“The shitbirds kidnapped Alex?”
“That’s right.”
Thorn pressed the tiny cell phone to his ear while he drove north on I-95. Just one of the gang now. Every second driver blowing past him was doing the same thing, yakking away on his phone. Giant SUVs roaring up behind him, braking hard a few feet from his bumper, the driver one-handing the wheel at eighty-five, then cutting around him. Thorn, a newly converted city guy: When in Miami, do as the assholes do.
“Did you make a copy of the damn thing?”
“I don’t give two shits about the photo, Sugar. They want it, I want Alex. It’s a simple swap.”
“Doesn’t sound simple to me, man. Sounds like you need some serious backup. This is nuts, Thorn, you and Lawton and that banged-up dog. I wouldn’t do it, man, way too risky.”
“I can handle these two.”
“I won’t even try to convince you to call the police.”
“Don’t know what it is about me and the cops. Oil-and-water thing.”
“You’re up there, it’s less than a day, and you’re into this shit.”
“I was minding my own business. This found me, Sugar.”
“You’re always minding your own business.”
“You in your car yet?”
“I’m doing seventy-five on the Stretch, passing a Winnebago at mile marker one-eleven. I’ll be there in forty-five minutes, tops. You can wait that long.”
“Waste of your time, Sugar. Appreciate your concern, but I’m going ahead. I just thought you should have a heads-up in case we get a bad outcome. A place to start if I don’t come back up for air.”
“Aw, shit, Thorn. Pull over, man.”
“I’m just jerking your chain, Sugar. This is a simple business deal. We each want what the other one has. Nothing complicated. Low-risk.”
“These are bad guys. And it’s two against one.”
“They’re a couple of sad cases.”
“Hey, wake up, Thorn. They kidnapped Alex, they nearly killed Buck, they pointed a gun at you.”
“But I had a super-healthy breakfast this morning. Big plate of fruit and soy sausage. They’re the ones in trouble.”
“Listen to me, you jerk, stop being cute. You go running in there half-cocked, you put Alex in danger, and Lawton, not to mention your own damn self.”
A guy in a black-windowed Hummer cut in front of him, missed his bumper by a whisker, then swung into the next lane, flying.
“It was a very little pistol they had,” Thorn said. “Bullets so tiny, they wouldn’t scratch my leathery hide.”
“Jesus Christ, Thorn.”
“I’ll be fine, Sugar. I’ll handle it with my usual dexterity.”
Sugarman was silent for a long moment.
Then he said, “The Liston-Clay fight? Back in ’sixty-three?”
“It was 1964. But yeah, Clay-Liston. The first one.”
“And Meyer Lansky is in the shot?”
Thorn said yeah, him and the former mayor, Stanton King, back in the sixties.
“So this is a mob thing?”
“I don’t know and I don’t give a rat’s ass. But these two guys that have Alex, they’re the ex-mayor’s adopted sons. Forty years ago their parents were murdered by Cuban spies, same night as the boxing match. So I’m thinking more likely this is about some Cuban political bullshit. Not boxing or Lansky. It could be a coincidence the mayor and Lansky are in the same row.”
“Did you talk to Alex? You sure they have her?”
“Yeah, they got her all right.”
“That’s all? Just ‘meet us at the graveyard, swap the woman for the photo’?”
“Gave me a one-hour deadline. And, oh yeah. Don’t bring the police.”
“That’s original.”
Thorn looked in the rearview mirror. In the seat behind Lawton, Buck had his face out the window, ears flapping, sucking down seventy miles an hour of scent. Lawton was snoring. His cheek against the headrest, chin touching his shoulder. A sad, faraway look.
“Make a copy of that photo. Stop at a Kinko’s, it’ll take two seconds. Give the punks the original, get Alex back, we can figure it out later.”
“I’m telling you, Sugar, I don’t give a shit what it’s about.”
Thorn put on his blinker and moved into the far right lane. Since he’d been on 95 he hadn’t seen anybody use his blinker. Cars darting and weaving so fast, there was no time to blink. Signaling intentions, another obsolete courtesy.
The blood was drumming in Thorn’s throat. Jacked up over Alex, now the insane drive up I-95. He couldn’t remember the last time his reflexes were firing at such a rate.
