by Nick Stone
‘You need to get to a hospital,’ Sam said.
‘No way.’ Carmine shook his head. ‘What’m I gonna say? My mamma went all Bates Motel on my ass?’
‘Say you got beaten up or somethin’.’
Carmine shook his head sadly.
‘Let me get the First Aid kit.’
But before he could, Lulu came down the stairs.
‘There’s a customer asking questions,’ she said in Kreyol.
‘Who?’ Sam asked.
‘White man.’
‘I’ll be right back,’ Sam said to Carmine.
‘Good morning. Welcome to Haiti Mystique. I’m Sam Ismael, the manager.’
‘How you doin’?’ the man said. He was close to six feet tall, solid, broad-shouldered and stern-looking. He had short brown hair, blue eyes and a smile that didn’t really suit his mouth.
‘Can I help you with anything?’
‘Just lookin’, thanks,’ the man replied.
‘I’ll be over here if you need me,’ Sam said, as he went and stood behind the counter and pretended to be busy checking the stocklist.
The man hadn’t identified himself as such, but Sam knew he was a cop: his way of standing–straight, but with his shoulders slightly forward, feet apart like a boxer, in a state of anticipatory aggression; his typically bad clothes–the catalogue-inspired, utility formal look–houndstooth sports coat, black slacks, wingtips, open-necked white Oxford shirt; and then his eyes–cold, piercing, steady, all-seeing, all-appraising, taking everything in and breaking it all down, a spark of savagery about them.
Sam felt panic skim down his spine.
The cop looked at the dolls, the black religious icons, the crosses, the mounted monkey heads, the skulls, the candles. He studied the noticeboard where the witchdoctors advertised their services. Eva’s card was up there too. He moved over to the houmfor drums on the floor and tapped one, getting a deep undulating sound which planed out into a hum and lingered for a few seconds before fading away into the ether.
He looked at the shelves of herbs, seeds, roots and weeds.
‘You from outta town?’ Sam asked.
‘Orlando,’ the cop said. ‘Say, do you sell calabar beans here?’
Sam felt his mouth dry up.
‘I occasionally import them for customers. On request. Why? Do you want some?’
‘Say I did, could you deliver or would I have to come here to collect them?’
‘Whatever’s most convenient for you. What do you need them for?’
‘I’m doing a paper on herbal cures,’ the cop said.
‘I see,’ Sam said. ‘You with Miami University?’
‘Yeah.’ The cop nodded.
‘Probably work out cheaper for you if you ordered through the university,’ Sam said. ‘I add on import duties, storage and handling charges.’
‘Budget’s all used up,’ the cop said, looking Sam straight in the eye, making him feel like he’d done something wrong. ‘What kinda money are we talkin’ about?’
‘Depends on the quantity. But I usually add on $200 for storage and handling, paperwork too.’
‘Must be some classy storage,’ the cop quipped. ‘What about the beans themselves? How much do they cost?’
‘$10 each.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ the cop said. He went over to the tarot-card stand in the middle of the store and slowly rotated it. ‘These take me back.’
‘Do you read?’
‘Not me, no. An ex-girlfriend of mine did,’ he said, looking at the decks. ‘She used this weird deck though. Not common. French name.’
‘Marseilles?’
‘No…it was the–the…’He flicked his fingers, searching the air for an answer. ‘The de Villeneuve deck. You sell that one?’
‘Not here,’ Sam said. He could feel his heart beating real fast now, and the tips of his fingers had gone cold. What the hell was this guy doing here? He thought Solomon had all the cops in his pocket. ‘They’re expensive and hard to come by.’
‘My ex was real rich–and connected.’ The cop laughed and carried on looking around the store. ‘Well, thanks for your time,’ he said, finally.
‘You don’t want the beans?’
‘Sorry. My pockets ain’t that deep.’
Then the back door opened a crack. Sam turned, thinking he’d see Lulu there, but it was Carmine, quickly peering through a gap before suddenly disappearing.
