Midnight Guardians

by Jonathon King

  I watched as the Brown Man turned the next corner. His brake lights flashed. I used a boxlike ficus hedge as a shield and eased forward to watch the Escalade slow and then ease into a driveway guarded by an eight-foot-high metal fence. A gated entry was rolling back, probably triggered by Carlyle from his SUV, and he pulled in and parked on a broad concrete lot. Compared to the surroundings, the house was a palace, two stories with wide sun-reflecting one-way windows. The entire place was painted bright white and had a full barrel-tile roof in pink and terra-cotta tones.

  Behind the ostentatious structure, I could see a three-story screen attached to the back indicating an outdoor pool and patio. You saw these kinds of homes along the Intracoastal Waterway and in the rich suburbs of Coral Springs, but not in the modest neighborhoods of Northwest Fort Lauderdale. The Brown Man had made his money and made no bones about it. The tax man, the policeman, the competition be damned. Here I am, the drug dealer was saying: Catch me if you can.

  I watched Carlyle get out of the SUV and walk through the double front doors of the house. He glanced back once, watching, I assumed, to make sure that the now closing gate was rolling appropriately shut. Since I was still blocking a stop sign, I turned onto the street, and settled in the shade of one of the few large trees on the block.

  Well, crime pays, I thought, turning off the engine of the Gran Fury.

  Carlyle was about my age. Six years ago, he was sitting on a stool in a prime drug market, selling crack to strung-out hookers, and ratting out a warped serial killer whose penchant for choking his sex partners to death had brought too much scrutiny to the Brown Man’s turf. Had his profitable drug business bought him this ostentatious lifestyle? Or did his jump into Medicare fraud enrich him? Billy’s record check had shown the house that sat on this double corner lot was supposedly purchased in 2004 under the Coombs’s name. Renovation licensing had been signed for by Coombs. But the way Carlyle had walked into the place, with that air of ownership, I had no doubt it was his.

  Maybe Mr. Carter is simply a very prosperous businessman, I told myself. But even the unspoken words in my head made me say out loud, “Bullshit.”

  I sat for fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, marking details: the tall white metallic fence that appeared to completely surround the property, the surveillance cameras mounted in obvious positions at the gate and on the garage doors, the basketball hoop with a Plexiglas backboard on the wide parking area, a nice touch. I wondered what the inside of the place might be like.

  I was actually playing with the idea of simply walking up and requesting an interview when the front doors opened, and Carlyle and a boy of about nine or ten stepped out. Both of them were looking directly at me.

  I fidgeted, felt myself unconsciously shift in my seat, and watched them walk to the gate as it rolled open. Carlyle was dressed as he had been when he’d entered, in an open-collared silk shirt and dress slacks. The boy was in knee-length shorts and a simple blue polo shirt, almost like a relaxed school uniform.

  As they walked directly toward me, the former drug dealer’s face was placid and expressionless. I watched his hands, which were empty and out front. There were no lumps that would indicate weapons, though I could not see the small of his back. When they were thirty feet away, their destination obvious, Carlyle seemed to read my mind, and raised his arms above his head and did a little pirouette, playfully, but purposely causing his shirt to rise above his waistline to show he was unarmed. The boy, whose complexion and shape was a miniature of the man, sported a smile and an excited look.

  I opened the driver-side door and stepped out as they approached.

  “Wow,” said the kid, not looking at me, focused on the car. “Nice car, man.” The boy’s face could not hide his honest thrill as he stepped up to the front of the Gran Fury and looked at his reflection in the polished surface of the black hood.

  The Brown Man had his hand out, extending it to me as if we were old friends or acquaintances meeting on a pleasant sunny afternoon.

  “Good day, sir,” he said, with a lilt in his voice I knew had not been there when I first encountered him working the streets.

  I stepped forward and took his hand, giving a single pump, and then withdrawing it.

  “Hello, Carlyle,” I said.

  The man’s eyes narrowed as he put an extra effort into looking at my face. “No one uses that name for me,” he said. His tone was moderated, not with surprise, or disapproval, or threat. “Do I know you, sir?”

