Miami Noir Read online

  This collection is comprised of works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Akashic Books

  Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple

  Miami map by Sohrab Habibion

  ePUB ISBN: 978-1-936-07038-1

  ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-13-2

  ISBN-10: 1-933354-13-5

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2006923116

  All rights reserved

  Akashic Books

  PO Box 1456

  New York, NY 10009

  [email protected]

  www.akashicbooks.com

  ALSO IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES:

  Brooklyn Noir, edited by Tim McLoughlin

  D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos

  Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block

  Baltimore Noir, edited by Laura Lippman

  Dublin Noir, edited by Ken Bruen

  Chicago Noir, edited by Neal Pollack

  London Noir, edited by Cathi Unsworth

  San Francisco Noir, edited by Peter Maravelis

  Twin Cities Noir, edited by Julie Schaper & Steven Horwitz

  Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Tim McLoughlin

  FORTHCOMING:

  Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton

  New Orleans Noir, edited by Julie Smith

  Havana Noir, edited by Achy Obejas

  Bronx Noir, edited by S.J. Rozan

  Queens Noir, edited by Robert Knightly

  Wall Street Noir, edited by Peter Spiegelman

  Detroit Noir, edited by Eric Olsen & Chris Hocking

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  PART I: EDGE OF THE COUNTRY

  JAMES W. HALL Coconut Grove

  Ride Along

  CHRISTINE KLING County Line

  Dead Storage

  GEORGE TUCKER North Miami

  Silence of the Stone Age

  KEVIN ALLEN Perrine

  Sawyers

  PART II: WIND, WATER, AND GRIME

  ANTHONY DALE GAGLIANO Homestead

  Blown Away

  TOM CORCORAN Card Sound

  One Man’s Ceiling

  PAUL LEVINE Florida Straits

  Solomon & Lord Drop Anchor

  DAVID BEATY South Miami

  The Last of Lord Jitters

  PART III: VICES OF MIAMI

  JOHN DUFRESNE Sunny Isles

  The Timing of Unfelt Smiles

  VICKI HENDRICKS Miami Beach

  Boozanne, Lemme Be

  CAROLINA GARCIA-AGUILERA Downtown

  The Recipe

  JOHN BOND Miami River

  T-bird

  PART IV: CHASING THE CITY

  PRESTON ALLEN Miami-Dade Correctional Center

  Swap Out

  LYNNE BARRETT Upper Eastside

  The Noir Boudoir

  BARBARA PARKER Biscayne Bay

  Machete

  JEFFREY WEHR South Beach

  The Swimmers

  About the Contributors

  For the good that I would, I do not:

  but the evil which I would not, that I do.

  —Romans (Ch. VII, v. 19)

  INTRODUCTION

  TROUBLE & PARADISE

  As both a teacher and a writer, I have often been asked to explain why Miami is such fertile territory for writers who write well and truly of crime and violence and of the dark side of the human condition. Sometimes the question is put out of honest curiosity. Other times, it seems as if there is a challenge there. As if the questioner might have continued, given half a chance: Why aren’t you writing novels of manners down there? Drawing room comedies? Something literary, for God’s sake?

  The former types are fine—honest curiosity is a good thing; as for the latter interrogators, they tend to become the models for the victims in our upcoming work. But let there be an attempt at an explanation:

  The truth is that Miami, though naturally lovely, is a frontier town, perched on the border between the known and the rarely before experienced. The poet Richard Hugo once said that the natural place for the writer was on the edge, and “edge” might well be the definitive word when it comes to this city.

  We are not only on the edge of the continent, we are to this country what New York was in Ellis Island’s heyday, what the West Coast was in the middle of the twentieth century. This is where the new arrivals debark these days, and it is no mistake that during the last decade of the last century, commentators as diverse as Joan Didion, David Rieff, and T.D. Allman devoted entire volumes to Miami’s role as the harbinger for America’s future.

