Voodoo Eyes (13 page)

The Black Jacobins became increasingly popular throughout Florida and then the South. Vanetta Brown was a passionate orator. Her fame and media profile rose accordingly. The media dubbed her ‘The Black Red’, and alleged that Fidel Castro was funding the group.

In 1965 heroin hit South Florida. High-grade Golden Triangle smack was smuggled almost daily into the US by military cargo planes flying from Vietnam to Florida’s army bases. Heroin became the drug of choice in Miami’s ghettos. The crime rate spiked.

The Black Jacobins declared a ‘war of shame’ on the dealers, the kingpin being Daniel Styles aka Halloween Dan. Their tactics included putting up wanted posters of known dealers all over town, picketing dealers’ homes and well-known drug spots, and forming human barricades in front of shooting galleries, forcing them to close. They also opened a free rehab clinic in Liberty City. The programme had an 80 per cent success rate.

Within two months, drug dealing and drug-related crimes in inner-city Miami dropped significantly.

On June 4, 1968, Miami police raided the Jacobin House. There was a gun battle and the building was set on fire. Ezequiel and Melody Dascal were killed in the blaze, along with five Jacobins.

Vanetta Brown allegedly escaped through a back window after shooting and killing Detective Dennis Peck – except that at least three eyewitnesses reported seeing Vanetta Brown several miles away in Miami Springs at the time of the raid. This contradictory evidence was buried in favour of that given by the two decorated and respected officers who led the raid – Eldon Burns and Abe Watson.

Over the course of the following week these officers found over a hundred kilos of heroin, $750,000 cash and numerous semi-automatic weapons in properties said to be tied to the Black Jacobins – although no corroborative evidence was ever presented linking buildings and group.

Vanetta Brown evaded a nationwide manhunt and seemingly disappeared. Then, in December 1971, Fidel Castro confirmed that she was living in Cuba, one of an estimated ninety-four US criminals the Cuban regime has granted asylum to since 1962.

Vanetta kept – and continues to keep – a very low profile. She is never seen in public and there are no known photographs of her in Cuba. She is believed to be alive and living in Havana.

The Cuban government pays $13 a day towards her living expenses.

15

Three and a half hours later Max was reading through his notes in the kitchen, waiting for the espresso machine to heat up.

The book had stirred up old memories.

Old,
old
memories.

His MTF days …

The raid on the Jacobin headquarters and the stash houses bore all the hallmarks of a classic Eldon Burns op. Max had had a hand in enough of them to know one when he saw one. The only difference was that this time it had been messy – a child had died and a cop had been killed. That never happened in his day, but by then Eldon had become so practised at stitching people up he’d got it down to a fine art.

Max thought back to Abe Watson. Joe had always despised him. Never explained why. It was there in the defensive-aggressive body language Joe adopted and the way he clamped his mouth extra tight whenever Abe’s name came up, like someone biting their tongue and trying not to vomit at the same time. Max had heard plenty of stories about Abe, most of them from Eldon: Abe and the lead-filled sap he christened his ‘nigger knocker’, Abe and the way he was
extra
harsh on black suspects, Abe always out to prove he was blue before black.

Halloween Dan. Max remembered Styles all too well from his days in Patrol; the sight of him, decked out like a dayglo pumpkin. The bright orange Caddy he’d driven, with orange-walled tyres, orange seats, orange-tinted windows. He always rode with four women – three in the back, one in front; black, white and brown, all in spray-on orange dresses.

Everyone in Miami knew who Halloween Dan was and how he made his money, but no one could touch him. He always avoided each potential bust. Evidence and key witnesses in cases against him would routinely disappear. Rumours abounded: that he was a snitch, that he was selling his high-grade smack for the CIA or the Feds, that he had himself some powerful friends.

Then, one day in 1973, he just disappeared. He was presumed murdered, hacked up and dumped at sea for the sharks and the lobsters. The drug trade in Miami was subsequently taken over by the Colombians, the Cubans and the Haitian, Solomon Boukman.

Of course, Max
could
have been wrong, and Vanetta Brown and the Black Jacobins really had been dealing heroin, but he’d known Eldon and just how bad he was.

