Magic City

by James W. Hall

  Two insomniacs were still up, lamps shining around the blinds, one room on the bottom floor, one on top. A dozen cars scattered about the lot.

  He was settling into a squat, trying to pick out room 212, when a whippy stem sprang loose and flicked him in the eye.

  Blinded, he rubbed his eye. Before him the parking lot, the motel, the cars became a blur, which sent him sailing back to Cassius again. Cassius and Liston. That night.

  Snake is a kid, listening on the radio. He’s a freshly minted American boy, rooting for his outrageous hero. But Cassius, noble Cassius, is blinded by something on Liston’s glove. And he’s lost hope, wants to quit. It is between rounds four and five. Cassius whines that he wants to cave in to the jeering fans, let Sonny Liston prevail.

  Never mind the thousand grueling hours, jogging in street clothes and combat boots across Julia Tuttle Causeway, ten miles between his ghetto hotel and the Fifth Street Gym, running that ten miles in the morning, then again after a day of workouts and sparring and the heavy bag, jumping rope, ten more miles back home in heavy leather boots. Harassed by cops, stopped, questioned, searched, like a street thief running from a crime. Day after day he’s done that, the punishing hours in the Miami sun, and now, with eyes stinging, he wants to quit. A little pain, and blurry vision.

  Astonishing how a man with such deep-rooted passion can suddenly lose it. How fragile a strong man can be. One small splinter of doubt piercing deep into the tissues of confidence, whispering that you aren’t going to succeed, that you’d better climb down from the ring while you still can, run for the exit. Start over in some other place, give up your dreams, abandon hope.

  But his corner man, Dundee, won’t let him quit. Blind or not, this is Clay’s chance. It is fight or die. Endure the doubt, survive the blindness, and punch his way through. Dance and jab. A moment like this comes once.

  As he settled back in his roost, a taxi pulled into the lot.

  It idled for a few seconds, then honked twice.

  Only a second or two passed before the driver honked again, then again. An hour before daylight, a stone’s throw from five-million-dollar mansions, but Ignacio didn’t give a shit. He honked once more, then held the horn down for a good thirty seconds.

  “It’s a trap, Thorn. Stay put.”

  “It’s a trap I set. Snake’s a little more creative than I thought.”

  The cab honked again and Thorn stepped back from the blinds.

  “If I don’t go out, this guy’s going to draw a crowd, then we’re screwed.”

  “You go out there, you don’t have any idea what you’re walking into.”

  “I want this over with.”

  “At least take my pistol, goddamn it.” Sugarman drew his holster from the computer bag and extended the nine-millimeter to Thorn.

  “You keep it. Protect Alex. I’ll deal with our friend.”

  “Aw, come on, Thorn. Take it.”

  Thorn went over to the desk and picked up the photograph and went back to the door.

  “This is all I need.”

  “Don’t be crazy,” Sugar said.

  “If things go south,” said Thorn, “get Alex out of here.”

  “Take the damn gun, Thorn. I’m not letting you out of here without it.”

  “Be careful, Sugar. Keep her safe.”

  And Thorn was out the door.

  Alex heard the horn blaring.

  The drugs had worn off and spikes of pain shuddered through her shoulder in sync with her pulse. Her throat ached, too, where Runyon had gripped her. Another kind of pain, every breath ripping at the wet tissues, a ragged, papery burn. She’d begun to taste blood in the back of her mouth.

  She blew out a breath, pushed the sheets aside, slid her legs over the edge of the bed, and rocked upright. A strobe light flared inside her skull and the room whitened and sent Alex’s stomach rolling. Down her back she felt prickly trails of sweat like the march of insects. The flesh beneath the cast was already itching.

  She held still until a wave of nausea passed and her vision cleared, then pushed herself to her feet and hobbled to the window and with a finger, opened a peephole in the aluminum blinds.

  Thorn was walking across the parking lot toward a taxi. A swagger. Hot-dogging as she’d seen him do before when he was scared shitless.

