The King of Swords (max mingus) (46 page)

Then, as he was bending down to pick Boukman up, he saw a flicker in the Haitian's swollen eyes and saw he was looking at him.

Boukman whispered something to him in the faintest, slightest breath, the words making the sound of a knife being sharpened on a whetstone.

Max bent down to hear.

He didn't catch it all. But he made out one word, clearly.

'Live.'

He waited in case Boukman repeated himself, or said something else, but he didn't.

Max hoisted Boukman up on his shoulders and carried him from the store and back into the street.

O
n the first Tuesday in October, Eldon Burns made the trip from Miami to Raiford Prison in Union County, to see Solomon Boukman. According to the warden, Boukman-now fully recovered after losing almost four pints of blood on the day of his arrest-had said next to nothing to anyone after he'd arrived. He answered questions in monosyllables, affirmative or negative grunts, or nods or shakes of the head. Only at night, in his sleep, did they hear him speak, but then in words no one in the prison could understand. He used a multitude of voices, none of them English. They'd bugged his cell and sent the recordings to language experts, who'd identified eighteenth century French, Haitian Kreyol and two West African dialects. The translations were identical. Solomon said the same thing in every language.

'You give me reason to live.'

'Your lawyer won't be coming any more,' Eldon announced after the guards had left him alone with Boukman in the interview room. 'Conflict of interest.'

Eldon sat down at the wooden table across from Boukman and observed him for a moment. He'd lost weight, to the extent that he resembled an anorexic teenager dressing tough in his standard-issue prison denim. His face was gaunt, his eyes baggy and his skin had the cold tone of burnt-out matchsticks, coupled with the sickly pallor common to prisoners with limited access to daylight and fresh air. He didn't look like much, but looks were deceiving. All the inmates at Raiford were terrified of him.

Boukman hadn't had advance warning of Eldon's visit, but he wasn't remotely surprised to see him. Or else he'd mastered the inmate's theatre of complete indifference to perfection: in prison you learnt to blend in with the walls.

Eldon reached into the padded envelope he'd brought with him and placed its contents on the table in front of Boukman. Three TDK C90 cassette tapes-black, grey and clear-each with dates written on the labels. Boukman glanced at them briefly, his expression unchanged.

'Think I didn't know you taped our conversations? Two copies for you'-Eldon pointed to the grey and clear tapes-'and one for Pruitt McGreevy-or, as we call him, Mr McGrievance. How much did you know about your lawyer, exactly?'

Eldon waited for Boukman to answer. He didn't. He merely sat back in his chair and folded his arms. Eldon noted he'd done up all the buttons of his shirt-front, collar and cuffs.

'All those high and mighty liberal principles of his,' Eldon continued. 'The man defends nigras pro bono, and all along he's got a pro-boner for under-age girls. Scandal like that-if it came out-would kill his career. He didn't want to be disbarred. I'm sure you understand. It wasn't personal.'

Boukman stared at Eldon, their eyes locking for the first time in broad daylight for many years. Eldon had almost forgotten those unique brown eyes with their bottomless stare, empty as skull sockets and filled with the same darkness. They were eyes old before their time, eyes that had lost their power to be surprised by anything life had to show them, no matter how shocking, cruel or atrocious. It took most criminals-even the hardest cases-years to perfect that inscrutability, that coldness and remove, but none of them even came close to matching Boukman.

'Even with the tapes, he couldn't have helped you. Cause you ain't gonna be tried for the drugs or the kidnapping or all that killing-those fucked-up voodoo sacrifices, all that shit you did. We don't care about that. You people kill each other every day. It's no story.

'But killing a cop, now that is a story. And that's what you're goin' down for. It's open and shut. Two highly decorated officers saw you do it. Your prints are on the murder weapon. Ballistics match. Done deal. The best lawyer in the world couldn't get you out of that. It's a straight-up death-row bounce. You'll get the chair.'

Boukman smiled very slightly at that, the ends of his mouth betraying the same hint of private amusement seen in his newspaper picture and mugshot. Then he leant forward and spoke, his voice no more than a murmur, 'Your "two highly decorated officers"-Max Mingus and Joe Liston-they were after me, but they never actually caught me. They caught a random taxi driver who killed a cop. If they're the best you've got, you might as well hand the city over to the criminals. But what am I saying? The city's already in the hands of criminals.' Boukman tilted his head at Eldon. 'Does Mingus know him and me were on the same team?'

'You've got nothin' left, Boukman.' Eldon ignored the taunt, but its boldness rankled. Why hadn't they killed this fucker in Lemon City? Why hadn't they let him bleed out? 'We've got it all-all your people, all your property, all your money. And your Haitian connections? I've got all those.'