  “We’ve met in the past. Over a mutual, uh, concern,” I said. “My name is Max Freeman.”

  He continued to search my face. “My apologies, sir. Perhaps you were in uniform before? I’ve met many people in uniform.”

  I watched the Brown Man’s eyes cutting behind me. I half-turned to see the boy now peering in the window of the Gran Fury, with that same “ooh, ahh” look on his face. He ran his hand over the chrome egg of the side-mounted spotlight, and then quickly used the tail of his shirt to polish off his fingerprints.

  “No,” I said, turning back. “Our mutual acquaintance was a homeless junk man with some very bad habits.”

  As the Brown Man raised his brow, a light of recognition slipped into his eyes.

  “Ah, the PI,” he said, and then shook his head as if remembering. “A nasty business, yes?”

  “Eddie the Junk Man,” I said.

  “A beast of a man.”

  “A dead beast,” I said, holding eye contact with the drug dealer a bit longer than I meant to.

  The Brown Man looked beyond me.

  “My son has a fascination with classic cars,” he said. “Right, Andrew?”

  The boy was still enthralled.

  “It’s a Plymouth, right?” he said to me.

  “Yes,” I said, talking to him over the shimmer of the polished roof. “A 1975 Gran Fury. They were mostly used as police cars back in the day.”

  The boy moved to the passenger-side window and cupped his face with his hands to reduce the glare as he peered inside.

  “Go ahead. Open the door,” I said. “Take a look inside.”

  The boy’s eyes lit up at the suggestion, but he looked to his father first to get the man’s approval. Carlyle nodded, and the boy opened the door and climbed in.

  “Information out on the streets is that you’ve gone into a new line of business, Carlyle,” I said, figuring, what the hell: Sometimes you have to ask the hard questions first and sort through the bullshit. He did not turn his eyes from the windshield of my car, where he could watch his son through the glass.

  “As an entrepreneur, Mr. Free-Man,” he said, putting an emphasis on both syllables of my last name. “I have business dealings in lots of areas, mostly as an investor.”

  He smiled, showing brilliant white teeth. Whether he was smiling at his son’s fascination or at my insouciance was up to interpretation.

  “This particular arena of business would be Medicare fraud, Mr. Brown Man,” I said.

  My use of his old street name caused a twitch in his stoic and professional demeanor. He gave me no response.

  “The family member of another player in this, ah, investment opportunity of yours has become a target. She’s a bystander, an innocent. She was shot at while I was with her. Which means I was shot at— which I don’t like.”

  Carlyle Carter put his hands behind his back. His eyes still did not meet mine.

  “You know my past, Mr. Free-Man. You know what I did, and I ain’t gonna deny it,” he said, losing some of his white-collar business speak.

  “But times have changed. The product has changed. The people done changed and the demand changed. But addiction don’t change. Another generation comes in, their taste is different—but that urge won’t dry up, Free-Man.”

  I clasped my hands in front of me, the opposite profile of Carlyle, but I turned to gaze through the windshield just as he had as he watched his son.

  “I do recall that a substantial supply of steroids and amphetamines and other prescr
iption drugs were found in the trunk of a recently wrecked gangbanger’s car,” I said, tossing more out there.

  “See? There you go,” Carlyle said.

  “And that kind of product would be your area of expertise.”

  I felt the man shrug more than saw it.

  “A mature man don’t sell the streets no more like some beggar,” he said, a tick of frustration now in his voice. “Them young boys? They’re tryin’ to get the thrills because they’ve heard stories of the old days. They’ll do almost anything, so you’re best not to mess with them. Nowadays, a smart man deals only with people he knows, people he trusts—people of a certain position, who can cover your ass, Mr. Free-Man—you know?”

  I could feel Carlyle Carter’s eyes on the side of my face when he said the words, making it personal instead of rhetorical. I looked at him as he signaled his son with a crooked finger. Before the boy got out, Carlyle made one last statement.

