by Peter Wild
Rodgers and Edwards looked at Hartman and then at each other, nonplussed.
‘OK, that’s an exaggeration.’ Hartman chuckled. ‘But there’s this Hollywood producer I know wants to do a pilot for a cop show based in Miami. He’s heard all about us and the fine work we do here. He needs two detectives to show him around, take him through their day, let him see life through their eyes. His characters are a salt ’n’ pepper duo. I immediately thought of you two.’
Miami PD frequently got asked to help out on movies, TV shows and the like in one capacity or another and usually refused, unless a big-name star contacted them in person and the project was resolutely pro-cop.
‘So what exactly are we supposed to do?’ Rodgers asked. He didn’t like the idea one bit. They had work to do and lots of it. Homicides in the city were already up two hundred per cent thanks to the cocaine cowboys’ daily shoot-outs and the new Cuban intake, killing their way into the American dream. Rodgers hated cop shows and most cop movies–not his bag, being entertained by a cartoon version of what you did for a living every day.
‘I want you two to play at bein’ cops for the day. Put on a show. Imagine you’re two characters in a movie, and the guy’s your audience. Impress him, wow him, inspire him.’
‘Huh?’ Rodgers grunted.
‘I got a little scenario in mind. Take him for a spin around the city for about an hour, point things out to him, let him see the luxury and the misery. Then, at about eleven a.m., you’ll get a call from Dispatch sayin’ there’s a stiff on a boat in the Marina. You go over there to investigate with the guy, show him what you do–the whole process, boarding the boat, securing the scene, discovering the body, witness canvassing–no paperwork, though, that’s boring.’
‘Who’s the stiff?’ Edwards asked.
‘Some rich guy turned up dead ten minutes ago. It don’t matter.’ Hartman lost a little of his jovial glow as he addressed Edwards, impatience stealing the sheen off his smile. Hartman was an old-school Miami PD who’d started his policing in the late ’50s when the force was segregated and the crime rate was negligible. Back then night patrol for Miami Beach had consisted of exactly one patrol car.
‘PD’ll take over once you guys have done your thang,’ Hartman said, testing Edwards the way he always did, throwing some condescending jive his way, letting him know his place. ‘As you’re drivin’ around, tell the guy war stories, entertain him, give him stuff he can use–shake down some hookers and dealers, if you like.’
‘We gotta spend all day with this guy?’ Rodgers groaned. Hartman nodded. ‘Want us to take him home with us too?’ Rodgers joked.
‘Cute.’ Hartman smirked. ‘When your shift’s over, bring him back up here. Think you can handle that?’
Rodgers grunted his assent.
‘Remember, this is about makin’ a good impression. So don’t get him killed. And Rodgers, ain’t you got a better suit of clothes you can wear? You look like you woke up in what you’re stood in.’
‘I didn’t know we’d be on show today–or else I woulda come here in my dress blues,’ Rodgers retorted. ‘White gloves and decorations. The whole nine yards.’
Rodgers was wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, his houndstooth jacket and black-and-white suede Nike Cortez sneakers. He hadn’t shaved. Edwards was smartly turned out as ever, navy blue suit and open-necked white shirt and polished black leather shoes.
‘Edwards, can you wait outside, please?’ Major Hartman said.
‘Yes, sah,’ Edwards whispered, his pointed sarcasm bypassing Hartman’s radar completely.
Hartman waited several seconds after Edwards had left before speaking, which he did in a quieter tone, leaning slightly forward over his desk.
‘Just so’s you know, Al, I’m puttin’ up some of my own money into this thing against a share of the profits. I consider it a good investment. The series comes off right, the country’ll get a picture postcard of Miami beamed into its living room once a week. No better ad for this city than a popular TV show. It’ll boost tourism and bring in the money. God knows this place could use some clean cash.’
America was in the middle of a crippling recession, but you wouldn’t have known it in Miami. Business was booming in every direction–real estate, construction and retail–thanks to the millions the cocaine traffickers were pouring into the city.
‘That’s if it works out,’ Rodgers said.
‘Of course.’ Hartman nodded. ‘But this guy knows what he’s doing. He’s worked for David Jacobs. And David Jacobs is the guy who put Dallas on the map.’
