Magic City

by James W. Hall

  Caufield was eyeing him carefully now. In the presence of a madman.

  “The moral,” he said. “You never know what minor event will unleash the furies.”

  “Who else is in this photo, Stanton? Stop wasting my time.”

  “Do you recall a certain Cuban gentleman from Miami, a fellow with a pencil mustache? What was his name? I remember he was a plumber.”

  Caufield’s lips parted with a soft snap.

  “He was sitting beside you, Pauline, as though you were joined at the hip. His picture was in all the papers the next day. He made quite a stir.”

  “I forgot he was there,” she said to herself. “The guy was a nobody.”

  Stanton looked back at Hotei.

  “Perhaps he was a nobody when the picture was taken. But he was quite a celebrity twenty-four hours later.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “So you see. That’s a stunning group. Lansky, you, me, Runyon, this other gentleman. Some sharp-eyed reporter digging around, who knows what else they’d find? Because don’t forget we weren’t the only ones in the third row that night. I’m sure you know who I’m talking about.”

  “All right. All right.”

  “I saw it hanging on the gallery wall and my heart flew out of my shirt.”

  “Where is this photo now?”

  “Long story,” Stanton said. “There’s only one copy left, so far as I can gather. It’s fallen into someone’s hands. They don’t know what they’ve got, I’m certain of that.”

  “Oh, this is beautiful.”

  “The sins of our fathers.”

  Hotei beamed. Stretching his arms up toward the Miami sky.

  Pauline sat down again on the bench beside him. She was silent, eyes making calculations, a slow firming of her jaw. A woman hardened by trials and burdens he had no reckoning of. Not the Pauline he had once known.

  “You and Runyon,” she said. “You’ll be the point men.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I’m serious. You and Runyon.”

  “With your resources, you’d rely on two old men?”

  “Here’s how it’s going to work, Stanton. You know this town. You still have contacts. So I feel comfortable entrusting you with the role of facilitator. Runyon will handle the heavy lifting. You two find the photo, destroy it. I’ll provide what cover I can. I have good relations with the FBI’s Miami field office. They’re not turf-conscious assholes looking for a fight. But any help I provide will still be limited. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Runyon and me. What can we do?”

  “I have great confidence in you, Stanton. And Runyon may be long in the tooth, but even if I tried, I couldn’t find anyone tougher.”

  Pauline resettled her purse on her lap and looked up at a fleet of white gulls navigating the invisible sea above.

  “Forget it,” Stanton said. “I won’t do it.”

  Pauline swept a stray strand of blond hair off her cheek.

  “Everyone has their secrets,” she said. “But as I seem to recall, you and Lola have more than your share. Given Lola’s high profile in the community, I’m sure public exposure of certain details of her past and your own would be the last thing either of you would want.”

  Stanton felt some part of his viscera shift downward.

  “So it’s blackmail. I do your bidding, or you out my wife.”

  “Characterize it as you will, Stanton. But Director Waters has charged me with making this situation go away quickly and completely. We’ll provide backup assistance to the degree we can. Runyon knows the protocol. I’ll give you both my private line, you can reach me in an instant.”

  “And you’ll be staying well behind the lines.”

  “As you must realize, it’s a delicate moment in the political cycle. If this photo were to fall into the wrong hands, careers would be finished. Think of this as your own personal second chance. An opportunity to clean up a disaster that all of us regret.”

  “Are you green-lighting me and Runyon to commit murder?”

  She looked around at the Japanese gardens.

  “This is critical, Stanton. The director has made it his highest priority. That image must be destroyed and the situation neutralized. So, yes, it’s entirely possible you might be called on to perform some health-altering practices.”

  “Health-altering practices? That’s what you call it now?”

  She took a sip of the cooling air, held it, savoring it in her lungs for a long moment like a doper with his weed. When she blew it out, her eyes clicked to Stanton’s and her lips tightened into something like a smile.

