Then he caught sight of his sad face in the mirror and saw Joe studying him and snapped out of it.



'You didn't see a tall fat guy with a hat around here, did you?' Joe asked.



'No.'



joe went over to look at Neptune's work station. There was a colour photograph propped up under the mirror.



It showed five people - four women and a man in the middle — standing together, arms around each other's shoulders.



'This Neptune?'Joe asked, pointing to the man.



'That's him. See the way he smilin' there? Way he always is. I never seen him unhappy. Girl next to him?' Emmanuel pointed to a stunning, dark-skinned woman with long straight black hair. 'That's Crystal. Prolly the reason he's so happy. The woman at the end? That's his cousin Madeleine.'



Madeleine Cajuste was tall and stout with glasses and a shoulder-length perm. Emmanuel pointed to the other two women — an older one in a green blouse, and, beside her, a younger girl in a dark blue Port of Miami T-shirt. 'That's Neptune's aunt - Madeleine's mamma - with Neptune's cousin. I think the aunt goes by the name of Ruth. Way he said it sounded like “root”.'



'I'm gonna have to take this, if you don't mind,' Joe said.



'I'll make sure it comes back.'



'You already doin' more than the last guy was here,'



Emmanuel replied.



Joe smirked.



Then Emmanuel took a couple of steps back and tilted his head a little.



'Say? You that cop been on TV? 'Bout the County Court murder?'



'Yeah, that's me.'



'You used to live round here too, right?'



'I came up here, yeah.'



'In Pork 'n' Beans?'



'I look that young?'



Emmanuel laughed. Joe slipped the photograph into his notebook.



'Neptune got somethin' to do with that courthouse thang, right?'



'I doubt it,' Joe said. 'Different case.'



'That so?' Emmanuel frowned, disbelief in his voice.



'How come you ain't IDed the shooter then?'



'I can't comment —'



'On an ongoin' investigation. Spare me the man's line, brother. I knew the shooter '



'What?



'OK, I didn't know know him, but he came by here maybe two, three times, right when Neptune started.'



'They were friends?'



'They was cousins. That shooter is Madeleine's older brother, Jean. Jean Assad. They had different daddies. His daddy was some kinda Ay-rab.'



'How d'you recognize him?'



'Face was clear as day on TV. I'm good with faces. Part of the trade, you know. Faces, first names, names of the kids. Everyone needs a haircut some time.'



'Did you tell the police this?'



'Sure I did. Called them right away.'



'And?'



'They said thank you very much for your information, took my name and number. When I see you comin' in I figured it was 'bout that.'



'Did you talk to Jean Assad?'



'Didn't get beyond “Hello” and “See you again”. He talked to Neptune mostly. It was Neptune cut his hair.'



'Neptune talk about him much?'



'Not much. He mentioned one time that the guy was mixed up with some bad people.'



'Did he say who?'



'Haitians.'



'Any names?'



'Yeah, just the one.' Emmanuel smiled. 'Solomon someone.



I can't remember his last name. Guy had a real bad rep. Neptune was scared just talkin' 'bout him.'



'What kind of things did he say?'



'You know what a shapeshifter is?'



'Sure,' Joe said, 'that's like a person that can take on all different kinds of forms — human, animal, whatever. I've seen the movies.'



'That's what Neptune said this Solomon guy is. But you know how in Haydee they got all that voodoo they do?'



'So this guy Solomon is some kind of voodoo gangster?'



Joe smiled. 'I seen that movie too. It's called Live and Let Die:



'What I thought too.' Emmanuel laughed. 'I didn't say nothin' though, you know. Respect for the man's beliefs 'n'



all.'



'And Jean Assad was working for this guy?'



'Yeah. I don't know what he was into 2acdy, but one day Neptune said Jean had just upped and left town.'



'Right,' Joe said. And then he suddenly came back and killed Moyez in the courtroom, probably after he'd killed his family.



'Anything else you remember?'



'Not offhand.'



'You think of anything, call me here.'Joe wrote down his home number in his notebook and tore out the page. 'If you get the machine, leave a message. I'll get right back to you.'



'You think Neptune's dead, don'tcha?'



'It doesn't look good,'Joe said.



32



Raquel Fajima — day-shift manager at the forensics lab smiled broadly when she saw Max standing at her office door, miming a knock. They'd known each other for ten years and still laughed about the night they'd first met, when she was still working call-outs and Max was in uniform. A group of frat boys had blown themselves up in their car with a grenade, and Raquel and Max had had to look for ID in all the gore. Raquel had made a bunch of tasteless wisecracks while Max — still new to gruesome kinds of death — had been trying to hold on to the contents of his stomach because he didn't want to appear weak. Raquel had found a useable index finger stuck to an eight-track tape. She'd bagged the finger and, after she'd seen the tape was Deep Purple's In Rock, looked all around at the mess in the car and said, 'Serves you right,' which had made Max laugh so hard he'd puked anyway. She could have slipped into fairly cosy gear as lab manager, spending her time delegating, juggling and going to meetings; instead she played an active role in cases, working on samples that came in, writing them up and testifying in court.



Max and Raquel had remained friends over the years, occasionally meeting up for all-night drinking and bitching sessions, but these were few and far between now she was married and had a two-year-old son.



It was 8.15 in the morning. Raquel was drinking a cup of jasmine tea at her desk. Max could tell she hadn't been in the lab long because she wasn't wearing her white coat, her dark brown curly hair was still down to her shoulders, and she was seated. Every time he saw her he usually had to



compete for her attention with the microscope she was hunched over.



They kissed each other on either cheek and Max sat on the chair opposite her desk, which was completely clear of everything bar a phone and lamp. All the shelves were full of files and thick leather-bound medical books, and there were more files on the windowsill. She had no photographs or personal items of any kind anywhere in the office. Here she was all about work. Her personal life stayed at home.



They exchanged pleasantries. Her boy was well, as was her husband. She understood he was in a hurry and cut to the chase.



What can I do for you?'



ŚYou know the samples you took out of the courtroom shooter's stomach? What've you isolated and IDed so far?'



'The tarot card everyone remembers.' Raquel stood up and went over to a filing cabinet and opened a drawer marked 'Ongoing'. She ran her finger along a series of hanging files, then pulled out an orange wallet folder, which she riffled through to find a list. She then stooped down to the 'Links' drawer and pulled out a grey folder.



'Some meal he had!' she quipped, sitting down and looking through it. 'Shooter's first course was a soup of Kool Aid, sand, crushed sea shell and bone — we're fairly sure it's human, that's still tbt — to be tested. Next, diced sirloin of tarot card. The card was high-quality cardboard and coated with a plastic seal, making it harder to digest. He had that with a tasty side salad of cashew leaves, bressilet — poison ivy — two kinds of stinging netde, mandrake and a bean, also tbt. Not common. His third course consisted of a side order of choice creepy crawlies: a tbt snake, a few millipedes, tarantula legs, bouga toad and —'



'A what toad?'



'Bouga toad. B-O-U-G-A. Their gland secretions are toxic. Cause catatonia in large doses. Shooter's liver and



kidneys contained traces of tetrodoxin. Tetrodoxin's another toxic substance commonly found in puffer fish. A large enough dose can put you in a coma or plain kill you.



'This was all in some kind of potion designed to render the person who took it incapable of controlling his own actions,' Raquel said, tapping at the grey files. 'I've seen this kinda stuff before. Look at this.' She slid over the grey file.



It was an autopsy report on a black man, aged thirty five, who had wandered into incoming traffic on USi on 13 February 1979. He'd been hit and killed by a Buick, which had turned over, killing the driver and his passenger. The contents of the collision victim's stomach were almost identical to those in Moyez's killer — except for the bean and the tarot card.



And then he noticed something else - the man had been registered deceased on 8 July 1977. He was called Louis-Juste Gregoire, a Haitian resident, who'd lived in Overtown. His grave was in the City of Miami Cemetery. His first death certificate stated he'd died of natural causes.



'I'm sure you've heard of zombies,' Raquel said.



'Sure.'



'Forget what you think you know - Night of the Living Dead and all that. In Haiti, Louisiana, certain parts of West Africa and South America they practise two kinds of voodoo.



There's the traditional kind called rada, which is peaceful and harmless, and there's the Hollywood-movie kind — the dark variant called petro or hoodoo. This is all about worshipping evil spirits, putting death spells on people, human sacrifice, orgies. Zombies stem from hoodoo.



'What basically happens is a witchdoctor will administer a potion on a person either orally or topically. This paralyses them and shuts down key parts of the brain. They look clinically dead. No breathing, really weak pulse, slow heartbeat.



They get buried.



'A few days later, the witchdoctor digs them up and brings



them back to life with an antidote. Except they don't fully return to the land of the living. They're very much alive, but their minds are gone. They don't recognize anyone they know: friends, family, whoever.



'You see, the potions they've been given also contain powerful hallucinogens which make the person believe they're dead. The zombie then becomes the witchdoctor's personal slave, doing everything their master orders.'



'Like killing someone in a courtroom?' Max asked.



'Sure. It's highly possible. A mixture of hallucinogens and hypnosis alone could turn a person into a killer. In fact, the levels of scopolamine found in the brain and blood of the shooter indicate that he was tripping when he killed Moyez.



'Scopolamine is found in mandrake, which was in his stomach. Mandrake belongs to a class of plants called “deliriants”



— very powerful hallucinogens. Under their influence people have been known to talk to themselves, believing they're addressing someone else. Except that there'll be dialogue instead of monologue, because people under the influence take on the characteristics of the person they're talking to — accent, patterns of speech, you name it.'



'Like schizos?'



'Deliriants induce a kind of schizophrenia, yes, but one which comes with a propensity for violence too. I've seen people beat the shit out of themselves, thinking they're attacking an enemy. Most of the time, once the deliriant wears off, a person will have absolutely no recollection of what happened.'



'Like sleepwalkers?'



'lixactly like a sleepwalker,' Raquel agreed.



'How common's the stuff you found in the stomach?'



'Garden variety. Except the bean.'



'How soon can you get a result?'



'That's a piece of string question, Max. It's a full house



in the morgue today. And one of them's a cop. A DEA sting got stung on the east side. You hear about that?'



'On the way in, yeah.'



'We think he got shot by one of his own.'



'On purpose?'



'We won't know until the results are in. Cocaine's turned this city inside out and upside down.'



'Tell me about it,' Max said. 'We're in a blizzard, walking blind.' He paused, lowered his voice and leant across the desk a little, 'Raquel, I don't wanna put any pressure on you, but I really do need to know what that bean is.'



