King of Swords

With Max's help, Joe was going to build the real Moyez case, uncover the people behind it and hand every detail over to Grace Strasburg at the Herald. She was a good reporter, one of the few who didn't think Sixdeep walked on water. He'd do it the day he officially left MTF. It would be his parting shot, his farewell and by the way fuck you to Sixdeep.

It would mean the end of his and Max's careers. Max would come out of it worse — both betrayed and betrayer — and Joe felt genuinely bad about that, but Sixdeep had to be stopped, and that made the ends justify the means.

31

Madeleine Cajuste lived on a stretch of North East 57th Street cops called 'Shantytown Central', because all the houses there looked like they'd been sucked up by a Third World hurricane and dumped on the nearest available strip of Miami wasteland.

The houses stood on bricks or breezeblocks, just like gutted cars, and were made up of five pieces of wood so thin that if you stamped your foot in anger it went through the floor. The roofs were slim sheets of corrugated iron, which split in heavy rain, buckled and ripped open in the heat, or blew off in the wind. Many had clear-plastic sheeting instead of glass for windows. They were hard to tell apart because their colours, although not the same or even similar, all seemed to blend together into a universal shade of pallid grey, like the tone of an overcast day.

The Cajuste house stood out. It was painted pale yellow.

There was glass in the windows, which were protected — as was the door — by thick steel bars, painted pea green. It told Joe that Madeleine was doing better than her neighbours.

The illusion was somewhat shattered when he reached through the bars and knocked on the window and made the whole structure shake.

No one answered. He knocked again. Rivulets of dry dirt poured off the ridges in the roof and ran down onto the ground, building up in little mounds. The curtains were drawn. He saw coloured lights glowing on and off in the room to the left of the door.

Outside the house next door, a Rottweiler started barking furiously at him from where it was tethered by a studded

collar and chain to a hunk of cement, lunging at him impotently from its spot, half choking itself every time. From behind the flimsy steel fence separating them, Joe flipped the beast the finger and went round the back of the house.

He was surprised to find freshly laid grass there instead of dirt. A child's swing and a paddling pool with a rubber Donald Duck were there too. The water was filthy and smelled rank. Mosquitoes were hovering over it. Madeleine Cajuste wasn't home and hadn't been for a while: someone this house proud - even if that house was a cereal box turned on its side — wouldn't have left that pool out in that state.

There were bars on the back door and windows too. Just to be sure, he knocked again on the windows.

He went to the house next door. The dog snarled and drooled as he approached.

A woman's voice asked him who he was when he knocked on her door. This house was sturdier, but the windows were made out of greaseproof paper.

'Police, mam. It's about your neighbour,'Joe said, holding up his badge.

The door opened a crack. A tiny, very dark-skinned woman with a wild shock of unkempt snow-white hair and white bushy eyebrows peered out and looked him up and down.

'You comin' by now} I made that call a month ago. Why ain't nobody come see me?' Her voice was a croak buried so deep in her throat it barely made it into her mouth.

'I don't know, mam, but I'm here now. Is Madeleine Cajuste your neighbour?'

'Thass right. An' I am' sin her since Easter, juss like I tole the lady police on the tele-fone.'

The Rottweiler was still barking, and there was more barking and growling coming from inside the house — a whole chorus-load. There must have been over half a dozen

dogs in there with her. Joe briefly thought about their welfare and the old lady's, but he wasn't here for that and let the thought blow off his conscience.

The old woman stepped out the door and pulled it to behind her as she stood on one of the tiered breezeblocks that made up the makeshift steps to the entrance of her home. She was barefoot and wearing a lavender nightdress down to her ankles. The fabric was so thin and faded it was almost transparent. Joe could see she was naked underneath and wanted to wrap his suit jacket around her to give her back some dignity, but she didn't seem to mind the state she was in, so he let that one go too.

“You made the call on 30 April, right?'Joe said, speaking louder to make himself heard over the dog. The woman looked at it fiercely and clicked her fingers. The dog quieted immediately.

'Thass right. I use ta see her ev'ry day out there, playin'

wit' dat baby.'

'She had a child?'

'Not hers. She tole me it belonged to that man she had livin' with her.'

'What was the man's name?'

'Sauveur. She said his name was Sauveur. Means “Saviour”

in Hayshun. They's from Haydee, you know, them people.'

'So they weren't married?'