“Man, I need to go back to driving school. I’m a few steps behind the state of the art.”
“You’re acting like this is a joke, Thorn. That’s a bad sign.”
“It’s how I cope, Sugar. You don’t want to know how I really feel about putting Alex in the middle of this bullshit. Okay?”
Sugar was silent. Letting Thorn’s outrage hang for a moment. When he came back, his voice was quieter than before.
“Give me the address again. West Dixie, I got that. The number.”
“It’s a cemetery. North Miami, couple of blocks west off Biscayne Boulevard, south of 163rd. Go straight into the graveyard, take the first right, and stop halfway down the row. Those are my instructions.”
“I know that place,” Sugar said. “Jamaican gangs machine-gunning Haitians for turf. Crack houses. It’s a war zone, man.”
“It just gets better and better,” Thorn said.
“Look, man, don’t go crazy on me. Pull over where you are, side of the road, wherever it is, and just wait for me. Do that for me, a favor for a friend. Pull the hell off and wait half an hour. It’s nuts to go charging in there all wild-eyed.”
“I’m calm,” Thorn said. “I’m solid ice.”
Another NASCAR hero slashed into Thorn’s path from two lanes over and braked hard to make his exit. Thorn had to double-pump his brakes and his hand went on the horn, but he stopped himself.
“I’m relaxed,” he said. “I’m the goddamn Buddha.”
“Listen, I’m at the second passing lane. It’s three-fifteen—this time of day, it’ll be thirty, thirty-five minutes max, till I’m there. What’s the difference, Thorn, thirty minutes?”
“I’m on the clock, Sugar. Like I said, they gave me an hour.”
“A few minutes more or less, they’re not going to do anything.”
“Hey, I’ll tell you what’s truly dangerous, Sugar. Driving one-handed on this freeway with all these lunatics. Yammering away with a phone at my ear, now that’s life-threatening. All these daredevils out here. Man, I’m going to have to hang up, Sugar, use both hands. I’m getting the willies.”
“Thorn, goddamn it!”
Thorn clicked off. He exited I-95 at 135th Street and was heading east at a moderate clip when Lawton came awake, rubbed his eyes. Looking over at Thorn blankly.
“Where you taking me now, you weasel?”
“We’re going to pick up Alex.”
“You’re the guy from Key Largo. That idiot lives in a tree house, ties fishing lures.”
“Guilty as charged.”
Fingering the butt of the aluminum bat, Lawton looked out at the neighborhood. Bars on the windows, lawns eaten away by exhaust fumes and cinch bugs, flaking paint on the houses. Even the trees were stunted by some essential lack of nutrients. There was too much sky showing, the land parched. Traffic and more traffic. Sidewalks swarmed with high school kids, black teenagers, the guys wearing baggy jeans, triple-extra-large T-shirts hanging down like skirts, scuffing along, crossing against the red lights, daring motorists to run them down.
A few blocks east, they passed the public school where the kids originated from. Graffiti covered the walls, Styrofoam cups tumbling down the middle of the street, a house here and there with a flower box out front and a green lawn, surrounded by tall, spiked wrought iron. Folks making their defiant stand.
The cell phone peeped and Thorn picked it up, checked the blue screen. Sugarman again. Thorn set it back on the console, let it ring.
“What’s my daughter doing in a neighborhood like this?”
“Good question,” Thorn said.
Lawton continued to babble, but Thorn focused on navigating the congestion. Kids cutting across the street, cars packed tight but clipping along.
Spotting the turn for West Dixie up ahead, Thorn swerved into the left lane and barely missed the front bumper of a red pickup truck. The guy honked and shot Thorn the finger. Ahead of him the light turned red, but Thorn bulled ahead, making the left onto Dixie against oncoming traffic, drawing a couple more honks. Fitting right in.
A block down Dixie, Buck lurched across the backseat and thrust his head out the window behind Thorn and let out a single woof.
“What is it, boy?”
The dog went quiet, nose tilted up. In the outside mirror Thorn watched Buck swinging his head from side to side through the half-open window. The cemetery was still ten or fifteen blocks ahead, but Thorn guessed it was possible Buck had already caught a trace of Alexandra. From what he’d seen of Buck’s search-and-rescue skills, nearly anything was possible.
