Chapter 25. Peacock Park

After landing at Miami International Airport, we hitched a ride to Peacock Park in Coconut Grove because we remembered panhandlers hung out there. Penniless. and homeless, in the same park where we had started. We weren’t alone and fit in with the other dispossessed. It seemed that Coconut Grove’s park was the place to go when there was nowhere else to go. 

I had no hustle left in me, but Stan did. Stan’s persona attracted people needing to buy pot or acid and he was enterprising enough to provide them with whatever he could get fronted to him by some of the lower-level dealers that hung out around the park by day.

I wasn’t all that good at dealing drugs. I did, however, try to provide my share of food by going to the supermarket and filling a shopping cart as though I was buying groceries. While I was doing that I would stuff a steak in my pants and snatch a bag of beans or rice small enough to fit in one of my pockets. I’d leave my cart as though I had forgotten something and walk out the door. On one such venture, as I was filling a cart, I was stopped by a very straight looking man in his forties who psst-ed me, and lowered his voice, so that no one would hear, “Don’t look around…Do you know you are being watched by security. If you're smart, put the stuff back and walk out the door.”

“Thanks,” I answered, and, as if he needed an explanation, “I’m not good at this.”

No one heard my confession because he was gone.

From then on, I panhandled and bought food from whatever I could beg-up. I wasn’t very good at that either. I had too much pride and it reminded me of Hollywood’s destitution of spirit that took me to New Mexico.

A group of people occupied a couple of tables at the far end of the park. They always had a pot of beans going and appreciated whatever else one could add to the pot. Sometimes it would start with an onion or a potato and evolve into a great stew. This was called Stone Soup.

It was at this table that Stan spotted Michael, “Hey look, it’s the guy from Hoss Bozz’s place.”

Michael saw us, sat down next to me, and began devouring a bowl of Stone Soup like he hadn’t eaten in a while. Between slurps, he asked, “So, you got off the island okay?”

Stan directly across the table from him, and, in the manner I liked about Stan, said, “Say, you don’t gots them zombie eyes like you did at Hoss Bozz’s joint. But, Man, you still don’t look so good… like you ain’t ate.”

I didn’t like this guy either, but I was curious enough to wonder what he was about now that he was in Miami with us.

Michael said flatly, “Not many survive a curse from Hoss Bozz. Bad things happen to them. But this time his curse on you must’ve backfired.”

“What do you mean, backfired?” Stan asked. He too was wolfing down a bowl of soup.

“Bad things happen to people Hoss Bozz curses.”

“No, I mean…” Stan fumbled for words, “We’re okay. You said his curse backfired?”

Michael looked at us incredulous, “You guys don’t know?”

 “We don’t know… what?” I was getting impatient.

“Hoss Bozz was shot dead right after you left his place,” Michael stifled a sob and wiped a tear from his face. “One of his cab drivers… shot him.”

I remembered Hoss Bozz crying-out that he was being swallowed… “Shot?”

“Yes, shot dead. They thought it was you guys that did it, but changed their minds after two of the detectives said they’d checked you out before you got there. They knew you had no guns.”

“When did they check us out?” Stan was uncharacteristically slow on the draw.

It clicked with me and I got it, “I’m thinking, remember the two guys in the Mercedes?”

Stan was direct, “He gots cab drivers on kickback and cops running security. What’s this Hoss Bozz dude about? Eh? He seemed like one crazy fuck to me.”

It was as though Michael was reliving a very painful experience. He sighed and then started a brief narrative like it was a script, “Hoss Bozz took us in. He fed us and took good care of us… the whole area. He’d send us off to… you know, cities, like Chicago and Washington DC, to connect his shipments with his people. I’m an accountant and helped Josephine manage the money. Josephine was the real boss.”

“What? Shipments of what?”  I was fishing but I’d figured it out regardless.

Michael’s demeanor reminded me of an impatient school teacher drilling a couple of especially thick students, “You heard him rant… ganja, that’s what.”

I wondered, “So, why did the cab driver shoot him?”

“He thought Hoss Bozz was holding out on what he got from you guys. He couldn’t imagine that white boys would come to his place without money. The drivers were to get a cut.”

Puzzled, Stan contended, “But we didn’t get there by cab. We walked and hitched rides.”

“You didn’t get there by cab but every kid on a bicycle, every cab driver, and villager, reported every move you made before you got there.”

I questioned whether there was anything to this story. I remembered how uneasy I felt that Josephine expected us. What could Michael have done for Hoss Bozz in the States? That he was an accountant made more sense than imagining the scrawny wimp as an enforcer.

Stan had gone on another one of his errands to deliver a few hits of acid. He came back with a rough looking biker character and two other youngsters.

I had been sitting under one of the coconut palms, going over in my mind what Michael had said. What of the curse? I felt, as absurd as the idea was, Mama Cat protected me from it. That protection might’ve had something to do with the curse returning to Hoss Bozz. If that was true, and curses do work, I wondered whether it would still be a problem for me even though it backfired.

Stan interrupted my thoughts, “Max, this is Ted. He wants to go into business with us if we know where we can get a kilo.”