Primary Colors (49 page)

"Wait a minute," Libby said. "Co--"

"Cocaine," Eddie said. "He loved the shit. Hell, we all loved the shit--but he's the only one of us who's a candidate for sainthood." "It doesn't fit," I said, shocked--and sickened--by this, and angry with Eddie Reyes for pushing this in our faces.

"With the current Senor Recto--no way it fits, chiquito," Eddie purred. "You see him on the tube and he's practically a virgin. But how old are you? Where you were twenty years ago? In diapers. You ought to understand," he said, turning to Libby. "Are you the same now you were twenty years ago?"

"Abso-FUCKING-lutely," Libby said.

Eddie looked at her and laughed. "I'll bet you are," he said. "I just look a little different," she added.

"But you do remember when everyone was doing everything, right?" Eddie continued. "You remember when people were saying cocaine was about as dangerous as marijuana. Word was, down here, they were even tooting up in the White House." And then he softened a bit: "Look, I ain't gonna testify against Freddy. I ain't gonna say a word. You were reporters, I'da given you my Tidewater rap and then sent you home. But I'm not the only guy in town. There are folks might want to make a fortune selling this to the National Flash. If your guy Stanton's a real shit, he'll reach out and touch someone--put in a call, start the ball rolling. I guess you guys know all about how that works. And I will fucking weep when Freddy goes down, because it will reflect back on my sister, who has put her life together okay now, and on my nephews. But he shoulda never gotten back into the game. He made the right choice when he quit in '78, came damn close to having his cover blown from what I hear. He should've left well enough alone. But down he will go. This is America. You can bank on it."

"I don't believe it," I said in the car heading back across the causeway. "He's just trying to lead us off the scent."

"Oh shit, Henry-why would he even bother?" Libby said dismissively. "He's not at risk in any way. Even if Freddy did all the things Reyes said he didn't do-even if he quietly helped make his wife and brother a fortune-Eddie's still clean. He was just a businessman, just doin' business. But Picker is fucked either way. If he didn't do anything bent, it still looks like shit. It still looks like four thousand man-hours of investigative reporting and Lord knows how many column inches of bullshit when the scorps get wind. And even if they don't come up with a scintilla of a fart in the end, Henry baby, the mere fact that they were looking-the mere fact that Sunshine existed, with Picker's wife and his brother and his brother-in-law turning any sort of profit at all-is gonna come off just marginally more benign than if Freddy had personally knocked off half the banks in Tampa. Henry, this is the world we inhabit. This is our lives. This is what we've been living the past few months. Why should Picker be immune? 'ALLEGED' is an indictment in a political campaign. So, yeah, I don't think the cocaine stuff was Eddie working any detour."

"Then what?" I asked. "It was weird. It was just so . . . gratuitous." "Payback can be therapeutic," Libby said. "You gotta figure Eddie's been storing up a shitload of pissed-offedness ever since Freddy went recto on him. And you gotta say, he's got a point-if Freddy was snowed in. I mean: Drugs but no deals? A very bent sort of integrity. I suppose you gotta admire it."

"You think it's true?"

"Well, you look at Freddy Picker back then, you look at the videotape-and he sure was a bouncy little fucker," Libby said. Then: "Henry, you are an open fucking book. Always were. You're rooting for Picker."

"And what are you doing?"

"I'm conducting a "scientific experiment," she said. "I am the Marie Curie of the shit world."

"Libby, we've busted enough dust," I said. "Why can't we go home now?"

"We've got to see it through," she said. "I will not consider this a satisfying personal experience unless we know exactly what Freddy Picker did and who he did it to. Even if," she added, "I'll be disappointed to learn it."

"But it'd take weeks--if ever," I said.

"How quickly, Henri, did we nail that shitbird Cashmere?" "About as fast as the governor did, most likely." I said, surprising myself. I'd never made a joke at Jack Stanton's expense before. "Henry Burton! Irreverence! Your conversational repertoire is like--EXPLODING--before my very eyes. If you could start discoursing-- No, not even that. just, like, personal opinions on Brahms' German Requiem, or maybe why you think Beethoven couldn't do opera. Does grunge have legs. Anything. You do that, we could go into business, be partners--like Starsky and Hutch--and I wouldn't be bored. It would be a life."

"You ever read Middlemarch?" I asked.

