Last Call (10 page)
Jack’s chest tightened. It sounded like he was about to get dumped, but he still had to ask:“So why are you leaving?”
Slowly, she broke away from his embrace, sat up, and faced him.
“Because if I stayed any longer, I’m afraid I might never go back.”
She sounded sincere, and Jack wanted to believe her. But somehow he couldn’t help wondering if she was speaking from the heart or saying what she thought he wanted to hear.
Theo’s telephone rang. It was across the room on the countertop, and the answering machine picked up.Theo liked to screen his calls, so the message played loud enough for Jack and Rene to hear every word as it was being recorded.
“Yo,Theo! Where the fug’ are you, man?”
Jack didn’t recognize the voice immediately, and even though he knew he shouldn’t listen, he couldn’t close his ears.
“Answer me, Knight! I know you got my message. So where are you, dude? I been waitin’ here almost half an hour for you.”
Jack hadn’t heard Isaac Reems’s voice in years, and they’d had only one telephone conversation. But he was dead certain that Theo’s machine was recording the message of a fugitive.
“Dude, here’s the deal,” said Reems. “Two thousand bucks.
That’s all it takes. I’m sure you think I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about. But trust me, a man hears a lotta shit sittin’ in prison as long as I did. So get me two grand, bro’. Just do me a couple of favors. And then I swear, I’ll tell you who killed your momma.”
The line clicked.The machine stopped recording.
Jack and Rene exchanged uneasy glances.
“What was that all about?” she said.
Rene was a bit of a
New York Times
snob and hadn’t read the Miami paper or watched any local news. The first she’d heard of Reems’s escape was when the cops showed up at Sparky’s and Jack 80
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had told Theo to go cool off. She hadn’t asked any questions—Jack said the cops were chasing rabbits—but in light of this phone call, maybe it was a good thing she was returning early to Africa after all.
“Excuse me a second,” said Jack.“I need to call my client.”
I saac was getting tired of waiting.
Hours before this follow-up call, he’d left detailed phone messages, one at his home and one at the bar, telling Theo when and where to meet. Not for a second did Isaac worry about Theo calling the cops again.This time Isaac had spelled out exactly what his old friend would get if he showed up.
Finally, the old leader of the Grove Lords had played his ace in the hole.
This was the proverbial offer that could not be refused. Sure, they hadn’t seen each other in years, but Isaac still knew Theo.They’d hung out together every day for months after the murder of Theo’s mother.
Tatum got over it in a day or two. But Theo was obsessed with finding her killer. It seemed that a day didn’t go by without Theo vowing to slit that bastard’s throat the way he’d slit his momma’s. Blood that hot never cools. It was irrational, really, the way Theo had managed to block from his memory all the ways in which his drug-addicted mother had failed herself and her children. In life, she had been nothing to him. In death, she became the score he needed to settle, as if his anger over the way she’d chosen to live her life had no way to manifest itself except in Theo’s revenge against the man who had sliced her open and left her dead on the street.Whoever he was.And now, after two decades,Theo had the chance to hear his name.
Where the hell are you, Knight?
Isaac checked the time on the bank marquee on the street corner. Eighty-one degrees at 1:37 a.m.
Theo was more than an hour late.
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Isaac had to move. The waitress was still in the trunk, so he didn’t have to worry about her reporting the car stolen. But maybe she had a roommate or lived with a boyfriend or her parents.
They would expect her home and eventually call the cops, which would trigger a police BOLO mentioning her Mustang. The car had served its immediate purpose. He decided to ditch it in the alley, but first he had to deal with the cargo.
He drew his pistol and popped the trunk. The waitress didn’t move. He nudged her. She still didn’t respond. He laid his hand on the back of her neck, and she was burning up. It was like the fires of hell in that trunk.The heat had obviously overtaken her. He checked her pulse. She was alive, but he wasn’t about to carry her around, dead weight on his shoulders.Wrong place, wrong time, honey.
No prisoners.
