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“Did she, Kylie, mention a name?”
“Someone named Swizzle. Should we go out and try and find him?”
“We don’t go out, not yet. First we ride on the coattails of others.”
My call went to Juarez, a detective with Miami Vice. He was dedicated and bright and a favorite of Vince Delmara.
“Swizzle?” Juarez said. “You’re probably talking about Shizzle, Shizzle Diamond. Real name’s T’Shawn Matthews. Collects runaways and confused girls from the streets and bus stations. He’s good at being what they need, uncle or daddy or friend, then takes a few weeks to feed ’em and fuck ’em and hook ’em on heroin.”
“I think there’s a rap song there.”
“I ain’t writing it. Matthews – I ain’t using that idiot pimp name – rides his herd hard and moves them around, sometimes as far north as Orlando. But mostly it’s Liberty City or the sadder parts of Flagami and so forth. He might run ’em over to the Beach, but he tends to venues with dark alleys and cheap motels, usually watching from a car or the window of a bar, sipping brandy while his sad little troupe services johns.”
“Any idea where I can find this particular bag of garbage?” I asked.
I heard a hand cover the phone, a question yelled out. After a minute the hand fell away. “Feinstein says he saw Matthews a couple days back at Black’s Lounge, lower Liberty, probably got his crew working there for a while.”
I thanked Juarez and pocketed the phone. “Drink up,” I told Belafonte. “We’re going hunting.”
We headed outside and I saw the Crown Vic. “Who gave you that junker? I can see the goddamn cop logo under the paint.”
“Motor pool. It’s all they had.”
“We’ll use my wheels,” I said. “Jump in.”
I drive a green Land Rover Defender with every possible option for safari use: racks, grille and headlamp shields, spare tire bolted to the roof, heavy-duty suspension. It had been confiscated from a dope dealer and though it rode a bit rough, it was, I figured, the only veldt-ready copmobile in the country and if a case ever took me to the top of Kilimanjaro, I was ready.
Night was deepening as we went to the corner where Shizzle Diamond had been spotted. It was not a neighborhood Miami would feature in a tourist ad, unless the tourists were looking for peep shows, strippers and the uglier side of street life, as demonstrated by the wino puking into the gutter as we passed.
“Get close to me,” I told Belafonte. “Whisper in my ear and play with my hair.”
“What?”
“We need to look like a guy who’s just picked up a woman. Or maybe a guy and a woman wanting a third hand at cards.”
“Cards?” She thought a moment. “Oh.”
Reluctantly, she scooted as close as the shifter allowed. Her hand patted my head like I was a Welsh Corgi. “Try for passion,” I said.
She moved her head closer and twirled a lock of my hair. “Is this how you behaved with your male partners?”
“When it was necessary.”
Which was true. Harry and I had several times gone hand-in-hand into gay bars or situations to hunt for a perp or gather information. In one memorable instance I had donned a dress and wig to play a cross-dresser, Harry dubbing me “the ugliest woman he’d never been with”.
Thus engaged in mock passion, Belafonte and I cruised toward one of the bars supposed to contain the pimp. There were two damsels of the dark on the street, but there were recessed doorways in the buildings and alleys and I figured there might be ladies back there, either waiting or working on a customer.
“There’s a bottle under your seat,” I told Belafonte. “Grab it.”
She reached down and found a half-full pint of bourbon. “You’re going to drink?”
“Pop the cap and bring it to your lips. You don’t need to open your mouth, but we need to look like we’re partying. Hurry. If we’re made they’ll slide back into the shadows. Or Matthews might pull them off the street.”
She screwed the cap off the bottle, appeared to take a hit. She passed the bottle over and I did the same and pulled to the curb beside a small alley. Across the street a woman of Latina extraction – girl, really – in gold lamé shorts, a top little more than a black bra and net hose studied us. I gave her a wink and took another pull from the bottle. She waved with three coy fingers.
“Now what?” Belafonte whispered.
“According to Juarez, these are some of Matthews’ girls, and that means he should be in one of these bars.”
“Why then are we here?”
