Versions of the Truth

By Glenn A. Bruce

The sex is as hot as the tropics, the body count as high as the temperature, and the intrigue as thick as a red tide. No one is safe—especially from themselves.

Christian Malle's drug-dealing father disappeared 15 years ago and left then teenaged Christian a fortune. His loving mother died of cancer ten years ago and left him an empty heart. His girlfriend dumped him for his own brother, and was murdered in broad daylight on South Beach one year ago today—leaving him nothing but questions.

Why was Christian's cop brother dating her just before she died? Who were the two high-priced assassins in the car with her and why did Castro and Chavez let them come to the U.S.? Who killed them all and why? Mainly: what really happened with his father back then, and what did his brother have to do with it? Will Christian's new girlfriend offer any hope, or just cloud the salt water of his soul?

EVOLVED PUBLISHING PRESENTS a taut, psychological thriller set in the dark world of South Florida's drugs, death, and money merchants.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evolved Publishing LLC
• Release date: Sep 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781622539321

Glenn A. Bruce

Author Glenn A. Bruce, MFA, is an award-winning writer-director who began his career in Hollywood, where he wrote the hit movie Kickboxer as well as episodes of Walker: Texas Ranger, Baywatch, plus many more. He’s had over fifty short stories and essays published internationally, and recently completed his 25th novel. Glenn taught screenwriting at Appalachian State University for over a dozen years, and recently returned to his home state to once again be a Florida Man.

Book preview

PART 1 – Ground Rules

Chapter 1 – South Beach

Summer 2005

Traffic is not moving, never does on a weekend. Cars, cool cars, and cooler cars are backed up from 13th to South Pointe—Carreras and Cabriolets, limos and Lambos, Astons and the assholes driving them.

An extended-wheelbase Rolls Royce moves two car-lengths per hour, tinted windows as black as the fifteen coats of lacquer around them, no chrome but for the 26-inch, 60-spoke, custom MOZ rims on Indy-wide Pirelli P-Zeros—six-hundred-grand to pimp-out a Phantom for someone rich, self-important, or simply hiding in plain sight.

Blending into the vacuous surroundings—everyone looking, no one seeing.

A pretty woman—done up, dark-haired and young—rides in back with a much older man—dark, well-dressed, and stoic. Nothing unusual for South Beach.

Up front, the sullen driver is a professional. His ruddy companion in a similar dark suit and shades rides shotgun—probably has one under the dash. Maybe an AK or an Uzi.

Ocean Drive is always packed on Sunday with the beautiful, the ugly, the lookers and the looked-at. Bare torsos line both sides of the street. Tats abound. If it’s now, it’s here. If it’s not, don’t even bother.

Waitresses in see-through camo over t-backs wade into traffic, delivering drinks to passengers waiting for a parking space, or just waiting—looking, dreaming, loathing. This is a tough crowd to work, and everyone’s working it.

Out on the beach, behind the low coral wall and tall palms hanging still and lifeless, high fashion models and nurses lie out topless while fully clothed men wander past pretending not to look. Three in ten don’t pretend. The girls don’t mind; they’re here to show... and tell later. Frozen drinks help on all fronts, even on your back.

A Preacher Man—that’s what he calls himself—rides a fat-tired cruiser, weaving in and out of static high-horsepower show cars. He’s been doing this for years, decades maybe—as far as anyone remembers. He was here long before Miami Beach got its sagging hip injected with hopped-up Nineties steroids and millennium Botox.

Bodybuilders as big as the buildings parade miniature Schnauzers while floss-girls waggle their enhanced accoutrements at anyone who will look. Everyone looks. It’s what makes South Beach South Beach: nothing real for miles.

Just the way they like it.

The Phantom has moved six feet. A blonde camo babe taps at the window, holding her tray and order pad. The window stays up. No one inside even looks. The girl leans down to peer in, shading her eyes, sees only a single slender finger close to the glass. Another finger points at the full bar in the back seat.