  “I got nothin’ to do with no shootin’ Mr. Free-Man. Ya’ll do guns. The young bloods do guns. I got responsibilities now, man,” he said, nodding at his son. “I don’t do guns. I’ve got nothin’ to do with it.”

  Carlyle turned and started back to his gated house. The boy caught up, but turned to me and waved.

  “Thanks, mister. That’s a cool ride.”

  — 14 —

  Sittin’ here restin my bones

  Where the hell did that old Otis Redding tune come from? Man, that’s like one of those ancient ones Dad would have been playing in the garage while he was working on one of those old junkers of his. The old man always had his head under the hood of some falling apart Oldsmobile 98, or a salvaged Caddy with a sprung rear bumper and peeling landau roof. Smell of gasoline in your nose since you were old enough to toddle out to the garage and search him out. Big door open to the big world, sun streaming in through the dust particles while your father teaches you the sizes of socket wrenches and spark plug gaps. Good old days.

  Shit, you’re losin’ it, Booker. Fucking good mood you’re in going all nostalgic and shit, eh?

  Yeah, OK, admit it, it is nice sittin’ here in the sun and watching the beach and waiting for a good-looking athletic woman coming to meet you for lunch. And she’s a wheelie and a cop, just like you.

  Well, not exactly like you. She at least has her shit together a little. She went back to her job. She’s doing her sheriff’s office work even if it is on the inside. How long would it take for you to ever make it on the inside, man? Riding a desk? No fucking way. You’re a street man— always have been, right?

  Well, look at yourself now, dude. You’re just veggin’. Existing like a fucking tomato. Admit it, what do you have? It’s not like you can keep on pumpin’ over at the gym and your legs are going to grow back.

  OK, don’t go all negative now, man, and screw up the lunch. Take another Vicodin and chill. As long as you can still keep the pain down and be a stand-up guy you’ve got something, right? Hah! Stand up— nice joke, Marty. Maybe you can use that one on her.

  Yeah, you’re stand up, all right, staying true to those guys at the gym even though they won’t have a fucking thing to do with you anymore. What, you lose your quads and they kick you to the street? I don’t need their fucking steroids anymore. Yeah, they can still get me the pain meds, as much as I want. But I oughta rat those fuckers out on this drug thing. I can get the scripts from the rehab doc just as easily now.

  Hell, you were gettin’ close to doing that anyway, weren’t you? Well, maybe, but there were some good times with those guys. That gig you did with Jesse Holshouser when you were both third-year patrol and went charging into that burning house to get the lady out. That was pretty cool. Hell, we didn’t even think about it, just did what first responders are supposed to do. Everybody high-fivin’ us after that one, like heroes, right? The old man would’ve liked that one, right? Doin’ it the way your dad wanted you to do it, makin’ him proud.

  Still, it wasn’t long after that when the gang really started up at the gym. Guys pumpin’ up, feeling good about being strong and stronger. Maybe it was just a competition thing.

  Admit it, it was kinda sweet that these guys were so hungry not just for the steroids to get all pumped up, but also the oxy and the Dexedrine and Adderall—and we were the ones who had it.

  Then comes McKenzie: The guy was turning it into some kind of business, supplying everybody in the gym, whether they were fellow cops or not. Shit, we all didn’t mind going along with it as long as he was just sharing it with other officers from our jurisdiction, guys you could trust, because they were really layin’ their own asses and careers on the line. But fucking McKenzie was starting to sell it to his bar bouncer buddies and guys from other departments—and that was just stupid.

  You knew it was getting crazy, Marty. But shit, get it out of your head man, ‘cause here comes the detective now. And whoa, look at her, with her blonde hair blowin’ in the breeze. She’s crankin’ that chair. Look, even the walking guys are checking her out. Man, those triceps are cut. No wonder she kicked McKenzie’s ass on those dips.

  Look at her, Marty: This chick is way confident. How the hell does she do that, man? I need to get that back. I need to be proud of myself again.