He closed the trunk and left her there, then walked around the building to the chosen meeting spot. It was behind a restaurant called Quincy’s. Back in the 1980s, it used to be a bar called Homeboy’s.
“Meet me behind Homey’s,” Isaac had told Theo in his first message.That was what they used to call it. Even if the cops had tapped Theo’s telephones, they had no way of knowing that “Homey’s”
referred to a ghetto bar called Homeboy’s that had closed almost twenty years earlier.
Quincy’s restaurant was closed, which made Isaac uneasy about standing around waiting for Theo. Someone might report a prowler.
The Dumpster offered the only hiding place. Fugitives had holed up in worse places, he figured. He climbed up and lowered himself into waist-deep trash that soiled his clean clothes and squished beneath his shoes. This sucked in a big way, but it was almost funny.
In a wry moment of nostalgia, he wished he’d run to South Miami.
Back in the day, the joke among Grove Lords was that you could knock off a bank and clean out a strip mall right under the nose of a South Miami cop—unless your getaway driver forgot to put a quarter in the parking meter.Then you were dead meat.
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The good news was that he hadn’t heard police choppers or sirens since coming north. But Isaac would be an easier target after sunrise.And the odor of restaurant garbage was getting to him. He had to move soon.
“Come on,Theo,” he muttered.“Where’s my money, bro’?”
Maybe Theo hadn’t listened to his messages yet. But Isaac couldn’t let his mind go there. If Theo wasn’t coming, that left Isaac in a stinking garbage can with no one to help him thread his way to freedom through a blanket of cops. He was screwed.
Totally screwed.
He heard something. Footsteps? He sat perfectly still and listened. Someone was coming down the alley. He rose up in the Dumpster just enough to peer over the rusty rim. The footfalls grew louder. It sounded like one person, and there was no beam from a flashlight leading the way—pretty reliable signs that it wasn’t the cops.A silhouette appeared at the end of the alley and stopped.
Isaac couldn’t tell who it was, but this was exactly where he had told Theo to meet him, and the outline in the darkness was that of a large man. In silence, Isaac drew his weapon and took aim, just in case.A gunshot would bring the cops, so he had to avoid discharging his firearm at all costs. He wanted to call out Theo’s name, but he held his tongue.
Let him speak first
, Isaac told himself.
The man said nothing. Slowly, he reached into his pants pocket.
Isaac watched, taking extra care not to make a sound as the man removed something and tossed it on the ground a few feet in front of him. With his other hand, the man switched on a palm-sized flashlight that sent a laserlike beam cutting through the darkness.
The light was on only a few seconds—long enough for Isaac to see that there was a roll of money on the ground. Then the man switched it off.
Isaac’s pulse quickened. Again, however, he reminded himself not to reveal his position until this visitor removed all doubt as to his identity.
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The man said nothing.
Sirens blared in the distance. Isaac was suddenly aware of the sweat beading on his brow. He listened, hoping the man would speak. All he heard were sirens. And maybe helicopters, too. Yes, that was definitely the whir of choppers, and it seemed to be growing louder.The manhunt was coming north—toward him.
The man started forward. Isaac’s finger was on the trigger. He wasn’t sure what to do about the slow and steady approach of this silent silhouette.Then the advance halted. Isaac could breathe again. But not for long.The man bent down, picked up the roll of bills that he’d tossed to the ground, turned, and headed back toward the dark alley.
He’s leaving!
More sirens. Helicopters were closing fast. Daylight was only a few short hours away. If Isaac didn’t make this connection, his only option was to use the waitress—but a hostage standoff was the sure-fire end for any fugitive. All the help he needed to complete his escape was just twenty feet away. Twenty-five. Thirty.
“Theo!”
The man stopped and turned.
Isaac rose from his position of safety and concealment in the Dumpster, revealing himself from the chest up.“That you,Theo?”
No answer.The man simply reached inside his pocket and, like before, tossed the roll of bills onto the ground in front of him.
