King of Swords

'Thass right. The brothers love theyselves some Cuban pussy, specially them white-lookin' ones like you. You gon be on that track and you gon stay on that track till you settle yo' debt.'

She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but nothing came out of her lips moving soundlessly liked a beached, dying fish.

'Hustie bitchY Bonbon hissed.

She walked away, off to the back of the store, head down, shoulders slumped, unsteady on her feet.

'Now thass how you handle hos, Carmine,' Bonbon said, turning back to him with a smile.

'Don't tell me how to do my job!' Carmine snapped.

'I built this damn bidniss.'

'Yo' moms and Solomon built dis bidniss,' Bonbon cor rected him. 'An' I made sure thangs was runnin' right. You done the next best thang to shit. Pimp always gotta have a whip in one hand and a leash in tha other. All you ever had in yo' hand Carmine was yo' dick. Why this is mines now.'

Carmine knew then that his mother had demoted him for good. Bonbon had never disrespected him like this, never talked down to him. He hadn't dared.

Carmine was too stunned to think straight.

He turned around and left the supermarket.

Outside he saw the black Mercedes with the tinted windows parked alongside his truck. He could sense he was being watched from the car. He thought he even heard women's laughter inside as he passed. He didn't look at the Merc. He got in the truck and drove out of the lot, heading for Haiti Mystique.

What the fuck was going on? Why had they done this to him? Sure, his mother hated his guts, but he'd always brought her a steady stream of top-class girls — earners. And he was damn good at finding and recruiting talent. No one could charm a bitch like him — no one — and certainly not Bonbon. It made no sense. No sense at all.

Then he thought of Julita, but instead he saw Lucita.

Stupid he hadn't realized this before, but even their names were similar. Julita and Lucita.

His heart grew heavy, his throat tightened and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness swallowed him. He couldn't do wrong or right without somehow fucking both up.

Without the pimping he was useless, good for absolutely nothing.

He saw his mother, imagined how she'd taunt him tonight in the bathroom, rub his failure in his face until he choked on it.

Julita wouldn't last long on 63rd Street. The Spades down there would give her hell 'cause she was the new girl on the block — and a white girl at that. Didn't matter she was Cuban.

39'

That'd make it even worse for her. The gangster kids would run trains on her at five bucks a pop. No way would she ever earn back that $1,250. She'd be used up in two months.

Bonbon knew this. It was his way of punishing her for stealing off them. Carmine wished he hadn't gone to see her, then none of this would've happened. He'd gone and ruined not just her life, but her little girls' too.

He tried to gee himself up, think of brighter things.

What did they say 'bout hittin' rock bottom? The only way was up.

There was Nevada to look forward to. What about all that money he'd stashed away? That was something to hold on to. All wasn't lost. There was still hope.

Yeah, right!

Who the fuck was he foolin'?

It was just him in here, on his own, cold light of day.

He might've been at the bottom of wherever he'd been kicked to now, but he sensed there was further to fall.

This was the start of the end.

5o

The number Max had taken down in Haiti Mystique was for a house on North East 128th Street, North Miami Beach. Both house and phone were registered to Eva Desamours.

Early on Wednesday morning Max and Joe drove out to North Miami Beach in a blue '78 Ford Ranchero they'd got from the car pool. The car ran fine, but outwardly it looked like a piece of shit — rusted fenders, scratches and chipped paint on the bodywork, dents in the hood and side — ideal camouflage for the area, where every vehicle was a third generation hand-me-down.

North Miami Beach wasn't quite the worst the city had to offer, but it was a million miles from the best. Its main tourist attractions were the St Bernard de Clairvaux Church off the West Dixie Highway — a medieval Spanish monastery William Randolph Hearst had bought in Europe and had had dismantied and shipped, down to the last brick, all the way over to the States - and a nudist beach at Haulover Park, across the Intercoastal Waterway, which was the target of regular protests by Christian fundamentalists. In-between the two was a drab area of working- and welfare-class homes, ugly-looking condos and cheapo stores where half the shelves were empty. Crime was high here, most of it comparatively petty and tame by Miami's current standards burglaries, home invasions, domestic violence, rapes and murders — but there was still too much of it for the understaffed and over-extended local police to deal with, so they were forced to prioritize. Violence against the very young

393 or the very old got their full attention. Anyone in-between was out of luck.”