  All the flux of a beautiful city where everyone is on the make and almost nothing has quite been settled creates an exceptional place for writers to live and work—and to put it simply, we write what we observe. Once this part of the world has settled down a bit—the tide of newcomers calmed, all the hustlers gentrified, the gators chased away—perhaps our literary output will morph into something a bit more “civilized.” But for now, the novel of crime and punishment is the perfect vehicle to convey the spirit and the timbre of this brawling place to a wider world.

  Nor is this exclusively a late—twentieth century development: In 1936, Francis Wallace published Kid Galahad, a novel of mob-influenced boxing set in Miami. In the 1940s, Leslie Charteris set an episode or two of The Saint series here. After Charteris came Davis Dresser, a.k.a., Brett Halliday, and his Mike Shayne series of the ’40s and ’50s, with such understated titles as Die Like a Dog, The Homicidal Virgin, and Blood on Biscayne Bay. In the 1960s, John D. MacDonald cranked the quality of the proceedings up several notches with the debut of his long-running Travis McGee series, set in the slightly less menacing environs of nearby Fort Lauderdale.

  But the true founders of the so-called “Miami School” are Douglas Fairbairn, author of the quintessential Miami noir, Street 8 (1977), the story of a hustling car dealer up against Cuban zealots, and his contemporary Charles Willeford, creator of the Hoke Moseley novels, which include Miami Blues, New Hope for the Dead, and—perhaps my favorite title of them all—Kiss Your Ass Goodbye. What Nietzsche wondered about, Fairbairn and Willeford nailed flat out. These two pioneered a kind of writing that so many of us pay homage to: captivating stories rich in character and sense of place, carefully wrought, complex in theme. And what was the question about literature again, please?

  Veterans of Miami mayhem will find many of their favorite authors in the lineup that follows. And they will also savor the appearance of several new perpetrators whose dark endeavors will fill the pages of many a novel to come. I was tempted to join in the fun myself, but given the plethora of talent, there seems no need to swell the rout. On the subject of Miami, I’ll give my last words to Vernon Driscoll, ex—Miami police detective and erstwhile sidekick of that endlessly put-upon South Florida building contractor Johnny Deal: “Do your worst,” Driscoll muses, while searching for his kidnapped pal in my novel Presidential Deal, “set off your explosions, spread your gases, litter the landscape with bodies, and when you tire of it all, in a few thousand years, the sawgrass will come creeping back, the roots will split the seams of the concrete, the heat and the moisture and the rot will do the necessary work, and all will be as it was before anybody got any big ideas. Big ideas. Miami. Yeah!”

  Until Miami Noir 2, then.

  Les Standiford

  Miami, Florida

  September 2006

  PART I

  Edge of the Country

  RIDE ALONG

  BY JAMES W. HALL

  Coconut Grove

/>   Jumpy was reaching for the door handle to get out when Guy took hold of his arm, saying, “Nothing weird this time. Promise me.”

  Jumpy took a few seconds to turn his head and look at Guy.

  “Define weird.”

  He had a point. It was more than weird already, an oddball pair like them out on a Sunday morning, 4 a.m., parked in a gravel lane next to a boarded-up house, with the orange sulfur lights from Douglas Road flickering like sky-fire through the big banyans. Three blocks north was the rubble and peeling paint of the Coconut Grove ghetto, three blocks the other way the mansions rose like giant concrete hibiscus blooms, pink and yellow, surrounded by high fortress walls, video cams, and coconut palms. The have-nots getting the exhaust fumes from Dixie Highway, the haves taking nice sweet hits on the ocean breezes.

  Thirty feet in front of where Guy was parked, standing next to a battered Oldsmobile, two black dudes were fidgeting while Guy and Jumpy stayed inside the white Chevy with the headlights off. Been there two, three minutes already. Doing deals with fidgety folks wasn’t Guy’s idea of good business practice.

  “The soul train must have a station around here,” Jumpy said.

