by Unknown
with Susan, and I showed Susan how to lift weights. But what she liked most was putting on the eight-ounce gloves and going a few rounds with me in a park near her new crib in the Grove. Basically, what she liked to do was beat the shit out of me three times a week, weather permitting. Forgetting her violent frame of mind, I had insisted that she wear head- gear and padding while I, being Jack Vaughn, "The Motiva- tor" (that's what it says on my business card), wore only a smile. By the end of the second week, Susan had fractured two of my ribs and loosened an incisor with a roundhouse kick. Seems she had forgotten to mention the brown belt in tae kwon do. After the tooth incident, I wised up and started dressing a little more like the Michelin Man. I even wore a steel cup inside my jockstrap--an accessory I hadn't needed with any of my other clients, not even the Sheik. Not being too bright, I made the mistake of introducing Susan to Vivian so as to dispel the notion I sensed percolat- ing in the latter's jealous mind that there was anything going on between Susan and me. Vivian had started showing up at the park where Susan and I had our kickboxing sessions, and while I always pretended not to have seen her, I thought it would be a good idea to make a preemptive move before the jealousy got ugly. I made arrangements for us to meet at a bar around the corner from Susan's office. We met during a happy hour, which failed to live up to its name. Susan brought along a nice-looking fellow named Jason, a nonen- tity in a business suit who seemed surprised to be alive. It didn't take long before I realized I'd made a fatal mistake. Susan and Vivian had liked one another about as much as the FBI likes the Mafia, maybe less so. They had nothing in common except their anatomy and the fact that each in her own way was beautiful. We were sitting at a small table with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth and a candle as 104
a centerpiece. I remember this aspect of the decor not be- cause I'm romantic but because of the way their eyes glared in the flickering light. Almost immediately it became clear that they were looking for something to get nasty about, and needless to say they soon found a suitable subject: Chilean wine. I became the mediator while Jason did his imitation of the Invisible Man. I was so anxious to get out of the place that I paid the bill five minutes before the food appeared from the kitchen. After that delightful evening, things begin to sour between Susan and me, and she cut her sessions from five to three, then to two, on down until it became every now and then. She let me know that she was dating Jason and had gotten into tennis. The training sessions became increasingly un- pleasant and the cup protecting my balls increasingly neces- sary. I might be slow, but no one ever called me stupid, so I knew it had something to do with Vivian. Maybe in some strange female way, she felt betrayed by the fact that I had a beautiful girlfriend, though I had spoken of her often enough--especially in the beginning when I was trying to convince my new emotionally labile client that she was relatively safe with me. Under those circumstances, even if Vivian hadn't existed, I would have invented her for business purposes alone. Call it Machiavellian if you will; I call it public relations. It had been a way of neutering myself without having to undergo the actual surgery, and it had worked, too--at least until the two women sat down and went to war over the seemingly insane subject of Chilean wine. Then, as frequently happens in my business, Susan disap- peared from my calendar altogether, became a name con- signed to the papery wings of my dog-eared Rolodex. The last time I heard from her, she had left her old job and joined a law firm and was now defending the same money-launder- 105
ing drug dealers she'd previously been charged with putting in jail. As it turns out, the dealers had a lot more money, and, in the charade that is the war on drugs, no one at her old place of employment thought the worse of her for defect- ing. Inspector Ruben was now nothing more than a foolish face, fading fast in life's rearview mirror. Jason had faded, too. She had a new man now, and things were, as they say, getting serious. There was no time for Jack, and I was made to understand that I, too, was part of the past. So long and thanks for the push-ups. Now here I was, sitting across from her ex-husband, call- ing her at the office of one of Miami's biggest law firms, Bal- thazar, Epstein and Blake, with the offhanded hope that she might be of a mind to help me out. The receptionist passed me along to a secretary who passed me along to an assistant who put me on hold for so long my ear began to ache from the pressure of the receiver against it. All the while Cortez sat looking at me with a demented grin on his face, like an alligator that happened to close its jaws just as an unlucky sparrow flew by. I was nothing to him but a small snack sent by the devil to help ease him through the endless boredom of his day. Finally Susan came to the phone. Her voice was brisk, demanding, the voice of a woman with very little time to spare. There was a long pause when she realized that it was her old friend and former personal trainer calling her, a puzzled silence that told me she was surprised, though not particularly pleased, to hear from me. I got right into it, what had happened and where I was. She let me talk. The silence deepened when she found out I was sitting across from her ex-husband. After a moment she told me to put Cortez on the line. The inspector grinned when I handed him the phone. His first words were, "Hey, babe," and I knew immediately that 106
