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21





The Knight of Hialeah


Barely 6:45 a.m.—and all was uproar in the office of Edward T. Topping IV. Too many people in here! Too much noise! He hadn’t had time to take so much as a glance at that great symbol of his eminence, his glass-wall view of Biscayne Bay, Miami Beach, the Atlantic Ocean, 180 degrees of blue horizon, and a billion tiny glints flashing off the water as the great Heat Lamp above began to amp up the juice. He hadn’t even been able to sit down at his desk, not once, unless you counted leaning his long bony haunches against the edge of it from time to time.

He had a telephone receiver at his ear and his eyes fixed upon the screen of his Apple ZBe3 computer. Impatient, frantic, even panicked calls, texts, tweets, twits, and e-screams were hurricaning in from all over the country… all over the world, in fact… from an anguished art dealer in Vancouver, where it was 3:45 a.m., some art fair impresario from Art Basel in Switzerland, where it was 12:45 p.m., an auction house in Tokyo, where it was a quarter of eight at night, and an anguished—no, panicked-to-the-point-of-screaming—private collector in Wellington, New Zealand, where it was just a few minutes from tomorrow, and every sort of news organization, including British, French, German, Italian, and Japanese television, quite in addition to every sort of old, cable, and inter network in America. CBS had a camera crew waiting in the lobby downstairs—at 6:45 a.m.!

John Smith’s story had just broken. The Herald had published it online at six o’clock last night to establish priority—i.e., a scoop. Six hours later it came out in the newspaper’s first edition beneath two words in capital letters, two inches high and bold and black as a tabloid’s and stretching all the way across the front page:

DEADLY COINCIDENCE



Every hotshot in the Chicago Loop Syndicate who was desperate to be “where things are happening” had boarded one of the Loop’s three Falcon jets as soon as the story broke online and had taken off for Miami. Where things were happening was in the office of the Herald’s editor in chief, Edward T. Topping IV. In there right now were eight—or was it nine!—Loop executives, including the CEO, Puggy Knobloch, plus Ed himself, Ira Cutler, and Adlai desPortes, the Herald’s new publisher. For some reason the city editor, Stan Friedman, and John Smith, the man of the hour, had stepped out for a moment. The most intoxicating chemical known to man—adrenaline—was pumping through the room in waves waves waves waves, making the Loop troupe feel they had inside-the-belly box seats for one of the biggest stories of the twenty-first century: A new $220 million art museum, the anchor of a huge metropolitan cultural complex, is named for a Russian “oligarch” following his extraordinary gift of “seventy million dollars’ ” worth of paintings. Master masons have long since carved his name in marble over the entrance—THE KOROLYOV MUSEUM OF ART—and now, look at us at this moment, here in this office. We are the maximum leaders. It is our journalists who have just exposed this great “donor” as a fraud.

Decibels above the hubbub and the buzz of any place where things are happening, Ed could hear Puggy Knobloch’s loud, ripe honk honking out, “Haaaghh—the old lady thinks ‘the Environment’ is the name of a government agency!?” Haaaghh! was Puggy’s laugh. It was like a bark. It drowned out every other sound—for about half a second—as if to say, “You think that’s funny? Okay, here’s your reward: Haaaghh!”

Oh, the adrenaline pumped pumped pumped!

Another voice rose above the rumble and the roar. Attorney Ira Cutler’s. You couldn’t miss it, not that voice. It was like the whine of a metal lathe. He was holding up the newspaper, with its gigantic DEADLY COINCIDENCE, before the eyeballs of Puggy Knobloch.

“Here! Read the lead!” said Ira Cutler. “Read the first two paragraphs.”

He tried to hand the newspaper to Knobloch, but Knobloch raised his big meaty hands, palms outward, to reject it. He looked offended. “You think I haven’t read it?”—in a tone that said, <<<Good God, man, you really don’t know who you’re talking to in such an impudent way?>>>

But that didn’t stop Cutler for a second. He had immobilized the maximum leader with his laser stare and his ceaseless, insistent, rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of words. He jerked the newspaper back and said, “Here! I’ll read it for you.

“ ‘Deadly Coincidence,’ it says, and right below that, ‘By Dusk, He Claims He Forged Museum’s Treasures. By Dawn—He’s Dead’… and then the byline, ‘By John Smith.’ And then it says, ‘Just hours after Wynwood artist Igor Drukovich called the Herald claiming he forged the estimated $70 million in Russian Modernist paintings now in the Korolyov Museum of Art—the core of its collection—he was found dead this morning at dawn. His neck was broken.

