The World of Max-A-Millions

South Florida

Welcome to the world of Max-A-Millions, your one-stop spot for the truth. I’ve been workin’ these streets for nine years, drivin’ every stretch of this island a million times over. There ain’t nothin’ I don’t know, either ‘bout Key West, beach life, or just plain livin’. I could retire on what I earned and make millions with what I know, but I do it for the love of the people.

People see me—the dreds, the shiny grill—and they think, ‘He’s a local.’ Then they catch the tie, the crisp shirt, and the wicked-sharp jacket, cuff buttons and all, and they go, ‘He’s a smart local.’ That’s how you get the fares. That’s how I get paid.

What they don’t see is the bank. Now, I ain’t got time for some fancy guy in a suit, hidin’ in a marble building, to take cash off the top just for stuffin’ my bills in a vault. That’s why I got a tub. It’s marble, just like the bank, and even has these fancy claw feet on the bottom. Best part? No one’s skimmin’ off the top, ‘cept me when I get a hankerin’ for dark chocolate, if you know what I mean.

Most folks, they just see what they wanna see, like lookin’ at a photo album filled with familiar pictures. Folks don’t see enough about me to know I’m not from Key West, or Jamaica—even though I slip in the accent on some people. They see what they wanna see, and my job is to let them see what they wanna see.

Last summer, this one lady, a slick dresser in a summer suit and a skirt that wrapped what she had just right... she started askin’ all kinds of crazy questions. I answered every last one, each one a gem she scratched down in a notebook. When I dropped her at the airport in Miami, she told me I was a fool if I didn’t start writin’ all this down—to put down a book so other folks can learn from my wisdom. I told her I’m an artist. I put down my rhymes to spit the truth and get my words out there, so I ain’t got time for no book. But my old lady—she’s back in Dallas—when I told her about this fancy lady, she got me a recorder for Christmas. When I hit record, it just starts to flow. Who am I to slow it down? So here we are.

DAY 2 or Some Shit

I work this diary to get my thoughts down—just click on the red button and spill my brains onto tape. I ain’t sure what to do with it yet, but if someone wants my wisdom, all they gotta do is pay my fare.

First off, welcome to Key West. There ain’t no island stranger than the one I’m from. The water is the same on both sides of the island, but everything in the middle is plain old mixed up—crazy stuff, scary stuff, some stuff that just don’t make no sense. That’s why we like it, and that’s why people come here to see it. But I’m not about the island. I’m about business. Makin’ money!

Most people, without the tourists, they always gonna fail. Who wants a I went to Key West and got this stupid Key West t-shirt when you live here? No one, that’s who. And disposable cameras? A stupid invention, if you asked me, useless if you got a bungalow on the island. Hats, towels, statues, carved coconuts... I ain’t got a use for none of that. But what you need—what you really need when it hits the fan—hey, I got it all! Just wave your hand, flag me down, and I’ve got your hookup.

The other drivers love their fancy meters, but I’ve been doin’ this so long, I can tell you the distance and fare between any stops in the Keys. I can quote the price for anything between the southernmost tip of the United States and Miami Beach. Only been wrong once in the past two years, and I comp’d the man’s fare to prove it.

The secret for me is my system. I got a system and a plan at every level—plans, contingencies, fallback strategies, all that stuff. They always say land’s the most important thing, but they ain’t near the beach. They got it wrong, man, jus’ plain wrong. It’s people... that’s what matters. People always gonna need something more than they got. The people that can get ahead of that curve, that’s the one’s that’ll be here when it falls apart. Need a ride? Bam, I got you. Need gold? Bam, I got you. Need a toothbrush? Got two in the trunk right now, waitin’ for some playa with bad breath lookin’ for a lady. Need women? I can find them too. Someday you’re gonna need something as simple as a glass of water. Bam! Just flag me down and watch me check the trunk of my car. You get what you want, and so do I.

Folks always tell me how the government is gonna save us, that they gonna spend money on me. On me? I know what I see. I drive folks by the Lester House all day—I mean all day. The government spends money on money. Taking people’s money, spending people’s money, keeping people’s money—that’s all they do. Money, money, money. Me? I got a system. You need something, you pay for it. That’s how Max made his millions.

I can convert a glass of water or a tube of sunscreen into money faster’n a bank. You just gotta know people. You gotta know how to get what people want and give it to ‘em. There’s an advanced class, though. That’s called givin’ people what they already have. Guy leaves his wallet in my trunk? He’s gonna give me a wicked tip to get it back. His wallet minus a fee for my services, and he’s payin’ to get his own stuff back.

DAY 3

The way I see it, you’re either a sheep or a shearer. You act like a sheep, you get fleeced, trimmed down to your skin or more. You play your cards right, it’s gonna grow back, and you can even make yourself feel better that you helped out the shearer. Then I come along, whip out the sharpened blade, and keep myself ahead by strippin’ others to the short hairs. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with either plan. You just gotta make choices about who you are and what you gonna do.

