stay close.
In the age of political correctness, a large black man in a crisply pressed police uniform could move at will through the corridors ofwhite-cracker bureaucracy and never once be questioned. Jim Tile took full advantage in the days following the big storm. He mingled authoritatively with Dade County deputies, Homestead police, firefighters, Red Cross volunteers, National Guardsmen, the Army command and antsy emissaries of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Between patrol shifts, Jim Tile helped himself to coffee and A-forms, 911 logs, computer printouts and handwritten incident reports—he scanned for nothing in particular; just a sign.
As it happened, though, madness flowed rampant in the storm’s wake. Jim Tile leafed through the paperwork, and thought: My Lord, people are cracking up all over town.
The machinery of rebuilding doubled as novel weapons for domestic violence. Thousands of hurricane victims had stampeded to purchase chain saws for clearing debris, and now the dangerous power tools were being employed to vent rage. A gentleman with a Black & Decker attempted to truncate a stubborn insurance adjuster in Homestead. An old woman in Florida City used a lightweight Sears to silence a neighbor’s garrulous pet cockatoo. And in Sweetwater, two teenaged gang members successfully detached each other’s arms (one left, one right) in a brief but spectacular duel of stolen Homelites.
If chain saws ruled the day, firearms ruled the night. Fearful of looters, vigilant home owners unloaded high-caliber semiautomatics at every rustle, scrape and scuff in the darkness. Preliminary casualties included seven cats, thirteen stray dogs, two opossums and a garbage truck, but no actual thieves. Residents of one rural neighborhood wildly fired dozens of rounds to repel what they described as a troop of marauding monkeys—an episode that Jim Tile dismissed as mass hallucination. He resolved to limit his investigative activities to daytime hours, whenever possible.
Nearly all the missing persons reported to authorities were locals who had fled the storm and lost contact with concerned relatives up North. Most turned up safe at shelters or in the homes of neighbors. But one case caught Jim Tile’s attention: a man named Max Lamb.
According to the information filed by his wife, the Lambs drove to Miami on the morning after the hurricane struck. Mrs. Lamb told police that her husband wanted to see the storm damage. The trooper wasn’t surprised—the streets were clogged with out-of-towners who treated the hurricane zone as a tourist attraction.
Mr. Max Lamb had left his rental car, in pursuit of video. It seemed improbable to Jim Tile that anybody from Manhattan could get lost on foot in the flat simple grid of a Florida subdivision. The trooper’s suspicions were heightened by another incident, lost deep in the stack of files.
A seventy-four-year-old woman had called to say she had witnessed a possible assault. It was summarized in two short paragraphs, taken over the telephone by a dispatcher:
“Caller reports suspicious subject running along 10700 block of Quail Roost Drive, carrying another subject over his shoulder. Subject One is described as w/m, height and weight unknown. Subject Two is w/m, height and weight unknown.
“Caller reports Subject B appeared to be resisting, and was possibly nude. Subject A reported to be carrying a handgun with a flashing red light (??). Search of area by Units 2334 and 4511 proved negative.”
Jim Tile knew of no pistols with blinking red lights, but most hand-held video cameras had one. From a distance, a frightened elderly person might mistake a Sony for a Smith & Wesson.
Maybe the old woman had witnessed the abduction of Mr. Max Lamb. Jim Tile hoped not. He hoped the Quail Roost sighting was just another weird Dade County roadside altercation and not the act of his volatile swamp-dwelling friend, who was known to hold ill-mannered tourists in low esteem.
The
In the age of political correctness, a large black man in a crisply pressed police uniform could move at will through the corridors ofwhite-cracker bureaucracy and never once be questioned. Jim Tile took full advantage in the days following the big storm. He mingled authoritatively with Dade County deputies, Homestead police, firefighters, Red Cross volunteers, National Guardsmen, the Army command and antsy emissaries of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Between patrol shifts, Jim Tile helped himself to coffee and A-forms, 911 logs, computer printouts and handwritten incident reports—he scanned for nothing in particular; just a sign.
As it happened, though, madness flowed rampant in the storm’s wake. Jim Tile leafed through the paperwork, and thought: My Lord, people are cracking up all over town.
The machinery of rebuilding doubled as novel weapons for domestic violence. Thousands of hurricane victims had stampeded to purchase chain saws for clearing debris, and now the dangerous power tools were being employed to vent rage. A gentleman with a Black & Decker attempted to truncate a stubborn insurance adjuster in Homestead. An old woman in Florida City used a lightweight Sears to silence a neighbor’s garrulous pet cockatoo. And in Sweetwater, two teenaged gang members successfully detached each other’s arms (one left, one right) in a brief but spectacular duel of stolen Homelites.
If chain saws ruled the day, firearms ruled the night. Fearful of looters, vigilant home owners unloaded high-caliber semiautomatics at every rustle, scrape and scuff in the darkness. Preliminary casualties included seven cats, thirteen stray dogs, two opossums and a garbage truck, but no actual thieves. Residents of one rural neighborhood wildly fired dozens of rounds to repel what they described as a troop of marauding monkeys—an episode that Jim Tile dismissed as mass hallucination. He resolved to limit his investigative activities to daytime hours, whenever possible.
Nearly all the missing persons reported to authorities were locals who had fled the storm and lost contact with concerned relatives up North. Most turned up safe at shelters or in the homes of neighbors. But one case caught Jim Tile’s attention: a man named Max Lamb.
According to the information filed by his wife, the Lambs drove to Miami on the morning after the hurricane struck. Mrs. Lamb told police that her husband wanted to see the storm damage. The trooper wasn’t surprised—the streets were clogged with out-of-towners who treated the hurricane zone as a tourist attraction.
Mr. Max Lamb had left his rental car, in pursuit of video. It seemed improbable to Jim Tile that anybody from Manhattan could get lost on foot in the flat simple grid of a Florida subdivision. The trooper’s suspicions were heightened by another incident, lost deep in the stack of files.
A seventy-four-year-old woman had called to say she had witnessed a possible assault. It was summarized in two short paragraphs, taken over the telephone by a dispatcher:
“Caller reports suspicious subject running along 10700 block of Quail Roost Drive, carrying another subject over his shoulder. Subject One is described as w/m, height and weight unknown. Subject Two is w/m, height and weight unknown.
“Caller reports Subject B appeared to be resisting, and was possibly nude. Subject A reported to be carrying a handgun with a flashing red light (??). Search of area by Units 2334 and 4511 proved negative.”
Jim Tile knew of no pistols with blinking red lights, but most hand-held video cameras had one. From a distance, a frightened elderly person might mistake a Sony for a Smith & Wesson.
Maybe the old woman had witnessed the abduction of Mr. Max Lamb. Jim Tile hoped not. He hoped the Quail Roost sighting was just another weird Dade County roadside altercation and not the act of his volatile swamp-dwelling friend, who was known to hold ill-mannered tourists in low esteem.
The
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