Cool, the waitress says and moves on cheerily. But no one thinks anything’s really cool—not cool enough. Who doesn’t have a mini bar in their car these days? She saw an Ultima coupe drive by with a Maxima grill up front and a Weber grill out back.

Gangstas on a cookout.

Six shirt-free college boys with their pants slung halfway down their boxers try to act like they belong. One of them is mixed and hot.

The cool white girls from Perrine check him out, making sure their tops don’t quite cover everything important.

He returns their smiles, then looks up across the street. Something has caught his eye—a moving shadow. Darkness stands out in the hard light of tactical black in August.

The Rolls has moved another car-length. The Preacher has made a full loop, from one end to the other and back, his hundredth of the day, shouting, The time of the locust is at hand! The beast will rise! Be prepared or be left behind! Only the weak will survive! The strong will perish with the beast! The rich will eat the forbidden fruits!

No one listens or pays him any mind. He wears fur leggings in 96-degree summer heat with 99-percent humidity, no rain in sight. His tan is so dark, he could be one of the original chosen people, if it weren’t for the shiny Schwinn and coonskin cap.

An older couple from Iowa—the only ones out here today—have stopped by the college boys and are looking up across the street with them, the bi-racial kid saying, I saw someone up there, dude. Maybe four or five guys in black suits.

The old man doubts it. In this heat?

All the kids laugh with him. He’s like their grampas back home, but they’re wearing the same plaid shorts—just forty years apart. They keep looking up and are quickly rewarded for their diligence.

Four men in black line up quickly along the front edge of the deco landmark, swing assault rifles in front, clip stainless carabiners onto high-tensile climbers’ ropes, toss them over the side and, in a second, have all rappelled onto the sidewalk below.

Special-ops on SoBe? So badass!

The driver of the Rolls floors it, lurches forward and slams into the hot babes’ hotter BMW ragtop in front—shoving it into the rental Mustang with stoned high school seniors from Up North. Then he reverses, tires smoking, screeching for the florist van behind, a city bus behind it.

The van driver and his delivery partner see it coming and dive in back, piling into each other as the Rolls smashes it hard, driving it back into the bus, the front of their van smashed in to the seats. Good thing they weren’t ‘Buckled up for Safety!’ They’d be dead, legless, or both.

The four men in black open fire. Hundreds of rounds per second pelt the Phantom and bounce harmlessly off bulletproofed glass and carbon-fiber, Kevlar-reinforced steel. Run-flat tires will go a hundred miles without air.

Right now, two blocks would do it.

The Rolls rocks, but Shotgun Seat hasn’t moved. He’s used to it—or dead already. The two in back sway like crash-test dummies—real-life mannequins in a hail of hellfire. If they’re scared, they don’t show it.

People on the street are hit and howling, crying for help—getting none as others run for their lives, stray bullets landing everywhere but where they are meant to go.

The big, black Phantom shoves into oncoming, unmoving traffic. The first Toyota is pushed out of its lane and onto the sidewalk, curb catching its tires, causing the sedan full of Cuba American girls to roll onto the grass, up over the low wall onto its roof. Seatbelts save them, screaming upside down.

The men with guns walk calmly ahead, dropping spent magazines in the street where the Rolls sat moments before, slamming in fresh ammo—foot-long banana clips. Firing. Firing. Bullets coming back at them, and they don’t care.

Windows behind them explode, covering cowering tourists with waterfalls of glass—not part of their Art Deco bargain, summer-vacation-package thrills.

One of the shooters is hit dead center with one of his own bullets, toppling him backwards. His finger never leaves the trigger. A full magazine is spent skywards, knocking coconuts onto bare-breasted running girls behind the wall and taking off the entire top of one of the trees.

It flips and falls on the upside-down Toyota full of still-screaming teens. A perfect fit, it looks like a planter.

One of the tatted college boys is just buzzed enough to risk being a hero and goes to help—until a stray bullet shatters a parking meter by his hip and he opts for safety, diving, hiding. Crying.