"George Eliot?" she said. "How could such a smart woman have such a fucking pathetic, self-destructive sex life?"

"It was the nineteenth century," I said.

"She was a rebel, she broke rules," Libby said, "and she weenied out on her own life. But then, who am Ito talk?"

"Shit, Libby," I said. "Let's go home. What else can we do here?" "Ralphie will know."

"Well, yeah," Ralph Potter said, hammering a crab claw and looking slightly ridiculous in his plastic bib. He was a classic state trooper, big and buzz cut, but with some irony in the crow's feet. "There were rumors."

"There were rumors he was a junkie; there were rumors he was flicking around on her, and vice versa; there were rumors he was gay; there were rumors she was gay," Judy Lipinsky said. "That was one crazy time. Coke had just come in, and it was a monster--and yeah, I guess the governor was down here a lot. He made the scene. It didn't seem like such a big deal: in the old days, it was okay for politicians to make the scene. She, the wife, was from here. And who wants to stay in Tallahassee if you're not under duress?"

I was drifting, fighting of sleep, picking at a seafood salad; I hadn't gotten much rest the night before. This was a very noisy restaurant--no problem for Judy and Libby, who could be heard in an avalanche, but Ralph spoke softly, slowly, and you had to strain to hear him.

"Ralphie," Libby asked. "What sort of rumors?"

"What you said," he said. "Drugs."

"What flavor?" Libby asked.

"Just what you said," he said, irritated. He knew something. And since he was willing--however reluctantly--to show that he knew something, Libby was sure to find out what it was. This was a negotiation. They were negotiating over discretion. Ralph was saying, Okay, I'll tell you, but I don't like this, I'm only doing this because you're an old friend. And you better be goddamn careful. And Libby was saying: I'll protect you and your source, but we both know you're going to tell me. She was saying this by not saying anything, by just staring at him, twirling great forkloads of linguini with seafood and allowing the quiet to settle in.

"Oh, for Chrissake, Ralphie," Judy finally said.

"There's a guy," Ralph said after another chastening moment of silence, directed mostly at his wife.

Libby stared at him.

"A former statie."

Libby twirled and stared.

"Name Reggie Duboise," Ralph said.

"And?" Judy asked. This was her interrogation now

"He was detailed to the governor whenever the governor came to Miami," Ralph said. "He was Picker's driver. He had a problem. He owes me a little."

"What kind of problem?" Judy asked.

"A running nose," Ralph said, eyes narrowing, angry with his wife. "I was his superior. He came to me, all fucked up. He needed help--and I got him a quiet little leave, with the understanding that he'd resign as soon as he got his problem taken care of."

"Why the break?" Libby asked.

"He was a good man," Ralph said. "And a lot of fucked-up things were going down in those days, as you said. I made a judgment he'
d m
ade a mistake and could get himself clean. I didn't think humiliation would help him any."

Judy came halfway out of her chair, threw her arms around Ralph's neck and gave him a long, passionate kiss on the mouth. She turned to Libby. "See," she said. "It wasn't his badge or his gun."

Libby nodded: touche. "So where is he now?" she asked.

"Doing community work," Ralph said. "They call him the Mayor of Liberty City."

We found the Mayor of Liberty City in a garbage-strewn vacant lot on Saturday morning with about twenty twelve-year-olds wearing bright yellow baseball hats and holding large green litter bags. He was an imposing black man, a huge upper torso precarious on long, thin legs, with a gray beard and furious eyes; he was wearing a Nelson Mandela T-shirt and khaki bush shorts. "Welcome to the Little Negro Leagues," he said, when Libby and I pulled up. "This is spring training. We clear the field, we cut a diamond. If we build it, they may come."

"We'll help," Libby volunteered. And we did, for several hours, and it felt very good--something actually got done. It was a hot clear morning that drifted from tolerable to bleach-white as the sun dragged itself to the top of the sky; we stopped every half hour or so and gave the kids fruit juice in small paper cups. Libby quickly flushed salmon-pink; huge, dark crescents of sweat radiated out from her armpits, turning her enormous olive shift black. I was drenched and dusty as well, but not quite so spectacularly. I lost myself in the work, the first sustained physical labor I'd done in I couldn't remember how long. I didn't pay much attention to the kids, certainly not as much as Libby (who tried, without much luck, to lead them in a Smokey Robinson's Greatest Hits sing-along--most were too young to know the songs). By noon the lot was cleared, a pyramid of green litter bags triumphant on the sidewalk.

