by Nick Stone
‘’Cause I don’t like him and I don’t trust him, so he’s got to go.’
‘Joe’s a good guy, Eldon. And a great cop.’
‘Bullshit! ’ Eldon snapped. ‘A great cop he ain’t. He’s a mediocrity at best. At heart he’s a by-the-book, process-driven lunk with a badge and a gun. He wouldn’t cross the fucken’ street if it wasn’t in the manual. He’s one of those guys who thinks about going home as soon as he clocks on, the kind of guy who treats this work like a job, not a vocation, not a duty. In short, he ain’t you. Or Harris, Brennan, Ford, Whitlock, Valdeon, Guzman, Valentín, Calderon, Teixeira. He ain’t no Abe Watson and he sure as shit ain’t me. Break down any door, go through any window, any skylight, that’s what I was like back in the day, and that’s what my guys are like now–all of you. Same methods, same dedication. And don’t give me that what “a good guy” he is crap either. Good guys don’t belong in the trenches. Good guys are what we protect not what we are.’
‘Joe’s cut plenty of corners, Eldon,’ Max said quietly, chastened by his boss’s outburst.
‘What? Beating up on suspects? Call that cutting corners? Tell me something, Max: you ever told him about what you really use the Comic Book for? He know what Seeds are? You told him how we really do things around here?’ Eldon looked at him, got up close. Max picked up a hint of coffee in his breath. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Because I wanted to keep him out of all this, Max thought and almost said, but held back. Why bother speaking his mind? Did he tell Eldon the truth? Eldon was going to get rid of Joe and there was nothing Max could do about it. He should have seen it coming. For the last six months, Eldon had pruned MTF of all the underachievers and people he plain didn’t like or trust. ‘Thank you!’ Eldon interpreted Max’s silence as point taken. ‘I’ve carried Joe Liston because of you. And hell, yes, because I had no homegrown nigras in the division too.’
Nigras–the word always made Max wince whenever Eldon used it, which he always did in private. The way he said it sounded real close to ‘niggers’.
Eldon read the look on Max’s face.
‘Hell, Max! This ain’t a race thing! You know there ain’t a bigger nigra lover than me on the force. You know what the good ol’ boys in command call me? “The EFO Man”–the Equal Fucking Opportunities Man! My record speaks for itself: I’m the only white face on the Rebuild Liberty City Committee, the NAACP has just shortlisted me for their Cop of the Year Award, and me and the Reverend Jesse Jackson are praying together at St Agnes next month–in front of the TV cameras.’ Eldon smiled and showed his teeth–large and white like bathroom tiles. He’d never been much of a smiler until he’d started appearing on television. After the first few times someone must have said something to him about the state of his mouth because he’d had his teeth bleached and straightened.
‘Don’t worry about Joe. I’ll look after him. He’ll do real well for himself for as long as he wants. He’ll make Detective First Grade at the end of the Moyez case. Then, in six to nine months he’ll do and pass the Sergeant’s exam–all that and a nice desk in Public Relations.’
‘Public Relations! Public Fucken’ Relations! Jesus, Eldon! Joe’s a street cop. He’s a Miamian born and bred! You can’t stick him behind some fucken’ desk!’ Max was ranting, but he might as well have been doing it to the walls for all the reaction he was getting. Eldon stood where he was, his expression rigid but his eyes bright and smiling.
‘Miami’s changing, Max, and the Miami PD is gonna change with it. And I’m gonna make Joe its poster boy. Literally. From September we’re gonna be running a recruitment drive, aimed at attracting us some ethnics and women. I’ve designed the billboard myself.’ Eldon looked at the sky and extended his hands outward in a straight line. ‘The poster will show a line-up–two women, a spic, a nigra in the middle, a white guy, and some kikey-lookin’ college type with glasses. The nigra’ll be Joe Liston, wearin’ his biggest, proudest, happiest, ear-to-ear shit-eatin’ grin. The new improved Miami PD, our rainbow force. And the headline? “All races, One Police Force”. Whaddayathink?’