they were the wrong words to use with the new and improved Susan Andrews. His grin vanished, and he shifted uneasily in his chair, as though a splinter had found its way into his ass. His face grew tighter and less self-assured by degrees, until it became a mask first of doubt, then of quiet anger. I couldn't hear her words, but I could guess their tone: cold and professional, filled with a steady refusal of all intimacy. I studied his face as he listened. I saw confidence replaced first by disbelief, then by acceptance. Cortez was nothing to her now, just the voice of a minor official with very few cards to play. At the end of their conversation, he handed the phone back to me. I hadn't liked what I'd heard him say. Susan's version wasn't any better. I was going to be stuck at Krome for a while. "Listen to me, Jack," she said. "They're going to hold you there at Krome over the weekend. Then they'll transfer you down to federal court. They want to charge you with smug- gling illegal aliens. The charge is bullshit and won't hold, but Ruben has to cover his ass on this one. Even so, under normal circumstances I could get you out on bail, but not till they send you downtown for arraignment. They're not in any hurry to do that. I can make a few calls, but it will be Monday at the earliest. That means you have to sit tight and wait." "I can't stay here that long," I said. "You don't have a choice. I can't do any better than Monday, and even that soon will require some maneuvering. By the way, do you have any idea how much I charge?" "I guess food stamps are out of the question, but don't worry. I've come into a little money." "Good," she said. "Because I bill at three hundred an hour. Listen, Jack, I have to go now. Can you behave yourself for a few days?" "I doubt it. There's a lot of shit happening." 107
"I'll see you on Monday morning." I didn't say anything. My mind was on other matters. "I said I'll see you on Monday," Susan said. "All right," I said. "Monday." Susan hung up. I handed the phone to Cortez, who spoke into it for a moment before realizing she was gone. He looked disappointed, then set the phone back in its cradle. "I guess you're going to be here for a while," he said. "So it would seem." "I see the bitch still holds a grudge," he said. "What do you expect? You were screwing her friend. Women tend to take things like that personally." "You're right. I was an asshole. I'll admit that." He stared down at the desk for a moment, as though seeking either his own reflection in the scorched mahogany or else some revelation that eluded him. He shook his head and looked up at me. "Her voice--did you notice it? I don't know. I mean, it didn't sound quite right. Like there was something under it. You know what I mean? You used to be a cop, right? Up in New York. You tell me." "She wasn't to glad to hear from either of us. That's for sure," I told him. "That's not what I'm talking about. It was something else." "I know. I caught it, too. Sounded like stress to me. Of course, she's a lawyer. That could be it." "What could be more stressful than a hundred and fifty cases at a time as a prosecutor, and that
on thirty-two five a year?" "Divorce." "She's past that now. I'm not even a blip on the radar screen anymore. You heard how she talked. I guess I knew it was over, but you never know how over it is until you hear it 108
on the phone. I cremated the thing pretty good, didn't I?" I nodded. "It sounded to me like even the ashes have blown away." He looked at me for a moment. "Let's get back to you. What were you doing so far out from shore, and don't tell me you were swimming either, not that far out." I told him about the kayak but omitted the sinking of The Carrousel. The omission was louder than the truth itself would have been. We both heard it. "What time did you head out? In the kayak, I mean," he asked. "About five in the morning." "Little early to be out in a kayak, wouldn't you say? There's something else. There's always something else. You're no smuggler. But you were up to something out there. What was it? Drugs?" "How much coke can you fit into a kayak? Come on. And where did I get it? You think maybe I paddled down to Co- lombia, loaded up a few kilos, then paddled back? That's a long way, Ruben." "You were a cop once. If you still were, would you believe that story?" "Probably not." "I rest my case. Whatever it was, maybe it will come out, but then again maybe not. But it's there, and you know what I'm talking about. Personally, I don't give a shit. It's not in my domain. I'm just telling you man to man, cop to cop." I sat quietly. We had a bit of a staring contest, but Cortez got bored and stood up. He turned his back to me and seemed to be reading his own commendations on the wall behind his desk. He stretched his arms above his head and turned to me again. "You say you went into the ocean at five. We got you at seven. We get a lot of people come out of the water down 109
here, and I've been on patrols with the coast guard. After a while you get a feel for how long a man's been in the ocean, and you were in the water for a lot longer than you say. I just want you to know that." "All right. So now I know. Any chance I can make a phone call?" "You just made one." "How about a little slack for a fellow cop?" "Ex-cop." He looked annoyed for a moment. "Okay, fuck it." He slid the phone across the desk. "How about a little privacy?" "Don't push it." I punched in Vivian's cell-phone number. Everything had been screwed up, including, of course, our rendezvous. But she was out there somewhere, probably wondering what had happened to me. It was possible, however, that she already knew, that she along with her father had been part of the setup. That was something I didn't like to think about, but I had to consider it all the same. I couldn't ask very many ques- tions with Cortez sitting across from me, but I would be able to get much from the tone of her voice, or so I believed. Williams's voice said hello. I started to say something, then thought the better of it and hung up. Cortez sat watching me. "What's the matter?" he asked. "You look a little pale-- even for a guy from Nebraska." I didn't say anything. "It's time for you to get out of here," Cortez said. "Go and meet all your new friends. The food's lousy and the weather is hot, but you'll only be here for a little while, which is more than I can say for most of them down there. Stand up. "It's too bad I don't like you," he said. "Otherwise me and you could be friends." He opened the door and called in Heckle and Jeckle. They 110