I kept my eyes on the hooker as if appraising her, talking to Belafonte with as little lip-motion as possible. “I don’t want to brace him on his turf. I want him out here.”
“How’s that going to happen?”
“I’m gonna run a play on these folks,” I said.
“A play?”
I winked, time to show the kid how the pros did things. “Stay put, watch how it’s done. I’ll have Shizzle-boy out here in two minutes.”
I half climbed, half fell from the Rover, recovered and meandered toward the hooker. “Hey, babuh,” I slurred. “My fren’ and I are looking for a li’l spice.”
A smile below the street-wise eyes; in this area I figured alley stand-ups and front-seat oral was more the norm. “I can party with y’all,” she said. “Two hundred an hour.”
“Hunh-unh,” I said. “I just need you to tell us where we can find a pretty white lady. We’re not into spicks.”
“You ain’t into what?”
“But you ain’t too shabby for darker meat. Tell you what, I’ll give you ten for a hummer … as long as my lady can watch.”
The eyes turned to slits. “Get the fuck outta here, asshole.”
“Don’t be mean, chica,” I said. “What else you got goin’ on?”
“FUCK OFF!”
“I’ll make it fifteen. Where you from, little mama? Haiti? Honduras? Fifteen bucks is like, what, a year’s pay over there?”
“GET LOST!”
I was betting one of Matthews’ other products had run to his hidey-hole to report a problem. I backed the girl against an abandoned storefront.
“Twenny, chica … all right? But you gotta do my lady, too.”
She tried to slip by to my right, I was in front of her. Darting left did the same. I was a fast drunk. I saw her eyes look past my shoulder and go from scared to relief.
“Yo, muthafucka,” said a voice from behind me; Shizzle, no doubt, out of his hidey-hole and protecting the merchandise. I spun. He was tall and in full-length leather topped with a wide-brimmed white hat, furious that I’d pulled him from the comfort of his brandy cavern.
I was about to cool him out with the shield but my eyes burst into flames. A fist caught me in the throat and sent me to the pavement on hands and knees, rolling away when a kick caught me in the gut and knocked out my breath.
“Muthafucka, you gonna be pissing blood for a week.”
Gasping for wind, I was too concentrated on warding off the next kick to try for the piece in my waistband. Plus I was near blind.
“Excuse me?” I heard a polite feminine voice say. It was followed by a sound reminiscent of a hammer striking meat and a simultaneous scream. Shizzle Diamond’s hatless head slammed the pavement beside mine and kept screaming, rolling on his back and pulling his legs to his chest.
I blinked through tears to see Holly Belafonte silhouetted against a streetlamp, a collapsible nightstick twirling through her fingers like a drum majorette in a holiday parade. She helped me to my feet. Matthews was still on the concrete, teeth clenched in pain. It seemed the hooker had pulled pepper spray from her purse and blasted my eyes. Belafonte had trotted over armed with the nightstick kept in her purse, and whipped it behind one of Shizzle’s legs. It hurt like hell.
I held my shield in Matthew’s face, then dragged him by his shirtfront into the alley where I patted him down, tossed the belt knife to Belafonte, and held the pimp against the building.
“You ain’t vice,” he said.
“FCLE.”
Confusion. “A state guy – why?”
I leaned close enough to let him smell my breath. “A pity the fabric burned but not the skin, T’Shawn. You left two perfect finger prints on her body, bud. It’ll go easier if you start talking.”
His eyes went wide and the pimp persona dissolved into cold-sweat fear. “Body? B-body? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, MAN?”
“You know, bitch.”
“NO I DON’T! TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!”
“You beat Kylie to death and set her on fire.”
“I D-DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT, MAN. SHE’S DEAD? OH JESUS. OH MY FUCKING GOD …”
I didn’t see knowledge or evasion: I saw stark terror. Ten years in the detective game, the last five so experienced from the first five that I knew the scumbucket had no idea what I was talking about.
“Tell me about Kylie,” I said, the hands loosening on his shirt.
“I-I ain’t seen her in four days. I figured she booked.”
