Magic City

by James W. Hall

  By the time Snake noticed the stocky man and his diamond, the flames had eaten away his face, and seconds later the fire consumed the rest of him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Your hand, man, doesn’t that hurt?”

  “Don’t worry about my hand.”

  On a middle-class street, South Miami, with stucco houses on small lots, Snake parked his Friendly Service yellow cab and they walked along the sidewalk toward the man’s home. Tile roof, big oak out front.

  Snake was trying to reconstruct the photo, bring it up from the hazy developing pan of memory. The way his brain worked, he absorbed every image passing before him, stored it away. Things he didn’t register at the time, he could go back and pick out, see as fresh as the original moment. But not this time.

  The stocky man’s face wouldn’t coalesce. It remained a shadowy smudge. Stanton’s features, yes, those were sharp and clear. A frown of tension. A troubled look Snake had rarely seen him wear, this congenial man who’d raised him, fed, clothed, housed him and Carlos for the past four decades.

  One house away, Snake halted and whispered to Carlos, “Look for that boxing photo, I want it.”

  “The old man said burn everything.”

  “Our mission has changed.”

  “It has?”

  “This is no longer about what Stanton wants. It’s about what I want.”

  Carlos said, sure, that was cool, whatever.

  “I need to study the image,” Snake said. “Grasp its meaning.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “It’s the answer. Why Carmen died and our parents were killed.”

  “Oh, shit, Snake. That’s so over. Fucking ancient history, man.”

  “It’s not over, Carlos. Not by a long way.”

  It was nearly one in the morning. Nobody around. Even the dogs asleep. Snake rang the man’s bell. He rang it again, then again.

  Finally there was a voice behind the door asking what in the world they wanted. A mild-mannered guy.

  Snake kept his face close to the peephole.

  “It’s a neighbor,” Snake said. “There’s a fire. I’m warning everybody.”

  “A fire!”

  “A fire,” Snake said. “It’s moving this way. Fast.”

  The man inside the house weighed it for a few seconds, then unbolted his front door, and that’s when Carlos kicked it into his face and the two of them went inside.

  Once they trussed up the man with plastic ties, they took their time.

  One by one Carlos smashed all the man’s cameras and pulled out the film, then they opened each drawer and checked for photographs, and when Snake made sure the boxing photo wasn’t among them, Carlos piled them up and set them ablaze in the man’s fireplace.

  They had the man tied up in his darkroom, center of the house. Heavy curtains, thick stucco walls. Better than a dungeon, scream all he wanted.

  Snake’s brother was a thick-chested man of medium height with a head one size too large for his body, a square face and dense black hair that he kept shaved in a bristly skullcap. He had the bloodshot eyes and puffy cheeks of a pro wrestler gone to seed. His eyes juked constantly, and every minute or two he waved a hand in front of his face like he was swiping at a cloud of mosquitoes. Except there were no mosquitoes there. None at all.

  After the night their family was slaughtered, the Morales boys were ruined in different ways. Carlos lived on constant high alert, forever vigilant of things whisking at his face, seeing danger where there was none, his hand lashing out to squash imagined creatures, taking offense when none was meant.

  Snake’s memory was his curse. At least once a day, a stray moment from those long-ago hours flared to life. The same ancient images recycling. A bullet blasting through the bedroom wall. Snow of plaster in his hair. Carlos sobbing. Carmen lying dead in the long spring grass. Cassius and Liston, LBJ unfolding from his limo, his cool dry hand enclosing Snake’s.

  “What is this about?” the man said. “What do you want?”

  “Your photos,” Carlos told him. “We already did the museum, all those are taken care of. Now we’re doing these.”

  “You went to Merrick Gallery?”

  “Just came from there,” Carlos said. “Nice place, all that marble. Not much of an alarm system, but they’ll probably upgrade after tonight.”

  “And you stole my photographs from the show?”

  Carlos waved an imaginary gnat from his face.

