King of Swords

them college kids and fashion types I usually do my bidniss wit'.

'Anyways, should you go lookin' in Apartment 302 in the Flamingo buildings out by the Palmetto Expressway in the a.m., you will catch yourselves two lil' chemists and stop a whole new drug epidemic'

'I'm sure the DEA will be real interested,' Max said.

'You're a model citizen, Drake.'

'I like to help out any way I can. You know me,' Drake

334 I mumbled while scrunching his toast. 'Say, if there's any way you can find out how they be makin' that shit, lemme know, right?'

4i

Eva Desamours gasped in shock and fear when she walked into the bathroom to give Carmine his bath and saw him standing by the steaming tub in his robe, looking every inch like her worst nightmare come true. She thought her son had been turned into a %ombi, sent to kill her.

Then she saw he still had eyebrows and her surprise turned quickly into anger.

'What have you done? To your Ł4Zff?!!?' she shouted.

'I — I wanted to see - to see what it looked like,' Carmine stammered.

He'd shaved his hair off earlier that afternoon.

Bad move not asking her first, he knew, but there'd been no time.

She pushed the door closed and glowered at him, her face going from disbelief to belligerent ferocity in a blink. She strode across the floor, shoulders hunched, head tilted slightly forward, fists clenched, neckchains making a loud timpani under her plain blue dress.

Oh no, he thought, here comes a ShitFit.

Carmine took a few steps back. She was an enraged bull and he was the penned-in matador, out of tricks, his balls in his mouth.

After he'd shot that cop in the foot, he'd burnt the car and the clothes he'd been wearing and tossed the gun in the sea. Then he'd completely changed his whole look. He was dressing down now in jeans, T-shirts, sneakers and mirror-lens Ray-Ban Aviators, which were too big for his skinny face and hung slightly crooked on his nose. He didn't care. The priority was keeping on the downlow until this

situation blew over. He'd heard how the cop had gone and died and that had seriously fucked him up. He was wanted for murder. How can you die of a gunshot to the foot? Had to be something else happened to him on the way to the emergency room. Maybe the medics had given him the wrong type of blood or sumshit.

The last thing to go had been his hair. Some fag over in Coral Gables had shaved it and waxed his head after. Damn if the faggot hadn't been sweet on his ass too, stroking his scalp and even tickling his fuckin' ear lobes. Couldn't blame him though. Even bald as Kojak he was a handsome motherfu— 'WHY didn't you ask my permission?!' His mother was standing so close to him, their bodies were almost touching.

Her eyes — small dry hard black beads of anger and poison — were drilling into his.

'Permission f-for what?' He hadn't told his mother about the cop any more than he'd told her about his hair.

'For THATY She reached up and slapped the back of his head so quick he didn't even see her move.

'I — I — dunno. I — I — just thought it up and went ahead and did it,' Carmine said, his voice scaling up and up, his words coming out in whimpers and bleats.

'You just “thought it up” and “went ahead and did it?” She mimicked his voice, then roared, 'You don't just think OR do anything without asking my PERMISSION FIRST!'

She punched him in the chest, but the robe's collar absorbed most of the hit so it came through to him like a weak tap. This emboldened him. Mentally he was suddenly back out on the street, and she was some impertinent Card, mouthing off at him.

'The fuck you sayin'!' he shouted, bringing his voice back to normal. 'It ain't yo' damn hair!'

She backed away a couple of steps, astonished, confused.

This inspired him some more.

'I'm twenny-nyynne motherfuckin' years old! You can't tell me to do a damn motherfuckin' thang - MOTHER!' he yelled. 'An - an - an - an anyways - YOU BALD TOO!'

Now, why the fuck hadn't he stood up fo' hisself like this years ago? he thought.

She stood, hands on hips, looking him up and down, mouth agape, incredulous. He swore he even saw her wig move a little.

Yeah, he thought. You stand there and stare all you want, like this is some Star Trek shit you witnessing but you ain't never washin' my ass no mo'. Fuck, this, fuck Solomon, and FUCKYOU Fixing his eyes on the door, he started walking forward.

Damn! He was pleased with himself! All it took was to stand up to her and — Then he hit an obstacle that stopped him dead in his tracks. More precisely, the palm of her hand pushing hard into his chest, right where his heart was.

' WHA T did you just say to me, boyV she yelled.

Her voice deafened him and drowned out the sound of his own thoughts. And just as easily as he'd slipped into his street persona, he fell back into being a scared little kid again; her towering over him, threatening to bring the whole world as he knew it down on his head.