Afraid of the Dark (6 page)

Chapter Eleven

O
n Saturday morning Jack found himself surrounded by a sea of spandex. Headed for CocoPlum, one of south Florida’s tony waterfront communities, he was stuck behind hundreds of cyclists—a side-by-side wall that stretched across three lanes and moved at the mind-numbing speed of eleven miles per hour. Cartegena Circle—a suburban south-Florida version of the vehicular insanity surrounding the Arc de Triomphe—was not just the meeting place of choice for weekend warriors on wheels. It was quite possibly the world’s greatest concentration of bulging blobs of jelly who had absolutely no business wearing form-fitting clothing.

Jack was inching around the circle in his ten-year-old Saab convertible with the ragtop down, practically riding on the rear bumper of a new Maserati—so new, in fact, that it had a temporary tag. Bullet gray with dark tinted windows. Chrome wheels so shiny that they couldn’t have left the showroom floor more than two hours ago. Jack wondered how anyone could plunk down a quarter-mill on a new Maserati in the post–hold-on-to-your-ass-cuz-I-just-lost-mine economy. The answer was splashed across the back window in block white letters:
FLORIDAFORECLOSURES.COM
.

Talk about a sign of the times.

Jack steered into CocoPlum, stopped at the guard house, and rolled down the window. “I’m headed to the Mays residence,” he said.

The guard jotted down his license plate number and offered quick directions. Jack followed the line of tall royal palms toward the water.

Last night’s phone call had come as a total shock. Jack still hadn’t decided to try the case. Even if he had, never in a million years would he have guessed that his first interview would be the victim’s father. Then again, never in a
billion
years would Jack have thought that Chuck Mays would call and insist on meeting him—alone. Jack was fully prepared for an angry lecture on why he shouldn’t stoop to defending the man who had murdered McKenna Mays.

Jack pulled into the driveway of a tri-level Mediterranean-style mansion. The new Mays residence was far more impressive and in a much pricier neighborhood than the one that had burned to the ground. The eight-bedroom waterfront estate hadn’t risen from the ashes with just insurance proceeds. In the past three years, Chuck Mays had made a pot of money in the data-broker business with a service that delivered billions of dossiers to police, private investigators, lawyers, reporters, and insurance companies. Success was relative, however. He now lived alone.

Jack was walking up the driveway when that new Maserati came flying around the corner, tires squealing as it pulled into the driveway behind him. A muscle-bound man with a surfer’s suntan and shoulder-length blond hair stepped toward him.

“Chuck Mays,” he said, shaking Jack’s hand. He was wearing nylon shorts and a sleeveless work-out shirt, the “V” of sweat on his chest suggesting that he’d just come from the gym.

“Nice car,” said Jack.

“Not my style. Got it on the cheap, but I’ll probably sell it. Basically for guys with little dicks.”

“You own a foreclosure company?”

“You mean that sign in the back window? Fuck no. Mr. Foreclosures-dot-com got foreclosed on, and I snatched up his wheels. Ain’t that fucking great?”

Jack had come expecting to meet the still-grieving father of a teenage girl. Instead, he found Hulk Hogan’s younger clone, who dropped the F-word like a carpet bomber. But Jack wasn’t fooled. “Chuck Mays could be the most intelligent human being you will ever meet,” Neil had told him at dinner the night before.

“So,” said Jack. “You wanted to talk?”

“Yeah.” He pressed the keyless alarm, and the Maserati chirped. “Follow me.” He led Jack up the walkway and into the house. It had all the charm of an unfurnished hotel lobby: twenty-foot ceilings, enormous crown moldings, bare marble floors, and naked white walls—not a rug, painting, or framed photograph anywhere. The chandelier in the foyer still had the price tag hanging from it.

“How long have you lived here?” asked Jack.

“Moved in after Shada passed away,” Mays said.

Jack had, of course, heard about his wife’s suicide. Lose a daughter, then a wife, and who could give a rat’s ass about decorating a new house?

Jack followed him toward the kitchen. Mays offered him a barstool at the granite counter and went to the refrigerator.

“You want a beer?”