  “Piled ’em in an alley and torched them. Sorry. That’s just how it is. Nothing personal, just doing a job.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “So this is all your photos?” Carlos said. “What we’re seeing here? You don’t have an office, a warehouse, there might be more stashed in boxes?”

  “I work at home.”

  “Hey, don’t be getting jiggy with us.”

  Carlos got his face up close to the man’s, gave him a stare, then swung around, and with a wave he cleared a path through the cloud of bugs and marched into the house to resume his search.

  The man’s name was Alan Bingham. He was in his late fifties. Tall and lean like a distance runner, still with a good head of silvering hair. Wearing faded jeans and a white T-shirt.

  “Look, Alan,” Snake said. “Don’t make this difficult.”

  Carlos was in the living room, rummaging.

  “You break in, tie me up, destroy my cameras. I’m supposed to cooperate like none of that happened?”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s disgraceful, smashing your fine equipment. My partner gets carried away. You’ve seen him. He’s rash and volatile.”

  “Every single photograph? Is that what you’re saying? You want to know where every single one of them is?”

  Snake could hear Carlos wrecking the furniture in another room.

  “Okay.” Snake took his voice lower. “Here’s the truth. We don’t care about all your photos. What we care about is one particular shot, okay? One that was in your show at Merrick Gallery.”

  “Which one?”

  Bingham was peering into Snake’s eyes like he was trying to bond. Or maybe searching for some fiber of humanity. Good luck with either.

  “Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston.”

  “You want that photograph? Why, for God’s sake?”

  “What were you, about twelve when you took that?”

  “Fifteen,” he said. “My first real photo.”

  “I listened on the radio,” Snake said. “Nineteen sixty-four Miami Beach Convention Hall. Louisville Lip versus the Big Ugly Bear. Seven-to-one odds against Clay. Liston had an eighty-four-inch reach. Bone breaker for the mob, in and out of jail, everyone thought he’d kill Clay. Howard Cosell doing the color commentary. Les Keiter on the play-by-play. Ref was Barney Felix.”

  “You’re a boxing fan.”

  “No. I just remember things. Useless trivia. When I was a kid, I saw Clay a few times. I watched him work out at the Fifth Street Gym, saw him on the streets in Overtown, strutting around. Later on after he won the title, driving that tomato red Cadillac convertible.”

  “He was a beautiful young man,” Bingham said.

  “But in the photo you weren’t interested in him. It’s more about the crowd. I just got a peek. Couldn’t make out all the faces, but a couple of guys in one row looked bored. How the hell could they be bored at that fight? A night like that. History in the making.”

  Bingham nodded.

  “But then, you never know it’s history in the making till it’s over, do you? Living your life, you got no perspective. That’s what you were after, I bet. Being part of something big, but not knowing it at the time.”

  Bingham shook his head, not believing this.

  “What was it about the boxing shot made you put it in the show?”

  “Just what you said. The looks on the people’s faces.”

  “That’s it? Nothing more than that?”

  “That’s a lot. All those different points of view.”

 
Snake gave Alan a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

  “I made a pledge to myself,” Snake said. “On that very night, the Cassius-Liston fight. I made a pledge, but then I kind of let it drift away.”

  “A pledge?”

  “A promise to myself, a life mission. But after all these years, I lost hold of it. It’s hard to hang on to one idea that long. Keep your focus.”

  Alan was peering uncertainly at Snake.

  “But you did it, didn’t you, Alan? You held on to your pledge. You were taking photographs at fifteen, here you are, all these years later, you’re still doing it. You stayed devoted to your quest.”

  Alan Bingham’s face softened, his eyes drifting toward the wall.

  “There’s always ups and downs,” he said. “Passion is hard to sustain.”

  Snake nodded. His own fervor had melted away, nearly vanished, but just tonight, it was back.

  “I want that boxing photo,” Snake said.

  “Jesus Christ. You could’ve just come in and asked for it. You didn’t need to get rough.” He shook his head, squirmed against the restraints.

  “I’ve been patient with you, Alan. This doesn’t have to get messy.”