“ ‘His body lay sprawled headfirst at the bottom of a flight of stairs in a senior citizens condominium in Hallandale—where he maintained, the Herald has learned, a secret studio, under the name Nicolai Kopinsky.’ ”

The pit bull lowered the newspaper, gleaming with self-commendation. “You get it, Puggy?” he crowed to Knobloch. “Got the picture now? You follow the strategy? We don’t accuse Sergei Korolyov of anything. The museum that owns the pictures just happens to bear his name, that’s all.” Cutler gave a mock shrug. “Not much we could do about that, was there. You get the key word: claim? I had a hard time getting it across to John Smith. He wanted to use words like Drukovich revealed the forgery or confessed or described how or other words that might indicate we assume Drukovich is telling the truth. No, I saw to it we used a word that can more easily be taken to mean we’re skeptical: He claims he forged them… that’s what he claims… It took me an hour to knock some sense into the kid.”

Oh, Ed remembered all that. ::::::We—me included—put poor John Smith through a real nosebleeder.:::::: A nosebleeder was what you called it when everybody is leaning over the shoulder of the reporter as he writes. If he should suddenly lift his head up straight, he would give somebody a bloody nose.

Ah, but the adrenaline pumps pumps pumps pumps for the unknown as well—combat! How will the con man respond? How will he fight? Who will he attack—and with what?

Shortly before 8:00 a.m. the intoxication of being where things are happening was pumping up to the max, when Stan Friedman popped back into the room. This time he was not thrilled. He was carrying a white envelope… and his face had turned very glum. He brought that grim visage and the envelope straight to the Herald’s publisher, Adlai desPortes, who until that moment had been enjoying the greatest adrenaline high of his life. Friedman immediately ducked out of the room again. Publisher desPortes read the letter, which was apparently not long, and very soon he brought the letter and his own glum face straight to Ed. Ed read it and ::::::Jesus Christ! Exactly what does this mean?:::::: he took the letter and his glum—no, not glum, petrified—face straight to Ira Cutler, and the room began to grow quiet. Everyone realized that Gloom had entered the room, and it grew quieter still.

Ed realized how weak and confused this made him look. Owww. It was time for him to step forward and show leadership. He raised his voice and said in what he intended to be the key of casual and lighthearted: “Hey, everybody, Ira here has some late-breaking news.” He waited for and never got a reaction to the casual and lighthearted mot—late-breaking—left over from the twentieth century. “We have word by messenger from the other side!” No sign of casual, light hearts in the room. “Ira, why don’t you read that letter out loud for us.”

The room didn’t seem anywhere near as blasé as Ed meant that to sound.

“Oh, kaaay,” said Cutler. “What have we here?” It was always a surprise to hear the high pitch of the pit bull’s voice, especially in front of this many people. “Let’s see… let’s see… let’s see… what we have here is… This communication seems to be from… the law firm of Solipsky, Gudder, Kramer, Mangelmann, and Pizzonia. It is addressed to Mr. Adlai desPortes, Publisher, the Miami Herald, One Herald Plaza et cetera, et cetera… hmmmm… hmm… and so forth.

“ ‘Dear Mr. desPortes, We represent Mr. Sergei Korolyov, subject of a front-page article in today’s edition of the Miami Herald. Your scurrilous and highly libelous depiction of Mr. Korolyov has already been repeated worldwide in print and electronic media. With patently false data and unconscionable insinuations, you have maligned the reputation of one of Greater Miami’s most civic-minded, generous, and highly respected citizens. You have relied heavily upon the fabrications, and, quite possibly, hallucinations, of an individual known to be suffering from an advanced stage of alcoholism. You have used your high position in a reckless, malicious, totally irresponsible way, and, depending upon the validity, if any, of certain assertions, felonious, as well. If you will publish an immediate retraction of this calumny-laden “story” and an apology for it, Mr. Korolyov will regard that as an ameliorating factor. Yours very truly, Julius M. Gudder, of counsel, Solipsky, Gudder, Kramer, Mangelmann, and Pizzonia.’ ”

Cutler narrowed his eyes and surveyed the room with a poisonous little smile on his lips. He was in his element. Let’s you and him fight! I’ll provide all the slurs you’ll need to bite him in the ass with… His eyes settled upon the official recipient of this slap across the face, Publisher Adlai desPortes. Publisher desPortes did not seem to be in any rush to avenge the honor of the Miami Herald. In fact, as his presumed French ancestors might have put it, he seemed decidedly hors de combat. He seemed dumbfounded, very much including the word’s literal meaning: speechless. My God, being publisher of the Miami Herald wasn’t supposed to involve such shit as felonious! It was supposed to involve going out to three-hour lunches with advertisers, politicians, CEOs, CFOs, college and foundation presidents, patrons of the arts, long-term celebrities, but also fifteen-minute stars hot off national TV dance shows, music shows, quiz shows, reality shows, and body shows, and TV dance-show, music-show, and game-show winners, all of whose presence demanded a suave, perpetually tanned, perpetually gregarious host, whose small talk never clicked and clacked because too many marbles got in the way, and whose very face brought out the most obsequious welcomes by name and aims to please by maître d’s and owners of all the best restaurants. There was nothing suave about him at this moment, however. His mouth hung slightly open. Ed knew precisely what desPortes was asking himself… Have we committed a terrible blunder? Have we done what scientists call hopey-dopey research, in which the hope for a particular outcome skews the actual findings? Have we relied on the word of a man who we ourselves know to be a pathetic drunk? Was Drukovich’s wall-full of forgeries missing for no other reason than that he had stored them somewhere else—if, in fact, they were forgeries at all? Have we hopey-doped Korolyov’s every move… when, in fact, he was innocent of any duplicitous intent? Did he, Ed, know precisely what was running through the mind of the grandly named Adlai desPortes because that was precisely what was running through Edward T. Topping IV’s mind, too?

