The King of Swords Read online

  ‘Remember me and remember this: I am going to be in your shit for the duration. I catch you tryin’ to recruit girls again I’ll bust you for real, and I’ll see to it you share a cell with some redneck ass bandido who turns you out so much you’ll shit a whole watermelon with a smile on your face,’ he said, tossing Carmine his wallet, lighter and aftershave bottle. ‘Now go.’ He stabbed his finger towards the exit.

  ‘What about my seeds, man? You don’t need ’em,’ Carmine pleaded.

  ‘Which part of “go” did you miss, shitstick?’

  ‘Motherfucker!’ Carmine spat as he started up the car.

  7

  Max found a payphone on 5th Street and called Striker Swan.

  Striker was Billy Ray Swan’s uncle. He’d done ten years for armed robbery. He’d been a serious badass before he’d gone away. He’d met his match behind bars and the experience had changed him from the inside out. He’d been rehabilitated of his worst excesses but he still wasn’t doing straight time, making his living mostly running hot cars in and out of the state, yet the violence he’d been notorious for in his youth never re-entered the frame.

  He’d loved his little nephew more than he’d loved anyone in his whole life–except, perhaps, for his sister-in-law Rachel on that one hot night when Billy Ray was conceived, or so people said. The two did look more than a little alike, even though that could just have been the Swan family genes. Whatever the reality, Striker had been the most broken up by the kid’s murder.

  Swan answered the phone at the fifth ring. Max spoke to him through a handkerchief over the receiver and in the only accent he could make fly–Jimmy Carter Jiowja.

  ‘Striker?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Striker answered in a yawn. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Never mind that. I got me a message to give you. Dean Waychek, guy that killed lil’ Billy Ray? Wanna know where you can find him?’

  Max didn’t wait to hear the answer. He told him.

  Max had met Swan once, very briefly, outside the police station, the day Waychek had been freed. Max had apologized to him. Striker–six feet two of white-trash muscle, tattoos and freckles–had given Max the briefest of nods and the faintest of smiles, as if to say, ‘You’re a pig, so I hate you, but you’re OK.’

  Striker didn’t say a word on the phone. He didn’t even reply when Max asked him if he’d got the name of the motel.

  But Max knew he’d got it all right.

  Max hung up and got back in his car.

  As he drove away he thought of Dean Waychek, remembered his smugness in the interrogation room, the way he’d been so sure he was going to get away with it.

  ‘Adios, motherfucker,’ Max said.

  8

  Carmine would never admit it to anyone, but he was scared of thunder. He didn’t have a big quake-in-your-boots phobia, yet whenever the skies rumbled he’d get a sense of real and imminent danger, of something about to go very wrong in his life. He’d have to get out of the way, find a building to shelter in until it was over. He didn’t like people seeing him afraid, especially not his Cards, current or prospective, and most of all he didn’t like nobody knowing about the twitch he got in his upper left cheek, a spasm so strong and violent it jerked his face halfway up his skull, closing his eye and opening up the side of his mouth to show the world his teeth. He was getting it now, listening to the storm raging outside, through the walls of the bathroom, over the sound of the tap filling up the tub. He slapped himself hard to make it stop. As usual, it didn’t.

  He looked around the vast bathroom–spotless white tiles covered the floor and walls; the large basin, bidet, toilet, deep bathtub and separate shower area were all gleaming, while all the fixtures, down to the pipes, were gold plated. There were white scales and a mirror by the door. But the highlight was the turquoise aquarium that ran almost the entire breadth and half the height of the wall opposite the tub. It was filled with a multitude of beautiful fish which glided, wriggled, hung or hovered across various tiers in the tank, some close enough to the surface to grab, others occupying the middle and showing off their colours, while a few avoided the limelight altogether and hid out in the rocks and vegetation below. They, Carmine decided, were the schemers and scavengers, the ones with the agendas, the plotters, the ones he related to the most. Sometimes, when the bathroom was dark, and the light, shadow and current in the tank came together in the right way to create a gentle, billowing effect that ran from one end of the glass to the other and back again, the aquarium resembled a magical bejewelled tapestry floating in mid-air.