  He halted a few feet from the driver’s window, bent forward, and spoke to the driver. Behind him, fifty feet or so, Alex thought she saw a shadow bob in the bushes. She craned forward and blinked but could make out nothing.

  Alexandra returned to the bed and sat. She tested the flesh at her neck with a careful touch. There was a welt and some deep bruising, probably damage to her trachea. Her head wouldn’t turn more than a few degrees left or right, as though a crick had taken root in the neck ligaments.

  She eased the phone off the table and punched in Dan Romano’s office number. Homicide detective, Miami PD, her cranky boss for the past decade. Officially retired but still pulling all-nighters three times a week, working some old cases he took personally. He claimed he wanted to tie up the last loose ends, leave a clean desk, but Alex knew Romano was having trouble letting go.

  Four in the morning, Romano snapped up the phone on the first ring.

  “Dan, it’s Alex.”

  Dan was silent for a moment, then said, “I was getting worried.”

  Alexandra looked at the plastic card taped to the base of the phone.

  “I’m at the Riviera Motel on Dixie. Across from UM.”

  “You in danger?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why aren’t you in the hospital?”

  “Long story. I’ll explain when I see you. I think Thorn’s putting himself into some serious jeopardy, though. I need your help.”

  The line was silent for a moment.

  “Hello?”

  Romano said, “Honey, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I got orders about this.”

  “What orders?”

  “If you should call in, there’s a protocol in place.”

  “What? Who gave you orders?”

  “Way it came to me, I’m supposed to pass on any info pertaining to your whereabouts. It’s a national-security deal. I don’t have a lot of latitude.”

  “Don’t joke with me, Dan. National security, me?”

  “Those were the words. All very hush-hush.”

  “What’s going on? This is me, Alex.”

  “You ever hear the name Pauline Caufield?”

  “No.”

  “Neither had I before today. Apparently she’s got some serious weight with the feds. She’s some major muckety-muck with one of the undercover agencies, NSA, Army Intelligence, FBI. They didn’t say. But since she called earlier, the chief and his people are standing up a little straighter. Look like they’re ready to salute.”

  “What’re you saying, Dan? You’re not making sense.”

  “Something you’ve done, Alex, you got the interest of some powerful folks. They didn’t tell me all the details, but this is a big deal. They want you to come in and talk. I heard they’re even going so far as to monitor calls around here. This call, for instance, I don’t think my line’s secure. So, you know, what you said earlier, your whereabouts, that might be compromised.”

  Alex slapped the phone down and stared at it as she backed away.

  Sugarman was at her bedroom door.

  “You okay, Alex? What’s going on?”

  “I called Dan. The feds are involved. They’re after me for something.”

  “Local feds? You mean Frank Sheffield’s people? FBI.”

  “No, this is somebody else. Pauline Caufield. You ever hear of her?”

  Sugarman shook his head.

  “They told Dan it was a national-security matter.”

  Sugarman scrubbed a hand back and forth across his hair.

  “Before I knew they were listening in, I gave Dan our location. I think we should get out of here, Sugar.”

  �
�I’m getting that same feeling.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  By the time he stopped a few feet from the cab’s window and looked in at the driver, Thorn was feeling out-of-body. Like he’d already been shot dead, but his brain was lagging, neurons spinning out a little death dance as his body took a few seconds to go into total shutdown.

  “You’re not Snake,” Thorn said to the Sumo at the wheel of the taxi. A man so big, he might need the jaws of life to get free at the end of his shift.

  “No shit,” the man said. “Where you want to go?”

  “I want Snake, not you.”

  “Hey, man. You call the cab company, you get whoever comes. This ain’t no fucking personalized limo service.”

  “Get out of here,” Thorn said.

  “Or you do what?”

  The guy pushed his door open, but Thorn kicked it closed, then leaned his hip against it and brought his face down to eye level with the cabbie. He had the complexion of a rotten cantaloupe and around him there was the reek of whiskey that would’ve blown the sensors on a Breathalyzer.

  “I’d say you got about ten seconds before the shoot-out starts. Stick around if you want, you’ll make a nice target.”

  “What shoot-out?”

