The King of Swords

by Nick Stone

  ‘You take care now, Carmine.’

  ‘You too, Solomon.’

  Solomon opened the door quietly and slid out of the car and made his way towards the Cordoba. As he walked he was slowly absorbed by the darkness, before disappearing into it completely.

  12

  ‘Hey, no smokin’ in the car. New ride, new rules,’ Joe said as Max put his fourth Marlboro of the morning to his mouth. It was just after 8 a.m. They were driving to work in Joe’s new car, a chocolate-brown ’79 Lincoln Continental with a V8 engine, chrome wheels, fine beige leather seats, wood appliqués in the cabin and two pine-tree air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. He’d won it a week ago in the SAW–Slain and Wounded–auction, where money was raised for the families of dead or disabled cops by selling the seized and confiscated property of criminals who’d been sent away for more than twenty years. And, as had been the custom since the auctions had started, a symbolic $100 donation was also made to the family of the first Miami Beach cop to be killed in the line of duty–David Cecil Bearden–shot dead by car thieves on 20 March 1928, at the age of twenty-four. The Continental only had 160 miles on the clock. It had briefly been used by a mid-level dope courier who was starting a seventy-eight-year stretch at Union Correctional.

  ‘Smell gets in the upholstery, it don’t come out. It’ll bring the price down, time comes to sell,’ Joe explained. They were on North East 2nd Avenue, stalled in a tailback caused by an earlier collision between a cement truck and a Winnebago. The truck had come off worst.

  ‘I’ll open the window,’ Max said.

  ‘The hell you will, Mingus. You’re in my ride, you respect my rules. No fumar en auto,’ Joe practised the Spanish he’d been learning off tapes for the best part of six months. Word was Miami PD brass were talking about setting up a fast-track promotion scheme where preference would be given to Spanish speakers, so Joe thought it best to get a head start. Besides, Spanish was most of what you heard on the streets nowadays. People could plot any old shit they wanted to if you couldn’t understand what they were saying. Max had followed his partner’s lead and bought a set of Berlitz tapes and books, but he hadn’t as yet taken them out of the packaging. Why the hell should he learn a foreign language to talk to people in his own country? He’d pick up the basics as he went along, same as he did with street slang.

  ‘There’s worse outside, Joe. Pollution, exhaust, bird shit. That’ll depreciate your car faster than any damn cigarettes.’ Max grumpily put his smoke back in the pack. He’d showered, shaved and ironed his clothes but he still looked and felt like a wreck. Before he’d left his home he’d swallowed a mouthful of Pepto-Bismol to douse the burn in his stomach, but it was still smouldering. The doctor told him he didn’t have an ulcer, just an acid build up caused by a cocktail of job pressures, booze, coffee and not eating a balanced diet at the right times of day. And he badly needed a damn drink. And a cigarette. ‘Next thing, you’re gonna tell me is they’re bad for me.’

  ‘They are bad for you.’

  ‘You smoke cigars.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘You quit?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Joe said smugly.

  ‘No wonder you’re actin’ like such an asshole.’

  Joe laughed.

  ‘You should think ’bout quittin’, Max. For real.’

  ‘Think about it all the time. For real,’ Max said gloomily. And he had. After the first cigarette of the day, he didn’t like smoking. The next nineteen to thirty were all reflex and habit, things to do with his hands, things to relieve stress, things to help him think, things to do for the sake of something to do–the necessity of addiction. But that initial cigarette–the curtain raiser–was still one of the best three or four experiences he’d had outside of sex, his job and the boxing ring.

  It had all the makings of turning into another nice spring day in Miami. The sky was a limpid clean blue, the sun was bright without being intrusive and there was a good but not forceful breeze cutting through the column of palm trees at the side of the road. January through to May were the best times to be in town, climatewise–warm but never hot, humidity low, rainstorms likely to last hours rather than days like they did in the summer.

  The traffic was moving at a slow, loud, angry, crawl. Midtown to downtown, the cars were bumper to bumper, horns were being tooted, people were leaning out of their windows or standing up shouting and cursing, yelling, screaming. At least they hadn’t started shooting each other, like they did in LA, but that couldn’t be far off.

