The King of Swords (max mingus) (43 page)

A
ugust-October 1981

M
ax came to haphazardly, rushing in and out of consciousness as if he was sprinting through time zones on winged feet-day to night, to day to night again. Wakefulness was hard to stand: it brought a wild dizziness to his brain and sharp stabbing pains to his neck and shoulders. He tried to fix and focus his eyes on a specific image, but his new environment whirled fast before him like greased carousel horses, defying all purchase and definition. He found it easier simply to close his eyes and sink deep and fast into oblivion, where the pain faded and his head settled and cleared.

The second to last thing he remembered was Carmine Desamours lying on the ground, his torso ripped open and shredded red; a fast-expanding crimson puddle under his back. He'd made eye contact with Max, his green irises registering first recognition, then trying to tell him something. Desamours had flicked his glance sharply to the right, twice. Max had turned and found himself face to face with a dark-skinned man with cuts all over his forehead and a very familiar stare.

As he'd reached for his gun, he'd felt a powerful crack on the nape of his neck.

A small engine whirred at his ear. He opened his eyes again. He was no longer dizzy, just exhausted, worn down to the bone. Things were coming into focus. He was in a vast, bare space with a concrete floor-about the size of a warehouse or an aircraft hangar-with a large, powerful spotlight beaming down on him from the ceiling, warming his exposed flesh. He was stark naked. He'd been shaved clean from ankles to groin, and his skin was gleaming, as if he'd been covered in oil.

How long had he been out?

He moved his head back to look up, but the engine stopped and a pair of rough, strong hands grabbed either side of his skull.

'Keep still,' a man ordered him.

He was sitting in a chair. His arms were tied behind his back and his legs were bound at the ankles. He could only roll on and off. He was as good as trapped.

The whirring resumed. He felt a dull, blunt object moving up along his cranium. Hair tumbled over his forehead and rolled softly and itchily over his face. Clippers. His head was being shaved. He thought of death-row inmates getting shorn like sheep before they got the chair; he remembered reading about what they'd done to the girlfriends of Nazi soldiers in Europe after liberation.

'Where's Boukman?' Max asked.

The barber didn't answer, just went about his business, now working on Max's temples, occasionally blowing away loose hair.

'Close your eyes,' the barber growled when he'd finished.

Max complied. He felt the clippers moving across his forehead, his eyebrows crackling between the oscillating metal teeth. Then he heard the snip-snip of scissors.

'Rinse! ' the barber shouted.

A bucket of cold water was dumped over Max's head. The shock of it so sudden and unexpected it made him scream.

But it completely woke him up too.

He knew what was happening.

Tomorrow-if today was still Friday-was Saturday.

The ceremony.

The SNBC.

He'd first-briefly-regained consciousness in an ambulance. He'd found himself strapped to a gurney and the siren was wailing. The vehicle was shaking. They were moving at high speed. Two men in police uniform were leaning over him, one rolling up a sleeve, the other prepping a syringe.

Before they'd shot him up with stuff that had sent him back to sleep he'd realized Boukman had had phoney cops on the airport concourse. Or were they real cops working for him?

After the drenching, the barber-a tapering hulk of over-developed muscle packed in a sleeveless denim shirt, grey sweatpants and a Hermes headscarf-sprayed the top of Max's head with shaving foam and spread it over his scalp. He produced a cutthroat razor from his pocket and scraped the stubble off Max's dome, wiping the blade residue on a cloth. He did Max's brows last.

'Rinse! '

They left him alone, dripping in a big puddle of water.

He looked around. He saw the bright light above him, the concrete ground and a trapdoor approximately twenty feet away. There were reddish-brown markings on the ground around the chair: a cross to his left, a star to his right and a line dividing them; the symbols were framed by the outline of a coffin.

Max raised his legs off the floor. His ankles were bound with a thick tourniquet of packaging tape. He tried moving his hands. He could barely wriggle his fingers.

There was no way out of this. He was going to die the long way.

Boukman would feed him the potion, put a gun in his hand and send him out to murder. He would no longer know who he was, let alone recognize the target. He prayed that target wouldn't be Sandra-and if it was her that the potion or a bullet would kill him before he even came close to taking her life.

At that moment he felt his captor's gaze on him. He was roving around in the darkness, studying Max from every angle. First from the back, then his profile, then his face. Max didn't bother searching for him. He knew he was there with an unverifiable certainty.

'BOUKMAN' he yelled. 'You hidin' again, you fucken' cocksucker? You fucken' coward! Why don't you show your face, asshole? Come on out! What've you got to lose, huh? I know what you fucken' look like!'