  “All right, damn it. In the oak cabinet. The studio, two doors down. There’s negatives of everything.” Alan’s eyes were muddy, body limp.

  Snake was turning to the door when Carlos rolled into the room, sweating—his green polo shirt with a dark butterfly of sweat on the front.

  “Your freaking air-conditioning broke?” he said. “Or you just cheap?”

  “I don’t have air-conditioning,” Bingham said.

  “What’re you, crazy?”

  “Alan’s old-school,” Snake said. “Living close to nature like the pioneers. Isn’t that right, Alan?”

  “Fuck nature,” Carlos said. “And the camel it rode in on.”

  Alan Bingham said nothing, looking off toward the far wall.

  “I think I got ’em all,” Carlos said.

  “And the one I want?”

  Carlos shook his head.

  “Well, there’s negatives,” said Snake. “Oak cabinet, two rooms down.”

  “I burned ’em already. They’re history.”

  “You didn’t check them first?”

  “Check them?”

  Snake cursed and pushed past him and found the oak cabinet. Drawers empty. He hustled to the fireplace, but it was too late. Just ash and rubble.

  He walked back to the darkroom. Carlos swished a hand through the air.

  “Okay, man, it’s go time.”

  “I need that photograph,” Snake told him.

  “Aw, shit. The old man says burn ’em all, we burned ’em all. This is getting to be a major buzz kill. Let’s just go.”

  Snake turned to Alan.

  “Tell me, Alan. Where can I find a copy?”

  Alan shook his head, mouth clamped.

  Snake said, “Show him the pistol, Carlos.”

  Carlos dug the .22 from his waistband, pressed it to Alan’s temple.

  “Where, Alan?”

  Bingham swallowed again.

  “All right, all right. There’s one I can think of. But it’s not here.”

  “Where?”

  “If I tell you, you have to promise you won’t hurt the man.”

  “Have we hurt you, Alan?” Snake said.

  “We’re cool with that,” Carlos said. “We look like stone-cold killers? Hey, we’re pulling a job for a guy. Torching some snapshots. He gave us work, we’re doing it. That’s all. A little harmless destruction of property.”

  “Who would hire you to do such a thing? Why?”

  “I said his name, you’d know it.”

  “Zip it,” Snake said. “Alan doesn’t need to know our business.”

  Carlos turned a make-believe key in front of his lips.

  Almost fifty, Carlos had never matured past adolescence, as though some crucial hormone had failed to kick in. A dash of gray sprinkled his hair, wrinkles setting in around his eyes, but otherwise, he was still a junior-high punk.

  “So who has this copy?” Snake repeated. “Tell us that, we cut you loose, we’re gone like a bad dream.”

  Carlos lowered the pistol to his side and patted Alan on the shoulder.

  Alan thought about it. Looking at Carlos, then shifting back to Snake, still trying to read him but getting nowhere. Finally he sighed.

  “He lives across the street. He’s an old gentleman losing his memory.”

  “How fortunate for him,” Snake said.

  “You’ve got to promise me you won’t hurt him.”

  “It’s all good,” Carlos said. “We’re straight up with that.”

  “His name, Alan,” said Snake.

  “He’s a frail old guy. Look, I’ll go over there myself and get it back.”

  “No,” Snake said. “We wouldn’t want to put you to the trouble.”

  “Just ask him for the photo, he’ll give it to you. No rough stuff.”

  “Alan, his name.”

  “Lawton Collins. He’s a sweet old man.”

  “Directly across the street? White house, tin roof?”

  Alan nodded.

  “He admired the boxing shot, so I gave him a copy. I’m longtime friends with him and his daughter. Nice neighbors.”

  “That’s good, Alan. That’s very good.”

  “Now you’ve got them all. A lifetime of work. Gone. Irreplaceable.”

  “There’s nothing can’t be replaced,” Carlos said, shifting the pistol to Bingham’s chest. “Not even you, dawg.”

  “No, Carlos, there’s no need for that.”

  Snake lay a restraining hand on his brother’s arm, but it didn’t stop him.