The Phantom driver is well-trained for this precise situation—up on the sidewalk and now the grass, taking out a row of café racers, all parked perfectly.

A red Ducatti ends up on top of the palm top on top of the Toyota bottom. The girls still haven’t stopped screaming.

The Rolls is getting away. No one hears the girls.

The man who shot himself with his own deflected bullet is back up on his feet, a minor dent in his body armor. He jumps onto the hood of an S600 Mercedes and dents it. The real estate developer inside is mad for an instant—then he’s out and running for his life. Could be an angry client.

You never know—not on South Beach.

The 6,000-pound LWB Phantom mows down bike racks, benches, newspaper vending machines, baby strollers. If he makes it to the public restroom at the end of the street, he’s free to make the corner. If he makes the corner, he’s free.

Dented man leaps from the Mercedes roof onto the top of the crumpled flower van, pulls out a collapsible tube and extends it—locking down and sighting.

The other men have stopped firing, but their eyes never leave the fleeing Rolls as the man on the van locks in on his target and pulls the trigger. Flames fly a car-length out the back of the tube as a grenade blasts from the front at 150-meters per second. No one will remember or recognize the style, but it’s Russian.

Before the end of that second, the missile finds its mark under the rear bumper of the half-million-dollar pimpmobile. Grenade and gas tank ignite at the same time. Fire and shrapnel lift the trunk of the Rolls as if it were made of balsa rather than steel.

The former high-security limo flies up and over, forward, landing on its side on top of the restroom. The RPG assailant has reloaded and fires again.

This time, his projectile finds the soft underbelly of the Rolls and cuts through, exploding inside the passenger compartment, filling the cab of the ultimate luxury sedan with boiling fire.

Someone standing close by could see the pretty woman in back looking out at life fading until she is engulfed in thousand-degree heat—and she ignites. The man with her is vaporized, and the men in front are ablaze, unrecognizable, their bones burning.

The men wearing black in August are already gone, the street awash in blood and chaos, but no one else is dead.

They were professionals, too.

Chapter 2 – The Waitress

Summer 2006

Christian Malle had just turned twenty-nine, eleven years having passed since his mother died, seventeen since his father Alex disappeared. Christian was twelve at the time, his brother Robbie, eighteen. Robbie had been a traffic cop since that day, as best Christian could remember. He and Robbie didn’t talk much.

Christian was not as tall as his brother—five-ten to Robbie’s six-feet—but he was every bit as fit. They’d both inherited their father’s good genes. Christian got his mother’s fine looks—and his father’s money. Robbie got the drive, the rage, and the short fuse, and his mother’s bad teeth. He wrote a lot of tickets.

On a hot one in late July, Christian stood in the middle of Ocean Drive and looked south towards Government Cut. He could stand in the middle of the street because it was another Sunday and South Beach was packed like always, traffic backed up as far as he could see in either direction—no one moving, windows up, a/c cranked on Max.

The circus was in full swing, both sides of the street flesh to flesh.

Not a breath of air came off the water, which looked slick as polished concrete, only blue. Palm fronds hung still as steel replicas, like sculptures that hinted at a vital past but were lifeless as Christian’s soul.

He could still see the events of a year ago unfolding in his head like personal memories, as if he had been there to witness them himself—the Rolls, the men in black, the beautiful people watching amazed, the screaming and bleeding.

Christina and the three men burned to death.

Christian looked behind him at the old deco hotel from which the armed men had launched their attack. Back in the Sixties, the Conklin was a run-down hostel for retired snowbirds with little cash, but now it was named after some artist or other, painted Flamingo pink with Nassau tourmaline accents, and had a Presidential Bondage Suite available for weekend retreats—leather included.

The bottom floor had been turned into a chic restaurant in back, with an open bar in front, where the camo girls poured in and out like half-naked ant-people, taking drink orders from stopped cars and running back in to fill them before the car moved with their tip.

