The King of Swords

by Nick Stone

  ‘It’s OK, baby. It’s over,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. Then he buried his face in her hair and started crying himself, overwhelmed with relief and by a million prayers all being answered at once. He swore he’d never put her in harm’s way again.

  Joe got quietly out of the car to give them some privacy. His legs and shoulders were tensed up and tight, and he was getting the beginnings of a nervous headache. He looked at the aftermath of the firefight; the carnage and destruction lit up by the hovering chopper’s quivering spotlight. A noxious mist of gun smoke hung in the air, wafting back and forth like wan muslin drapes. SWAT personnel combed the wasteground, checking the still, rounded forms that were the dead, kicking weapons away from the wounded before cuffing them. A team entered the building, torches mounted on their weapons. Soon they were barking ‘Clear’ multiple times. The van burnt near the canal, its skeleton visible in thin geometrical lines under layers of burning flame. All around him he heard sirens–police, ambulance, fire service. After gunplay, paperwork.

  68

  Solomon drove carefully. He took the side roads out of Opa Locka, keeping to the speed limit. The maroon Dodge Magnum was perfect cover, something common and anonymous, something that blended in, something that didn’t spell drug dealer, something the cops wouldn’t be looking for. And they were everywhere–on the roads and in the skies, sirens undercutting every sound, spotlights probing the ether–chasing a shadow through the night.

  Carmine and Bonbon were in the back. Carmine was in shock; numb, paralysed, close to complete insentience. Bonbon was laughing hysterically–a hacking squealing cackle, which started with a phlegmy blast that first vibrated up and down in his larynx before breaking free and rocketing up out of his mouth in a pitch suggesting a rubber duck getting mauled by a rabid cat.

  ‘HEEE-YUKKA-YI-HI-HI! ’

  Everything had happened so fucking fast: too quick for Carmine to think and react–too quick for any of them to react. He’d had Mingus’s woman in his sights, but he hadn’t pulled the trigger. When it had come down to it, he couldn’t kill an innocent person in cold blood. Simple as that. She didn’t deserve to die.

  Then the cop had grabbed that stupid fucker in the fatigues and opened up on them. Marcus and Jane had died instantly.

  ‘HEEE-YUKKA-YI-HI-HI! ’

  Bonbon looked down at him, glittering silvery slug-slime lines for eyes, face a big blobby mass of trembling mirth.

  His laugh corroded Carmine’s shell.

  ‘Fuck you laughin’ at?’

  ‘YOU!’ Bonbon roared, spraying Carmine with a mass of spit, halitosis and candy; tears running down his cheeks. He had his piranha dentures in. He looked like an obese dog.

  ‘The one friend you had in the world–the one person in the world didn’t think you was a no good piece of caca and you…you fuckin’ SHOT him! You SHOT HIM–HEEE-YUKKA-YI-HI-HI! ’

  Carmine had seen Mingus’ girlfriend crawling towards their car. Solomon had seen her too. ‘Shoot the bitch,’ he’d ordered, no emotion or urgency, just cold neutrality, like he’d asked for cream in his coffee.

  Carmine had deliberately aimed wide, past her head, and pulled the trigger. But at that precise moment a dark shape had dashed out from nowhere and taken the bullet meant for the girl. Only when he was laid out flat on his back, with his face turned toward the building, had Carmine recognized Sam. Why the fuck had he run out like that into certain death? Maybe that was the way he’d wanted it. Maybe, somewhere, he was grateful it was Carmine who’d killed him. Not that it made it any better.

  “‘Nooooooo!”’ Bonbon screeched, high-pitched, flapping his hands on limp wrists. ‘Thass what you said up in there when you shot him. “Nooooooo!”–like some donkey takin’ it up the ass. Nooooooo! I shot my boyfwend! Noooooooo! HEEE-YUKKA-YI-HI-HI! ’

  ‘Shut your mouth, you sick fat fuck!’ Carmine snarled.

  But Bonbon didn’t and his laughter seeped into Carmine’s insides and mingled with his hurt and his sorrow and his anger, stirring everything up–all the humiliation he’d ever had to endure in silence, all the shit he’d had to swallow. He wanted this to end–and he wanted it to end now.