“I think I believe you,” I said. “So right now I need the whole ugly truth, T’Shawn. Anything less, I’ll take you downtown and sweat you all night. Your choice.”
He’d probably have done a go-right-ahead bit if I’d been MDPD, but the FCLE had arrived in his squalid little world, which meant things were serious.
“Anything, man,” he said. “But you gotta know, it wasn’t me.”
I asked questions, he provided answers. Matthews had found Sandoval on the streets seven months back, drunk. He’d brought her to one of his two cribs, babied her. He also traded out the booze for H and put her on the street.
“What’d she do before she got to Miami?” I asked at one point.
“She never talked about that, man. Never. Like she’d shut it off. Bad shit at home, maybe. You wouldn’t believe what got done to some of these girls when they lived at home.”
In the end Matthews knew almost nothing of Sandoval; little more to him than an ATM, and as long as she kept pumping out money, he was fine with it. I shot a glance at Belafonte. Her eyes were expressionless but her nose looked like a sewage field was nearby.
“Beat it,” I said, releasing the pimp. Matthews ducked low past me and went to pick up his hat but Belafonte was standing on it. He gave her a wide berth and retreated down the street as we climbed back into the car to press onward into the unrevealed world of Kylie Sandoval. I took a deep breath and rested my head on the steering wheel. My cheek was sore from the punch and my side ached from the kick.
“Quite the interesting play,” Belafonte said, giving me my first-ever sample of what amusement sounded like in her voice. “Your take on Richard III, perhaps?”
“My kingdom for a nightstick,” I sighed.
10 (#ulink_5dc0b5fc-96e9-5dd7-abe1-d0dd1a6e4346)
I dropped Belafonte off at her car and headed to Viv’s. The place was deserted and my heart sank. I gave her a call.
“I’m running a half-hour late … be home in twenty minutes. I’ll make a food grab on the way in. Miguelito’s?”
“Olé.”
Viv arrived minutes later with burritos, chips, salsa and guacamole from a favored tacquería. She grinned as she scampered by to warm the chow and I used the time to admire Vivian’s slender form bending to put the food in the oven. She wore a simple blue skirt over improbably long legs and a gray blouse. The kicks were dark athletic shoes which looked out of place, but were the requisite wear for long hours of hard hospital floors.
We feasted on burritos – chicken for Viv, goat for me – washed down with Negra Modelo. Our conversation veered briefly into the sadness of Roberta Menendez’s loss, then, happier, into a recap of my weekend with Harry and his new prospects.
“Harry’s driving someone around?” Viv said. “He’s already bored with retirement?”
“Harry felt he could stash some playtime cash. And yes, Harry needs to be doing something or he gets mopey.”
“Mopey?”
“That time he got his head bashed in and spent weeks in the hospital? He hated TV so he tried crossword puzzles. Doing them bored him after two days, so he started making them. I remember one had the word ‘heimidemisemiquaver’ crossing the word ‘subdermatoglyphic’.”
“What the hell do those mean?”
“The first has something to do with music, the second concerns fingerprint patterns, and is the longest word where every letter is used just once, the reason Harry wanted to use it. It took him a month to build that damn puzzle but when he was done it made the New York Times Sunday version look like it was written by a ten-year-old.”
Viv gave me a look. “You miss him, don’t you?”
I made a smile happen. “We had some good times. But the world moves on.”
Another look, then a change of subject. “Harry thinks he’ll like being a chauffeur?” Vivian asked, curling the long legs on to the sofa.
“Driver,” I corrected. “We’ll just have to wait to find out.”
“I guess we will,” she said, standing and angling toward the stairs. “But until then, I know something that can’t wait much longer.” She winked.
I was off the couch like a shot.
Viv left for MD-Gen before six a.m. and I awoke at eight twenty with the vague recollection of a fleeting kiss. Breakfast was leftover frijoles refritos and chips and I was ready to attack the Sandoval case when my phone rang: JEREMY.
“There’s a huge commotion down the street, Carson,” my brother said before I could speak. “What is it?”
I suppressed a moan: My brother always wanted something.
“A commotion?”