  When he was growing up in Haiti, his father had told him that thunder was the sound of the gates of heaven opening up so the angels could come down and kill the world’s sinners. All the flashes and bolts of lightning were their swords, cutting the heads off the evil ones, and the rain that came afterwards was to wash their bodies away into the sea. If he was good, his dad had told him, he’d never have to be afraid of thunder, ever.

  Back then they’d all lived in a two-bedroom house overlooking the Carrefour slum in Port-au-Prince. They hadn’t been rich but they hadn’t been as badly off as their near neighbours who never had enough to eat and walked around in rags. Carmine’s mother was a mambo, a voodoo priestess: she cast spells, read fortunes, talked to the spirits of the dead and practised abortion. She had quite a clientele, ranging from the poor-as-dirt country folk who walked ten days to see her, to senior government ministers and society women who’d come to the house in chauffeur-driven cars. She was rumoured to have briefly cured one of Papa Doc’s daughters of lesbianism and another of myopia. Carmine had been her hounci–her assistant–as soon as he could walk. He’d helped her pick the herbs and prepare the animals she used for her potions, sat in the same room when she told people their fates with tarot cards, and, when he was old enough to know his way around town, he’d delivered messages from his mother’s lips to the ears of her clients.

  His mother didn’t like talking about his dad. Depending on what kind of mood she was in, she would head off the subject when she sensed it coming up and turn the conversation in another direction, or she’d clam up altogether and shake her head threateningly, or else she’d get out and out aggressive. The closest she ever came to talking about his dad was when she’d tell him that he looked just like him, and that he was just like him, only even more of a loser. And she only ever said that when she got what he had dubbed the ShitFits–terrifyingly intense rages she flew into once in a while.

  Carmine’s memories of his dad were few but mostly very fond. He remembered him as tall and handsome, always in a black suit and fedora, despite the heat. He was around the house a lot more than his mom: he used to sit outside smoking cigarettes–Comme Il Faut, the Haitian brand–and either reading the Bible or a tattered brochure about holidays to America. He talked about how one day they’d go there together, just the two of them, father and son; maybe they’d even stay for good, not come back ever. He made Carmine promise not to tell his mom, just like he made Carmine promise to keep another secret from her too.

  His mom would often travel to see her most important clients. She’d be gone for days, even weeks. When that happened all kinds of women would come by the house to see his father, mostly at night, but once in a while in the day too. They always woke Carmine up with the noise they made in the bedroom. He never complained. In fact it made him laugh. He remembered there being many different women at first, then it became just the one, his favourite. She was called Lucita. She was light brown and green eyed like his daddy, with the same soft curly hair too, only hers was longer and fell past her shoulders when she let it down. Her and his daddy spoke in Spanish as opposed to the Kreyol he usually spoke to everyone else. She always brought Carmine candy, stroked his face and asked him how he was doing. She smelled great too, like marshmallows and French soap. She was his first love.

  The only memory he had of his mother and dad together was when they fought over him. She’d been the disciplinarian in the house, the o
ne who made the rules and beat him for disobeying. She had a thin stick with flayed ends and dried buds growing out of the side. If he disobeyed her or talked back she’d beat him with it across the knuckles, which hurt like a bitch, or across the ass and the backs of his legs. At least that was the idea, but whenever she got it in her mind to beat him, a ShitFit wasn’t far behind and when it overwhelmed her she’d switch from the stick to her fists and feet. One day she’d started beating him because he’d forgotten to run an errand. For the first time ever his dad intervened. He came into the room, wrapped his arms around her, picked her up and carried her, kicking and screaming, into the bedroom. Carmine heard them shouting–well, more his mother–for what seemed like for ever. She’d screamed at his dad that she hated him, that Carmine was just like him, that he could get out of her house and take his son with him. So his dad had done just that. The two of them had walked out of the house and gone into Port-au-Prince. There his dad took him to Lucita’s house. He didn’t know how long he stayed there–it seemed a long time, maybe a month–but he was happier than he’d ever been at home with his mother. In fact, looking back, it was the happiest time of his life. His father and Lucita took him out to the beach, to the Dominican Republic, to carnival. He started playing with other kids his own age which his mother had forbidden him from doing. He never got beaten. And Lucita used to sing him to sleep some nights, in words he couldn’t understand but loved anyway.