Not a parking space sat empty, and the meter maid—a bearded man in his sixties with shorts and a reflective safety vest—stayed busy. Parking tickets supported the pension fund for half the town council. The other half came from exorbitant property taxes. Living on the beach had once been cheap, now only life was cheap there.

Christian counted nine cars in a row that each cost well over a hundred grand; one was a faux Cobra—but it was special, like everything else on South Beach. It was fake and both stood out and fit in—like the waitresses with balloon implants.

Christian looked south again, staring at the still-charred restroom at the end of the street. Almost a year had passed, but Parks and Rec hadn’t repaired the building. The hurt wouldn’t go away with new paint, but it couldn’t hurt.

Some kids in their daddy’s car laughed at him. Christian could see them in his peripheral vision, giggling and pointing, saying the stupid things high school kids say when they don’t understand... anything.

He would have ignored them, but one of the boys apparently felt the need to impress his girlfriend in the back. If she wasn’t his girlfriend yet, after this, she would be.

Hey, asshole, he said to Christian. What’re you doin’ standing in the middle of the fucking street?

Christian looked down and said, Trying to decide whether or not to shoot you in the face. You know, if it’s worth it or not.

He moved his right hand to his hip, as if reaching behind his back—and stared.

The laughter stopped, the windows went back up until just a slit remained for them to look through, and the kid told the traffic to, "Move. Come on." It didn’t.

Christian looked directly at the boy for three full minutes, until he was able to inch his dad’s Hyundai ahead, out of Christian’s sightline.

The girls in the back sat perfectly still and said they really had to pee.

Christian had left his gun at home—technically his father’s gun, a Beretta M9—but they didn’t know that. They likely did know what had happened here a year ago, and that it could happen again any time—maybe to them, maybe today.

Christian turned his attention back on the restroom—blackened, like his memories, but still standing. Around the low one-story public building, beach life went on as usual. If any of these people knew what happened last year, they’d chosen to forget.

It was easier that way.

South Beach hadn’t changed, that much was certain. If Christian had been there that day, a year ago, standing in this same spot, and had blinked himself back to today, nothing would look any different—except the charred restroom and the topless palm.

All other traces had vanished. The windows had been replaced, and the relentless semi-tropical sun—semi... right—had long since bleached any signs of screeching tires on pavement.

Christian stood on the yellow lines in the middle of Ocean Drive, high-performance supercars not moving any faster than local kids’ parents’ wagons and four-doors—life at a standstill in oppressive heat and affluence, neither of which everyone here could afford, but they all flashed smiles around go-cups of cold confidence-builders.

And a little more.

Girls on the beach—regular girls with regular jobs—left their inhibitions at the curb. They strode out onto the hot sand, took off their tops with a flourish, knowing exactly how many eyes were on them, then arranged themselves on their towels and spread their legs toward the sun to expose minimum fabric for maximum effect.

They’d planned everything carefully at home before walking out the door.

The men were no better. Some clown had sat next to Christian at an outdoor bar in white baggies, and told him how he’d left the tag on them and tried them out in his shower at home, prepared to return the trunks if his junk didn’t show. He was doing shots, making faces like Clint Eastwood with hemorrhoids each time.

Christian thanked him for the information and moved to another stool.

Later, he saw the same guy casually strolling up from the water, across the sand, through the demi-naturel chicks, with his tag-less whites plastered to his tan, hardwood floors—nothing left to anyone’s imagination.

As if anyone here had any to begin with.

The retail salesgirls, secretaries, and dental hygienists stole glances and hoped he’d squat next to them to talk about nothing—hopefully his good job, expensive car, and Brickell condo—so everyone could get a close look at everything and maybe do something about it.

Life here had to be more exciting than just plain life. Without risks, being alive meant nothing. Without chance, days were predictable. Without feeling, all was safe.

Without a conscience, anything was possible.