Raquel looked at him hard for a moment, then leant over the desk towards him and winked. 'This another of your off-the-books crusades, Max?'



'I'd appreciate your discretion, yeah.'



T should've known when you showed up right at the start of my shift. You normally come in when I'm, you know, right in the middle of something important.'



'I know you're real busy . . .' Max began.



'Eldon know about this one?'



Max shook his head. Raquel drew breath mock dramatically and mimicked his headshake.



'Let's keep this between us, huh?'



'Sure. What do I get out of it?'



'What can I do for you?'



'Well, what can you do for me, Max . . . ?'



'You still drink mojitos?'



'When I get the time.'



'Then the next time's on me. If you can stand my company.'



You know attempting to bribe an officer of the law is a federal crime?'



'You started it.' Max grinned.



'Deal,' she said.



'Can you call me at home, when you get the result?'



'OK.'



'Thanks, Raquel. I appreciate it. Can I get a copy of this Haitian's file?'



Back in his apartment Max sat down at the phone and started going through his list of tarot-card stores, distributors and individual suppliers, asking if they stocked Charles de Villeneuve cards. Many of the stores and distributors hadn't heard of them, but the few that had explained they could only be obtained directly from the family. The solo operators were more helpful, offering to get him a deck and quoting him prices varying from $ 5,000 to $ 10,000. Had they ordered any for anyone recently? No, they answered.



After fifteen calls he took a break, made coffee and smoked a couple of cigarettes on his balcony. It was a sunny day with a good cool breeze undercutting the heat; he could smell the sea in the air. Unfortunately the illusion of paradise was shattered when his gaze ranged over Lummus Park below. They should have renamed it Fuckups Park.



He sat back down on his couch and looked at his call list.



The next place was a shop — Haiti Mystique, the owner's name one he recognized — Sam Ismael, who'd been one of the prospective developers in the Lemon City reconstruction programme that had been awarded to Preval Lacour and Guy Martin.



Before he could pick up the receiver the phone rang.



It was Joe, calling from a payphone, sounding out of breath and harassed.



'I know who the Moyez shooter was,' he said, 'and I've just found his family. Bring the tools and lose your breakfast.'



33



It was dark and hot inside Ruth Cajuste's house. All the curtains had been pulled shut, the windows closed. The stench was intense, close to unbearable; even behind their masks and the Vicks ointment they'd rubbed under and in their noses, hints of its extremity wriggled through.



Max closed the door and Joe flicked on the light. They were wearing gloves and plastic covers on their shoes. The scene would be examined by forensics and they didn't want to leave even a hint of their presence.



They saw the first three bodies immediately: still, dark bundles lying very close together, to the right of the door.



There were two more bodies about twenty feet away.



They checked the rooms: kitchen on the right, empty; two bedrooms on the left, both empty. Last there was the bathroom. The door had been kicked or bashed clean off its hinges. Another body was in a seated position on the end wall, right under a small rectangular frosted-glass window.



There was no back door. They'd checked before going in the front.



Six bodies.



They went back to the beginning and examined the house.



They were in a wide open-plan space which served as both front room and dining area, tiled pale yellow. The area around the bodies was moving, armies of black beetles scurrying and swarming to get a piece of what palatable flesh was left. This wasn't the orderly disciplined stripping and carting off they'd witnessed at the Lacour house, but a frenzied free-for-all. The beetles sensed that time was



J29° running out. The temperature in the house had accelerated the process of decomposition.



'What's the date today?' Max asked.



'Third of June.'



'These look well over a month old. I'd say they were killed on the twenty-sixth of April.'



The five-week-old bodies had passed the bloated stage and were liquefying from me inside. Puddles of shiny translucent slime had formed about the torsos, mingling with the halos, commas and wings of dried and now black blood that had poured out of the wounds; skin was slipping off bone and turning into grey-green mush. Each body had its own cloud of blowflies hovering right above it.



Joe named the ashen-haired woman as Ruth Cajuste, the man two feet away from her as Sauveur Kenscoff, and the girl lying face down in the red and white gingham dress, he initially mistook for Crystal Taino, except that her hair and body type were wrong. She looked more like a teenager. He corrected her identity to Jane Doe.



Ruth Cajuste had been shot in the forehead. A writhing nest of yellowy blowfly maggots filled the hole. She was lying on her back, in the corner, hands folded across her chest. Max and Joe agreed she'd most likely been killed first, way before she could realize that her son Jean Assad had just put a bullet in her brain.



Sauveur had realized what was happening and had tried to fight back. There was a silver . 3 8 Special next to his right hand, but the safety was still on. He'd had just enough time to pull his weapon before being hit in the shoulder, chest and through the left eye. That last shot had voided his cranium and splattered the contents over the wall behind him. He too was lying on his back.



The blood-wipe pattern between the edge of the door and the teenager's head told them her body had been moved post-mortem. There was an upward arc of high-velocity



spatter covering the inside of the door; stray spots of blood had hit the wall above and touched the ceiling, indicating that the girl had been close to the door handle when the bullet struck the back of her head. There were shell fragments studding the wood and wall, along with pieces of bone and two teeth. She'd been shot at close range, the circle of singed hair around the entry wound suggesting the barrel had been mere inches away.



'No one heard it,' Joe said.



'Silencer — must've been,' Max suggested. It was the only explanation he could come up with. The house was in the middle of a row of one-floor homes, each about fifteen metres apart. The walls were on the thin side of functional.



Max looked around the scene. He thought he'd seen something unusual about the bodies, but he couldn't find it again.



The two other corpses in the middle of the room were those of Neptune Perrault and Crystal Taino. Neptune's right leg was slung across both of Crystal's, his puffed-up, rotting right-hand fingers were interlocked with those of Crystal's left, and his ruptured head — shot clean through the temple — was leaning into Crystal's neck, as if he'd been nuzzling her when he'd died. Crystal was lying face down, shot through the crown.



Max stared at them a good long while, unable to take his eyes away from the sight, as touching and tender to him as it was grotesque.



'He didn't even try to get away, or resist,' he said to Joe.



'He just lay down and grabbed her hand. He couldn't live without her, but he could die with her. They deserve justice.'



'That's why it's just the two of us here, right?' Joe said, looking at Max quizzically, seeing an altogether new side to him. They'd seen far worse than this — a comparatively clean straight kill and relatively painless for the victims, no signs of torture, no dismemberment — and Max hadn't blinked



out of turn. He'd studied the bodies, read the scene, come to initial conclusions. The only thing that upset him was when they found children, but that got nearly all cops. They usually got angry, some cried, some couldn't do their jobs.



Max was in the first category. But how he was now was new to Joe. Max looked sad, as if he had known the victims. Joe wondered if this new girl Max had started meeting for lunch hadn't opened up his emotional side, if he wasn't a little bit in love with her. He'd been awful quiet about her, which was really unusual for him. He hadn't even told Joe her name.



There were half a dozen spent shells on the ground near the bodies. The shooter had reloaded. Joe bagged two of them and left the rest for forensics.



Up ahead of them was the bathroom, a mess of smashed tiles and blood stains everywhere. Madeleine Cajuste had been shot at least five times in the torso and once through her right hand. The bathroom door had been dead-bolted from the inside.



The window was unlocked and opened out from the side onto a view of the garden — a small strip of lawn, rose bushes and a palm tree at the end.



Max noticed small scraps of white fabric stuck to splinters at the edge of the sill. He plucked one and showed it to Joe.



'You said she had a baby? I think she dropped it out of the window. When the shooting started she ran in here, bolted the door and put the kid out of the way of the bullets.



Maybe she screamed for help too. Either way, they took the baby. Let's take a look at the other rooms.'



Joe went to the kitchen. Dry dishes and cudery on a rack by the sink, rotting and withered fruit in a large bowl on the counter. Everything in the refrigerator had gone off.



Max looked through the bedrooms. Ruth Cajuste's was nearest the bathroom. She'd slept in a double bed, with a liible and a wind-up alarm clock at her side. The curtains



were drawn. There were bars on the windows. Next door was where the teenage girl had slept. Her name was Farrah Carroll. She was fifteen. He found her Haitian passport and return-flight ticket for 5 June. In two days' time her parents would be expecting her home. By her bedside was a photograph of her, Ruth and Mickey Mouse taken at Disneyland.



She had kept her room neat and tidy.



Max made for the front door.



He went and stood where he'd been when they'd first come in and scanned the scene of slaughter one more time, first casually, then body by body, trying to find what he'd missed.



The bugs were crawling up Farrah's right leg but not her left.



He looked at her feet. There was a small pile of dead beedes by her shoe. He bent down and studied the sole.



There were white stains on it, absent from the other shoe.



She'd trodden in something, maybe slipped. He turned around and looked behind him.



There, that was it: a small circle a few feet away, clearly defined by the crust of dead black beedes all around it. It was a white splash with scraps of dark green matter in it, shredded leaves or herbs, and something small, shiny and dark brown, but unmistakeably part of a bean.



'I think the shooter puked here,' Max told Joe.



Joe went back to the kitchen, got a knife and spoon which Max used to scrape the dried mess into an evidence bag.



Then they left the house, turning off the light as they went.



'I'll call it in from a payphone,' Max said.



'Say you heard gunshots,' Joe suggested. 'Otherwise it'll be another year before they send someone round.'



34



'You're a piece a dogshit on wheels.' Carmine sighed as he drove his new ride — a white Crown Victoria — down North West 2nd Avenue. It was a cop car, an honest cop's car; only kind of ride pigs could afford on the minimum wage they made outta being' pigs. The pigs on the cocaine payola drove flashier autos: fresh-off-the-ramp sports cars and rides they'd seen in James Bond movies.



There was method to his downshifting in the style stakes, because today, and every day until he got a location on Risquee, he, Carmine Desamours, was playing at being a cop. He wasn't just driving this shitty ride, he'd changed his look too. He was wearing ugly straight-off-the-rack clothes from JCPenney — a grey sports coat, shitty black slacks that itched the inside of his thighs, a white shirt and scuffed black wing tips. He had himself an authentic-looking fake ID and a pearl-handled .38 snubnose on his hip. He was a regular Richard Rowntree motherfucker. OK, that wasn't strictly accurate - RR was a private dick not a cop, but he couldn't think of no black cops he wanted to be in the image f, so Shaft did him just fine.



He wasn't the only one out looking for Risquee. He'd put Clyde Beeson on her trail. Beeson said he'd tried every dentist and hospital in Florida and none of them had any record of her. Beeson said he'd asked around on the streets loo. He was sure she'd disappeared; most likely left the state.



