The King of Swords

by Nick Stone

  When the buzzer went Eldon walked to his corner, where one of the assistant trainers handed him a towel and bottle of water. Abe saw Max standing ringside and came over.

  ‘Hey, Max!’ He smiled. ‘Long time.’

  It was true. It had been nine months since they’d last seen each other. Max and Abe had never been close the way he was with Eldon, but he’d been around Abe just as long and felt a strong bond with him. Abe wasn’t the most demonstrative guy in the world. He rarely showed his emotions, positive or negative, but once, when Max had won his very first Golden Gloves championship against Alonzo Wilson, an opponent everyone had expected to defeat him, Abe had put his arm around him, congratulated him and told him how proud of him he was. That had meant the world to Max, more than the two whores Eldon had bought him as a reward.

  ‘How’s it goin’, Abe?’

  ‘Ah, you know. Same-O, same-O.’

  He was a tall slender man with greying hair and a shining bald spot in the middle. He kept his moustache neatly trimmed. There was an air of sadness about him, his face dragged heavily and reluctantly behind each expression and his eyes seemed to be either on the verge of tears or recovering from them. He hadn’t really been the same since his eldest son, Jacob, had died from a heroin overdose in 1977. Jacob, once a promising basketball player, had come back from Vietnam in a wheelchair after he’d taken a bullet in his lower spine. He’d been in near constant pain, which he’d used increasingly large doses of street heroin to quell.

  ‘Any pugs I should be watching out for?’ Max asked.

  ‘Some.’ Abe cast his eyes around the gym, where about twenty fighters from their teens to their early twenties were going through their paces. ‘These kids comin’ up now, they ain’t hungry like they used to be. That do-or-die drive just ain’t there no more. They want the victory and the rewards that go with it, but they just don’t wanna run to the finish line. They wanna drive there instead–preferably in the back.’

  Eldon came round the side of the ring, wiping his face with a towel.

  ‘Don’t be a stranger.’ Abe took his cue with a nod to Max, and then slipped under the ropes and walked over to observe a fighter putting combinations together on the heavybag.

  ‘What’ve you got?’ Eldon asked. They never talked business on the phone, unless it was above board.

  Max told him about Octavio Grossfeld, stressing the German parentage and Lehder’s Nazi sympathies.

  ‘Good. Very good. That’s my boy. We’ll just have to amp the Nazi angle and the kikes’ll have a field day. Reagan’ll love us for this. I can see those headlines now: “Drugs–the new Holocaust”.’ Eldon smiled broadly and gave Max a one-armed hug. Great drops of sweat broke out on his forehead and cascaded down his face, lingering off the edges of his chin and jaw and nose like big transparent warts before falling and splattering to the ground. His T-shirt was soaked through and he was giving off the acrid and slightly sulphurous smell of people who eat too much protein.

  ‘Bring Grossfeld in the day after tomorrow. Early morning. Plant if you have to,’ he said.

  ‘OK.’ Max made to go but caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye that made him stop and turn to his right where the speedbags were. A young black boy in grey sweats, around eight or nine, was standing on a chair, hitting methodically, left fist to right. ‘Who’s that?’ Max said.

  ‘I was just about to introduce the two of you.’ Eldon beamed, then turned the boy’s way. ‘Frankie!’

  The boy stopped what he was doing, jumped off his chair and came running over. He was a cute-looking little kid, Max thought, with a skinny face and large eyes that were both innocent and very sharp, as if he was already living on his wits.

  ‘This here is Frankie Lafayette,’ Eldon said, putting his wet hand over the boy’s shoulder and shaking it playfully. ‘Found him here a month ago.’

  ‘You hit him in the face?’ Max asked the kid. Frankie didn’t reply, just looked up at Eldon.

  ‘His English ain’t so good yet. Abe found him here one Monday morning, sleeping in the ring. He walked in one day and hid out until everyone’d gone.’

  ‘Where are his parents?’

  ‘Who knows? He says they’re back home in Haiti. He came over here on a boat. Illegals. They’re comin’ here all the time, just like the Cubans. He’s a natural. God knows what he’ll do; how far he’ll go.’ Eldon looked down at Frankie, smiling. Frankie smiled back. ‘I’m seriously thinking of adopting the little bastard.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Becoming his legal guardian. He ain’t got anyone else,’ Eldon said.

