The King of Swords (max mingus) (32 page)

'
Solomon Boukman-man or myth?' Drake mumbled as he looked around his tower of Babel-a sandwich so big it could have fed a small elephant: six solid inches of pastrami, beef and turkey inter-layered with pickles, sauerkraut, onions, lettuce and piercingly bright yellow mustard, the whole structure topped and tailed with a thin slice of rye bread and held together by a long wooden skewer. Max had a Cuban coffee and his cigarettes.

They were facing opposite directions in adjacent end-of-aisle booths in Woolfies on Collins Avenue, a vast diner with mirrored columns, plush red leather seats, art deco lamps, and a beige and brown tiled floor.

'Word is he's the crime lord of Miami. Got his finger in absolutely everything there's a law against. Dope, prostitution, extortion, gamblin', numbers, auto theft, etcetera, etcetera.' Drake took the tower apart and partitioned it into five smaller sections, but his meal still looked daunting.

'So how come I never heard of him before?' Max asked. Today his informant had come dressed as a Brazilian soccer player-yellow and green shirt, blue shorts, white tube socks. He had the boots and a ball by his side.

'Thass juss it. Dependin' on who you talk to, Boukman either exists or he don't. Some folks are sayin' the Haitians made him up so they could scare off the niggas that was preyin' on 'em-kinda like a criminal scarecrow or sumshit. The Haitians say he's for real. At least them simple ones straight off the boats do. The rich ones I deal with in Kendall think it's all bullshit too.'

'What about you? What do you think?'

'I ain't the cop here, Mingus. I juss tell you what I hear an' see. But if you want me to take a worthless guess-a guy like that?-you'd-a had to have some paper on him by now. No one that big goes undetected. Leaves a trail.'

'True,' Max said, chasing his sweet, thick black coffee with a pull on his Marlboro.

'Strange thing is, the people who say he's real don't know what he looks like. Or they do, but all the descriptions is different. Some of 'em say he's white, some say he's black, some say he's Latino-and there was this one ole girl tole me he was Chinesey lookin'. And then no one can agree if he's really a he or a she. Or an it. Or an evil genius midget man chile. I even heard he's got two tongues. Can you believe that?'

'Two tongues?' Max laughed quietly. 'The ladies must love him.'

'What I thought.' Drake shovelled a wedge of mixed meat and sauerkraut into his mouth.

'So, all this you heard is just word-of-mouth stuff? Nothing concrete?'

'All porch talk. Other thing I found out is that Boukman's got hisself a gang. They call theyselves the Saturday Night Barons Club. The SNBC. You heard of 'em?'

Max shook his head.

'You know why that is? 'Cause they don't exist neither.'

'Right.' Max sighed heavily through a cloud of smoke.

'They ain't like the gangs we got here, or like you seen in The Warriors, or them Crips and Bloods in LA, feudin' over colours and area codes. The SNBC don't have no identification, no territories, none o' that. But, you can't miss 'em if you see 'em 'cause they supposed to be twelve feet tall.'

'This is all soundin' like you sat around a campfire listenin' to a bunch of stoners who watch too many horror movies.' Max chuckled as he spoke, but his patience was wearing thin. The information was ridiculous, even if there were parallels with what he and Joe had found in the files.

'I'm tellin' you what I heard, Mingus.' Drake glanced at him sharply, looking genuinely affronted, mustard bracketing the ends of his mouth.

'OK. Go on,' Max said. 'Why's it called the Saturday Night Barons Club?'

'You ever see that James Bond flick-Live and Let Die?'

'With Gloria Hendry out of Black Caesar? Yeah, I saw that.'

'You remember that guy at the back of the train at the end-big ole brother in whiteface, top hat and tails-laughin' his ass off?' 'Uh-huh.'

'That's Baron Samedi, voodoo god of death who only comes out at night. Samedi means Saturday night in French.'

'So Boukman's gang meet up on Saturday nights, like a Mormon prayer group or something?'