The cop had noticed. He stared at the door, then back at Sam. He nodded to him and left the store.
Moments later Carmine came out, looking scared.
‘That guy’s a cop! He’s the same fucker beat me up in April. Took the beans offa me too–remember?’
Sam picked his telephone up off the floor and started dialling.
‘Who you callin’?’
‘Your mother.’
43
‘He make you?’ Joe asked when Max got back in the car, parked four blocks up from the store.
‘Yeah,’ Max said as he flipped out his notebook and started scribbling. ‘He looked real worried.’
‘What you get?’
Max showed him.
‘Eva Desamours,’ Joe read out.
‘Only fortune teller he had up on his noticeboard. Otherwise it was all exorcisms, healings, spell-makings, spell-breakings and so on. Eva Desamour’s on my list of fortune tellers who use the de Villeneuve cards. In fact, she’s the only reader in Miami who does. My list didn’t have a contact number. Now I got one.’
‘What about Ismael?’ Joe started the car.
‘He ain’t our guy, but he works for him,’ Max said. ‘Ismael’s the front man. He owns most of Lemon City. After Preval Lacour killed the Cuestas, he took over the redevelopment contracts. Ismael supplied the calabar beans and tarot cards that ended up in Assad and Lacour’s stomachs. We’re gonna need to take a closer look inside the store. It’s got a basement.’
‘How you gonna get a warrant?’
Max looked at Joe and saw he was joking.
44
‘Congratulations! You’ve won!’ Sandra said, handing Max a silver envelope. She’d invited him to dinner at Joe’s Stone Crabs in Washington Avenue. Despite living in the neighbourhood, Max had never eaten there because the place was always full; it was one of Miami’s oldest restaurants and featured prominently in every tourist guide. They didn’t do reservations, but Sandra’s firm handled their accounts, so she got a table.
‘Won what?’
‘Take a look!’
Max opened the envelope and burst out laughing. It was six Casino Dance lessons at a studio off Flagler.
‘That’s real sweet and thoughtful of you,’ he said sarcastically. ‘This is so I don’t embarrass you out in Calle Ocho?’
‘You don’t embarrass me,’ she replied. ‘The studio’s just around the corner from your building. We can go after your ten to six shift.’
‘My colleagues found out I was takin’ dancin’ lessons, I’d never live it down.’ Max laughed.
‘You’ll be going with me,’ she said.
‘Won’t make a difference.’
‘Then don’t tell anyone.’
‘Won’t make a difference either, Sandra. Cops find out everything eventually–especially when it’s about one of their own.’
‘You are coming,’ she repeated. ‘’Cause I’m not going alone.’
‘You don’t need to learn. You move like an angel.’
‘Angels don’t dance.’
‘But if they did, they’d move like you,’ Max said.
They looked each other in the eyes for a moment and everything around them seemed to stop.
‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, breaking the spell.
‘And you too.’
They leant across the table and kissed.
‘Does that mean you’ll do it?’ she asked.
‘God, you’re impossible!’ He laughed. ‘Just let me clear this case I’m workin’ on first, all right? Then, yeah,
I’ll do it.’
‘You’ll love it.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘You’ll learn to like it.’
‘That’s what my trainer said when I got my ribs separated in the ring one time.’
‘And you carried on, right?’
‘I sure did,’ Max said.
‘There you go.’
Their food arrived. They had ten jumbo crab claws, served with mustard-mayo sauce and melted butter, which gave the vaguely sweet but generally mild-tasting white meat an added kick. They also had a large plate of fried green tomatoes and the biggest hash browns Max had ever seen–the size of a loaf of bread and served in slices.
After dinner they went to the cinema on Lincoln Road to see Fort Apache, the Bronx. Sandra had picked the film. Max would’ve opted for something else, like going to a bar, because the last thing he wanted to do was sit through a cop film, especially one which had been praised for ‘gritty authenticity’; it would mean adding another two more hours to his working day. But he’d got more interested when Sandra had told him Pam Grier was in it. He’d seen all her seventies films, which were, without exception, terrible–especially the ones where she kept her clothes on, but, luckily for him, she’d made very few of those.