  It all ended very suddenly one afternoon when a group of armed men came to the house in a long black car. They’d knocked on the door, yelling for his dad to come out or else they’d burn it down. His dad had gone to the door and they’d grabbed him and dragged him into the middle of the street where they’d forced him to lie face down on the ground. One man put his foot on his dad’s head, while another patted him back down and then drew an X on his shirt in red pen and shot him in the spot. Carmine had run out of the house screaming. He’d tried to grab his dad’s arms to pick him up off the ground, but he was convulsing, arms and legs slapping at the asphalt like an epileptic swimmer’s as foamy blood pumped out from under him. Carmine remembered how his dad had tried to say something, but couldn’t get any words out because of the blood filling up his mouth. As Carmine became schooled in the ways of the street and learned about guns, he discovered that one of the most painful places to get shot is through the heart because, in its final panicked moments the brain diverts the blood flow to the open wound to close and heal it, causing brief but absolute agony for the dying victim. His father’s convulsions stopped, until the only sign he was still alive was a twitch in the left side of his face, a violent tugging which Carmine had thought at the time was an invisible angel, trying one last time to pull his dad up on his feet before it was too late. The men bundled Carmine into their car and drove off.

  On the way a storm broke. There was nothing like those Haitian storms. They sounded like all the wars in heaven had broken out on earth; lightning lashed at the landscape and thunder roared and boomed, followed by a deluge of rain. His father’s killers had pulled over and stopped until it passed. Carmine had looked out of the window, trying to see if the rain would carry his dad’s body into the sea. He saw nothing. He concluded his dad had been a good person.

  They drove him to his mother’s house. She was waiting for him at the doorway and led him to the bathroom. There was a large round grey metal tub in the middle. It was filled with hot water doused with Dettol. She’d never washed him before, it had always been his dad. Carmine’s clothes were covered in blood and when she asked him to take them off he told her he wanted to keep them on. His mother produced her stick and said, ‘Do as I say because there’s no one else here for you now. It’s just me and you for as long as I say so. Now, take off your clothes and get in the bath.’

  And so, realizing he had no choice but to surrender for the time being, he did as he was told without further protest or hint of complaint. That was the beginning of their relationship, which had then evolved into one of tyrant and subject, mistress and slave, one growing ever more powerful as the other grew slowly weaker and more insignificant. Or so he let it appear.

  They left Haiti for Miami when he was about eight or nine. Memories of his father moved to the back of his mind, to a place he retreated to when things with his mother got real bad. He replayed them there and thought of what might have been and how different his life could have turned out if those men hadn’t come and killed his dad; men he knew his mother had sent. He created a fantasy world, a padded panic room he could run to when the humiliation of the real one and the reality of his place in it got too much. In that world he was with his father and Lucita. He himself was still six years old, with everything in front of him and everything to live for. He often thought about Lucita and wondered what had happened to her. He couldn’t remember if she’d been there in the road with his father, or if she’d stayed in the house. Had the men killed her too?

  It had long bothered him, the not knowing–not just about her, but about his father too. He didn’t know where he was from originally, what he’d done before he’d met his mother. He didn’t even know his name. His mother kept all that from him.