'I don't know when they meet up,' Drake chew-spoke. 'But they supposed to have these ceremonies where they worship Baron Samedi. Human sacrifices take place. Only-OK, I know you gonna laugh-the people they kill, they don't really die. I mean they do, but they come back as-erm-zombies.'

Drake paused, waiting for Max to ridicule him.

'Anyone mention the courtroom shooting in April? The name Jean Assad?' Max asked.

'S'matter o' fact people did, yeah-said he was the guy done the shootin'. They said he was a zombie.'

'Were the SNBC behind that?'

'Yup. Assad stole smack from Boukman and wound up gettin' sacrificed and zombified. He popped that Colombian in the courtroom, right?'

Max ignored the question.

'Tell me what else you heard about the gang.'

'Way I hear it, the whole gang's Haitian-at least the principals are. They got a lot of like subcontractors workin' for 'em. Cubans, Colombians, Jamaicans, blacks and whites, Jews-damn near ev'ry one. Only the subcontractors ain't actual members. They do one job or ten, get paid, bye bye.'

'They know who they're workin' for?'

'Only if they fuck up or flip.'

'What about names?'

'Only heard the one: Carmine Desamours. He's Haitian.'

Max immediately thought of Eva Desamours.

'He's that green-eyed pimp you as'd about. Guy runs the best hos in Miami. Got 'em divided up into playin' card suits-based on looks and earnin' potential. Hearts are cream, Spades blue cheese-street meat, y'know?-and the in-betweens are milk and yoghurt. All Carmine's girls got a small tattoo on the inside of their thigh to identify whatever suit they from. If a girl starts out a Diamond and ends up a Club, she has a new tattoo put next to the old one, and the old one gets crossed out.'

'Like a cattle brand,' Max commented, more to himself.

'Carmine ain't like The Mack-all fur coats, diamonds 'n' gold 'n' all that pizzazz,' Drake continued. 'He's low key, dresses like a bidniss man and don't drive around in no pimpmobile. Fact, you'd never know him fo' a pimp if you saw him. You'd think he be workin' in a bank or sumshit. Smooth motherfucker, pretty boy too, what I hear. But all them other pimps on the track be scared o' him 'cause he got this guy, this enforcer he uses. Big fat motherfucker goes by the name of Bonbon, on account o' how he eats candy the whole time. Bonbon ain't got no teeth neither. He's got these sharp dentures. Bites people's faces off. Pimps see Carmine comin', they run. Carmine wants to knock they best-lookin' hos, they gots to give 'em up. They give him any static, that Bonbon dude come by an' kill 'em. Right there on the street. He don't give a fuck. Way it is out on the track now, pimps won't even put no pretty girls out on the street no mo' 'cause they know Carmine's just gonna come by and knock 'em.'

'Bonbon got another name?'

'Bonbon's all he go by.'

'What else did you hear about him?'

'Nuttin' much, 'cept he's one scary, fearless motherfucker. Rides around wit' these two dykes. Fine-ass bitches, but they be as bad as him. They his security.'

'Get their names?'

'No. Say, you remember Cook Gunnels?'

'Sure,' Max said. Back in the early seventies, Cook Gunnels had had over a hundred hookers working for him. He called himself the King of Pimps and sometimes you used to see him riding around in a pink open-top caddy with a real gold crown on his head and an ermine cape. Gunnels was a nasty sack of shit. He had a reputation for pouring drain cleaner or battery acid down his girls' throats if they held out on him. He had even filmed himself doing it so he could show his new recruits what he was capable of.

'You know how he juss disappeared one day?' Drake said. 'Everybody thought the mob had put concrete boots on him and dumped him out in the ocean. Now I'm hearin' it weren't the mob, but the SNBC killed him. Did him the way he used to do his girls too. 'Cause straight after he went Carmine came on the scene, took over Cook's bidniss.'

'Interesting,' Max said. 'I've seen this Carmine around though. And he ain't twelve feet tall.'

'Yeah, I hear that.' Drake licked the mustard off the sides of his mouth. 'Figured that part for bullshit anyways.'