The cinema was next to empty. They sat towards the front with their Cokes.
The film starred Paul Newman as a middle-aged, by-the-book cop working in one of the worst, most run-down parts of the south Bronx. There were plenty of lingering shots of urban wasteland, which, had they upped the temperature, added sunshine and palm trees, could have been half of Miami.
Fifteen minutes in Max was bored stiff. The plot was meandering and Pam was nowhere in sight. He needed a cigarette and a drink. Paul Newman and his partner tried to talk a transvestite out of throwing himself off a roof. Paul Newman–in his fifties and looking it–started an affair with a young Latina junkie. He yawned and looked at Sandra, who was engrossed. He didn’t know why. Maybe he was missing something deep. He remembered the liquor store close to the cinema. He thought of going out to get himself a quart of bourbon and have a smoke. Then Pam appeared and he briefly forgot about his needs. She looked rough in this, because she was playing a psycho-junkie hooker who kills two of Paul Newman’s corrupt colleagues. He’d never paid attention to her acting talent before, but he had to admit she was pretty scary, killing people with razor blades hidden in her mouth (she’d used the razor blade in mouth trick in Foxy Brown, but that was to free herself), and oozing cold-eyed menace. She killed a couple of corrupt cops and disappeared. He waited for her to come back for a good while, but realized she probably wouldn’t be taking her clothes off and decided to slip out.
At the liquor store he bought a quart of bourbon and smoked a Marlboro outside the cinema.
When he sat back down next to Sandra he tipped some of the bourbon into the cup. He offered Sandra some. She shook her head and looked at him with a mixture of disgust and worry.
After the film was finished she insisted on driving his Mustang. He could see she was pissed off with him.
‘Did you enjoy the film?’ he said as they went down Alton Road.
‘How much do you drink?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry about that–’
‘How much do you drink, Max?’
‘On and off, some days more than others.’
‘So you drink every day?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘All kindsa reasons: unwinding, socializing, something bad’s happened. And ’cause I like it,’ he said. ‘A lotta cops drink.’
‘Why did you drink in the cinema?’
‘I thought the film was boring. I needed a break.’
‘You were with me.’ She sounded hurt.
‘You weren’t up on the screen,’ he quipped.
‘Do you have a drink problem?’
‘I don’t think so, no.’
‘’Cause I’ll tell you this now, I am not having a relationship with an alcoholic. There’ll be four of us in the same room: you and me, the person you turn into when you’re loaded and the bottle. I am not going to live like that. No way.’ She was angry.
‘Jeez, Sandra, I’m sorry, all right?’
She was having none of it.
‘I had an uncle who was an alcoholic. He died of cirrhosis. He was in a lot of pain at the end, puking blood, scratching his skin raw. I don’t want to have to go through that with you, if I can help it.’
They turned on to 15th Street. Max lit a cigarette.
‘And that’s something else that’s going to have to go.’
‘Damn, Sandra!’
‘Kissing you’s about as close as I can get to licking a dirty ashtray. You ever licked an ashtray, Max?’
‘I like smoking,’ Max protested.
‘No, you don’t. You’re just hooked. A junkie like Pam Grier was in the movie.’
‘A junkie? Me? Get outta here!’
‘Have you tried to quit?’
‘No.’
‘Bet you can’t imagine life without one, huh?’
‘I wasn’t born with a cigarette in my mouth,’ Max said. ‘Have you ever smoked?’
‘I tried it once and thought it was disgusting. Which it is. And it’s dangerous too.’
‘So’s livin’ in Miami.’ Max chuckled. ‘Besides, cigarettes go great with coffee, drink, after sex, after a meal–’
‘They don’t go great with life.’ Sandra cut him off. ‘Are you going to be one of those guys you see, aged sixty, wheeling an oxygen tank around with tubes in their nose ’cause they’ve got emphysema and can’t breathe? Or one of those people with a hole in his throat and a battery-operated voicebox?’