Like a good pit bull, always spoiling for a fight, Cutler seemed to look through the hides of all the Eds and Adlais before him and see all the limp spines. So it fell to him, the task of stiffening them and making them stand up straight.

“Beautiful!” he said, grinning as if the most jolly game in the world had just begun. “You gotta love it! Have you ever heard a bigger bagful of hot air in your life?… masquerading as a missile? Try to find one fact in our story that they deny… You won’t find it, because they can’t, either! They can’t deny specifically what we have accused Korolyov of doing—because we haven’t accused him of anything! I hope you know,” he said, “that the moment they file a libel suit, they’re inviting a real strip search.”

Cutler not only smiled, he began rubbing his hands together as if he couldn’t imagine any prospect more delightful. “This is all bluster. Why are they sending this thing—by hand—so early in the morning?” He scanned all the faces again, as if someone might get it immediately… Silence… Stone… “It’s pure PR!” he said. “They wanna get on the record about how ‘scurrilous’ this all is, so that no more news stories will go out without their all-threatening denial included. That’s all we’ve got here.”

Ed felt the need to demonstrate his leadership by commenting in some trenchant way. But he couldn’t think of anything to say in any way, trenchantly or otherwise. Besides, the letter was addressed to desPortes, wasn’t it? It was up to him, right? Ed stared at Adlai desPortes. The man looked as if he had just been poleaxed at the base of the skull. He was a blank, out on his feet. Ed knew what he, the publisher, was thinking, because he, Ed, was thinking the same thing. Why had they let this ambitious juvenile, John Smith, have his way? He was a boy! He looked like he never had to shave! His whole case was based on a sudden burst of “truth” from the breast of a hopeless drunk—who was now dead. With this lawyer Julius Gudder brandishing the scalpel, Korolyov and Company would reduce Igor Drukovich’s reputation and veracity to a stain on a bath mat.

Publisher desPortes came to life and, so to speak, took the words right out of Ed’s mouth: “But Ira, aren’t we relying awfully heavily on the testimony of a man with a couple of serious handicaps? One, he’s dead and, two, he was dead drunk when he was alive?”

That drew some laughs, and thank God for that! Signs of life among the undead!

The pit bull, however, wasn’t having any of it. His voice hit only higher, harsher, more haranguing tones as he said, “Not at all! Not at all! The man’s sobriety or lack of it has nothing to do with it. This is a story about a man who led a double life, one open, one completely secret, and he’s found dead—conceivably murdered—under mysterious circumstances. Whatever he says on the eve of his puzzling death becomes highly relevant, even if the facts cast a shadow on others.”

Well put, Counselor! But it did nothing to slow Topping’s tachycardia. Just then Stan Friedman came into the room with a very sad-looking John Smith in tow. Ed felt like addressing the whole group and saying, “Why, hello, Stan. Managed to get your ace investigative boy reporter back into the room, have you? But why? He’s such a child, he can’t even stand to listen to what he’s done to us all for the sake of his own childish ambition. Couldn’t even show enough backbone to stay in the room and listen to how it’s turned out, could you? Short Hills, St. Paul’s, Yale—yaaaaaagggh!… So this is what the paneled mahogany life turns out these days—weaklings who nevertheless think they have the birthright to do what they please, no matter how much it hurts mere commoners. No wonder you’re hanging your head like that. No wonder you’re afraid to look at anybody.”

The little bastard, led, practically by the hand, by Stan, was heading straight for Ira Cutler. The entire room was quiet. Everybody, every shaken body, wanted to know what this was supposed to be about. Even Ira Cutler looked bemused, something he tried never to look. Stan left John’s side and went to the pit bull’s and said something, quite a bit, in fact, in a very low voice. After a while both glanced at John Smith, whose head was hanging down so low, he probably couldn’t see them.

Stan said, “John—”

John Smith walked toward the two of them, hangdog all the way. He nodded feebly at Cutler and said something to him in not much more than a whisper. From a pocket inside his blazer he pulled several sheets of paper and handed them to Cutler. They seemed to be handwritten. Cutler studied them for what seemed like ten minutes—then the whine of the metal lathe and Cutler said, “I think John wants me to apologize for him for ducking out of the room so much. He had his phone on vibrate and had to keep stepping outside to take these calls. Gloria, at Stan’s desk, had his phone number so she could reach him. So far he’s had queries”—Cutler raised the sheets of paper as evidence—“queries from literally all over the world, and they’re all panicked about the same thing. In the relatively short time since the Korolyov Museum of Art opened, they have bought tens of millions of dollars’ worth of paintings—or maybe not worth—from dealers representing Korolyov. And that’s just the ones who have called the Herald. God knows what the total will be. I never knew he was selling pictures on the side.” Cutler looked about the room… Nobody else had, either.