People shed dead skin cells every second of the day. Human bodies were like smokestacks pumping out particles nonstop. Body heat sending everyone’s personal soot up in the air, each flake of skin carrying a microscopic trace of bacteria—the body’s aromatic signature. Sit in one place long enough, the particles of smell pooled up around the chair. Skin rafts, they were called. Every flake carrying a grain of scent. And dogs swam endlessly through that torrent of odor. A few parts per million was all they needed to catch the trail. A few more parts to home in.
The way Alex explained it: a person walks into someone’s house where a pot of stew is simmering, he can name the scent, no problem. Beef stew.
Take a search-and-rescue dog into that same house, if the dog could talk, he’d say, “Pinch of oregano, dab of thyme, cup of onion”—every ingredient.
Thorn kept one eye on the road, one on Buck. The dog was swinging his head from side to side. He had something. A trace. A whiff of Alex.
The neighborhood turned grim and commercial. A few two-story apartments with broken windows and missing roof tiles, hard-luck pawnshops, an open-air Laundromat, check-cashing shops, a boarded-up Taco Bell. An occasional twenty-four-hour market or cut-rate gas station with cashiers stationed behind bulletproof glass. A purple-and-green funeral home. Strip malls with liquor stores, topless clubs, and gun shops. All your basic needs.
Six, seven blocks in the distance Thorn could make out the white-columned entrance to the cemetery. He was slowing for a red light when Buck freaked. The dog tried to pry his head out the window opening, and when that failed, he began digging his claws against the glass.
“Whoa, Buck. Hold on, boy, hold on.”
Thorn skidded to a stop in the parking lot of a shabby concrete bunker called the Bamboo Lounge.
“You stay here, Lawton. Stay right where you are.”
Lawton thumped the head of the bat against the floorboard at his feet.
“Yeah, right. Like I’m going to take orders from Mr. Weasel.”
“I mean it. Lock the doors, keep the windows up. And don’t get out of the car, no matter what. Goddamn it, do what I say for once, you old fool.”
Lawton stared at Thorn for a moment, then his face caved in. Eyes brimming with hurt. In that instant Thorn saw Alexandra’s features emerge from Lawton’s bone structure, a ghostly appearance of the woman he loved. Her eyes were shadowed with unspeakable rebuke.
“Christ, I’m sorry, Lawton. But stay here, please. Stay here.”
The old man shook his head with such finality, it was clear no simple apology was ever going to undo Thorn’s words.
No time to make amends. Thorn threw open the back door, grabbed Buck’s collar and hitched him to the lead, then let the dog jump out.
As Thorn shut the door, Buck yanked him sideways across the sidewalk and into the busy thoroughfare. Stumbling into the northbound lane, Thorn threw up an arm to halt the traffic. A motorcycle whisked by Buck’s nose, but the dog advanced without a flinch.
Cars flashed around them, more horns and obscenities flung his way. Fixed on the scent trail, the dog hauled Thorn across four furious lanes of traffic and into the parking lot of a shopping plaza and heaved forward toward a windowless one-story building with flashing neon out front. As large and gloomy as a slaughterhouse, the structure was painted a washed-out red.
PINK GOLD—ADULT EMPORIUM. PEEP SHOWS, FULL LENGTH MOVIES, ADULT TOYS, LINGERIE, TRIPLE X. On the marquee above the door a lit sign advertised this week’s double feature: Ass Traffic and Nuns in Leather.
Buck towed him to the front door. The wrought-iron security bars were latched open, the solid inner door shut.
Two black men stood a few feet away, smoking cigarettes and sharing a pint in a paper sack. Both of them desperately thin with the weathered hides of vagrants punished by endless hours of sun and fiercer weather from within.
“Yo, white boy, what’s up with dat dog?”
The tall one pushed himself away from the wall and staggered toward Thorn. Buck shoved his nose against the doorjamb, then turned his head and fixed his eyes on Thorn’s. It was called an alert. The dog displayed that signal only when he was closing in on a target.
“Take a fucking dog in there,” the other man said, “perverts’ll be humping that thing before you can spit.”
Grinning at Thorn, the shorter man joined in.
“You can’t be taking no animal in there. Ain’t allowed.”
“Watch me,” Thorn said, and shoved the door open and stepped into the fluorescent interior.