'I get around,' he said. 'Keep driving.'
Carmine set off down the road.
'Put on your seatbelt,' Solomon said, his voice still the same, a clear, forced whisper, his words hollowed out and filled with silence.
Carmine plugged in the belt. He felt his boss's stare bouncing back at him from the rearview mirror, even though he couldn't see his eyes, let alone his face.
'Keep your eyes on the road. Concentrate,' Solomon said.
Where we goin'?'
'Wherever you are.'
'I'm workin'. Got a possible Heart lined up.'
'A Heart? That's good. We need more of the high-class ones, less of the low,' Solomon replied.
'I hear that,' Carmine said. 'I'm doin' my best out here, you know?'
'Your best at what?' Solomon asked.
'My best at what I do, Solomon,' Carmine answered, mouth drying, a little tremor in his voice. He hoped Solomon hadn't found out about his and Sam's side project. They'd been so damned careful.
'How's your mother?'
'She's good.' Carmine searched the mirror quickly, but all he saw was a silhouette. He hadn't been face to face with Solomon in five or six years at least. They always met like this, in dark or shadowy places when Carmine least expected it and not often. Carmine had heard that Solomon had had extensive facial reconstruction, that he'd bleached his skin close to white and wore his hair straight and long, that he was so unrecognizable you could pass him on the street
without knowing who he was, and that he used doubles and soundalikes to fool his enemies. Carmine wasn't really sure he wasn't talking to an impersonator right now.
'Send her my regards.'
'I will.'
'Take a left here.'
He turned onto North East ioist Street and drove on for a short while.
'Pull over after the Cordoba there.'
Carmine parked in front of a black Chrysler. The road was empty.
'I heard about that cop who assaulted you. We're looking into it.'
'It's no big deal,' Carmine spoke to the mirror. A sliver of stray light coming from the street had fallen across Solomon's mouth. It was bullshit what they'd said about him bleaching his skin; he'd probably started the rumour himself.
He was into that - 'misinformation' he called it.
'It is a big deal.' Solomon smiled.
And then Solomon licked his lower lip and Carmine saw what had always freaked people out. It wasn't something Solomon let everyone and anyone see, but it was the one thing about him that left the deepest impression, usually to the detriment of his other features. People who'd seen him went on and on about his eyes, their luminous quality, the way they looked through you, the way they saw your secrets, but none of them had ever seen Solomon Boukman's tongue. It was forked, split in two from the middle out, with its tips splayed and pointed and curved slightly downward, like two small pink talons. Carmine remembered when his mother had done that to him, sliced the thing down the middle on a butcher board with a knife. Solomon hadn't even flinched.
'You take care now, Carmine.'
'You too, Solomon.'
Solomon opened the door quietly and slid out of the car
and made his way towards the Cordoba. As he walked he was slowly absorbed by the darkness, before disappearing into it completely.
12
'Hey, no smokin' in the car. New ride, new rules,' Joe said as Max put his fourth Marlboro of the morning to his mouth. It was just after 8 a.m. They were driving to work in Joe's new car, a chocolate-brown '79 Lincoln Continental with a V8 engine, chrome wheels, fine beige leather seats, wood appliques in the cabin and two pine-tree air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. He'd won it a week ago in the SAW Slain and Wounded auction, where money was raised for the families of dead or disabled cops by selling the seized and confiscated property of criminals who'd been sent away for more than twenty years. And, as had been the custom since the auctions had started, a symbolic $100 donation was also made to the family of the first Miami Beach cop to be killed in the line of duty David Cecil Bearden - shot dead by car thieves on 20 March 1928, at the age of twenty-four. The Continental only had 160 miles on the clock. It had briefly been used by a mid-level dope courier who was starting a seventy-eight-year stretch at Union Correctional.
'Smell gets in the upholstery, it don't come out. It'll bring the price down, time comes to sell,' Joe explained. They were on North East 2nd Avenue, stalled in a tailback caused by an earlier collision between a cement truck and a Winnebago. The truck had come off worst.
'I'll open the window,' Max said.
'The hell you will, Mingus. You're in my ride, you respect my rules. No fumar en autoj Joe practised the Spanish he'd been learning off tapes for the best part of six months.
Word was Miami PD brass were talking about setting up a
I
fast-track promotion scheme where preference would be given to Spanish speakers, so Joe thought it best to get a head start. Besides, Spanish was most of what you heard on the streets nowadays. People could plot any old shit they wanted to if you couldn't understand what they were saying.
Max had followed his partner's lead and bought a set of Berlitz tapes and books, but he hadn't as yet taken them out of the packaging. Why the hell should he learn a foreign language to talk to people in his own country? He'd pick up the basics as he went along, same as he did with street slang.
'There's worse outside, Joe. Pollution, exhaust, bird shit.
That'll depreciate your car faster than any damn cigarettes.'
Max grumpily put his smoke back in the pack. He'd showered, shaved and ironed his clothes but he still looked and felt like a wreck. Before he'd left his home he'd swallowed a mouthful of Pepto-Bismol to douse the burn in his stomach, but it was still smouldering. The doctor told him he didn't have an ulcer, just an acid build up caused by a cocktail of job pressures, booze, coffee and not eating a balanced diet at the right times of day. And he badly needed a damn drink. And a cigarette. 'Next thing, you're gonna tell me is they're bad for me.'
'They are bad for you.'
ŚYou smoke cigars.'
'Not any more.'
You quit?'
'Uh-huh,' Joe said smugly.
'No wonder you're actin' like such an asshole.'
Joe laughed.
You should think 'bout quittin', Max. For real'
'Think about it all the time. For real,' Max said gloomily.
And he had. After the first cigarette of the day, he didn't like smoking. The next nineteen to thirty were all reflex and habit, things to do with his hands, things to relieve stress,