by Tom Wolfe
“John,” he said—and then he paused, because he had surprised himself. He had never called him by his first name before, or any name, for that matter. “I want to thank you for everything. When I finished the shift last night—I mean, talk about bummed out—I was… I was hard up as I’ve ever been in my life. I owe you one… no, a shitload. If there’s anything I can do for you, just say it.”
John Smith didn’t say a word. He didn’t even look at Nestor at first. He was still looking straight ahead at the road when he finally responded. “As a matter of fact, there is something. But I figured this wasn’t the right time. You’ve got enough to think about for one day.”
“No, go ahead. If I can do something for you, I’ll do it.”
Another long pause, and now John Smith turned toward Nestor. “Well… I need access to police files”—he glanced at the road and then back toward Nestor—“to see what information they may have on a certain individual, a man who lives in Sunny Isles.”
“Who is he? What’s his name?” said Nestor.
John Smith said, “Well… I haven’t mentioned this to anyone except my editors. But if I’m right, it’s a big story. His name is Sergei Korolyov. Does that ring a bell?”
“Ummm… no.”
“You don’t remember this Russian oligarch—that was what they kept calling him, a Russian oligarch—this Russian who gave a bunch of valuable paintings to the Miami Museum of Art? It wasn’t that long ago… a bunch of Chagalls, Kandinskys, and uhhh this Russian ‘Suprematist,’ he called himself… his name’s gone right out of my head, but he’s a famous modern artist. Anyway, the museum figured these paintings were worth close to seventy million dollars—Malevich! That was the guy’s name!—the one who called himself a Suprematist… Kazimir Malevich. This was such a gold mine, the museum changed its name to the Korolyov Museum of Art.”
Nestor gave John Smith a long puzzled look. The americano had lost him the moment he mentioned Seagulls or whatever the artist’s name was… and Kadinsky and Malayvitch… and the Korolyov Museum of Art, for that matter.
“The thing is,” said John Smith, “I got a very solid tip that they’re all forgeries, all those seventy million dollars’ worth of paintings.”
“No shit!”
“No, my source is a very serious guy. He’s not the type who’s just full of gossip.”
“Did the museum give him any money for these paintings?”
“No, and that’s the funny thing. These were straight-up donations. All he got out of it was dinner and a lot of flattery.”
The fantasy’s lights dimmed. “Mierda,” said Nestor. “If he didn’t get any money out of it, I don’t know if it’s even a crime. I’d have to ask somebody.”
“I don’t know, either,” said John Smith, “but either way, it’s a hell of a story. I mean, there they all were, the mayor, the governor, Maurice Fleischmann, every hotshot in Miami, all trying to outdo each other piling praise on an impostor. It reminds me of Gogol’s play The Inspector General. Did you ever—anyway, it’s a great play.”
::::::No, I didn’t ever—my pale americano… :::::: But his resentment evaporated quickly. He was a curiosity, John Smith was. Never had Nestor come across anyone more instinctively unlike himself. The guy didn’t have a Latin bone in his body. He couldn’t see him as a cop, either, not for three seconds. There was something bland and weak about him. This kind of guy—it was hard to imagine him being aggressive enough to come up with the Cop Look, even. ::::::Nevertheless, he, an americano, is my only hope of keeping the tide of my own people, my own family!—from sweeping me away.::::::
When John Smith drove him up to the Isle of Capri, he barely recognized the place. In the noonday sun it looked small and gray and dead. What would have ever seemed glamorous about it? It didn’t glow… it was a cheap little dump, that was all. He spotted his Camaro, thank God.
He thanked John Smith again and promised to find out what he could about the Russian. As he departed the car, he experienced a strange feeling. In a moment, John Smith would drive off, and he, Nestor Camacho, would be left abandoned. Abandoned was the feeling… it began to steal over his central nervous system. Now, that was strange. He had an irrational urge to ask the americano to stay a little longer… at least until the shift began at the Marine Patrol marina. I’m alone!… more alone than I’ve ever been in my life! And the patrol shift would only make it worse. By the time the shift had ended last night, at midnight, his “comrades,” his “brethren,” were looking at him as if they wished they didn’t have to. And that was merely the first day after the whole thing with the man on the mast. Tonight they would be wondering why couldn’t he do the decent thing… and disintegrate… the way all decent marked men do.
