King of Swords

'And you, Max, are gonna help me do it.' Eldon looked him hard in the eye and squeezed his shoulder. 'You're the next best cop it was ever my honour to know. And I mean that. Together, you, me and this division — we're gonna make a real difference. And when the smoke clears and the dust settles, Miami won't be Murder Capital USA no more.

It'll be the greatest city in America, the place everybody wants to come to and be part of. Just like it used to be.

'And do you know what the best part about it is? After I'm gone, one day, this'll all be yours. Everything you can see. What do you think of that, Max?'

I think you're full of shit, Eldon, Max thought. Bullet by bullet? Are you totally fucken' insane?

'I think that sounds real great, Eldon,' Max said flatly. 'Real great.'

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' “One day this will all be yours”. Kind of fucked up shit is that?' Joe laughed sourly and then took a pull on his Miller.

He was sitting on Max's balcony looking out over Ocean Drive. The balcony was wide enough for Max to stretch out in, but Joe was so tall the only way he could sit anywhere near comfortably was by resting the backs of his ankles on the iron railing.

It was late afternoon, but the sky was so dark and thick with cloud it felt like night had come early. The beach was the colour of graphite, while the sea had the tone and stillness of mercury. There was going to be one hell of a storm.

'What he said,' Max replied. He'd related the whole conversation to him as soon as they'd sat down.

'Crazy muhfucker,' Joe grumbled.

'What I thought.'

'But you didn't tell him, right?'

'What difference would it've made?'

'Were you serious about quittin'?'

'Still here ain't I?'

“Predate the loyalty man.'Joe clicked his bottle against Max's.

'It was an empty gesture,' Max said.

'Not to me, man,' Joe countered. 'Not to me.'

It had taken Joe most of the day to recover his public composure. After they'd taken him through his statement, he'd gone back to his desk and sat there for an hour with his chair turned away, facing the wall. He hadn't said a word.

The phone had rung and he hadn't answered it. People had

talked to him and he hadn't acknowledged them. Then he'd got up and left the office. When he came back two hours later Max had smelled the booze on him, but he'd been more communicative and had managed to laugh at the way Max got his finger caught in the typewriter keys when he was writing up the report.

They hadn't discussed what had happened and wouldn't for a while. It was too close to Joe. He never talked about traumatic events until he'd got a good distance away from them.

'Emperor Burns was right 'bout one thing though,' Joe said, looking down the street with its still pretty pink sidewalks.

'This used to be one helluva beauty spot. Sure ain't like it now.'

'I hear that,' Max said.

'Why d'you live here, man?'

'So I can tell chicks I gotta view of the sea,' Max quipped and lit a Marlboro. 'Besides, it's cheap.'

The press called Ocean Drive 'the ghetto by the sea'.

They had a point. On either side of Max's building were some of the old exclusive art deco hotels Eldon had talked about — the Shore Park, the Pelican, the Colony, the Carlyle — now exclusively home to Cuban refugees and infirm Jewish retirees living out their last days in the sun. Fifty dollars or less got you a room for a week. The buildings were cracked and crumbling, pastel paint flaking off the walls in chunks, and the neon signs barely came on any more, either because the tubes were burnt out or because the owners were saving on electricity. Washing hung on lines from almost every balcony, and Spanish-language radio playing Spanish language tunes to drown out Spanish-language arguments was all you ever heard. In the daytime, in Lummus Park, on the other side of the road, the old women would sometimes sit out in groups on folding metal chairs. They'd knit and talk in Yiddish about the past, hair covered in headscarves,

drab-coloured dresses down to their knees, flip-flops on their feet. Between the 1940s and 60s the park had been a lush stretch of nature, densely planted with palm trees, but many had been uprooted in storms and never replaced; now it was mostly grass, ratty and clogged with trash. It was a magnet for bums, drifters, runaways, junkies and dealers.

Every day one or two bodies would be found in the park.

Max was playing the album he'd been listening to all week because he hadn't bothered to take it off the turntable — Donna Summer's Bad Girls. The album had hit its dull ballad quarter. He usually skipped these tracks when he was on his own and dropped the needle on the synth-heavy anthems at the end, starting with 'Our Love'.

'I reckon you only like this shit 'cause o' the covers,'

Joe said, picking up the sleeve of Bad Girls. 'You're too embarrassed to go get yourself a copy of Black T V A, so you go to the record store instead.' Joe looked at Donna's half-open mouth, and come-hither stare. 'She sure is fine though.'

'Gimme that.' Max snatched the cover back. 'Fucken'