‘You should work in advertising. You’re wasted here,’ Max retorted sourly. He wondered how long Eldon had been planning this, how long he’d been digging away at the ground under his feet. And did it matter?
‘Aw, come on, Max!’ Eldon said. ‘You don’t stay partners if you got ambition. Do you see me with a partner? Hell, no! You can’t carry and climb, Max. There’s room on that ladder for you and you only. Get to where you’re going first, then–if you feel so inclined–dispense a little favouritism. It’s no different to when you was boxing, remember? Champs only come in ones.’
The thought of what was going to happen to Joe and his complicity in it, sent a nauseous spasm all through Max’s guts. The spit in his mouth turned warm and his throat tightened. He was already in poor shape. He’d averaged two hours sleep a day since the Moyez shooting, most of it snatched in twenty-minute instalments in his car. He hadn’t even been back home in three days. He’d eaten, washed, shaved and changed in HQ. He’d also been drinking too, a nip of bourbon here and a slug there, most of it in the near-continuous stream of coffee and Cokes he’d been floating on. And then there were the 30 mgs of dexedrine he’d been popping every six hours to fight off the worst of the fatigue.
‘I’ve got big plans for you too, Max,’ Eldon went on. ‘You’ll make Lieutenant next year, have your own division by 1985. And by 1995 you’ll be Deputy Chief or more.’
‘With you always one step ahead of me, right, Eldon?’ Max said wearily. Clearing the path and then blocking the way, he thought. ‘And what about you? The Turd Fairy gonna wave his wand and make you Chief when this is over?’
Eldon smiled and put an arm around his shoulders.
‘I was like you once, you know, Max. I believed it was all about merit and hard work and that should be enough to get you through. But life ain’t like that. It’s not about how good or how clever you are–that counts, sure, but it’s other stuff that sees you right: who you know and how far you’re prepared to go to get what you want. You’ve gotta break eggs and hearts to get what you want. That’s just the way it is.
‘You do Moyez right and it’ll be a beautiful thing. You boys’ll be heroes. Don’t worry about Liston. It’ll be for the best and he’ll come to see it that way.’
Max heard the sounds of traffic and voices carrying faintly up to the roof. He thought about having to face Joe when he came out of the office, then of working this last case with him, and then, more than anything, he realized he wanted a drink–and it wasn’t even midday.
16
Max sat in a booth at the Well and slung back his second shot of Wild Turkey, chasing it with a gulp of Schlitz and a long pull on his Marlboro.
He felt seriously bad about Joe, the worst. He hadn’t been able to look him in the face when he’d come out of Eldon’s office. They’d ridden the elevator down to their floor in a tense silence. Joe normally asked him how it had gone, but this time he hadn’t said a word; like he knew–which he probably did. He’d once told Max that black people had a sixth sense when it came to trouble, for knowing when something was wrong even when everything seemed right. He called it NSP–Nigger Sensory Perception, a genetic survival tool.
Once back at their desks, Max had taken the Comic Book out of his bottom drawer and said he’d be gone for an hour. Joe hadn’t replied. He’d know where to find him if he needed to.
‘Fuck you, Eldon,’ Max mumbled into dead space. He couldn’t resist his boss’s decision any more than he already had. It was final, no argument, no compromise. Typical. What Eldon said went.
And it had always been that way, ever since Eldon had trained Max as a boxer.
They’d first met on 8 March 1964 when Max, then aged fourteen, had walked into the 7th Avenue boxing gym in Liberty City late in the afternoon. It wasn’t his idea to go there. He was tagging along with his friend Manny Gomez, who’d wanted to learn how to fight.<
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Eldon and Abe Watson owned the place. Abe had retired from the force and was running the gym on a day-to-day basis, while Eldon trained amateur fighters four nights a week. Eldon had been Golden Gloves champion in both Mississippi and Florida and had briefly fought as a pro before becoming a cop.