::::::Oh, why don’t you just jump into the river and drown, you miserable little maricón!:::::: He had always looked with contempt at people who submerged themselves in self-pity. At that point they lost all honor. And here he was, Nestor Camacho, treating himself to the perverse relief of avoiding the struggle—and all the assholes—by giving up and halfway hoping they’ll pull him under for the third time. Hey, that’ll end the pain, won’t it!
In fact, there must be something peaceful about drowning… once you get over the initial shock of never breathing again, never drawing another breath. But he had already gone through the initial shock, hadn’t he. What exactly did he have to live for? His family? His friends? His Cuban heritage? His loved ones? The great romantic love of his life? Or maybe for John Smith’s approval. That made him laugh… rancidly. John Smith would very much approve of his going under for the third time. That way he could wring one more touching human-interest story out of this shit. Nestor could see the pseudo-sincere look on John Smith’s face, as if he were still standing here facing him.
That conniving skinny WASP! Anything to get a story… that’s how sincere he is… Other faces began to appear… vividly… vividly… faces for an instant along the railing of the Rickenbacker Causeway bridge. For that instant—a woman in her forties… he had never seen a more hateful face in his life! She spit at him. She raged. She tried to finish him off by beaming death rays from eyes set deep within her contorted face. He could hear the boos coming at him from all directions, including from below, from all the small craft that had come out for no other purpose than to shoot him down. And—who… is… this? ::::::Why, it’s Camilo el Caudillo! He’s right there before me with his arms crossed smugly atop his paunch… and here’s my simpering mother sopping with sympathy, even though she knows el Caudillo’s word is Gospel… Yeya and Yeyo—hah!:::::: So every living Camacho generation looks upon him as the Ultimate Traitor… Uncle Andres’s cousin-in-law Hernán Lugo, who had taken it upon himself to preach at him at Yeya’s birthday party… Ruiz’s father, at Ricky’s, turning his head about forty-five degrees so he could say out the side of his mouth, Te cagaste—“You shit all over it, didn’t you, and all over yourself”… and aaahhh, it is Mr. Ruiz who now sits immediately before him with his back turned, snarling out the corner of his mouth beneath his shiny dome. All of them, the whole bunch, would love to see him go under… some, like his own family, to see the stain disappear once and for all… others, like Mr. Ruiz, so they would have such riveting, grossly embellished stories to tell… “He came skulking in wearing dark glasses, thinking I wouldn’t recognize him”… and you, Señor Comemierda Ruiz, you’d probably lubricate it with sympathy at the same time… Oh, how you’d love it if I now just went with the current and let the undertow take me all the way to the bottom… well—
I’m damned if I will!
You’d all find it too delicious, and I truly resent that! Sorry, you’re not going to have the satisfaction! And if you don’t like it, don’t blame me. Blame Mr. Ruiz with his te cagaste at the break of dawn. And then kindly go fuck yourself!
“You maybe zink thees fonny,” said Mr. Yevgeni Uhuhuh—Nestor couldn’t catch the last name—“bot I moss say ze kvestion. What you know aboud art?”
&nbs
p; Nestor had no idea what to say. He was getting desperate. It was 3:15 p.m. The shift began in forty-five minutes. This was his third Craigslist visit in the past three hours… and he had to have this apartment. By sharing it with the tall bony, somewhat stooped Russian before him he could afford it… and he had to have it! He couldn’t survive another night like last night, when he had no choice but to be taken in like a stray—by a reporter from Yo No Creo el Herald! He and this Yevgeni were talking in the pathetically small vestibule between the apartment’s two small rooms… Crammed into the vestibule were a tiny filthy kitchen, a tiny filthy bathroom, and the standard clattering aluminum-clad front door you found in Low-Rent apartments like this. Yevgeni, it seemed, was a “graphic artist.” He referred to the apartment, which he wanted to share, as his “studio.” Nestor didn’t know what a graphic artist was, but an artist was an artist, and he lived and worked in his art studio… and now he’s asking what does he, Nestor, know about art? Know about art?! His heart sank. ::::::¡Dios mío! I wouldn’t last two sentences in a conversation about art. There’s absolutely no point in pretending otherwise. Damn! Might as well look him in the eye and take it like a man.::::::
“What do I know about art? To tell the truth… nothing.”