  ‘You hear from René?’ Joe asked. ‘No.’

  ‘You called her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You gonna?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Best way. Clean break.’

  ‘That’s right: clean break.’ Max nodded. ‘What about you? How’s your love life?’ ‘Not as bad as yours.’ Joe laughed. He was a big man–six and a half feet tall and 245 pounds of mostly muscle and bone. He looked like a monument when he was standing still and a boulder when he was coming at you. His car seat was pushed way back to accommodate his long thick legs, and the wheel looked like ribbon in his wide hands; hands that were so solid and dense they looked like padded heavy bag mitts, barely a hint of bone showing anywhere, except for the obelisks he had for knuckles.

  Unlike Max, Joe rarely used force on people. He didn’t often have to. The sight of him alone made people think twice about messing with him, although the few times Max had witnessed him hit someone their bones had been as tough as matchsticks. Outside work and when he was with people he knew, Joe had a friendly cartoon bear’s face which complemented his genial, disarming manner. On the street or in interrogations, however, it was a different matter: he had his game face on–that of a very big and very mean dog whose tail you’d just trodden on.

  ‘So you met someone?’ Max asked.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Joe said smugly.

  ‘That why you stopped smoking?’ Max asked.

  ‘New love, new leaf.’

  ‘Sounds like she ain’t wasted her time gettin’ you by the balls, Joseph. She got a name?’

  ‘Lina,’ Joe replied. In the decade they’d known each other, Joe had had two serious relationships, both lasting close to three years. When they’d been on patrol he’d dated La-Shawna Harris, a radio dispatcher who’d sounded a lot better than she looked. That had finished when he and Max made Detective in 1973. Then Joe had met and moved in with a Dominican nurse called Marisol. They’d gotten engaged and set a wedding date, but then Joe found out that she already had a husband and two kids she was sending money to back home. He hadn’t talked about the break-up all that much. The little he had said was straight off the nearest shelf–shit happens, life goes on and then we die, etc.–the kind of catchphrases people resort to when they want to keep their pain to themselves. Max could tell his friend had been hurt real deep. It was in his eyes and manner–the dull, wounded look in his stare, a general lack of enthusiasm for life and a quickness to cynicism. Before Marisolgate, Joe had believed that most people were basically good and if you helped them out they’d be grateful. Now he was closer to Max’s outlook, which was that if you offered someone a helping hand you’d best take a rabies shot first because they’d probably bite you. He’d also become a better cop. When he’d been with Marisol, he’d never been the first through a locked door, always the second to go up to the window of a suspect vehicle. After the relationship was over, he threw himself into the job–first one through, last one out. Any hesitation, any half step was a thing of the past. But now Max guessed he’d revert to his old happy self once his new flame turned into a home fire and this worried him a little. For the last three years they’d been a kick-ass team, regular superheroes. They’d broken big cases, made solid collars and secured a 97 per cent conviction rate–the highest in Florida. They’d won commendations for the last four years. They were both on their way to big promotions. Before they’d done well, better than most, but once you’d done great, doing well wa
s a poor substitute.

  ‘What does she do?’

  ‘She’s a teacher. First grade.’

  ‘When d’you meet?’ Max asked.

  ‘Two months ago.’

  ‘Two months…’ Max said, surprised Joe hadn’t told him anything about her earlier. ‘What? Was this like a you-start-off-friends then realize you got a hard-on kind of scenario?’

  ‘I just wanted to be sure of her first.’ Joe smiled. ‘And I am now.’

  ‘I’m happy for you, Joe. You deserve it. Where d’you meet?’

  ‘You ain’t gonna believe this, Max…’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Church.’

  ‘Church? Since when do you–Joseph George Liston–go to church?’

  ‘As of two months ago.’

  ‘Yeah–right.’