Kids? I got two... back at home in Dallas. They come down when they can, but there’s no use havin’ ‘em down here all the time—too many distractions. They need to focus on school, get they butts to college, I tell ‘em. I’m gonna need ‘em to run the country, when they’re older. Can’t do it all myself. Besides, I’m gonna need ‘em to look after my money. I didn’t do all this hard work just to let them throw it all away on overpriced J’s and some snotty cafe latte or something on the corner of “wasting” and “my money.”

My world is my car. Everything revolves around the four wheels beneath me. I depend on it, sometimes more on faith than I want to admit, so you might call it a religion. It rewards me when I do well, punishes me for my weakness, and gets me where I wanna go.

My first one was a used 1997 Honda Accord—teal green, like some sorta Easter egg-colored island carriage. It cost me a bottle of air freshener almost every other day, and I’d had enough blue coconut mist around me that I smelled like a walkin’ Pina Colada. But hey, folks expect stuff in paradise.

My latest one, the War Bus, was a pristine, white, 2012 Ford Escape. It had midnight tint on the back windows, and I’d had Johnny Q from Car World build me some secret compartments. I could hold nearly twice the cargo as the factory model. He gave me a deal on a special “hurricane” wrap on the windows that made them three times as strong as tempered glass, and he attached a couple of carbon fiber panels inside the door—for driver safety. He’d stitched in a holster in the driver’s seat, big enough for my sawed-off pistol grip, and even managed to mount a few hidden compartments in the ceiling.

Just like a smuggler, but I was only movin’ things to sell to tourists. If you know what you’re doin’, there’s more money, and less risk, givin’ people legal stuff than tryin’ to sneak around with contraband. And with all these protesters runnin’ around, the cops are everywhere. Righteous is the way to be.

DAY 5... The Day Some Set Dude Lost His Mind in my Car

Headin’ back from Miami... it’s a long run, but it pays the bills. It also gives me time to fill in a new entry about this guy I just drove to the mainland. Might make a good song one day.

I do a lot of runs to and from the hospital, mostly people that broke something or put something where some things don’t belong. Most don’t want to be seen in an ambulance, and I offer a bit of discretion. When the docs are done, they want to tuck tail, get straight to the hotel, then the airport and back home, wherever that is. Not too many folks can leave a hospital, even in paradise, without anyone knowin’ why they were inside. That’s where I come in. They pay money for the speed, and even more for the secret. That’s what fills the bath tub!

Like this one guy... called me to meet him at the entrance to the ER. Blue polo shirt, khaki shorts, and a just-off-the-rack panama jack straw hat—he was really tryin’ to look the part. Graham McMillan, or whoever he really was, wanted folks to think he was a tourist, but he was not here for pleasure. He carried a metal briefcase, black, not silver, and kept lookin’ at an email message blinkin’ on his phone.

Most folks sit in the back, but this guy jerked open the front door and plopped right down in my passenger seat. I was used to weird, but rude was another story. I was about to make a scene when he flattened two hundreds on the center console.

“I’m a firm believer in discretion between friends,” he said.

“I’m not sure we’re friends,” I answered, palmin’ the money and slippin’ it into my shirt pocket. “But I think discretion can be a fine thing.

“Then just drive.”

I’d had my SUV for a few months, and taken my share of twitchy fares, but this guy seemed completely uncomfortable, shifting in his seat like the upholstery was bitin’ him. You’d think paradise itself had been gnawin’ on him.

I was so focused on my passenger that I almost hit the bumper of a yellow cab waitin’ for a fare to the airport. Moon Man Marqueza would have been pissed if I gave him a love tap. Then again, he tended to fall asleep behind the wheel between fares, cloggin’ up the taxi lanes.

I pressed the accelerator to the floor and jerked the wheel hard to the left. The engine roared and I slipped between two oncomin’ mopeds like a football through a field goal. Once past them, I pulled a hard U-turn in front of a VW bug pullin’ a trailer, and then cut hard to the right, exitin’ through the one-way entrance into the hospital parking lot, avoidin’ the cars still waitin’ at the intersection. Sand and dead palm leaves flew up from my tires, but I kept one eye toward my passenger.

He caught me starin’ and pulled his briefcase close to him. “Most drivers don’t stare at their fares.”

“Most fares don’t come on this hard.”

“I’m not most fares.”

“And I ain’t most drivers.”

I’d worked worse-dressed folks for tips and extra cash for years, but this guy? What was his angle? He was scannin’ everything around us, but not just the cars. I whipped through traffic, missin’ side mirrors and fenders by inches, but he was more worried about something beyond the cars.

Might as well be direct, since we’d be at Key West International in five minutes. “Like I told you on the phone,” I started. “I’m not just a driver, but a professional who specializes in travelers who need special favors. More like family than business.”

“Then maybe you can tell me the best way to get off this island.”

“Other than the airport?” I asked, watchin’ him gently spin the twin combination dials on his case.

He caught me lookin’ and quickly grabbed my name tag hangin’ from my rear-view mirror. “Olivey? I thought your name was Max.”

“I didn’t pick it. My parents gave me the name. Since you’re payin’ the bills, you can call me what you want. Max usually works fine.”

“And your accent? Jamaican? Haitian?”

“I am at home on the islands,” I answered, soakin’ each word in as much Bob Marley as I could muster.