“Yessss!” exclaimed Yevgeni. He raised his fist to shoulder level and pumped it with his elbow, like an American athlete. “You vant to share zees studio?—eet’s yours, my fren!” Noting Nestor’s consternation, he said, “Ze graphic art ees now not good, and I haf to share thees studio. Ze last person I vant ees ze person who zinks he knows aboud art, ze person who vants to talk aboud art, and zen zat person vants to gif me adfice!” He put a hand over his eyes and shook his head, and then looked at Nestor again. “Belief me, I cannot zink of any fate vorse. You are a police officer. How much you like it eef zomebody comes een, and he zink he knows about ‘ze cops,’ or he vants to know about ze cops, and you moss tell him… You crazy in vone veek!”
Besides, he didn’t want to live with the Russians up in Sunny Isles and Hallandale. They’d drive him crazy, too. Here, in this studio in Coconut Grove, he felt more at home. It didn’t hurt, either, that he liked to work from the afternoon into the night—and Nestor would be away, on his shift.
::::::Perfect:::::: Nestor said to himself. ::::::We’re both aliens, you from Russia, me from Hialeah. Maybe we can make it in Miami.:::::: He wrote out a check right away and showed Yevgeni his badge and invited him to write down his badge number. Yevgeni gave him the shrug that said, “Oh, why bother?” He seemed as eager as Nestor to be sharing this place.
This was the sort of thing the Chief never talked about to anybody… anybody… He wasn’t a fool, after all. People would sooner talk about their sex lives—sometimes, among cops, you couldn’t shut them up—or their money or their messy marriages or their sins in the eyes of God… about anything other than their status in this world… their place in the social order, their prestige or their mortifying lack of it, the respect they get, the respect they don’t get, their jealousy and resentment of those who wallow in respect everywhere they set foot…
All this went through the Chief’s mind in a single blip as his driver, Sergeant Sanchez, pulled up in front of City Hall in the Chief’s official Escalade. Miami’s city hall was a curiously small white building that stood alone on a half-acre rectangle of landfill sticking out into Biscayne Bay. The Escalade, on the other hand, was a huge brute, all black, with darkened windows and without a single marking to indicate it was a police vehicle… only a low black bar across the roof containing a lineup of spotlight and flasher lenses and a light on the dashboard, no bigger than a quarter, emitting some sort of ominous X-ray-blue radiation. As soon as they stopped, the Chief fairly sprang from the passenger seat in front… in front, next to Sergeant Sanchez. The last thing he wanted people to think was that he was an old coot who had to be chauffeured around. Like many men in their mid-forties, he wanted to look young, athletic, virile… and so he sprang, imagining himself a lion or a tiger or a panther… a vision of lithe strength, in any case. What a sight it was! Or so he was convinced… he couldn’t very well ask anybody, could he? He wore a darkest-blue military-style shirt, tie, and pants, black shoes, and dark wraparound sunglasses. No jacket; this was Miami… ten o’clock on a September morning, and the cosmic heat lamp was high overhead, and it was already 88 degrees out here. On each side of his neck, which he figured looked thick as a tree trunk, a row of four gold stars ran along each side of his navy blue collar… a galaxy of eight stars in all… and atop that starry tree trunk was his… dark face. There were six feet, four inches and 230 pounds of him, with big wide shoulders, and he was unmistakably African American… and he was the Chief of Police.
Oh yeah, how they stared, all those people going in and out of City Hall—and he loved it! The Escalade was in the traffic circle right in front of the entrance. The Chief stepped onto the curb. He stopped for a moment. He lifted his arms out to the side with bent elbows, thrust his shoulders back as far as they would go, and took a deep breath. He looked like he was stretttttching after being cooped up in the car. In fact, he was forcing his chest to bulge out full-blown. He bet that made him look twice as mighty… but of course he couldn’t very well ask anybody, could he…
He was still in midstretch, midpreen, when—
“Hey, Chief!” It was a young man, but he had City Hall Lifer written all over him… light skin, probably Cuban… emerging from the entrance and beaming a smile of homage at him and paying his respects with a wave that began at his forehead and turned into half a salute. Had he ever laid eyes on the kid before? Did he work in the Bureau of—what the hell was it? Anyway, he was paying homage… The Chief blessed him with a lordly smile and said,
“Hi, Big Guy!”
He had barely rolled his shoulders forward into a normal position when a middle-aged couple passed him—on their way into City Hall. They looked Cuban, too. The man swung his head around and sang out, “How’s it going, Chief!”
Homage. The Chief blessed him with a lordly smile and favored him with a “Hi, Big Guy!”
