into her pocket and took out the switchblade she kept there, in case of bad tricks. It had a six-inch razor-sharp stainless-steel blade.



Ole Spice stopped when he heard it pop open.



Dumbass . . . Dinn think to frisk me, did) a? But who's complainin', fukka?



She swung quick and hard and stuck him in the gut. The blade pierced his flesh and ruptured soft tissue. He screamed. She dragged the blade down her like she was pulling on a lever.



He screeched in an unmanly way, reminded her of a little girl getting spooked on a ghost train.



His warm blood pissed out all over her hand and splashed on the ground.



She pulled out the knife; he fell heavily to his knees.



'You fuckin' bitch!' he said, quietly, in astonishment, 'you fuckin' stabbed me!'



'No shit, fukka!' she yelled and kicked him in the face.



He fell back with a grunt.



Risquee ran up the street, fast as her legs could carry her.



She had a great pair of pins on her, sprinter's legs, or so she'd been told. Amount of runnin' away she'd had to do all her life had developed 'em juss right.



She heard Ole Spice yellin' his ass off. Then he shot at her. Pop-pop-pop. She ran faster.



Two cars were coming up the road.



Poppoppop again.



I







She heard glass breaking and the first car suddenly swerved sharply and skidded, crashing into Ole Spice's ride.



She ran even faster, just kept on going, faster and faster, oblivious to her busted-up mouth, and the sounds of more gunfire.



Carmine's ride was stolen right from under his nose. He'd left the top down and the keys in. Didn't think he was going to be gone for more than a few seconds. Little fuckers had probaby been watchin' him from the minute he stopped in the street. They'd jumped in when his back was turned and reversed so fast the tyres had squealed. Then they'd spun around and torn off down the street, as hell had broken loose behind them.



First some shots, then a car had swerved off the road and smashed slap-bang-boom into the hitman's ride. Then there'd been more shots - automatic fire, coming from another car — rat-tat-tat-tat-tattatat — loud — sounded like an assault rifle. Bullets had smashed into the vehicles and started ricocheting everywhere.



Who was shooting at who and why, Carmine didn't know or care because he'd started running the opposite way, running for what was left of his dear, precious, sad-ass life.



27



9.30 p.m. Eldon Burns had a home to go to. His day was done. He was going to go to his gated house in Hialeah, kiss Lexi hello, kiss Vanessa and Leanne, if they were still in, have himself a good hot bath and then kick back with some beers and watch some old fight films in his basement den.



Friday nights were his alone, Saturdays he met up with the Cutmen, and Sundays he spent with his family, especially Leanne, the youngest, brightest and sweetest of his daughters.



He hated to admit it and did his best not to show it, but she was his favourite. He had high hopes for her - an Ivy League college, then an internship with a congressman in DC, possibly Strom Thurmond, who the Turd Fairy knew very well.



He got in his dark blue Buick Skylark sedan. Leather seats, dark wood panelling, 2.8 litre engine, gold wire wheels, smooth transmission, plenty of room inside, like being in your own private club; an all over class ride. He also drove a Cadillac Eldorado, but that wasn't as practical for me day to day as this baby.



He got onto Flagler. Traffic was fluid.



He popped a cassette tape into the car stereo. It was an advance copy of Sinatra's new album, She Shot Me Down, which wasn't due out in the stores for another few months.



He'd got it straight from Frank's management, where he had good contacts. He loved Frank, always listened to him on a Friday. It was great end-of-week music.



As Eldon took USi, he decided the album was pretty good for late-period stuff, possibly even the best thing he'd done since September of My Years. He wasn't trying to be



I







relevant or appeal to hippies and moptops, and he wasn't doing none of that Star Wars bullshit he'd tried on Trilogy. No, this was Frank at his best, back in some bar on his lonesome, loaded on Jack Daniels and thinking about how Ava Gardner had dumped him for a bullfighter. The years were showing in Frank's voice, but the material he was singing suited him perfectly. It was a nice album you could kick back to. Lexi might even like it, if he could stop her from playing Kenny Rogers for just a second.



He noticed the black Mercedes which had been behind him since he'd left the car park wasn't exactly shy about the fact that it was tailing him. He wondered if he should do something now or later. He smiled to himself. He had a .3 57 Magnum in the glove compartment and a .38 under the seat. He preferred revolvers over automatics. They never jammed.



When he reached Hialeah, Eldon pulled over and parked in a well-lit residential street close to his house.



The Mercedes stopped behind him and killed its lights.



'Whaddaya want?' Eldon said, finally looking in the rearview mirror at the passenger who'd been riding with him the whole way. He could only see the side of his forehead.



'The most powerful man in town shouldn't be leaving his car door open.'



'I didn't,' Eldon said. 'Whaddaya want?'



'Two of your finest are investigating me.'



'Who?'



'I don't have the names. One's black, one's white.'



'How d'you know this?'



'I just do.'



'This more of your voodoo shit, Boukman? The spirit of King Kong materialize in your living room or somethin'?'



I '11 don laughed.



'You'll never understand,' Solomon said. The leather squeaked as he moved slightly in the seat.



247 'I'd “understand” if you gave me a name or two.'



'Look into it.'



'You heard of “please”, or don't that word exist in Haiti?'



'Look into it - please Solomon said. No sarcasm in his tone. No emotion. No nothing. Usual flat, dull, personalityfree voice. 'We don't want any problems, not with the construction about to start.'



'There's no problems I don't see comin' a month before they show up,' Eldon said. 'I'm your future, remember? So you got nothin' to worry about, s'long as you remember who's in charge.'



'Long as I remember my place, you mean?'



'Don't gimme that civil rights shit!' Eldon laughed. “You ain't a nigra, Boukman. You're Haitian. Martin Luther King did not die for you.'



Solomon didn't answer. He shifted closer to the door on the passenger side.



'Why are you sweatin' this anyway? No one knows what you look like, right? You probably forgotten yourself, way I bin hearin' things. How many operations you had to your face?'



'You remember what I look like, Eldon. You never forget a face, right?' Solomon opened the door and got out of the car.