It would've been the sensible thing to do, what he would've clone himself if he'd almost been killed, but Carmine didn't buy it. He knew Risquee: when she was pissed any common sense she possessed went out her ears. And she'd be real



pissed at him. She'd think he'd sent that creep who'd tried to kidnap her outside the store. If Risquee had read any of the papers, she'd know her attacker's name was Leroy Eckols, out of Atlanta, said he had 'criminal connections'.



Eckols had been killed by the driver of the car he'd shot at.



She'd want payback. And he didn't blame her, the way things looked.



So, he was out here, searching for her himself too.



He passed a stretch of dismal row houses and had to slow down for an ambulance that was pulling up outside one of them. Looked like a lot of death had happened there. Another ambulance was already in place, doors open, plus three prowlers and a blue version of his own ride with a red light on the hood. The front door was open and medics with masks on were stretchering out a stiff in a bodybag. There was a whole lot of commotion, as a heavy crowd of onlookers jostled for a view. Uniforms told them to stay back.



This kinda shit always happened around O Town. When he made proper money in Nevada, no way would he be living in the nigger towns of this world. No, he was gonna get himself a condo in a fancy high-rise block with white folks for neighbours and security at the door, kind that said 'Good morning' and 'Good evening, sir' and told you who your visitors were.



Today, he might've been a pretend cop, but he still had pimp business to attend to for Solomon. Apart from recruiting and breaking in new Cards, today was when he collected from the two street Suits - the Spades and the Clubs.



He turned onto North East 6th Street and saw a Spade called Frenchie getting out of a tan Olds. He waited until the car had disappeared and let her get a good stride in her step. She had on a red vest, red heels and a pair of Daisy Dukes so small and tight they squeezed her big fat wobbly ass cheeks half down her big fat wobbly thighs. She was forty or fifty, something around that — he didn't properly



know because she was full of shit, always lying about the time of day — dark skin, hard face, shitty teeth, shitty reddish brown wig she either wore up or all the way down to her elephantine behind. When she was far enough into her walk, he drove up and hit the brakes hard, squealing to a stop right next to her. She scoped out the car in an instant, turned around and started heading in the opposite direction.



The look was good. She'd made him for a vice cop.



He reversed, winding down the window.



'Hey, Frenchie! Git yo' ass back here!' he called out to her.



She let out breath and smiled at him.



'Shit, Carmine, baby, I thought you was a cop,' she said, hurrying over to him. She had a jamambo pair of titties that were the only reason she ever made money.



'Just testin' yo' reflexes, baby.' Carmine gave her his nicest smile. Bitch smiled back at him. She'd always told him she liked his smile the most, said it reminded her of one of her little boys - or was she the one that had girls? — he couldn't remember and didn't give a fuck either way. 'Get yo' cute lil' ass in here.'



She got in the passenger seat and closed the door.



Lil' ass? My ass! thought Carmine as she took up the whole seat.



'Watcha got for me, baby girl?'



'Bidniss been slow, baby.'



Even if he hadn't seen her getting out of the Olds, he could smell cum and sweat on her.



'That right?' Carmine smiled. 'Whose car was that I saw you gettin' out of? You got a chauffeurnow?'



She looked down at her knees, the skin on them all scarred and tough from the amount of time she spent on 'cm.



'I-ike I said, and like I keep on sayin', I got eyes every„ here, kind see round corners, so don't try 'n' play me, baby fjrl, else I'll send my man Bonbon over to see you.' Carmine



enjoyed the fearful look she got in her eyes at the mention of Bonbon's name. He could've used a Bonbon on his payroll to keep his private Cards in line — the likes of Risquee wouldn't've dared go up against him. Sam had suggested it and he'd said, nah, I'll be man enough for them bitches. He was regretting it now.



Frenchie reached down in-between her titties and handed him a thin sweaty roll of green. Thirty bucks. One fuck.



'And whatchu' got up there in yo' pussy bag?' he whispered to her.



She opened her mouth to protest, but he shut her up.



'Don't be makin' me go explorin' up in there, bitch!'



She snapped open her cut-off jeans and unclipped the small cloth bag she kept pinned on the inside, under the waistband, and gave it to him.



He took out the money. Eighty bucks. Two fucks 'n' a suck.



'Take off,' he told her, tossing the empty bag in her lap.



She didn't move. Her lower lip trembled. Damn. Bitch was gonna cry.



'What's up witchu? You heard me. Time to get busy.'



'I ain't had nothin' to eat all day but dick, baby. I need me some bread.' She sniffed.



'You need bread, huh?' Carmine looked at her. 'Then go fuck a baker. Vamos!'



She got out the car and he hit the gas, laughing his handsome ass off.



Shit, he was sharp as a tack too-day.



'Go fuck a baker' - ho, ho, ho!



Shit, did he just say 'ho ho ho'?



Man he was double sharp!



He spent the rest of the morning collecting from Cards and going to the kind of places he knew Risquee went to — nail parlours, hair salons, boutiques and a few bars she liked to drink rum and Coke in.



He did the cop thing as good as any Jack Lord or Kojak motherfucker. He'd walk in someplace, go up to someone working there, flash his badge and introduce himself as 'Officer Bentley, Miami PD'. He'd ask his questions. He'd get headshakes and, 'No, ain't seen no one like that.' It was disappointing and might have been a real unproductive way of spending a day, if it hadn't been for the vibe he got off the people he was questioning. They all kind of WW when they saw his badge, got a scared look in their eye, started trembling. These cats — some of them big overgrown stone cold niggas and bitches with monuments of attitude — were intimidated by little old him and his big shiny shield. He liked the way that felt. He felt good, powerful, running things, badass. Damned if it didn't even get his dick a little hard. Cops must've got that way too, when they started out.



All that power over people. Hell, maybe he should've been a cop instead of a pimp. Sure, the money was shit if you played it by the book, but there were perks a-plenty in what it did for your manhood and self-esteem.



He stopped at a hair salon called Proud Heads, on North West 5 2nd, near Olinda Park.



Carmine walked inside. A receptionist was opposite the front door, behind her a silhouette of a black woman with a huge afro. The place was full of potentials. Damn! Great late discovery of the day deux: he should be fishin' in this pussy stream, hittin' all-a those places only women went.



No way would they suspect what he was. Shit, he could even pretend to be some fag needing a manicure or his hair relaxed. Nothin' some bitches liked more than a fag for a best friend, some guy to go cry over movies and talk lipstick with. It wasn't zactly too late in the day to change up his plan. Maybe he'd do that at his dude ranch in Nevada. OK, the faggot thing bothered him a lot, but hey, business was business.



The receptionist looked up from the Ebony magazine she



was flipping through. Girl had a plain face, no older than nineteen. Radio was on. The Pointer Sisters singing 'Betcha Got a Chick on the Side'. He'd always liked that one.



'Good mo'nin',' he said with a smile.



'Can I help you?'



'Officer Bendey, Miami PD.' He showed her his badge.



'Lookin' for a girl mighta been here. Busted-up face. Goes by the name of Risquee.'



'Risss-kayyj}“ the girl said. 'Kinda name's that?'



'Kinda name her momma gave her,' Carmine said. 'What name yo' momma give you?'



The girl turned around and yelled out over the hairdryers, radio and general chit-chat in the salon.Ś 'Janet! Poh-lice here to see you.'I Everything stopped a beat in the salon — even the radio, it seemed, though it was still playing - and Carmine felt all eyes turn his way.



He got an uneasy feeling deep in his gut, but he tightened his jaw and stared back at the chicks.



A woman came out from the end, drying her hands. She was short, dark, worried-looking.



'This about Timothy?' she asked.



'No, this ain't about no Timothy,' Carmine said. 'This 'bout somethin' different'



'So he's cool?'



'This ain't 'bout Timothy. I'm here on different bidniss.'



She frowned and looked at him in a new way that made him uneasy, like she was trying to work out something about him.



'What fe'-ness?' She pronounced it slowly and carefully, taking Carmine in from his shoes to his hair. Bitch musta been one of them mommas beat their kids over table manners and shit. No wonder Timothy was givin' her problems. Those who got treated the harshest rebelled the hardest, Carmine remembered sumshit he'd heard on TV or the radio or read on a wall somewhere.





'I'm lookin' for a girl mighta come in here. Had a busted-up mouth.'



'Her mouth busted-up she'd need a dentist not a hairdresser.'



'Yeah, I hear that,' Carmine said. The bitch was standing there with hands on her hips. Hips were wide too. He knew tricks who liked that shit though. 'Only she mighta come by get her hair done after her mouth got patched up, you know?



Make herself feel better.'



'You got a picture?'



'No.'



'You a cop lookin' for someone and you ain't got a picture?



Damn! He swore this Janet knew he wasn't for real.



'What does she look like — apart from the mouth?'



'She about your height, slimmer, built.'



She scowled at him angrily now. Damn! Musta been conscious 'bout her weight too. One of them bitches ate when she had problems. He smiled, did the nice one all bitches with kids told him was sweet. Made her madder. She musta thought he was laughing at her.



This was going real wrong.



'What did you say your name was?'



'Officer Bentley.' He held out his badge. She took it from him.



'Badge says Detective.'



'Huh?'



'You ain't an Officer if you're a Detective.' She pointed at the shield.



'Oh, right, yeah, see I just got promoted. Still gettin' my head around the title.' He smiled, but he was nervous as a motherfucker, heart beating crazy voodoo all up in his chest.



Shaniqua?!F Janet hollered out over her shoulder. 'I need you up here a second.'



Cottdayum if Shaniqua wasn't a straight up Diamond. Tall, long legs, cafe with a little au kit in her complexion, short



}OI hair. Black jeans and a blouse tied in a knot over her bare flat middle.



Janet talked to Shaniqua in a whisper. The receptionist was listening in and kept on looking over at him, smiling more and more. Shaniqua was looking at him too, looking harder at his face.



Carmine started to sweat, hairline leaking and running to his jaw. Time to go, time to go, he thought, but he couldn't make himself move. Couldn't do nothing. The fuck was wrong with him. The fuck was wrong with this?



The receptionist looked straight at him squirming in his shitty wingtips and giggled.



T do somethin' to make you ha ha?' he said aggressively.



The receptionist was going to answer when hotass Shaniqua spoke to him, 'You after Risquee?'



'You know where she at?'



'You know a virgin called Mary?' Shaniqua answered. She had a deep voice, close to a man's imitating a woman.



'Tell me.'



'Pay me.'



'What?



'Pay me.' Shaniqua came up to him, hand out.



Damn!



'How I know we talkin' 'bout the same Risquee?'



'We are. Now pay me.'



OK, defuse. Cops paid snitches all the time.



'How much?'