  He hadn’t been surprised when the choppers had appeared, because he’d expected something was up when the planes stopped flying. Yet he’d still been completely caught off guard by the way they’d showed up–out of thin air, as if by pure magic; the room had suddenly and abruptly filled with the brightest bluey-white light. He’d seen the bullets coming at them like giant fireflies soaked in gasoline. When they’d hit the building they’d blown inch-wide holes clean through the bricks, every one of them letting in a shaft of light, as if God’s own angels had teamed up with the cops and were raining spears at them. He’d never felt so cursed, so doomed. His life had been worthless and his death even more so: he was going to die here, fighting for people he hated.

  Then Solomon had grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him away from the window and they’d run out of the room and down the stairs. Him, Solomon, Bonbon and Danielle. Bullets tore through walls and came straight at them, blindly yet accurately. Danielle was hit in the side and fell down the stairs. She’d begged Bonbon to help her. He’d shot her in the head and stepped over her.

  ‘HEEE-YUKKA-YI-HI-HI! ’

  They were close to Miami now. Carmine could see the city lights glittering through the windshield, a row of bared diamond and jade teeth, the Freedom Tower a fang.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked Solomon.

  ‘Get Eva.’ Solomon didn’t turn around.

  Solomon had anticipated an ambush and had made contingency plans. They’d all arrived in Opa Locka in a Mercedes, but they’d abandoned it behind the building as they’d fled. They’d made for the airport. A hole had been cut in the fence around the runway. Once inside the perimeter, they’d followed it round to where another hole had been cut, this one close to a road. That was where the Dodge was parked.

  ‘Simple thang like killin’ you cain’t even git right! You a straight up fuckin’ retarded faggot, Carmine! HEEE-YUKKA-YI-HI-HI! ’

  Bonbon. The fat fuck hadn’t even suffered a scratch. The bastard still had his hat on.

  Carmine watched him guffawing, his head tilted back, the seat reverberating with his wretched laughter. Bonbon’s prodigious gut was sticking all the way out between the flaps of his coat, the gold buttons of his waistcoat looking like they were set to flee the fabric.

  Carmine’s eyes fell on the handles of Bonbon’s silver Magnums.

  ‘Stop laughing,’ he said quietly.

  ‘HEEE-YUKKA-YI-HI-HI! ’

  ‘Stop laughing at me, motherfucker!’

  ‘Or what…?’ Bonbon sneered. ‘Whatchu gonna do, mamma’s boy? Huh?’

  ‘FUCK YOU!’ Carmine screamed and snatched one of the guns from Bonbon’s holster.

  He stabbed the barrel into the fat man’s chin, sinking the metal deep into a cushion of blubber.

  Then he squeezed the trigger.

  Bonbon’s head erupted as though a grenade had been tossed into a full barrel of red wine. Carmine, the side windows, the back window and parts of the front were saturated in a mixture of blood, dessicated brain, hair, skin and fragmented bone.

  Solomon turned around in shock, accidentally swerving the Dodge into the opposite lane. He spun the wheel sharply to right the car, sending Bonbon’s near headless corpse toppling over onto Carmine, who caught a warm jet of jugular blood straight in the face. He savagely pushed the body away from him. It fell on the passenger door which sprang open. The body toppled out, colliding with a car coming the opposite way. The car smacked into the side of the Dodge, sending it spinning out across the middle of the lane where it was hit from both sides and at great force by hurtling traffic.

  Carmine was thrown from his seat. He heard glass shattering all around him and metal being crushed like paper, then a series of loud thuds, followed by screams. Solomon was slumped over the wheel. The windscreen was gone.

&
nbsp; The Dodge was penned in from both sides by smashed and smoking cars. Carmine scrambled over the front seats, crawled out and slid across the hood into the road. He was dazed, his head was spinning, and there was a pain in his neck. He still had Bonbon’s gun in his hand. He shoved it down his pants.

  Eight cars were piled up in an ungainly heap in the road. He smelled leaking petrol and burnt rubber.

  Up ahead of him one part of the road was completely clear. The other was gradually choking up with a line of backed-up traffic. It wouldn’t be long before the cops came. He had to get out of here.

  He started walking up the road.

  ‘CARMINE!’ Solomon shouted at him. He didn’t turn around. Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t because the pain in his neck was extreme and spreading to his shoulders.