Eldon watched him walk off to the Mercedes, which had pulled back away from the street light and into the dark.



The car then reversed up the road, did a three-point turn and headed back to Miami.



Weirdly, Eldon had the feeling someone was still in the car with him. He switched on the light and looked behind him. There was no one there, but Boukman had left something on the seat, his signature, his calling card: the King of Swords.



Their troubles weren't over. There'd be more killing.



PART FOUR



June 1981 I 28



'Tarot cards are used in the art of divination, commonly known as fortune telling. They've been around since the fifteenth century, and are thought to have originated in Italy, although fortune telling itself is older than the Bible. The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy rail against fortune tellers. And in Chronicles, one of the reasons King Saul dies is because he asked a medium for help. You could even say it's the oldest faith,' Phyllis Cole explained to Max in a room at the Tuttle Motel on Collins Avenue, where she taught card-reading and palmistry classes on Thursday nights. She was a professional psychic who also helped cops with their investigations. Max had never used psychics himself, but it was a common, if not publicized practice, especially in missing persons cases. Phyllis had a good reputation: she'd found several people, although they'd all turned up dead.



'There are seventy-eight cards in a tarot deck. They're divided into two groups - Major Arcana and Minor Arcana,'



she continued, laying out four on the table. 'There are twenty-two Major Arcana cards; they signify life's prime forces, things over which we have no control — twists of fate, acts of God, the intangibles, the imponderables. They're results too. You're probably familiar with some of them, on account of seeing them on TV or movies - Death, the Devil and the Lovers. None of these are meant to be taken literally.



Take a look at the design. What do you see?'



She passed the Death card over to Max, who was sitting opposite her at a table at the end of the room. He saw a giant grinning skeleton in black armour riding a white horse.



The horse was trampling over a body. In front of it stood a



2W cardinal in his mitre and robes, hands clasped together in prayer and supplication, while two children knelt beside him, one looking up at the skeleton, the other looking away in fear.



'Oh, I know, I know,' she said before he stated the obvious. 'Looks like a scene of devastation, doesn't it? But look to the right of the picture, behind the horse's head.'



'A rising sun,' Max said.



'Exactly.' She nodded. 'A rising sun. A new day. After the end, a new beginning, a fresh start; change, regeneration.



That's what the card symbolizes — one door closing, another opening. And if you look at the rest of the background, you'll see a waterfall, symbolizing the constant flow of life.'



'And tears too, right?' Max said.



'See? You're learning.' Phyllis smiled warmly. She was a short, large, but not unattractive, woman who wore her hair in an almost militaristic afro, cropped close around the back and sides, but higher and pointed on top. It shouldn't have suited her, but it did.



She put the cards away and picked out eight new ones from the deck, laying them face up so Max could see them.



'This is the Minor Arcana, which closely resemble traditional poker cards. There are four suits — Swords, Cups, Pentacles or Coins and Wands or Batons. Playing cards are also used in fortune telling, and when they are, Spades are taken to mean Swords, Hearts are Cups, Clubs are Pentacles and Diamonds are Wands.



'Like playing cards, the number suits run from an Ace to a Ten. Swords represent aggression and drive, as well as pain and suffering; Cups are the emotions; Pentacles symbolize money and all that goes with or without it; Wands mean ideas and creativity, as well as communication.



'Now, the main difference is in the court cards, of which there are four in tarot — King, Queen, Knight and Page — as opposed to just three. The court cards represent people,



seniority usually reflecting their age. Except for the Queen.



She can be any age.'



One of the cards Phyllis had put out was the King of Swords — a scowling man in robes, sitting on an ornate stone throne, holding a huge sword in his left hand. His right hand was clenched into a fist. Around him, in the background, much smaller than him, were three trees and low-lying clouds. Max understood the card represented someone who dominated with aggression, but — peering closer at the King's wary sideways glance — also someone who was always looking over his shoulder to make sure nothing was sneaking up on him from behind.



'So Swords are bad cards to get?' Max asked.



'Yes and no. It depends where they turn up in a reading.



The Ace of Swords, for example, turning up in the middle of good positive cards can mean a heroic triumph over adversity. But the Three of Swords means heartbreak, and the Eight, Nine, and Ten are all bad news.'



Max considered the King of Swords a lot more closely.



What was it doing in two people's stomach? Was it a sign, a message, a calling card or part of a potion?



'Now, do you want to know how these work?'



'Please,' Max said.



Would you like me to read for you?'



'No thanks, mam.'



'You don't believe in it?'



'Not really, no. No disrespect meant or anything.'



'None taken.' She shuffled the cards overhand, but considered him curiously, like she'd noticed something new about him. Max sensed a gentle pleasant warmth behind his neck, close to the nape, as if he was being massaged.



'Tarot readings can be like confessionals. Do you go to church?'



'Sometimes,' Max admitted, 'but not for the religion.'



She frowned.



25 ?



'I go there to think things through occasionally, when I need peace and quiet.'



'To reflect but not to pray?'



'Yeah.' Max nodded. 'Something like that.'



'To help solve your cases?'



'The difficult ones, sometimes, yeah.'



'And do you solve them?'



'As a matter of fact, when I'm there I find I'll remember things I missed.'



'But do you think it's God shining his light in those dark corners of your mind, wiping away the dust?'



'I really couldn't tell you.'



'You didn't say “no”, Detective, which is interesting.



It's a short step between the church and what I do, you know.' Phyllis smiled. 'It's all part of the same path . . .



But anyway, I respect your wishes. We'll do a hypothetical reading.'



She put on her glasses and picked out ten cards. She arranged two in the middle of the table, one crossing the other, then she quickly placed one above and one below the cross, then one card on either side of it. The last four tarots she laid down to her right, vertically, one over the other.



She circled her hand above the group of tarots on the left. 'This first set of cards represents the present, and these'



— she moved her finger up and down over the upright line on the right — 'going up, represent the future. Now, let's break it down.



'The two crossed cards in the middle represent the petitioner - that's the person you're reading for.'