He guessed the following: Eldon’s political paymaster – Victor Marko – and maybe the FBI as well – wanted rid of Vanetta Brown and her organisation. They gave Eldon the job in exchange for more power, more influence, more money. He gratefully accepted.

If Brown was innocent and the drugs, money and guns had been planted, she still had a motive to kill Eldon. A solid one. Her husband and daughter – her family – had died in the raid.

She would be seventy-two now. She could have paid a hitman to kill Eldon. That was feasible. Revenge never got old.

But what about Joe? In 1968 he was an ordinary Patrol cop.

Where did he fit in?

What had
he
done to her?

Something wasn’t right.

Max’s phone rang.

It was Jack Quinones.

16

‘How are you, Jack?’

Max pulled up a chair and sat down.

‘I don’t like Miami any more,’ Quinones said.

‘I know.’

‘I like you even less.’

‘I know that too.’

They were sitting outside a busy Creole restaurant in Bayside Mall. The place had a great view of the marina, which was clogged with tourist boats swallowing and disgorging groups of people. The operators offered tours of the tiny surrounding islands, where the rich and famous lived. At a loose end Max had gone on one to see what tourists were spending their money on outside of clubs and coke. When the boat stopped outside a celebrity’s house, the loudspeakers blasted a snatch of something appropriate – a movie theme, a song, a catchphrase. At Sylvester Stallone’s place they played the theme from
Rocky
at full volume. It had made him thankful he’d never been famous.

Quinones looked terrible. It had taken Max a hard look and a double-take before he recognised him. He’d withered since their last encounter. Eleven years ago he’d been swarthy, black-haired and goateed, his body heavy. Now he was thin, sallow, sunken-cheeked and clean-shaven. His lined face looked like it had been painstakingly glued together from a thousand fragments. His hair was the colour of ash on snow.

Quinones had been through hell recently. His wife died of cancer in 2004. He watched the disease take her away very slowly, piece by piece, over three years. Every night she woke up in extreme pain, screaming and crying, the illness fighting over her insides. It was a tug-of-war with tightly clamped jaws filled with sharp and serrated teeth at both ends. One night she ran out of morphine. The pharmacies were shut and she was in agony. Jack needed to do something quick so he went out and scored smack on the street. That helped her through the night.

The next day he told his boss about it. He was disciplined and demoted to a teaching post. So much for honesty. Not that Jack minded. In fact, it was what he’d wanted, because his new role let him spend more time with his wife.

‘Far as I was concerned, the last time I saw you was the last time I’d see you,’ said Quinones. ‘But Joe was a good friend and he asked me to talk to you if something like this happened.’

‘Did he have reason to think he was going to get killed?’

‘No. He just asked and I promised.’

‘I didn’t know you two were that tight.’

‘There’s a lot you didn’t know.’ The only thing that hadn’t changed about Quinones was his voice – its natural Latin lilt held in check by buffers, officious and gruff.

A waitress came over with a smile, a spiel and two menus. Max knew they weren’t going to be eating even before Jack cut her off at the specials and asked for water. Max ordered coffee.

‘Joe ever tell you how we met?’ Quinones asked.

‘Didn’t I introduce you?’

‘We were on first-name terms long before you put on a uniform.’

That surprised Max and he didn’t try to hide it. For a few moments his mouth hung open like that of a beached fish.

He had first met Jack in the summer of seventy-six. He was impressed: Jack wasn’t your typical Fed bureaucrat, looking down his nose at local law enforcement, using his smarts to reflect your perceived stupidity; he was simply interested in doing his job and catching criminals.

Quinones was investigating an IRA gun-running operation. The weapons had all come from Argentina and been re-routed to Ireland via Miami. By chance, Max and Joe were investigating an Irishman who’d absconded first to South America, then to Miami after being caught in a credit scam in Cork. They teamed up with Quinones, pooled resources and brought down a small network of smugglers and money launderers.

Max introduced Joe to Quinones one night while they were working on the case. Or so he thought. The two certainly acted like they didn’t know each other. The tentative small talk, searching for common ground to build a conversation on. Boxing had been that junction, and booze brought them closer. Now, Max couldn’t help but feel hurt. He and Joe had shared everything. There’d been no secrets between them. Supposedly.

‘Where’s this going, Jack?’