  She unzipped her small leather purse and spread it open in her lap. The black glint of a molded pistol grip caught the dying light.

  “Yes or no, Stanton? With us or against us? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Thorn waited in the porn-shop parking lot with a crowd of onlookers until Sugarman finally arrived. Sugar spoke to a couple of cops, getting the picture, then went over to Thorn with a dead look.

  “I better get rolling,” Thorn said.

  “Cops might want to have a word with you.”

  “I’m not in the mood for cops.”

  “Where you going?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll call your cell when I get settled.”

  “This isn’t over for you, is it? You’re just getting started.”

  Thorn watched the stretcher rolling out with the body covered by a sheet. Lawton’s white tennis shoes specked with blood.

  “I’ll call you when I’m settled.”

  Thorn led Buck across the street and got into the gray Camry and headed off.

  He drove back down 1-95 into the Grove, and on south into Coral Gables. He found the motel where he and Kate and Dr. Bill had stayed that week in 1964. Riviera Motel. It was on the bank of a wide canal across from the University of Miami. It looked exactly as it had forty years before, though everything around it had changed.

  He checked in to a room in the back, away from Dixie Highway, and managed to sneak Buck inside. He switched on the window air conditioner, turned the shower on as hot as it would go, stripped off his clothes, and got in and put his face into the scalding water. With the tiny bar of soap he washed his hair and scrubbed at his skin till it was raw. He dried off, put on the same pair of khaki shorts and denim shirt.

  He found himself doing everything slowly. Rehearsing each step before he took it. As if he were drunk. Which he supposed he was. Cockeyed drunk. His head spinning, system working overtime to absorb the day’s events. Lawton dead, Alex injured. He wasn’t sure how bad.

  And he’d been sent off alone, exiled from the kingdom he’d been trying to call home. Thorn went outside to the vending machines and bought a razor and blades and a cheap comb.

  Back inside the room, he stared at the bathroom mirror. A wild man looked back at him. Red-eyed and confused and without direction. Thorn shaved. He broke half the teeth on the comb trying to part his hair.

  Why shaving was so important he didn’t know. Why it mattered so much to be showered and comb his hair. It was surely psychological. A need for order. A fresh start. Something basic and stupid like that.

  He stood at the mirror and listened to the traffic. Buck was snoring on the bed. The dog was groggy, but he could walk steadily enough.

  It was suppertime, rush hour, the workday done for most of the world.

  Thorn picked one of the comb’s teeth out of his hair and dropped it into the trash. He stared into the mirror and watched the darkness gathering about him, watched his image fade.

  After a while he went to the desk beside the air conditioner, turned on a lamp, and sat down and spread out the contents of the envelope. The Xeroxes from The Miami Herald, February 1964. He drew out the photograph of the boxing match and set it to the side of the stack of Xeroxes.

  Those five people in row three. Mayor Stanton King, Meyer Lansky, a thin blond woman, a chunky man with a diamond on his
little finger, and a skinny Cuban man with a pencil mustache. Five people. Maybe they were together, maybe not. Maybe they had something to do with the Morales murders that took place a few hours later that same night, or maybe they didn’t. Maybe the photograph was about something else entirely.

  Thorn looked at the photograph and he looked at the pages of the old newspaper. He couldn’t concentrate. He sat at the cheap wooden table and listened to the air conditioner and the rise and fall of traffic noise outside. Buck was snoring on the bed in the next room. The air smelled musty, as if ancient mildew had taken root out of sight somewhere.

  Thorn couldn’t remember which room he’d stayed in forty years ago. It might be the same one as he was in now. He’d had a room to himself that week, Dr. Bill and Kate staying next door. An independent kid. He couldn’t remember what he’d done alone by himself in that room. So long ago.

  At that same time Lawton was a young man. A cop. Picking up extra cash working security at the fight. Alexandra Collins was just a child.