  Neither cop was a churchgoer, but whenever Max needed to think things through, be it a case, or a personal problem, he sought out the nearest and emptiest church. It was a habit he’d developed on the back of a whim during his first year as a detective. One hot afternoon, he’d decided he needed to find somewhere cool and dark to mull over the case of a serial rapist who was posing as a repairman to get into women’s homes. He’d gone into the first nearest appropriate place he’d found–Plymouth Congregational Church on Coconut Grove. He’d cracked the case within five minutes of sitting there on a hard varnished pew, in the semi-darkness, the smell of candle smoke in his nostrils. He’d simply remembered something an eyewitness had said about the design of one of the victim’s bedroom curtains, something he couldn’t have known about unless he’d been inside the house. It had come to him within moments of homing in on all the information he’d absorbed, sifting it out, breaking it down and then breaking it down again. Ever since then, whenever he couldn’t see straight, either professionally or personally, he’d go and sit in the nearest church and mull things over.

  Meanwhile Joe would wait outside. Joe didn’t believe in God and avoided going into churches. His father had been a preacher who drank and regularly beat his mother and all Joe’s siblings, before leaving them for good one Christmas Eve. He was both impressed and worried by Max’s church sessions. He was glad they helped him break cases, but he hoped to high hell his partner wouldn’t get the Jesus bug along the way too and see the hand of God instead of his own fingering the perp.

  ‘Told you you wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘And, you’re right, I don’t. So, c’mon, where d’you meet her?’

  ‘I just told you.’

  ‘Stop pullin’ my dick, Joe.’

  ‘I ain’t pullin’ your dick.’

  ‘You been goin’ to church for two months and you ain’t told me? You’re pretty quiet for a born again Christian. Shouldn’t you be standin’ on your car roof shoutin’ hosannah and hallelujah?’

  ‘I ain’t been born again, Mingus. Once was enough.’ Joe chuckled, stepping on the gas. The traffic had begun to move faster now, although the cars were still jammed nose to tail. ‘Remember when my moms broke her leg? She asked me to drive her to church. So I took her to this service she goes to on a Wednesday night and I went in with her and sat through the thing. The place was crowded, every seat taken. And after a while it hit me.’ ‘What?’

  ‘Never in my life had I seen such a collection of fine, free and available women under the same one roof. So, the next day, I went back there by myself to get a closer look.’

  ‘Get the fuck outta here, Joe!’

  ‘I’m bein’ serious. There are some fine chicks in them churches, Mingus, some fine chicks.’

  ‘Did you say “church-ezz”? As in, you been to more than one?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. The Baptist ones are the best for eye contact, chit-chat and hand-holding. They’re informal, the preachers play guitars like they just sittin’ around a campfire with a few brews. The worst ones are the Catholics. Uptight as hell. All the fine women are with their mammas.’

  ‘You’re a sick man, Joe,’ Max said with genuine distaste. He may not have used churches for their actual purpose either, but the last thing he’d use them for was as a meat market. He had bars and clubs for that. ‘You go to church to get right with God, not to get laid.’

  ‘Ah, He don’t mind. He ain’t lobbed a thunderbolt at me.’

  ‘Yet…’ Max cautioned, half seriously.

  ‘You should try it.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘See, you bein’ white–and a cop–I know it’s harder for you to get with the sisters nowadays, ’cause of McDuffie and the riots. But, you meet a sister in church–if she Christian enough to be in there then she gonna be Christian enough to look past your colour too.’

  ‘I do all right as I am,’ Max said, but Joe had a point. Post-McDuffie, people were sticking close to their own kind and hunkering down like they were under siege. It was harder for Max to get to talk to black women he fancied. Instead of the looks he used to get–interest mingled with suspicion and light unease–now he saw fear, resentment and sometimes outright hostility–and that was before he told them he was a cop. It didn’t happen all the time, but it happened more often than not, and a lot more than it had a year ago.

