The King of Swords

by Nick Stone

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

  He closed his eyes. Quickly he fell asleep.

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

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

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

  25

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

  Though Max had been going to clubs since 1968, he couldn’t really dance for shit–his main moves being either a cracked mirror to what he saw men around him doing, or a sole to sole shu?e that had more in common with defensive boxing footwork than groovy gesticulation. He’d presided over the rise of disco, the ‘Theme from Shaft’ giving way to quarter-hour long epics with four/four beats, easy to follow bass patterns and empty, innuendo-laden lyrics. He’d loved it and he’d loved discos. They’d been a great racial melting pot–whites, blacks and Latinos coming together for the single purpose of having a good time, everyone getting along, Dr King’s dream in platforms, satin, sequins and on lots and lots of cocaine; and it had never been easier to meet black chicks, which was his main reason for going to so many, so often. Then Saturday Night Fever had come out and killed it. After that all you ever saw were random assholes in white suits and black shirts aping Travolta, while the women unfailingly wore red dresses and talked in phoney New York accents. He’d been glad when the backlash had kicked in, with the ‘Disco Sucks’ campaign and the blowing up of a small mountain of records on Disco Demolition Night: it had cleared the air and the wannabe Tony Maneros had fucked off to Kiss and REO Speedwagon concerts, denying their past dalliance like Peter before the cock crew.

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

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

  He lit a cigarette and checked out the women, but it was too dark to tell the shapes apart. Torture-by-saldisco segued into son-of-torture-by-saldisco. The crowd was still thicker at the edges of the dance floor, the vibe in the place curiously dead, frowns instead of smiles, stillness instead of motion. He began thinking that coming here hadn’t been such a good idea and wondered whether it was worth driving to his second favourite spot, O Miami in Miami Springs. He dismissed it as a trek too far and walked over to the dance floor, to see what was keeping the people at bay.

  At first he thought it was some kind of competition, or maybe a ‘couples only’ segment of the night. There were maybe two dozen people getting down to the God-awful shit coming out of the speakers. Nothing special about them at an initial glance, except for the fact they could all dance quite superbly, their movements at one with the musical squall, not a dip or turn out of time. You always got this at discos, the Cinderella effect transforming the drab into deities, deities to dust. But the longer he watched them, the more he realized what was happening: they were all dancing in the same way, and the dances were an incredibly complex mix of dazzling footwork patterns and unpredictable turn sequences. It all seemed pre-arranged, pre-planned and exclusive. To participate you not only had to know the moves, but know the dancers too. The couples were in a loose, tight circle, but were all interacting with each other, the merest look or hand signal announcing a switch in the pattern: perfect physical telepathy. And nearly everyone around them watched in defeated awe, as if suffering from a collective loss of confidence in their own hipster abilities. A few men and a few more women were trying to copy the steps, but they couldn’t keep time with the music, or were too uncoordinated to fuse feet and upper body, or simply glanced at the new masters of the dance floor and realized they’d never ever get it right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  She sat down a few tables away from him. When the waiter came over she waved away the menu and ordered in Spanish. He hadn’t touched his food since he’d seen her, not even chewed what he had in his mouth. She sensed him looking at her and turned around to meet his stare. She had big round brown eyes, long dark eyebrows, high cheekbones, a wide mouth with large lips protruding in a natural pout. Then she looked away. She was just about the most beautiful woman he’d seen since he could remember, and that was saying something because Miami was filled with them.

  Max weighed up his options. He could try and talk to her, but he was in such a shitty mood she’d probably pick up on it, and he didn’t think rejection the best way to round off a lousy evening. So he carried on eating, looking straight ahead of him. Her face stayed in his mind’s eye like a retinal imprint of the sun, taking its long sweet time to fade. He read her license plate and unconsciously memorized it. She was local. The car was a ’75 or ’76 Civic, reliable not flash.

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

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

  Max grabbed his beer and ran for the restaurant entrance. The girl was already there, standing under the awning, eating her sandwich.

  ‘Hi,’ Max said.

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

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

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

  ‘Heavy rain, huh?’

  ‘Sure is,’ she said.

  ‘Did you have a good night?’ he asked

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

  ‘What is it you do?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m an accountant.’

  ‘Downtown?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What firm you with?’

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

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

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

  ‘That obvious, huh?’

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

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

  ‘Sorry, Detective Sergeant,’ she said with jokey sarcasm.

  ‘I’ll let you off with a warning.’

  She finished eating her sandwich.

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

  ‘You local?’ he asked.

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

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

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

  ‘So, your folks, they what? Cuban?’

  ‘My mom’s Cuban-Dominican, my dad’s black.’

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

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

  ‘He musta been real serious about her,’ Max said.

  ‘He still is.’ She smiled.

  ‘So they still together?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She nodded.

  ‘That’s nice. How long they been married?’

  ‘You ask a lot of questions.’

  ‘What do you expect? I’m a cop.’

  ‘You’re off-duty.’

  ‘I’ll be a cop again in a few hours.’

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

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

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

  ‘Three brothers, one sister.’

  ‘Five of you? You the eldest?’

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

  ‘Guess you’re a tight family?’

  ‘Yeah, we’re real close,’ she said.

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

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

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

  ‘Bellotte-Peters,’ she answered.

  ‘You’re right, I don’t know it.’

  ‘We’re corporate accountants. As far as I know we don’t break the law.’

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

  ‘You don’t look like the sort that gets cats outta trees.’

  Max laughed aloud. ‘I don’t look that bad.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Your folks stop at Max?’

  He laughed again. He was starting to really like her, but to despair a little too. She was as smart as she was beautiful. Everything going all the way right for her. She wouldn’t want him. Anyway, she was probably living with some nice guy, with a nice job, who she was hoping to marry someday and live in a nice house in a nice part of town with some nice beautiful kids–everything he couldn’t give her.

  ‘It’s Mingus’, he said.

  ‘Mingus? Like Charlie Mingus, the jazz guy?’

  ‘Yup.’ He nodded. ‘We ain’t related though.’

  ‘I can see that,’ she said.

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

  ‘What was it originally?’

  ‘MacCassey,’ Max said. ‘It’s Scots-Irish.’

  ‘Max MacCassey. It’s gotta nice ring to it.’

  ‘I prefer Mingus.’

  ‘Your parents still together?’

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

  ‘That’s sad…’

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

  ‘What about your mom?’

  ‘We ain’t too close,’ Max said. ‘She moved outta Miami. Went back to Louisiana. Talk once in a blue moon.’

  ‘You married?’ she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘OK.’ Max couldn’t keep the disappointment from showing. She’d probably liked his company enough to let him down easy.

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

  ‘Sure!’ Max said, a little too keenly for his own comfort. But what the hell? She hadn’t said, ‘No, my nice boyfriend with a nice job and nice prospects wouldn’t like it,’ had she?

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

  ‘So long, Detective–sorry, Detective Sergeant Mingus.’ She held out her hand.

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

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

  ‘Qué culo magnifíco! ’ The waiter sighed quietly next to him, under his breath, translating Max’s uppermost thoughts into the little Spanish he knew.

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

  Sandra waved at him just before pulling out into the road. He waved back and then stayed where he was until her tail lights had disappeared. He had a huge smile on his face.

  26

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