'Two hundred.'



'Two hunnret} How 'bout I give you one}7 'How 'bout you kiss my black ass?'



'I know men pay good money to do just that.' Carmine smiled. She got angry. 'OK, OK. Be cool. I'll pay you.'



Carmine turned his back on her and took out his roll. Peeled off four fifties, turned back and held them up folded between his fingers.





302 1 'Tell me.'



'Uh-uh.' She held her hand out, rubbing her fingers together. 'You pay to play.'



'You a slot machine?' He handed her the money, which she took and passed to the receptionist. He noticed Janet had disappeared.



He looked for her in the salon. He saw her at the end, talking to a man sitting in a chair with a towel around his shoulders.



The man looked over in his direction, took off the towel, got out of the chair and started walking up.



The man was tall and black.



The man was a cop in uniform.



Shit!



'I help you, sir?' the cop said to Carmine.



'No, I was . . .'



'Impersonatin' a police officer?' the cop said. He was holding Carmine's badge. How the fuck did he get that?



Shit! He'd handed it to Janet.



'This is as phoney as a three-dollar bill. And you are under '



Carmine noticed the cop wasn't wearing his gun belt.



The cop reached out to grab him, but Carmine took a step back and pulled out his piece. The receptionist screamed.



'ID's fake. This ain't. Now back the fuck up!' He pointed the gun at the cop's chest.



The cop didn't move.



'I ain't playin'!' He cocked the gun, but his hand was shaking.



'Do like he says, Timothy!' Janet pleaded behind him.



The cop moved back a step.



'Hey — all the way!' Carmine said. The cop didn't look scared, but the bitches did. That turned him on a little.



'Toss me that ID.'



The cop flicked it at him.



The gold glint of the badge caught his eye.



Next thing he knew the cop had grabbed his gun arm and was twisting it like he wanted to snap it.



Carmine pulled the trigger.



The cop screamed loudly and fell flat on his back. There were screams all over the salon. The bitches got down on the ground.



There was blood on the floor and a hole in the cop's foot where the bullet had hit. The sole of his shoe looked like a dripping red rose, the leather splayed and twisted in a whorl, blood was pumping out of the hole in the middle.



The cop wasn't holding his foot though; he was shaking, going into convulsions.



Carmine grabbed the ID and ran out of the salon.



I 35



'You want to tell me what's behind the long face?' Sandra asked Max.



'Work,' he said.



'I figured that. You want to tell me about it?'



Max shook his head. It was the day after he and Joe had been to Ruth Cajuste's house. He hadn't stopped thinking about the way Neptune and Crystal's fingers were intertwined.



He'd heard the paramedics had had to use a saw to separate them.



They were sitting in Dino's off Flagler, a diner with tables outside and two long rows of wide booths with crimson leather seats inside. There were pictures and posters of Dean Martin through the ages on the wall, from young drunk to old drunk, comedian to cowboy to crooner, and a working Wurlitzer jukebox filled with his records.



Sandra was eating a flaked tuna-steak sandwich on rye with fresh orange juice. Max hadn't been able to eat anything since the previous day, so he was sticking to cigarettes and coffee.



'Not even a general idea?'



'You really don't wanna know, Sandra. Trust me,' he said, nodding to her food.



She pushed her plate aside. 'What if I do?'



'I'm still not gonna tell you,' he said, but he wished he could talk to her. She looked and sounded like she wanted lo know, and her big, steady, attentive eyes showed she was a natural listener; the sort who thought about what the speaker was saying instead of waiting to speak herself, the sort who never missed a thing.



'Is this the way it is with cops? Silence over dialogue?'



'I guess, some, yeah. We got a way higher than national average divorce rate in the force.'



'And you think that's an OK way to be?'



'No, but that's the way it is.'



'Pretty vacant,' she said.



'I can't argue with that.' He shrugged.



'You ever talk about your work to any of your exes?'



'No, never. I figured if I did they wouldn't wanna be around me.'



'Looks like they didn't anyway,' Sandra said.



'You're funny.' Max smiled.



'I have my moments.' She winked mischievously, which made him laugh. He was glad she'd called him earlier that morning and glad he'd come out to meet her. Even though he hadn't been in the mood for small talk and the polite pretences of fledgling courtship, this was turning into their easiest and most relaxed meeting so far. His guard was down and he was letting her take a look at him as he really was instead of throwing up diversions and detours.



Sandra was in her office clothes: a short-sleeved pale blue blouse, undone at the neck, a brown knee-length pinstriped skirt and brown high-heeled shoes with rows of small blue flowers on the sides. She wore a thin white-gold chain around her neck and small white-gold crucifix earrings. It was a conservative look, but a stylish one too, and, judging from the shoes, Max thought, one she'd tweaked to suit her more than her superiors. She was wearing very little make-up, but still looked stunning. In fact, she seemed to get more beautiful every time he saw her.



'There, see, you've lightened up. You know a person uses less muscles smiling than frowning.'



'Is that right?'



'That's what I read.'



'You read a lot?'



“Yeah, I do. I'm one of those people who, when they get



interested in something go out and find out everything there is to know about it. Do you read at all?'



'No. Well, outside police stuff and the papers, I don't get a lot of time, you know. Besides books ain't really my kind of thing, tell you the truth.'



'So, d'you follow sports?'



'I ain't a ball games kinda guy, but I keep up with boxing.



I told you I used to box, right?'



'Yeah, I looked you up.'



'No shit?'



'No shit.' She smiled, and told him his entire Golden Gloves record, significant titles he'd won and the dates of his first and last fights. He was impressed.



'You like boxing?' he asked.



'Not much. But I've seen Rocky and Rocky 2.'



'That wasn't boxing, that was ballet.'



'What about Raging Bull? Did you see that?'



'Nah.' Max shook his head. He'd heard about it but hadn't been curious enough to check it out. 'That's the one where De Niro got himself all fat for the part, right?'



'It's a great movie. Sad and disturbing.'



'You should see a real fight,' Max said. 'They're always sad and disturbing — for the loser.'



'Would you take me to one?'



'Any time.' He smiled, realizing he had an opening, the perfect opportunity to ask her out on a proper date.



But before he could suggest anything, she looked at her watch.



'I've gotta go,' she said.



'Too bad,' Max said. 'We never give each other enough lime, do we?'



She looked at him and held his stare. Some women he'd gone out with had told him they couldn't handle the look in his eyes, which they'd said, was somewhere between piercing and accusing and something like getting a light



shone into their souls. He'd made them feel like they'd done something wrong. Cop's eyes, in short. Sandra didn't seem to have that problem.



'When do you finish today?'



“Bout six 'You got any plans for the evening?'



Sure, Max thought. Going back to the garage and talking things through with Joe — zombies, missing babies and a guy called Solomon — and asking himself where this investigation of theirs was going, and how long they could hope to keep it a secret.



Want to get a drink? You look like you could use one,'



she suggested.



'Sure,' he said.



'I know a great spot - great drinks, great food, great music'



'Where?'



'Little Havana, real close to mi casa?



L'Alegria on South West nth Avenue was a bar-restaurant with a nightclub downstairs. Max had driven past it many times but had never gone in, hadn't even been tempted. The outside looked unprepossessing, the kind of place which probably framed its health code violations in the kitchen.



But the interior proved far classier — dark wood floorboards, tables draped with spodess white tablecloths, laid out with sparkling silverware, napkins in rings and, in the middle, a blue or orange lantern.



He let Sandra do the talking and asked the kind of questions which prompted her to give long answers. She gave him the Passnotes guide to what she did. She talked about her office, about her bosses and co-workers, the different clique, and their power plays. She told him about how she was going to have to fire someone in her team soon and how she was dreading it. Max thought about joe. Then he



thought about Tanner Bradley and how he hadn't wanted to kill him. Then he chased the image away by looking over at a couple sitting, as they were, side by side at a table, holding hands, but he saw again Neptune and Crystal's final frozen clasp.



Sandra noticed the change in his face.



'Are you OK?' she asked him.



'I'm good,' he lied. 'You?'



'Do you dance?'



'Like a gringo,' he said.



'Racist!' She laughed.



They went down to the club. It was very dark and packed solid with moving bodies, everyone doing that damn Casino Dance to that damn saldisco music. Max rolled his eyes and shook his head. Sandra grabbed his hand and tried to teach him some moves, but he could barely master more than the initial steps and was drunker than he'd realized, because he quickly forgot what he was supposed to be doing and had to start all over again.



“You're right,' she yelled-over the galloping bass and ear-shredding horns coming out of the speakers. 'You do dance like a gringo.'



Then the music slowed as the DJ spun a Spanish-language ballad which reminded him of Julio Iglesias, like every Latin crooner did. Sandra draped her arms around him and pulled him into her and they began to dance together, close, body to body, eyes locked. He felt the heat of her on his skin as they moved — her gracefully, him swaying in lugubrious time.



She held him by the neck and stroked his nape and smiled.



I le held her loosely by the waist, telling his hands to keep off her ass. It would have been the perfect moment for a kiss, but as he started to lean towards her the DJ turned up I he beat and another saldisco classic announced itself with ;i shriek of horns and gate-crashed their moment like a drunken relative desperate for attention.



3°9 ”You wanna get out of here?' she offered.



'Please,' he said.



Sandra lived in a two-bedroom condo in the pink and blue San Roman building on South West 9th Street. It was the tidiest place Max had ever been in. She paid a cleaner to keep it that way.



They went into her living room, which was painted and carpeted in beige and smelled faindy of incense and peppermint.



The right-hand wall was lined with books; adases and encyclopedias on the top shelf, travel guides, biographies and history books on the next two down, and the rest was given over to fiction. On the other walls were a large map of Cuba and a painting of two women and some kind of upside-down fish, which Max thought so amateurish he assumed it was something she'd done in tenth grade art class.



Sandra went out to the kitchen to make coffee and told him to put on some music.



Max flicked through her albums. There was a lot of Latin music, none of which he knew, and some classical stuff, which he didn't know either, but she had Diana Ross's Chic-produced Diana, plus Bad Girls, Innervisions, Songs in the Key of Life, Let's Get It On, some Bill Withers and Grover Washington records, Barry White's Greatest Hits . . .



She came back in, carrying two white mugs on a tray.



She'd changed into faded jeans and a baggy white T-shirt, which made her skin seem a shade darker.



'Probably not your kind of music, huh?' she said, setting the tray down on a table opposite the couch.



'What do you think I'm into?'



'Gringo music: Springsteen, Zeppelin, the Stones — stuff like that?'



'Nah. And don't ever talk to me about Brucey baby. My partner's in love with him, plays that shit all the time.