Such masses of empty humanity made Christian Malle feel hollow. In his full heart, he hurt like he was a hundred years old and had seen more life and death than anyone on this street, anyone in this city, even if he knew he hadn’t. Losing Christina had put a sad new patina on old ideas of being young.

Nothing looked different, but everything was.

Preacher Man still rode his bike beat, his squeaking footbrake close, so Christian turned. The bearded dark man said, Brother, God has instructed me to request ten dollars from you.

Christian had never seen the self-anointed South Beach saint up close. The overly tanned man, probably only forty or forty-five, looked seventy. His eyes were watery blue, pale and clear, surrounded by a solid thatch of veins red from sun and alcohol.

Christian nodded with no hint of arrogance and said, Really?

Yes, Brother, it’s true. He spoke to me, the Holy Roller said.

And he told you to ask me for ten dollars?

Yes, Brother, he did.

And you believed him?

The Preacher Man squinted in the hard sun. Yes, Brother, I always believe Him. Why wouldn’t I? He’s God the Almighty. I am but his humble servant.

Christian nodded as if thinking that through and agreeing but then said, Well, that’s odd.

The Preacher Man stared harder, meaner. Someone was questioning his God? His faith? What? How so, Brother? the bearded one asked suspiciously.

Well, it’s just, Christian said, pausing as if trying to craft his statement carefully, respectfully. I mean, if he’s God, you’d think he would know I never carry cash.

The Preacher stood motionless, paralyzed. Apparently, his devout method of panhandling usually worked better. He didn’t move.

Christian didn’t move, didn’t look away. He offered a different possibility. Maybe you misheard Him.

Preacher Man managed to squint even more. His eyes thinned to slits surrounded by more creases than a loggerhead turtle’s neck.

Christian said, "Maybe he was talking about some other guy standing in the middle of Ocean Drive, maybe in a different block on a different day. You never know. God’s voice is always open to interpretation."

When the Preacher realized Christian wasn’t bluffing, wasn’t forking over any cash, the prematurely ancient bicyclist/philosopher put his foot up on one pedal, said, You speak the truth of the original Israelites. Have a blessed day, Brother, and shoved off through traffic, shouting, "The plague is coming! Repent now or forever be lost! Let the Pox of Abraham alight in your house of eternal grieving and evil, you heatherns!"

A slick salesman type in a convertible said, Shut the hell up, and threw half a fast-food soda on him.

The Preacher dove into the front seat, swinging, swearing, and invoking Santeria, his bike scratching the Saab’s nice sea foam metallic paint.

The old ticket-writer had to break it up—though he took his time strolling over—just another day at work on South Beach.

Before Christian could find a smile inside—if any were left—he heard a young woman’s voice say, Ick! Only it sounded like three syllables.

Christian turned to find one of the camo babes in a florescent yellow Wicked Weasel floss bikini standing not two feet away, her sheer wrap enough to obscure the good parts—barely—but she appeared to have retained a tiny landing strip.

What can I get you? she said, holding her trusty pen and pad up under her ample bosom so that Christian could look closer—without being obvious—and detect that the gossamer layers did not obscure the dark, round circles inside.

He looked at her, closely, then around at the north and south lanes of unmoving Sunday browsers, and pointed out the obvious. I’m in the middle of the street.

The blonde smiled perkily and said, We deliver. Then she added, Besides, I like your butt. She was apparently not shy, nor about proving it with a sly wink. Then to prove she had an even better butt, she turned to wave at... someone.

Maybe.

She allowed Christian enough time to notice that no matter how much she jumped and wiggled and bounced, there was no jiggle. She was firm, solid as a man but all woman. The Weasel t-back under her thin shroud was little more than a thread, in case he had any doubts.

He thought he saw pucker.

Waving demonstration over, she turned back, pad ready, and said, Sorry, my girlfriend was leaving. You should have us over sometime. She smiled in such a way that the suggestion didn’t seem vulgar or even suggestive.

