Voodoo Eyes (8 page)

‘There’s things I can tell you and a lot I can’t,’ Joe said after the waitress had brought the menus.

Liston was leaning in, keeping his voice to a murmur. Max could tell he’d had a long and difficult day. There was the extra set of luggage under his eyes, the cauliflower pattern of his screwed-up forehead, the anxiety unbalancing his usually calm stare.

‘You know whose gun the shooter used?’ said Joe. ‘Abe Watson’s. We got his ballistics on file. They matched his forty- five.’

‘How’d the shooter get hold of it?’

‘Abe was
buried
with his gun. 1911 Colt. His grave was robbed a week before Eldon was killed. You know he made history with that gun, right? He was the first cop in Miami with an automatic. Back then, everyone had thirty-eights. Peashooters. Even Eldon.’

‘Who knew he was buried with the gun? Outside of his family and friends?’

‘People at the funeral parlour. They’re on the list for questioning.’

‘So Abe Watson’s connected to all of this too?’ Max started tying up the leads. ‘Eldon was shot with his gun. They were partners and close friends. The shooter dug up the gun. What do you exhume? Things that’ve been buried, hidden away. The past. So this could be related to something Eldon and Abe did when they were cops. And Eldon was shot through both eyes. What’s that telling us? Something – or someone – he saw that he wasn’t supposed to? Or something we –
you’re
– not seeing?’

‘Eldon was shot with Black Talons,’ said Joe. ‘Aka “the bullets that kill you better”: cop-killer rounds, on account of their being able to pierce Kevlar vests – or so interested parties thought.’

‘Weren’t those discontinued ten, fifteen years ago?’

‘From public sale, yeah. Law enforcement and the military used them for a while. Then Winchester modified the bullet and rebranded it the Ranger SXT. The new bullets aren’t black ’cause they stopped spraying them with Lubalox. But the ones Eldon got shot with? Vintage lead.’

‘Can you track the batch?’

‘They’re working on it,’ Joe said. ‘It won’t be easy. A lot of discontinued weaponry gets sold to the Third World via back-door deals. Between us, the killer might be a foreigner.’

‘Tell me more.’

‘I can’t,’ said Joe. ‘I shouldn’t even have told you that much.’

‘Why not?’

‘I just can’t. I’d like to. There’s all kinds of things I’d like to tell you.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like stuff I can’t talk about.’

Max had never known Joe to be like this. He’d seen him down and close to defeat, he’d seen him angry and capable of murder, he’d seen him heartbroken and on the verge of tears, he’d seen him at the edge, but never going over. Joe’s innate restraint and stolidity had always seen him through, enabled him to weather the worst without losing his head. Life may sometimes have confused him, but it had never overwhelmed him, never got the better of him. Until now.

‘What kind of trouble are you in, Joe?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Liston.

‘Anything I can do?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yeah.’

But Max sensed Joe wanted to talk. He just wasn’t there yet; he was still finding the right way to present the information, release it in a way he could live with.

Give him time. Change the subject.

Max looked out over Lincoln Road. It had become lush and prosperous, with restaurants, cafés, bars, cigar stores, art galleries and boutiques all doing a roaring trade under its natural canopy of spotlight-strewn, parrot-laden trees. Not that long before, the road had been two miles of arid sewer, connecting Collins Avenue to a group of dilapidated condos by the marina. Mounds of stinking trash everywhere, buildings either boarded up or colonised by bums. The only people who went down there were lost tourists, crazy old folk who’d come off their meds and the cops and medics rescuing them. Hard to believe it was the same place now. They’d even renovated the theatre. Max remembered chasing a purse-snatcher in there, only to discover a whole boatload of newly washed-ashore Haitians hiding under the stage, terrified and starving.

It was always busy on Lincoln at night, although it wasn’t uncommon to see the same people three or four times. In the early evening it was couples and families, many with children and pets, looking for a place to eat, checking out the blown-up menus and plates of artfully arranged, cellophane-covered seafood in front of the restaurants. Later on it was the turn of the hustlers and exhibitionists – the cheap guitar slingers hustling you for a song, the freaks carrying parakeets and snakes, the ugly transvestite who mimed arias, the failed circus acts. And then, later still, when the clubs opened, out came the true Miami freaks, the kind of beautiful but utterly vacant starfucking types who wound up on reality TV shows – an endless parade of the tattooed, pumped-up, pierced, depilated, liposucked, collagened, botoxed, implanted and plugged. Narcissistic vulgarity taking the long walk to absolutely nowhere.