  Thorn stared at the photograph but saw nothing he hadn’t seen before. Five people bracketed by the rope rings. Two he had names for. A gangster and a mayor. A man sitting between them with a blocky head and big diamond. A woman sitting beside the mayor, blond and young and intense. A small man next to the blond woman. Looking nervous and awkward, like he didn’t belong.

  Thorn stared at the pages from the newspaper. The old photographs, and the words some reporter had written, so full of the urgency and drama of the moment. Then the next day the reporter moved on to the next story and the one after that. Forty years of stories between that one and today.

  Thorn couldn’t concentrate. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to concentrate again.

  The eleven o’clock news was just beginning when Sugarman arrived. The Porn Shop Massacre was how they were tagging it. A big deal, even in that city of gaudy crimes. Fifteen minutes of coverage, going over and over the same sketchy details. A retired homicide detective shot dead, his daughter, a crime-scene technician with Miami PD seriously injured, and the adopted son of a former mayor of Miami brutally beaten to death in his own place of business.

  The segment included a salacious camera pan across the porn magazines, a shot dreamed up by smirking juveniles in the newsroom. The shot replayed several times as the reporter spoke.

  Sugar stood inside the door and watched in silence. They hadn’t spoken a word yet. But Thorn could see from the rigid set of his jaw that Sugar’s usual calm was under serious strain.

  When the segment was over, Thorn switched off the set and drew out a chair at the desk and sat. Sugarman stayed put, his back against the door. Like he might be about to leave.

  “She’s at Baptist Hospital, in case you’re interested.”

  “How is she?”

  “Shoulder’s busted up. They put metal pins in. Arm’s in a cast, shoulder to elbow. Five months, six. She’s going to be rehabbing awhile.”

  “Pain?”

  “Doped up,” Sugarman said. “Awake but groggy. Not feeling much.”

  “She recognize you? Say anything?”

  “Said a couple of things, yeah.”

  “I suppose she mentioned a baseball bat?”

  “She did, yes.”

  Sugar opened the miniature refrigerator, cracked ice from the tray and dropped two cubes into a glass, and filled it with water from the tap. At the Riviera Motel every room was an efficiency with a tiny kitchen tucked along a wall and separate bedroom.

  Sugar drew out the other dinette chair, sat heavily, and stared into Thorn’s eyes. Outside on Dixie Highway cars rumbled past.

  “Goddamn it, I loved that old guy. Seeing him go down, I flipped out.”

  “You couldn’t wait for me. You had to rush in there.”

  “Straight-Arrow Sugarman. Knows every word of the rule book by heart. Swears allegiance to all things honorable and good.”

  “That’s not smart, Thorn, insulting the only friend you got.”

  “I’m going to see Alex,” Thorn said. “I’ve got to talk to her.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a great idea.”

  “I’m going, Sugar.”

  “How in God’s name did you get yourself into this shitstorm?”

  “I jumped off the roof.”

  “What roof?”

  “I jumped on Carlos Morales, the guy who shot Lawton.”

  “The one you killed?”

  “Yeah, that one.” Thorn slid the photo across the desk so Sugar could see it. “Carlos snuck inside Alex’s house and stole this photo. He and his brother, Snake, were waltzing away, I jumped on the guy’s back.”

  Sugarman tapped a finger on the tabletop. Looked toward the window. Keeping all judgment out of his face.

  “Yeah, I know, Sugar. You don’t have to say it. If I’d stayed put, let them walk away with the picture, none of this would’ve happened. They walk, I go about my business, Lawton is alive, Alex isn’t facing months of pain, Buck is smelling the roses. All’s right with the world. Any normal citizen would’ve waited till they left, climbed down, called the cops. But me, I fucking jump.”

  “You’re Thorn.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Thorn jumps. We don’t get to rewrite our genes. You’re Thorn, you pull rusty hooks out of an old snook’s lip. Risk killing some worn-out fish to spare it a little pain. And you’re right. I climb down the ladder, call the cops.”