‘You’re assuming a lot,’ Max said.
‘Like what?’
‘Like we’re going to be together that long. I mean, we haven’t even–you know–slept together.’
‘You haven’t asked.’
‘I have to ask you?’
‘I’m an old-fashioned girl,’ Sandra said.
‘I thought you wanted to take it slow.’
‘You haven’t even made a move in–in what’s it been?–a month?’
‘I didn’t wanna scare you off. But since you’re offerin’–your place or mine?’
‘We’re going to yours,’ she said.
‘I warn you, it’s a tip.’
‘I figured that,’ she replied. ‘Besides, my mama always told me to beware of a man with a tidy house. He’s either loco or a maricon.’
45
In his apartment in South Miami Heights, Joe put on his favourite sad song–Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The Promise’ and sat back in his armchair with a glass of red wine.
Lina had just cleared away the plates and blown out the candles from their dinner. It should have been a happy occasion for him–a quiet confirmation of his love for the woman he wanted to marry. But instead, Joe felt bad. He couldn’t slip away from the shadows in his mind and let go the heaviness in his heart.
‘The Promise’ was an unreleased song from the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions, which Bruce had played sporadically on his 1978 tour. It was a tortured, tragic dirge about betrayal and broken dreams, a loser’s lament played solo on piano. The recording wasn’t the best, taped at a Seattle gig by a member of the audience, but you couldn’t hear another sound in the building, save that of someone who’s reached the end of the rainbow and found absolutely nothing there but a cold open road to nowhere. To Joe it was the greatest, most moving song Bruce had ever written, and one whose words were coming to mean more and more to him every day.
Joe could have done with a joint right now, to go with the booze and the music. It would have been nice to get his head up a little. He’d always smoked grass with Max, and they’d always ended up laughing hysterically about stupid shit. Like the time they’d played the only white rock record Max owned–a 12 inch single of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Miss You’–about fifty times over, taking it in turns to imitate Jagg
er’s mid-song rap about Puerto Rican girls that was juss daaahyunnn ta meeetchooo. Eventually, when the high had worn off and they’d got sick of the song, Max had taken the record off and they’d gone down to the beach and played frisbee with it. The thought that he’d have to betray his friend and turn all those good memories to shit was killing him and poisoning everything in the process.
‘Bad day?’ Lina came into the room and sat down next to him. She still looked every bit as good to him as when he’d spotted her in church across from the altar: petite, dark-skinned, with short hair, high cheekbones, slightly slanted eyes and the kind of smile that could pull him out of the deepest darkest hole, but she wasn’t smiling now. She was sharing his troubles.
‘Forgot what a good one is.’ Joe sighed, gulping down half his wine. He’d told her some of what was happening, how MTF was really run and how he was going to get transferred to public relations after the Moyez case was over. And that would be soon: Casares had given up most of his contacts, including Carlos Lehder, and they were planning swoops on the major players. After that would begin the long process of bringing the ‘guilty’ to trial, but Joe would be out of the picture way before then, possibly as soon as August. And he hated August in Miami the most. It was always way too hot, people went way too crazy and hurricanes were always one wrong breath away.
‘You been goin’ to church?’ she asked.
He shook his head.
‘You should.’
‘What in the hell would God say to me about what I’m doin’?’ Joe asked bitterly. ‘I’m schemin’ to betray my partner and best friend, the guy who’s had my back and been nothin’ but loyal to me ever since we hooked up. It was only ’cause o’ him I made Detective.’
‘You’re doing what’s right for you, Joe. And sometimes doing the right thing is the hardest thing of all.’ She spoke tenderly but firmly, like he imagined her doing to one of the kids she taught. ‘Sooner or later MTF will get exposed. Bad will always out. And you don’t want to be there when that storm breaks, because it always rains on the little people the hardest.’