The Knight of Swords, riding a white horse, charging into battle, sword aloft, face frozen in aggression, was crossed by the Two of Cups, a young man and woman, each holding a golden chalice, reaching out to touch one another's fingers.



'Typical boy meets girl scenario, from a male's perspec I





tive,' Phyllis said. 'The card behind them, the Six of Wands, represents the recent past, what's brought them to this point: news, communication, a letter, a phone call. The one above them, the Queen of Cups, represents what the petitioner hopes for the most. In this case, the Queen of Cups is the woman of his dreams. The card below, the Three of Swords, is what the petitioner's worried about - a broken heart. And the last card in this section, the one in front, is the Three of Cups and shows the present moving into the future. It may be a celebration. A happy time.



When you read them, you read them in the order you placed them. Tell me what you see, Detective.'



Max studied the cards, which she'd laid out so that they faced him.



'The Knight of Swords is an aggressive young guy. Like a younger version of the King of Swords, always going to war. He meets this girl he thinks is everything he isn't, and that maybe she's better than him, so he's afraid of getting his heart broken if he goes after her. They've been in touch with each other though' — he pointed to the Six of Wands and then moved to the Three of Cups - 'and they've made a date to go to - a party?'



'Very good.' Phyllis clapped. 'You're a natural.'



Max thought it wasn't exactly brain surgery, but he smiled at Phyllis instead of speaking his mind. Then he thought of Sandra, who he'd met twice for lunch close to her workplace in the past two weeks and studied the cards more closely.



The Six of Wands - half a dozen branches seemingly falling through the sky - reminded him of rain.



He looked at Phyllis again and got a knowing smile from her.



“You understood that the cards tell a story. Most people, when they start out as readers, take it one card at a time.



Not you. You got a girl in your life?'



'Not really, no. Why? D'you see one for me?' he asked



her. The times he'd met Sandra had been brief, but he'd sworn she'd been a bit warmer to him when they'd first met than these last two times. Their lunches - sandwiches and coffee in Avi's Diner on Flagler — had almost been formal, the talk small and polite, her attitude aloof and distant. Yet it was she who'd made all the moves. She'd called him up both times and fixed the where and when. He'd gone there all excited, like the teenage geek who's bagged the best looking cheerleader in his school, yet he'd come away uncertain as to whether she felt anything for him beyond curiosity.



It was an odd position he found himself in, vulnerable and open to hurt in a way he hadn't been since his youth.



'I thought you didn't want a reading,' Phyllis replied, putting away the cards.



'Guess not,' Max said. 'So, how many different kinds of tarot cards are there?'



'All kinds. The one we used here is the Rider-Waite deck, probably the most common and popular, on account of its simplicity, but there are literally hundreds of designs. You can get the ones with Native American Indians, crows, cats, dogs, vampires, comic-book superheroes, old movie stars, baseball players — you name it. They're all based on the Rider-Waite system. There are some exceptions though.



Have you heard of Aleister Crowley?'



'Yeah. The devil worshipper, right?'



'That's him. He designed a deck called the Thoth Tarot.



It incorporates a lot of Egyptian symbolism in the designs.



Then there's also the Golden Dawn Tarot, the Tree of Life Tarot and the Cosmic Tarot, each with a variation in the way they're interpreted.'



Max pulled out three black and white morgue photographs of the card taken from Preval Lacour's stomach, the scraps fitted together to make a whole.



'Seen this one?' Max handed her the photographs.



Phyllis studied them for just a second.



'My God! That's from a de Villeneuve deck!' She was almost breathless. 'Where did you find this? And why's it been cut up like that?'



'It was found in someone's stomach.'



'Someone ate this?'



'Ate, swallowed, force fed. We're not sure yet.'



'These are very rare cards. Very exclusive. Very expensive.'



'How much do they go for?'



'Five grand a deck, the last I heard, and that was a few years ago. They're not easily available. They're only printed once a year in Switzerland. And they're made to order. Cash up front.'



'What's so special about them - apart from the price?



Why's the face missing'



'All the faces are missing. That's one of their unique qualities. Not just anyone can use them. Only certain people.'



'Like who?'



'People with … a very special gift.'



'Can you use them?'



'I wouldn't go near them,' Phyllis said.



'Why not?'



'Did you ever hear of someone called Kathleen Reveaux?'



'No.'



'She was a well-known card reader, quite famous even.



She'd been on TV a few times, accurately predicted Nixon's downfall, defeat in Vietnam, the attempt on Ford's life. I knew her very well. She bought a de Villeneuve deck at an auction in New York. She tried using the cards and the images on them turned hostile?



'What do you mean?'



'She said she saw monsters, great beasts with blood-red s and white fangs. I told her to burn the cards immedily.



Bur she had a wilful, stubborn side and she persisted :h them.'



Phyllis stopped talking and tears began to gather in her eyes. She took off her glasses and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.



'What happened to her? If you want to tell me,' Max said.



'She took her life. She threw herself off the Freedom Tower. You must have heard about it?'



'Was that in '78?'



Phyllis whispered, 'Yes.'



'Yeah, I heard about her,' Max said. He remembered the incident, but not well. It was deemed a spectacular suicide, given the location, but a suicide nonetheless. A deranged woman who'd died alone. It made a change from the two most common kinds of death in Miami at the time — cocaine cowboys killing each other and everyone in-between, and South Beach retirees checking out of God's waiting room — but those were the only things about Kathleen Reveaux's death that had registered. He hadn't even known her name until now.



'I spoke to her a few days before,' Phyllis said. 'Kathleen told me the cards were speaking to her, compelling her to … to kill herself.'



'She heard voices?' Max asked.



'Just like psychotics do, I know.'



'What kind of voices?'



'Actually it was just the one voice. A man's voice. She said he had a French accent. And every day the voice got louder and louder, until I presume it was all she could hear and all she could listen to.'



She broke off and stared out of the window into the darkness outside.



'Who was this de Villeneuve?' Max asked, bringing her gaze and attention back to the photographs on the table.



