The King of Swords (max mingus) (17 page)

Carmine didn't reply. She had him. She was completely right.

'I was gonna go see yo' mamma, tell her everythang, only ain't no money in that.'

'How much you want?'

'Fiddy thousand bucks.'

'I ain't got that kind of money.'

'Get it,' she snapped coldly. 'Today's Tooseday. You got till next Tooseday, or I'll go see yo' mamma. And maybe I won't gonna go alone neither, 'cause I'm sure you runnin' plenty other bitches out here. Meet me at yo' boyfriend Sam's store at eight.'

'He ain't my boyfriend,' Carmine said bitterly.

'Way that nigga passed up my pussy fo' my ass that night? He straight fag-fucked me, nigga.' Risquee sneered. 'You the only pimp in the world don't fuck his bitches, you know that? Hell! You ain't even a pimp-you a motherfuckin' pimple!' She laughed her hyena screech. 'An' I'ma gonna squeeze you like the pimple you is, nigga! Next Tooseday. You better be there-an' you better have my money.'

With that she turned and walked off, squeaking and clicking down the street, head up, swinging her bag.

Carmine got in his car and drove off.

Humiliated and panicked, he went through Coral Gables, barely giving it a glance, even though it was one of his favourite drives. Normally he loved cruising past all those beautiful big homes, along the smooth, ficus-tree-lined roads, his top down, the warm wind on his face, the smell of big money and fresh grass in his nose. Now he just sped over the Blue Road Bridge, not even glancing at the boats parked in the seawater canals behind their owners' houses. And he didn't even bother marvelling at the Venetian Pool. He didn't give a fuck about all this man-made beauty. He wanted to get the hell away from what had just happened.

He went down Miracle Mile, faintly aware he'd planned to scope out two potential Cards-Diamonds, one for him, one for his mother-but he felt like such a failure he didn't even want to think about doing what he did best.

Christ! That bitch knew!

He'd been running his own Game for three years now without a hitch, being real careful about everything. And now that cunt Risquee was threatening to blow it all. Solomon would kill him for sure. Didn't matter what history they had. Didn't matter that they'd been virtually like brothers from Haiti up. None of that shit mattered to Solomon. He'd torture him too. He'd do him at an SNBC. And what about Sam? What would happen to him? Sam was his best friend, his only friend. Sam was in this shit as deep as him.

When he got to Little Havana he felt better. The whole place was so run down and poor and derelict it suited his state of mind. Shitty little spic stores. Shitty little spic bars. Shitty little spic diners. Even the sky was shitty little spic something here.

He should never have brought her in. Bitch hadn't even worked nowhere nice. She'd worked at fuckin' Wendy's! A burger chain!

And she'd hit him. Twice. Just like his mother did.

It just wasn't right! It was too much. He had to stop.

He pulled over and parked on Calle Ocho. Opposite him a man was standing near a flatbed truck loaded with coconuts. He was cutting the ends off and selling them as drinks to passers-by. Carmine watched him work. Simple job. Simple life. Simple guy. Right then he would've traded places with him in a heartbeat if he could. Let that fuck deal with Risquee.

Bitch had taken his money. Bitch wanted to take more. Bitch was gonna tell his mother. Bitch was gonna tell all his other Cards too. He'd lose them all. And he was so damn close to getting away. So damn close.

A solitary tear ran down his face, still throbbing on both sides from the slaps. He hated himself for crying. He hated himself for being such a fuckin' pussy. Bitch was right. He wasn't no real pimp. A real pimp would've broken both her arms and then gone to work on her face. He wasn't no real pimp.

Maybe it was time he started behaving like one. Maybe it was time he grew some balls.

He wiped his face. He was going to see Sam.

He started his car, pulled out and drove on.

Risquee wasn't going to get his money. No way.

No fuckin' way.

