by Tom Wolfe
She managed to collect herself long enough to run the few steps to her bedroom and pick up her phone and come back to the living room, where she wouldn’t be alone, and scroll down her contact list to “Nestor.” It began ringing almost immediately, and almost immediately a mechanical voice answered, “—is not available. If you would like to leave a—”
Magdalena looked at Amélia with absolute despair upon her face and said in a tone that suggested the end of the world, “He doesn’t answer.”
As soon as the elevator door opened on the second floor, Cat Posada was right there, waiting for him.
“Officer Camacho?” she said, as if she wasn’t sure exactly who he was. “Follow me. I’ll take you to the Chief’s office.”
Nestor studied her pretty face to detect… anything. It was about as easy to read as a brick. He couldn’t stand it. This was the very girl he had lusted for on this very same spot… even in the middle of a crisis that had rendered him speechless at the time. Was it possible that she really didn’t remember? All at once, without planning it, he heard himself saying, “Well, here we go again. The long march.”
She was already walking when she glanced back and said, “Long march? It’s just down the hall.”
It was the tone that says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about and it’s not worth my time to find out.” As before, she led him to just outside the Chief’s office and stopped. “I’ll let him know you’re here.” Then she disappeared inside.
In no time she came out of the office. “You can go in.”
Nestor tried one last time to get a sign… from her lips, her eyes, her eyebrows, a tilt of the head—just a sign, any sign, goddamn it! Her loins weren’t even a part of the anatomy at this moment. But all he got was the brick.
With a sigh Nestor went inside. The Chief didn’t even look up at first. ::::::Christ!—he’s big.:::::: He knew that, but now it was as if he were taking it in all over again. Not even his long-sleeved navy shirt with all the stars across the collars could hide the sheer physical might of the man. He had a ballpoint pen in his hand. He seemed to be absorbed in some computer-generated material on his desk. Then he looked up at Nestor. He didn’t stand or offer his hand. He just said, “Office Camacho…” It wasn’t a greeting. It was a statement of fact.
::::::Hello, Chief?… It’s good to see you, Chief?:::::: None of it was going to sound right. He settled for the one word, “Chief.” It was a plain acknowledgment.
“Have a seat, Officer.” The Chief pointed to a straight-backed chair, armless, directly across from the desk. It was all such a replay of the first meeting, Nestor’s heart sank. Once he sat down opposite the Chief, the Chief looked at him with a long, level gaze and said, “I have some things—”
He stopped and looked toward the open door. Cat was peeking through it. “Chief?” she said in a tentative voice. Then she beckoned, and the Chief got up, and they stood tête-à-tête in the doorway. Nestor could hear her first words, “Chief, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I thought you should know.”
Then she lowered her voice until he could hear nothing but a low buzz. He thought he picked up the name Korolyov, but he also knew it could be sheer paranoia. Korolyov was the reason he had been disobeying the curfew, and that was no doubt the reason the Chief had ordered him to come in. ::::::Oh, Dios Dios Dios:::::: but he was too discouraged to pray to God. And why would God stoop to help him in the first place? ::::::“Oh, Lord, thou who hath forgiven even Judas, I have committed the sin of deceit, which involves cheating as well as lying”… Oh, the hell with it. It’s hopeless! Judas at least did a lot to help Jesus before he sinned against him. And me? Why should God even bother to notice me? I don’t deserve it… I’m truly fucked.::::::
The Chief and Cat kept buzzing at a very low volume. Occasionally he would cut loose out loud with a profane oath. “Oh, for Christ’s sake”… “Jesus Christ”… and one “Holy freaking Jesus”… Fortunately, he actually said “freaking.”
Finally he ended his little parley with Cat and started back toward his desk—but then wheeled about and said out loud as she headed back to her desk, “Tell ’em they can say whatever they want, but there’s no way I would have turned that plane back, even if I’d known about it. The man’s got a Russian passport, he hasn’t been charged with anything, he hasn’t been singled out as ‘a person of interest,’ nobody has even directly accused him of anything, not even the freaking Herald. So how do you turn the plane around? You’ve got a notion? Those newspaper execs have never run a damn thing in their lives. They just sit on committees and try to think up ways to justify their existence.”
Nestor was dying to know what the Chief and Cat had been talking about. It had Korolyov written all over it. But Nestor was not going to risk so much as one question. ::::::“Oh, excuse me, Chief, but did you and Cat happen to be talking about—” I’m not going to open my mouth about that—especially not that—or anything else unless the Chief asks me a direct question.::::::
The Chief sat down at his desk, and ::::::I knew it! I knew it! He still has on his angry scowl from thinking about everyone who gave him so much outrageous grief… :::::: The Chief cast his eyes down and shook his head in a semaphore that said, “Clueless fucking assholes,” then looked up at Nestor with clueless fucking assholes still written all over his face and said, “Okay, where were we?”
::::::Damn! That scowl! He thinks that I must be one of them, the one who caused him to forget.::::::
“Oh, yeah, I remember,” said the Chief. “I have some things of yours here.”