It was not yet noon, but pointing that out to a guy like Mays would have probably earned Jack a major wedgie.

“Sure,” he said.

Mays popped open two cans and put one in front of Jack. “Cheers,” he said, and then he guzzled down most of it. Jack half expected him to start burping out the entire Mays alphabet:
fucking-A, fucking-B. . .

“I didn’t used to drink, you know,” said Mays.

Jack knew what he was saying. “I hear you.”

Mays had a little beer foam on his mustache. He took care of it with a backhand swipe of the wristband.

“Your client called me from jail the other night,” said Mays.

“I heard about that in court yesterday,” said Jack.

“Told me where he was when McKenna was murdered.”

Jack wasn’t sure how to respond, so he let Mays keep talking.

“I’ve been giving his story a lot of thought,” said Mays.

“I know it must sound hard to believe,” said Jack.

Mays locked eyes with him, and for a moment Jack wondered if he was going to reach over the counter and slug him. Finally, Mays stepped away, took a file from a stack of papers on the kitchen table, and laid it on the countertop in front of Jack.

“What’s this?” asked Jack.

“Payroll records for my company. It’s from three years ago, when Jamal worked for me.”

Jack opened the file and found his client’s name on the list of employees.

Mays said, “We had automatic deposit for Jamal’s paychecks to go to his bank every week.”

Jack glanced at the transaction dates on the ledger. “So is it a coincidence that he was off the payroll for the two pay periods before your daughter was murdered?”

“Jamal stopped showing up for work. So I stopped paying him. Tried calling him, got no answer. Went to his apartment. Nobody there. Called his mother in Minnesota. No idea where he was. She even filed a missing person report.”

Jack looked at him, confused. “All that actually
supports
Jamal’s claim that he was abducted before the crime.”

“I realize that,” he said.

Jack studied his expression. The guy was no easy read. “Why would you help me defend the man accused of killing your daughter?”

Mays drained the last of his beer, then crushed the empty aluminum can in his bare hand. “Jamal Wakefield was sitting in Gitmo for three years.”

“Well, nominally at least it was Khaled al-Jawar.”

“That’s exactly my problem,” said Mays. “Those fuckers knew they had Jamal. But no one told me. They just let me go on thinking for three years that the man who killed my daughter was still on the loose, never going to be brought to justice.”

“I can see where you’d be angry.”

“This isn’t about anger. I’m just saying they have a different agenda, and I understand that. They think Jamal’s a terrorist, and they want to keep him locked up.”

“The Justice Department did take an unusual position in court yesterday,” said Jack.

“What do you mean?”

“Normally, when a criminal defendant wants access to classified information, the feds make him jump through all the hoops under the Confidential Information Protection Act. The government doesn’t care how long it takes. But in Jamal’s case, they’re suddenly all concerned about the swift administration of justice.”

“You see what I’m saying?” said Mays. “It doesn’t really matter if he killed McKenna. So long as he ends up behind bars, it works out either way for them.”

“But it matters for you.”

“I just want the truth. I think you do, too, which is why you’re on the fence about taking this case to trial.”

“Who told you that I was on the fence?”

He shook his head, as if Jack were naïve. “My supercomputers can search eight billion files in an instant, tell me where you lived when you were in college, and pull up the Social Security number of every man, woman, and child who ever lived in the same zip code. Give me another minute and I can do the same thing for two hundred seventy million other folks, and not a single one will have the slightest idea that he was being checked out. Then, if you like, we can compile a complete personal dossier for every high-school graduate who earns six figures, smokes Marlboros, uses the name of his childhood pet as his preferred online password, and has a landlord named Bob.”

Jack hesitated, but he knew Mays wasn’t kidding. “You can’t click a mouse and know how I feel about a case.”

“No, I’m not quite there . . . yet,” Mays said with a smile. Then he turned serious. “But I do know this: You wouldn’t be anywhere near this case if something wasn’t telling you that Jamal is innocent.”

Jack didn’t respond.

“Vince Paulo is a friend of mine,” said Mays. “I know he’s one of your personal heroes. And why shouldn’t he be? He was the lead hostage negotiator who stopped a raving lunatic from killing your best friend.”

