kill is. But I’ve also been in the shoes of cops like Camacho and Hernandez—many times. And I know that every vile thought you’ve ever had in your head—the animal in you is likely to say it out loud. Look, Dio, this thing happened in a crack house. You got to be afraid when you enter one a them, because with dope comes guns. As it was, the biggest guy in the house tries to choke Sergeant Hernandez. Hernandez pulled his gun and would have shot the guy, except that Camacho jumped on the guy’s back, and Hernandez was afraid he might shoot Camacho, too. Camacho clamps some kind of wrestling hold on the guy and rides him until he’s out of gas and gives up. If he’d been able to get Camacho off his back, he woulda killed him and yanked his head off for good measure. None a that comes out when you just read from a tape of what they said.”
“Okay. Okay,” said the Mayor. “I get your point. But my point is we’ve got a big African American population here, and they’ve been here a long time. A thing like this could set off another riot. They always riot over the same thing, the criminal justice system. That’s not gonna happen on my watch. Your Camacho and Hernandez… they go, Cy… for the good of the city.”
The Chief started swinging his head from side to side, all the while staring the Mayor right in the eyes. “Can’t do it,” he said. “Can’t do it.” He was seething again.
“You’re not leaving me a hell of a lot of room here… Chief Booker…” The Mayor’s sudden formality was more portentous than the Chief’s. He had more to back it up with. “Somebody’s got to go.”
Sonofabitch! This one knocked the chief off his feet… down for the count… He could feel his defiance fading… This job was the biggest thing in his whole life… his family included. Chief of Police of Miami—he had never dreamed of such a thing when he became a young cop fifteen years ago… a young black cop… and now he ran the police department in a major American city… thanks to that man right there, Dio… and now he was putting Dio in the position of having to throw him off that eminent peak, and it was a long way down… for the ex-Chief, him and his salary of $104,000 and his house in Kendall… which cost $680,000… which he never could have swung if the UBT Bank hadn’t set him up with a $650,000 mortgage at the near-prime rate of 1.2%… which they never would have done, never, were it not important for them to do favors for Mayor Cruz… which they would foreclose faster than you could say subprime borrower… reducing him just like that from being the Man, though Black, to being another subprime deadbeat black man… He’d have to take the kids out of the Lorimer School… all that, in addition to getting himself stigmatized, big-time, as a traitor to his own people. Oh, Dionisio would see to that. He’s no genius, Dio, as the world defines genius, but he sure is a genius looking out for his own hide… and a cutthroat genius, if he has to be—
—and in that microsecond of awareness, all these thoughts hit him, in a single flash of many neurons, and zzzzzaaaapped his vows and his courage all at once—
—but not his accursed vanity. Oh no, not for a second. His new vow was not to come up looking like just a run-of-the-mill weakling in front of Dio’s Cuban choir, these brownies, these potted palms… his jury. Oh, they would love to see the Big Man, the Chief, the gran negro crawling in front of old Dionisio the way they crawled. They’d love it.
His mind began racing… and then he got it… or he got something. “Well,” he said, “let me just give you one piece of advice.” ::::::See, I’ve given in without having to put it that way! I’m the one handing out the advice to him!:::::: Out loud he said, “Camacho and Hernandez… fired over this?—discharged outright? The union’s gonna go apeshit, and the union’s run by two real loudmouths, and both a them’s Cuban. They’ll keep this thing going for a month, they’ll turn it into a real inferno, they’ll have black folks” ::::::I’m damned if I’m going to say “African American” and sound like I’m walking on broken glass the