  ‘How does Lexi feel?’ Lexi was Eldon’s wife.

  ‘She’s thrilled. You know, we never had boys, so it’ll be a change. Plus the girls are all growing up fast, so it’ll be good for her.’

  Max wanted to ask Eldon what would happen if it turned out that Frankie didn’t want to box. What would he do then? Dump him in the sea and tell him to swim back home? But he didn’t want to jinx the kid’s future, or say anything bad around him, even if he wouldn’t be able to understand. The kid was entitled to keep however much of his innocence a place like Haiti had left him with. And he seemed happy enough with Eldon.

  ‘You know what, Max? Frankie here reminds me of you, the way you were. All that natural aggression, all that raw talent just waiting to get shaped and directed,’ Eldon said, his big flushed face slippery and shiny with sweat, his smile dazzling in its cosmetic whiteness.

  Max remembered his past life, here in the gym, all that optimism for the future, the great things he was going to do, the titles he was going to fight for and unify and he felt a little sick for everything he’d lost and missed out on, and for where those failed dreams had led him. And suddenly he feared for Frankie and what would become of him if he didn’t live up to his brightest hopes. Would he too become a cop who drank too much, slept too little and really couldn’t remember when exactly he’d crossed the line?

  ‘You know how to pick ’em, Eldon,’ he said wearily, a little sarcasm trickling into his tone.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Eldon replied with a laugh, ‘look at you.’

  19

  Max got back to MTF an hour later, tired as hell. The benzedrine had worn off. His tongue felt like galvanized rubber, there was a coppery taste in his mouth, dull aches in his arms and legs, and a hangover waiting to drop on his head from an almighty height. He looked forward to going home and crashing.

  He started heading towards his desk and saw Joe sitting there, thick arms folded across his big broad chest, looking right at him with an almightily pissed-off expression.

  ‘You said an hour. It’s been four.’ Joe glared at him when he sat down. There were plenty of people in the office. Alex Teixeira, who sat nearest to them, was eating lunch off a yellow styrofoam plate–black beans in thick sauce, white rice, fried sweet plantain and avocado. He never touched meat but always denied being a vegetarian.

  ‘Got a break on the Moyez case. Had to run with it.’ Max sat down, opened his top drawer and pretended to rummage for something so he wouldn’t have to meet Joe’s eye.

  ‘Oh yeah? You find the perp at the Well? What’s his name? Jack Daniels?’ Joe sneered.

  ‘I ran a check on this guy, Octavio Grossfeld…’Max began, then stopped when he realized the absurdity of what was about to come out of his mouth: that he’d been looking through the Comic Book and somehow found the perp right there, between the pages; that he’d then, on a hunch, rung Pete Obregón up and, lo and behold, he happened to have a mule in custody who said she was working for the suspect; and then he’d have to try and get Joe to believe him. Here they schooled you to lie to everyone but each other. That you chose to do on your own. ‘Can we get a drink?’ he said instead.

  ‘No. No more drinks for you. You’ve had enough.’ Joe shook his head. ‘What you need is Cuban coffee, food and aspirin to get yourself right. Then we’ll talk.’

  ‘You know, the first time we got one of thes
e cases, ones that seemed to just solve themselves–the Jerome Perabo case? I wondered about that one for the longest time. I mean that lead come out of nowhere, right? As good as if it fell right out of a tree–knowhumsayin’?’ Joe wiped his mouth after he’d finished eating. They were in Calle Ocho, Little Havana’s main drag, in a small restaurant right opposite Maximo Gomez Park, where the old men played dominoes, smoked cigars, reminisced about the good old days and bitched about that singao Castro. Joe had ordered everything in Spanish. He’d gone for shrimp tortillas and fresh orange juice, while Max had opted for a deluxe Cuban sandwich–half a pressed and toasted baguette with spicy roasted pork, ham, melted Swiss cheese, dill pickles and mustard–delicious, but he’d only managed to eat one bite of it before he’d felt full. The dexedrine had killed his appetite for anything other than liquid and cigarettes. He downed his sweet, thick Cuban coffee and ordered another.

