The King of Swords

by Nick Stone

  ‘You’re right,’ she yelled over the galloping bass and ear-shredding horns coming out of the speakers. ‘You do dance like a gringo.’

  Then the music slowed as the DJ spun a Spanish-language ballad which reminded him of Julio Iglesias, like every Latin crooner did. Sandra draped her arms around him and pulled him into her and they began to dance together, close, body to body, eyes locked. He felt the heat of her on his skin as they moved–her gracefully, him swaying in lugubrious time. She held him by the neck and stroked his nape and smiled. He held her loosely by the waist, telling his hands to keep off her ass. It would have been the perfect moment for a kiss, but as he started to lean towards her the DJ turned up the beat and another saldisco classic announced itself with a shriek of horns and gate-crashed their moment like a drunken relative desperate for attention.

  ‘You wanna get out of here?’ she offered.

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  Sandra lived in a two-bedroom condo in the pink and blue San Roman building on South West 9th Street. It was the tidiest place Max had ever been in. She paid a cleaner to keep it that way.

  They went into her living room, which was painted and carpeted in beige and smelled faintly of incense and peppermint. The right-hand wall was lined with books; atlases and encyclopedias on the top shelf, travel guides, biographies and history books on the next two down, and the rest was given over to fiction. On the other walls were a large map of Cuba and a painting of two women and some kind of upside-down fish, which Max thought so amateurish he assumed it was something she’d done in tenth grade art class.

  Sandra went out to the kitchen to make coffee and told him to put on some music.

  Max flicked through her albums. There was a lot of Latin music, none of which he knew, and some classical stuff, which he didn’t know either, but she had Diana Ross’s Chic-produced Diana, plus Bad Girls, Innervisions, Songs in the Key of Life, Let’s Get It On, some Bill Withers and Grover Washington records, Barry White’s Greatest Hits…

  She came back in, carrying two white mugs on a tray. She’d changed into faded jeans and a baggy white T-shirt, which made her skin seem a shade darker.

  ‘Probably not your kind of music, huh?’ she said, setting the tray down on a table opposite the couch.

  ‘What do you think I’m into?’

  ‘Gringo music: Springsteen, Zeppelin, the Stones–stuff like that?’

  ‘Nah. And don’t ever talk to me about Brucey baby. My partner’s in love with him, plays that shit all the time. Drives me nuts. You got any Miles? Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain?’

  ‘I forgot. Your jazz genes. No, sorry, I don’t. Do you think I should?’

  ‘Everyone who likes music should have at least one Miles Davis album in their collection. Better still, ten,’ Max said. ‘And, seein’ as you’re into Grover, you should be lookin’ into John Coltrane too. People say Charlie Parker was the corner stone of jazz, but nearly everyone who’s ever picked up a sax from ’65 onwards sounds more like ’Trane.’

  He carried on looking. He found just what he wanted at the end–Al Green’s Greatest Hits.

  ‘This OK?’ He held up the sleeve.

  ‘The Reverend Al? Sure.’

  Max went over and sat next to her on the sofa as ‘Let’s Stay Together’ kicked in. They looked at each other for a moment and there was silence between them, not the kind of uncomfortable, embarrassing void that opens up between people who’ve run out of ways to hide the fact that they have nothing to say, but a natural pause in dialogue.

  Max looked at the painting behind her.

  ‘You do that at school?’

  ‘I wish,’ she said, turning around. ‘It’s El Balcón–The Balcony–by Amelia Peláez. She was an avant garde Cuban artist. She was famous in her homeland for murals.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Max said, ‘I don’t know too much about art.’

  ‘It’s all right. At least you don’t pretend to.’

  Max heard a hint of recrimination in her voice and guessed then she’d been lied to by someone close to her, maybe a boyfriend who’d cheated on her or had led her on pretending to be something he wasn’t–in other words, by someone a little like him.

  Although they were sitting real close on her couch in the dead of night, there was an element of the forbidding about her. He decided to hold back, be the passenger, take everything at her pace. He sensed that was the way she wanted things and that was fine by him.

