King of Swords

All he had to go on was a description — short brown hair, blue eyes, under six feet tall, big build, 190—200 pounds, mid thirties — which narrowed it down to about 3,000 people, including Max and Brennan.

Not that anyone was investigating Boukman. Eldon had checked, double-checked and triple-checked every department.

The Feds too. It had taken four days — days when he'd been swamped with work because of all the planning and backstage politicking that was going on with the Moyez case. They were in limbo because the Turd Fairy was discussing the potential fall out of busting a major Colombian drug ring with his people in Washington. Some players weren't comfortable arresting so many spies all in one go.

Spies had that strange way of suddenly bonding together because they spoke the same lingo. And spies had too much political clout, so they had to be managed with care.

Anyway, it was bullshit. Even if someone was looking into Boukman they wouldn't get far. There wasn't a single picture or accurate description of him on file. No criminal record, no social security number, no immigration documents. Nada, as the spies would say. Boukman didn't officially exist. Some of this was down to Eldon erasing all and every trace of him, beginning with his one and only arrest in 1969 for cutting a nigra's Adam's apple out (charges were dropped due to lack of evidence), and continuing to this day, destroying any eye witness reports for anything remotely close to a positive ID and then letting Boukman know the source. But most of the Boukman myth was created by the nigra himself, and, Eldon had to admit, it was a masterstroke of pure fucked up ruthless genius. Boukman used 'doubles'

who didn't remotely look like him - out of work actors and actresses, mostly, recruited through small ads — to imperson 364 ate him at meetings Ś, and if anyone outside his tight inner circle clapped eyes on him he had them killed. Misinformation is the same as no information, and the dead don't talk.

'Maybe it's someone you don't know about,' Boukman said, finally, in that toneless, emotionless, slightly French voice of his.

'Highly unlikely,' Eldon replied. 'Nothing gets investigated in this city without me knowing about it well in advance. How did Ismael know it was even a cop?'

'It's in the cards,' Solomon answered.

Oh, then it must be true, thought Eldon. He yawned and stretched theatrically to let the damn nigra know his voodoo paranoia was boring him. Shit, if those things are so damned accurate why can't you predict who'll win the World Series and make yourselves some nice, easy, legal money instead?

Because those things are horseshit — that's why.

'You're takin' this mumbo-jumbo crap way too seriously, you know that?' Eldon said.

Solomon didn't reply, so they sat in a silence which dragged towards the uncomfortable — for Eldon at least.

He wondered what Boukman was like with other people, the rest of his voodoo mob, or his woman — if he had one.

He didn't care exactly, but he was curious, wouldn't have minded a little genuine insight into the man. In the thirteen years they'd done business they'd never had much in the way of small talk. Actually, they'd had none. The miniscule scraps of what passed for conversation between them involved big subjects, like drugs, delivery, money and death.

The street outside was still. No cars in the road, no people walking around. The neighbourhood was just great that way.

An oasis of tranquillity; everything bad happened to someone else, somewhere else, never here. Here it was safe, middle class and very white. If you saw a spic or a nigra they were delivering your mail or moving your furniture in or out.

?6?

Eldon started humming Frank's 'Last Night When We Were Young'.

'Only a fool mocks what he doesn't understand,' Solomon interrupted him.

Eldon turned around at that, expecting to see Boukman behind him, but his guest had moved to the left — noiselessly as always — so he was close to the door, a form moulded out of darkness.

'You know what I understand? I understand you're born, you live, you die. With the livin' part you do the best you can, for as long as you can and then you're gone. Worm food or ash. That's . Simple.'

No response.

Jesus! thought Eldon, we could be here all night. He broke into a few bars of 'In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning'.

Frank had a tune for every asshole situation.

'I want the photographs and names of every cop in Miami.'

'Excuse me?'

'If the cop's from Miami, Sam can pick him out.'

'Have you been listening to a word I said?' Eldon was angry now. 'There ain't — any body — investigatin' — you.'

Boukman didn't reply, so more silence. Eldon peered into the darkness behind him, trying to see him, wanting to switch on the damn light, go eyeball to eyeball with this piece of shit. Eldon was mad. He wasn't going to show Boukman his files. That was police business - his turf.