King of Swords

The Haitians say he's for real. At least them simple ones straight off the boats do. The rich ones I deal with in Kendall think it's all bullshit too.'

'What about you? What do you think?'

369 'I ain't the cop here, Mingus. I juss tell you what I hear an' see. But if you want me to take a worthless guess — a guy like that? — you'd-a had to have some paper on him by now. No one that big goes undetected. Leaves a trail.'

'True,' Max said, chasing his sweet, thick black coffee with a pull on his Marlboro.

'Strange thing is, the people who say he's real don't know what he looks like. Or they do, but all the descriptions is different. Some of 'em say he's white, some say he's black, some say he's Latino - and there was this one ole girl tole me he was Chinesey lookin'. And then no one can agree if he's really a he or a she. Or an it. Or an evil genius midget man chile. I even heard he's got two tongues. Can you believe that?'

'Two tongues?' Max laughed quietly. 'The ladies must love him.'

'What I thought.' Drake shovelled a wedge of mixed meat and sauerkraut into his mouth.

'So, all this you heard is just word-of-mouth stuff? Nothing concrete?'

'All porch talk. Other thing I found out is that Boukman's got hisself a gang. They call theyselves the Saturday Night Barons Club. The SNBC. You heard of 'em?'

Max shook his head.

'You know why that is? 'Cause they don't exist neither.'

'Right.' Max sighed heavily through a cloud of smoke.

'They ain't like the gangs we got here, or like you seen in The Warriors, or them Crips and Bloods in LA, feudin'

over colours and area codes. The SNBC don't have no identification, no territories, none o' that. But, you can't miss 'em if you see 'em 'cause they supposed to be twelve feet tall.'

'This is all soundin' like you sat around a campfire listenin'

to a bunch of stoners who watch too many horror movies.'

Max chuckled as he spoke, but his patience was wearing

370 I thin. The information was ridiculous, even if there were parallels with what he and Joe had found in the files.

'I'm tellin' you what I heard, Mingus.' Drake glanced at him sharply, looking genuinely affronted, mustard bracketing the ends of his mouth.

'OK. Go on,' Max said. 'Why's it called the Saturday Night Barons Club?'

'You ever see that James Bond flick — Live and Let Die?

'With Gloria Hendry out of Black Caesar? Yeah, I saw that.'

You remember that guy at the back of the train at the end — big ole brother in whiteface, top hat and tails — laughin' his ass off?'

'Uh-huh.'

'That's Baron Samedi, voodoo god of death who only comes out at night. Samedi means Saturday night in French.'

'So Boukman's gang meet up on Saturday nights, like a Mormon prayer group or something?'

'I don't know when they meet up,' Drake chew-spoke.

'But they supposed to have these ceremonies where they worship Baron Samedi. Human sacrifices take place. Only — OK, I know you gonna laugh — the people they kill, they don't really die. I mean they do, but they come back as — erm — zombies.'

Drake paused, waiting for Max to ridicule him.

'Anyone mention the courtroom shooting in April? The name Jean Assad?' Max asked.

'S'matter o' fact people did, yeah - said he was the guy clone the shootin'. They said he was a zombie.'

'Were the SNBC behind that?'

'Yup. Assad stole smack from Boukman and wound up gettin' sacrificed and zombified. He popped that Colombian in the courtroom, right?'

Max ignored the question.

'Tell me what else you heard about the gang.'

37'

'Way I hear it, the whole gang's Haitian - at least the principals are. They got a lot of like subcontractors workin'

for 'em. Cubans, Colombians, Jamaicans, blacks and whites, Jews — damn near ev'ry one. Only the subcontractors ain't actual members. They do one job or ten, get paid, bye bye.'

'They know who they're workin' for?'

'Only if they fuck up or flip.'

'What about names?'

'Only heard the one: Carmine Desamours. He's Haitian.'

Max immediately thought of Eva Desamours.

'He's that green-eyed pimp you as'd about. Guy runs the best hos in Miami. Got 'em divided up into playin' card suits — based on looks and earnin' potential. Hearts are cream, Spades blue cheese — street meat, y'know? — and the in-betweens are milk and yoghurt. All Carmine's girls got a small tattoo on the inside of their thigh to identify whatever suit they from. If a girl starts out a Diamond and ends up a Club, she has a new tattoo put next to the old one, and the old one gets crossed out.'

'Like a cattle brand,' Max commented, more to himself.

'Carmine ain't like The Mack — all fur coats, diamonds 'n'

gold 'n' all that pizzazz,' Drake continued. 'He's low key, dresses like a bidniss man and don't drive around in no pimpmobile. Fact, you'd never know him fo' a pimp if you saw him. You'd think he be workin' in a bank or sumshit.