'Enjoy…while it lasts. Because nothing that good lasts for ever.' Boukman's eyes glinted with knowing mockery.

Eldon snorted contemptuously and shook his head.

'What I don't get…You knew the jig was up in Opa Locka. You could've run. Split town. Split the country. Why d'you stay? Why d'you go to Lemon City-of all the other places you could've gone to?'

'I know my destiny.'

'Eva's bullshit again!' Eldon chuckled.

Boukman lost his smirk at the mention of Eva's name.

'Destiny can't be changed, any more than a bullet can be recalled.'

'So you knew it was comin' and you did nothin' to change it? You Haitians are a bunch of fucken' losers, you know that?' Eldon laughed.

'You don't know how this ends,' Boukman replied.

'Oh, I do,' Eldon said. 'It ends with you frying in an electric chair a year or two from now: your insides boiling, your flesh burning like paper and your eyes popping out of your skull.'

'It doesn't end that way at all for me,' Boukman replied. 'You'll cage me, but you'll never kill me.'

'You sure of that?'

Boukman nodded and sat back in his chair and folded his arms.

'Why?'

'Everything has come to pass. Everything has come true. To the letter. Right down to your betrayal.' 'Yeah?' Eldon was incredulous. 'Then why did you fucken' do business with me?'

'Destiny and bullets,' Boukman replied.

'Eva did some job on you.' Eldon laughed. 'Turned you into a permanent fucken' zombie! Did she know she was going to burn to death in her own house?'

'She didn't die in the fire,' Boukman said, with a slight touch of emotion. 'She was dead when I found her.'

'Carmine kill her?'

Boukman didn't answer. He crossed his arms tighter.

'Don't make no difference anyway. Case is closed. Good riddance.' Eldon thought he saw a shadow of hurt darken Boukman's eyes, but it was gone so quickly it might have been wishful thinking on his part.

'Why did you come here?' Boukman asked.

Eldon had ostensibly come to tell Boukman that his insurance policy-the tapes he'd been planning to use against him-had expired. But he'd really come to show that dumb nigger just how powerful and all-knowing he was.

But it hadn't really worked out that way. Boukman's attitude-his resignation to his fate and the certainty, his cast-iron faith that he'd escape the inevitable-had unnerved and even undone him. He was suddenly conscious of the sweat running down his temples, of the uncomfortable feeling in his gut that maybe-just maybe, in some impossible way-Boukman might even be right about the way things were going to turn out.

Eldon felt beaten. Powerless. Insignificant.

Without saying a word to the prisoner, he put the tapes back in the envelope, stood up and banged on the door for the guard.

'I thought so,' Boukman said, his voice suddenly at his ear.

Eldon turned around sharply, expecting to see him standing right behind him, but he hadn't moved from the table. He was smiling broadly at Eldon, showing a set of strong white teeth and, between them, the curled, pointed tips of his splayed tongue.

As the door opened and Eldon stepped out of the room he heard Boukman laugh behind him. It wasn't a loud laugh, more a snigger, but a hard, contemptuous one which reminded him of hailstones on a tin roof.

The laughter stayed with him, not in his ears, but in his brain, embedded in his memory, swirling around and around in his head as it followed him out of the prison and into his car. It was with him as he drove to Gainesville Regional Airport and caught the flight back to Miami. And then, once he was airborne, it got marginally louder and significantly harsher, especially when he tried to concentrate on the business he had before him that evening-a meeting with the Mayor, to discuss his imminent promotion to Deputy Chief, and how he was going to help clean up the police force and make Miami great again.

5
November 1982 'How did it go?' Sandra asked Max after he'd sat down next to her on the sand. It was early evening and the sun was going down, bathing the beach in a deep coppery glow. The holidaymakers were all packing up and drifting away back to their hotels, while the gulls were circling the trash they'd left behind like vultures. Soon the junkies and the homeless bums would be marking out their turf for the night.

'It went,' he said. It had been his third and final day on the witness stand in the trial of Solomon Boukman, and he was dead beat, drained to the last dregs, good for nothing but some idle small talk, a couple of hours of mindless TV and a good long sleep.

'His lawyer chew you up today?'

'No.' Max shook his head. 'He left his teeth at home. Again.'