But Boukman didn't come out. Max's words echoed around the empty space, and his anger-his useless rage-hugged the air like cold cordite.

'Hey…' Max said after a few moments' reflection, his tone normal, resigned. 'If I don't see you again, hear this…Fuck you!'

Some time later the barber returned, wheeling a small metal table. Two other men followed behind, carrying a black plastic bucket, which they set down on the floor in front of Max, out of reach of his feet, but close enough for him to see the contents: a putrid-looking milky-green liquid with the viscous consistency of pea soup.

'That the Kool Aid?' Max sneered.

The two men looked first at each other and then at him and then again at one another and chuckled in unison.

The barber positioned the table close to the bucket. On top were a small stack of Dixie cups, a plastic funnel, a spindle of catgut, a matchbox, a soup ladle and a leather case in the shape of a pocketbook.

He wasn't quites care dyet, more apprehensive and nervous.

The barber dipped the ladle into the bucket and filled a cup.

'You can make this easy on yourself and just suck it down,' he said, as he took the matchbox, slid it open and sprinkled its contents-small coloured squares-into the cup. 'Or else you make us force you. Your choice.'

'Fuck off!' Max shouted.

'Most people get it over with-glug-glug,' the barber suggested calmly.

'Fuck off!'

The barber nodded to the two men.

One locked his arm around Max's head, covering his eyes, while the other grabbed Max's legs, straightened them and held them fast.

Strong fingers gripped Max's lower jaw and forced it down, stretching his skin, muscles and ligaments to tearing point, until the whole lower half of his head felt like it was going to snap off.

He struggled about, wriggling and thrashing and rolling his shoulders, but he was too constricted for his movements to count for anything other than a nominal, face-saving resistance.

The chair was tilted and the plastic funnel was jammed into his mouth, the end reaching his back teeth. He bit down on it but the plastic was hard and unyielding.

Then his mouth was flooded with a glacial, slimy, lumpy fluid that tasted rancid and sour-curdled milk cut with vinegar and bleach, coupled with a strong trace of bitter herbs and fresh grass. He tried to constrict his throat to stop it going down but he couldn't. The potion swept past his epiglottis and rushed into his stomach.

The funnel was removed from his mouth.

The man behind him let go of his jaw and uncovered his eyes.

Max could feel the fluid in his stomach, cold and heavy, as if he'd just swallowed a dozen whole ice cubes.

The barber was standing before him, smiling, the funnel dripping greenly on the floor.

'Bon appetit,' he said.

'FUCK YOU!' Max shouted. His throat and mouth were raw and coated with grit, his tongue swollen and tender.

'You have a brave mouth, blanc,' the barber said as he unzipped the leather case and opened it like a book, revealing two rows of surgical sewing needles, arranged in order of length and thickness, on either side of the case. The barber studied Max's face for a moment and opted for a thick, four-inch-long needle. He cut a length of catgut from the spindle, knotted one end and threaded it through the eye. When he'd finished he nodded to the man standing behind Max.

The man clamped his palms on Max's head and held it firm and still. The barber came over, crouched down and pinched Max's lips tightly together with his fingers. He pushed the needle slowly through the corner of Max's left lower lip. Max screamed and tears ran down his face as the point first punctured the skin and then penetrated the cushion of soft tissue, before bursting out of his upper lip. The pain doubled as the tough catgut slithered bloodily up and out through the hole. The barber wound the slack around his fist and tugged at it hard, dragging Max's mouth up towards his nose, before sticking the needle back through his bottom lip and repeating the process. He sewed carefully and methodically, taking his time, until Max's lips were completely sealed.

When he'd finished, the barber cut another, shorter length of catgut and put a single stitch through Max's nose.

By then Max was in such pain he barely noticed.

The barber wheeled the table away and the men carried off the bucket, leaving Max to his suffering and the poison in his stomach.

He could feel the potion moving subtly, incrementally in his gut, like a living thing, finding its way around inside of him, familiarizing itself with him, slowly taking over.

He sensed himself becoming weaker, strength trickling out of him, away from his legs and arms, dissipating out into the air through the ends of fingers and toes. Tiredness was creeping through him, shutting him down, switch by switch.

The ceremony began.

First, he was encircled by people on stilts-all exactly the same height, all identically dressed in top hats, tailcoats, pinstriped trousers, ru?ed shirts and black gloves; all with their faces heavily made-up in pancake white from forehead to nose and black for the remainder. They stood, steady and unwavering, their hands folded in front of them and their eyes fixed on him, human totems dwarfing the sacrificial offering.