Jack couldn’t deny the facts.

Mays said, “You’d have to be one incredibly cold and ungrateful son of a bitch to defend the guy who blinded him.”

“It’s a tough one,” said Jack.

“Damn right it is. But we both know one thing.”

“What?”

“If Jamal is innocent, that means the man who murdered my daughter and took Paulo’s eyesight is still out there, a free man. That’s why you’re on this case, isn’t it?”

“I’m not comfortable having this conversation,” said Jack.

Mays grabbed him by the wrist, his move lightning quick. “I couldn’t care less about your comfort.”

“Let go of my arm.”

Mays squeezed harder, his bicep bulging. “I need to know if they’ve got the wrong guy. I have
the right
to know.”

“Mr. Mays, let go of my arm.”

“Tell me the truth. Would you be in this case if you really thought Jamal did it?”

They were locked in a stare down. Mays’ eyes were like lasers, but it was the kind of question Jack would never answer.

“I’m giving you one last chance,” said Jack. “Let go of my arm.
Now.
”

Mays had the grip of a mountain climber, not a computer genius. His eyes narrowed with anger and then, finally, he released Jack.

“Get out of my house,” said Mays.

Jack flexed his wrist, got the blood flowing, then walked straight to the foyer and opened the front door.

“Swyteck,” Mays called out, his voice booming down the hallway.

Jack stopped in the open doorway, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t even glance back.

“Defend him if you want,” said Mays. “But if he’s guilty and you get him off, I’ll kill you. That’s not a threat. That’s just the way it is.”

Jack stepped out. Behind him the door closed with an echo that traveled beyond the bare walls of the big, empty house.

Chapter Twelve

P
.O., no, no!”

Jack recognized his grandfather’s shouting the moment he entered the Alzheimer’s wing. It was coming from inside his room at the end of the hallway—that same pointless rant against the post office that Jack had heard many times before.

“P.O., NO, NO!”

The thought of his grandfather swatting at nothing and shouting nonsense made Jack want to rush to his side, but Saturday lunch was a peak visiting hour at Sunny Gardens. The hallway was clogged with clusters of residents and guests, many using wheelchairs or walkers. Merely the wind from his sprint could have knocked over most of them, and Jack had more sense than to run through an Alzheimer’s nursing home anyway. He hurried as quickly and as safely as he could to the open doorway.

“It’s okay, Grandpa,” he said as he entered the room.

His grandfather didn’t seem to notice him, but thankfully the shouting had ceased. He was sitting up in the mechanical bed, quietly staring up at an elderly woman who was standing at his bedside.

“That’s my bubbala,” she said in a soft voice of praise. She was holding his hand and stroking his forehead. Jack didn’t recognize her, and instead of the blue uniform of a Sunny Gardens employee, she was wearing a green cotton dress with a thin white sweater. Her hair was done in the classic style of a fading generation that went to the beauty parlor every Saturday morning. Jack wasn’t sure if Grandpa recognized her either, but she had an undeniably calming effect on him. They couldn’t seem to take their eyes off each other.

“Who are you?” asked Jack.

Her gaze remained fixed on the older Swyteck, and she answered in the same soothing tone. “Who am I?” she asked, smiling at Jack’s grandfather. “I’m Ruth, of course. Bubbala’s main squeeze.”

Grandpa has a girlfriend?

Jack watched them. Ruth was singing to him now, too soft for Jack to hear the words, but the tune was familiar and pleasant enough, even if it was in an older voice that cracked now and then. Grandpa’s eyes were closing, and in a matter of minutes, he was sound asleep. Ruth kissed him gently on the forehead.

“I love you,” she whispered, and then she stepped away from the safety rail.

Jack tried not to appear too shocked. His grandfather had been a widower for twenty years, and Jack had no idea that he’d even dated since.

“I’m Ruth Rosenstein,” she said, offering her hand.

Jack shook it and started to introduce himself.

“You’re Jack, I know,” she said. “Bubbala’s told me all about you before . . .” She glanced toward the bed and smiled sadly. “Well, before.”

“How long have you two you known each other?”