'A lot of rumour and conjecture surrounds him,' Phyllis began. 'What is known for sure is that he was a painter in



the court of the eighteenth-century French king, Louis XVI.



He made a good living painting flattering portraits of the nobility. He was a favourite of Marie-Antoinette, Louis'



wife. Some claimed he was also her lover. But there was another side to him. He was a reputed devil worshipper, and — unlike Crowley — he was said to be the real deal, capable of summoning Lucifer himself from the depths.



'The story went that Lucifer granted him the power to change his appearance. He could become whoever he wanted, male or female. He had the power to walk through any wall and open any door. He made a lot of use of this to further his position and influence in court, taking on the appearance of husbands, wives and mistresses, hearing every dirty little secret in the realm, which he passed on to Marie Antoinette.



'But, as with all pacts, there was a downside, a price to pay. Every month de Villeneuve had to make a human sacrifice to retain his powers. Young women — young girls, actually, because the Devil would only accept virgins. He killed several society women, some say up to ten or twelve before he was caught. The bodies would be found with their throats cut ear to ear, and there'd be a brand over their hearts - a long upright, medieval sword, very similar to the one in the card. The hearts would be missing, although no one knew how because the only injuries the victims had were to their necks.'



'How d'he get caught?' Max asked.



'Well, one day, the king decided to honour de Villeneuve by exhibiting his favourite paintings of himself and his cronies. The portraits were hung in the Grand Trianon - an outbuilding in the Palace of Versailles. Hundreds of guests were invited. They wined, dined and danced in the main palace ballroom and then Louis led them over to see the portraits. There they got the shock of their lives. Instead of seeing portraits of the monarch and themselves, they saw



what looked to be a hundred variations of the same painting: a naked young girl, sitting in a chair with her feet in a bucket and her hands tied behind her back. A man in black robes was standing behind her with a raised sword. And all around them, in a circle stood these very tall men with dead-white faces.



'No one knew how the paintings got in there, or what had happened to the original portraits. Then one of the nobles recognized the girl in one of the paintings as his murdered daughter. And then another nobleman saw his child in another of the paintings.



'They arrested de Villeneuve and put him in the Bastille, but he escaped. That was in 1785. In 1789 the French monarchy was overthrown and de Villeneuve resurfaced, this time in Haiti.



'Haiti was then a French slave colony. No one knows how, but de Villeneuve had become a wealthy plantation owner; coffee and cane were his main trade. He owned over a hundred African slaves, although, for the times, he was enlightened. He treated them well and gave them a kind of freedom. He paid them and even built a village for them away from his estate. Of course, there was a reason for this.



At night, the slaves practised their religion.'



'Voodoo?' Max suggested, mentioning one of the four things he knew about Haiti, outside of Papa and Baby Doc, and the fact that the island was a hundred miles away from Miami.



'No. De Villeneuve's slaves practised black magic, a series of rituals revolving around human sacrifice and the conjuring up of evil spirits. The high priest of the slave village was a man called Boukman. He was said to have all kinds of supernatural powers, including the ability to see far into the future. He used playing cards in his divination.



'De Villeneuve used to attend the ceremonies, both as participant and painter. He and Boukman were good friends,



as well as followers of the same master. De Villeneuve designed a set of cards for Boukman to use.'



'And that's the origin of the famous five-grand deck?'



Max asked.



'Yes. But it's said that it wasn't really de Villeneuve who was the cards' creator, but Lucifer himself. All the cards are said to bear his signature in the lower left-hand corner: a falling star, symbolizing his fall from grace. And the cards are only really meant to be used by those who follow him, or who are at least familiar with his ways. I can't verify this because I've only seen the cards in photographs, and those weren't close-ups.'



They both studied the card in the morgue pictures, but all four corners were eroded.



'What happened to de Villeneuve?'



'He lived in Haiti until 1805, when once again he disappeared.



This time for good. No one knows what happened to him.



'As for Boukman, in 1791 he led the first slave uprising against the colonial masters — a very bloody and violent campaign. De Villeneuve and his property were of course untouched. Although Boukman was eventually captured and executed by the French, the rebellion continued and became a sophisticated military campaign led by Toussaint L'Ouverture. Haiti declared its independence in 1804.



'De Villeneuve is known to have fathered many many children by slave women, including several with Boukman's sister, by whom he had six — all twins. Many of his descendants are still in Haiti and Switzerland, of course, where they produce the cards every October, which was the month they were originally created.'



'So this King of Swords card. What do you think it was doing in someone's stomach?'



'What did the person do?' Phyllis asked.



Max told her about Lacour.



'It sounds like he was possessed and under a spell, to do something like that,' Phyllis said. 'Just like Kathleen was, God rest her soul.'



Max checked his watch. It was past 9 p.m.



He asked Phyllis for the names of shops where they sold tarot cards. She told him she had a list of suppliers and distributors in her files and went out to make him a copy.



She came back with three sheets of paper. He thanked her for her time and help. She walked him outside.



When they were shaking hands and saying goodbye, Max saw her expression change from pleasant to fearful.



'I know you don't yet believe, Detective, but I have to tell you to be very careful,' she said gravely. 'You're heading out on a dark road. It's going to be very dangerous - not just for you, but those close to you, people you care about the most'



'Where does it end, the road?' Max asked.



'It's not where, it's how,' she said, looking at him with concern one final time.



'Could you be any more specific?'



She shook her head and walked quickly away, back into the motel.



29



Early the next morning, Max drove to Miami-Dade PD headquarters and went to the library. He looked up microfiche articles on Kathleen Reveaux's suicide. It had made the front page of the Herald on Thursday u May 1978.



She'd jumped from the top of the Freedom Tower in the early hours of Wednesday morning. There were no witnesses.



The body had been discovered by construction workers.



The following day the story had been bumped down to a third-page column: Reveaux was identified, and her family and friends were quoted as saying she'd become increasingly disturbed since her return from a trip to New York the previous month.



By Friday 26 May, another column, again on the third page, said the police had ruled out foul play and were marking her death as a suicide. The report mentioned that 'numerous occult objects' had been found in her house on South Miami Avenue, before going on to describe her career as a celebrity fortune teller.



