to be amusing to watch Old Dionisio squirm. Whenever things were going bad for the Mayor or driving him crazy, the Chief thought of him by his real name, Dionisio Cruz. The Mayor had done everything he could to make the whole world think of him as just plain Dio, the way William Jefferson Clinton had become Bill and Robert Dole had become Bob. The Mayor figured Dionisio, the five-syllable name of the Greek god of wine and party boys, was too unusual and too big a bellyful for a politician. He was only five-six and had a very luxurious paunch, but he had enormous energy, the best political antennae in the business, a loud voice, and an egotistical bonhomie that could take over an entire room full of people and swallow them whole. All of that was quite okay with the Chief. He had no illusions concerning the politics of the situation. He was not Miami’s first African American police chief, but the fourth. The concern was not the African American vote, which didn’t amount to much. The concern was… riots.
In 1980 a Cuban cop was accused of murdering an African American businessman, who was already lying on the ground in police custody… by bludgeoning his head until it split open and you could see his brains. Two of the Cuban’s fellow cops testified against him at his trial, saying they were there and saw him do it. But an all-white jury found him innocent, and he left the courtroom free as a bird. This set off four days of riots and wholesale slaughter in Liberty City, the worst riot in Miami’s history and perhaps the country’s. A whole string of riots ensued in Miami in the 1980s and beyond. In case after case, you had Cuban cops accused of knocking African Americans’ lights out. Liberty City, Overtown, and other African American neighborhoods became lit fuses and the bomb always went off. The latest riot was just two years ago. After that one, Dio Cruz decided to promote Assistant Chief Cyrus Booker to Chief. See? One of your own, not one of ours, runs the entire Police Department.
That was pretty transparent stuff. At the same time, there were five African American assistant chiefs in the Department—and the Mayor had chosen… me. Dio Cruz sincerely liked him and admired him, the Chief chose to believe… sincerely.
But this morning, thank God, it was his pal and admirer Dionisio himself who was caught in a bind by his own people. Usually it was him, the Chief. Outsiders, usually white people, used to talk to him with the assumption that black folks—“the African American community” was the currently enlightened phrase, and white folks uttered it like they were walking across a bed of exploded lightbulb shards—must be “awfully proud” that “one of their own” now headed the police force. Well, if they were so proud of him, they had a funny way of showing it. Every time a recruiter approached a young African American and suggested that he might make a terrific cop—the Chief had gone on this sort of mission himself—the guy would say, “Why would I want to be a traitor to my own people?” or something close to that. One kid had been so brazen as to look the Chief right in his black face and say, “Tell me why the fuck I wanna help the fucking Cubans beat up on my brothers?” No, if he had any respect on the streets from “the black community,” it was only because he was hooked up to the Power… currently. He had the power of the Man… currently. Unghhh huhhhnh… You don’t be jackin’ with the Traitor in Chief, man. He come after you and you be committing “suicide by cop.” You be committing suicide by getting a po-lice bullet shot clear through yo’ chest, and they be finding a gun on your corpse you didn’t even know you had, and they say you pulled this gun-you-never-knew-you-had on a cop, and you be giving them no choice. They got to act in self-defense. You don’t know you committing suicide. But that’s what you did when you pull this gun-you-don’t-know-you-got and aim it at the Suicide Squad. Nome sayin’?—but, hell, you ain’t even listening. Oh, I’m sorry, brother. Ain’t no way you be listening to nothing no more now.
The Cuban Suicide Squads… and so what did that make him? Oh, yeah… the Traitor in Chief. He was happy that this time it was