  And there was another reason he couldn’t eat: Joe was talking about the very first Turd Fairy mission they’d done–the first time Eldon had asked Max to find a patsy to fit up for a headline-grabbing case and make it stick. They’d never discussed the case before.

  Thursday 26 May 1977, St Alban’s primary school, Coral Gables. As the children were going home someone started shooting at them. Two fifth-grade girls were killed immediately and seven others, including two teachers, badly wounded. Three died from their injuries within days, among them Anthony Tabrizi, the nephew of a New York mobster Aniello Pastore, a high-ranking member of the Gambino family. The two girls, Norma Hughes and Charlotte Mazursky, were best friends who always sat together in every class. The gunman got away. Witnesses reported seeing a blue Eldorado speeding from the scene. A burnt-out blue Eldorado was later found in a stretch of wasteland near Overtown. The car was traced and found to have been bought from a second-hand dealership in Atlanta. Not that any of this ever came out because that wasn’t the direction the investigation went in. Eldon had had other ideas.

  ‘Jerome Perabo, out of town mob trigger man.’ Joe shook his head with a smile. ‘Man, I never told you this at the time, but I really wondered about that one. Kept me up nights. How could someone like him get so careless? Remember what we found when we tossed his house?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Max lit a cigarette for something to do to distract his mounting nervousness. Where was Joe going with this? ‘A pistol with his prints on it. The pistol had been used in a hit on Ángel Quisqueya, who owned all that beach-front land in Miami Beach. Perabo’s prints matched a shell casing from an M1 carbine we found in some bushes opposite the school.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that whole picture?’ Joe asked.

  Max shrugged. The waitress set down his coffee.

  ‘Trichloroacetic acid,’ Joe said. ‘As in the shit they use in face peels. We found three big bottles of that in Perabo’s pad. Perabo was a real meticulous motherfucker. He’d been doing hits since he could crawl. He used the acid to peel the skin off his hands, get rid of gun residue.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I asked him.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last year. I went to see him in prison. A little off the record chit-chat.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I needed answers,’ Joe said. ‘Like how it was that someone who went to the trouble of burning off his skin would leave a shell casing with his prints on it at a murder scene. And don’t even get me started on the pistol. A nickel-plated Colt. Mingus, that’s a born-to-lose stickup kid’s gun! All shiny and flash. Perabo would never have used shit like that in a hit. Too visible. And no way in hell would he have held on to it. Professional hitmen always lose their pieces.’ ‘So what d’he tell you in prison? That he was innocent?’ Max laughed and took a sip of coffee.

  ‘Of killing those school kids? Yeah.’

  ‘And you believed him?’ Max did his best to appear casually amused, but he couldn’t pull it off. His stomach was tightening.

  ‘What Perabo told me was the day he was meant to have killed them kids, he was really out smokin’ some mob rat in Fort Lauderdale. Guy called Vinnie Ferrara.’

  ‘So?’ Max finished his cigarette and crushed it out on the ashtray, which had Castro’s face on it. ‘Doesn’t prove he didn’t do the Coral Gables shooting. He could’ve killed Ferrara too,’ Max said.

  Joe shook his head.

  ‘I believed him. He didn’t do it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘’Cause I never believed you. You found an asthma inhaler in the bushes, remember? You had a cast made of the footprint too.

  ‘I didn’t say nothin’ at the time. I thought maybe someone else found the bullet. But you told me to leave out the inhaler and the blue Eldorado. Said they were “irrelevant”. You already had Perabo in the frame for this. It all had something to do with them South Beach hotel developments. Gave the city an excuse to investigate them, and we all know what got found.’

  Max put another cigarette in his mouth but fumbled trying to light it with his brass Zippo.

  ‘It wasn’t Perabo I was interested in. One way or another he gets the chair. But I want you to tell me what happened to the real perp.’ Joe took the Zippo off him, lit Max’s cigarette and snapped the lighter shut.

  Right then Max felt like one of those cartoon characters who unknowingly sprint off the edge of a cliff, spend a few seconds treading thin air before realizing where they are, and then plummet to their own destruction surprised and suddenly very stupid.