With that, he leaned so far over to one side of his desk that even his great hulk almost disappeared. Nestor could hear him opening a lower drawer. When he brought himself up again, he had something unwieldy in his hands… turned out to be a pair of pale-gray boxlike containers, one small and one considerably bigger. Cops called them “malcontainers.” They were for storing evidence in criminal cases. The Chief put them in front of him on the desk. He opened the smaller one—
—and the first sign from On High that Nestor got was a flash of gold as the Chief withdrew it from the container. Now he could see the whole thing as the Chief extended his arm across the desk and handed it to him.
“Your badge” was all he said.
Nestor stared at it in the palm of his hand as if he had never seen such a wondrous object before. Meantime, the Chief was opening the other container… and extending a large ungainly cincture of leather and metal across the desk. It was a Glock 9 in a leather holster attached to a gun belt.
“Your service revolver,” said the Chief—tonelessly.
Nestor now had the badge in one hand and was supporting the Glock and its rig with the other. He stared at them… probably longer than he should have… before turning his eyes up toward the Chief… and managing to say in a shaky voice, “Does this mean…”
“Yeah,” said the Chief, “that’s what it means. You’re restored to active duty. Your next shift with the Crime Suppression Unit will begin at four p.m. tomorrow.”
Nestor was so overcome by this miracle, he didn’t know how to respond. So he tried, “Thank you—uhhh—”
The Chief spared him the struggle. “Now, I have a word of advice—no, I take that back. This is an order. What I’m doing is going to create a certain amount of static. But I don’t want to hear about you talking to the press in any way, shape, or form. You got that?”
Nestor nodded yes.
“You can be sure you’re going to be in the press tomorrow. You understand? The DA is going to announce that he is dropping the charges against the teacher at Lee de Forest—José Estevez—due to lack of evidence… They’ll mention you. You were the one who exposed the ‘evidence’ for what it was, a plot by a bunch of frightened boys to protect that punk so-called gang leader Dubois. I want you in the press in that regard. But what I said still goes. You don’t talk to the press. You don’t confirm information. You don’t respond to the press in any way. And I’ll say it again
: That’s… an… order.”
“I understand, Chief.” Somehow the way he said it—I understand, Chief—made him feel that he was back on the force again.
The Chief put his forearms on the desk and leaned as far toward Nestor as he possibly could… and for the first time betrayed an emotion other than his note of stern do-not-defy-me authority. He let his lips widen all the way across his face… and his eyes came alive… and the flesh over his cheekbones welled up into two soft pillows of warmth… and he said… “Welcome back, Camacho.”
He said it softly… and it was only a smile from a policeman in the decrepit downtown of Miami, Florida, in the first place… but did any light ever come from any more radiant place On High… or render a man’s soul calmer or more blessed… or lift him more completely clear of this trough of mortal error we are fated to live out our lives in?
Outside, on the street, Nestor didn’t feel vindicated or redeemed or triumphant or anything like that. He felt lightheaded, disoriented, as if a staggering load he had been carrying for a very long time had been removed from his back by magic, and the Big Heat Lamp was up there roasting his coconut as usual, and he didn’t even know in what direction he was walking. He had no idea what street it was. He felt completely, totally out of it… but wait a minute, he really should call her anyway.
He scrolled down his contact list until he found her name and tapped the iPhone’s glass face.
In practically no time she answered, “Nestor!”
“Well, I have some good news. The Chief gave me my badge and my revolver back. I’m reinstated; I’m a real cop again.”
“Oh, my God, Nestor! That’s… so… wonderful!” said Ghislaine.
About the Author
Tom Wolfe is the author of more than a dozen books, among them The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, and I Am Charlotte Simmons. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he earned his BA at Washington and Lee University and a PhD in American Studies at Yale. He received the National Book Foundation’s 2010 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in New York City.
ALSO BY TOM WOLFE
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby
The Pump House Gang
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
The Painted Word
Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine
The Right Stuff
In Our Time
From Bauhaus to Our House
The Bonfire of the Vanities
A Man in Full
Hooking Up
I Am Charlotte Simmons
* “Look at her! Granny, you spit when you talk, like a rabid mutt foaming at the mouth.”
* “your dumb ass of a man”; literally, “your little pubic hair.”
* “What a pair you make, you stupid bitch!”
* “Don’t fuck with me with your little fits. Go to hell, bitch!”
* “No, my fat, dirty-talking whore…”
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Contents
Welcome
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue: We een Mee-AH-mee Now
Chapter 1: The Man on the Mast
Chapter 2: The Hero’s Welcome
Chapter 3: The Daring Weak Man
Chapter 4: Magdalena
Chapter 5: The Pissing Monkey
Chapter 6: Skin
Chapter 7: The Mattress
Chapter 8: The Columbus Day Regatta
Chapter 9: South Beach Outreach
Chapter 10: The Super Bowl of the Art World
Chapter 11: Ghislaine
Chapter 12: Jujitsu Justice
Chapter 13: A La Moda Cubana
Chapter 14: Girls with Green Tails
Chapter 15: The Yentas
Chapter 16: Humiliation One
Chapter 17: Humiliation, Too
Chapter 18: Na Zdrovia!
Chapter 19: The Whore
Chapter 20: The Witness
Chapter 21: The Knight of Hialeah
About the Author
Also by Tom Wolfe
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2012 by Tom Wolfe
Cover design by Oliver Munday
Cover copyright © 2012 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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ISBN 978-0-316-21458-2