  ‘Do you remember all the cases you worked?’ Sandra asked, putting down her cup on the table.

  ‘Sure.’ Max nodded.

  ‘Raffaela Smalls?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He sighed. ‘That poor poor kid.’

  It had been in 1975. A black, twelve-year-old girl, fished out of the Miami River, naked, arms and feet bound, a bag over her head. She’d been raped and then hung.

  ‘Don’t tell me you looked all my cases up too? Same way you did my boxin’.’

  ‘Sort of. I remember when it happened,’ she said. ‘I remembered your name coming up and thinking you were black on account of it.’

  ‘It’s a common misconception,’ Max said.

  ‘You never gave up on that case, did you?’

  ‘Took two and a half years, yeah.’

  ‘That’s unusual in this city, in this state, a white cop being that dedicated to solving a black kid’s murder.’

  ‘I was just doin’ my job. Me and Joe got handed the case. Me and Joe solved it. There’s criminals, there’s crime, and we’re cops. We do what we do. That’s all there was to it.’

  ‘The family said how nice you were to them, how you promised to catch the guy.’

  ‘They were decent people who’d had a child taken away. Ain’t no black and white in that, Sandra. Just right and wrong. They deserved justice, and they got it.’

  ‘Her uncle did it.’

  ‘Piece of shit called Levi Simmons.’

  ‘He claimed you and your partner roughed him up bad.’

  ‘He also claimed he didn’t do it.’

  ‘He looked pretty beat up in his mugshots.’

  Max didn’t say anything.

  ‘Did you rough him up?’

  ‘He tried to make a move,’ Max lied. ‘We stopped him.’

  ‘Innocent till proven guilty,’ Sandra said.

  ‘He was makin’ a move,’ Max insisted, looking her right in the eye, just as he had Simmons’ defence lawyer in court when he’d thrown up the same accusation. ‘We did what we had to do in the circumstances.’ Max needed a break from examining his career history. ‘Can I go and smoke on your balcony?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  She came outside with him. The air was still warm, and a limpid breeze shook the leaves of nearby trees. She didn’t have much of a view–more apartment buildings, mostly dark, directly opposite–and then Calle Ocho behind, almost deserted. It was still way quieter than Ocean Drive, where no one ever seemed to sleep if there was an argument to be had or a fight to be fought.

  ‘You know, every day when I leave my home I know there’s some poor bastard doin’ the same thing, only they won’t be comin’ back,’ Max said. ‘They’ll get caught in crossfire between rival posses of cocaine cowboys, or else some young kid’ll roll up on ’em and blast ’em just to watch ’em fly in the air. That’s the way it’s gettin’ around here now–thrill kills, killing for kicks and braggin’ rights. And that’s a family they’ve left behind who’ll look to me for answers, who’ll look to me to put things right. And that’s my job. What I signed up for. Makin’ things right.

  ‘I know I ain’t ever gonna make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. I’m past that rookie idealism. Crime goes up, not down. Guns get bigger, more powerful, hold more bullets, kill more people. But in the end, if I can bring a little peace of mind to some dead person’s wife or husband, if their kids can grow up knowing that the scumbag who killed their mommy or daddy’s dead or in jail for life, then it’s worth it. And that’s what keeps me goin’, n
o matter how jaded I sometimes get. That’s what keeps me goin’ every second of every day.’

  She didn’t say anything. She just moved a little closer to him and leant her head on his shoulder and they stood there together in silence while he finished his cigarette.

  They went back inside and carried on talking. Personal stuff, trivial stuff. They joked and laughed a lot. With Sandra, Max felt happier and more relaxed and comfortable than he’d been since he could remember.

  And then she asked him what had been bugging him over lunch.

  He thought about it for a second, how he’d never brought his job into his private life, how he’d refused to talk about any of it with any of the women he’d been involved with. He’d kept it to himself and in the end it was all they’d left him with–the stuff that never got mentioned. He decided then that more than anything, he wanted Sandra in his life and he wanted her to stay.