Max then went down to Records.



Kathleen Reveaux's file was thin: incident report, coroner's report, witness statements (two) and twenty photographs.



A Detective Billue had caught the case. His report stated that, based on the damage to the victim's body — head, legs ;ind arms all fractured in multiple places - the victim had fallen from a considerable height, estimated to be the upper floors of the Freedom Tower.



The victim was wearing blue Levi's, a white blouse, white socks and one Adidas tennis shoe on her left foot. Recovered



near the scene was the right tennis shoe. Screwed up in her hand was a tarot card: the King of Swords.



Max made a photocopy of the file and took the elevator down to evidence to see if they'd kept anything from the case. All personal effects in suicides were usually destroyed if the next of kin didn't claim them.



There was nothing, but Kathleen's sister had signed for her belongings — her bloodstained clothes and shoes, and the tarot card.



Her address was in Gainesville.



Max called her up and made an appointment to go by her house that evening.



I 3°



Joe sat back on the busted up couch and stretched out his long legs as he finished up reading through the NYPD witness reports on the Wong family murders. He was in the disused garage behind North West 9th Street in Overtown, which he and Max were using as their base. His cousin Deshaun had hooked them up with it for fifty bucks a month. Apart from the couch, a wall of empty metal shelves, a refrigerator, their three boxes of paperwork, a blackboard and a corkboard, the place was empty. Max and Joe went there once a day, sometimes together, but more often individually, before the beginning or at the end of their shifts.



They never talked about the case at MTF. Any calls they made were on outside payphones.



The place could have been much better — light came from a single bulb hanging off a flex, and the power supply was temperamental, going off for minutes at a time; plus there was no ventilation, so it was always stifling hot, and the stench of old oil made Joe's head hurt and his clothes stink like a mechanic's overalls. But it was on a deserted side road, and was one of a dozen identical-looking, brown metal-shuttered garages with rusted padlocks, completely anonymous.



Joe liked it here, doing real police work instead of framing patsies. He and Max had spent all of the past week putting together an imaginary case against Philip Frino, an Australian dope runner who brought Colombian cartel coke in on a small fleet of cigarette boats. Frino had a place in the Bahamas. The idea was to link Grossfeld to him and then him to Carlos Lehder's middle management. It was



something they could've done in ten minutes, but Sixdeep wanted the whole thing carefully documented, a paper trail that would stand up in court, so he'd pulled them both off their eight ongoing investigations and made them go at Moyez full time; so far they'd put Frino under surveillance and photographed him meeting numerous people. Joe was glad he was in on the joke.



This was his third time going through the Wong file, making sure he hadn't missed anything. The NYPD officers had been diligent and conscientious, interviewing damn near everyone who lived on the street. Several witnesses had reported a dark blue Ford transit van with New Jersey plates parked across the road from the Wong house, and three people had described the same man hanging around on the kerb by the Ford — tall, fat and wearing a black bowler hat.



The van hadn't been recovered. They'd run the plates, but they'd turned out to be fake.



The candy wrapper had been dusted for prints, but nothing had come up. It was the same with the one found at the Lacour house.



Joe put the file away and got himself a Coke from the fridge. He turned his attentions to the twelve-page computer printout of missing persons reported in Miami between June 1980 and May 1981. Forty-six names per page, 5 52 in total.



He scanned the printout for families living at the same address. Nada.



He scanned it again for matching family names. It was laborious, because the list wasn't in alphabetical order. Twice the light went out and he lost his place and had to start again.



He persevered. He sweated through his shirt.



He got to the twelfth page and swore he'd missed something.



He went back to the beginning.



Spanish names dominated, then English. The French and Jewish ones stood out.



Nothing matched.



He did it by address.



Nine pages in, he hit the jackpot.



Madeleine Cajuste, 3121 North East 56th Street, Lemon City; reported missing: 30 April.



Sauveur Kenscoff, 3121 North East 56th Street, Lemon City; reported missing: 30 April.



That was it. Two people living in the same house had disappeared just before the Moyez shooting. It was too late to check it out now; he'd go the next morning.



Joe wrote it down on the blackboard, which they'd divided in two, Joe on the right, Max on the left. That way they kept track of their current and upcoming tasks, as well as any leads they'd generated.



Max had written that he was currently talking to tarot card sellers and distributors. So far nothing. The de Villeneuve family in Switzerland had refused to divulge their list of buyers, saying they prided themselves on their secrecy and considered their clients an extension of the family. Some family, thought Joe, who'd heard all about their history from Max.



At the bottom of the board, in capitals, Max had written: 'DEVIL WORSHIPPERSBLACK MAGIC?'



Max had been to Bridget Reveaux's house in Gainesville and photographed her late sister's tarot card. He'd blown up his picture to A3 size and tacked it to the corkboard.



livery detail was visible, including the supposed mark of the Devil in the bottom left-hand corner — an inverted five-pointed star with an elongated tip, which, to Joe, looked more like a badly drawn plummeting eagle.



Joe didn't buy into any of that hocus-pocus bullshit, but the card sure freaked him out. The King of Sword's may have had a blank face, but it didn't feel that way. The thing had some kind of presence — and a human presence at that.



It was like having someone in there with him. Even with



the lights off. He wanted to turn the fucking thing around, but that was a pussy thing to do. It wasn't even a card, but a picture of a card.



Fuck it! He turned the damn thing around.



After he was done, Joe locked up the garage and went to his car, parked close to the Dorsey house.



When he was a kid his granddaddy used to take him by there and point it out to him. It was a fine two-storey wooden gingerbread house, with tall trees in the back yard and red rose bushes in the front. D. A. Dorsey was Miami's first black millionaire. He'd made his fortune in real estate and done a lot of good for Overtown, including, among other things, helping build the Mount Zion Baptists church.



Joe's granddaddy told him that every black man should aspire to being a little like D. A. Dorsey — help yourself first and then, when your pockets are full, give some of it back to the people around you.



The house had long since fallen into disrepair and neglect.



