The King of Swords

by Nick Stone

  Frenchie reached down in-between her titties and handed him a thin sweaty roll of green. Thirty bucks. One fuck.

  ‘And whatchu’ got up there in yo’ pussy bag?’ he whispered to her.

  She opened her mouth to protest, but he shut her up.

  ‘Don’t be makin’ me go explorin’ up in there, bitch!’

  She snapped open her cut-off jeans and unclipped the small cloth bag she kept pinned on the inside, under the waistband, and gave it to him.

  He took out the money. Eighty bucks. Two fucks’n’ a suck.

  ‘Take off,’ he told her, tossing the empty bag in her lap.

  She didn’t move. Her lower lip trembled. Damn. Bitch was gonna cry.

  ‘What’s up witchu? You heard me. Time to get busy.’

  ‘I ain’t had nothin’ to eat all day but dick, baby. I need me some bread.’ She sniffed.

  ‘You need bread, huh?’ Carmine looked at her. ‘Then go fuck a baker. Vamos! ’

  She got out the car and he hit the gas, laughing his handsome ass off.

  Shit, he was sharp as a tack too-day.

  ‘Go fuck a baker’–ho, ho, ho!

  Shit, did he just say ‘ho ho ho’?

  Man he was double sharp!

  He spent the rest of the morning collecting from Cards and going to the kind of places he knew Risquée went to–nail parlours, hair salons, boutiques and a few bars she liked to drink rum and Coke in.

  He did the cop thing as good as any Jack Lord or Kojak motherfucker. He’d walk in someplace, go up to someone working there, flash his badge and introduce himself as ‘Officer Bentley, Miami PD’. He’d ask his questions. He’d get headshakes and, ‘No, ain’t seen no one like that.’ It was disappointing and might have been a real unproductive way of spending a day, if it hadn’t been for the vibe he got off the people he was questioning. They all kind of wilted when they saw his badge, got a scared look in their eye, started trembling. These cats–some of them big overgrown stone-cold niggas and bitches with monuments of attitude–were intimidated by little old him and his big shiny shield. He liked the way that felt. He felt good, powerful, running things, badass. Damned if it didn’t even get his dick a little hard. Cops must’ve got that way too, when they started out. All that power over people. Hell, maybe he should’ve been a cop instead of a pimp. Sure, the money was shit if you played it by the book, but there were perks a-plenty in what it did for your manhood and self-esteem.

  He stopped at a hair salon called Proud Heads, on North West 52nd, near Olinda Park.

  Carmine walked inside. A receptionist was opposite the front door, behind her a silhouette of a black woman with a huge afro. The place was full of potentials. Damn! Great late discovery of the day deux: he should be fishin’ in this pussy stream, hittin’ all-a those places only women went. No way would they suspect what he was. Shit, he could even pretend to be some fag needing a manicure or his hair relaxed. Nothin’ some bitches liked more than a fag for a best friend, some guy to go cry over movies and talk lipstick with. It wasn’t zactly too late in the day to change up his plan. Maybe he’d do that at his dude ranch in Nevada. OK, the faggot thing bothered him a lot, but hey, business was business.

  The receptionist looked up from the Ebony magazine she was flipping through. Girl had a plain face, no older than nineteen. Radio was on. The Pointer Sisters singing ‘Betcha Got a Chick on the Side’. He’d always liked that one.

  ‘Good mo’nin’,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Officer Bentley, Miami PD.’ He showed her his badge. ‘Lookin’ for a girl mighta been here. Busted-up face. Goes by the name of Risquée.’

  ‘Risss-kayyy?’ the girl said. ‘Kinda name’s that?’

  ‘Kinda name her momma gave her,’ Carmine said. ‘What name yo’ momma give you?’

  The girl turned around and yelled out over the hairdryers, radio and general chit-chat in the salon.

  ‘Janet! Poh-lice here to see you.’

  Everything stopped a beat in the salon–even the radio, it seemed, though it was still playing–and Carmine felt all eyes turn his way.

  He got an uneasy feeling deep in his gut, but he tightened his jaw and stared back at the chicks.

  A woman came out from the end, drying her hands. She was short, dark, worried-looking.