Tonight that crew had to compete with the Halloween crowd. It was mostly adult. People were dressed as witches, wizards, vampires, ghouls, goblins. There was a Michael Myers with a plastic butcher’s knife, a few Jasons in hockey masks, assorted Leatherfaces, Pinheads, Freddie Kruegers. Max saw a Robocop, a Boris Karloff, a Lion, a Tin Man and a male Dorothy skipping down the street, hand in hand. Here came a Pinball Wizard in towering platforms and a woolly hat, next a seventies pimp trailing a gaggle of chained women wearing glitter, gold thongs and Bin Laden masks. There were plenty of presidents around – a Washington in a powdered wig, lipstick and rouge; a pregnant woman as Benjamin Franklin; a handful of Lincolns, one of them on stilts; a couple of Reagans; and a lot of Nixons and Dubyas, the latter outnumbering the former.

Then, cutting right through the cartoon freakery, running and bouncing along, came a line of over a dozen children – boys and girls, all races – no older than twelve, chanting, ‘Yes we can! Yes we can!
GO
!-BAM-A!
GO
!-BAM-A!’ People stopped and stared and many smiled and some shouted encouragements.

‘It’s looking real good for Obama,’ Max said finally. The election was four days away.

‘Can’t believe you’re not even arguing for McCain,’ said Joe.

‘I’d sooner argue for a third Bush term. I mean,
Sarah Palin
… Fuck no.’

‘Hell just froze over.’ Joe smiled for the first time that evening, his gloomy demeanour momentarily lifting.

Politics had been their one and only other regular argument, after the merits of Bruce Springsteen. Until recently, Max had been a lifelong Republican. Joe was and always had been a staunch Democrat. They’d argued the 2000 election until they were hoarse, Joe insisting Bush stole it, Max saying Gore voters were too dumb to punch the right hole. 9/11 had briefly united them, but the war in Iraq had once again got them arguing, Max buying the government line about Saddam’s WMD, Joe saying that was all bullshit, that it was about oil. Max had continued supporting the war, right up until Abu Ghraib. After the government’s inaction during Hurricane Katrina, for the first time in his life he would have voted Democrat if he could – except his criminal record prohibited it.

‘The whole family’ll be watching the results round my house,’ said Joe. ‘You’re invited.’

‘I accept.’ Max made a show of studying the menu, despite the fact that he invariably had the same thing here, his favourite –
lechon asado
(roast pork, marinaded in orange, garlic, onion and olive oil),
maduros
(sautéed sweet plantain) and
moros y cristanos
(literally ‘Moors and Christians’, figuratively black beans and rice).

Joe was determined to try everything on the menu and always varied his dishes. ‘You know why the mariposa’s the national bird of Cuba?’ he asked Max.

‘Because of its colours? Red, white and blue?’

‘That too,’ said Joe. ‘The real reason is you can’t cage a mariposa because it dies. It’s a symbol of freedom.’.

‘Freedom?
In Cuba?’
Max laughed. ‘Is that some kind of joke?’

‘There are many kinds of freedom.’

‘Like the freedom to give up your basic freedoms?’ Max chortled.

‘You ever been there?’

‘No. Of course not. Have you?’

Just then the waitress came over to take their order. Max gave his. Joe took his time. From the way he was fussing, uncommonly, Max wondered if it hadn’t hit a nerve, and he was trying to cover it up. Had Joe been to Cuba? He decided not to pursue it for now.

He glanced across the restaurant, at the black-and-white tiled floor, and the walls, decorated with mariposa frescos – the birds in flight, the birds singing; the country’s symbol of freedom appropriately frozen in midflight, on hold, its mouth open, its voice unheard.

Max remembered the shell casing Lamar Swope had given him and took it out of his breast pocket. He ran down his day, told Joe what he’d found out.

‘The shooter’s black, has a hare lip. He was wearing a black shirt with bird patterns on it. And he has an accomplice, a driver, white. Not sure if the driver’s male or female. The car’s a brown Ford Sierra,’ Max said. ‘You should pull any camera footage you can find from 7th and 8th Avenues, between MLK Boulevard and 54th Street.’

‘Great work.’ Joe pocketed the bullet. ‘Bet you got the taste back today, right? For police work?’