‘“Who shot JR Ewing?”’ Rodgers remembered with a rueful smile. ‘Two of the quietest nights in the history of Miami law enforcement.’ On 21 March the previous year, the streets, bars and clubs had nearly emptied for the hour that cliffhanger episode of Dallas had aired–a phenomenon repeated in nearly all major American cities. And they’d been deserted all over again on 21 November when the shooter’s identity had been revealed. Rodgers hadn’t watched either episode, but he’d had the lowdown from virtually everyone he knew, as well as a constant barrage of newspaper headlines, magazine covers and TV reports wherever he went.
‘You can’t argue with the power of television.’ Hartman grinned. ‘This series comes off it’ll be great for the city and great for us.’
Good for you, you mean, Rodgers thought, but didn’t let it show in his face, giving Hartman a mild nod of approval.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘What’s this guy’s name?’
‘Roman Rich.’ The film producer stood up and introduced himself with a hand extended in Edwards’ direction. He’d been waiting for them downstairs in reception, black notebook in hand.
Rich was in his mid to late thirties and stood slightly over six feet tall, but his was a strictly blow-away-in-the-breeze build, as if his skeleton had been put together with matchsticks. He was the sort of guy who coordinated his colours. His sharply creased beige chinos matched his pastel yellow complexion; his maroon Lacoste polo shirt whose sleeves billowed around his long, thin arms went with his polished leather loafers and the frames of the large square-framed glasses he wore, both exactly the same shade of maroon. His small brown eyes were magnified by the thick lenses so that they appeared to hover over and in front of his head like a pair of greasy bees, seemingly disengaged from the rest his face, which was as thin and pointy as a rodent drawn by a bored architect with ruler and pencil. Rich’s straight hair was the same shade as his eyes. It was cut short at the back and left semi-long at the front, so it fell over his forehead in bangs, which he’d parted in the middle. He wore a gold Rolex on his left wrist and a thick gold chain around his neck, which reminded Rodgers of the kind of very expensive collar rich, misanthropic old women bought for the ugly dogs they named after dead husbands.
‘You must be Detective Sergeant Al Rodgers,’ Rich said to Edwards, in a voice that couldn’t have fitted his physique better–thin, reedy and slightly nasal.
Edwards gave Rodgers a slight look that Rodgers acknowledged with a meagre nod, giving his partner the go-ahead to bullshit. It was an easy enough mistake to make and one people made regularly–Edwards looked more authoritative than Rodgers–but Rodgers had already taken a dislike to Rich before meeting him, simply because they were having to waste their time sucking up to him on Hartman’s say-so. This meant that nothing the jerk could say or do short of pissing off out of their lives that instant would ever be right.
‘I must be,’ Edwards replied with a smile.
‘Pleased to meet you!’ Rich smiled broadly for a few seconds longer than seemed natural or normal, as if his lips had got stuck to the top of his gums–which, Rodgers noticed, went very well with his shirt, glasses and loafers. His teeth were as white and straight as the best American dentistry could make them, but when he smiled Rich reminded Rodgers of stuffed and mounted roadkill.
Rich looked at Rodgers.
‘And you must be Detective Larry Edwards?’
‘Right again,’
Rodgers deadpanned.
‘So, er, how’s this gonna work?’ he asked Edwards.
‘What we’re gonna do is drive you around some. Show you a few sights and–if we’re lucky–we might get to do some business,’ Edwards said jovially.
‘Business?’
‘Yeah, you know, cop business. Arrest us some bad guys.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘Good is what it is–after you.’ Edwards motioned Rich to the glass front door and they followed him out. Edwards made a jerk-off sign behind the producer’s back and Rodgers nodded and smirked.
They took MacArthur Causeway to Miami Beach. It was a nice day out, the bright morning sun boosting the shimmering blue of the ocean against the ashen concrete of the bridge.
Edwards drove. Rich sat in the back, grinning like a kid who’s been allowed to stay up late. Edwards told Rich war stories about hundred-mile-an-hour car chases across MacArthur and how the bridge was a popular spot for jumpers. Rich was writing everything down in his black notebook with a gold pen. When the details were to his liking he’d gasp an excited ‘Wow-yeah!’–which came out as ‘Wah-hair!’–or a curt ‘Neat!’–or, if they got particularly juicy (anything with coke and multiple homicides), he’d make a long low sound somewhere between a choked gurgle and a pleased moan, as if he were getting the blowjob of his life and being throttled at the same time.