  ‘Yesterday me and Joe got a call about a multiple homicide in Overtown. Whole family had been shot. Six bodies. But there was this young couple, boyfriend and girlfriend. They were holding hands. And from the way they were, I could see the girl had got shot first and the guy had lain down right next to her and taken hold of her hand. And that’s how he died.’

  ‘He couldn’t live without her,’ Sandra said.

  ‘That’s what I thought too. He musta really loved her. Literally the love of his life. And I also thought–’ but he stopped talking, realizing how sick the words he was about to say might sound.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t wanna know’.

  ‘Max,’ Sandra took his hand, ‘we’re both adults and we both know what’s happening here. If we’re gonna have any kind of relationship it’s got to be about sharing and honesty and openness. You’ll tell me about your day, I’ll tell you about mine. I don’t want you keeping anything from me.’

  ‘My part’s gonna be difficult, Sandra.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s things about me you’d be best off not knowing.’

  ‘Past stuff?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Max nodded.

  ‘You a dirty cop?’

  ‘I don’t think I am. But I’ve gone through bad to get to good. Sometimes you have to in this job. Sometimes you got no choice. Well, you do. You can walk away. But I ain’t the kind that walks away.’

  ‘I figured that,’ she said.

  ‘OK.’ He took a deep breath, as though he was getting ready for a high dive into a bottomless pool. ‘I’ll tell you what I thought when I saw that couple. I thought that coulda been you and me down there. That I woulda done the same as the guy.’

  ‘That’s a sweet thought,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a sick thought,’ he corrected her.

  ‘It’s a bit gothic, I agree.’ She smiled. ‘And you barely know me.’

  ‘Cop’s instinct,’ he said.

  ‘I thought that just worked on bad guys.’

  ‘When I’m off-duty it works the other way.’

  She laughed and put her arms around him. They hugged and then they kissed.

  ‘You taste like an ashtray.’

  ‘Who told you to lick ’em?’

  She burst out laughing. Her laughter filled the room and drowned out the music. Her laughter made him laugh too.

  When they’d recovered she leant her head against his shoulder and took his hand. They stayed there like that, staring into space together. The music stopped without them noticing.

  He realized she’d dozed off. He listened to her breathing in his ear, felt her gently rise and fall against his arm. He smelled her hair and his nose filled with faint traces of perfume and coconut.

  At around 4 a.m. he fell asleep himself.

  36

  When he woke up two hours later he heard the shower going. After she was done she made them both breakfast of tostada and café con leche, which they ate at the living-room table. Max imagined every day being like this with her.

  An hour later they walked back to where they’d parked their cars on South West 8th. They’d exchanged numbers. Max wanted to see her again that same night, but he knew he couldn’t because he’d lost time on the Moyez case.

  Before they parted she kissed him on the lips. Like the first time, he watched her pull away before getting into his car. And like the first time, he had the same stupid smile on his face.

  He had an hour or two before he was due to punch in. He thought of going over to the garage, but he needed a shower and a change of clothes and he wanted to stay in this special moment and savour it for a while longer.

  As he headed down Calle Ocho he turned on the radio and got the news. A cop had been killed in Overtown the day before. Police were looking for a tall, light-skinned black man in a white Crown Victoria.

  Back at his apartment, Max had just finished getting dressed when the phone rang. It was Raquel.

  ‘That sample you gave me yesterday. We located our mystery bean.’

  ‘Shoot,’ Max said, ri?ing through his notepad for a clean page.

  ‘It’s a calabar bean.’ She spelled it for him. ‘Two uses: one good, one bad. It produces an alkaloid called physostigmine, which is used to treat glaucoma and is found in over-the-counter eyedrops.

  ‘The bean on its own is highly toxic. It was used to expose those suspected of witchcraft, when it was commonly known as the Ordeal Bean. The person under suspicion would be forced to eat half a bean. If the person vomited, he or she was deemed to be innocent because their bodies had rejected it. If the person died then they were guilty. Most people died.