In rapid succession another “Hey, Chief,” a “How ya doin’, Chief!” and then a “Hi, Cy!”—short for Cyrus, his first name—and a “Keep ’em flyin’, Cy!” and he hadn’t even reached the door yet. The citizens seemed to enjoy paying homage with salutations that rhymed with Cy. His last name, Booker, was too much for their poetic powers, which was just as well, the way he looked at it. Otherwise, everything they called him would be mockery or a racial or personal insult… mooker, spooker, kooker, hooker… Yes, it was just as well…
The Chief said, “Hi, Big Guy!”… “Hi, Big Guy!”… “Hi, Big Guy!”… and “Hi, Big Guy!”
Homage! The Chief was in an excellent mood this morning. The Mayor had summoned him here to City Hall for a little… “policy meeting”… concerning this Marine Patrol officer Nestor Camacho and that Man on the Mast business. He broke out into a big smile, for nobody’s benefit but his own. It was going to be amusing to watch Old Dionisio squirm. Whenever things were going bad for the Mayor or driving him crazy, the Chief thought of him by his real name, Dionisio Cruz. The Mayor had done everything he could to make the whole world think of him as just plain Dio, the way William Jefferson Clinton had become Bill and Robert Dole had become Bob. The Mayor figured Dionisio, the five-syllable name of the Greek god of wine and party boys, was too unusual and too big a bellyful for a politician. He was only five-six and had a very luxurious paunch, but he had enormous energy, the best political antennae in the business, a loud voice, and an egotistical bonhomie that could take over an entire room full of people and swallow them whole. All of that was quite okay with the Chief. He had no illusions concerning the politics of the situation. He was not Miami’s first African American police chief, but the fourth. The concern was not the African American vote, which didn’t amount to much. The concern was… riots.
In 1980 a Cuban cop was accused of murdering an African American bu
sinessman, who was already lying on the ground in police custody… by bludgeoning his head until it split open and you could see his brains. Two of the Cuban’s fellow cops testified against him at his trial, saying they were there and saw him do it. But an all-white jury found him innocent, and he left the courtroom free as a bird. This set off four days of riots and wholesale slaughter in Liberty City, the worst riot in Miami’s history and perhaps the country’s. A whole string of riots ensued in Miami in the 1980s and beyond. In case after case, you had Cuban cops accused of knocking African Americans’ lights out. Liberty City, Overtown, and other African American neighborhoods became lit fuses and the bomb always went off. The latest riot was just two years ago. After that one, Dio Cruz decided to promote Assistant Chief Cyrus Booker to Chief. See? One of your own, not one of ours, runs the entire Police Department.
That was pretty transparent stuff. At the same time, there were five African American assistant chiefs in the Department—and the Mayor had chosen… me. Dio Cruz sincerely liked him and admired him, the Chief chose to believe… sincerely.
But this morning, thank God, it was his pal and admirer Dionisio himself who was caught in a bind by his own people. Usually it was him, the Chief. Outsiders, usually white people, used to talk to him with the assumption that black folks—“the African American community” was the currently enlightened phrase, and white folks uttered it like they were walking across a bed of exploded lightbulb shards—must be “awfully proud” that “one of their own” now headed the police force. Well, if they were so proud of him, they had a funny way of showing it. Every time a recruiter approached a young African American and suggested that he might make a terrific cop—the Chief had gone on this sort of mission himself—the guy would say, “Why would I want to be a traitor to my own people?” or something close to that. One kid had been so brazen as to look the Chief right in his black face and say, “Tell me why the fuck I wanna help the fucking Cubans beat up on my brothers?” No, if he had any respect on the streets from “the black community,” it was only because he was hooked up to the Power… currently. He had the power of the Man… currently. Unghhh huhhhnh… You don’t be jackin’ with the Traitor in Chief, man. He come after you and you be committing “suicide by cop.” You be committing suicide by getting a po-lice bullet shot clear through yo’ chest, and they be finding a gun on your corpse you didn’t even know you had, and they say you pulled this gun-you-never-knew-you-had on a cop, and you be giving them no choice. They got to act in self-defense. You don’t know you committing suicide. But that’s what you did when you pull this gun-you-don’t-know-you-got and aim it at the Suicide Squad. Nome sayin’?—but, hell, you ain’t even listening. Oh, I’m sorry, brother. Ain’t no way you be listening to nothing no more now.