The front entrance and all the windows were boarded up, the white paint was greying, bubbling, cracked and peeling.



In some places it had been replaced with gang graffiti.



A bunch of kids were hanging around on the sidewalk outside it, smoking and drinking liquor out of bottles in brown bags. They eyed Joe up, immediately made him for a cop and one by one started to disperse, shuffling off slowly, a dip in their walks, left arms swinging lower than the right.



Yeah, go on, walk off,' Joe muttered under his breath.



They didn't know shit about where they'd been standing.



He looked up at the sad old house, dirt under the slats, smashed roof tiles in the grass. There should've been a statue of Dorsey in Overtown, but the city wouldn't spring for that and who'd come see it anyway? Nobody came to Overtown any more unless they lived here, had a score to



settle or a crime to commit. It hadn't always been that way, but it sure was now.



Overtown was one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Miami. In the 1930s it had been called Colouredtown, and its entertainment district, known as the Strip or the Great Black Way on North West 2nd Avenue had almost rivalled Harlem's, right down to the Lyric Theatre, Miami's very own version of the Apollo, where all the greats had played.



His granddaddy had talked about seeing Nat King Cole, Cab Colloway, Lady Day, Josephine Baker and many others at the Lyric. The area had been home to the Cola Nip Bottling Company, as well as dozens of hotels, grocery stores, barbershops, markets and nightclubs. It had been a happening place, and a happy, prosperous one too - or as happy and prosperous as black people were allowed to get in the Jim Crow era.



Ironically, Overtown had started dying when segregation laws were repealed. There was a slow exodus of businesses and talent as people relocated to other parts of town. Then the powers that be had driven a stake right into its heart by building the I-95 Expressway right through it, which devastated the already struggling community. Now the place was barely there and easy to miss; somewhere people literally drove over on their way downtown or to get their kicks at the beach.



Joe felt angry as he pulled out and got on the road. Angry at the city, angry at the world he lived in, and mostly angry at himself for burying his emotions behind his badge and uniform. He'd looked the other way and stayed quiet when he should have been pointing his_ finger and screaming his head off. He'd played the white man's game for the sake of his bullshit career and lost. Stevie Wonder couldVe seen that coming. He couldn't help but feel that he was being punished for the way he'd done things — and for the million things he hadn't done. He'd let his people down. He'd



watched them take beatings and humiliations they didn't deserve, and he hadn't lifted a finger or raised his voice in protest. He'd lied for racist cops who would've done exactly the same thing to him, if he hadn't been a uniform. He could've taken a stand and done the right thing, but he hadn't because he'd thought he needed his job more than his soul and his pension more than his peace of mind. He thought of his granddaddy again, trying to instil those good values in him as he'd held his hand in front of the Dorsey house. He'd failed him.



And even now, with what he was doing in that garage — who was he fooling? Max, that was who he was fooling. His best friend — shit, his only damn friend. The guy had always been a straight arrow as far as he was concerned, always looked out for him, no matter how unpopular it made him.



Max just didn't care. Joe was his friend and you didn't bail out on a friend, no matter what.



Max was helping him because he thought this was about getting some proper justice and to see Joe go out in a blaze of glory. But it wasn't really. It was about Sixdeep, about bringing him down.



With Max's help, Joe was going to build the real Moyez case, uncover the people behind it and hand every detail over to Grace Strasburg at the Herald. She was a good reporter, one of the few who didn't think Sixdeep walked on water. He'd do it the day he officially left MTF. It would be his parting shot, his farewell and by the way fuck you to Sixdeep.



It would mean the end of his and Max's careers. Max would come out of it worse — both betrayed and betrayer — and Joe felt genuinely bad about that, but Sixdeep had to be stopped, and that made the ends justify the means.



31



Madeleine Cajuste lived on a stretch of North East 57th Street cops called 'Shantytown Central', because all the houses there looked like they'd been sucked up by a Third World hurricane and dumped on the nearest available strip of Miami wasteland.



The houses stood on bricks or breezeblocks, just like gutted cars, and were made up of five pieces of wood so thin that if you stamped your foot in anger it went through the floor. The roofs were slim sheets of corrugated iron, which split in heavy rain, buckled and ripped open in the heat, or blew off in the wind. Many had clear-plastic sheeting instead of glass for windows. They were hard to tell apart because their colours, although not the same or even similar, all seemed to blend together into a universal shade of pallid grey, like the tone of an overcast day.



The Cajuste house stood out. It was painted pale yellow.



There was glass in the windows, which were protected — as was the door — by thick steel bars, painted pea green. It told Joe that Madeleine was doing better than her neighbours.



The illusion was somewhat shattered when he reached through the bars and knocked on the window and made the whole structure shake.



No one answered. He knocked again. Rivulets of dry dirt poured off the ridges in the roof and ran down onto the ground, building up in little mounds. The curtains were drawn. He saw coloured lights glowing on and off in the room to the left of the door.



Outside the house next door, a Rottweiler started barking furiously at him from where it was tethered by a studded



collar and chain to a hunk of cement, lunging at him impotently from its spot, half choking itself every time. From behind the flimsy steel fence separating them, Joe flipped the beast the finger and went round the back of the house.



He was surprised to find freshly laid grass there instead of dirt. A child's swing and a paddling pool with a rubber Donald Duck were there too. The water was filthy and smelled rank. Mosquitoes were hovering over it. Madeleine Cajuste wasn't home and hadn't been for a while: someone this house proud - even if that house was a cereal box turned on its side — wouldn't have left that pool out in that state.



There were bars on the back door and windows too. Just to be sure, he knocked again on the windows.



He went to the house next door. The dog snarled and drooled as he approached.



A woman's voice asked him who he was when he knocked on her door. This house was sturdier, but the windows were made out of greaseproof paper.



'Police, mam. It's about your neighbour,'Joe said, holding up his badge.



The door opened a crack. A tiny, very dark-skinned woman with a wild shock of unkempt snow-white hair and white bushy eyebrows peered out and looked him up and down.



'You comin' by now} I made that call a month ago. Why ain't nobody come see me?' Her voice was a croak buried so deep in her throat it barely made it into her mouth.