Cutler broke into a pit bull grin. “Hmmmm… I wonder if he’s taking a seventy-million-dollar tax deduction from forgeries he gave the museum to wipe out whatever he’s making from forgeries on the side… On this list John has all the names, all the contact information, and he has taped recordings of the calls he made from Gloria’s desk. He’s had calls from galleries, dealers, other museums—well, you can imagine. But the one that intrigues me is the one from a guy who owns a small printing press in Stuttgart. He’s worried because he thinks he’ll be blamed for something he did in all innocence. For some Russian company he manufactured a catalogue of a Malevich show, in French, from the early nineteen twenties. He says the company provided paper from at least as far back as the twenties, old typefaces, layouts, designs, binding thread, the works. The guy thought this was for some kind of Malevich centennial, and hey, what good fun! Clever, too. Then he saw some Maleviches on the wire and internet coverage of John’s story and the possibility of forgery by some Russians and put two and two together. Gentlemen, I think what we’re looking at is maybe the biggest scam in art history unraveling right before our eyes.”

Ed and everybody else had their eyes pinned on John Smith. ::::::My God, this kid’s the one who has broken this case wide open! So why is he still there with his eyes all downcast, shaking his head?:::::: He heard Stan explaining to Ira Cutler that John Smith had been terribly stricken with guilt ever since Igor Drukovich was found dead, and he’s still stricken. “He’s convinced that if he hadn’t written that original story on Drukovich—to provoke the very revelations that came to light this morning—Drukovich would still be alive. I’m telling you he’s in a bad way.”

Suddenly Ed burst forth with a loud voice and vehemence, in short, a roar, which nobody, including himself, knew he was capable of: “SMITH, COME HERE!” Now more frightened than forlorn, John Smith stared at his maximum editor, who said, “FEEL GUILTY ON YOUR OWN GODDAMNED TIME! YOU’RE WORKING FOR ME NOW, AND YOU’VE GOT A BIG STORY TO WRITE FOR TOMORROW!”

Nobody knew Edward T. Topping IV had it in him! All the Loop Syndicate and Herald brass saw and heard it happen! It was in that moment, they all decided, that Ed Topping—old “T-4”—had become a new man, a strong man, a real man, and a credit to the newspaper game.

Ed was surprised, too. Actually—and he knew it—he had thundered at John Smith out of fear, fear that the kid might mope off without writing the story that would get him, Ed Topping, and lots of others, out of a real jam.

Her talk with Nestor had reduced Magdalena’s fear level from terrified to scared witless. There is a difference, and she could feel it; but she still got almost no sleep that night. She couldn’t find a single position lying in bed in which she wasn’t unpleasantly aware of her heartbeat. It wasn’t all that fast, but it was primed to gallop at any moment. After a few hours… or that’s what it felt like… she heard the latch on the front door turning, and that almost set her off. Her heart bolted, as if it wanted to attain insane levels of atrial fibrillation. She prayed to God to make it so—

—and it was so: only Amélia coming home. “Thank you, God!” She actually said it aloud, although under her breath.

The last two nights, Monday and Tuesday, Amélia had been at his place near the hospital, he being the thirty-two-year-old resident neurosurgeon suddenly in her life. Neurosurgeon! Surgeons were at the top of the status hierarchy at all hospitals, because they were men of action—surgeons were usually men—men of action who routinely held human life in their hands—literally, tactilely—and currently neurosurgeons were the most romantic of all. They faced the greatest risks of all surgeons. By the time someone had reached the point of needing brain surgery, he was already in a very bad way, and the rate of deaths in their field was the highest of all. (At the bottom of the ladder were dermatologists, pathologists, radiologists, and psychiatrists; no crises to go through, no emergency calls at night at home or, on days off, or over the hospital speaker system, no mortifying treks to waiting rooms in your scrubs, trying to think up the right rhetoric for telling the praying wrecks that their loved one just died on the table and why.) It occurred to Magdalena that Amélia’s and her love lives were now reversed. It seemed like only yesterday that Amélia was Reggie-less and forlorn, while she was about to go out with a young, famous, rich, handsome, dashing Russian named Sergei. Now there was no more Sergei, she devoutly hoped. She was forlorn, and on top of that frightened half to death, while Amélia was busy getting it on with a young second-generation Cuban neurosurgeon who was romantic per se.