  ‘Don’t you walk away, Carmine! Don’t you dare walk away!’ Solomon shouted.

  But Carmine carried on walking towards the line of stalled traffic. Then he ran. People were getting out of their cars, heading towards him and the crash site.

  A short Latino man in a white shirt was waving both hands at him.

  ‘Stop walking, man. You’re hurt, man. Stop walking.’

  Carmine tried to push past him but the man grabbed his arm. He was strong and Carmine was too weak, shocked and dizzy to put up much resistance.

  ‘You need to sit down. You been in a bad accident. Sit down,’ the Latino implored, wincing at the sight of the man he wanted to help soaked in blood.

  Carmine saw his chance.

  ‘Lemme…Lemme sit down in your car,’ he said. ‘I hurt my neck real bad. I need support.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’ The Latino led him over to the second car in the line–a silver Firebird coupé.

  He opened the passenger door and helped Carmine get in.

  Carmine checked the keys were in the ignition. They were hanging at the end of a fob with Fidel Castro’s face on it, crossed out by a red slash, like a No Smoking sign.

  Carmine slammed the passenger door shut and locked it. Then he slid over to the driver’s side and did the same.

  The Latino started banging on the window. People turned around.

  Carmine switched on the ignition and hit the gas. He quickly steered out of the line and into the wide-open lane and sped off.

  69

  ‘How the fuck did this happen? How the fuck did he get away?’ Max shone his torch at the large rectangular gap in the airport’s perimeter fence. ‘The building should’ve been completely surrounded.’

  ‘They must’ve left before SWAT moved in,’ Powers said.

  ‘This was Plan B. In case something went wrong.’ Joe pointed his Maglite at the ground near the wire, bent down and picked up half a dozen strips of duct tape.

  ‘He came here in that Mercedes we found at the back of the building,’ Powers said. ‘Same one we tailed from the Desamours house. Six people came outta the car–the two dead girls, the dead guy in the building, Bonbon, a high-yella-type guy with a rifle and another man.’

  ‘Description?’ Max asked.

  ‘Tall. Slim. Didn’t get his face.’

  ‘Story of our fucken’ life–and his.’ Max was very angry and very frustrated. Boukman had been theirs to lose and they’d done just that.

  ‘And surveillance got pulled back just before you went in, right?’

  ‘You know the drill, Max,’ Eldon said. He was standing next to him.

  ‘Yeah, and so does Boukman. He’s got a guy on the inside, so he would’ve known how we work the big plays. Air, then ground,’ Joe said. ‘They bailed as soon as the choppers showed.’

  ‘You were point man on this, right?’ Max looked at Powers. ‘Why didn’t you have nobody at the airport?’

  ‘We had ’em at the exits.’ Powers looked at the ground. ‘We honestly didn’t think he’d get out of that building.’

  ‘Well he fucken’ did!’ Max shouted.

  ‘That’s if he was here at all,’ Powers suggested.

  ‘He was here,’ Max insisted, angry and frustrated, ‘and he got away. Question is how? You had road blocks, right?’

  ‘Major arteries,’ Powers said. ‘But this area has more outs than a sieve.’

  ‘Maybe he slipped through the road blocks unnoticed,’ Joe said. ‘He’d have had another car parked around here. Kind of vehicle you wouldn’t notice.’

  ‘Could be he’s still in the area,’ Powers said. ‘We’re doing a door to door now.’

  ‘Oh yeah? “Knock-knock. Have you seen this man? Sorry we only know what his tongue looks like,”’ Max said sarcastically. He looked at Eldon, whose expression was thunderous. ‘Anyone at the Desamours house now?’

  Eldon shook his head.

  ‘Why the fuck not?’

  ‘Whole division’s here,’ Eldon said.

  ‘Someone should be at that house–should be there right now. Put two units on it.’

  ‘You really think he’d go back there after this? If I was him I’d be in the wind,’ Powers said.

  ‘That’s why he ain’t you. Eva Desamours and Boukman go way back. He was her apprentice. She’s probably the closest he has to a mother. We need to get out there now.’

  ‘No, Max.’ Joe stepped up to him. ‘You need to be with Sandra. You came for her not Boukman.’

  ‘But he’s out there, Joe, right now, gettin’ away.’