  — 15 —

  SHERRY MET ME for dinner at Lester’s because I like the meat loaf with real mashed potatoes, and I think she likes putting her chin up and overpowering the handicap ramp that climbs at a ridiculous angle because it’s grandfathered-in and thus legal. It’s her statement: Make it difficult, I’m coming in anyway.

  I also like the old-style diner for its monster-size coffee cups and the vinyl-covered booths that afford at least a little privacy when you’re talking shop. Lester’s used to be a hangout for sheriff’s deputies and Fort Lauderdale cops on coffee breaks, but that changed after the sheriff’s office moved to its Broward Boulevard palace years ago. The addition of I-595 effectively detoured the truckers who used to frequent the place. But the joint is still quaint and familiar, especially if you like gum-cracking waitresses who call you “hon.” You can also trust that there will be a tiny tin pitcher of real cream on your table instead of those infernal little peel-n-pour thimbles of who knows what.

  I was still sipping my first bowl of coffee—the sixteen-ounce porcelain one with the faded blue stripe around the rim—and taking my time to respond to Sherry’s bomb of a theory.

  “Maybe the car wreck wasn’t an accident. Maybe somebody tried to kill him.”

  “OK,” I said, swallowing, and running the statement through my head while the warm caffeine was hitting my brain. “Where the hell did that possibility come from?”

  “The guy opened up to me a little,” Sherry said, her fingers pushing a napkin around on the table in front of her. We sat in a booth in the far corner of the dining area. Sherry had pulled alongside, and then slid herself into the opposite side to face me, the side that would allow her words to be absorbed by the wall behind me.

  “This on the second time you’ve had lunch with a legless man who wouldn’t talk to any of his professional therapists and shrinks?”

  “Yeah,” she said, putting that little smile on the corner of her mouth. “I’m pretty good.”

  “I agree with half of that statement,” I said. “You are pretty.”

  She smirked.

  “You’ve always been a jealous man, Max.”

  “Agreed,” I said, and took another sip of coffee. “So lay out the theory, Detective. I mean, I’m guessing it isn’t an official case yet, right?”

  She looked up at me as if she thought I was being smart-assed about the statement, but I wasn’t.

  “Booker says that the group at the gym was pretty much into the whole steroid thing. They’d started it just wanting to see what it could do, and then it blossomed on them—some sort of competitive thing he couldn’t really enunciate.”

  “Yeah, well, the steroids were pretty apparent by the acne all over that McKenzie guy’s neck and shoulders,” I said.
/>
  Sherry chuckled. “And you didn’t even see the way his face turned purple when he was trying to beat me at the dips—definite high blood pressure syndrome. Anyway, they started out small-time. But pretty soon, everybody in the core group was on board.”

  The waitress came to our booth, cracked her gum, and refilled my cup with the glass orb of coffee that seemed to be locked into the hand of every server in the place. I ordered the meat loaf and Sherry got chopped salad, uh, without the ham, please, and can you take the yolk out of the boiled egg, uh, and no onions and just oil and vinegar dressing, thanks.

  The waitress smiled a perturbed smile. Sherry gave her that fake “too bad I’m the customer and you’re not” look. I shook my head and kept my mouth shut as the she gathered the menus and left.

  “Booker told you all this?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I think he trusts me. I told him I had nothing to do with IA, and that it was the behavioral unit that asked me to meet him. I told him they never said anything about a drug use problem. And anyway, I wasn’t the one who brought it up to begin with.”

  “He offered to talk about drugs?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Well, I did say that I’d done some digging on his case. I told him the stuff about the clean car, the wiped-down clean car, and how weird that seemed.”

  “And?”

  “He agreed. That’s what they told him every time he tried to check on the status of the investigation of the hit-and-run driver who pinned him. They always told him they didn’t have any leads. Even he was smart enough to wonder what the hell was going on.”

  “And the drugs?” I said, looking directly into Sherry’s eyes.

  “Well, that brought me to the blood tox report that I’d seen off the record—which led to the steroid discussion.”

  “That’s not sort of,” I said.