E
very morning Sam Ismael-a tall, very slim and straight bald man, with a long bulbous nose and yellowy-brown eyes-washed the sidewalk outside his store with an infusion of jasmine, mint and rosewater. It was a Syrian shopkeeper's custom passed down to him from his parents who'd run a supermarket in Port-au-Prince. The smell was meant to attract prosperity and peace.

Sam was certainly prosperous, and, partly because of that, he was mostly at peace with himself. His store, or botanica, Haiti Mystique, on North East 54th Street in Lemon City, was doing great. It sold all kinds of voodoo paraphernalia from drums, spirit-calling sticks, candles, dolls, plaster saints, to all manner of herbs, roots, leaves and seeds, and also sacrificial animals-roosters, chickens, doves, goats and snakes. He also did a highly lucrative trade in under-the-counter goods used in black magic, much of it stolen from churches and graveyards-the skulls and bones of nuns, priests and murderers proving exceptionally popular. Everyone came to him from Haitian houngans and mambos, Cuban and Brazilian Macumba priests, African witchdoctors, homegrown witches and fortune tellers, satanists to kinky-sex freaks, musicians and tourists.

The store stood out a mile in the drab and derelict street. It was an antidote to an otherwise depressing grey vision of row after row of boarded-up buildings, empty warehouses and low-lying tenement blocks that were home to squatters, junkies and ever increasing groups of Haitian migrants.

Sam didn't believe in vodou any more than he believed in any religion, but he understood the hold it had on people and he appreciated and respected what the belief could do.

He thought little of most of his customers-charlatans, quacks, hacks or simply deluded crackpots; people who'd made a living out of being born with weird faces and staring eyes and a perfect aloofness-yet he was still undecided about Eva Desamours. She sometimes scared him enough into believing in the supernatural. Once, on a rare visit to the shop, she'd seen a German couple who were looking at coin chains, and she'd said to the woman, a brunette in her early thirties: 'It's a boy and you'll name him after your father, because he won't live to see him born. He's ill and hasn't got long.' The couple had left in a hurry, much to Sam's fury, because tourists were easy spenders. But last year they'd come back with their young boy, looking for Eva, to ask her how she'd known.

Sam was also a money launderer, specifically for Solomon Boukman, but also for a growing number of senior officers in the Haitian army, who were making serious cash from cocaine smuggling. They'd built private airfields in the north of Haiti and were landing Colombian cartel airplanes stuffed with coke, refuelling them and flying them off to Miami. US Customs never suspected a thing because of where the planes were coming from: Haiti wasn't cocaine country. The Haitian connection was the source of all Solomon's narcotics, and the cornerstone of his massive wealth. Sure, he had a hand in almost everything illegal, but nothing paid like drugs. And he owed it all to Sam who'd got him started in the big game, simply by telling him about the airfields in his homeland and arranging a few meetings with the main players. Prior to that Solomon had been strictly a small-bills and dime-bag operator.

Sam's services varied from straightforward routing of money through offshore banks to accounts in Switzerland, Monaco and Luxemburg, or, in Solomon's case investing the money in businesses and property. Sam was the frontman for the Lemon City project, and in some ways the brains behind it. He'd had a vision of sorts. He'd been driving back through Coral Gables with Carmine one day after the two of them had been gator hunting out in the Everglades. Carmine had been talking about how the area had once been orange groves until George Merrick had come along and decided to build a city there in the 1920s. Twenty minutes later they'd found themselves stuck in traffic in Little Havana. He'd seen a sign on the kerb reading 'Parking For Cubans Only. All Others Will Be Towed'. He'd been shocked at first by the audacity of it, immigrants doing this to their host nation, but then it had occurred to him they could get away with it because it was their area-built, owned and run by the 'Freedom Flighters', the Cubans who'd fled Fidel. And that's when he'd had his vision of a similar area for Haitians: a 'Little Haiti'.