  The tiny pistol wasn’t loud, which was a virtue, but the downside, a caliber that small, it took three shots to quiet Alan’s gurgling.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lying beside Alexandra all night, Thorn dreamed of naked flesh, sleek torsos, fingers tracing across his skin, several persons attending to him, an orgy held in his honor, a dream that seemed to last for hours with bodies coiling like oily snakes around his own, his erection holding firm so long it began to ache. Such a vivid dream, it might have lasted only seconds but seemed to stretch back into the long hours of the night.

  He was still lost in the erotic swoon when he felt Alexandra’s long limbs raking across him, her arms and legs, thin yet strong from years of karate training and wind sprints across the soft dunes of Key Biscayne. Gymnast’s calves and the long, smooth arm muscles of a distance swimmer.

  Groggy, submerged in the ocean depths of slumber, Thorn registered her climbing atop, settling skin to skin, pressing flush against his contours. He opened his eyes, saw her smiling down. Then came a faint shifting and realigning until he was fully within her. Alexandra’s glossy black hair fell forward and curtained his face. There was a wry twist in her smile, as if she’d seen into his dreaming mind and was pushing aside the others and claiming what was rightfully hers.

  An April dawn in Alexandra’s bedroom with gray light swimming beyond her lace curtains. Outside the open window a gardenia hedge flowered, its perfume thickening the air.

  No kissing. Speechless. As though this were an encounter between unknowns. A woman and a man in an anonymous bed. Some wordless song passing back and forth between their lips. The rasp of her skin against his. Her face nuzzled against his neck, the smell of her sweat, acrid and citrus. With his fingertips he sketched the knobs of her spine. Inside her, heated but not moving. Holding it there, that fit, that merge of tissue and moistness.

  On the bureau across the room, an oscillating fan hummed and sent its periodic breeze. Her breath stirred the hair on his neck.

  Her right hand cupped his neck from behind. He turned his face and touched the tip of his tongue to her wrist, licked at the dark wisps of hair. Tasted more of her salt. But some message her loins transmitted kept him contained, not even permitting a mild thrust. The two of them holding that
tight grip. Their hips immobilized by some signal rising from their core.

  She worked her other hand into the small of his back, touching a knob in his lumbar region. Just there. Pressing it with her fingertips. Top of spine, base of spine, making some electrical connection. Alexandra, the conduit.

  And Thorn had a male vision. A dead bolt gliding into its slot. Swiss precision. Twin pieces coming together in finely engineered connection. A fit so flawlessly calibrated, no oil was required for its slide. An effortless mesh. A lock with two halves joined. Him and her, with a rising pressure now in her hands, one on the base of his neck, the other just above his rump, gripping, cradling, the heels of her hands digging in. He could feel her nipples prod his own. The smallest writhing worked through their hips. His or hers. He was lost now. Not there. Fused. Loins dissolved.

  Then after an interminable moment, she flinched. Her haunches quivered; a rumble rose between them. Some forewarning below the crust of the earth. An ancient growl of awakening geologic plates.

  And a final surprise: with no warning, there was a mutual gasp. A massive letting go of air and fluids, spasms of sphincters, gripping so hard that there surely would be blue and yellow finger bruises later, and then constriction. Painful, burning. And with a groan, Alex heaved herself up and rolled away onto the white sheets.

  Breathless and panting, both of them. Something like laughter rolling up, a cough of breath, an astonished cheer.

  The cardinal that had nested in a poinciana tree just beyond the gardenia bush sang for them. Riddling the silence, overfilling it with a lush melody, its one simple song. A bird in the delicate light, a stirring breeze. His heart was slowing, gravity returning to reclaim him.

  When words were possible, Thorn said, “What the hell was that?”

  She took several seconds before answering.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’d you learn it?”

  “Here,” she said. “We learned it together, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “Something Oriental? Chakras, all that?”

  “Is a name required?”

  Thorn’s right hand was resting on her thigh. Damp flesh still warm, still beating with blood.