King of Swords

They found the house — a small pale pink bungalow with a screened porch and a palm tree growing to its left. It was set back from the road and surrounded by a well-tended lawn with a flower-lined brick path leading to the front door, easily the best-looking home in a street filled with dismal bungalows struggling to stay upright, losing the battle against their own decrepitude. Although some owners had erected barbed-wire fences around them, put bars on the windows and left various breeds of attack dogs out in their front yards, gang graffiti still adorned two-thirds of the homes.

They rolled a little further down the road and parked behind a dusty, brown Pontiac, opposite the house,. It was 8.05 a.m.

Joe turned on the radio. The Rolling Stones' 'Start Me Up' was playing. The song was all over the airwaves and racing up the charts. Joe nodded his head along with the beat and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Max looked out of the window, first at the light grey sky, then at the matching tone of the street, wishing his partner had better taste in music.

Forty minutes later a gleaming black Mercedes 300D with tinted windows, eight-spoke silver rims and whitewall tyres stopped in front of the house. Max took out a Nikon FM camera fitted with a 5 o mm lens and started snapping.

A tall, fat, dark-skinned man, wearing a long black coat, white gloves and a fedora stepped out and opened the passenger door. A woman with short black hair and the same complexion as the driver emerged. She was dressed in an elegant brown trouser suit and pumps and carried an alligator-skin purse. She talked to the man for a moment.

Next to him she looked starved and frail, but Max could see from the cowed expression on his face that she commanded his absolute respect.

394 I The woman walked briskly up to the house, unlocked the door and went inside. The man got back in the car.

'The driver looks like Fatty Arbuckle's shadow,' Joe quipped.

'Guessing from his appearance, that'll be Bonbon,' Max said, putting the camera down on his lap. 'And the royalty's Eva Desamours.'

At 9.08 a silver Porsche Turbo pulled up behind the Mercedes and a tall, slim, blonde woman got out. She was dressed expensively — tailor-made blue silk suit, gold jewellery on her wrists, hands, neck and ears — and long hair coiffed in a bouffant mane which didn't move at all as she clicked her way along the sidewalk and up the path to the house with the well-drilled grace of a catwalk model. She was beautiful, but it was beauty cut in ice — all the aloofness money could buy. Max knew who she was.

'She must be loaded. That's a brand new Turtle.' Joe nodded at the Porsche 911.

'Don't you recognize her?' Max asked.

'Sure, that's Cheryl Tiegs,' his partner joked.

'Bunny Mason.'

'As in Pitch Mason's wife?'

'Uh-huh.'

Pitch Mason was a major cocaine distributor who had slipped two elaborate DEA stings, because, it was widely rumoured, he'd been tipped off by someone on the inside.

During the past year, Mason had become a society-page regular because of the stables and stud farms he owned and because of his wife — a former swimsuit model — who he referred to openly as his 'favourite filly'.

An hour later, Eva Desamours came out with Bunny Mason, walked her to her car, air-kissed her on both cheeks and waved goodbye as she roared off down the road.

The next visitor arrived in a red Ferrari 308 at 10.25.

Latina, older, shorter and far stouter than her predecessor.

39 J She had a round, hard face, black hair in a short ponytail and a huge pair of sunglasses that reminded both Max and Joe of the kind of oudandish specs Elton John wore. She was dressed in a black velour tracksuit with diamante trim and matching slippers. She strode quickly up to the door with all the grace of a pissed-off pitbull.

'Know her?' Joe asked.

'No, but counting the Turde, we've got the drug dealer's automobile trifecta here,' Max said as he photographed the woman disappearing into the house. Mercedes, Porsches and Ferraris had become so popular with Miami's coco-riche that car dealers had virtually run out of them and waiting lists were eight months long.

As before Eva came out to the sidewalk with her client and stayed until she'd left the street.

Two more visits followed — a black woman in a Mercedes Benz 450SEL 6.9, a redhead in another Porsche, both in their late twentiesearly thirties, both wearing their money, both staying roughly an hour apiece.

'That's a high-end client base. She must be good,' Max remarked.

'Or a good bullshitter,' Joe said.

'Same coin,' Max said. 'You ever had your fortune read?'

'Nah,'Joe said. 'That shit creeps me out.'

'So you believe in it?'

'Sure. There's something in it. But outside of this job, I don't wanna know what's round the corner. Kinda defeats the object of living.'