"You want to come back next week and rake?" Reggie Duboise asked, after sending the kids home. "Or you gonna be too busy destroying a friend of mine?"

"Where do you want to talk about it?" Libby asked.

"NO fucking where," Reggie said. "But there's a McDonald's a few blocks down, and it's air-conditioned."

Duboise ordered himself several Big Macs, Libby ordered herself several quarter-pounders with cheese; I had a medium Diet Coke, which tasted like liquid cardboard. "You know," Libby said, "I've never understood why they wouldn't do a Mac with quarter-pound patties."

"Fuck you," Duboise said. McDonald's wasn't built for people his size; he and Libby sitting in the same booth represented a serious population problem, but he was working the discomfort angle. He didn't want us to feel too easy about our work.

"And you know what else?" he said, taking a fierce, noisy climactic sip from his Coke. "Fuck you. I just want to make my utter disgust perfectly clear. I also want it clear that I will never say a public word against Freddy Picker; in fact, I will fucking deny everything I tell you now. I'm only doing this shit because I owe Ralph Potter my life and he asked me to cooperate, and he ain't asked a thing from me from the day he saved my life until now. But I want you to know," and he looked at me very evenly, "I think you're scum."

"You drove for the governor?" Libby asked.

"Yeah," he said, "and it was a fucking privilege."

"Why?"

"Because he was a decent human being who got caught up in something he didn't expect."

"Which was cocaine?"

"None of us had any idea what it was, except it made you feel like God. And the governor would--score. And, y'know, I don't know how it started--how it became clear to us that we were both into the shit. Maybe it was just that everyone was into it then, maybe you just saw it in each other's eyes. But, at some point, it was clear. It wasn't grotesque. He wasn't . . . like me. I was a fucking animal. But I never thought he was as fucked up as me. You know how it is, you're always doin' junkie trigonometry: I am more fucked up than A, but less flicked up than B. I thought he controlled it pretty well, but then, what did I know? I always imagined him living a Father Knows Best life up in Tallahassee, then coming down here to take vacations from having to be perfect. I never asked myself, Why is this guy messin
g w
ith his life this way? When you're a cop, you don't look for explanations of people fucking up--you just assume it: people fuck up. But there are amateurs and professionals. The governor fucked up like an amateur."

"Where would he score?" Libby asked gently.

"There was a guy . . ."

"The same guy, always?"

"Yeah. Lorenzo Delgado, upper-class Cuban--a lawyer, I think. Lived in a classy old building in Coral Gables. Another amateur, at first. I think he and the governor knew each other socially, met through the wife's crowd. But Renzo got snow-blind real bad. He began to deal, and deal heavily enough to draw attention."

Libby didn't say anything.

"Yeah, yeah," Reggie Duboise said. "I saved the governor's ass. I was down in the car. He was up with Renzo. Sometimes you just get lucky. A narc you once knew will stroll up to the car, the governor's car, and say, 'I'm not so sure you want to be in this neighborhood. It's not very safe.' So I run upstairs and I found them. And I say to the governor, 'Stevie is calling you, something urgent up north.' Stevie was his chief of staff. And he--we--got out of there, just in time. And it kind of focused the mind. He sat in the backseat of the car and he began to cry, his hand up over his eyes, and I sat in the front seat, crying too. And you know, I didn't know what to do, what to say. Because we'd never really said anything in the first place, we had no vocabulary for this shit. I just got him the fuck out of there as fast I could, to the airport--out. I opened the door for him, and we just looked at each other, our eyes met, and we didn't say anything, but I knew we were both thinking the same thing: 'Is this who we are?' " Duboise gathered all the sandwich wrappings and placed them neatly on the tray; he policed the area. "And then," he continued, "I went and found Potter, and I told him everything--except for the part about the governor--and he said, 'Reggie, you're a good cop. Take yourself a leave of absence, get cleaned up, and then I don't ever want to see you around a state barracks again.' I was lucky that way--luckier than the governor. There was no Ralph Potter for him to go to, and I think he needed someone. He quit the job a few weeks after that, the press conference you keep seeing on the news. I never saw him again."