“Oh, it’s been about five years now.”

Jack suddenly felt small. He was in his thirties when his maternal grandmother had finally come over from Cuba, and he’d spent countless hours building a relationship with her, making up for lost time. Grandpa Swyteck had lived most of his life just a plane ride away in Chicago, yet Jack knew so little about his father’s father. Jack saw him on holidays and at important family events, but the relationship was never deep. It was more like the obligatory grandson visits, even after he retired to Florida. Even after he went into the facility.

“Do you have time for a cup of coffee with me in the cafeteria?”

“I’d like that,” said Jack.

An old Irving Berlin tune—“I’ll Be Loving You . . . Always”—played softly over the intercom system as they walked together down the hallway and found a table by the window. The coffee wasn’t good, but Jack didn’t really notice as Ruth told him how she’d met his grandfather, the kind of things they used to do together, the close relationship they had forged.

“Last year at Passover he even joined me at the seder,” she said, suddenly wistful. “That was one of his last really good days.”

Jack smiled a little. “He thinks we’re Jewish, you know.”

She drank from her cup, and then her expression turned very serious. “What do you think, Jack?”

Her response was not at all what Jack had expected. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, never mind.”

“No, please don’t say ‘never mind.’ Did my grandfather tell you something I should know?”

She measured her words and said, “I think the best way to put it is that there is some confusion about that.”

“With Alzheimer’s there’s confusion about everything.”

“True,” she said. She put her cup and saucer aside. “Let me just share one little story with you.”

She was using that very calm tone again, but it made Jack’s heart race. “All right,” he said.

“Two years ago your grandfather and I went to see a play called
Edgardo Mine.
It’s a true story about a little boy named Edgardo Mortara. Do you know it?”

“Mmm, no.”

“Edgardo was the son of a Jewish merchant in Bologna, one of eight children raised in an observant Jewish home in the 1850s. When he was an infant, he was very sick with fever, and the family’s Catholic serving girl secretly baptized him because she didn’t want him to be excluded from heaven. Happily, Edgardo survived his illness.”

“Something tells me there’s not a happy ending.”

“Hardly,” said Ruth. “Nineteenth-century Bologna was part of the Papal States. Under church law, a child who was baptized could not reside in a Jewish home. It’s not clear how, but whispers about Edgardo’s secret reached all the way to the pope. One night the constabulary showed up at the Mortara house and took him away.”

“This is a true story?”

“Absolutely. The church’s position was that Edgardo could return to his parents if they converted to Christianity. Needless to say, Edgardo never came home. It was a huge international incident, but the pope wouldn’t budge. The boy even lived with him in the Vatican for a while. Edgardo ended up a Catholic priest, one of the protégés of Pio Nono.”

“Pio Nono?”

“That was the Italian name for Pope Pius IX.”

“That’s what Grandpa shouts from his bed. I thought he was railing against the post office.”

“Pio Nono is actually the main character in the play. Your grandfather was very moved by the story.”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

“I mean it really impacted him,” she said. “Much more than I expected.”

Jack waited for her to say more, but she fell silent. “Because . . . he’s Jewish?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. Maybe something inside me made me want to think he was. Look at me,” she said, laughing at herself, “I’m eighty-three years old and still trying to please my mother. Oy vey.”

Jack smiled. It was easy to see how his grandfather had enjoyed her company.

His cell phone rang. Jack didn’t recognize the number, so he didn’t answer.

“I’m not saying it’s so,” said Ruth, “and the last thing I want to do is create an identity crisis for you. But I have heard of people literally on their deathbed, telling their children or grandchildren the truth about their ancestry. And you can’t always dismiss as crazy everything that comes out of the mouth of someone with Alzheimer’s.”

Jack’s phone chimed with an incoming text message. He glanced at it, then froze.

“It’s Pio Nono
,
”
it read.
“Call me. NOW!”

“Is something wrong?” asked Ruth.

Jack shook off the chills. “Will you excuse me one minute?”

Ruth seemed concerned, as if she might have said something to anger him, but Jack had no time to explain.

He hurried out of the cafeteria and found a quiet place to return the call from a dead pope.