  ‘The bean depresses the nervous system and causes muscular weakness. It slows the pulse to a crawl but increases blood pressure too.’

  ‘How long does a person live after they’ve swallowed one?’ Max asked.

  ‘One, two hours at the most, depending on the person and the dose.’

  Max thought about this for a moment. Lacour and Assad had killed people in different places and at different times.

  ‘Is there an antidote?’ Max asked.

  ‘I was getting to that,’ Raquel said. ‘We found traces of atropine in the shooter’s bladder. Atropine’s an alkaloid derived from belladonna–deadly nightshade. It counteracts the effects of physostigmine. But, as it was in the bladder, I think he got the antidote some time before he stepped into that courtroom.’

  ‘How long before?’

  ‘Atropine takes a while for the body to completely eliminate. Again, it depends on the person. Three to six weeks.’

  Max understood what had happened. After his trial run of murders in Overtown, Assad had been given atropine to keep him alive for the main event.

  ‘I’ll tell you this,’ Raquel said. ‘The levels of physostigmine in the shooter’s liver were so high, he was basically a dead man walking before a bullet ever hit him.’

  37

  ‘Solomon? That all you got?’ Trish Estevez asked Joe.

  ‘Yeah. That’s all I got. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t apologize to me. You’re the one who’s gonna have to do the work.’

  Trish was the Miami PD’s computer database manager. She’d started out in dispatch in 1967 and then taken computer classes in the evening and gone on to become an expert in the things before they were introduced into the department in 1971, when next to no one knew how to use them. Now she had two people working for her, who she’d trained from scratch. They were transferring all the paper records to floppy disc, an arduous process which would have been easier with more manpower and machines, but the budget was minimal. The dot-matrix printer made up the heart of the computer room. It was about as long and as wide as an upright piano, and stood on two tables which had been pushed together to support it. Trish sat at a desk at the end of the room, watching over her people working at their Compaq machines, each at a desk on either side of the room, near the door, their backs to each other; their fingers hitting the keyboards the only sound. The machines they were working on–VDUs which looked like small portable black
and white TVs–couldn’t help but remind Joe of something archaic, like the set in his parents’ house he and his brothers used to put red or blue strips of plastic over to pretend it was colour, or the small set he’d had in the first apartment he’d lived in when he’d left home.

  ‘Gonna be a big old list. First name, family name, middle name, street name, nick name.’ Trish’s parents had immigrated from Ireland to Boston when she was seven, and a broad brogue still held fast to her accent.

  ‘I’ll start off with first names.’

  ‘Wise choice,’ she said and spun her chair to face the grey wall-to-wall cabinet behind her, where rows of 5¼ and 3½ inch floppy discs were lined up in alphabetical order. The former were housed in cardboard sleeves which made Joe think of the old 10-inch 78s his granddad used to play.

  She took out seven of the bigger discs and fed them into the computer on her desk. The machine purred and made an accelerated clicking sound before a menu came up on the screen. She hit a few keys.

  ‘Seven hundred and fifty-three entries under first name Solomon,’ she said.

  ‘How up to date are they?’

  ‘Last entry was in November.’

  ‘That’ll do,’ said Joe.

  ‘Come back around four for the paper.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You guys could make my life a lot easier if you knew how to use one of these.’

  ‘Then you’d be out of work,’ Joe said.

  ‘That’s why man invented machines.’ Trish smiled.

  In the library, Max went through a botany book until he found what he was looking for: Calabar bean–seed of Physostigma venenosum, a climbing leguminous plant found in West Africa. The seed is half an inch in diameter and of a dark brown colour.

  The short piece went on to describe the bean’s toxic and medicinal properties, as well as its use in witchcraft.

  He turned the page and found a colour photograph of the bean. He recognized it from somewhere. The next photograph down was of the plant it grew from. Green leaves and deep pink-coloured flowers.