Magdalena must have finally fallen asleep for a couple of hours sometime after six, because she had glanced at the luminous hands on her alarm clock and blip she was waking up, and the same clock now said 9:30. Not a sound in the apartment; Amélia must still be sleeping, because she came home late, and this was one of her days off. Magdalena could have happily remained lying there, but all the circumstances of her miseries and fears came plunging back from out of the hypnopompic fog and made her too wary to stay lying there in supine vulnerability. So she got up and put a cotton bathrobe over the T-shirt she slept in and went into the bathroom and brought two cupped hands full of cold water up to her face and felt no better. Her heart was again drumming away a little too fast, and she had a dull headache and a great weariness such as she never had in the morning. She went to the kitchen and made herself a cup of Cuban coffee, and that better pull her out of this, the coffee, or—the main thing was to be wary and scream to Amélia and call 911 the moment she heard anything, not after she went to the door and listened more closely. She went into their tiny living room and sat down in one of the armchairs, but even holding the cup made her tired. So she got up to put it on the little makeshift coffee table and, being on her feet, turned on the TV, digiting the sound down very low, so as not to wake up Amélia. A Spanish channel was on, and she found herself watching a talk show. The host was a comedian who went by the name Hernán Loboloco. He preferred to be called Loboloco, not Hernán, because Loboloco meant Crazywolf and he was a comedian. His specialty was asking his guests serious questions in the voices of other people, famous people, such as asking a champion skateboarder about half-pipe stunts in the angry, hortatory voice of Cesar Chavez warning the Americans about encroachments. He was very good at it—he could also make extremely funny animal sounds, which he was likely to do at any moment—and Magdalena usually enjoyed Loboloco on the rare occasions she watched TV. But being so depressed and wary, she wasn’t in shape to find anything funny, and the canned laughter irritated her enormously, even at low volume. Why would a comedian as good as Loboloco feel like he needed canned laughter? It didn’t help the show, it made it sound cheesy and—

Her heart nearly jumped out of her rib cage. The lock on the door was turning and the door burst open! Magdalena jumped to her feet. Her new iPhone was back in the bedroom—no time!—no 911!—no Nestor! She wheeled about—and it was Amélia… with a big thirty-two-ounce Nalgene bottle of water she was tilting back and gulping down. Her skin was glowing with sweat. She was wearing black Lycra tights that came down to just below the knees and a black racer-back halter top with some crisscross cutouts. She wore no makeup and had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Add it all together and it said spinning, the new fad. Everybody in the class—and rare was the Xersoul older than thirty-five—sat astride a stationary bicycle, one amid rank after rank after rank of them, and took orders from a teacher, male or female, who bellowed out commands and denunciations like a sadistic drill sergeant until everybody was pedaling away to the very limits of her lung capacity and leg strength and endurance. Three out of every four of these volunteer masochists were women so eager—to the point of desperation—to get in shape, they would subject themselves to… even this. Well… Magdalena would subject herself to this torture, too, except that classes cost thirty-five dollars a pop, and she had barely that much to keep herself fed—never mind fit—for a week, and even at that rate what little money she had left in the bank would run out in a month… and what was she going to do then?

Between gulps from the Nalgene container—she had progressed no farther than just inside the door—Amélia caught sight of Magdalena standing stock-still in front of the armchair on the balls of her feet, knees bent, as if she were about to leap or flee.

Amélia stopped gulping long enough to say, “Magdalena, what’s that look on your face?”

“Well, I… uhh… I guess I’m just surprised. I thought you were still sleeping. I heard you come in last night, and it seemed pretty late.”

Amélia took a few more gulps from the Nalgene bottle, whose volume must have been nearly as great as her head’s.

“Since when are you into spinning?” said Magdalena.

“How do you know I’ve been spinning?”

“It’s not hard… that outfit, the size of that water bottle, your face is red—I don’t mean red sick, I mean red workout, a really hard workout.”

“To be honest, this is the first time I ever tried it,” said Amélia.

“Well,” said Magdalena, “what do you think?”

“Oh, it’s great… I think… I mean, if you live through it! I never voluntarily worked that hard in my life! I mean, I… am… really wiped.”

Magdalena said, “Why don’t you sit down?”

“But I feel so—I have to take a shower.”

“Oh, come on, sit down for a minute.”

So Amélia sprawled in the easy chair and sighed and let her head tilt so far back she was looking straight up at the ceiling.

Magdalena smiled, and it occurred to her, in so many words, that this was the first time she had smiled even once over the past forty-eight hours, and she said, “This new interest in working out, I mean really working out, it wouldn’t have anything to do with neurosurgery, would it?”

Amélia chuckled faintly and lifted her head and sat up straight. For the first time she noticed the television was on. The Loboloco show was still going, displaying a lot of grins and orthodontically perfect white teeth and gestures and moving lips… giving way to what were no doubt convulsions of laughter that made almost no sound at all, since Magdalena had turned the volume down… “What’s that you’re watching?” said Amélia.

“Ohhh… nothing,” said Magdalena.

“Isn’t that Loboloco?” said Amélia.

Immediately on the defensive, Magdalena said, “I wasn’t really watching it, and I had the sound down really low, thinking you might still be asleep. I know Loboloco is stupid, but there are shows that are stupid stupid and some that are stupid funny… like The Simpsons and anything Will Ferrell is in, and I think Loboloco’s kind of like that, stupid funny, or sometimes he is—” ::::::Let’s get off Loboloco!:::::: “Wait, what were you saying?”