  “You’re jacking yourself up, man. I told you. You freak out this time, it’s over, I walk.”

  “I don’t like dreadlocks,” Jumpy said.

  “It’s a hairstyle is all,” Guy told him. “A Rastafarian thing from Jamaica. Same as a crew cut is to you.”

  “I never did like dreadlocks. It’s a gut reaction.”

  “Okay, so you don’t like dreadlocks. But a little fashion incompatibility, that isn’t going to keep us from doing our business, right?”

  “It looks dirty,” Jumpy said. “Unkempt.”

  “Yeah, well, then let’s forget it. Start the car, get the hell out of here.”

  “You losing your nerve, teach? Get right up close to the devil, feel his warm breath on your face, then you back away?”

  “Nothing weird, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”

  Jumpy was 6’4″, skinny as a greyhound, pasty-skinned, all knuckles and Adam’s apple. Kind of muscles that were easy to miss in that string bean body, like the braided steel cables holding a suspension bridge together. From what Guy had been able to learn, Jumpy had a couple of years of college, then he’d shipped out as a Marine for two hitches, then a lone-wolf mercenary for a while, off in Rwanda and Venezuela, spent a few years in a federal pen in Kansas, now he was on the prowl in Miami. Whatever unspeakable shit he’d been into never came up directly in conversation. Guy didn’t ask, Jumpy didn’t say. But it was there like a bad smell leaking from a locked room. The man was dangerous, and Guy loved it. Got a little tipsy from the proximity. So much to learn, so much to bring back to his own safe world. Riding the knife blade of violence, ever so careful not to get cut.

  Jumpy didn’t pump up his past. Very understated, even flip. Guy considered that a form of extreme cool, like those muscle-bound bodybuilders who only wore loose clothes. Tight shirts were for showboat assholes.

  Jumpy didn’t have to flaunt. There was a halo around him nobody could miss, a haze of androgen and pheromones that could turn a barroom edgy in a blink. Guy had seen nights when the bad boys lined up for a chance at Jumpy, pool cue in one hand, switchblade in the other, one by one coming at him like twigs into a wood chipper. Going in solid, coming out a spew of sawdust.

  Trouble was, in Jumpy’s line of work, nuance might be a better strategy than overwhelming force. But try to tell that to Jumpy. Dialing back that guy’s throttle, even for Guy, a silver-tongued specialist, a man Jumpy respected, it could present a challenge. Not that Guy was morally opposed to violence. In the abstract, inflicting pain and drawing blood was fine. He’d written about it for years, described it in excruciating detail. But putting it into flesh-and-blood action, no, that wasn’t his instinctive first choice like it was with Jumpy.

  “So we cool on this?” Guy said. “Do your deal and walk. No crazy-ass banter, no stare-downs. Right?”

  Jumpy kept his lasers fixed on the two dreadlocks.

  “I need some signal of agreement, Jumpy. A grunt is enough.”

  Jumpy turned his head and blinked. That was all Guy was getting.

  They got out and Guy tried to match Jumpy’s casual saunter over to the Olds.

  The two gangstas insisted on patting Guy down, then after a moment’s indecision, they did a hurry-up job frisking Jumpy and stepped away like they’d burned their hands. The tall one went around to the trunk of the Olds and popped the lid.

  Guy stayed a couple of steps behind Jumpy while the tall dude, wearing a black T-top and baggy shorts, showed off the Squad. His dreadlock buddy stood by the driver’s door watching. His right hand fiddling around his shirttail, ready to quick-draw if things went bad.

  Dreadlock One was extolling the merits of the Squad Automatic Weapon, otherwise known as SAW. Eight hundred—meter range, lightweight, just over twenty pounds with the two hundred—round magazine. Talking straight English with a little Bahamian singsong, none of the hip-hop, webadass bullshit.

  When Dreadlock One paused, Guy said, “You want to hold it, Jumpy? Inspect it?”

  Jumpy was silent.