Then the light on him grew brighter and hotter and a circle of drums began to pound. The stiltmen joined hands and began to move around him, slowly, anti-clockwise, one giant step at a time.

The drums were joined by mass chanting, the sound of a hundred or more voices, reciting words he couldn't understand in a prayer-like cadence, delivered in the lowest register.

Max could no longer feel much of his body. His eyes and ears were still working, his nose just about, and his guts too, channelling the potion, breaking it down, dispatching its lethal components into his bloodstream.

He couldn't move his mouth or jaw. Breathing was difficult, mere whispers of air getting through the narrow gaps in his nostrils. He tried-reflexively, again and again-to inhale through his mouth, but his mouth was as good as gone. He'd suck in and get absolutely nothing.

He was no longer brave or defiant.

He was terrified-a little for himself, but mostly for Sandra and of what he'd be made to do to her. Boukman would send him to accomplish what he'd failed to achieve in Opa Locka.

The drum beats picked up, faster and faster they went, and the stiltmen moved with them, gaining speed, quickening their pace until their colours began to fragment and bleed into each other before his eyes, the monochrome contrasts merging into a single unbroken circle of grey-the tone of graphite strokes on paper and overcast Miami summer mornings and decades old prison barbed wire.

The chanting was no longer a verse, but a single word, one he recognized, shouted in unison, loudly, very loudly:

SSSSO-LO-MON

SSSSO-LO-MON

SSSSO-LO-MON

N
ow the drums were being beaten so fast they sounded like propellers, and the stiltmen were orbiting him with centrifugal force, emitting a faint cooling breeze that wafted his way.

SSSSO-LO-MON

SSSSO-LO-MON

Then the trapdoor dropped open and a shaft of blood-red light came out of the ground.

SSSSO-LO-MON

SSSSO-LO-MON

A man rose up from the floor-a man dressed and made-up as the stiltmen were, except he was all in white.

He stepped out of the light and took two paces towards Max. He folded his arms, reached inside his coat and pulled out two long gleaming samurai swords, which caught the light and dazzled Max. He closed his eyes, very briefly.

When he opened them again the man was standing a few feet away from him, twirling the swords at high speed as if they were batons. The kaleidoscopic bolts of light were shooting from the blades-red, pink, orange, violet, yellow and blue splattered Max's eyeballs and blinded him to his surroundings.

He found himself thinking of sunsets. Sunsets on the beach opposite his home; watching the sun dripping down behind the darkening ocean like a drop of burning honey. Every day ended at sunset.

'
Don't blame yourself,' Eldon mumbled to Joe as they stood together on the MTF roof at dawn on Sunday, sunlight starting to dissolve the night away from Miami's flat cityscape, giving it the biliousness of unearthed bones.

Both men were exhausted-physically and mentally-and their nerves were frayed from a combination of non-stop anxiety, missed sleep and way too much coffee. They'd been up close to forty-eight hours looking for Max. No result.

The last time Joe had seen his partner was when they'd split up outside the airport. Then he'd watched security camera footage of two fake cops dragging him out of the concourse, a shadowy man with an indiscernible face at their side, unchallenged by the dozens of officers trying to keep control of the hysterical, panicked crowd in the building.

'Max was like kin to me,' Eldon continued, following a flock of seagulls making for the ocean.

'Was…?' Joe said.

'Come on, you gotta be realistic at times like these, prepare for the worst. Max's dead. Boukman's finished what he tried to do in Opa Locka.'

'That's straight-up cold,' Joe said.

'It is what it is,' Eldon said. 'You think this is easy for me? You think this ain't hurtin' me? I'm dyin' in here.' Eldon pointed to the middle of his chest. He had tears in his eyes. 'Max was damn family.'

'The son you never had, right?' Joe said, with a trace of sarcasm.

'Yeah.' Eldon missed it. 'Something like that. We were real close, you know? He came to me about everything. Everything.'

'He didn't come to you about Boukman,' Joe reminded him.

'Well, he should have. If he had, he'd-a still been alive.'

'Yeah, right.' Joe chuckled grimly. 'Like it was that easy.'

'What are you saying?' Eldon frowned and narrowed his eyes.

'You know why he never told you nothin' 'bout Boukman? It was 'cause you woulda done nothin'. You were too busy puttin' the Moyez case on a bunch of guys didn't have nothin' to do with it. You didn't give a shit who the real perps were. It's all about lookin' good on TV and pleasin' them politicians you hobnob with.