came in looking skeptical, like a couple of nervous fathers let into the delivery room. They had no idea what was going on. Cortez put a hand on my shoulder. "Treat this guy right," he said. "Vaughn here used to be a cop up in New York. This whole thing is just a fucked-up misunderstanding. He's going to be here for a few days, so keep an eye on him." Heckle and Jeckle were a lot friendlier to me as they es- corted me out to the pen. "How come you stopped being a cop?" Ellis asked me. "I got tired of writing traffic tickets," I told him. "That don't sound like a very good reason to quit your job," he said. "You're right. Maybe I was too hasty." The outdoor cage where they put me might have passed for a schoolyard, except for the razor wire spiraling along the top of the Cyclone fence that surrounded the compound. The sunlight pressed down on the concrete, and the dank air wriggled with the heat, but out to the west the clouds had begun to mass, collecting their strength for the late-after- noon storms that came with the summer months. It was the time of year when hurricanes are born above the coast of West Africa and speed across the ocean like demons made of wind. There was no malice in them, but they were full of destruction. Most died as soon as they were named or else wandered off and disappeared. Some, like Andrew, make it to land, where they changed history. Lay a thousand yards of sidewalk a day and the jungle rains would come again someday and try to take it all back. But I had a more personal storm to worry about. How had Williams gotten hold of Vivian's cell phone? I walked through the gate and looked around and wished that a tempest would suddenly appear and scatter every- thing I saw to the four directions, including myself. There 11 1
are places on this earth so full of distress and inertia that only chaos can set them free. Neither is it a mystery that all of those places are made by men and maintained by men, and such a place was the Krome Detention Center that day in late August. I heard the gate close behind me and felt the heat clamp down on my neck in the same instant. No way I can stay here until Monday, I thought. I had to know what had happened to Vivian. What was he doing with her cell phone, and why had he tried to kill me? Those thoughts kept circling in my mind like dust devils in a sandstorm, and the only way to stop their incessant whirling was clear though far-fetched. I had to get out of Krome. Two days was too long to wait for answers. I walked across the yard toward the shadows and the promise of shade. The asphalt threatened to burn through the thin soles of the worn-down sneakers they'd given me. There was a long, dented canopy of corrugated steel that ran the length of the fence and abutted a concrete shoe box of a building. Under the canopy were wooden benches and picnic tables with canisters of water on them. Thirty or forty people sat in the shadows, some of them playing dominoes and others reading quietly in the bad light. A few merely sat staring over the expanse of the yard, watching me come. I was just another stranger walking across the desert toward them, bearing no gifts and bringing no good news. At the west end of the yard where the clouds were closing fast, three men were playing basketball under a rim with a net made, appropriately enough, of chain. The ball refused to bounce more than a foot above the ground. The man drib- bling was forced to run doubled over like a hunchback in order to stay with the ball. When he was twenty feet from the basket, he straightened up suddenly and launched the ball at the rusted rim. It sailed through the hoop and landed in a puddle without bouncing. The men came and looked 112
down at the ball the way you look at a dead dog that belongs to somebody else. There was a brief discussion, and then the men turned and walked away, forfeiting the ball to the sun- cracked concrete. The Haitians sat with the Haitians, and the Cubans sat with the Cubans. There was a blond man who looked like a sun-drunk German, and a small group of Central Ameri- cans with straight black hair and Mayan faces. It was like being at the United Nations, except we were all in jail, a fact that tends to kill much of the joy of the multicultural experience. Everyone was speaking either in Creole or in Spanish. The beleaguered-looking man with the blond hair stood alone by the fence, talking to himself. In his natty, beige, well-tailored if rumpled linen suit and blue bow tie, he was the best-dressed man in the compound. No one paid him any attention. His was a private club, at least until they took him off to the rubber room. Two men, whom I assumed to be Chinese, sat with them- selves. They sat so close together I thought they would merge. I could not imagine the length of their journey, and the dejection concentrated in their faces matched the storms over the swamps in the west. It is a long way back to Haiti when you've nearly died trying to escape from it, but it was not so far that you couldn't try again. The Cubans were, for the most part, home free. But China was another planet. It may have taken them months to get here, and now they were going back. They had the tired faces of men without hope and whose only luck is to endure, yet despite all this, when I smiled at them, they smiled back. Their eyes were unexpect- edly kind. I gave them the thumbs-up and went past them into the shade. There didn
't seem to be an American section, so I sat with my back against the corrugated wall of a Quonset hut. A man with muscles like wrought iron dipped in black enamel 113