‘Why are you involved in a police investigation?’

‘Who said I was involved?’

‘Don’t fuck with me. Your best friend gets killed right in front of you, and you’re doing what?
Nothing?
Yeah, right. You knew who it was, he’d be dead already.’

‘Who said it was a he?’

The waitress brought the drinks over. Quinones waited until she was out of earshot before continuing.

‘Word is Vanetta Brown’s in town,’ he said.

‘You know her?’ Max asked.

‘I’ll talk, you listen. When I’m done, we’re done. No questions. Understood?’

‘Yeah.’

‘When she was still in Overtown, I was working a COIN-TELPRO for the Bureau here in Miami. The dirty tricks brigade. We were undermining Black Power groups. Not just them. We targeted the Klan and the American Nazi Party too. We were equal-opportunity mischief-makers. We’d plant undercover operatives in the organisations and keep tabs on them. And we did other stuff as well, fun stuff, like undermining reputations with rumour and unsubstantiated gossip. If we couldn’t get them on crime or Commie ties, or any kind of sex, we just made it up. Some of the stuff even became true.’ Quinones smiled. ‘The public are basically fucken’ dumb. They’ll believe anything. That’s why they voted for Bush the Second.’

‘You’re some Fed, Jack.’

‘I’m getting used to the idea of retirement.’

Max finished his coffee.

‘I handled the operatives within the Black Jacobins – Brown’s group,’ Quinones said. ‘The local membership was young. And angry. Black kids brought up by parents who remembered the Liberty City wall. Parents who remembered redneck cops calling them ‘nigger’ and ‘boy’. Parents who’d tried to fit in their whole lives, trying to be white with their hair-straightening parlours and Uncle Tom obsequiousness. But they still had to sit in the back of the bus and drink out of segregated water fountains. Their kids grew up and thought, Fuck that – that ain’t gonna be me.

‘The way we infiltrated the Jacobins was by getting a handful of young black guys fresh out of police academy, right before they got assigned. They’d already had the basics drummed into them. We took them and turned them into spies. We promised them Bureau jobs or a fast track to detective. Joe Liston was my guy, my operative.’

‘
Joe
…?’ Max started but shock choked his voice.

‘He saw what looked like a good opportunity and he took it,’ said Quinones.

‘Joe? Sell out his own people? I don’t fucken’ believe you, Jack.’

‘That’s not the way it was. First up, Joe didn’t ‘sell’ anybody out. You think Hoover would’ve created COINTELPRO if he didn’t have just cause? And it wasn’t about race either. Hoover came down on white extremists as hard as he did on blacks – Panthers, Klan, Nazis – they were all the same to him. Like I said, equal fucken’ opportunities. Get over it. Extremists are all as bad as each other.’

‘What about Martin Luther King? He wasn’t an “extremist”!’

‘Back then, to us, he was,’ said Quinones. ‘But so was Jesus in his time, if that’s any consolation. And look what happened to him.’

‘When did you recruit Joe?’

‘Nineteen sixty-five. He didn’t volunteer. He’d lied on his police application form, said he didn’t have a criminal record. He had two unpaid parking tickets. He said he’d forgotten to pay ’em and blah-blah, but that was basically his career fucked in the womb. Cops have to be honest and law-abiding. At least, they did then.’ He winked at Max. ‘So we gave him a choice: work for us for a while and we’ll wipe the slate clean. Joe worked for us for a year and a half. He reported directly to me. I was his only contact.

‘He got close to the inner circle. Vanetta Brown trusted him. He never found any evidence of criminal wrongdoing the whole time he was there. Neither did any of our other guys.’

‘So Joe stopped working for you in, what, sixty-seven?’

‘Yes and no. He said he couldn’t see the point of our operation. The Black Jacobins weren’t a threat to national security. They were doing a lot of good in the community. Which was absolutely true. He joined the Miami PD. He could’ve had a Bureau job if he wanted one. He had the right temperament for it. And the smarts. Or he could’ve gone to another state, but Miami was what he knew, what he wanted. Didn’t even want the fast-track option either. That was the way Joe was. Honest and principled to a fault.’

‘What about the drug dealing?’

‘Joe never saw any of that. Neither did any of our other operatives,’ said Quinones.