  “The one your buddy Snake arranged.”

  The cabbie’s testosterone wrestled with his common sense for about five seconds, then he slammed the car in reverse and left a screaming track of rubber across the lot.

  Thorn slipped the envelope with the Xeroxes and photograph under the front of his shirt and tucked it a few inches into the waistband of his shorts.

  He turned around and appraised his exposure.

  An open street on one side, a church in the distance. An adjacent parking lot. The only place a man could hide close by was in a clump of bushes on the south side of the property.

  Thorn could try a sprint back to the motel room, but even if he made it, that would only draw fire toward Alex and Sugar.

  As he headed back into the center of the parking lot, his head was still swimming, body braced for a dive to the pavement or the impact of a slug.

  “That was cute, Snake, luring me outside with the taxi. Real clever.”

  Thorn took a sidelong glance toward the shrubs but saw no movement, no human shape. Wondering if maybe he had it wrong and this wasn’t Snake’s setup after all, that Thorn was out there alone in the dark talking to himself.

  “I been studying the photo. Trying to figure out why it’s so damn important. I identified four people already. Row three. Maybe you could give me a hand. The two of us together, we might solve this thing.”

  Thorn had been in the enemy’s sights before. A familiar prickle crept across his flesh, a clench of sphincters. Like walking a narrow ledge with a mile-deep gorge on either side. Not the moment for any sort of wobble.

  The door to their motel room opened and Sugarman stepped outside.

  “We got to roll, buddy,” he called. “We’re lit up on the radar.”

  Thorn angled a few feet Sugar’s way and got his voice down.

  “You go. I’ll be behind you in a few minutes.”

  “What’re you going to do, hitchhike?”

  “I’ll go get Alex’s car.”

  “Come with us, Thorn. This is turning ugly.”

  “Get the hell out of here. Go. Keep her safe.”

  “Then take my nine,” Sugar said.

  Thorn turned his back on the motel room and headed out into the lot. He stood in the center of the asphalt, staring into the dark perimeter, holding his position until he heard two car doors slam behind him, a motor revving and then Sugar’s Taurus circling toward him.

  The car pulled in front of him, two feet away, came to a stop and the back door swung open.

  “Get in,” Alex said.

  Thorn went over and leaned his head down.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  Sugar said, “The name Pauline Caufield mean anything to you?”

  Thorn shook his head.

  “She’s some kind of super-fed. She’s tracking us. She may be on her way here right now. Dan says it’s a national-security issue.”

  “I got a few things on my plate already,” Thorn said. “You drive safe.”

  He shut the door.

  Sugar delayed a few seconds, but he knew all about Thorn’s bullheadedness. Once he’d made up his mind, forget it.

  When the car pulled away, Thorn began to move across the lot.

  As bleak as his view of human nature was, mankind’s penchant for depravity and malice, he also knew there was a sizable percentage of people with countervailing instincts, tendencies toward restraint. He’d heard that even soldiers on the front lines often misaimed on purpose, putting their own lives in danger rather than kill the enemy. A peaceful nature not even military drilling and foxhole pressures could corrupt. Whether it came from biology or culture, he didn’t know. But what made his walk across that parking lot possible was some fraction of hope that Snake was one of those.

  Or at least that he was a bad shot.

  Thorn made an aimless meander of the lot, coming closer by small degrees to the bushes that were the only hiding place.

  He raised the volume of his voice a click past conversational.

  “A few hours ago when we first met, you said this photo was a matter of great personal importance to you. I believe those were your exact words. I believe you want to figure out who killed your parents and your sister, and why it happened.

  “Well, that’s fine, but the thing is, I got a personal stake, too. I need to know what this is about so I can take the necessary measures to walk away and be sure a year from now it’s not going to pop up and whack my head off or endanger my friends. So what do you say? We make a truce, join forces. How’s that sound?”

  The voice came from farther out in the darkness than he’d been guessing. And it wasn’t Snake. It was an older man, gruff voice, coarsened by age and strong drink: “Take out that fucking photo, lay it down on the asphalt, and step back. You got to the count of three.”