Abe was Eldon’s old partner. In 1957 Eldon had been the first white detective in the South to work with a black partner–a good three years before the Miami PD was officially desegregated. He’d personally gone to Chief Walter E. Headley with the request, arguing that it would help build trust with the black community and improve community relations if they saw at least one white cop working alongside their own kind. The Chief partnered Eldon up with Abe, the best detective in the police department’s black division. It was a deeply unpopular move. The white detectives refused to let Abe sit in the same office as them, so he was given a cramped, stinking cubicle in the basement of police headquarters, very close to the holding cells. Eldon moved down there with him, and between them they got some serious results, closing close to 98 per cent of their cases; solid collars resulting in solid convictions.
Eldon had greeted Max and Manny like he did every wannabe who walked through the gym’s saloon-style swing doors: no hello, who and how are you, just, ‘OK. Hit me in the face.’ It was his way of sorting the shit from the serious at the starting gate, and those who’d follow orders from those who’d question and hesitate.
Manny threw an awkward version of a jab he’d learnt from the street and watching fights on TV. Eldon casually moved his head out of the way and it missed him by a mile. Max hit Eldon flush on the chin with a short right hook which sent him to the ground with a thud like a sandbag landing on a pyramid of barrels. Everyone in the gym stopped what they were doing. No one had so much as landed a glove on Eldon since the gym had opened, let alone put him down.
‘Nothin’ to see here, ladies. Back to work,’ he’d called out to his gawping charges as he got up off the floor. Then he’d looked at Max and Manny and said, ‘I’ll see you two tomorrow, 6 p.m. sharp. Bring shorts, a T-shirt and gym shoes. And don’t be late.’
Max had been that rare thing–a fighter with the sort of natural, God-given ability that only needs pointing in the right direction and then keeping focused and on track. He was state and national middleweight Golden Gloves champion. Everyone thought he was going to do really great things–win gold at the Mexico Olympics and then go on to be an undisputed World Champion.
Although in public Eldon hadn’t treated him any differently to the other fighters in the gym–infrequent and highly begrudging compliments breaking otherwise uniform criticism and barracking–in private they forged a close bond. They were a perfect fit: Eldon didn’t have any sons, and Max’s jazz musician father had bailed on him when he was nine, leaving him in the care of a mother who was largely absent from his life because of the two jobs she worked to keep the roof over their heads and the food on their table. Eldon took Max under his wing and looked out for him, encouraging him to work hard at school because boxing wouldn’t last long and he’d need something to fall back on when the ring didn’t want him any more. Max opened up to him, talked to him like an older, wiser buddy, asked him for advice–mostly about girls, which Eldon was an expert on. It was thanks to boxing that Max lost his virginity. When he’d taken his first trophy, a mere three months after walking into 7th Avenue, Eldon had bought him an hour with a hooker–something he did for all his fighters whenever they won championships. Eldon also introduced Max to his friends, a close-knit group of cops nicknamed the Cutmen who hung out at the gym. They adopted Max as their mascot and came out to support him at all his fights.
But Max never made it to the Olympics.
In November 1967 Max and Manny Gomez travelled to Atlantic City for a Golden Gloves bout. Max fought first and won easily, but Manny ran into problems with Kid Fernando, a local fighter also known as the Hands of Stone. He was knocked out close to the end of the last round and slipped into a coma. He came out of it a week later, but he was blind and paralysed on his left side.
Max hit a losing streak after that. He lost his nerve in the ring, played it cautious and safe where he’d once taken risks and gone out on a limb. He was suddenly scared of getting hurt. He lost nine bouts in a row, the last three to fighters so mediocre Eldon wouldn’t have let them into 7th Avenue.
In the gym during training everyone could see the fight going out of Max, the way it sometimes did with naturally gifted boxers. One minute they had it, the next they didn’t. Boxing was a sport of gradual peaks and sharp troughs. There was no gradual decline, just the sky, and then the ground rushing up to your face as you crashed towards it.
‘So, do you know what you wanna do with the rest of your life?’ Eldon asked him after he’d lost his tenth fight.
‘Yeah,’ Max answered. He’d always known.
The Well was small, cramped and always sombre, the main sources of light came from TVs fixed to brackets in each of the four corners, bulbs above the booths and bar counter, and the gaudy neon signs and tube lights advertising liquor, beer and cigarettes on the walls around the bar, all of which combined to suffuse the place in a dull and sticky blue-pink twilight.