'Maybe not. The gang could all be standin' on stilts-like in the circus,' Max joked. 'The name Eva Desamours come up in any of your conversations?'

'Yeah. That's his moms. Badass bitch, the way they tell it. Her and Carmine used to live over in Pork 'n' Beans. People around there still talk about the beatin's she gave him-right there on the street, front o' everybody, like he was some kinda dog done wrong. No one said nuttin' to her 'cause they was scared to. She was supposed to be some kinda voodoo priestess. She told people's fortunes, and she used to do all the abortions in the area, plus she could cure the clap. Thass how she got to know all the hos.'

'Did Boukman know 'em?'

'He musta done, 'cause he came up in Pork 'n' Beans too. He had his gang even then. People was scared o' him too-at least all the non-Haitians was. He looked after his own. You so much as touched a Haitian in the projects, Boukman and his crew would come after you.'

'Noble,' Max commented sarcastically. 'Bet the Haitians paid a lot for his services. Tell me about Sam Ismael.'

'He's good people-legit-far as I can tell.' Drake leant back and belched quietly between mouthfuls. 'Comes from a rich Haitian family. Owns most of Lemon City, runs this voodoo store out on North West 54th.'

'No SNBC/Boukman/Desamours ties?'

'None I heard about.' Drake shook his head. 'Most people seem to like him. They say he's gonna redevelop Lemon City into a Haitian quarter, like Little Havana.'

'What's he gonna call it? "Little Haiti"?'

'Has a nice ring to it, don't it?' Drake smiled. He'd now eaten half his Tower of Babel. 'Maybe you should go by an' tell him.'

'Maybe I just might.' Max checked the time. Just gone 9.15. He thought through the information Drake had given him, what best to start working on first. Eva. He'd traced the number he'd taken down in Haiti Mystique to a house in north Miami.

'What can I do for you?' he asked Drake.

'Put this one here in my favour bank an' let it grow. You did right by me with them Palmetto Expressway motherfuckers.'

'It was a pleasure,' Max said.

'You find out their secret formula?'

'They're still working on it in forensics,' Max lied as he got up to leave.

'Prolly some complex shit,' Drake said, shoving another layer of meat and pickles into his mouth. The formula was actually simple-50 per cent cocaine, 50 per cent bicarbonate of soda, water, heat, stir until solid, then break off into small quantities and sell cheaply. Anyone could make it and soon everyone who wanted to would. McCalister at the DEA had told Max this new way of smoking coke had already started taking off in the ghettoes of LA, New York and Chicago, and that if it went nationwide it would be an epidemic.

'No way niggas would get hooked on somethin' that fast there wasn't some Einstein shit behind it,' Drake said. 'No way.'

M
ax went to the garage. He found Joe sharing the couch with a thick stack of papers. He'd been there a good while. He'd gone through five large cups of McDonald's take-out coffee and two cans of Coke. He looked beat-bags under bloodshot eyes, face sagging, a downward slope to his shoulders-and there were large sweat stains under the armpits of his powder-blue shirt and damp patches on the front too.

'You sleep here?'

'As good as.' Joe yawned.

'What you got there?' Max asked.

'Revelations,' Joe said. 'I saw Jack Quiones over the weekend.' 'Yeah? How is he?' Max smiled fondly. Jack was a whole bunch of very rare things-a Fed he liked, a Fed he trusted, a Fed he could work with and a Fed with a sense of humour. They'd frequently cooperated when he'd been stationed in Miami-another rarity, because while police departments grudgingly shared information and resources, getting more than a straight refusal from a G-Man was like getting Mount Rushmore to crack a smile. Feds looked down on ordinary cops; liked them to know they not only had more power, better resources, better training and bigger brains, but that they could walk on water too, as and when duty called. Jack was the exception. He was more interested in solving crimes and saving lives than in winning bureaucratic pissing contests. Since the previous September, he'd been in Atlanta, trying to catch the killer who'd so far claimed the lives of twenty black children.