“Saying? Gosh, I already forgot,” said Amélia.

“We were talking about spinning,” said Magdalena, “and how you got into it…”

“I don’t remember what I was saying,” said Amélia. “Well… whatever… I found out today you can’t exercise really hard and think about anything but ohmygod can I make it through this! You can’t think about your problems at the same time. You should try it, Magdalena. I can guarantee you can’t spin really hard and think about… all this other stuff, too. You have to give yourself a break! You know what I mean? But how are you feeling? You sound a little better.”

Magdalena said, “A little… did I tell you I saw Nestor yesterday?”

“What?! Umm… no! You somehow failed to mention that one… Why?”

“Well, I just… I guess I just…”

“You just what?” said Amélia. “Come on, spit it out, girl!”

Sheepishly Magdalena said, “I called him.”

“You called him? You probably made his decade hahahah! Oh boy, a few dozen Hail Marys have hit the jackpot.”

“Well, I don’t know. I called him because he’s a cop. And I guess I just thought he could help me, you know, with what happened with Sergei.”

“You told him about that?” said Amélia.

“Well, I mean, not about me being left naked in Sergei’s bed. Nothing about Sergei’s bed at all, or anything at all about how I know Sergei except that I was visiting him, me and some other people—and, you know, I didn’t even tell him what time of day this all was. I just said the whole setup freaked me out, Sergei giving people orders like he’s Mafia, the head of the Pizzo crime family or something, and he orders this huge bald-headed robot goon to drive me home—and maybe Nestor could tell me what to do besides go to the police, because if I did, it might get out, and then Sergei would send the goons after me for real.”

“Isn’t he on the outs, though?” said Amélia. “Like, is he even still a cop?”

“Well, I don’t really know. I mean, we know he’s been in the papers and everything, and even though some of it seemed pretty bad, it’s like he’s almost famous or something.”

“The boy from Hialeah you couldn’t wait to get rid of?”

Amélia had begun to smile, and it was pretty obvious that she found all this amusing, but Magdalena didn’t hold it against her. Just having somebody to talk to helped her see things in a more organized way and, come to think of it, assess Nestor’s place in the world.

“Yeah, I was kind of surprised myself,” she said. “It was like he was different, though—you know? When I saw him the other day, it was like he was bigger or something or—”

“Maybe now he just has more time to go to the gym…”

“It’s not that. I mean like if he got any more muscles, I don’t know where he’d put them,” said Magdalena. “But I don’t mean physically bigger. I didn’t really know who else to turn to, and when I first saw him again, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s the same old Nestor,’ but then after I started telling him the story he just got like… so mature, concerned, like he was really listening to me, like he really wanted to know, you know?”

“Yeah,” said Amélia, “because he’s still madly in love with you.”

“It wasn’t that. It was like he was being all manly and taking charge. He wasn’t listening just to make me feel better; he started firing questions at me, like really detailed cop questions, like he knew something about it and knew what to do. He was kind of… I don’t know…” She laughed, to take the edge off the word she was about to use—“hot.”

“Oh, my God, I thought I’d never see the day come when you called Nestor Camacho hot.”

“I don’t mean it like holy-shit, head-swivel hot… just like strong. You know what I mean? It made me wonder if maybe—” She cut it off there.

“You think you should have stayed with Nestor?”

“Well, I feel like maybe I took him for granted,” said Magdalena. “I mean, no one else has really been there for me like he has. And when something happens, he’s the one I think of first. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?”

“Well, I can’t really say you’ve gone up from there.”

“Yeah, seriously, a perv, then a criminal,” said Magdalena. “I was really going places, wasn’t I.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” said Amélia. “I guess you could do worse than Nestor. He was really good for you. How did you guys leave it?”

“We didn’t really,” said Magdalena. “That’s the weird thing. Just as I really started to feel something for him again, he was practically out of his chair.”

“Typical guy.”

“No, I mean literally. He was like, ‘I gotta go call my partner’ and ran out of there. It was so—what’s the word? Valiant? Like he was going off to fight—oh, I don’t know.”

“Your knight from Hialeah!” said Amélia.

Suddenly they both were looking at the television screen. The pattern of light and shadows had changed abruptly. The Loboloco show had obviously been indoors, in some studio, and the contrast between bright parts of the screen and dark parts was minimal. But now you were outside in a punishing noonday sunlight that made the shadows of a building look like India ink in contrast. It was a courtyard of some three- or four-story building with wraparound terraces—no, interior walkways they were—that projected over the courtyard. Between the floors were big outdoor stairways, and at the foot of one of them what was obviously a person’s body lay sprawled upon the last few stairs at a downward angle, headfirst, beneath some sort of white cloth, the head, too, meaning the person was dead. There were cops standing near it and a barrier, more or less, of yellow crime-scene tape holding back a bunch of mainly old people, quite a few of them leaning on aluminum walkers.