Max turned his attention to the business at hand, the thick and heavy blue file he’d bought with him: the Comic Book.
It was called the Comic Book because you used the pictures and words to make up stories. It was the MTF’s Gideon’s Bible. There was one in every detective’s drawer.
The Comic Book was a 550-to 600-page directory containing details on every serious criminal and suspect known to be at large in Florida. It was arranged into four sections–Murder, Drugs, Sex, Other–with the people they covered, known informally as Characters, arranged in alphabetical order. An individual page contained a Character’s mugshot or most recent photograph, zip code, basic particulars, family details, known associates, main crimes, MO. The pages were updated as many as five times a day. Gretchen Varadera, the MTF database manager, brought them round to each detective and then took away the out of date information. The data was collated by a surveillance team whose job it was to monitor the Characters and keep the information up to date and accurate.
The book had two uses. It was primarily a reference tool. If a particular crime fit one or more of the Character’s MOs, or was similar, then the Comic Book provided a list of possible suspects. To access more information on one or more Characters, a detective would get Gretchen to print out the full file on the database and, if necessary, get a larger print of the photograph. But the directory also had another purpose, the one Max was using it for.
Eldon never referred to what he ordered his inner circle to do as ‘framing’. He called it ‘getting results’ and ‘making adifference’. As far as he and everyone who worked for him at MTF were concerned, anyone who made it into the Comic Book was a scumbag who needed taking out of circulation one way or another. Whether they’d actually committed any crimes that were being actively investigated really didn’t matter. They would be preyed on just like they preyed on innocent Miamians.
The surest way to set up a Character for a fall was by sowing Seeds–planting evidence for forensics to find. Even the best defence lawyer found it next to impossible to argue away fingerprints found on a murder weapon, hairs, fibres, teeth and traces of fluid found at a suspect’s home. MTF collected plenty of samples from all the cases it was working and carefully stored them in climate-controlled conditions in various safehouses around the city. When it was a Character’s time to go down, the Seeds would turn up in his or her home–never too much to alert suspicion, but enough to put guilt beyond any reasonable doubt.
In addition to the evidence, some of the houses were used to store sizeable amounts of coke and cash, the former to plant on Characters, the latter mostly to pay certain sympathetic judges to sign search warrants. The going rate for this public service was around $20,000.
Octavio Bolivar Grossfeld, twenty-nine, Colombian.
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br /> Ideal.
Grossfeld had entered the US on a student visa in 1974 and studied land economy at Miami University for a year, before getting kicked out for drug offences. He’d not only been caught smoking grass, but he’d been dealing it on campus too. His three brothers and their girlfriends had been bringing brick-packed kilos over from Colombia. He was arrested and locked up for a month before his arraignment and was repeatedly assaulted and raped in prison. He was bailed and then disappeared. A bondsman who caught up with him in Boca Raton ended up dead with multiple stab wounds. Grossfeld was believed to have slipped back into Colombia.
But, in July 1979, he re-emerged as the leader of a small-time gang who’d been importing heroin into Florida. He’d been using Colombian women as mules, bringing them over by the plane load, guts filled with skag balloons. Some of the women had turned up dead with their stomachs hacked open and half their intestines missing. In September 1980 one of the mules was found alive and, against all odds, survived to give an accurate description of Grossfeld as the man who’d attacked her.
MTF officers had tracked him down to an address in South Miami Heights.
Max called Gretchen from a payphone and got more details on him from the database. He cross-referenced them with the factsheet he had on Carlos Lehder. They were a perfect fit. Both had shared German ancestry through their fathers who’d emigrated to Colombia from Germany, and both had mothers who were avowed Nazi sympathizers.
Next Max called Pete Obregón, a senior supervisor at airport customs. Pete was also a friend of Eldon’s.
‘Como estas, Max?’
‘Bueno, Pete. You got any fresh mules in the tank?’ Max asked.
‘Been a real busy day. We got seven. Three Colombians, two Nicaraguans, a Panamanian and some girl from Georgia swears she’s Jamaican.’
‘The Colombians? Can they speak English?’