  ‘This about Timothy?’ she asked.

  ‘No, this ain’t about no Timothy,’ Carmine said. ‘This ’bout somethin’ different.’

  ‘So he’s cool?’

  ‘This ain’t ’bout Timothy. I’m here on different bidniss.’

  She frowned and looked at him in a new way that made him uneasy, like she was trying to work out something about him.

  ‘What bizzz-ness?’ She pronounced it slowly and carefully, taking Carmine in from his shoes to his hair. Bitch musta been one of them mommas beat their kids over table manners and shit. No wonder Timothy was givin’ her problems. Those who got treated the harshest rebelled the hardest, Carmine remembered sumshit he’d heard on TV or the radio or read on a wall somewhere.

  ‘I’m lookin’ for a girl mighta come in here. Had a busted-up mouth.’

  ‘Her mouth busted-up she’d need a dentist not a hairdresser.’

  ‘Yeah, I hear that,’ Carmine said. The bitch was standing there with hands on her hips. Hips were wide too. He knew tricks who liked that shit though. ‘Only she mighta come by get her hair done after her mouth got patched up, you know? Make herself feel better.’

  ‘You got a picture?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You a cop lookin’ for someone and you ain’t got a picture?’

  Damn! He swore this Janet knew he wasn’t for real.

  ‘What does she look like–apart from the mouth?’

  ‘She about your height, slimmer, built.’

  She scowled at him angrily now. Damn! Musta been conscious ’bout her weight too. One of them bitches ate when she had problems. He smiled, did the nice one all bitches with kids told him was sweet. Made her madder. She musta thought he was laughing at her.

  This was going real wrong.

  ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Officer Bentley.’ He held out his badge. She took it from him.

  ‘Badge says Detective.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You ain’t an Officer if you’re a Detective.’ She pointed at the shield.

  ‘Oh, right, yeah, see I just got promoted. Still gettin’ my head around the title.’ He smiled, but he was nervous as a motherfucker, heart beating crazy voodoo all up in his chest.

  ‘Shaniqua?!!’ Janet hollered out over her shoulder. ‘I need you up here a second.’

  Gottdayum if Shaniqua wasn’t a straight up Diamond. Tall, long legs, café with a little au lait in her complexion, short hair. Black jeans and a blouse tied in a knot over her bare flat middle.

  Janet talked to Shaniqua in a whisper. The receptionist was listening in and kept on looking over at him, smiling more and more. Shaniqua was looking at him too, looking harder at his face.

  Carmine started to sweat, hairline leaking and running to his jaw. Time to go, time to go, he thought, but he couldn’t make himself move. Couldn’t do nothing. The fuck was wrong with him. The fuck was wrong with this?

  The receptionist looked straight at him squirming in his shitty wingtips and giggled.

  ‘I do somethin’ to make you ha ha?’ he said aggressively.

  The receptionist was going to answer when hotass Shaniqua spoke to him, ‘You after Risquée?’

  ‘You know where she at?’

  ‘You know a virgin called Mary?’ Shaniqua answered. She had a deep voice, close to a man’s imitating a woman. ‘Tell me.’ ‘Pay me.’ ‘What?’ ‘Pay me.’ Shaniqua came up to him, hand out. Damn! ‘How I know we talkin’ ’bout the same Risquée?’

  ‘We are. Now pay me.’

  OK, defuse. Cops paid snitches all the time.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two hundred.�
�

  ‘Two hunnret? How ’bout I give you one?’

  ‘How ’bout you kiss my black ass?’

  ‘I know men pay good money to do just that.’ Carmine smiled. She got angry. ‘OK, OK. Be cool. I’ll pay you.’ Carmine turned his back on her and took out his roll. Peeled off four fifties, turned back and held them up folded between his fingers.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Uh-uh.’ She held her hand out, rubbing her fingers together. ‘You pay to play.’

  ‘You a slot machine?’ He handed her the money, which she took and passed to the receptionist. He noticed Janet had disappeared.

  He looked for her in the salon. He saw her at the end, talking to a man sitting in a chair with a towel around his shoulders.

  The man looked over in his direction, took off the towel, got out of the chair and started walking up.

  The man was tall and black.