Rodgers said nothing whatsoever, left it all to Edwards, glad he didn’t have to entertain this arsehole.
They had the radio on. Edwards would stop in mid-tale whenever the dispatcher came on.
‘What’s QSM mean?’ referring to the way the dispatcher started every call out.
Quit Shooting Your Mouth, Rodgers thought to say, but kept his peace.
‘It’s a code requesting a response from an available unit. So, what she just said–“QSM a unit to respond to 714 Northwest Eighteenth Street in reference to male stabbed”–means any cars in the vicinity go to this place. Then the car in the area will answer QSL, then give their car number and say they’re on their way.’
‘Neat!’ Rich said as he scribbled, his pen making the sounds of rat paws scuttling back and forth across a ceiling.
They went down to South Beach, which Edwards told Rich was called God’s Waiting Room, on account of the majority of the population being over sixty or the kind of lowlifes who wouldn’t make it past thirty.
‘God’s Waiting Room–wah-hair!’
Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue fascinated Rich, as Edwards pointed out spots where epic gun battles had taken place or mutilated bodies had been found in parked cars. His pen scratched furiously, like a dog with stubborn tics, and his fellated hanged man noises got louder and more intense, embarrassing the two cops.
Edwards stopped right in front of the building where Rodgers lived and gave Rich a long talk about how the once glorious and fashionable art deco hotels had all turned into near-slums from the new Cuban intake, or doubled up as brothels, shooting galleries and squats. Rodgers mouthed ‘fuck you’ to Edwards, who merely winked at him. Rodgers had never seen Edwards happier on the job.
They rolled down James Avenue, past the derelict and boarded-up Albion Hotel and into a strip of poverty, where failed cafés, cheap motels, used-tyre stores and scrap-metal lots dominated either side of the street. They turned off at 18th Street and went down Washington Avenue, passing bars and clubs, Edwards reeling out more stories about shoot-outs between rival posses of cocaine cowboys that had happened right in the middle of the dance floors, with the cops caught in between.
‘What kind of guns do you guys carry?’ Rich asked.
‘Mine’s a .45 Colt M1911 automatic,’ Edwards said.
‘That work out for you OK?’
‘Sure,’ Edwards said. ‘I’d be happiest with a revolver, though–a .357 Magnum or even a .38 Special–’cause they don’t jam and they’re next to always reliable–autos jam and stovepipe like crazy. But this is the Wild West out here and you need to get off fast rounds. We carry a couple of Ithaca pumps in the back, plus two M16s in case things get real heavy.’
‘Have they?’
‘This is Miami, man,’ Edwards said. ‘There’s always a war on somewhere.’
Rich let out a long and very satisfied moan at that and they heard him squirm in his seat before he grated some more in his book.
‘What about you, Detective Edwards?’ Rich asked Rodgers. ‘What do you carry?’
‘9 Mil Sig Sauer P220,’ Rodgers mumbled.
‘A what?’
Rodgers repeated himself and spelled the name.
‘They ain’t that common here yet,’ he added. ‘They’re Swiss-made. Double action, no safety, so once you pull it you’re good to go. It’s low recoil, very accurate and reliable. I regularly put ninety per cent of a clip dead on centre of a target.’
‘Where d’you get it?’
‘Company sent some over for us to try out,’ Rodgers lied. He’d kept two of the pistols on a raid of a Finnish arms dealer’s warehouse in 1978. The guns were brand new and still in their boxes. He kept the other one at home.
‘Can I see it?’
‘Askin’ a cop if you can see his gun is like askin’ a man to show you his dick,’ Rodgers said.
‘Come on, Edwards, be a sport.’ Edwards grinned. ‘I do hold rank here.’
‘I’ll show him mine if you show him yours, Sarge,’ Rodgers said.
‘Deal.’
Rodgers took out the Sig and ejected the clip. He passed it to Rich, who took the gun–which weighed slightly under a kilo–in the palm of his hand, admiring it.