'He called me up for some intel on those two Aryan Brotherhood pricks we took down in '79.'

'Lund and Wydell?'

'Remember the uncle, Dennis Kreis? Jack thinks Kreis might have something to do with Atlanta-or at least know the button man. He wanted copies of our files on Kreis. So I traded up for some Fed intel on Boukman.'

'That's some intel.' Max glanced over at the block of paper cratering the couch.

'There's at least three dead trees of bullshit there-you know, the usual rumour and conjecture stuff, the guy changin' appearance, the guy bein' in five places at once, the guy havin' two tongues-but someone has accurately IDed Boukman.'

'As what? A blonde three-legged midget?' Max laughed.

'No.' Joe shook his head. 'There were photographs.'

'Were photographs…?'

'Yeah, they're gone,' Joe said. 'What happened was this: December the fifth last year, the Feds arrested a nineteen-year-old Haitian called Pierre-Jerome Matisse for sellin' coke to frat kids. They'd had him under surveillance for four months. He was gettin' his shit from Haiti. Best quality-high 80s, low 90s. A Pan Am pilot was bringin' it in for him, a kee at a time. The pilot was workin' for the Feds.

'Once they get him in custody Pierre calls his dad in Haiti. Daddy is Legrand Matisse, a colonel in the Haitian army. Daddy has been importin' coke into Miami from Haiti for the past three years. Daddy calls his lawyer, the late Coleman Crabbe of Winesap, McIntosh, Crabbe and Milton.'

'Moyez's lawyer?' Max asked as a cold feeling passed into his stomach.

'The very same.' Joe nodded. 'Up until two years ago, the Feds, the DEA and the Coastguard all thought most of the coke coming into Miami was gettin' in via the Colombians-go-fast boats and light aircraft. It is, but that ain't the main route. A lot of the shit we've been gettin' here is comin' in from Haiti.

'They already had intel that Solomon Boukman was a player in the Haitian drug connection, only it wasn't until Matisse that they realized the magnitude of what the guy is actually doin'. I mean, he is the Haitian connection.

'The Feds originally thought Boukman was a link in the chain-just another small fish workin' for the Colombians, or maybe workin' with the Cubans. But Boukman ain't just collectin' from point A and deliverin' to point B. They've now established that the motherfucker buys from the Colombians direct, flies it over to Haiti and from Haiti to here. Then he sells and distributes. I mean, all he needs to do now is find some place to grow coca leaves and he'll be a one-man industry.'

'How did they know all this?'

'Colonel Matisse. He was workin' for Boukman. According to the report, half the Haitian officer corps are. Matisse was in charge of the pick-up from Colombia to Haiti and the Haiti-Miami drop-off.' Joe wiped his sweaty brow with his hand. 'Matisse cut a deal with the Feds. He'd give 'em Boukman and his entire Haitian operation in exchange for his son's freedom. Crabbe negotiated the whole thing.

'But the Feds have the same problem we do. Who exactly is Boukman? What does he look like? There's nothin' official on him-no social security number, no immigration papers, no criminal record. Nada.'

'Maybe he's an illegal who's been real lucky,' Max said.

'Maybe.' Joe nodded. 'But the Feds know Boukman's got himself some serious juice in high places. I'll come to that.'

Max lit a cigarette and looked in the fridge for some water. There was only beer. He'd promised Sandra he wouldn't have any alcohol until after 7 p.m., and only every other day, and never when they were together-unless it was wine with a meal. Only he didn't drink wine because it gave him an acid stomach and a headache in quick succession. He closed the fridge.

'You ain't havin' a brew?' Joe frowned at his partner with surprise.

'Too early,' Max said.

Joe gave him a knowing look. 'Must be love.'

'Carry on.' Max smiled.

'She gets you to quit the cancer sticks, I'll kiss her feet one toe at a time.'

'Carry on,' Max repeated, his smile getting broader.

'OK. So the Feds needed an ID. Matisse told Crabbe he had photographs of Boukman. He said he'd had 'em taken in secret, the last time they met face to face, in 1978. As insurance. Now, it was definitely Boukman, because they went way back. Had mutual friends or-no, that was it-they shared a fortune teller.'