  The man was a cop in uniform.

  Shit!

  ‘I help you, sir?’ the cop said to Carmine.

  ‘No, I was…’

  ‘Impersonatin’ a police officer?’ the cop said. He was holding Carmine’s badge. How the fuck did he get that? Shit! He’d handed it to Janet.

  ‘This is as phoney as a three-dollar bill. And you are under–’

  Carmine noticed the cop wasn’t wearing his gun belt.

  The cop reached out to grab him, but Carmine took a step back and pulled out his piece. The receptionist screamed.

  ‘ID’s fake. This ain’t. Now back the fuck up!’ He pointed the gun at the cop’s chest.

  The cop didn’t move.

  ‘I ain’t playin’!’ He cocked the gun, but his hand was shaking.

  ‘Do like he says, Timothy!’ Janet pleaded behind him.

  The cop moved back a step.

  ‘Hey–all the way!’ Carmine said. The cop didn’t look scared, but the bitches did. That turned him on a little.

  ‘Toss me that ID.’

  The cop flicked it at him.

  The gold glint of the badge caught his eye.

  Next thing he knew the cop had grabbed his gun arm and was twisting it like he wanted to snap it.

  Carmine pulled the trigger.

  The cop screamed loudly and fell flat on his back. There were screams all over the salon. The bitches got down on the ground.

  There was blood on the floor and a hole in the cop’s foot where the bullet had hit. The sole of his shoe looked like a dripping red rose, the leather splayed and twisted in a whorl, blood was pumping out of the hole in the middle.

  The cop wasn’t holding his foot though; he was shaking, going into convulsions.

  Carmine grabbed the ID and ran out of the salon.

  35

  ‘You want to tell me what’s behind the long face?’ Sandra asked Max.

  ‘Work,’ he said.

  ‘I figured that. You want to tell me about it?’

  Max shook his head. It was the day after he and Joe had been to Ruth Cajuste’s house. He hadn’t stopped thinking about the way Neptune and Crystal’s fingers were intertwined. He’d heard the paramedics had had to use a saw to separate them.

  They were sitting in Dino’s off Flagler, a diner with tables outside and two long rows of wide booths with crimson leather seats inside. There were pictures and posters of Dean Martin through the ages on the wall, from young drunk to old drunk, comedian to cowboy to crooner, and a working Wurlitzer jukebox filled with his records.

  Sandra was eating a flaked tuna-steak sandwich on rye with fresh orange juice. Max hadn’t been able to eat anything since the previous day, so he was sticking to cigarettes and coffee.

  ‘Not even a general idea?’

  ‘You really don’t wanna know, Sandra. Trust me,’ he said, nodding to her food.

  She pushed her plate aside. ‘What if I do?’

  ‘I’m still not gonna tell you,’ he said, but he wished he could talk to her. She looked and sounded like she wanted to know, and her big, steady, attentive eyes showed she was a natural listener; the sort who thought about what the speaker was saying instead of waiting to speak herself, the sort who never missed a thing.

  ‘Is this the way it is with cops? Silence over dialogue?’

  ‘I guess, some, yeah. We got a way higher than national average divorce rate in the force.’

  ‘And you think that’s an OK way to be?’

  ‘No, but that’s the way it is.’

  ‘Pretty vacant,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t argue with that.’ He shrugged.

  ‘You ever talk about your work to any of your exes?’

  ‘No, never. I figured if I did they wouldn’t wanna be around me.’

  ‘Looks like they didn’t anyway,’ Sandra said.

  ‘You’re funny.’ Max smiled.

  ‘I have my moments.’ She winked mischievously, which made him laugh. He was glad she’d called him earlier that morning and glad he’d come out to meet her. Even though he hadn’t been in the mood for small talk and the polite pretences of fledgling courtship, this was turning into their easiest and most relaxed meeting so far. His guard was down and he was letting her take a look at him as he really was instead of throwing up diversions and detours.

  Sandra was in her office clothes: a short-sleeved pale blue blouse, undone at the neck, a brown knee-length pinstriped skirt and brown high-heeled shoes with rows of small blue flowers on the sides. She wore a thin white-gold chain around her neck and small white-gold crucifix earrings. It was a conservative look, but a stylish one too, and, judging from the shoes, Max thought, one she’d tweaked to suit her more than her superiors. She was wearing very little make-up, but still looked stunning. In fact, she seemed to get more beautiful every time he saw her.