“Hey, turn that up for a second,” said Amélia.

So Magdalena digited the volume up, and the face of a reporter appeared on the screen, a young woman with blond hair. “You ever notice they’re always blondes, even on the Spanish channels?” Amélia said with some irritation. The blonde was holding a microphone and saying, “—and one of the mysteries is that the artist was known in this senior citizens condominium in Hallandale—although he seldom had anything to do with his neighbors—as Mr. Nicolai Kopinsky, and his apartment was apparently some sort of clandestine studio, which he never allowed anyone to enter.”

“Oh, my God!” said Magdalena. “Did she say Hallandale?”

“Yeah, Hallandale.”

“Oh, my God-d-d-d-d-d,” said Magdalena, turning it into a cross between an exclamation and a moan and covering her face with her hands. “That’s what Sergei said on the telephone, ‘Hallandale.�� All the rest of it was in Russian! Oh, my God-d-d-d in Heaven! I’ve gotta call Nestor! I gotta find out what’s going on! Hallandale! Oh, dear God!”

She managed to collect herself long enough to run the few steps to her bedroom and pick up her phone and come back to the living room, where she wouldn’t be alone, and scroll down her contact list to “Nestor.” It began ringing almost immediately, and almost immediately a mechanical voice answered, “—is not available. If you would like to leave a—”

Magdalena looked at Amélia with absolute despair upon her face and said in a tone that suggested the end of the world, “He doesn’t answer.”

As soon as the elevator door opened on the second floor, Cat Posada was right there, waiting for him.

“Officer Camacho?” she said, as if she wasn’t sure exactly who he was. “Follow me. I’ll take you to the Chief’s office.”

Nestor studied her pretty face to detect… anything. It was about as easy to read as a brick. He couldn’t stand it. This was the very girl he had lusted for on this very same spot… even in the middle of a crisis that had rendered him speechless at the time. Was it possible that she really didn’t remember? All at once, without planning it, he heard himself saying, “Well, here we go again. The long march.”

She was already walking when she glanced back and said, “Long march? It’s just down the hall.”

It was the tone that says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about and it’s not worth my time to find out.” As before, she led him to just outside the Chief’s office and stopped. “I’ll let him know you’re here.” Then she disappeared inside.

In no time she came out of the office. “You can go in.”

Nestor tried one last time to get a sign… from her lips, her eyes, her eyebrows, a tilt of the head—just a sign, any sign, goddamn it! Her loins weren’t even a part of the anatomy at this moment. But all he got was the brick.

With a sigh Nestor went inside. The Chief didn’t even look up at first. ::::::Christ!—he’s big.:::::: He knew that, but now it was as if he were taking it in all over again. Not even his long-sleeved navy shirt with all the stars across the collars could hide the sheer physical might of the man. He had a ballpoint pen in his hand. He seemed to be absorbed in some computer-generated material on his desk. Then he looked up at Nestor. He didn’t stand or offer his hand. He just said, “Office Camacho…” It wasn’t a greeting. It was a statement of fact.

::::::Hello, Chief?… It’s good to see you, Chief?:::::: None of it was going to sound right. He settled for the one word, “Chief.” It was a plain acknowledgment.

“Have a seat, Officer.” The Chief pointed to a straight-backed chair, armless, directly across from the desk. It was all such a replay of the first meeting, Nestor’s heart sank. Once he sat down opposite the Chief, the Chief looked at him with a long, level gaze and said, “I have some things—”

He stopped and looked toward the open door. Cat was peeking through it. “Chief?” she said in a tentative voice. Then she beckoned, and the Chief got up, and they stood tête-à-tête in the doorway. Nestor could hear her first words, “Chief, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I thought you should know.”

Then she lowered her voice until he could hear nothing but a low buzz. He thought he picked up the name Korolyov, but he also knew it could be sheer paranoia. Korolyov was the reason he had been disobeying the curfew, and that was no doubt the reason the Chief had ordered him to come in. ::::::Oh, Dios Dios Dios:::::: but he was too discouraged to pray to God. And why would God stoop to help him in the first place? ::::::“Oh, Lord, thou who hath forgiven even Judas, I have committed the sin of deceit, which involves cheating as well as lying”… Oh, the hell with it. It’s hopeless! Judas at least did a lot to help Jesus before he sinned against him. And me? Why should God even bother to notice me? I don’t deserve it… I’m truly f*cked.::::::

The Chief and Cat kept buzzing at a very low volume. Occasionally he would cut loose out loud with a profane oath. “Oh, for Christ’s sake”… “Jesus Christ”… and one “Holy freaking Jesus”… Fortunately, he actually said “freaking.”