'The real Moyez investigation was our thing-our case. Not yours, not MTF's-ours. Me and Max did it in our time, on our own dollar. That's 'cause Max is and always will be what you, Mr Burns, are not. And that is a real cop. You just wear the uniform. Underneath it, you're just a mercenary. A soldier of political fortune. A gun for hire. And this-MTF-your unit, your creation-ain't nothin' but a bunch of thugs with a licence to kill. You're runnin' a crew of straight-up gangsters. Just like Boukman.'

Eldon was open-mouthed and speechless, his stare criss-crossing Joe's face in every direction, as if he was trying to be certain Joe had actually just spoken the words he'd heard. His wart was a weak tint of pink.

'So, no, I don't blame myself. I blame you, Mr Burns. You're responsible for this. You and this fucked up paramilitary outfit you run. And if Max turns up dead, you'll have his blood on your hands, same as Boukman,' Joe said. He was angry and bitter, but calm with it. He hadn't raised his voice at all.

His boss was still mute, in a whole new terrain with no map and no get-out clause.

'After I bring Boukman in, I want to transfer out of here-but only after I bring Boukman in,' Joe continued, ''cause you know what? I don't like the way you do things, Mister Burns. And, most of all, I really don't like you.'

Eldon glanced out at the city, and then back at the sea, bewildered. He looked at Joe and found his subordinate appeared to have grown a few inches taller in his moment of rectitude. Eldon had to look up at him. It was humiliating, but it was just the two of them up here, so no one could see it.

'Do you know why I brought you up here, Liston, you dumbfuck loser?' Eldon mustered his voice, but it was hollow, without its usual booming, crushing authority.

'Somethin' to do with dividin' up the scarlet robes?' Joe asked.

'Huh?' Eldon frowned.

'You read The Bible, Mr Burns?'

'Is that what this is about? You a Jesus freak?'

'No.' Joe smiled wryly. 'I'm just big on right and wrong.'

'Fine!' Eldon snorted. 'Bring Boukman in and you'll get your wish. In spades.'

Joe let the racial insult go. He truly didn't give a fuck.

He turned and started walking towards the steps, then stopped.

'Oh, and one more lil' detail-'bout my forthcoming transfer. I ain't gonna be no grinnin' house nigger in Public Relations. You can tear up that plan.'

Joe was heading out of Eldon's office when the phone rang. He hoped-and dreaded-that the call might be about Max, so he decided to hang around and listen.

Eldon came in quickly through the side door and grabbed the phone.

'Yeah?' he snarled, back in his game. 'What!' He looked at Joe. 'When?' He opened a drawer, took out a.38, checked the cylinder and placed it on the desk. 'Where is he?…fuck!'

He hung up.

'You are not gonna believe-'

He didn't have time to finish because the door opened and Max walked in.

'What the fuck…?' Joe gasped.

Max was completely bald, missing his eyebrows and his mouth was swollen, bruised and encrusted with dried blood. His eyes were glazed and fixed straight ahead, seeing without recognition. He was wearing a long black raincoat Joe had never seen him in.

'Max?' Joe started walking towards him.

Max reached into his coat and pulled out a MAC11.

'BURNS! GET DOWN!' Joe yelled and took a dive to the right, hitting the carpet as Max opened fire in the direction of Eldon's desk, pulverizing the glass display case behind it with a single sustained burst of.380 ACP rounds, flying out at 950 feet per second; the small weapon jiggling in his hands as he drained the magazine, bullets flying wide and crooked, smashing all the windows, splitting chairs, blowing chunks out of the walls and side door and strafing the top of the mahogany desk until it looked like porcupine hide.

Max emptied the MAC11 in seconds, dropped it and reached for his service pistol.

At that very instant Eldon, who'd crawled around the desk with his.38, took aim at his would-be assassin and fired.

Joe got up and ran at Max, slamming his shoulder into Max's hip and bringing him down easily.

Eldon's bullet missed them both by a close, hot whistle.

Joe took the automatic out of Max's holster and tossed it. He did the same with Max's ankle piece.

'Is he dead?' Eldon asked.

'No.' Joe looked at his partner, whose eyes were on Eldon. 'Get a medic!'

Eldon looked for the phone and found it-the casing completely blown off, a busted mess of coils, springs and twisted metal.

Max, meanwhile, reached for his hip holster grabbed at air and brought his empty hand up in Eldon's direction and pulled in his index finger a few times, before dropping his arm.

'GET A FUCKIN' MEDIC, NOW!' Joe shouted at Eldon, who was standing dazed, looking around his ruined office.