Sam had seen that whole chunks of Lemon City were being sold off and he'd suggested to Solomon that he buy it all up as a long-term investment. Sam had even told Solomon there was a bizarre symmetry between Lemon City and Coral Gables, because back in the early 1900s Lemon City had earned its name because of its abundant lemon groves. Between them, they'd be building a modern version of the Gables. It took some convincing, but Solomon had gone along with the idea. To him the place would just be one huge money laundrette.

Not so for Sam. Although Syrian by birth, he considered himself Haitian. He spoke French and Kreyol fluently-as well as English, Spanish, Arabic and Circassian. He loved Haitians and wanted to do something for them. He'd come to the island as a baby and lived there until his early twenties, when he'd gone to the University of Miami to study economics. The country had been good to him and to his parents, Rafik and Zada, who'd made a considerable fortune with their supermarkets, thrift shops and garment factories.

Sam had met Solomon nine years ago, shortly after he'd first opened the store. Solomon had sent Bonbon round to collect protection money. Sam had pulled a shotgun on him. Bonbon had waddled off, warning him that he'd made a big mistake.

Sam had heard about Solomon Boukman and his gang. Solomon was a neighbourhood legend, and impressionable minds were already ascribing mystical powers to him. The Liberty City Haitians considered him their guardian. The rest of Liberty City feared him. This hadn't fazed Sam, who'd thought it was all bullshit, but had still taken precautions and always kept the gun to hand in the store.

Solomon had never come to him in person. He'd sent Eva. She'd apologized for Bonbon, said it wouldn't happen again. Then she'd looked around the store, bought a John the Conqueror root and left. She'd returned the following week and bought two chickens and a toad. Both times he sensed her scoping him, looking into him, even though their conversation was limited. On her third visit she told him Solomon needed someone to help manage his money.

How had she known he was good with numbers? Sam guessed she'd done a little research into his background, possibly found out he was managing his parents' investments here in the US. It wasn't exactly a secret. They liked to boast that their son was a whizz with money, a regular Richie Rich.

He didn't want to do it. He wanted to make his money honestly, like his parents had, but Eva mentioned his sister Malika, studying in Gainesville, and he understood he had no choice.

Sam met Solomon face to face a month later-after a fashion. They'd sat across from each other in an empty room with closed curtains. It was late afternoon and the sun was going down. Solomon was an ambiguous silhouettein the feeble light, appearing to change shape as night encroached on the room and merged more and more with his outline. They'd talked business. Solomon's voice was soft, American-accented with the mildest hint of Haitian. His words, although few, were well chosen and precise; he wanted to make sure he wasn't misunderstood. He'd struck Sam as highly intelligent, as clever if not cleverer than the brightest people he'd known at university. He had a quick mind and remembered every detail of what was said to him. He'd asked Sam to set up six savings accounts-four for him, two for Eva, but not in their names. He'd then asked about numbered accounts in Switzerland. Sam had told him he needed serious capital to get one of those. 'It will come,' Solomon had said. And it did.

Whenever they'd met, it had always been in places with poor light or no light at all. For all Sam knew, Solomon might not even have been there in person on every occasion; he could have been meeting one of the doubles Carmine said he regularly used. Not that it really mattered one way or another, because, apart from his voice, Sam didn't have the slightest idea what his employer looked like. Solomon could have come into the shop and Sam wouldn't have known it was him.

Things ran very smoothly, or had done until the murders of Preval Lacour and Mr and Mrs Cuesta over the Lemon City project. Sam hadn't approved, but he hadn't disapproved of their being out of the picture either. He was, above all, a businessman, and business was about taking advantage of whatever opportunity came your way.

On Wednesday afternoons, the slowest time, his assistant Lulu gave him a manicure. Sam was fastidious about his appearance. Hands and teeth were exceptionally important in his kind of business, he had found, along with his brains and book of contacts, the key tools of the trade. A good smile with healthy teeth drew someone in and gained their trust, and a firm handshake bound them to you.

He was inspecting Lulu's fine work when the bell above the door rang and Carmine walked in, looking sweaty and pissed off.