‘Real neat!’ he said, and wrote down some more notes.
‘So what’s this show of yours about?’ Rodgers asked when Rich handed him his piece back.
‘It’s not a show as such yet. It’s a pilot.’
‘Pilot?’ Rodgers asked.
‘Yeah, a pilot’s like a feature-length episode that gets made ahead of a projected series. Sort of a trailer for the series. Introduces the characters, what they do, who they are, where they’re at. It gets aired, and if it does OK, a series gets commissioned.’
‘Like a TV movie, then?’
‘Kind of, yeah, if you see it that way,’ Rich said in a slightly condescending tone, which Rodgers picked up on.
‘This pilot got a name?’ Edwards asked, passing Rodgers his black Colt.
‘Yeah–Cap’n Crunch!’ Rodgers joked.
Edwards guffawed, more to let out a few hundred cubic metres of trapped laughter than because of Rodgers’ witticism.
Rich didn’t laugh at all.
‘I was thinking of Miami Homicide,’ he said, coldly.
‘That’s real positive,’ Rodgers said, ejecting the clip and the spare round in the Colt’s chamber before passing it back to Rich.
‘Miami is Murder Capital USA, right now,’ Rich remarked. ‘But this series isn’t just going to be about crime. I want to make it into a–a–a poem to Miami. I want to capture the city’s beauty–not just the cupcakes in bikinis either, but its cultural diversity, its–its–its ethnicky beat.’
‘“Ethnicky beat”?’ Rodgers turned around and looked at him. ‘The fuck is that?’
‘He means gunfire.’ Edwards laughed.
Rich didn’t reply. He was transfixed by Edwards’ gun.
‘Wah-hair! Pearl handles! This is a real black man’s gun!’ Rich said excitedly. Rodgers turned around and saw the film producer virtually drooling over Edwards’ black automatic and its mother-of-pearl grips, feeling its heft and damn well caressing the thing with the tip of his index finger, all the while filling the car with his curdled moan, lost in his own space. Edwards watched Rich in his rear-view mirror, his brow creasing with incredulity and hilarity.
‘If you’re gonna stereotype, you might as well get it right,’ Edwards said through his laugh. ‘Niggers and spics love their guns shiny–chrome, nickel and silver-plated. You get that down in you book now. Word for word.’
Rich
said nothing, didn’t seem to hear, so transfixed was he with Edwards’ gun and whatever fantasies it was transporting him into.
They got on to Dade Boulevard and made for the Venetian Causeway, heading back towards downtown Miami.
The dead guy on the boat had been a disco fan–and a big one. He’d called his forty-foot-long yacht Studio 54 and the vast downstairs lounge area they found him in was a like a personal nightclub. There was a mirrorball hanging from the ceiling, banks of coloured lights in the corners, close to the speakers, a small DJ booth at the far end, complete with two turntables and microphone.
Taking pride of place over a faux fireplace next to a fully stocked bar was a picture of the person they took to be the victim and John Travolta, with their arms around each other’s shoulders. They were almost indistinguishable–both with those chiselled features, dimpled chins, bouffant black hair and sparkling blue eyes. Rodgers wondered whether the dead guy hadn’t had surgery to look more like Travolta.
The corpse was face down in the middle of the room, his left hand wrapped tight around a woman’s turquoise shoe with a stiletto heel. He was barefoot, but wearing white duck pants and a blue-and-white striped shirt. There was an open bottle of champagne and a half-empty glass on a coffee table, next to some lines of coke and a gold straw on a chain, which spelled confirmed user. There was an open billfold next to the drugs. Rodgers checked it. No cash or cards save a Tucson driver’s licence and gun permit.
‘Don Tubbs.’ Rodgers read out the name.
Edwards told Rich to hang back, out of the way, so as to not disturb the scene. Admiring the surgical gloves Edwards had given him to wear, Rich went off and stood close to the stairs leading below deck.
Rodgers crouched down over the body and rolled his jacket sleeves up to the elbow.
‘What do you think?’ Edwards asked.
Rodgers felt the corpse’s right hand and tried to move its arm. The flesh was stiff and cold, the joints frozen in place.
‘Dead twelve. Rigor mortis.’
The body had the slight smell of death about it.