‘Yeah.’ Max had got the taste back all right, enough to miss every damn thing he’d left behind, to regret every wrong turn, every misstep. Being out there, looking for Eldon’s killer – and doing real work again – had energised him, given him purpose, made him forget what a slow-leaking boat his life was. He didn’t want to give up what he’d just started.

Joe seemed to read his mind.

‘Let it go now, Max, d’you hear?’

‘I’d like to know what’s bugging you.’

Joe looked at him. ‘I shouldn’t have involved you.’

‘But you did.’

‘Now I’m telling you to back off, all right?’ As he said it his face darkened a touch and Max knew that he wouldn’t get anything more out of him, that the subject was closed.

A heavy silence settled between them. Max thought it best to let the matter rest for now.

The waitress brought over their food. She was called Samantha, or at least that’s what her name tag read. Tall, with long, blonde-streaked dark hair and a full mouth, she would have been a knockout if she hadn’t looked almost permanently pissed off. The first time Max had seen her – a year before – he’d attributed it to anger at the possibility that she would be waiting tables for the rest of her life. Then she turned around and he saw what was probably the cause of her unhappiness. Her ass. High, pert, bulbous and firm, it was one of the finest asses he’d ever seen. It was barely contained in the knee-length black skirt that she wore. Men would stop in the street and stare at that ass and then moments later they’d be sitting at the restaurant. It was a customer magnet. He felt sorry for her. He tried not to look at her ass, but he couldn’t help himself, so to compensate he was as friendly as possible to her and always left a generous tip. It only made her scowl harder.

Joe had followed Max’s eyes.

‘You still God’s Lonely Man?’ said Joe. He’d ordered
picadillo a la criolla
with a side of boiled green bananas and a mixed salad.

‘Of course.’ Max nodded. He’d been single since Hurricane Tameka. Not that he’d exactly been inundated with offers. In fact, the only women who looked at him twice were prostitutes he accidentally made eye contact with.

‘What else is going on with you – in the bedhopper business?’ Joe asked.

Max told him about Emerson Prescott and what had happened at the Zurich Hotel. Liston howled with laughter when Max got to the part about the DVD. He laughed so hard neither of them could eat until he’d stopped.

After Joe had recovered, they picked at their food and watched people idle by on the street, making occasional comments on the pageant of freaks. No one seemed in a hurry. Opposite, half a block down, a young kid with a pudding-bowl haircut was playing electric guitar and singing ‘Brown Sugar’ with a heavy Spanish accent. A small crowd had gathered and were tossing coins into an upturned baseball cap and filming him on camera phones.

Then Max saw Joe’s expression change. The humour drained out of his face and his eyes moved to Max’s right, over his shoulder, fixing on something behind him.

‘What are you lookin’ at?’ Max asked.

Joe didn’t answer. He glanced at Max. He looked puzzled and worried, like he’d just seen something he didn’t believe or understand. His eyes moved back over Max’s shoulder.

Max turned around. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

‘What did you see?’

‘Some creep,’ said Joe, glancing over Max’s other shoulder, at a point past his neck.

‘Which one?’

Joe chortled.

‘It was the strangest fucking thing,’ he said. ‘I just thought … Forget it. Carry on.’

Max went back to Emerson Prescott, to trying to understand what the fuck it was all about, but Joe wasn’t listening. His troubles were refusing to time out.

‘Joe,’ said Max. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s up? What am I gonna do – apart from listen? You were willing to go up against the department just yesterday. Risk your livelihood. You asked me to help and I did. And I’d do it again. You know that. So why don’t you just tell me what’s up? I’d tell you.’

Liston looked at Max for a long moment.

Then he put his cutlery down, wiped his mouth on a napkin and rested it near his plate.

‘They say the best way to keep a secret is to tell no one. And this is one I’ve been living with longer than I’ve known you. I haven’t even told my wife – and I tell her everything,’ he said.

‘Except this?’

‘That’s right. Does the name Vanetta Brown ring any bells?’

Max’s immediate thought was, No. But in the back of his mind, there was a faint chime of recognition.

‘The name sounds vaguely familiar.’

‘Well—’ Joe started and stopped. His eyes suddenly moved back to scanning the crowd behind Max.

As Max was about to turn and look around again, a thunderous boom reverberated right behind him, very close, close enough to deafen him. It was a huge sound, that of a shot being fired just above his ear. He felt it right down to the tips of his toes.