Drives me nuts. You got any Miles? Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain?“



'I forgot. Your jazz genes. No, sorry, I don't. Do you think I should?'



'Everyone who likes music should have at least one Miles Davis album in their collection. Better still, ten,' Max said. 'And, seem' as you're into Grover, you should be lookin' into John Coltrane too. People say Charlie Parker was the corner stone of jazz, but nearly everyone who's ever picked up a sax from '65 onwards sounds more like Trane.'



He carried on looking. He found just what he wanted at the end — Al Green's Greatest Hits.



'This OK?' He held up the sleeve.



'The Reverend Al? Sure.'



Max went over and sat next to her on the sofa as 'Let's Stay Together' kicked in. They looked at each other for a moment and there was silence between them, not the kind of uncomfortable, embarrassing void that opens up between people who've run out of ways to hide the fact that they have nothing to say, but a natural pause in dialogue.



Max looked at the painting behind her.



'You do that at school?'



'I wish,' she said, turning around. 'It's El Balcon — The lialcony — by Amelia Pelaez. She was an avant garde Cuban artist. She was famous in her homeland for murals.'



'Sorry,' Max said, 'I don't know too much about art.'



'It's all right. At least you don't pretend to.'



Max heard a hint of recrimination in her voice and guessed then she'd been lied to by someone close to her, maybe a boyfriend who'd cheated on her or had led her on pretending 10 be something he wasn't — in other words, by someone a little like him.



Although they were sitting real close on her couch in the (lead of night, there was an element of the forbidding about



ii her. He decided to hold back, be the passenger, take everything at her pace. He sensed that was the way she wanted things and that was fine by him.



'Do you remember all the cases you worked?' Sandra asked, putting down her cup on the table. Ś 'Sure.' Max nodded.



'Raffaela Smalls?'



ŚYeah.' He sighed. 'That poor poor kid.'



It had been in 1975. A black, twelve-year-old girl, fished out of the Miami River, naked, arms and feet bound, a bag over her head. She'd been raped and then hung.



'Don't tell me you looked all my cases up too? Same way you did my boxin'.'



'Sort of. I remember when it happened,' she said. 'I remembered your name coming up and thinking you were black on account of it.'



'It's a common misconception,' Max said.



'You never gave up on that case, did you?'



'Took two and a half years, yeah.'



'That's unusual in this city, in this state, a white cop being that dedicated to solving a black kid's murder.'



'I was just doin' my job. Me and Joe got handed the case.



Me and Joe solved it. There's criminals, there's crime, and we're cops. We do what we do. That's all there was to it.'



'The family said how nice you were to them, how you promised to catch the guy.'



'They were decent people who'd had a child taken away.



Ain't no black and white in that, Sandra. Just right and wrong. They deserved justice, and they got it.'



'Her uncle did it.'



'Piece of shit called Levi Simmons.'



'He claimed you and your partner roughed him up bad.'



'He also claimed he didn't do it.'



'He looked pretty beat up in his mugshots.'



Max didn't say anything.



312 'Did you rough him up?'



'He tried to make a move,' Max lied. 'We stopped him.'



'Innocent till proven guilty,' Sandra said.



'He was makin' a move,' Max insisted, looking her right in the eye, just as he had Simmons' defence lawyer in court when he'd thrown up the same accusation. 'We did what we had to do in the circumstances.' Max needed a break from examining his career history. 'Can I go and smoke on your balcony?'



'Be my guest.'



She came outside with him. The air was still warm, and a limpid breeze shook the leaves of nearby trees. She didn't have much of a view - more apartment buildings, mostly dark, directly opposite - and then Calle Ocho behind, almost deserted. It was still way quieter than Ocean Drive, where no one ever seemed to sleep if there was an argument to be had or a fight to be fought.



'You know, every day when I leave my home I know there's some poor bastard doin' the same thing, only they won't be comin' back,' Max said. 'They'll get caught in crossfire between rival posses of cocaine cowboys, or else some young kid'll roll up on 'em and blast 'em just to watch 'em fly in the air. That's the way it's gettin' around here now thrill kills, killing for kicks and braggin' rights. And that's a family they've left behind who'll look to me for answers, who'll look to me to put things right. And that's my job.



What I signed up for. Makin' things right.



'I know I ain't ever gonna make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. I'm past that rookie idealism.



(ime goes up, not down. Guns get bigger, more powerful, hold more bullets, kill more people. But in the end, if I can bring a little peace of mind to some dead person's wife or husband, if their kids can grow up knowing that the scumbag who killed their mommy or daddy's dead or in jail for life, I hen it's worth it. And that's what keeps me goin', no matter



3'3 how jaded I sometimes get. That's what keeps me goin'



every second of every day.'



She didn't say anything. She just moved a little closer to him and leant her head on his shoulder and they stood there together in silence while he finished his cigarette.



They went back inside and carried on talking. Personal stuff, trivial stuff. They joked and laughed a lot. With Sandra, Max felt happier and more relaxed and comfortable than he'd been since he could remember.



And then she asked him what had been bugging him over lunch.



He thought about it for a second, how he'd never brought his job into his private life, how he'd refused to talk about any of it with any of the women he'd been involved with.



He'd kept it to himself and in the end it was all they'd left him with - the stuff that never got mentioned. He decided then that more than anything, he wanted Sandra in his life and he wanted her to stay.



“Yesterday me and Joe got a call about a multiple homicide in Overtown. Whole family had been shot. Six bodies. But there was this young couple, boyfriend and girlfriend. They were holding hands. And from the way they were, I could see the girl had got shot first and the guy had lain down right next to her and taken hold of her hand. And that's how he died.'



'He couldn't live without her,' Sandra said.



'That's what I thought too. He musta really loved her.



Literally the love of his life. And I also thought —' but he stopped talking, realizing how sick the words he was about to say might sound.



'What?'



'You don't wanna know'.



'Max,' Sandra took his hand, 'we're both adults and we both know what's happening here. If we're gonna have any kind of relationship it's got to be about sharing and honesty



34 and openness. You'll tell me about your day, I'll tell you about mine. I don't want you keeping anything from me.'



'My part's gonna be difficult, Sandra.'



'Why?'



'There's things about me you'd be best off not knowing.'



'Past stuff?'



'Yeah.' Max nodded.



'You a dirty cop?'



'I don't think I am. But I've gone through bad to get to good. Sometimes you have to in this job. Sometimes you got no choice. Well, you do. You can walk away. But I ain't the kind that walks away.'



'I figured that,' she said.



'OK.' He took a deep breath, as though he was getting ready for a high dive into a bottomless pool. 'I'll tell you what I thought when I saw that couple. I thought that coulda been you and me down there. That I woulda done the same as the guy.'



'That's a sweet thought,' she said.



'That's a sick thought,' he corrected her.



'It's a hitgothic, I agree.' She smiled. 'And you barely know me.'



'Cop's instinct,' he said.



'I thought that just worked on bad guys.'



'When I'm off-duty it works the other way.'



She laughed and put her arms around him. They hugged and then they kissed.



'You taste like an ashtray.'



'Who told you to lick 'em?'



She burst out laughing. Her laughter filled the room and drowned out the music. Her laughter made him laugh too.



When they'd recovered she leant her head against his shoulder and took his hand. They stayed there like that, staring into space together. The music stopped without them noticing.



3M ŚI!



He realized she'd dozed off. He listened to her breathing in his ear, felt her gently rise and fall against his arm. He smelled her hair and his nose filled with faint traces of perfume and coconut.



At around 4 a.m. he fell asleep himself.



When he woke up two hours later he heard the shower going. After she was done she made them both breakfast of tostada and cafe con leche, which they ate at the living-room table. Max imagined every day being like this with her.



An hour later they walked back to where they'd parked their cars on South West 8th. They'd exchanged numbers.



Max wanted to see her again that same night, but he knew he couldn't because he'd lost time on the Moyez case.



Before they parted she kissed him on the lips. Like the first time, he watched her pull away before getting into his car. And like the first time, he had the same stupid smile on his face.



He had an hour or two before he was due to punch in.



He thought of going over to the garage, but he needed a shower and a change of clothes and he wanted to stay in this special moment and savour it for a while longer.



As he headed down Calle Ocho he turned on the radio and got the news. A cop had been killed in Overtown the day before. Police were looking for a tall, light-skinned black man in a white Crown Victoria.



Back at his apartment, Max had just finished getting dressed when the phone rang. It was Raquel.



'That sample you gave me yesterday. We located our mystery bean.'



'Shoot,' Max said, riffling through his notepad for a clean page.



'It's a calabar bean.' She spelled it for him. 'Two uses: one jood, one bad. It produces an alkaloid called physostigmine,



which is used to treat glaucoma and is found in over-thecounter eyedrops.



'The bean on its own is highly toxic. It was used to expose those suspected of witchcraft, when it was commonly known as the Ordeal Bean. The person under suspicion would be forced to eat half a bean. If the person vomited, he or she was deemed to be innocent because their bodies had rejected it. If the person died then they were guilty. Most people died.



'The bean depresses the nervous system and causes muscular weakness. It slows the pulse to a crawl but increases blood pressure too.'



'How long does a person live after they've swallowed one?' Max asked.



'One, two hours at the most, depending on the person and the dose.'



Max thought about this for a moment. Lacour and Assad had killed people in different places and at different times.



'Is there an antidote?' Max asked.



'I was getting to that,' Raquel said. 'We found traces of atropine in the shooter's bladder. Atropine's an alkaloid derived from belladonna — deadly nightshade. It counteracts the effects of physostigmine. But, as it was in the bladder, I think he got the antidote some time before he stepped into that courtroom.'



'How long before?'



'Atropine takes a while for the body to completely eliminate.



Again, it depends on the person. Three to six weeks.'



Max understood what had happened. After his trial run of murders in Overtown, Assad had been given atropine to keep him alive for the main event.



'I'll tell you this,' Raquel said. 'The levels of physostigmine in the shooter's liver were so high, he was basically a dead man walking before a bullet ever hit him.'



'Solomon? That all you got?' Trish Estevez asked Joe.



'Yeah. That's all I got. Sorry.'



'Don't apologize to me. You're the one who's gonna have to do the work.'



Trish was the Miami PD's computer database manager.



