King of Swords

'That girl? She's surplus to our requirements. She broke our laws. She goes to our prisons. End of fucken' story.

You got that?'

Max didn't reply. The thick veins in Eldon's muscular neck had sprung up like a nest of snakes and his face was beet-red. Max hadn't seen him so mad at him since his boxing days.

'I didn't fucken' hear you,' Eldon said, getting right up in his face, so close their heads were practically touching.

'I got it, Eldon.' Max backed off a step, feeling pathetic and whipped and all kinds of small. Back when he was training him, Eldon had used one of two approaches to get results. Patient, friendly encouragement when he'd lost confidence in his abilities, or full-scale public verbal bombardments when he'd lost sight of his ambition. Eldon had known him so long he knew exactly which buttons to press and how hard.

'You what?

'I said I got it. I understand,' Max said more loudly, keeping a firm hand on his wounded pride so it wouldn't turn to anger.

'Good.' He stood glowering at Max, soaking up his protege's capitulation. And when he'd had his fill, he packed the anger away, smiled, and put a firm but friendly arm around Max's shoulder and walked him over towards the edge of the roof.

'A littie disagreement's always healthy, huh?' he said.

'Clears the bad air.'

Max replied with a noncommittal, 'Hmmm.'

The and Abe, God, we used to fucken' disagree all the time. You know why? Abe was extra efficient when it come to dealin' with his own people. He was rougher and nastier iincl more intolerant than any o' those Klan-affiliated Patrol :ops ever were. Whenever we was interrogatin' nigras, he “lad this bat he used to take out, intimidate 'em with. Thing ivas filled with lead shot. One tap'd turn bone to powder.

Know what he used to call it? His “nigger knocker”. Can you imagine that? Abe was a great cop, one of the best ever

had a badge, and the finest I ever worked with. But, you know, sometimes he went way too far trying to prove he was bluer than black, one of us. Boy did we argue! Things he used to say. Close your eyes and you woulda sworn that was some redneck talkin' to you.'

Max had heard all the stories about Abe, although never direcdy from him. Abe didn't talk about the past much. Joe despised Abe, called him a self-loathing sellout - and that was when he was being polite.

Eldon took a deep breath of the dense dead air and sighed.

'I love this fucken' city, don't you?' Eldon swept his free hand across the view of the flat landscape, his tone now warm and friendly.

'It's all right, I guess.' Max shrugged his shoulders. He wanted to get Eldon's paw off him.

'It's “all right, you guess”?' Eldon laughed. 'You're Miami born and bred, Max. You don't know no better. Me? I love this city more'n I love most people. That's the honest truth.

Always been that way, always be that way.

'First time I came here, I was ten years old. Came here with my daddy, Eldon Burns the First. He was a sheriff in Mississippi. Caught himself a fugitive wanted by Miami PD.

So we drove him down. Guy was in the back seat. I was up front with Daddy. We handed him over and went down to Miami Beach. The first sight o' that was so fucken' beautiful.

The beach, the sea, them rows of art deco hotels. Those places were really somethin' back then, you know? Not like the dumps they are now. To me they were little palaces and everyone stayin' in 'em was royalty. I made myself a promise that when I grew up I'd be sheriff of Miami. Look at me now, huh?'

Yeah, look at you now, Max thought bitterly. Your daddy woulda been real proud of you, Eldon Burns the Second.

I

'There ain't no place like Miami,' Eldon continued. 'We got it all here. Back in my days in uniform it was whites, tourists, Cubans, kikes and nigras who knew their place and were happy to stay there. Now we got World War Three going on out here with these Colombians and the street gangs. They're bringing this shit into our city, right under our noses and fucken' it up for everyone. They're walkin'

into our courtrooms killin' people on national fucken' television!

Tourism's down, money's dryin' up. Breaks my heart to see what this place is comin' to.

'Only, you know what? Miami ain't gonna get no lower than this. Things are gonna stop and things are gonna change. Like it or not, Max, we're at war. They're winning right now, but we're fightin' back. We're like a guerrilla unit.

We're the Miami Resistance. We're outnumbered, outgunned, outfinanced. And we're fighting not one but fifty invading armies, and they're all at war with each other, and they're all at war with us. The Cubans are fighting the Colombians. And the Colombians are fighting each other.

But we're gonna win. 'Cause this is our city and our country.

We're gonna reclaim Miami, bullet by bullet. We're gonna help turn it around, give it back its looks, its glamour and its money. We're gonna make it beautiful again.