Men in Miami Hotels

Book excerpt: From Charlie Smith, critically acclaimed poet, author of Three Delays, and novelist of “appalling brilliance” (New York Times Book Review) comes the thrilling, moving, and violent story of Cotland Sims, a Miami gangster hellbent on helping his mother—when he steals a trove of emeralds to cover costs, he risks losing everyone he loves In Men in Miami Hotels, Smith tells the story of Cot Sims, a listing Miami gangster who returns to Key West aiming to—among other things—save his fool-proof mother from homelessness after a recent hurricane. For love, for cash, and for the hell of it, he snatches a trove of emeralds that his boss, the relentlessly vicious Albertson, keeps hidden on a small island. And then trouble, which has been coiling around him for years like a snake, bites. Cot has forty-eight hours to return the emeralds before items of equal or greater value—namely, the lives of everyone he loves—are repossessed by Albertson and his army of hired gunmen. Fleeing across the Caribbean, Cot blazes a trail of survival, skeltering between the narrowing walls of fate.