  He sliced his fingers through the water in the metal tub. It was boiling hot and reeked of Dettol, that safe but sour plastic stench he associated with his father’s murder. Just like he associated the tub with that day. The tub had come with them from Haiti–the sides dented, the handles and bolts rusted, a film of lime scale dried into the dull metal, the inside encrusted with greeny-grey grime. It had once been big enough for him to drown in–she’d tried once, when he still talked back–but now it was too small for him to do more than half crouch.

  She always made him take his baths too hot, deliberately, so the water would scald him and the metal would heat up and burn his feet. She’d had a special tap and boiler installed, just for him to fill his tub. He was forbidden from using the main tub. That was for her alone. Normally she’d shower, but whenever she was seeing her lover, she’d have a bath and it would be a real occasion. She’d be in there at least two hours. She’d put candles at the end of her tub and sweet-scented oils in the water; she’d turn off the lights and play tapes of the sea washing up on the beach.

  He heard the familiar sound of his mother coming down the stairs, the clippety-clop, clippety-clop trotting pony rhythm of her feet on the boards, followed by the sound of the two gold lockets she wore around her neck bumping together with a shhhh-put, shhhh-put as she approached the door. Thankfully the thunder had stopped a while ago and with it his twitch, so he had no problem putting on his game face–the game being that of the dutiful, loving and admiring twenty-nine-year-old son, happy to see his mother who was coming to give him his bath.

  She entered quickly, all 4 feet 9 inches of her, opening and closing the door so fast he could’ve sworn she’d walked right through it like a ghost. No smile, no nod, no hello, as usual.

  Eva Desamours was more striking than she was beautiful. Her skin was dark and rich, unlined and unmarked, bar a single pockmark beneath her left eye; her forehead was wide, her cheekbones high and prominent, while the lower half of her face tapered down acutely to a pointed, well-defined chin, accentuating her prominent downturned mouth whose full lips–dark brown with a hint of purple–for ever reminded Carmine of a drying grape whenever she pursed them. He never looked her in the eye because he was scared to. Marginally slanted and unblinking, cold, near motionless and very very black, her eyes fixed on the world with a merciless detachment, as if she already knew its fate and didn’t care to change it. She was also completely bald–whether naturally or by choice, Carmine had neither plucked up the courage to ask nor been able to work out. She wore an array of wigs styled in a straight black bob that fitted her so well they looked like her real hair.

  Eva had a man. They’d been together for as long as he could remember. It was a casual relationship. Either he’d come visit once or twice a month, or she would disappear on long weekends. Carmine
had never met him nor seen him nor heard his voice. Nor did he know his name. Eva just called him ‘mon type’–her guy. He’d sometimes heard the two of them going at it–loud, raucous and rapturous, her cries duetting with his bull-like snorts and gasps to the accompaniment of quaking floorboards.

  ‘Take your clothes off and get in your bath. I haven’t got long,’ she snapped. They spoke English to each other and had done ever since they’d come to Miami, twenty years ago. Carmine had learnt his English from the black kids in his neighbourhood, and he’d picked up Spanish from the Cuban kids he’d hung out with. He was often mistaken for Cuban, something he never corrected because to admit to being Haitian in Miami was tantamount to tattooing ‘loser’ on your forehead.

  He took off his robe and hung it on the hooks by the towel rack. He felt his skin rise in goosebumps even though the bathroom was warm. Sometimes she came straight out and told him what was bugging her but usually she liked to wait, hold on to it, let it brew and ferment and build some more in her head, circling him all the while before getting to the point. It was always worse when she prolonged it because he could always sense her fury, always knew what was coming. He could virtually see the rage massing behind her brow, those dark and very deadly legions of anger she had total command over, which she could unleash or withdraw at the drop of a hat.

  ‘Wait,’ she said as he was about to step into the water. ‘Turn around.’ He did as she asked. He’d never been ashamed of standing naked before her. She’d seen him naked every day of his life since the day of his father’s murder. ‘What’s that?’ She was pointing at the cauliflower-shaped bruise in the middle of his abdomen.

  ‘Someone hit me,’ Carmine said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A cop.’