She'd started out in dispatch in 1967 and then taken computer classes in the evening and gone on to become an expert in the things before they were introduced into the department in 1971, when next to no one knew how to use them. Now she had two people working for her, who she'd trained from scratch. They were transferring all the paper records to floppy disc, an arduous process which would have been easier with more manpower and machines, but the budget was minimal. The dot-matrix printer made up the heart of the computer room. It was about as long and as wide as an upright piano, and stood on two tables which had been pushed together to support it. Trish sat at a desk at the end of the room, watching over her people working at their Compaq machines, each at a desk on either side of the room, near the door, their backs to each other; their lingers hitting the keyboards the only sound. The machines they were working on — VDUs which looked like small portable black and white TVs — couldn't help but remind Joe of something archaic, like the set in his parents' house he and his brothers used to put red or blue strips of plastic over to pretend it was colour, or the small set he'd had in the first apartment he'd lived in when he'd left home.



'Gonna be a big old list. First name, family name, middle name, street name, nickname.' Trish's parents had immigrated



from Ireland to Boston when she was seven, and a broad brogue still held fast to her accent.



'I'll start off with first names.'



Wise choice,' she said and spun her chair to face the grey wall-to-wall cabinet behind her, where rows of 5 % and 3 V2 inch floppy discs were lined up in alphabetical order. The former were housed in cardboard sleeves which made Joe think of the old 10-inch 78s his granddad used to play.



She took out seven of the bigger discs and fed them into the computer on her desk. The machine purred and made an accelerated clicking sound before a menu came up on the screen. She hit a few keys.



'Seven hundred and fifty-three entries under first name Solomon,' she said.



'How up to date are they?'



'Last entry was in November.'



'That'll do,'said Joe.



'Come back around four for the paper.'



'Thanks.'



'You guys could make my life a lot easier if you knew how to use one of these.'



'Then you'd be out of work,'Joe said.



'That's why man invented machines.' Trish smiled.



In the library, Max went through a botany book until he found what he was looking for: Calabar bean — seed of Physostigma venenosum, a climbing leguminous plant found in West Africa. The seed is half an inch in diameter and of a dark brown colour.



The short piece went on to describe the bean's toxic and medicinal properties, as well as its use in witchcraft.



He turned the page and found a colour photograph of the bean. He recognized it from somewhere. The next photograph down was of the plant it grew from. Green leaves and deep pink-coloured flowers.



Green, he thought. A green suit, matching green eyes.



He looked at the bean again.



And it came back to him: the pimp he'd beaten up outside Al & Shirley's diner on 5 th Street, the stuff he'd confiscated and put in his Mustang.



'Sbitr



He found the silver cigar tube at the back of the glove compartment. He opened it and shook out the contents into his hand. Five calabar beans.



38



When Joe took off Pip Frino's blindfold and he saw he wasn't in a police station like he expected to be, but in a room with boarded windows, faded, damp-stained yellow wallpaper and ripped flowery lino on the floor, he looked worried.



'What is this place? Where am I?'



'Purgatory,' Max said, 'limboland.'



Max and Joe were sitting opposite him at a wooden table with a one kilo bag of 93 per cent pure Medellin cartel cocaine in between them.



'What am I doin' here? Frino spoke in a rough, growly voice and a heavy Australian accent which gave it gravitas.



He was short and thickset, with medium-length lank blond hair and a full beard. The whiteness of his teeth was accentuated by the golden tan of someone who worked outdoors.



They were in an MTF safehouse in Opa Locka. It was early Tuesday morning. Dawn was breaking outside; the birdsong just about filtering through the walls. Frino and his whole crew had been arrested on the Miami River, close to Biscayne Bay, right in the middle of a drop-off in a joint operation between MTF and the Coastguard. The Coastguard got to keep 7 5 per cent of the drugs, the boats, the crew and all the credit in exchange for handing Frino over to MTF. It had been a smooth operation. No shots fired; a simple swarm and seize.



Max and Joe had gone to Frino's harbour-front penthouse, where they'd found a loaded silver Beretta 92 in a bedside cabinet and a safe with $200,000 cash and Swiss,



Italian, German, British, Australian and New Zealand passports under various names.



Max was looking through the passports without saying a word. Joe sat back in his chair with his arms crossed, angrily eyeballing Frino.



'These yours?' Max held up a few of the passports.



'Yes.'



'That's five to ten years right there. You got a licence for the gun?' Max asked.



'No.'



'Another five to ten. And this morning's bust puts you away for life everlasting. You're thirty-eight. You ever been to jail?'



Frino shook his head.



“You'll go to a maximum security facility. That's hell on earth. Everyone'll try and kill you or fuck you or both. Guy like you won't get old in there,' Max said. Frino eyeballed him back. No emotion. “You got anything to say?'



'Lawyer,' Frino answered.



'You're not under arrest,' Max said, 'we haven't charged you.'



'Otherwise I'd be in a police station instead of this crab shack,' Frino said.



'You catch on quick,'Joe said. 'Pip a girl's name?'



'Who are you people?'



'Who we are is of no importance to you right now. What we can do to you is,' Max said.



'Longer!' Frino shouted.



'You're not under arrest,' Max repeated.



'Then this is kidnapping.'



'Call it what you want, I don't give a shit,' Max said. 'You run drugs in go-fast boats out of the Bahamas into here.



Who for?'



'I freelance. I get green for running white. Whoever's payin'.'



'Is this about cuttin' some kind of deal?'



'Answer my man's question,' Joe said.



'It was a guy called Benito Casares. Colombian. He's a middle-man for a cartel. One of many. I never met the main guys; you never do.'



'Who's the main guy and what's the cartel?'



'Medellin cartel. That's Medellin in Colombia. Main guy - well, there's two, one in Colombia, one in the Bahamas.



Pablo Escobar in Colombia, Carlos Lehder in the Bahamas.



Norman's Cay. Virtually fuckin' runs the place. But I guess you know that already?'



Max just about stopped himself from looking at Joe.



'So you never met Lehder?'



'No.'



'Where d'you meet Casares?'



'Here. In Miami. Where we always meet.'



'How was that set up?'



'There's a carwash in Little Havana. I'd go there, tell the guys I want to talk to their boss and leave a number.



Casares'd call and fix up a meet. I'd turn up.'



'How many times you worked for him?' Max asked.



'Seven in the last two years.'



'So he trusts you?'



'I guess.'



'OK,' Max said. 'Here's the deal. And, so as you know from the off, it's non-negotiable. Our way or jail.'



'I figured that. What do I get out of it?'



'You don't go to jail and you leave the country. And don't come back. Ever,' Max said.



'What do I have to do?'



'I'm gonna tell you something that happened and you're gonna repeat it into a tape recorder downtown with your



3M reap almighty hell. You understand?'



'In every language,' Frino said and smiled sardonically, showing a set of gleaming white teeth, perfect in every way but for two overlong, vampiric incisors.



'Do we have a deal?'



'What do you want me to say?'



Max told him: Frino was paid by Benito Casares to transport the Moyez shooter from Norman's Cay, and that once they got to Miami, he handed him over to Octavio Grossfeld.



'So I implicate myself in that courtroom shooting?' Frino smiled. 'What kind of fuckin' cops are you?'



Neither Max nor Joe said anything to that. They couldn't.



They had no replies, no comebacks, just a deep sense of shame. Frino seemed to pick up on this and sat back in his chair with his arms crossed and his legs splayed, smug and haughty, enjoying himself.



You guys work on the Kennedy assassination too?' Frino asked.



Will you do it?' Max responded.



'Sure. Anything to help you boys out, seem' as we're virtually on the same team.'



fed Powers was sitting in the kitchen with Valdeon, Harris and Brennan, drinking take-out coffee.



'Well?' he asked Max when he came in.



'When he gives his statement he'll say that he ferried in the Moye2 shooter from Norman's Cay,' Max said. 'But there's a little more: his real life middle-man happens to work for Carlos Lehder. All Frino has to do is make a call and he'll deliver the guy to us.'



Jed Powers stood up and clapped. The other three followed suit.



'Is this about cuttin' some kind of deal?'



'Answer my man's question,' Joe said.



'It was a guy called Benito Casares. Colombian. He's a middle-man for a cartel. One of many. I never met the main guys; you never do.'



'Who's the main guy and what's the cartel?'



'Medellin cartel. That's Medellin in Colombia. Main guy — well, there's two, one in Colombia, one in the Bahamas.



Pablo Escobar in Colombia, Carlos Lehder in the Bahamas.



Norman's Cay. Virtually fuckin' runs the place. But I guess you know that already?'



Max just about stopped himself from looking at Joe.



'So you never met Lehder?'



'No.'



'Where d'you meet Casares?'



'Here. In Miami. Where we always meet.'



'How was that set up?'



'There's a carwash in Little Havana. I'd go there, tell the guys I want to talk to their boss and leave a number.



Casares'd call and fix up a meet. I'd turn up.'



'How many times you worked for him?' Max asked.



'Seven in the last two years.'



'So he trusts you?'



'I guess.'



'OK,' Max said. 'Here's the deal. And, so as you know from the off, it's non-negotiable. Our way or jail.'



'I figured that. What do I get out of it?'



'You don't go to jail and you leave the country. And don't come back. Ever,' Max said.



'What do I have to do?'



'I'm gonna tell you something that happened and you're gonna repeat it into a tape recorder downtown with your



324



I reap almighty hell. You understand?'



'In every language,' Frino said and smiled sardonically, showing a set of gleaming white teeth, perfect in every way but for two overlong, vampiric incisors.



'Do we have a deal?'



'What do you want me to say?'



Max told him: Frino was paid by Benito Casares to transport the Moyez shooter from Norman's Cay, and that once they got to Miami, he handed him over to Octavio Grossfeld.



'So I implicate myself in that courtroom shooting?' Frino smiled. 'What kind of fuckin' cops are you?'



Neither Max nor Joe said anything to that. They couldn't.



They had no replies, no comebacks, just a deep sense of shame. Frino seemed to pick up on this and sat back in his chair with his arms crossed and his legs splayed, smug and haughty, enjoying himself.



You guys work on the Kennedy assassination too?' Frino asked.



Will you do it?' Max responded.



'Sure. Anything to help you boys out, seem' as we're virtually on the same team.'



Jed Powers was sitting in the kitchen with Valdeon, Harris and Brennan, drinking take-out coffee.



'Well?' he asked Max when he came in.



'When he gives his statement he'll say that he ferried in the Moyez shooter from Norman's Cay,' Max said. 'But there's a little more: his real life middle-man happens to work for Carlos Lehder. All Frino has to do is make a call and he'll deliver the guy to us.'



'Great police work!' Powers shouted and spun his fist in the air.



Max wanted to be sick.



I 39



Twenty-nine straight hours later, Max and Joe were sitting on the couch in the Overtown garage, drinking weak coffee and staring at the thick pale green rectangle that was Trish Estevez's list. They hadn't slept at all. They were both drained. The last thing either wanted to do was more work.



