Brian Newell passed through Nelly’s office. Noise canceling headphones back in-place, she heaved an armload of folders into the maw. The Exonerator roared. Brian’s pace quickened as he fled the noise. The outer office door lay flat as a coffin’s lid — its frosted glass and The Honorable J. J. Carpenter, in gold leaf, intact.
He strode past empty commission chambers and into city hall’s lobby. The Vizier and the lesser beings were gone. The metal detector lay trampled beside Sylvie’s upended security perch. The detector’s twisted gray metal bars lay amid Sylvie’s scattered quilts, feigning the sardonic humor of post-modern sculpture. Brian glanced up at the blinking red light on Marco’s security camera before pushing through double doors, returning to that humid Miami morning. He squinted against the sun – its light refracted and brightened by impending rain.
Captain Gofuckyourself stood in front of city hall, back to Brian, hands on hips. “Come on,” he hollered. “Load them up. We’ve got a full day ahead.”
A white school bus with “Border Patrol and Enforcement” in blue letters running back to front was parked lengthwise across city hall’s traffic circle. Black wire grates covered its windows. An ICE agent atop the bus, binoculars in hand, paced from side to side — stopping at each end, he scanned the surroundings. A clutch of people, hands zip-tied behind them, struggled, twisting against their bonds. Brian recognized constituents from the city commission chambers, some of the lessers who’d gathered in the lobby, and members of Miami’s media bouquet. A pile of purses, shoulder bags, baseball caps and backpacks lay in a jumble on the graying asphalt. ICE agents, waving their arms and shouting in Spanish, Haitian Creole and English encircled them.
Off to the left, Roger Carlisle stood in the shade of a blue and gold Miami Design District umbrella. Chanting “U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A…” he thrust the umbrella skyward in time to the rhythm of his cries. Behind him in the parking lot, his generator ground on as the squad of red, white, and blue TRUMP 2024 inflatable tube men gyrated, flailed and flopped, snapping the air with whip like cracks.
On the traffic circle’s right, three ICE agents behind clear riot shields corralled all that remained of the local media, Charles Plessy and the camera man Monroe.
A sodden American flag wrapped the flagpole.
As the ICE agents harried the people beside the bus into a single line, Brian realized he was now their witness. He took out his iPhone to record, capture, and document all that he saw. Starting left, at the line’s end, a man’s face filled his phone’s screen: eyes tearing, mouth tight, dried saliva caked his lips. Brian tapped his phone, the screen blinked and held the man’s image. He moved one person right — a woman, gray hair in tight curls, mouth firm, eyes squeezed closed, head back, chin tilted upward – as if demanding God explain himself. The screen blinked and captured her bewilderment. Counting faces, he continued, from one to two to three. Making a record. From eight to nine to ten. His feeble effort to protect these people from secrecy and anonymity. To nineteen. They were human. Twenty. He was human. Twenty-one. He did not know them. Until he did. Twenty-two — a young woman, with bright green hair, small silver hoops piercing ears and lower lip, a blue, green and gray tattoo covering her right arm. Brian took the photo and gazed at Carmen’s profile. He tapped the iPhone’s screen twice. The opening bars of Bizet’s Carmen came from the pile of bags on the asphalt. Carmen turned and stepped toward the pile. An ICE agent rushed beside her, arms waving, he yelled her back into line.
Out on Bayshore Drive, the ancient Dodge pickup’s engine roared. Canting like a rearing horse, trailed by a billowing black cumulous of exhaust — a swaying spire of flattened cardboard rose skyward from its bed. The truck turned onto Pan American Drive and rumbled toward the bus, the prisoners and the government agents. Horn honking, gears grinding, its engine’s growl grew louder.
“Becker, the hell is this madness?” Captain Gofuckyourself, shouted to the man on top of the bus.
Becker focused his binoculars down range and shouted back, “Can’t tell, Cap…”
As it drew closer, the exhaust cloud overtook the truck, shrouding its progress.
Captain Gofuckyourself cried, “Spread out. Weapons drawn.”