  ‘Why do you wanna know now, Joe?’

  ‘You think I’m Stevie Wonder, Max? Think I need Braille to read what’s going on, huh?’ Joe leant over the table, just like he did with suspects, when he got in their faces to intimidate them. He had sweat in the creases of his brow. ‘Which part of Alaska’s Eldon transferring me to?’

  ‘Shit! How did you know?’

  ‘NSP–Nigger Sensory Perception. Works every time.’ Joe eyeballed Max. ‘You weren’t planning on tellin’ me, were you?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I…’

  Joe cut him off with a wave of the hand and sat back. ‘I understand. It ain’t your call. Eldon’s never liked me. Way it is everywhere. Doesn’t matter how good you are at your job, if your face don’t fit no way are you going anywhere. Where’s he puttin’ me?’

  ‘Public Relations.’

  ‘I s’pose it beats Traffic.’

  ‘I tried to talk him out of it.’

  ‘I’m sure you did, Max. You shoulda gone and talked to the wall instead. He tell you when?’

  ‘Once we wrap up this Moyez thing.’

  ‘As I thought.’ Joe nodded. ‘Go out in a blaze of good publicity.’

  ‘Eldon says there’s gonna be big changes in the force. Give it a year or two and you’ll be back on Homicide.’

  ‘Bullshit and you know it, Max. I ain’t goin’ anywhere he doesn’t want me to go. I predict that within two years they’ll have brought all the different Miami police departments under one big roof, with Eldon sitting on top running things. That’s going to be his trade-off for doing the Turd Fairy’s bidding.’

  Max didn’t know what to say. Joe was right. Eldon had often talked about how he’d reform the police force, turn it into the Southern equivalent of the LAPD, with specific units tackling the city’s biggest problems–cocaine and money laundering. And MTF was his pilot, the trailer for the big picture.

  ‘Now. Back to Perabo,’ Joe said. ‘You killed the real perp didn’t you?’

  Tanner Bradley. White male, forty-six years of age, five feet ten inches, 217 pounds. Taught English and gymnastics at St Alban’s Primary. Taught Norma Hughes and Charlotte Mazursky. He’d been there for two years. His pupils all loved him. Felt he was their big brother, their best buddy. They had a nickname for him, ‘Tan Your Hide Bradley’, but it was meant affectionately. He was well-respected by his colleagues–always on time, always willing to help out in after-school activities, but, they all said after he disappeared, something of a loner. None of them really felt they knew hi
m.

  And they were right about that. If the school had bothered to cross-check his references it would have found them to be bogus. Tanner Bradley hadn’t spent the last ten years as a teacher in Hawaii and LA, like it said on his resumé. He’d worked as a caretaker in an orphanage. He’d molested five girls in his care. He liked them blonde.

  Norma and Charlotte were blonde.

  That’s what Max got back when he ran the prints they’d found on the asthma inhaler. Ray ‘Tanner’ Bradley. Got his teaching qualifications in San Quentin–that was when he wasn’t getting assaulted and raped by the inmates. Prison was hell for everyone who didn’t want to be there, but it was double that if you were a kiddie rapist. It was open season on you and everyone was taking their best shot. The guards wouldn’t help–as far as they were concerned, you had it coming.

  The footprint was from a size 12 US Army issue para-trooper boot. You could see the markings quite clearly on the sole. He’d also found a small scrap of olive-coloured fibre in the bushes, which could have come off fatigues. He’d killed the girls because they’d presumably threatened to tell their parents he was molesting them.

  Max had never had time to discuss any of this with Joe because Eldon had called him up to the roof and told him they were going to pin the killings on Perabo and make them stick. When Max tried to complain, Eldon told him the Turd Fairy had visited. He had no choice but to follow orders.

  The Perabo bust went like a dream. They gave him the option of voluntarily putting his prints on the carbine shell and pistol they planted in his apartment, therefore voluntarily fucking himself. When he refused, two MTF officers broke his right wrist and got their evidence anyway. Max and Joe took the credit and got the glory, but all they’d had to do was listen to Perabo calling them criminals for twelve hours straight.