'Salaam, Carmine!' Sam called out happily. He walked over and kissed his friend on each cheek and then stood back to look at him. Carmine was lightly bruised about the face. 'What happened?'

'Not here,' he said, looking at Lulu, who was packing away her manicure set.

'Why don't you go downstairs and clean up?' Sam said in English, which Lulu was still trying to master.

By downstairs Sam meant the lower basement, two floors beneath. The floor directly below where he kept his animals. Until very recently he'd had a chimpanzee there. It was a runaway from Primate Park he'd found sitting outside his shop, seemingly half dead with exhaustion. He'd taken it in and let it stay in the empty goat cage, before selling it to a Congolese witchdoctor.

The lower basement had white tiled floors and walls, and a whitewashed ceiling with a long rail across it hung with stainless-steel hooks. It was spotless and reeked heavily of industrial disinfectant. There was a marble mortuary slab in the middle with a sluice drain next to it. There were four white rectangular freezers around the slab, humming a quiet but deep note.

This was where Sam stored the carcasses of the gators he and Carmine went out and hunted in the Everglades once a month. Sam drove the airboat and Carmine shot them through the eye with a hunting rifle. He was a great shot, hitting the beasts dead on target every time.

When they were done they'd bring the gators back to the shop, hang them up, gut them, clean them and pack them in ice. Later Sam would ship them out to his parents' factory in Haiti where they got turned into shoes, belts, luggage and souvenirs-the heads and feet being big sellers to tourists and religious freaks.

Carmine washed his face and then scooped out some ice into two trash bags and put them against his bruises.

When Sam came down a few minutes later, Carmine told him what had happened. Sam remembered Risquee well; trouble from the moment she'd stepped into their lives. She was a Diamond, albeit one still clinging to the coal. When Sam had put the $2,000 on the table, she'd asked him for more, saying she wasn't going to suck on his Ayrabb dick for less than $3,000. Sam had paid up. Then she'd asked for another Quaalude so she could imagine that he was hung like John Holmes and fucked like Mandingo. Sam had liked her, but she'd scared him limp. She was a ready-made hustler who didn't give a shit.

'What are you going to do, Carmine?'

'I can't give in to no blackmail, man,' Carmine said. 'I do that, she'll take it all.'

'And who knows what else she'll do,' Sam said.

'What do you mean "what else"? She already said she'll tell my mother. She finds out, we're both fuckin' dead. Don't matter what you do for Solomon, how useful you are an' shit. You cross him, you're gator food. The guy is straight up ruthless. Shit don't mean shit to him.'

'Then there's only one thing to do.'

Carmine nodded but didn't meet Sam's eye.

'You want me to take care of it?' Sam offered.

'No, man,' Carmine said, 'I gots to handle my own shit.'

'You're not a killer, Carmine.'

'Yet.'

'You're not a killer,' Sam repeated firmly. 'And you don't want to walk down that road. Let me sort it out. Put someone on it.'

'Who?'

'Someone. There's so many killers in Miami they'll have a union soon.' 'No man. It's my thang, you know. This bidniss is mines, so this problem is mines. How you expect me to survive out in the desert if I can't deal with one greedy bitch? I'll handle this.'

Carmine looked at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. 'My face, man. Look at me. I gots to be collecting the rent off these hos about now. That Lulu? She got some-er-make-up or somethin'? All girls always got make-up on 'em, right? See if she got some foundation I can put on my face.'

'Foundation? OK.' Sam turned around and started heading for the stairs, clenching his jaws so he wouldn't laugh.

'Hey, don't tell her it's for me, right?' Carmine called after him.

What Sam hadn't told Carmine was that Solomon and Eva knew all about his sideline. Sam had kept them informed from the very beginning. He'd had to. They would have found out easily, and he and Carmine would've wound up as human sacrifices.

They hadn't taken it badly. In fact Eva had been amused that her useless, stupid son had even thought of making it on his own.