'Oh, dear God, spare me,' Kling said, and rolled his eyes heavenward.
'Because if you hadn't stopped them Jakies . . .'
'Jakies?'
"Them Jamaicans.'
Kling had never heard this expression before. He had the feeling Herrera had just made it up. The way he'd made up his cockamamie Asian or North American Indian cultures that held a man responsible for saving another man's life.
'If you'd have let them Jakies kill me,' Herrera said, 'then I wouldn't have to be worrying they would kill me now.'
'Makes perfect sense,' Kling said, shaking his head.
'Of course it makes sense.'
'Of course.'
'This way I'll probably have a nervous breakdown. Waiting for them to kill me all over again. You want me to have a nervous breakdown?'
'I think you already had one,' Kling said.
'You want them Jakies to kill me?' Herrera asked.
'No,' Kling said honestly. If he'd wanted them to kill Herrera, he'd have let them do it the first time around. Instead of getting a tooth knocked out of his mouth. Which he still hadn't gone to the dentist to see about.
'Good, I'm glad you realize you owe me,' Herrera said.
Kling was neither a Buddhist monk nor a Hindu priest nor an Indian shaman; he didn't think he owed Herrera a goddamn thing.
But if a strong Jamaican posse really was about to do a big dope deal right here in the precinct . . .
'Let's say I do offer you protection,' he said.
* * * *
5
The oriental gangs in this city had difficulty pronouncing his name, which was Lewis Randolph Hamilton. Too many L's and too many R's. The Hispanic gangs called him Luis El Martillo. Which meant Louie the Hammer. This did not mean that his weapon was a hammer. Hamilton was strapped with a .357 Magnum, which he used liberally and indiscriminately. It was said that he had personally committed twenty-three murders during his several years in the States. The Italian gangs called him Il Camaleonte, which meant The Chameleon. That was because hardly anyone knew what he looked like. Or at least what he looked like now.
There were Miami PD mug shots of Hamilton wearing his hair in an exaggerated Afro, mustache on his upper lip. There were Houston PD pictures of Hamilton wearing his hair in Rastafarian style, so that he looked like a male Medusa. There were NYPD pictures of him with his hair cut extremely short, hugging his skull like a woolly black cap. There were LAPD pictures of him with a thick beard. But here in this city, there were no police photographs of Lewis Randolph Hamilton. That was because he'd never been arrested here. He'd killed eight people here, and the underworld knew this, and the police suspected it, but Hamilton was like smoke. In Jamaica, as a matter of fact, he had for a number of years been called Smoke, a name premised on his ability to drift away and vanish without a trace.
Hamilton's posse was into everything.
Prostitution. Exclusively Mafia in the recent dead past, increasingly Chineseever since a pair of lovely sisters named Tina and Toni Pao moved from Hong Kong to San Francisco and began smuggling in girls from Taiwan via Guatemala and Mexico, their operation expanding eastward across the United States until it was now fully entrenched and because of its local-tong and overseas-triad connections - virtually untouchable here in this city. Hamilton had discovered the enormous profits to be made in peddling ass on carefully selected, police-protected street corners. Nothing high-class here. No Mayflower Madam shit. Just a horde of young, drug-addicted girls standing out in the cold wearing nothing but Penthouse lingerie.
Gun-running. The Hispanics were very big on this. Maybe because, like cab drivers coming back from the airport, they didn't like to ride deadhead. Bring up a load of Colombian coke, you didn't want that ship going back empty. So you filled it with guns - high-powered handguns, automatic rifles, machine guns - which you then sold at an enormous profit in the Caribbean. Hamilton already knew how to bring up the dope. He was now learning - way too damn fast to suit the Hispanics - how to send down stolen guns.
And, of course, drugs.
Unless a gang - any gang, any nationality, any color - dealt drugs, then it wasn't a gang, it was a ladies' sewing circle. Hamilton's posse was heavily into dope. With enough weaponry to invade Beirut.
All of this was why the slants, the spics and the wops wanted him dusted.
Which amused Hamilton. All those contracts out on him. If they didn't know what he looked like, how could they reach him? Unless one of his own people turned, there wasn't no way anybody could be out there squatting for him. All highly amusing. Their dumb gang shit. Contracts. What was he, a kid playing in the mud outside a shack? The concept of a Hollywood hood with a broken nose looking high and low for him made him laugh.
But not today.
Today he wasn't laughing.
Today he was annoyed by the way three of his people had mishandled the José Herrera thing.
'Why baseball bats?' he asked.
The word 'bats' sounded like 'bots.'
Very melodious. Heavy bass voice rumbling up out of his chest. Bots. Why baseball bots?
A reasonable question.
Only one of the three was standing there in front of him. The other two were in the hospital. But even if the cop hadn't jammed them, they'd have been denied bail. Assaulting a police officer? Terrific. The one who'd been sprung looked shamefaced. Six feet three inches tall, weighing in at two hundred and twelve pounds, big hands hanging at his sides, he looked like a schoolboy about to be birched. Like back in Kingston when he'd been a kid.
Hamilton sat there patiently and expectantly.
At an even six feet, he was smaller than the man he was addressing. But he emanated even in his reasonableness a sense of terrible menace.
He turned to the man sitting beside him on the couch.
'Isaac?' he said. 'Why baseball bats?'
The other man shrugged. Isaac Walker, his confidant and bodyguard - not that he needed one. A confidant, yes. It could get lonely at the top. But a bodyguard? Wasn't anyone ever going to take out Lewis Randolph Hamilton. Ever.
Isaac shook his head. He was agreeing that baseball bats were ridiculous. Baseball bats were for spics out to break a man's legs. For chasing after a man's woman. Very big thing with the spics, their women. There were women attached to the posse, of course. Camp followers. There when you needed them. But nobody was going to get into a shootout over a mere cunt. Big macho thing with the spic gangs, though. Even the Colombians, who you thought would have more sense, all the fuckin' green involved in their operation. Mess with a spic's woman, it wasn't maybe as serious as messin' with his shit, but it was serious enough. Break the man's legs so he couldn't chase no more. But who had given these three the order to use baseball bats on Herrera?
'Who told you baseball bats, man?' Hamilton asked.
It came out 'Who tole you baseball bots, mon?'
'James.'
Like a kid telling on his best friend.
James. Who was now at Buenavista Hospital where they had dug the cop's bullet out of his shoulder. At the hospital, James had whispered to Isaac that he'd knocked out one of the cop's teeth. He'd sounded proud of it. Isaac had thought he was a fucking dope, messing with a cop to begin with. A cop showed, they should have split, saved Herrera for another day. Which they were having to do anyway. Jump up and down on a cop? Had to be fucking crazy. James. Who, it now turned out, had told them to go after Herrera with baseball bats.
'James told you this?'
Hamilton speaking.
'Yes, Lewis. It was James for certain.'
The Jamaican lilt of his words.