'Take a look around. That's my own art work on the walls.'
She meant the photographs, rows of them, black and white and most of them taken by flash, Lt. Lacroix with incident-number 3546, Lt. Lacroix with incident-number 1170, the positions mostly the same, a man stooping or leaning face to the wall or prone on the floor, a cop frisking him or putting the handcuffs on or keeping a locked arm-hold or pushing him into a squad car, Lt. Lacroix looking on, got up in short pants and a tank top or jeans and a tee shirt or a torn leather jacket, the same expression on her face in every shot, very alert, her eyes wide and missing nothing, giving me the impression that if the cop fumbled with the handcuffs or lost the arm hold or let the man slip away from the car she'd be there with a force of her own, because she hadn't spent the amount of time she had in nailing these people just to see them evade arrest.
'Kinda toast?' she asked me, 'rye, whole wheat, French?'
'Whatever you're having. So what would you do if one of these people tried to get away, Monique?'
'I do what it takes. I've been up three times this year on a police brutality rap, you beat that? Thing is, they're all in the slammer and I guess that's the name of the game.'
'How tall are you?'
'Five two, hundred and ten pounds, call me a fucking midget, but listen, the bottom line is just how hard you kick them in the nuts, because it really gets their attention.'
We sat at a black lacquered table under one of those hanging mirrored globes, with its reflections floating across the walls and the black net curtains as she flashed me a smile and passed me the ketchup and said in her light, husky voice, 'See, I don't personally give a shit if people decide to go to hell in their own handcart by smoking crack or shooting snow, they don't wanna live and they know how to die, it's their business. I just find it's a good game to play, it's fast and it's risky and I go into these houses and make a purchase and flash my badge and bring the rest of the guys in from the cars, scare the shit out of everybody and maybe sometimes shake a guy down for a couple of grand, I like nice things, look at this room, I like a nice watch and nice shoes, you know? And who do I steal from, the public? Shit, I steal from the dealers, see, I'm not like those fancy congressmen, charge the public for their plane trips and women and cruises and all that stuff, they're the real crooks but of course for them it's legal. They okay?'
The eggs. Said yes.
'Thing is, it triggers so much crime, and there's not much we can do to keep it down, the numbers are just too big. In this town there's maybe a thousand armed robberies and auto thefts and break-ins every day, and a big percentage of those are drug-related, those poor slobs sucking on the devil's dick and having to net a hundred grand or two hundred grand to support the habit – that's where the public pays. So I do my thing and like I say it's fast and risky but there's no way, there is no way we can stop the biggest growth industry in Miami – the stuff just comes dropping out of the sky in bales and canvas bags from the low-flying planes while the power boats are out there picking them up, same time as, the body-packers in from Columbia are dying in the hotel rooms, found one of them today with a pound of cocaine in his stomach stashed away in eighty-two condoms, had to give him emergency surgery because, see, those things can burst and the coke paralyses the colon and this poor son of a bitch had been out and bought himself an enema and two packets of prunes and a box of Exlax, didn't do him any good, see, near dying when we got to him, went to Jesus two hours later in the post-operative room, things going on like that all over this town, the stuff comes in every way there is, planes and boats and pickup trucks and people's stomachs, you like some more?'
Coffee. Said yes.
'Anyway, Toufexis is my assignment, I mean my personal assignment, they wouldn't put just one little lieutenant to work on the head of the Miami Mafia, we've got a whole special unit on his ass, but that's why I moved in on George Proctor, see.'
'What caught your interest?'
'I saw him with Toufexis himself, talking in the lobby of the Gold Hibiscus, shaking hands and everything like real good friends, I took it from there. Had to get Cambridge off the stage but he liked the cut of my whoops or something and it only took a few days. Then I began working on him, you know? I mean once I'd copied the key of the apartment and he wasn't there. Diaries, phone-numbers, the regular routine, and one time I followed him to a place he often went to, and the next day I got myself invited inside, flashed my badge, nice and polite.'
'Where was that?'
'House on West Riverside Way, 1330, you know the place?'
'No,' I said, and put my coffee down, 'but tell me about it.'
Chapter 21: FINIS
'… And the last time he went there was two days ago, but it's a dead end because I can't go in there myself a second time without an official backup and like I say, that place sure is no crack house.'
She was sitting on a black leather bean bag, one arm held straight out and resting on her knee, her hand hanging, the gold nails glinting sometimes as the light from the mirror-lamp floated across them.
'How many of the rooms did you see?'
'Maybe three or four, the big hall with the staircase and a couple of rooms either side and a small kind of den. See, you can't have just one cop go into a house and take the whole place apart, this was just a drop-by kind of thing, like I explained to them, they could have asked for a warrant if I'd tried muscling them. You okay there?'
On the floor. Said yes.
'The way it was, see, they should have told me to keep my ass in the street, a great big house like that and the guys got up in pin-stripe duds and everything, and it got me thinking a little bit, why they were so ready to show me around, but maybe I was just over-suspicious because Proctor went there.'
'You didn't see a Japanese?'
'No. Just these three guys, two of them American and one with a French accent – he was on the phone to someone. I took it to the point, see, where I could back out and leave there with my nose clean, said my despatcher had obviously sent me to the wrong address. I wanted them to forget the whole thing as soon as they could because I was taking a risk, they could mention a cute little black cop in Proctor's hearing and he could ask them to describe her and bing-go. But anyway he's gone to ground and unless he shows up again there isn't anything more I can do. But there's a couple of little things that've got my antennae quivering, see, though they're nothing to do with drugs, things like him calling the Soviet Embassy, that get your attention?'
'Somewhat,' I said.
'Somewhat, sure, you being in the intelligence game. But listen, this is a two-way street, you know? I show you mine, you show me yours. If there's anything you've got on Proctor I can take to the FBI, I want it.'
I got off the cushion and walked about, rolling the right shoulder to ease the stiffness. 'I can't promise anything.'
'Shit.' A bright, frozen smile.