'Who?' Max asked. 'Eva Desamours?'

'I don't know. Or maybe it was in his deposition. Crabbe flew out to Haiti before Christmas and took a full deposition from Matisse. Matisse also gave him the photographs. Crabbe then called the Feds to let them know Matisse hadn't just given up all the Haitian cocaine high command, but he'd also given him his contacts in Customs, the Miami PD, the DEA and the FBI.'

'Christ! ' Max sat down. 'And Crabbe gave that stuff to his secretary, Nora Wong, right?'

'Yeah.' Joe nodded slowly and heavily, remembering the NYPD's crime scene report and the photographs. 'The Feds never got to see any of it because they didn't free Pierre-Jerome. They wanted to change the terms of the deal. They said they'd have no way of knowing if Matisse wasn't making the whole thing up, so they'd only let the kid go home after they had people in custody. And they wanted Matisse to testify against Boukman in open court. Matisse said no dice. Crabbe was in the middle of renegotiating when he got gunned down with Moyez.'

'So Moyez was never the target: Crabbe was.'

'That's right.' Joe nodded.

'Shit. Didn't he make any fucken' copies of the deposition?'

'If he did, they ain't turned up. My guess is they're gone,' Joe said.

'What about Matisse?'

'He's dead. On the morning of May the fourth-the same day as the Moyez trial-Matisse, his wife and their two other children were all shot dead as they ate breakfast at their home in Port-au-Prince.'

'And Pierre-Jerome?'

'Found dead in his cell.'

'Wasn't he in solitary?'

'Yeah. Someone put ground glass in his oatmeal. It's an old trick.'

'Mother-FUCKER!' Max yelled, getting up. 'How in the fuck did Boukman pull this shit off?'

'Everyone has a price, Max, and everything can be bought. Those drug guys have got a lot of money.'

'So Boukman hit everyone on the same fucken' day-in two countries!'

'Yup.' Joe sighed.

'But think of that! That's high-level counter-intel! That takes meticulous planning! You can't get shit like that together in what?-a week!'

'Well, he did it,' Joe said wearily, as Max paced back and forth across the garage. 'Boukman must've had a guy close to Matisse. It's the only explanation.'

'What are the Feds doing now?' Max asked.

'They're tryin' to plug their leak. Then they've gotta start on Boukman all over again. Their last report said Boukman has recruited himself a brand new employee-Ernest Bennett, father-in-law to Baby Doc Duvalier, the president of Haiti himself.'

'Wouldn't surprise me if it was true, wouldn't surprise me if it was bullshit,' Max said gloomily. He crushed out his cigarette and lit another.

Joe knew Max's angers: there was the cold, speechless kind that was always the prelude to physical violence; frustrations and other people's fuck-ups would make him yell and shout; hitting a brick wall in a case would make him do the same-until he went and sat in a church and got his head together. Joe had seen him close to tears when they'd found the bodies of missing kids-but they weren't tears of sorrow, they were tears of rage. Now he was mad as hell all right, yet there was a worry about his anger, almost a fearful tone to his venting. Joe knew what he was going through. He'd been there this morning, feeling so stunted by the length of Boukman's reach he'd wanted to quit the case. He'd got as far as starting to dial Max's number from a nearby payphone to wake him up and tell him, but then he'd thought of the reasons he'd started this whole thing in the first place and put the receiver down.

Max stopped pacing. He thought of Sandra. He saw again her smiling face on his pillow last night when he'd told her he loved her. He saw her sitting at his kitchen table yesterday morning, dressed in one of his shirts, reading the paper. He'd stood in the doorway just looking at her without her noticing, thinking how beautiful she was and how he was the luckiest guy in the world right then. If they carried on with this case the way they were, he'd be putting her in danger. But he couldn't let Joe down.

Max sat on the couch and looked at the black, sticky oil-stained floor. Outside he heard the rumble of thunder.