Finally he ended his little parley with Cat and started back toward his desk—but then wheeled about and said out loud as she headed back to her desk, “Tell ’em they can say whatever they want, but there’s no way I would have turned that plane back, even if I’d known about it. The man’s got a Russian passport, he hasn’t been charged with anything, he hasn’t been singled out as ‘a person of interest,’ nobody has even directly accused him of anything, not even the freaking Herald. So how do you turn the plane around? You’ve got a notion? Those newspaper execs have never run a damn thing in their lives. They just sit on committees and try to think up ways to justify their existence.”

Nestor was dying to know what the Chief and Cat had been talking about. It had Korolyov written all over it. But Nestor was not going to risk so much as one question. ::::::“Oh, excuse me, Chief, but did you and Cat happen to be talking about—” I’m not going to open my mouth about that—especially not that—or anything else unless the Chief asks me a direct question.::::::

The Chief sat down at his desk, and ::::::I knew it! I knew it! He still has on his angry scowl from thinking about everyone who gave him so much outrageous grief… :::::: The Chief cast his eyes down and shook his head in a semaphore that said, “Clueless f*cking a*sholes,” then looked up at Nestor with clueless f*cking a*sholes still written all over his face and said, “Okay, where were we?”

::::::Damn! That scowl! He thinks that I must be one of them, the one who caused him to forget.::::::

“Oh, yeah, I remember,” said the Chief. “I have some things of yours here.”

With that, he leaned so far over to one side of his desk that even his great hulk almost disappeared. Nestor could hear him opening a lower drawer. When he brought himself up again, he had something unwieldy in his hands… turned out to be a pair of pale-gray boxlike containers, one small and one considerably bigger. Cops called them “malcontainers.” They were for storing evidence in criminal cases. The Chief put them in front of him on the desk. He opened the smaller one—

—and the first sign from On High that Nestor got was a flash of gold as the Chief withdrew it from the container. Now he could see the whole thing as the Chief extended his arm across the desk and handed it to him.

“Your badge” was all he said.

Nestor stared at it in the palm of his hand as if he had never seen such a wondrous object before. Meantime, the Chief was opening the other container… and extending a large ungainly cincture of leather and metal across the desk. It was a Glock 9 in a leather holster attached to a gun belt.

“Your service revolver,” said the Chief—tonelessly.

Nestor now had the badge in one hand and was supporting the Glock and its rig with the other. He stared at them… probably longer than he should have… before turning his eyes up toward the Chief… and managing to say in a shaky voice, “Does this mean…”

“Yeah,” said the Chief, “that’s what it means. You’re restored to active duty. Your next shift with the Crime Suppression Unit will begin at four p.m. tomorrow.”

Nestor was so overcome by this miracle, he didn’t know how to respond. So he tried, “Thank you—uhhh—”

The Chief spared him the struggle. “Now, I have a word of advice—no, I take that back. This is an order. What I’m doing is going to create a certain amount of static. But I don’t want to hear about you talking to the press in any way, shape, or form. You got that?”

Nestor nodded yes.

“You can be sure you’re going to be in the press tomorrow. You understand? The DA is going to announce that he is dropping the charges against the teacher at Lee de Forest—José Estevez—due to lack of evidence… They’ll mention you. You were the one who exposed the ‘evidence’ for what it was, a plot by a bunch of frightened boys to protect that punk so-called gang leader Dubois. I want you in the press in that regard. But what I said still goes. You don’t talk to the press. You don’t confirm information. You don’t respond to the press in any way. And I’ll say it again: That’s… an… order.”

“I understand, Chief.” Somehow the way he said it—I understand, Chief—made him feel that he was back on the force again.

The Chief put his forearms on the desk and leaned as far toward Nestor as he possibly could… and for the first time betrayed an emotion other than his note of stern do-not-defy-me authority. He let his lips widen all the way across his face… and his eyes came alive… and the flesh over his cheekbones welled up into two soft pillows of warmth… and he said… “Welcome back, Camacho.”

He said it softly… and it was only a smile from a policeman in the decrepit downtown of Miami, Florida, in the first place… but did any light ever come from any more radiant place On High… or render a man’s soul calmer or more blessed… or lift him more completely clear of this trough of mortal error we are fated to live out our lives in?

Outside, on the street, Nestor didn’t feel vindicated or redeemed or triumphant or anything like that. He felt lightheaded, disoriented, as if a staggering load he had been carrying for a very long time had been removed from his back by magic, and the Big Heat Lamp was up there roasting his coconut as usual, and he didn’t even know in what direction he was walking. He had no idea what street it was. He felt completely, totally out of it… but wait a minute, he really should call her anyway.

He scrolled down his contact list until he found her name and tapped the iPhone’s glass face.

In practically no time she answered, “Nestor!”

“Well, I have some good news. The Chief gave me my badge and my revolver back. I’m reinstated; I’m a real cop again.”

“Oh, my God, Nestor! That’s… so… wonderful!” said Ghislaine.


About the Author

Tom Wolfe is the author of more than a dozen books, among them The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, and I Am Charlotte Simmons. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he earned his BA at Washington and Lee University and a PhD in American Studies at Yale. He received the National Book Foundation’s 2010 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in New York City.