  “One of you should check that shit, man, we don’t want no pissing and moaning later on.”

  “Let me know when the sales pitch is over,” Jumpy said. “I’ll get the cash.”

  Dreadlock One shifted his angle, moving for a better view of Guy.

  “What’re you looking at?”

  “That’s what I’m asking myself,” he said.

  “Do that again?” Guy said.

  “Who’m I doing business with,” Dreadlock One asked, “man or woman? From across the way, you look like a dude; up close like this, you could be a bull-dyke bitch.”

  Guy felt Jumpy shift closer to him.

  “Happens all the time,” Guy said. “It’s the haircut.”

  Guy had blond shoulder-length Jesus hair, slender hips, and sleek Scandinavian features. A man of long smooth planes. Not feminine so much as asexual. A floater. Hovering between the sexes. Some women found him sexy, and just about as many men.

  “More than the freaking haircut. It’s your whole entire weird-ass self.”

  Jumpy stepped between Guy and Dreadlock One and said, “Why don’t you reach down my partner’s pants and find out?”

  The second dreadlock cackled, then grinned a big gold smile. “Yeah, Willie, do it, man, reach your hand in there and squeeze.”

  “I was just curious,” Willie said. “It don’t matter. Forget it.”

  “Don’t be shy,” said Jumpy. “Reach in, take a handful, make yourself happy. Guy’s cool with that, aren’t you, Guy?”

  Willie stared at Guy’s face for a few ticks, then shook his dreads.

  Jumpy took two quick steps and grabbed Willie’s hand, took a grip on Guy’s belt buckle, pulled it out, and jammed the dude’s spidery fingers down the front of Guy’s pants.

  The other dread had his pistol out and was aiming at Jumpy, ordering him to step the fuck away from his partner, let him go, stop that shit.

  Jumpy released Willie’s hand and the man yanked it out of Guy’s pants.

  “So what am I?” Guy said.

  Willie didn’t say anything. He turned and saw his partner with the pistol out.

  “Put that shit away, man. Put it away.”

  “So what I am?” Guy said. “Did your field trip enlighten you?”

  “Two thousand for the SAW. Five hundred for the loaded magazine. Take it or leave it, no negotiating.”

  “Two for the whole caboodle or I’m outta here. Starting now. Ten, nine, eight, seven…”

  “Two’ll do,” Willie said.

  “Hard bargainer,” Jumpy said. “Tough nut.”

  Jumpy and Guy walked back over to the stolen Chevy, Jumpy getting into the passenger seat. Staying there for a minute, another minute with Guy standing back by the trunk waiting, watching, recording.

  Jumpy’s do
or was swung wide open, the overhead light on.

  The two dreadlocks were talking near their Olds Ciera, but after a while they started shooting looks over. Willie held the SAW in one hand.

  Jumpy sat there and sat there and sat some more until finally the head dread came strolling. Dumbass carrying the SAW one-handed.

  “You got the bread or you fucking with me?”

  “It’s stuck,” Jumpy said. “Fucking glove box is stuck.”

  “Stuck?”

  Jumpy leaned back in the seat, gestured toward the glove compartment.

  Willie leaned in the door, peered through the darkness.

  “You got a screwdriver,” Jumpy said, “something that can pry it open?”

  Willie craned another inch forward and Jumpy took a grip on the padded handle and slammed the door closed on the dreadlock’s neck. Opened it and slammed it again and then a third time. Then one more for good luck and pushed the dread out of the way and reached down to the gravel and took hold of the SAW and aimed it out the crook of the open door at Dreadlock Two, who was trotting over with a big-ass chrome .45 in his right hand.

  Guy was frozen. It was a freaking movie streaming around him. Every outrageous, amazing second of it. Hand down the pants and all.

  The SAW kicked against Jumpy’s shoulder. Jumpy fired again over Dreadlock Two’s head, yelling at him to drop his weapon. Which he did. Not giving it a second thought, just tossing it into the gravel.