Some talent—or business as usual. Without the business. Those girls were upstairs and didn’t usually come out till after dark.

Christian considered how her ménage approach must usually result in a large tip, making her obviously smarter than the average bimbo. And it was business—just not the business she proposed. That was tease—like everything else in every direction.

He said, I’ll pass, thanks. He meant on everything—in every direction. South Beach was a place he came to remember why he didn’t go anywhere else.

If the camo-waitress was disappointed, she didn’t show it. I’m here ‘til five, she said with a practiced smile, and moved down the yellow stripe to the next car, bending over to the driver’s window so that, if Christian had missed anything during the first show, he wouldn’t this time.

From the back, as her shawl rose, bare labia appeared on both sides of the Weasel. She never looked back, didn’t get an order, and walked on.

Christian found a smile. It wasn’t much, but he appreciated her willingness to make a buck on South Beach with the rest of the profiteers, at the cost of personal integrity.

No shame.

These days, the only people who came here were looking to brush up against fame and wealth—see where Gianni Versace got shot by the gay spree killer, or the disco Madonna owns or owned or visited, or the strip club that had nothing at all to do with her.

Or they came to cash in on those who did.

Christian decided the camo girl was clearly of the latter persuasion. He grinned and headed for his car, which he always parked around the corner on a side street in his secret spot off 7th—unsafe at any time of the day decades earlier.

Back in the day, before Christian was born, South Beach had been a pit. If the place had been some sort of sun-bathed haven for Yankees in the Forties and Fifties, by the Sixties and Seventies, it became little more than a few rows of flophouses inhabited by Jewish retirees—widows and widowers mainly—and junkies.

The old dog track drew gamblers of all stripes, high rollers and low, dabblers and addicts; but one block over, you stepped into Hell. While the old folks hobbled out to take in the morning warmth in winter, on run-down, wrought-iron porches in rusting chairs along Ocean Drive, hookers and their pimps shot smack in rooms with no running water in buildings with no heat or air, less than a hundred feet away.

Back then, you could get anything you wanted in South Beach, including dead.

In that way, nothing much had changed. Sure, they’d spruced it up, and the average age had declined by half a century, but essentially nothing was different—just, the stakes were higher.

Christian dug out his keys and climbed in his 1964 Ferrari 265GT/L, red. Only someone who didn’t care about tomorrow would actually drive this car.

Christian didn’t even lock the doors.

By the time he hit 5th Street, the speedometer read 65—thirty over.

Chapter 3 – Downtown

When the motorcycle cop pulled him over, Christian was doing well over 100. He stopped at the apex of the McArthur Causeway Bridge, some seventy-five feet above Biscayne Bay. The day was clear and hot, visibility unlimited. Low-roaming cumuli hung above them, uniformly flat on the bottom, drifting so slowly as to appear still—shocking white against the deep blue glimmer of late summer.

Traffic was heavy for midday, but it always was on the weekends, going to and coming from the ocean—especially South Beach. Horns blew and people shouted out the few open windows of passing cars as the bike cop sauntered to the Ferrari.

Several drivers let their windows down to complain.

Despite commonly held knowledge that you should never get out of your car if stopped, Christian stepped out, closed the door, and leaned against it.

The cop said, Why the fuck’d you stop up here? in the middle of the top of the bridge in heavy traffic.

Christian said, You pulled me. I stopped.

The cop said, You were going a hundred and ten.

Really? Christian said. Speedo’s hanging up. Felt more like 80.

Speed limit’s 50, the cop said, pulling off his helmet and setting it on the sloping trunk of the 275GTB.

Watch the paint, Christian said.

The cop leaned on the side of the car, his utility belt hard against the red lacquer. Then he said, When was the last time this thing was painted?

1964.

It’s holding up well.

It’s a classic, Christian said, and lit a cigarette.

The cop said, Those things’ll kill you.

Christian nodded at the motorcycle and said, So will those. He offered the cop a smoke and the cop took it. Christian lit it for him.

