Back to Blood: A Novel by Tom Wolfe

Author:Tom Wolfe
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction / General
ISBN: 9780316214582
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2012-10-23T04:00:00+00:00

11

Ghislaine

Finding a long-sleeved shirt to cover up those famous—they were literally in the news today—those famous Nestor Camacho muscles of his took some doing. But it had to be done. Then he remembered a checked flannel shirt he had stuck away on the shelf in the closet he and Yevgeni shared. Obviously a long-sleeved shirt made of flannel with a dark check design was not not not the ideal choice on a hot hot hot Miami halogen-heat-lamp day like this… but it was the best he could do. It was pretty ugly, actually, and he wore it hanging outside the pants to make himself look like a feed sack full of modesty… all this, because he knew the story in the Herald this morning would be the Godzilla in the room anywhere his CSTeammates laid eyes on him. The thing was on the front page, with a smaller version of the picture of him with his shirt off after the Mast incident.

Sure enough, Nestor, Hernandez, Nuñez, and Flores, another cop in the unit, had just settled into a booth at Kermit’s, the little short-order joint just down the block from the big CVS—come to think of it, every joint in Miami seemed to be just down the block from one big CVS or another—anyway, they had just sat down in the booth when Hernandez said, “Who is this John Smith, Nestor? What’s it cost to hire a PR man, anyway?”

Oooof! That one nailed Nestor right between the eyes. But he managed to lie coolly, in a put-on tone, “As far as I know, Sarge, he’s just a guy who recognizes real talent when he sees it.”

Good one. Nuñez and Flores laughed appreciatively. Sergeant Hernandez didn’t. “Yeah, but he didn’t see it. He wasn’t there. But you’d never know it from this—” Hernandez picked up a copy of the Yo No Creo el Herald as if it were a toxic object and began reading out loud. “ ‘The rope-climbing cop, twenty-five-year-old Nestor Camacho, Police Department medal-of-valor winner a couple of months ago for carrying a panicked Cuban refugee down, bodily, from atop a seventy-foot-high schooner mast, yesterday left fellow cops—and a pair of Overtown crack house suspects—agog’—what the hell’s a gog?”—appreciative chuckles from Nuñez and Flores—“ ‘With yet another feat of strength. Camacho and his partner, Sergeant Jorge Hernandez,’ unfortunately not a legend in his own time himself—” More chuckles from Flores and Nuñez, and Hernandez swelled up with his newly found gift for wit—

Nestor broke in. “Hey, come on, Sarge, it doesn’t say that!”

“Gee, maybe I misread it,” said Hernandez. He continued reading, “Camacho and his partner, Sergeant Jorge Hernandez, still a virgin in the Land of the Legends—were trying—”

Nestor rolled his eyes up into his skull and moaned, “Give me—a—break…”

“—‘trying to arrest TyShawn Edwards, twenty-six,’ ” Hernandez went on, “ ‘and Herbert Cantrell, twenty-nine, both of Overtown, on drug charges when things turned deadly. According to police, Edwards, six-five and 275 pounds, had both hands around Hernandez’s neck, choking

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