  McDuffie had even split the cops into unofficial racial factions, blacks in one corner, whites, Hispanics and Asians in another. Although, it being Miami, with its disparate, cross-pollinating racial mix, things hadn’t been quite that clear cut. Black Hispanics had tried unsuccessfully to occupy a middle ground, before throwing their lot in where they had the most friends. Max and Joe were unaffected. Their friendship had long surpassed the point where they thought of each other in terms of race. In fact, Max had earned the respect of the black cops when he’d refused to give money to the McDuffie murder officers’ defence fund, just like he’d refused to shake their hands when he’d accidentally run into them all in a bar one night. Instead he’d called them cowardly killer motherfuckers and told them he hoped they went to jail for life. Joe had had to get him out before things had turned seriously ugly.

  ‘You do all right, huh?’ Joe countered sarcastically.

  ‘I do just fine,’ Max insisted.

  ‘You doin’ just fine now?’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  Joe laughed, Max joined in a few beats later.

  ‘My relationships don’t last, Joe, because I am, a.) an asshole and, b.) a bastard. I start goin’ steady with someone and end up fucking their best friends or their sisters or their first, second or third cousins. I don’t commit, I’m thinkin’ about work when I should be thinkin’ about them, and the last thing I want to do right now is settle down. Race and religion ain’t got a damn thing to do with it.’

  ‘You ever even been out with a white girl?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Nope, never. First girl I ever kissed was black. She was called Jasmine. She was my first girlfriend, I guess. And you know what they say, “Once you go black, you never go back.” Well, it’s true–as I found out at the age of six.’

  ‘You never been with a white girl, how would you know the difference?’

  ‘I don’t want to know the difference, Joe. I love black women and brown women. Ain’t nothin’ finer in my eyes. That’s what I like, same as guys who only go for blondes or brunettes. Where’s this all coming from anyhow?’

  ‘Just thinkin’ ahead that’s all. If you wanna get beyond Captain by the time you’re forty, you gonna need to get with the programme a little. Conform. See, the police is one racist minefield, the further up you climb. Everywhere you step there’s a redneck with two heads. You’re Miami PD’s rising star, the cop every rookie with a brain wants to be. And there you are, bringing black girls to the ball every damn year. Some of the black cops don’t like it ’cause they say you stealin’ their women, and the white folks don’t like it ’cause they racist assholes. Say, sooner or later, against your better judgement, you meet the right girl, and that girl happens to be black, you’re gonna have to choose between her and this.’

  ‘So what are you sayin’? I s
hould get myself an Aryan cheerleader or somethin’ to improve my career prospects? That’s reverse racism.’

  ‘Don’t have to be a white girl. How about a Latina?’

  ‘I have been out with Latinas.’

  ‘Mingus, they was black Latinas.’

  ‘I’m a cop, Joe, a policeman not a politician. I ain’t never gonna be a politician. That’s for them pansies over at IA. I’ll go out with who I damn well please. And anyhow it’s no one’s damn business. You seen the Chief’s wife? She looks like a fossil. No wonder the old guy looks so miserable, that’s what he wakes up to every morning. If she’s what you’re tellin’ me I’ve gotta marry to get ahead in this job I’ll quit and become a lifeguard.’

  ‘Plenty of hot white girls out there, Mingus,’ Joe said.

  Max looked out of the window. The traffic was flowing without pause into the heart of downtown, its buildings catching and reflecting the sunlight and sky like scraps of broken mirror.

  ‘Tell you what, Joe. You run for office and leave the women and the police work to me, OK? Then, when they make you God or Mayor, you can make me Chief. How’s that sound?’

  ‘Sounds great.’ Joe sighed, shaking his head.

  ‘This girl of yours, Lina? She know you ain’t really a Jesus freak?’ Max asked.

  ‘We don’t talk about religion, Mingus.’

  ‘You mean you avoid the subject?’

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Joe. They both laughed.

  They stopped at the lights near the Freedom Tower, one of the oldest and grandest buildings in Miami, 225 feet of Mediterranean revival architecture bearing more than a close resemblance to the Giralda Bell Tower in Seville, Spain. There was graffiti on the walls and most of the windows were broken. The giant red on white ‘For Sale’ sign draped around the middle of the building seemed more like a plea than an offer.