Plans had been changed in mid-air. First they'd taken Frino to MTF to walk him through his statement, but once there they'd had word from Eldon that their captive needed to spill more names before any deal could be made. Eldon wanted everyone Frino had ever worked for — especially in Miami. Frino refused to give anything up until he'd talked to his lawyer and ratified the original deal he'd been offered.



Max and Joe tried persuasion and then threats, but Frino knew he had the upper hand, so he just sat back with his arms crossed and smirking fangs fully bared.



They talked to Eldon. Burns spent fifteen minutes alone in an interrogation room with Frino. When he came out Frino had given up his every employer.



He was formally charged with multiple counts of drug trafficking and possession with intent to go global and given his phone call. At around midday his lawyer, Ida Basil, walked in and demanded to see the dope they'd allegedly caught her client with. Joe stalled her while Max made calls to the coastguard asking for the 300 kilos of coke they had logged into evidence and claimed as their bust to be brought to MTF. Two hours later the coke came in under armed escort.



The following deal was done: Frino would make a statement implicating Casares and Carlos Lehder in the



Moyez shooting and testify against them in court. He would also help MTF capture Casares. In return he'd be granted full immunity and get deported as soon as he'd given evidence.



Just after 6 p.m., Frino, wearing a wire, walked into Lazaro's Carwash on North West 3rd Street and told them he needed to speak to the boss. He gave them the number of his harbourside pad. He drove back there and waited for the call with Max, Joe, Powers and Valdeon. Casares called him an hour later, screaming about how his load hadn't turned up in Chicago and asking where the fuck it was?



Frino calmly told him there'd been complications mid-sea transit, that they'd almost got busted and had had to divert the load to a safehouse in North Miami. Frino said he suspected a leak in the organization and needed to meet Casares in person to tell him about it. Casares said he'd meet him at the house the next day, Tuesday 11 February at 11 a.m.



He was punctual. MTF was waiting for him. They arrested him, his three bodyguards and driver.



Casares was taken to a basement in Jackson Avenue, Coconut Grove, where Eldon was waiting. He said he'd take it from here and sent them home for the rest of the day.



'You know,' Joe tapped his foot on the list, 'we could both make our lives easier by just forgettin' all about this shit and goin' on home.'



'True,' Max nodded, sparking up his Zippo to light a cigarette, 'but then we wouldn't be police at all.'



'True.'Joe nodded and yawned.



'This shit pisses me off. Here we are, doin' real police work on the sly and fake police work out in the open. This is not what I signed up for.'



'I hear that.'



'I'm fucken' sick of this shit, Joe. It ain't right, you know?'



'So whatchu sayin', man?'



328



I 'I'm sayin' I've had enough.'



'You wanna quit?'



'Right now, yeah.' Max sipped his coffee and pulled deep on his Marlboro, holding the smoke in his lungs for a few seconds and then exhaling slowly. “We could put a stop to Eldon's way of doin' things, you and me.'



'How?' Joe sat up.



'Crack this case — the real case — and go public with it.



Expose this Moyez bullshit for the sham it is.'



'You wanna take Eldon down?' Joe asked.



'It ain't only 'bout him. It's about the way he does things.



Would you back me?'



'Hell, yeah!' Joe's big voice rilled the confined space and echoed back at them metallically, like a gunshot.



'The only thing that'd stop me - that mil stop me, I guess — is that if he goes down, we go down. And I wouldn't wanna be an ex-cop in prison. Would you?'



cWe could cut a deal,' Joe suggested.



'You could, maybe; you got nothin' to hide,' Max said bitterly. 'The only deal they'd give me is life without. That's if we lived long enough to make any fucken' deal. Eldon's got his hooks in everyone everywhere.'



'Maybe we could go to the press?'



'We'd still go down. Hell, we'd go down harder if we went that route. Police hate being' the last to know when it concerns their own. You know that.'



Joe didn't say anything, just stared straight ahead of him at the list then at nothing. False dawn. He was still on his own on this. Max wouldn't go along with him. He was right.



He had too much to lose. His sense of self-preservation outweighed his principles.



Max extinguished his cigarette in his coffee. The whole time he'd been thinking of Sandra, and the life they could have together, and what she'd said about sharing and openness. He didn't want to lie to her about what it was he



did. He thought about requesting a transfer, maybe to Miami Beach PD, if there was an opening.



'Let's make a start on that list,' Max said finally.



They split the list evenly. Joe had the beginning to middle of the alphabet, Max the remainder.



The list was broken down into name, felony details and a capital letter, either C — conviction, W — wanted, A — accomplice, AS — accomplice suspect and SI — informant placing suspect at a crime scene. This was followed by a basic physical description and last-known location.



They worked through them in near silence, starring things of importance. Max chain smoked. When it got too much for Joe he opened up the garage to let the tobacco fog out.



Max was finding no trace of a master criminal in his section. All the names so far were mostly petty criminals home invaders, muggers, cheque forgers, non-fatal stick-up kids, car thieves — plus a few manslaughters and one-off murderers.



When he reached the first name at 'O', he did a double- _ take and burst out laughing.Ś 'Solomon O'Boogie,' he read out.Ś 'What's he in for?' Joe looked up.I 'SI. Murder in a club on Washington. Informant named him as a major-league drug supplier.'



'Yeah?'



'White male, six foot, grey hair.'



'Solomon O'Boogie, huh?' Joe said, then flipped back a couple of pages. 'I got a Solomon Boogie here. Named as an AS for the shooting of a drug dealer in Little Havana.



This one's described as Hispanic, nineteen to twenty-five — female.'



'Female?” Max frowned. 'What's the date?'



'2.13.77.'



33°Ś 'Yeah?' Max showed Joe. 'I got the same date.'



Remembering how Charles de Villeneuve was said to have had the power to change his appearance, Max looked across at the picture of the King of Swords.



'Joe, why d'you keep turnin' it around?'



'Shit was creepin' me out,' he said.



'Pussy!' Max chuckled. 'You sleep with the light on too?'



They carried on looking through their lists.



Solomon O'Boogie had four more AS and SI entries, two for drug-related murders, one for drug trafficking, one for prostitution, all in the same year, 1977. Every listing gave a different appearance, age and gender. O'Boogie was an old white man, a young white man of 'Jewish appearance', an old black woman with a ginger afro wig and an Asian male, approximately five feet tall, mid-thirties.



'Now this is some seriously strange shit here.' Joe turned over the pages rapidly. 'There must be over a hundred listings for this one guy — Solomon Bookman.'



Boukman — the Haitian witchdoctor slave who'd inspired the de Villeneuve cards.



' What did you just say?' Max looked up.



'Bookman.'



'Let me see.'



Max looked down the list.



'Bookman, Solomon,' he read. He turned the pages. Joe was right. The list went on and on.



Then he came to the right spelling. Boukman, Solomon.



And read on.



The list detailed AS and SI reports on murders (most of them drug-related — dealers, gangleaders, suppliers, all shot or stabbed), drugs, prostitution, extortion, all taking place between 1974 and 1980. BookmanBoukman's appearance changed every time. Male, female, old, young, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American. Spoke with a Spanish, French, Russian, German accent. Had long and



3 3'



short hair, an afro, cornrows, plaits, dreadlocks, was bald.



Had blue eyes, brown eyes, black eyes, green eyes, grey eyes.



'That's our guy,' Max said. 'Solomon Boukman.'



ŚWhich one?' Joe asked.



'All of 'em and none of 'em,' Max said. 'My guess is no one knows what he really looks like because they've never seen him. He uses decoys.'



'Then maybe Boukman ain't even his real name. Why go through all that trouble to hide your appearance when you're using your real name?'



'Maybe. Or maybe he wants people to know his name.



Cause his name ain't gonna turn up anywhere. Nowhere official. No record, no driving licence, no IRS, no utility bills. Man as myth.'



Joe took a deep breath.



'It's just you and me on this, right? If this guy's that organized we don't stand a chance.'



Way it always was.'



'We're talkin' someone with serious juice here, Max. Connected like the city grid, friends in high places.'



'We'll take it as far as we can on our own, Joe. Then we'll look at our options.'



4o



Back home Max called up the Department of the Interior for a list of Florida-based calabar-bean importers. He identified himself by name, badge number and date of birth and explained what a calabar bean was. He was told to hold.



He held for fifteen minutes. Then he was put through to the plants division.



The list was short enough to read out over the phone.



There were three importers - Mount Sinai Medical Center, Miami University School of Medicine and Haiti Mystique proprietor Sam Ismael.



Next, Max called Drake Henderson. They fixed a meet in the coffee shop in Burdine's department store on Flagler.



Max' shaved, showered, swallowed some bennies with coffee and headed out.



'I need the lowdown on three people — two I got names for, one I haven't,' Max said after he'd ordered coffee. They were sitting back to back. Drake had come in after Max, wearing golfing clothes — brown check pants and matching cap, black and white Oxford wingtips, a pale yellow polo neck and a pink pullover tied around his neck. Beside him was a bag of golf clubs. He was eating bright yellow scrambled eggs on rye with a slice of ham and a glass of orange juice.



'First name — Solomon Boukman.' Max spelled it for him.



'I heard that name around the way,' Drake said.



'Where?'



'Around. In passin'.'



'Next, Sam Ismael.' Max's coffee came. He lit a cigarette.



V?3 'Now, the third guy is a pimp with green eyes. He's about six feet tall, slim build, light-skinned black, freckles, sharp dresser. Not pimp clothes, more the businessman type.



Drives a dark blue Mercedes coupe. Now, this ain't your average pimp. He doesn't strike me as the kind out there on the track, tryin' to knock other pimps for their girls. This one's organized. Recruits 'em workin' in cafes, bars, restaurants.



He's got cards printed up with phony names. Poses as a photographer, music producer, film producer.'



'Corporate pimp, huh?' Drake snickered. 'I'll see what I can do. Call me in three days.'



What do you need?'



'I'm lookin' to rid myself of some competition — the entrepreneurial kind,' Drake whispered. 'I'm gettin' my ass undercut by these two guys outta LA. Ebony 'n' ivory team.



The nigga goes by the name o' T-Rex, or Tampa Rex. Real name's Reggie Carroll. The cracker's name is Micky Goss.



His streetname's Big Sur, 'cause that's where he came up.



Used to be some kinda pro-surfer.



'What they been doin' is sellin' this shit they're callin'



freejack — it's like poorman's base. Rock cocaine. They sellin'



this shit for fiddy cents a pop, an' people be linin' up all day to get some. They say it's fiddy times the hit of snort, intense like you dunwannaknow. And that shit bin killin' my damn bidniss. No one wants a little toot and a toke no mo', they wanna smoke theyselves some freejack. We talkin'



them college kids and fashion types I usually do my bidniss wit'.