'I don't know, mam, but I'm here now. Is Madeleine Cajuste your neighbour?'



'Thass right. An' I am' sin her since Easter, juss like I tole the lady police on the tele-fone.'



The Rottweiler was still barking, and there was more barking and growling coming from inside the house — a whole chorus-load. There must have been over half a dozen



dogs in there with her. Joe briefly thought about their welfare and the old lady's, but he wasn't here for that and let the thought blow off his conscience.



The old woman stepped out the door and pulled it to behind her as she stood on one of the tiered breezeblocks that made up the makeshift steps to the entrance of her home. She was barefoot and wearing a lavender nightdress down to her ankles. The fabric was so thin and faded it was almost transparent. Joe could see she was naked underneath and wanted to wrap his suit jacket around her to give her back some dignity, but she didn't seem to mind the state she was in, so he let that one go too.



“You made the call on 30 April, right?'Joe said, speaking louder to make himself heard over the dog. The woman looked at it fiercely and clicked her fingers. The dog quieted immediately.



'Thass right. I use ta see her ev'ry day out there, playin'



wit' dat baby.'



'She had a child?'



'Not hers. She tole me it belonged to that man she had livin' with her.'



'What was the man's name?'



'Sauveur. She said his name was Sauveur. Means “Saviour”



in Hayshun. They's from Haydee, you know, them people.'



'So they weren't married?'



'She callt him her man. Dinn say nuttin' 'bout no marriage.'



'When d'you last see them all together?'



'On a Sunday. In the mo'nin'. I think they was goin' to church.'



'Why?'



'They was dresst up all fine an' dandy. Like what you do when you goin' to church. You go to church?'



The? Yeah, sure I do. Every Sunday, mam.' Joe smiled.



'What church did they go to?'



'I dunno. Fact, I ain't sure they went to church, zactly.



You know, they's from Haydee. They still eatin' folks out there, what I heard.'



'Did she have the baby with her, when they went out that day you told me about?' Joe asked, trying not to laugh at what the old woman had just said.



'I think so. I didn't look too good though, you know. She wood'na left home without him.'



'Was the baby a boy or a girl?'



'Lil' boy. Sweet thang. Smiled a lot at me — and my dogs.'



'Was there anyone else with them when they left?'



'Juss the man drivin' the car.'



'What car?'



'A shiny black one. Fancy and long, kinda like you see at a funeral.'



'What did the driver look like?'



'I dinn' see no dryva. See, I guess't there were a man there cause they's all get in the back. Ain't no car can drive itself - yet.'



'Did you notice anyone coming to the house afterwards?'



'Except you, no. Why it take you so long to come anyway?



A whole month done gone by from since I callt.'



'We're pretty busy, mam,' Joe said. 'I apologize.'



'You think somethin' bad happened to her, right? Else you wouldn't be here.'



'I hope not, mam. This is a routine visit. Miss Cajuste might've moved. Did they have any visitors? People who came by regularly?'



'No. But Madlayne's brother used to live wit her for a lil'



time.'



'Her brother? What was his name?'



'John or Gene, somethin' like that.'



'What did he look like?'



'I never sin him. Just heard he was there, what she tole me.'





'When did he leave?'



'A long time back. I ain't sure when. One year. Longer. I dunno. He was good to her though. She tole me he sent her money regular. How she get them bars on the house, and that green grass there.'



'You ever see a man with a hat hanging around the house?'



'Near every man arown here wear a hat, 'cept you.'



'Tall guy, maybe my height. Fat.'



She shook her head and the thick white explosion she had for hair swayed like ghost wheat in a field.



'Did Madeleine mention any other relatives she had here in Miami?'



'Said somethin' 'bout a cousin over in Liberty. Went by the name o' Neptune,' she said.



'Neptune? Was that it? Anyone else?'



'Not that I can think of.'



'Well, thanks, mam, you've been mighty helpful.' Joe closed the notebook he'd been scribbling in. 'You did the right thing calling us.'



'You coulda got here sooner.'



'I wish we had,'Joe said. 'You have a nice day now.'



Back in his car he went through the missing person's list, running his finger down first names, looking for Neptune.



He found it.



Neptune Perrault, 29 Baldwin Gardens, North West 75 th Street, Liberty City; reported missing: 27 April.



Baldwin Gardens was a project building. In Miami they built them way lower than in other cities, on account of the weather, but the principle was exactly the same: officially, affordable housing for the poor with great views thrown in; unofficially, concrete pens to crowd the minorities in like sardines. Meant for four to five people, the tiny apartments



housed anywhere up to twice or often three times that number.



Joe took the stairs to the fourth floor, breaking into a sweat as he went up. The building reeked of piss, garbage, alcohol and too much humanity crammed into too small a space.



Neptune Perrault's corridor was dark, hot and wet. Joe heard TVs and radios bleeding through the thin doors, as well as conversations and arguments, most of them in a foreign tongue he recognized as Haitian Kreyol, a hybrid of French and West African.



There was no answer when he knocked at No. 29. He tried the apartment next door. Same thing.



Someone stuck his head out of a door at the end of the corridor.



'Police, do you know . . . ?'



The head went back in.



He tried the next apartment along.



A young girl opened the door wide and stared up at him.



She had wet cereal on her face and her hair in braids. She couldn't have been older than eight.



'Hello, sweetie. Are your mummy and daddy home? It's the police.'



A man shuffled up behind her, red-eyed, half awake, a pair of orange Bermuda shorts barely clinging to his skinny pelvis, golfball for a navel. He had an old man's face, craggy, lined and droopy, but an anorexic teenager's body, bone breaking through skin, zero fat.



'Morning, sir. Police.' Joe held up his badge. 'You speak English?'



The man nodded silendy.



'Do you know a Neptune Perrault? Apartment twenty nine?'



The man nodded again.



'Have you seen him today?'



The man shook his head, 'What about yesterday? Or recently?'



Another negative shake of the head.



'When was the last time you saw him?'



'April,' the man said with a cough.