  ‘We’ll find him. We’ll flip the guys we caught today. They’ll tell us something. We’re hitting the SNBC soon. All the addresses Ismael gave us. Closing down all the bank accounts.’

  ‘The fucker’s out there. And as long as he is, Sandra’s not safe. We’ve seen what he can do.’

  ‘Boukman may be runnin’ now, but he’s got no place to go. He’s exposed. He won’t get far,’ Joe reassured him. ‘But that’s for tomorrow. Right now Sandra needs you, Max. Go to her.’

  Max stood his ground. He wanted to kill Boukman. He wanted him dead so he couldn’t hurt Sandra again.

  ‘He’s right, Max. You get outta here. Go be with your girl,’ Eldon said. ‘That’s an order.’

  70

  His mother’s house was dark and felt unusually empty, bereft of her presence and the accompanying sense of dread Carmine always had whenever he walked in. He guessed she had fled. That’s what he would have done in her position. Still, just to be sure, he was careful not to make a sound as he crept down to the basement.

  In his room, he stripped out of his bloody clothes. His head, neck, arms and hands were caked in sticky brownish blood, and he was giving off a heavy carrion stink. He couldn’t go anywhere looking like this. He needed to wash.

  He packed a small bag with clean clothes, put on a pair of jeans and chose a shirt to travel in. Then he took the locker key out of the coffee jar and slipped it into his trouser pocket along with the keys to the pickup, which was still parked outside.

  He tiptoed up to the bathroom.

  He didn’t turn on the light. The shadowy indigo glow of the aquarium was enough to see by. He closed the door, filled up the sink with warm water and washed the blood off his skin. Then he washed his stubbly scalp as best he could. He’d pause regularly to listen for signs of movement–his mother’s feet on the stairs, the clinking of her necklaces and lockets–and for the sound of police sirens. He heard nothing but his pounding heartbeat.

  When he was done he dried himself with two of his mother’s white bathtowels, which were soft as a bed of wool and smelled pleasantly of eau de cologne and talcum powder. He got dressed and checked himself in the mirror. He smiled at what he could see. He was still a regular handsome motherfucker. Plus he had $365,000–all his.

  First thing he’d do when he got to Buffalo would be to buy himself some nice clothes. Then he’d go out and get himself a fly bitch, but one with money and a regular job, going places; and one who appreciated the fine things in life–fine things, like him.

  He’d be happy and he’d be free.

  The light suddenly went on in the bathroom and Eva was standing
there.

  Every part of Carmine froze solid. Except his eyelids, which he blinked manically as his vision scrambled to adjust from dark to light.

  ‘Where’s Solomon?’ she asked.

  He couldn’t turn his head to look at her because of a vice-like stiffness around the nape and down to his shoulders, so he turned his entire body in her direction. She was standing by the open door, dressed in brown leather sandals and a plain light blue denim dress with wooden buttons up the front.

  ‘What happened?’ She looked him over, half naked, then saw the two bloody towels and puddles of reddish water around his feet.

  ‘Cops,’ he said quietly. ‘Cops ambushed us.’

  She looked him up and down slowly, inspecting him, taking all of him in. She didn’t appear at all surprised by what he’d said. Maybe she already knew.

  ‘Whose blood is that? Where’s Solomon?’ she said hurriedly.

  He didn’t answer. His heart was beating faster. He couldn’t help it. He was getting scared.

  ‘I said, where’s Solomon?’

  Until then, she’d been composed, neutral, matter of fact. Now there was a snarl in her voice.

  ‘There was an–an accident,’ Carmine managed to say.

  ‘I thought you said you got ambushed.’

  ‘We–we got away,’ he said. ‘Then there was an accident.’

  ‘Is he hurt?’

  ‘Yeah–I mean, no. I–He was OK when I left him.’

  ‘You LEFT HIM?’ she shouted.

  ‘I had to get away,’ Carmine pleaded. His mouth was dry and his throat tight. He could clearly see her building up to a ShitFit: her nostrils were flaring and her hard black eyes seemed to be getting smaller.

  ‘Where is he?’ She took two steps towards him, her eyes leaping from him to the towels and back again.

  ‘There was a pile up. A loada cars crashed into us.’

  ‘Answer me, you little prick! Where is he?’ she barked.

  ‘I–I–I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’