Agents ran to defensive positions on either side of the bus; dropping to one knee, all drew
their sidearms and steadied their weapons with both hands.
The agents corralling Plessy and Monroe dropped their shields and ran toward the bus.
Captain GoFuckYourself stepped to the bus’s right side and rested his left hand on a kneeling agent’s shoulder. “Hold fire. Don’t panic.”
The exhaust cloud concealing the truck drifted toward city hall carrying the nose-stinging aroma of water mixed with burnt petrol.
A woman in the line beside the bus shouted, “Correr… Rapido… Vamanos… Correr…”
Men and women, hands bound behind them, legs pumping, ran — frantic dashes in all directions.
Charles Plessy, yelled, “Monroe, you getting this?”
Monroe muscled his camera up on his shoulder. “We’re hot, Charlie.”
Plessy, his back to the bus, shouted into his microphone. “An ICE round up today at Miami city hall descended into chaos…” The truck’s exhaust shrouded him. Its roar drowned his voice.
Roger Carlisle closed his umbrella, held it out like a fencing foil and stepped in front of a fleeing woman. Blonde hair drawn back in a ponytail, hands bound behind her, wearing black yoga pants and a blousy black and gold Versace top, she veered left. Carlisle lunged. She parried right, head-butting his chest, spinning Carlisle in a circle and toppling him like a bowling pin. The woman kept going.
The cloud drifted over the bus and enveloped Brian in an oily fog. Tiny black droplets spotted his skin, hair and seersucker. Nose wrinkling at the unctuous tang, he tapped his phone’s screen and moved through the smoke toward the strains of Bizet’s opera. He grabbed Carmen’s satchel from the pile, hung it over his left shoulder and moved toward the bus. From his own phone came Carmen’s voice, Hola. Soy Carmen… Por favor deje un mensaje. The phone beeped in English.
He shouted at the phone, “Carmen, it’s me, Brian. I’m right here.”
“Brian? Quien? Who?” she called out from his right shrouded by the cloud.
He moved toward her voice.
Carmen, hands bound behind her, stood where she had been when he snapped her photo.
Brian wrapped his hand around her bicep. “Come on. Let’s go,” he said.
“Go?” She turned, looked into his eyes. “I need to document this.”
“They’re taking you to jail.”
“I’m a citizen — born at Baptist.”
“Great, you’re a citizen. Let’s go.”
“I need to see what happens to these people. Do you think the corporate media is going to report it?”
“These people are running away. Do the same. Before you’re jailed. Deported. You won’t report anything.”
Carmen wriggled her wrist and shoulders, slipping free of the zip tie. She handed it to Brian. “They’ll let me out when they see I’m a citizen.”
Brian glanced at the zip tie in the flat of his hand. He slid it over his left wrist. “They don’t care where you’re born. I’m wearing a bow tie. They almost took me.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
“You won’t be.”
“Listen for my podcast. We’ll have lunch next week.”
“I’ve got pictures on my phone. You can have them. Interview me. They roughed me up. Tied a woman to her chair. They won’t care. We’ve got to run away before the smoke clears.”
“You do what you want, but we aren’t going anywhere.” Carmen took the satchel from Brian’s shoulder and draped its strap over her own. She dug her headphones and microphone from the bag, unwound cords and plugged both into the recorder. She fiddled with some buttons and spoke into the mic, “Prueba, check, check. Uno do tres. Escuchame Miami, aquí Carmen María Nuestra-Gómez, justo frente al ayuntamiento…”
The truck’s engine grew louder, its sound as overwhelming as the noxious cloud.
Brian squeezed his fists and spun in a circle. He faced Carmen again, as she shouted into her microphone. Her voice strained to rise above the ancient truck’s chest rattling clamor.
Captain Gofuckyourself bellowed, “Don’t panic. Hold fire.”
Publisher’s note —
“Escuchame Miami” is part of a serialized novel by Mr. Schmand.
It can be read here starting with “A Recent Thursday Morning.”