'Anyways, should you go lookin' in Apartment 302 in the Flamingo buildings out by the Palmetto Expressway in the a.m., you will catch yourselves two lil' chemists and stop a whole new drug epidemic'



'I'm sure the DEA will be real interested,' Max said.



'You're a model citizen, Drake.'



'I like to help out any way I can. You know me,' Drake



334 I mumbled while scrunching his toast. 'Say, if there's any way you can find out how they be makin' that shit, lemme know, right?'



4i



Eva Desamours gasped in shock and fear when she walked into the bathroom to give Carmine his bath and saw him standing by the steaming tub in his robe, looking every inch like her worst nightmare come true. She thought her son had been turned into a %ombi, sent to kill her.



Then she saw he still had eyebrows and her surprise turned quickly into anger.



'What have you done? To your Ł4Zff?!!?' she shouted.



'I — I wanted to see - to see what it looked like,' Carmine stammered.



He'd shaved his hair off earlier that afternoon.



Bad move not asking her first, he knew, but there'd been no time.



She pushed the door closed and glowered at him, her face going from disbelief to belligerent ferocity in a blink. She strode across the floor, shoulders hunched, head tilted slightly forward, fists clenched, neckchains making a loud timpani under her plain blue dress.



Oh no, he thought, here comes a ShitFit.



Carmine took a few steps back. She was an enraged bull and he was the penned-in matador, out of tricks, his balls in his mouth.



After he'd shot that cop in the foot, he'd burnt the car and the clothes he'd been wearing and tossed the gun in the sea. Then he'd completely changed his whole look. He was dressing down now in jeans, T-shirts, sneakers and mirror-lens Ray-Ban Aviators, which were too big for his skinny face and hung slightly crooked on his nose. He didn't care. The priority was keeping on the downlow until this



situation blew over. He'd heard how the cop had gone and died and that had seriously fucked him up. He was wanted for murder. How can you die of a gunshot to the foot? Had to be something else happened to him on the way to the emergency room. Maybe the medics had given him the wrong type of blood or sumshit.



The last thing to go had been his hair. Some fag over in Coral Gables had shaved it and waxed his head after. Damn if the faggot hadn't been sweet on his ass too, stroking his scalp and even tickling his fuckin' ear lobes. Couldn't blame him though. Even bald as Kojak he was a handsome motherfu— 'WHY didn't you ask my permission?!' His mother was standing so close to him, their bodies were almost touching.



Her eyes — small dry hard black beads of anger and poison — were drilling into his.



'Permission f-for what?' He hadn't told his mother about the cop any more than he'd told her about his hair.



'For THATY She reached up and slapped the back of his head so quick he didn't even see her move.



'I — I — dunno. I — I — just thought it up and went ahead and did it,' Carmine said, his voice scaling up and up, his words coming out in whimpers and bleats.



'You just “thought it up” and “went ahead and did it?” She mimicked his voice, then roared, 'You don't just think OR do anything without asking my PERMISSION FIRST!'



She punched him in the chest, but the robe's collar absorbed most of the hit so it came through to him like a weak tap. This emboldened him. Mentally he was suddenly back out on the street, and she was some impertinent Card, mouthing off at him.



'The fuck you sayin'!' he shouted, bringing his voice back to normal. 'It ain't yo' damn hair!'



She backed away a couple of steps, astonished, confused.



This inspired him some more.



'I'm twenny-nyynne motherfuckin' years old! You can't tell me to do a damn motherfuckin' thang - MOTHER!' he yelled. 'An - an - an - an anyways - YOU BALD TOO!'



Now, why the fuck hadn't he stood up fo' hisself like this years ago? he thought.



She stood, hands on hips, looking him up and down, mouth agape, incredulous. He swore he even saw her wig move a little.



Yeah, he thought. You stand there and stare all you want, like this is some Star Trek shit you witnessing but you ain't never washin' my ass no mo'. Fuck, this, fuck Solomon, and FUCKYOU Fixing his eyes on the door, he started walking forward.



Damn! He was pleased with himself! All it took was to stand up to her and — Then he hit an obstacle that stopped him dead in his tracks. More precisely, the palm of her hand pushing hard into his chest, right where his heart was.



' WHA T did you just say to me, boyV she yelled.



Her voice deafened him and drowned out the sound of his own thoughts. And just as easily as he'd slipped into his street persona, he fell back into being a scared little kid again; her towering over him, threatening to bring the whole world as he knew it down on his head.



He could hear his heart pounding, and he was sure she could feel it too. His mouth dried up all the way down to his throat. And damn if his legs weren't trembling. His will to resist snapped. His bravado fled from his bones like a bird escaping out of an open cage.



'I _ I said _ I'm - I'm—'



'YOU WHAT?V 'I - I - I. ..'



'You dare raise your voice at me, boy! Who do you think you are?'



'I — I'm — I'm s-s-sorry,' he blurted.



'STRIP!' she snapped.



He did as he was told and took off his robe and dropped it on the floor.



She looked at it.



He picked it up and went over to the wall to hang it up, then padded back to where he'd been standing.



She looked him up and down, naked and shaking, her eyes stopping on his dick, now all shrivelled up. She came up close to him and grabbed him by the jaw, digging her nails deep into his cheeks, forcing his lips apart.



'Never raise your voice at me again, boy! You hear? Never!'



He tried to say yes, but her fingers had clamped his teeth so tight he was scared her nails would tear his skin. He tried to nod his assent, capitulation and surrender, but he couldn't move his head, so fast was her grip.



'You trying to be independent now, is that it, boy? Want to be a MAN7' she bellowed. 'You're not a man. You were NEVER a man!' She kept on burying her fingers into his skin, her face contorted, mad and merciless. Carmine was utterly terrified. He'd never seen her like this before. 'And you'll never BE a man. NEVER! You're WEAK! A WEAK PIECE OF SHIT like your coward FATHER!



'Now get on your knees,' she commanded, letting go of him.



'What?' He hadn't heard or understood.



'Get. On. Your. FUCKING KNEES!'



Carmine quickly did as he was told.



She kicked off her bathroom slippers and stepped around him. Behind him he heard her lockets bumping together, the chains scraping against them.



The first blow to his head was so hard it made everything inside it shake — his brains, eyes, teeth and tongue all shuddered.



She hit him even harder the second time. He cried 'Hit and snot flew out of his nose. She kept on whacking



the back and top of his head. She was using one of the slippers. They were rubber and plastic, but so solid and thick they might as well have been wood.



He didn't turn around.



She hit him again and again and again. A few stray shots struck his face and ears. A few blows landed on his neck and hurt like fuck, making him groan in agony.



The blows stung and burnt and bit and smarted. She was an accurate hitter too, got him in the exact same spot near the top of his head three times and made him yelp with each strike. Now he knew where he got his shooting skills from. He'd hoped it was from his dad. But they'd come from her.



His scalp felt scalded and raw. He wished he hadn't shaved off his hair. Then he understood the punishment.



She would have done this to him no matter what.



He didn't know how many times she beat him, but there was no let up and she didn't get tired. When one blow landed more softly than the last, the next was a hundred times harder.



After a while, his mind went blank. He focused on the door in front of him, the tiles in-between. He looked at his shadow. Eventually, he thought, this will stop.



It did occur to him, when she caught him right behind his ear and it hurt so much he thought she'd burned him, that he could always turn himself in to the cops. But he knew Solomon had his hooks all the way into their souls via their wallets. They'd cut him loose and he'd be the star attraction at the next SNBC. They wouldn't have to bother shaving his head.



The pain leaked through his cranium. His head began to hurt like he had an almighty hangover; pressure began to build up in his brow. Every blow made white stars explode in front of his eyes. His nose started to bleed. He couldn't even feel the blows any more.



Eventually he heard her drop the slipper on the floor.



'Now get in the fucking bath!'



He thought she'd have been spent from all that beating, but she scrubbed him harder than ever, really ripping chunks out of his back and legs. The bathwater even had a mild tinge of pink to it.



He stared at the wall of fish in front. That dumb beautiful shoal. They had it so damn easy, nothing better to do all day but swim, eat, look pretty and die.



He thought of his father and Lucita. They'd loved him, he knew, and he'd been happy then. Things would've turned out so differently if they were still alive. He wished he'd died with them that day.



He began to cry. Silently. He did that sometimes when his mother's humiliations got too much to bear, when she'd found a new soft spot to expose and mock, poke at and stab. His face was already wet so she wouldn't see the tears.



He thought of what had happened, his brief moment of rebellion, her retribution.



She was right. He wasn't a man.



Crying relieved him. And with it came another kind of relief. His bladder went too. He pissed a long, uncontrollable jet in the water. He positioned his legs and crouched over a little so his mother wouldn't see and the piss made only the most ambiguous of ripples on the surface.



Thank God for Dettol, he thought, which would kill the germs before they could infect the wounds on his back.



I iva had smelt and tasted the stench of fear on Carmine so strong she'd known the little fuck was bluffing. He didn't have the balls to stand up to her. All she had to do was bark and stamp her foot and his spine crumbled.



She saw him pissing himself and trying to hide it. She wanted to laugh.



She smelled the tears running down his face. Tears were



like sea water and fresh water mixed together. When they were sad tears they were heavy on the salt, and that's the way Carmine's were. Crying for his pathetic useless little self. And his daddy. And that bitch whore Lucita. If only he knew what had happened to Lucita. She'd show him the pictures one day. Maybe. She'd told his father's killers to make sure they all got a piece of Lucita before they killed her. And they had.



She scrubbed away at his back and shoulders, drawing up a pinkish lather as the blood from the opened cuts mixed in with the froth. She was still mad enough at him to beat him some more. She had half a mind to.



Then she smelled something familiar but totally unexpected coming off the side of his head. She put her nose close to the spot and inhaled deeply, tasting what she'd caught in the back of her throat. Metal, oil, smoke - guns! She always smelled it strongly on members of Solomon's crew, sometimes weeks after they'd carried out hits or been in shootouts.



What was it doing on this pathetic son of a — son of a lowdown scumbag? She smelt the spot again, breathing in so deep it stung her nostrils. Definitely guns. On Carmine} Couldn't be!



She rolled the taste around her mouth. She detected a hint of the just curdled milk flavour of confusion.



'Who did you shoot?' she asked him.



The little fucker almost jumped out of the tub, splashing the floor, teary-eyed, lips trembling.



'I — I dinn shoot anyone!'

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