the press on the day of her appointment as head of Miami Homeland Security. Shoulder-length auburn hair, blue eyes and a smile more formal than friendly. She favoured her father.
Max looked over his notes.
Questions:
Joe – what was his involvement? He’d been in Patrol back then.
What were Robbery-Homicide detectives Eldon Burns and Abe Watson doing on a drugs raid?
He paused there.
This wasn’t going anywhere good.
He knew Eldon had been neck-deep in shady shit from the jump, doing the bidding of Victor Marko, the political fixer. It wouldn’t have surprised him in the least if the Black Jacobins bust had been a proto-MTF fit-up. Find a perp, plant the evidence, arrest or kill on sight. Above all: make it fit, make it stick.
But Joe?
If Max left it here, he’d never know. And that would be for the best. Ignorance was bliss and he’d smile with the best of them. He could still preserve his memories.
Yes, he could do that.
And spend his life getting eaten up by doubt, by the not-knowing?
Yes … at a push, he could do that: his memories were all he had left now.
He looked back at his notes.
He’d written ‘FBI/COINTELPRO’, and circled it twice.
Max tapped out an email to Jack Quinones: What do you know about Vanetta Brown?
He sent it and printed off the Herald pictures. He took two prints of Vanetta Brown’s studio shot. He stuck one on the board in his office.
He was dog-tired, but he knew he wouldn’t get any sleep, that he’d just lie there seeing Joe get his brains blown out right in front of him.
He took a shower and made more coffee.
He turned on the TV. Local news reported Joe’s murder and issued a description of the shooter. No mention of Vanetta Brown.
Then he thought of Emerson Prescott.
Prescott still owed him for the surveillance job. The sum of $5837 – plus $1200 expenses. That it had turned out to be bogus and he’d been made to look and feel a fool was neither here nor there. He’d played his part in whatever sad-sack postmodern porno pantomime Prescott had going on, and he was going to collect.
He needed to take his mind off Joe. There was nothing he could do right now but leave it to the police, be there for the family … and find out some more about Vanetta Brown.
He went back to his office and fed the Zurich Hotel DVD into his computer.
11
Max had never been into porn, never got the appeal. He found it pathetic and grubby, the preserve of the complacent and sexually short-circuited. His was a childhood-old repulsion. He’d seen his first strokemag when he was ten. It had been lying open in the middle of the sidewalk. Two thick rectangular humps of glossy paper with a faintly plastic smell. The mag was called Farmers’ Daughters and consisted of gyno shots of fat Mid -western girls sprawled on bales of hay. He felt like having a wash and then burning the shower down after seeing it.
So he’d never used strokemags. Not even tame ones like Playboy and Penthouse; not even in his teens. He had boxing instead. Eldon Burns used to buy his fighters hookers every time they won a trophy. The night he won the South Florida Golden Gloves, he popped his cherry on Eldon’s dime. When the hooker found out it was his first time, she stroked his face and hugged him and told him her real name was Evangeline. She said she’d always wanted to be remembered in a good way by someone. He never forgot her, even though for all he knew she said the same thing to all her virgins. Nine years later he busted her on Washington Avenue. He promised himself to let her go with a warning if she recognised him. When she didn’t, he took her in. After she’d been booked and processed, he told Joe about their shared past. Joe laughed and called him a heartless asshole. Truth was, the sex hadn’t been all that great. For a while he’d even wondered what all the fuss was about, until he started winning more titles. And getting girlfriends.
These days porn was everywhere, diluted and used to
Max looked over his notes.
Questions:
Joe – what was his involvement? He’d been in Patrol back then.
What were Robbery-Homicide detectives Eldon Burns and Abe Watson doing on a drugs raid?
He paused there.
This wasn’t going anywhere good.
He knew Eldon had been neck-deep in shady shit from the jump, doing the bidding of Victor Marko, the political fixer. It wouldn’t have surprised him in the least if the Black Jacobins bust had been a proto-MTF fit-up. Find a perp, plant the evidence, arrest or kill on sight. Above all: make it fit, make it stick.
But Joe?
If Max left it here, he’d never know. And that would be for the best. Ignorance was bliss and he’d smile with the best of them. He could still preserve his memories.
Yes, he could do that.
And spend his life getting eaten up by doubt, by the not-knowing?
Yes … at a push, he could do that: his memories were all he had left now.
He looked back at his notes.
He’d written ‘FBI/COINTELPRO’, and circled it twice.
Max tapped out an email to Jack Quinones: What do you know about Vanetta Brown?
He sent it and printed off the Herald pictures. He took two prints of Vanetta Brown’s studio shot. He stuck one on the board in his office.
He was dog-tired, but he knew he wouldn’t get any sleep, that he’d just lie there seeing Joe get his brains blown out right in front of him.
He took a shower and made more coffee.
He turned on the TV. Local news reported Joe’s murder and issued a description of the shooter. No mention of Vanetta Brown.
Then he thought of Emerson Prescott.
Prescott still owed him for the surveillance job. The sum of $5837 – plus $1200 expenses. That it had turned out to be bogus and he’d been made to look and feel a fool was neither here nor there. He’d played his part in whatever sad-sack postmodern porno pantomime Prescott had going on, and he was going to collect.
He needed to take his mind off Joe. There was nothing he could do right now but leave it to the police, be there for the family … and find out some more about Vanetta Brown.
He went back to his office and fed the Zurich Hotel DVD into his computer.
11
Max had never been into porn, never got the appeal. He found it pathetic and grubby, the preserve of the complacent and sexually short-circuited. His was a childhood-old repulsion. He’d seen his first strokemag when he was ten. It had been lying open in the middle of the sidewalk. Two thick rectangular humps of glossy paper with a faintly plastic smell. The mag was called Farmers’ Daughters and consisted of gyno shots of fat Mid -western girls sprawled on bales of hay. He felt like having a wash and then burning the shower down after seeing it.
So he’d never used strokemags. Not even tame ones like Playboy and Penthouse; not even in his teens. He had boxing instead. Eldon Burns used to buy his fighters hookers every time they won a trophy. The night he won the South Florida Golden Gloves, he popped his cherry on Eldon’s dime. When the hooker found out it was his first time, she stroked his face and hugged him and told him her real name was Evangeline. She said she’d always wanted to be remembered in a good way by someone. He never forgot her, even though for all he knew she said the same thing to all her virgins. Nine years later he busted her on Washington Avenue. He promised himself to let her go with a warning if she recognised him. When she didn’t, he took her in. After she’d been booked and processed, he told Joe about their shared past. Joe laughed and called him a heartless asshole. Truth was, the sex hadn’t been all that great. For a while he’d even wondered what all the fuss was about, until he started winning more titles. And getting girlfriends.
These days porn was everywhere, diluted and used to
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