  “And everyone would still be alive.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Sugar said. “In my experience, jumping off the roof works about as often as following the rules. Neither has a particular advantage. And I don’t think either one is morally superior.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  A siren passed by on Dixie Highway. Both of them looked at the window until it had passed. Not for them. Not this time. Not yet.

  Lansky was only showing off by inviting them to the championship fight. His seats were three rows back, practically ringside. Such a smug man, making them all place bets, putting down as much cash as they could afford to wager. Saying the fight was rigged, a sure thing. Bragging.

  She went along with the others. Something to do to pass the hours before the assault.

  She sat and watched the two black men, the plodding one and the dancing one, the gorilla and the prince, watched them hit and sweat, plod and dance. Amazing. Around her all the men cheered as the fighters hammered each other. She was young and horny, and it was a carnal feast. While the men rooted, she imagined tugging the silk trunks down, pulling the jockstrap aside, exposing the prize. The prince and the gorilla. She pictured that while she watched them slam and dance and plod.

  After the fight, passing a bottle in the tense car, a slug of bourbon each. They drove to the house, sat for a moment in the drive, readied their weapons. Got out.

  The night was warm, the stars bright, a slice of moon. Up the concrete steps, halting at the door, looking into one another’s eyes one last time. And she, the only woman, was first through. First through that door to the other side.

  As she entered two men emerged from the sunporch. Cigars clamped in their mouths, looking at her, at the gun, then she fired and their round stomachs ripped open, eyes rolling back, a bark from each. Two fat men dying, then the others poured out with guns and she fired and fired but hit only two more. The husband, the wife. Meeting their eyes, killing them, the husband, then the wife. The dreadful wife.

  She killed four that night. Lived with the memories for forty years. Over time it became just a high whine, a dentist drill buzzing far back inside her skull.

  But now it was starting again. An intruder had poked the fragile nest. Threatening the colony. One by one the swarm gathered and the buzz grew. Ready to sting, to sting to protect the hive.

  She loaded the eight-shot pellet gun and aimed it out of the slats of the attic vent, into the black heart of the night. She fired at nothing, fired at everything. Fired and fired, rel
oaded and fired some more.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “That was Detective Mark Jacobs, Miami-Dade Homicide. He’ll be here in five minutes.” Stanton set the phone down and came around his desk.

  “It’s after midnight,” Lola said. “It’s too late for police grilling. Call him back; tell him we’ll do it in the morning.”

  “I held him off all evening,” Stanton said. “He’s coming.”

  “I’m not talking to any cops.” Snake rose and headed for the door.

  Lola said, “No, stay. The three of us need to talk.”

  He minded his mother and went back to the love seat. He’d always minded her. Not that he feared or loved her. He obeyed out of instinct. Duty to the female race. Some vestige of his loyalty to Carmen.

  They were in the study where LBJ had shaken Snake’s hand. Two leather wingback chairs for Lola and Stanton, the white brocaded love seat for Snake.

  Lola wore a simple navy dress. Her bright red hair was pinned up, a single coil broken loose and hanging down her right cheek like a strand of yarn. She’d been upstairs in her bedroom when the news came. Her adopted son dead, the victim of a savage beating.

  Snake could see Lola’s eyes were swimming. Her face hot and dizzy.

  Through the evening helicopters hovered over the estate. News crews were camped at the front gates with satellite trucks and klieg lights, cameras trained on the front of the house, waiting for action.

  Stanton made calls, managed to banish all but one of the choppers. A helicopter from the single local station where he had no pull was still hovering. Every minute or two its spotlight raked the grounds, and the beam passed across the velvet curtains and sent a slash of light into the study where they sat. Lit up the swirls of dust.

  “That sweet boy,” Lola said. “That innocent, damaged child. And look at you, Stanton, sitting there so detached, like it didn’t happen. Like Carlos wasn’t clubbed to death. Like it’s all just some technical problem to be solved.”

  “He was an adult,” Snake said. “Not a child.”