King of Swords

the heavyweight title for the first time. He'd blown up one of the photos to lifesize — Ali in his white shorts, championship belt around his waist, throwing a jab, exuberant expression on his face — and proudly exhibited it in the window, only for someone to smash the glass and steal the picture. Max and Joe had caught the thief a couple of weeks later when they'd seen him standing outside a school Ali had just opened, with the six-foot-plus-sized blow-up at his side, waiting for an autograph. The incident made the front page of the next day's Miami Herald. The accompanying photograph was a surreal sight: Joe hauling the thief away in cuffs, Max walking just behind them, carrying the Ali blow-up under his arm; while standing very clearly in the background, unbeknown to all, the real Muhammad Ali and his entourage were watching the spectacle and laughing.

Max looked through the same window and took in the desolate view of the near empty forecourt beyond, its entrance flanked by two tall but frail-looking palm trees, with weak trunks and drooping, dried-out leaves. His brown 1979 Camaro was parked in-between a white Ford pickup and a gleaming dark blue Mercedes coupe he guessed was Drake's. It had been there when he'd arrived. The sky above was thick with ash- and sour-milk-coloured clouds which broke the sunlight down to a feeble glow full of shadows.

The air was dead and still. Everything was on pause, waiting on the heavens to make up their mind.

Inside were two rows of booths starting from near the entrance and ending at a glossy mural of Old Glory which filled up the back wall, shot-up and dirt-caked, but billowing defiantly — American pride and endurance at its most fundamental.

The cop and his snitch were in the last two booths at the end, to the left, away from the window, Max facing the door as he always invariably sat, even off-duty. He liked to know

what was behind him and what was ahead of him as best he could.

The place was nearly empty, which wasn't surprising, given the time — just shy of 9.30 a.m. — but it felt like this was as busy as it was going to get today.

Max listened to Drake eat, the sounds of his chewing recalling a platoon trampling in time across dry undergrowth.

Although Drake had once claimed to eat only breakfast, Max wondered where on his six foot three, raggedy-ass bird-leg frame he put all the calories he was wolfing down - a greasy pile of crispy bacon, sausages, ham, hamburger, beans, hash browns, grilled tomatoes, four eggs fried two different ways and toast; so much food, they'd had to serve it up on two plates, one for the meat alone.

Drake dealt coke, poppers, pills and grass to an upmarket clientele of interstate jetsetters, white-collar lost weekenders, college kids with more bucks than brains and Miami's burgeoning gay community. Max helped him by regularly busting his competition and keeping him off the police radar.

He also occasionally kicked some of the coke he seized in the line of duty back to him. He didn't feel too good about the last part, but that was the way it was in Miami right now. The town ran on coke and coke ran the town. For every three kilos seized, one would make the papers and two would make it back on the street.

'Ain't no cure for that kinda evil thing,' Drake continued.

'Ain't no jail bad enough, ain't no religion good enough, ain't no shrink shrunk enough to undo that. Only a bullet can cure that'

Drake was getting worked up, like he always did whenever Max asked him about child abusers and child killers. He hated their kind with such intensity that Max often wondered if he hadn't himself been molested when he was a boy, but it wasn't the kind of thing you ever asked a street-forged hoodlum like Drake — not that he'd ever tell anyway, because

it'd make him look how he couldn't afford to be seen: weak, a victim, a sissy. If he got a rep like that it'd be bad for business. He'd have armies of rivals on his tail, and there'd be nothing Max could do to save him.

'I hear you,' Max said, barely moving his lips, 'but you know how it is. It's the law.'

'Then the law's all fucked up. Shit needs changin'. You get mo' time for peddlin' reefer than you do rapin' some lil'

girl'

'I hear that too.'

'Yeah?' Drake leant back a little so his mouth was closer to Max's ear. 'You hear so good, why you still a cop?'

'Same reason I had when I joined: I thought — and still do think — I can make a difference. Even if it's a small one no one notices. Somewhere, to someone, what I do counts.

For better or worse depends on the someone. And that's why I'm still here, meetin' you for breakfast,' Max answered.

ŚYou believe in Santa Claus too?' Drake chuckled and Max could almost hear him flashing his smile, that same sardonic, knowing, each-day-as-it-comes-and-fuck-tomorrow nonchalant expression that had landed him more pussy than he could handle and a bullet in the leg from a husband he'd cuckolded.