  ‘There, see, you’ve lightened up. You know a person uses less muscles smiling than frowning.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘That’s what I read.’

  ‘You read a lot?’

  ‘Yeah, I do. I’m one of those people who, when they get interested in something go out and find out everything there is to know about it. Do you read at all?’

  ‘No. Well, outside police stuff and the papers, I don’t get a lot of time, you know. Besides books ain’t really my kind of thing, tell you the truth.’

  ‘So, d’you follow sports?’

  ‘I ain’t a ball games kinda guy, but I keep up with boxing. I told you I used to box, right?’

  ‘Yeah, I looked you up.’

  ‘No shit?’

  ‘No shit.’ She smiled, and told him his entire Golden Gloves record, significant titles he’d won and the dates of his first and last fights. He was impressed.

  ‘You like boxing?’ he asked.

  ‘Not much. But I’ve seen Rocky and Rocky 2.’

  ‘That wasn’t boxing, that was ballet.’

  ‘What about Raging Bull? Did you see that?’

  ‘Nah.’ Max shook his head. He’d heard about it but hadn’t been curious enough to check it out. ‘That’s the one where De Niro got himself all fat for the part, right?’

  ‘It’s a great movie. Sad and disturbing.’

  ‘You should see a real fight,’ Max said. ‘They’re always sad and disturbing–for the loser.’

  ‘Would you take me to one?’

  ‘Any time.’ He smiled, realizing he had an opening, the perfect opportunity to ask her out on a proper date.

  But before he could suggest anything, she looked at her watch.

  ‘I’ve gotta go,’ she said.

  ‘Too bad,’ Max said. ‘We never give each other enough time, do we?’

  She looked at him and held his stare. Some women he’d gone out with had told him they couldn’t handle the look in his eyes, which they’d said, was somewhere between piercing and accusing and something like getting a light shone into their souls. He’d made them feel like they’d done something wrong. Cop’s eyes, in short. Sandra didn’t seem to have that problem.

  ‘When do you finish toda
y?’

  ‘’Bout six.’

  ‘You got any plans for the evening?’

  Sure, Max thought. Going back to the garage and talking things through with Joe–zombies, missing babies and a guy called Solomon–and asking himself where this investigation of theirs was going, and how long they could hope to keep it a secret.

  ‘Want to get a drink? You look like you could use one,’ she suggested.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘I know a great spot–great drinks, great food, great music.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Little Havana, real close to mi casa.’

  L’Alegría on South West 11th Avenue was a bar-restaurant with a nightclub downstairs. Max had driven past it many times but had never gone in, hadn’t even been tempted. The outside looked unprepossessing, the kind of place which probably framed its health code violations in the kitchen. But the interior proved far classier–dark wood floorboards, tables draped with spotless white tablecloths, laid out with sparkling silverware, napkins in rings and, in the middle, a blue or orange lantern.

  He let Sandra do the talking and asked the kind of questions which prompted her to give long answers. She gave him the Passnotes guide to what she did. She talked about her office, about her bosses and co-workers, the different clique, and their power plays. She told him about how she was going to have to fire someone in her team soon and how she was dreading it. Max thought about Joe. Then he thought about Tanner Bradley and how he hadn’t wanted to kill him. Then he chased the image away by looking over at a couple sitting, as they were, side by side at a table, holding hands, but he saw again Neptune and Crystal’s final frozen clasp.

  Sandra noticed the change in his face.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked him.

  ‘I’m good,’ he lied. ‘You?’

  ‘Do you dance?’

  ‘Like a gringo,’ he said.

  ‘Racist!’ She laughed.

  They went down to the club. It was very dark and packed solid with moving bodies, everyone doing that damn Casino Dance to that damn saldisco music. Max rolled his eyes and shook his head. Sandra grabbed his hand and tried to teach him some moves, but he could barely master more than the initial steps and was drunker than he’d realized, because he quickly forgot what he was supposed to be doing and had to start all over again.