My shirt sleeve had slid up a bit, revealin’ my faded tattoo with a bold KC in the center of an ill-drawn outline of the state of Missouri.

“Really?” he asked. “I hear something different. Not quite island. Something a bit more domestic.”

“Island or American, I can be who you want. That’s the kind of family I am.”

US 1 to Roosevelt was busier than usual. In front of me, the brake lights on a delivery truck blinked twice and I pulled around it, straddlin’ the centerline to slip between the truck and an oncoming stream of vehicles. Blarin’ horns from northbound travelers greeted me, and my tires squealed in protest as I tucked back in behind a camper-trailer.

The turn toward the airport was even worse, with a log-jam at Flagler and cars fillin’ all four lanes. The highway was clogged with cars in both directions, and a pair of police cars were blockin’ Flagler, sending everyone east or north.

“What’s going on?” the man asked, leanin’ out of the passenger window.

“Must be a wreck,” I guessed. “Something big that they can’t clear out. Cops got the strip all closed off after last night. I’ve steered clear of that mess for the last two days. I don’t know what this is.”

“It’s nothing good,” he said, kinda slow and serious. The man clutched his briefcase to his chest. “Do the local police do many checkpoints down here?”

“The police wouldn’t snarl traffic like this. It’s bad to slow down the tourists when they’re spendin’ money. Cars don’t match our pedestrian lifestyle. It throws off the vibe.”

“Isn’t this the only road onto the island?”

“All roads lead somewhere. It just depends on where you want to go.”

“My plane leaves Miami at 9 PM. Can you drive me there?”

“It’s three and a half hours by car. This traffic’ll change that a bit.”

“There’s an extra five hundred if we make it by 7 PM. I can get a drink before my flight leaves.”

Time waits for no man. Neither do I, and now I was bein’ paid by the minute, not the mile. I cut hard to the right and pulled across the front lawn of Miss Terri Mondragaon. I made a mental note to fix her grass when I finished this job. I whipped up Eagle Avenue toward the residence of one Carolina Rockport. She’d installed automatic front and back gates when her husband bought an RV. When he ran off with Dulce from the Cabana, she needed help with a few arrangements. I ain’t nothin’ but a deal-maker, so when the deal was done, the widow Rockport gave me an opener for both gates—not Max’s only secret shortcut through town. I had a dozen of them by now, and with a quick tap of the blue garage door opener on my visor, I had a straight shot between the houses onto Duck Avenue and back on the road to Miami.

More police were showin’ up, lights flashin’ like it was a parade or something.

The man leaned forward, slidin’ a pair of fresh hundreds into my cup holder. “Let’s change things a bit. Keep us off the radar. Tell you what, if I can enjoy my last hours in the Keys without seeing anyone too ‘official,’ I’ll leave you an even thousand dollars.”

See, everyone has a price—either a thing they want, or a way they want their things. You just have to dig a bit to get them to strike a bargain. Ahead of me, the swath of red brake lights on US 1 gave little hope of gettin’ to the mainland too quickly. Whatever it was, it seemed to have started in KW and was sendin’ everyone north—probably stoppin’ to gawk at a dead seagull or some poor traveler changin’ a flat.

I made it to Miami just shy of 7 PM. The man had gone silent for the entire trip, his eyes watchin’ the blue water, then his watch, then back to the water—like he was tryin’ to lose himself in the ocean but didn’t want to be tardy about it.

Right before we took the loop into the airport, he said, “Max, what if I told you that I had a friend who was a health worker? What if I told you that this friend was supposed to check out one person to see if they had this really bad disease, but when he started seeing who they might have had contact with, he found out that it wasn’t one person anymore. It was over thirty.”

“I’d say your friend had a mighty big job ahead of him.”

His head slumped like he was in court and just got the guilty verdict.

I pulled up to his gate, pissin’ off two cabbies when I slipped between them. They yelled about the lack of a taxi stamp on my car. I told them I was sorry, just droppin’ off a friend at the airport. One runs off to call security, but my friend was already out of the car.

He shut the door and leaned back in, ten hundred-dollar bills held tight between his fingers.

“Why don’t you stay away from Key West for a while?” he asked. “This’ll set you up nicely, maybe for a week or so?”

“I gotta do what I do,” I answered, still workin’ the island accent, while slippin’ the cash into my shirt pocket.

“There’s nothing in Key West that is worth your life, is there?”

“My friend, I figure my life is all I got.”

“Ever thought of moving back to Kansas City?”

“These wheels belong back in Key West.”

He nodded funny. “Take care of yourself, Max. The world needs people who know how to handle themselves.”

Then he turned toward the terminal entrance, slippin’ by two security guards who were comin’ my way. I waved at them as I pulled away from the curb, earnin’ a loud honk from the bus behind me.

“The world needs a lot of shit.”

Kansas City was a bit humid this time of year, and Delilah did not particularly like surprises. I folded the bills and added them to my pocket, and took the exit back for US 1 to the Keys. I tapped the CD player on my console and pulled up a new track: Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

It wasn’t Bob Marley, but this cat had some weird stuff goin’ on in his head.