Boukman's public defender was one of the worst lawyers he'd ever encountered-if not the worst. Or should that be the best? A half-decent lawyer would have at least tried to cast a shadow of doubt over his and Joe's testimony: they never actually saw who pulled the trigger on the cop, never positively IDed Boukman behind the wheel of the cab (which was never recovered after the riot); they could, theoretically, have been chasing the wrong man. And then there were all those injuries Boukman had sustained-three broken ribs, a busted nose, a fractured cheek and a dislocated jaw-which Max didn't even get cross-examined about. Not that the predominantly white jury would have bought into Boukman's innocence anyway: the press had already blamed him for starting what was now known as the 'Little Haiti Riot' when he'd killed Otis Mandel, an honest, hard-working patrol cop who'd left behind a wife and daughter; and no lawyer could argue with forensics and fingerprint evidence. Boukman was going down. No doubt about it.

'So why are you upset?'

'I'm not.' Max smiled at her. 'I'm just tired.'

'Something's bugging you. Something's got under your skin.' Sandra looked at him with her big brown eyes that saw everything.

'Can I tell you later?'

'Nothing wrong with now.'

'Everything's wrong with now.' He looked out at the sea and the family in front of them-a couple and their two young children, a boy and a girl in matching yellow floppy hats.

Sandra was frowning at him. 'I insist.'

'I've…I've decided to leave the force. I'm not gonna be a cop any more. I don't wanna be a cop any more. Not this way.'

He thought she'd be pleasantly shocked, but she was merely pleased.

'I knew you weren't happy there,' she said.

'Why?'

'After you brought Boukman in, you just stopped caring.'

'You noticed?'

'Oh yeah.'

Yeah, he had stopped caring, but it had nothing to do with Boukman.

First Joe had left last October. He'd transferred out to Vice. Half the girls he'd busted in his first six months on the job had once worked for Carmine and Eva Desamours.

Then Eldon had been made Deputy Chief, to much press fanfare. He was hailed, in some papers, as 'Miami's best shot at salvation'. He'd immediately expanded and reorganized MTF into individual units, all reporting to him.

Max got promoted to Lieutenant and put in charge of MTF's Robbery and Homicide division. He hated it. MTF may have been reorganized, but that simply meant it had become more proficient at doing what it had done before. Evidence was still planted, people were still framed or killed, and judges and juries lied to: the wrong bad guys got convicted and the right ones walked. 'Make it fit and make it stick' became MTF's unofficial motto. There was no point in talking to Eldon about it, because it was the way Eldon had always done things, and the way he'd always do things.

And as for Max, he could either put up or pack up.

He'd lived that way, one foot out of the door, one foot in, right up until the start of the Boukman trial.

When he'd been called to the witness stand and placed his hand on the Bible to give his oath, he'd remembered his swearing-in ceremony, when he'd first joined the police. He'd really believed in what he was doing then, really believed that he could make a difference. And then he'd remembered how he and Joe had tracked Boukman, on their own, working out of that garage in Overtown. It all seemed to have happened to someone else.

And that was when he'd made his decision.

'I don't know what I'll do,' Max concluded.

'We'll think of something. Don't worry. It'll be all right. It'll be more than all right. You'll see.'

'You think?'

'I know. What does your gut tell you?'

'If I stay it'll just get worse,' Max answered. 'But if I leave, it can only get better. Me and Eldon may have history, but this is about the future.'

'There you go,' she said. 'I never did like Eldon. Those brief times we met, in the hospital, and when you made Lieutenant…something about him wasn't right. Something didn't fit and didn't stick.'

'Anything specific?'

'Instinct.' Sandra shrugged.

'That's what you get from livin' with a cop. A little of our sixth sense rubs off.'

'Oh, I've always had it, baby.'

'Then you should've been a cop.'

They laughed and after the laughter they let the sound of the waves take over for a while.

Sandra watched the family in front of them. The father was holding the girl up and making her squeal with laughter as he pulled faces and growled. This made Sandra smile, the way Max had noticed she always did when she saw happy children-or children generally. It was her private, daydreaming smile, the one she never shared with him; the one she had when she was seeing her hopes and dreams being projected through others.

She put her arm around him and leant her head on his shoulder.

'You know,' she sighed, 'I'm really looking forward to spending the rest of my life with you.'

He smiled at that. He thought of something appropriate to say in return, and the words came to him quickly.

But as he opened his mouth to speak he felt a sudden chill shoot down his spine and his body spasmed and shook.

Sandra sat up and looked at him worriedly.

'What is it? Are you OK?'

She ran her fingers along his forearm and felt goose-pimples.

'I'm fine.' He nodded, suddenly warm again, like nothing had happened.

She rubbed his arm and looked up at the sky and its dwindling light.

'We best be going in,' she said. 'It'll be dark soon.'

'Yeah,' Max replied with an unknowing certainty, 'I know.' Acknowledgements With special thanks to Beverley Cousins for her vision, wisdom, support, and encouragement-and for setting my dream free.