  Thorn halted and tried to track the direction of the voice.

  “Is that you, Runyon?”

  The voice was silent.

  “How’s that kidney feeling? A little sore, is it?”

  Then another man spoke from the clump of shrubs a few feet away. Snake’s syrupy drawl.

  “If I were you, Thorn, I’d get flat on my belly quick as I could.”

  Thorn was lowering himself to his knees when the first shot whistled nearby and thunked into the fender of a parked car. Another followed it, and a third. A silenced pistol.

  Thorn dove into the shrubs and tumbled into Snake’s wiry body. Another slug tore a ragged groove in the tree a few feet overhead.

  Snake held a pistol in his right hand, aimed into Thorn’s gut.

  “Who the hell is Runyon?”

  Thorn disentangled himself and settled his rump onto a patch of sand.

  “Maybe you should ask your dad that.”

  As Snake squinted in confusion, Thorn pitched forward and clipped a forearm to the side of his face. Snake fell back into the thick branches, and Thorn wrenched the pistol from his grip.

  Another shot carved its initials in the bark overhead.

  Thorn kept his head low and touched the barrel to Snake’s rib cage.

  “We both know what I’m capable of,” Thorn said. “Now stay calm and don’t fuck with me.”

  “I’m always calm.” Snake’s eyes seemed to absorb more than their share of the available light and store it in the silvery depths of his pupils.

  “Where’s your ride?”

  “Across the street at the church. Gray Audi.”

  “This guy’s not the best shot. We should be fine. Stay low and zigzag.”

  “I’ve seen the same movie,” Snake said.

  Thorn raised up and flattened himself against the trunk of the tree and let off two quick rounds. Snake was gone before the answering fire began.
>
  The man could run, Thorn had to give him that.

  “You know I’m going to kill you, first chance I get.”

  “Just drive, Snake. There’ll be time to kill me later.”

  Thorn was in the passenger seat, the .38 held loosely in his lap. Snake at the wheel.

  “My brother, Carlos, was helpless. You beat him to death.”

  “Make a U-turn by the Seaquarium, then it’s your first right.”

  For the past hour Snake had been driving silently. Up Dixie Highway, then back south, Thorn looking out the rear window, trying to make sure they weren’t being followed. If there was somebody back there, he was better than anyone who’d ever tailed Thorn before.

  At dawn he directed Snake out to Key Biscayne, toward the only guy Thorn knew who might help.

  “First right,” Thorn said.

  “The waste-treatment plant? What’s there?”

  Thorn stared ahead and didn’t reply.

  “You have no intention of showing me the photograph, do you?”

  “Look, I’m taking you along because I want to hear what you got to say about the photo. Maybe clear up a few things, why people died because of it. I’ll tell you what I know, and you tell me what you know. So yeah, you’ll see it. When the time’s right. Now put a cork in it.”

  Half a mile off the highway Thorn steered Snake into a gravel parking area. The breeze was out of the west, and the sulfurous reek of the sewage plant was flooding the eastern shore of Virginia Key. A hawk sailed overhead, on its way to the four-hundred-acre wildlife area. Virginia Key was a patchwork of good and bad ideas, tarnished legacies of the past and a living record of betrayed promises.

  On the southernmost edge of the island near the causeway was a sandy strip that had once been Miami’s segregated black beach. Sugarman had taken Thorn there back in the old days. A bathhouse and concession stand; Thorn, the only white kid for a mile around; the air ripe with barbecue and down-home recipes. Car radios playing boogie.

  There was the high hump of a landfill a little north of that old beach. An unregulated dump that was now retired and overrun by vines and weeds concealing the toxic fuels and paints and solvents that generations of Miamians had unloaded there. All of it leeching through the limestone into the waters of Biscayne Bay. The western edge of the island, the side facing Rickenbacker Causeway, was dotted by marinas and restaurants with unhindered views across the water of the downtown skyline. The old Marine Stadium was there, too, on the bank of a horseshoe cove where rock concerts and boat races had once been staged. Raft up under the stars to hear the Rolling Stones boom across the water.