King of Swords

Max lit a cigarette and looked in the fridge for some water. There was only beer. He'd promised Sandra he wouldn't have any alcohol until after 7 p.m., and only every other day, and never when they were together — unless it

was wine with a meal. Only he didn't drink wine because it gave him an acid stomach and a headache in quick succession.

He closed the fridge.

ŚYou ain't havin' a brew?' Joe frowned at his partner with surprise.

'Too early,' Max said.

Joe gave him a knowing look. 'Must be love.'

'Carry on.' Max smiled.

'She gets you to quit the cancer sticks, I'll kiss her feet one toe at a time.'

'Carry on,' Max repeated, his smile getting broader.

'OK. So the Feds needed an ID. Matisse told Crabbe he had photographs of Boukman. He said he'd had 'em taken in secret, the last time they met face to face, in 1978. As insurance. Now, it was definitely Boukman, because they went way back. Had mutual friends or - no, that was it they shared a fortune teller.'

'Who?' Max asked. 'Eva Desamours?'

'I don't know. Or maybe it was in his deposition. Crabbe flew out to Haiti before Christmas and took a full deposition from Matisse. Matisse also gave him the photographs.

Crabbe then called the Feds to let them know Matisse hadn't just given up all the Haitian cocaine high command, but he'd also given him his contacts in Customs, the Miami PD, the DEA and the FBI.'

'Christ!' Max sat down. 'And Crabbe gave that stuff to his secretary, Nora Wong, right?'

'Yeah.' Joe nodded slowly and heavily, remembering the NYPD's crime scene report and the photographs. 'The Feds never got to see any of it because they didn't free Pierre-Jerome. They wanted to change the terms of the deal.

They said they'd have no way of knowing if Matisse wasn't making the whole thing up, so they'd only let the kid go home after they had people in custody. And they wanted Matisse to testify against Boukman in open court. Matisse

said no dice. Crabbe was in the middle of renegotiating when he got gunned down with Moyez.'

'So Moyez was never the target: Crabbe was.'

'That's right.' Joe nodded.

'Shit. Didn't he make any fucken' copies of the deposition?'

'If he did, they ain't turned up. My guess is they're gone,'

Joe said.

'What about Matisse?'

'He's dead. On the morning of May the fourth — the same day as the Moyez trial — Matisse, his wife and their two other children were all shot dead as they ate breakfast at their home in Port-au-Prince.'

'And Pierre-Jerome?'

'Found dead in his cell.'

Wasn't he in solitary?'

'Yeah. Someone put ground glass in his oatmeal. It's an old trick.'

'Mother-FUCKERV Max yelled, getting up. 'How in the fuck did Boukman pull this shit off?'

'Everyone has a price, Max, and everything can be bought.

Those drug guys have got a lot of money.'

'So Boukman hit everyone on the same fucken' day - in two countries!'

'Yup.' Joe sighed.

'But think of that! That's high-level counter-intel! That takes meticulous planning! You can't get shit like that together in what? - a week?

Well, he did it,' Joe said wearily, as Max paced back and forth across the garage. 'Boukman must've had a guy close to Matisse. It's the only explanation.'

'What are the Feds doing now?' Max asked.

'They're tryin' to plug their leak. Then they've gotta start on Boukman all over again. Their last report said Boukman has recruited himself a brand new employee — Ernest

Bennett, father-in-law to Baby Doc Duvalier, the president of Haiti himself.'

'Wouldn't surprise me if it was true, wouldn't surprise me if it was bullshit,' Max said gloomily. He crushed out his cigarette and lit another.

Joe knew Max's angers: there was the cold, speechless kind that was always the prelude to physical violence; frustrations and other people's fuck-ups would make him yell and shout; hitting a brick wall in a case would make him do the same - until he went and sat in a church and got his head together. Joe had seen him close to tears when they'd found the bodies of missing kids — but they weren't tears of sorrow, they were tears of rage. Now he was mad as hell all right, yet there was a worry about his anger, almost a fearful tone to his venting. Joe knew what he was going through. He'd been there this morning, feeling so stunted by the length of Boukman's reach he'd wanted to quit the case. He'd got as far as starting to dial Max's number from a nearby payphone to wake him up and tell him, but then he'd thought of the reasons he'd started this whole thing in the first place and put the receiver down.

Max stopped pacing. He thought of Sandra. He saw again her smiling face on his pillow last night when he'd told her he loved her. He saw her sitting at his kitchen table yesterday morning, dressed in one of his shirts, reading the paper.

He'd stood in the doorway just looking at her without her noticing, thinking how beautiful she was and how he was the luckiest guy in the world right then. If they carried on with this case the way they were, he'd be putting her in danger. But he couldn't let Joe down.