A fat Cuban in a maroon minivan with peeling paint stopped in front of them and opened his passenger window. Whatchu doin’? You gotta pull dis asshole on the bridge, fuckin’ idiot?

The cop inhaled and let it go. He was speeding. You want a ticket too? Stopping on a public thoroughfare, causing a hazard?

Fuck you, the guy said belligerently, and with confidence. My cousin’s the mayor of Hialeah.

Hialeah, huh? the cop said. This is City of Miami.

So what? the irate driver said. He knows her, too.

The cop nodded and said, Yeah well, my brother here is the governor’s nephew. That makes me, well, his brother. So, like I said... He took another drag on his fag.

Christian did the same, watching the guy with the same calm clarity as his brother Robbie.

The guy in the van looked them over and saw the resemblance. After a quick moment of thought, he said, "Fuck the both’a you, pingas hermanos," flipped them off, and sped away, the underpowered shit-heap struggling to get back in the flow of traffic.

Lotta anger in the world, Robbie said.

Christian agreed, and the brothers watched him drive off, swerving across lanes like a veteran I-95 lunatic. Christian said, You get his plate number?

Yeah, Robbie said. I’ll send him something special in the mail. Christmas, maybe. Unless his birthday comes first.

The constant stream of cars continued to bottleneck and beep, even though they had plenty of room. The drivers yelled and swore, threw the finger—one threw an empty beer can—and continued past as Christian and Robbie took slow drags off their cigarettes and appreciated the day.

Hot, Christian said.

Summer, Robbie said.

Neither needed to remind the other they were in Miami in late July on the top of a manmade mound of concrete in the sun.

Below them, a 42-foot Formula Super Sport made its way from downtown—what once was simply Pier 1, now morphed into Miamarina at Bayside—in less than a minute, and passed under them with a roar, twin inboard Volvos pushing the redline. Had to be going a hundred and twenty.

Robbie muttered, Fuckin’ idiot. Run into the bridge and kill everyone for five miles around, no doubt wondering where the cops were when you needed one.

Christian knew his brother had a thing for Marine Patrol but had to settle for Traffic.

The sleek speedboat made Christian think of something else, farther away in a dark past. You ever wonder what really happened to Dad?

Robbie stopped smoking, looked directly at his younger brother, and said, No. He then flipped his cigarette over the top of the Ferrari and the cement bridge railing for the Bay below.

A platinum MILF riding shotgun in a passing Corvette convertible shouted, Litterbug!

Robbie shouted after her, Stupid cunt! I’ll give you a ticket just for bein’ fuckin’ unoriginal! You and your dipshit grampa!

She flipped him off, as did the dipshit who laughed and floored it.

Miami.

Traffic had snarled on both sides of the causeway. Robbie looked up at the sound of an approaching helicopter.

Fuck, was all he had to say. He knew what was coming.

***

Captain Frank Manny Garcia was waiting at Robbie’s shared desk when he walked into the Field Operations Division with Christian, who wore a Visitor pass clipped to his shoulder.

Nice job, Officer Malle, Garcia said. He’d been a handsome man in his youth, before police work and cigarettes got the better of him. Pork.

Robbie tried not to look his captain in the face.

Garcia said, WTVJ chopper got it for the noon parade. Didja see? He nodded up to a small flat screen that was always on, and always on the news. Aerial footage of traffic tied-up down both sides of MacArthur Causeway played on a blue-screen panel behind a local news hen. She appeared concerned, but probably wasn’t.

Robbie said, Must be a slow news day.

Garcia wasn’t smiling. Make a report. He looked at Christian. "And get him outa here before a plane crashes into the building like Garp."

Christian’s reputation preceded him.

Robbie didn’t say yes sir, no sir, maybe. Nothing. So, Garcia left.

It wasn’t that they had bad blood between them, more that they had resentment over situations beyond their control. Garcia had been a lieutenant when he was