'Beginning, middle, end?'



'End.'



'End?'



'That's what I said,' the man replied. He had an island accent — one of the smaller ones, Trinidad or Barbados.



'How can you be sure?'



'I just am.' He shrugged, like Joe was stupid.



Where d'you see him?'



'Outside Emmanuel's - barbershop across the road. He was getting in a car. He worked at Emmanuel's.'



'What kinda car?'



'Black limousine.'



'Was he well dressed?'



'Better than normal, sure. He was in a suit.'



'Did you talk to him?'



'No.'



'Were you friends?'



'He was a friendly person.'



'But were yon friends'? Did you like him?' 'He was OK. I didn't really know him too well, you know.'



Joe looked at him hard and then looked past him into what he could see of his home. Curtains drawn, several kids in the background crowding around a doorway to see what was happening.



'Did Neptune live with anyone?'



'Sure. Crystal. His girl.' He smiled lazily. Island Man liked her - probably why he hadn't been friends with Neptune, Joe reasoned: jealousy. Joe even went as far as to guess that Neptune might have warned Island Man off his woman.



'Tell me about this Crystal — she got a last name?'



'Never asked her that.'



'What she look like?'



He smiled again. Yellow, tobacco-stained teeth. 'Pretty lady,' he said. 'Built, you know.'



'Pretty lady, built. Very descriptive.' Joe stepped up to him. 'Height?'



'About mine. She was big down below. I like that.'



'Was she Haitian?' Joe asked, realizing that if he asked the man to describe her face he'd get a cell by cell fotofit of ebony booty. Exactly the way Max described three-quarters of his conquests and crushes.



'No. I think she said she was Dominican. Spoke Spanish only.'



'They have any kids?'



'Just them.'



'Visitors?'



'A few all-night parties.'



'You go?'



'No.'



'Ever see a tall fat guy with a hat around here?'



'No.' He shook his head.



'What's your name?'



'Why?'



'Just asking.'



'Arthur Jones.'



'How long you lived here, Arthur?'



'Two years this May past.'



°What about Neptune?'



'The same. We move in about the same time.'



'Was he friendly with anyone else around here?'



“Whole project knew him, mon. He cut everyone hair.'



'He cut yours?'



'No.'



'Why not?'



Arthur Jones smiled again.



“You fuck her?'Joe asked.



'Every night. In my dreams,' Jones said.



Emmanuel Polk was wiping down one of the three chairs in his barbershop when Joe walked in and introduced himself.



'Yeah, Neptune worked here,' he said. 'I was the guy made the call when he didn't show up for work on the Monday. In the eighteen months he worked for me, he was always early and always stayed late to help me clean 'n' close.



Like they say, “a model employee”.'



'Any police come by?'



'Sure.' He read from a card wedged into the mirror frame opposite the chair he was cleaning. 'Detective Matt Brinkley.'



'Right.' Joe nodded, not surprised they'd sent the worst guy in Missing Persons into Liberty City. Brinkley couldn't find snow in Alaska if it was pointed out to him. His specialty was helping old ladies cross the street.



The barbershop was small and cramped, two work stations on the right, one on the left, with a bench right next to it for waiting customers. On the wall were pictures of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, O. J. Simpson, Jim Brown, Bernie Casey, Leon Isaac Kennedy and Carl Weathers in his Apollo Creed costume.



'When d'you last see Neptune?'



'Sunday, 26 April. Around midday. Came by to get his hair cut. Said he was goin' to some party his cousin was throwin'. I was cool with that, you know. I live just above this place and I was happy to do him a favour.'



'Was he well dressed?'



'Yeah, in a suit. Looked fly.'



'Anyone with him?'



'His girl, Crystal. Dominican. Didn't speak much English, but I know a little espanol, so we got along good. Nice girl.'



'What was her last name?'



'Taino. She said it's the same name as the tribe of Indians that lived on the island when Columbus discovered it. She had that look too. Like Pochahontas, only darker.'



'What else do you remember about that day?'



'They got picked up outside-a here in a black car. A black Mercedes. Tinted windows.'



'Did anyone get out?'



'No. The passenger door opened. Neptune knew the people in there. Said hello and was laughin', all happy, like he ain't seen them people in a while.'



'He say where this party was at?'



'Somethin' 'bout Overtown. I think it was 2nd in Overtown.'



'You tell the detective this?'



'Sure. He wasn't writin' nothin' down though. He ain't called me back neither. I left six, seven messages fo' him.'



Polk looked disgusted. He was a bald man of medium height, with grey chest hairs curling over the open collar of his yellow polo-necked shirt and white sparkles in his stubble.



'I'm sorry to hear that, sir,' Joe said, meaning it.



'You one of the good ones, I know, I can tell. Got your book out.' Emmanuel looked at him, paused, then frowned.



'I been cuttin' folks' hair here since '6 5. Seen boys grow up into men, those same men grow old. I was cuttin' hair of all the construction guys built Baldwin. You know Neptune's the best employee I ever had? He's better than that. I ain't hired no one else to take his place, 'cause you know, he might be back. That's where he works right there.' He pointed to the single chair on the left. 'Used to be mine, but I let him have it on account of how popular he is with everyone.'



Emmanuel stopped and looked at the space behind the chair for a long moment, as if he was seeing Neptune there.


ТЕЛЕГРАМ

Канал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками

Книжный Вестник

Бот для удобного поиска книг (если не нашлось на сайте)

Поиск книг

Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах

Любовные романы

О психологии, саморазвитии и личностном росте

Саморазвитие

Детективы и триллеры, все новинки

Детективы

Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки

Фантастика

Отборные классические книги

Классика
ВКОНТАКТЕ

Цитаты, афоризмы, стихи, книжные подборки, обсуждения и многое другое

Книжный Вестник
БИБЛИОТЕКИ

Библиотека с любовными романами, которая наверняка придётся по вкусу женской части аудитории

Любовные романы

Библиотека с фантастикой и фэнтези, а также смежных жанров

Фантастика

Самые популярные книги в формате фб2

Топ фб2 книги