Isaac’s gaze followed the cash. The diversion was just enough to delay his reaction to the blur of a hand that pulled a pistol and took aim at Isaac’s face.The entire motion was completed in a split second, but for Isaac it seemed like an eternity.
He no longer heard the approaching police sirens.The whir of choppers vanished.
He heard only the muffled release of a silenced projectile as his knees buckled and his head jerked back in a crimson explosion—as he left his own body and saw the lifeless shell of Isaac Reems collapse in the Dumpster, trash on top of trash.
Andie got the phone call as she was preparing for an eight o’clock briefing with her ASAC. She reached the Grove ghet to before 9:00 a.m.
Isaac Reems’s body was still in the Dumpster.
It wasn’t exactly the answer to her prayers, but it was an answer.
Media helicopters hovered overhead. Television stations from Action News to Telemundo had vans and remote-broadcast crews crammed into the parking lot across the street from Quincy’s Restaurant. It seemed strangely Orwellian, this wintry forest of metal towers topped with microwave dishes. Field reporters were vying for the best position to broadcast the “latest developments” back to their respective stations. Many of them had been covering the Reems story from the beginning and recognized Andie before she could even step out of her unmarked car. She politely breezed past the microphones, politely refusing several requests for a comment as she approached the crime scene.
Uniformed police officers and yellow crime tape closed off the alley that ran alongside the east side of the restaurant.The west entrance to the delivery area behind the building was also cordoned off. Andie showed her credentials and was allowed to pass through the outer perimeter, but she was stopped before she reached the Dumpster. MDPD was in charge of the crime scene, and the perimeter-control officers were determined to make certain that no one, not even the FBI, contaminated it.Andie caught the eye of Lieutenant Dawes, who recognized her from the task-force meet-86
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ing. He went to her and provided an update, the two of them separated by taut yellow police tape.
“You sure it’s Reems?” said Andie.
“Positive,” said Dawes.
“How long has he been dead?” said Andie.
“Don’t know yet.”
Dawes had the look and demeanor of a homicide detective who had seen far too many murders. He was tense and angry, his teeth and right hand stained from chain smoking, a clenched fist of a man. Andie sensed that he knew more than he was willing to share, which wouldn’t have been the first time in the history of American law enforcement that a homicide detective chose to be tight-lipped around the FBI. Her questions had to be more pointed to draw anything out of him.“Rigor mortis set in yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Beyond the neck and jaw?” she asked.
“It would appear that way.”
“Full body?”
“Not yet.”
“What about lividity? Any blanching to the touch?”
“I’d say it’s fixed.”
“So, you can set a preliminary on the time of death at six to eight hours.” She checked her watch. “Between one and three a.m., roughly.”
“That’s a fair guess.”
“Can you tell if the body was moved here from somewhere else?”
“Not yet,” said Dawes. No elaboration.
“Well, what does your ME say about the bloodstains and lividity patterns?”
“No signs that the body has been moved.”
Andie said, “So Reems was shot exactly where he was found, in the Dumpster. Are you thinking suicide?”
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“Still under consideration.”
“Did you find a weapon nearby?”
“Yeah. But it hadn’t been fired.”
“Blood spray on his hands?”
“Nope.”
“Where’s the entry wound?”
“Between the eyes.”
“Not your typical self-inflicted gunshot,” said Andie. “Any powder burns or starburst at the point of entry to suggest a close-contact wound?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t sound like suicide to me. Any witnesses to talk with?”
“One possibility.”
“Who?”
“Reems stole a car to get here. Owner is a nineteen-year-old woman. She was locked in the trunk, semiconscious when we found her. She’s at Jackson now. Maybe she can tell us something.”
“Got a name?”
Dawes gave it to her, and Andie wrote it down. Then she glanced toward the Dumpster, where the forensic team was busy searching for fingerprints and collecting other evidence. “Mind if I have a closer look?”
“Sorry. We’re doing a footprint and tire-track analysis, and I’d like to keep traffic to a minimum.”
“Understood,” she said.“Anything of particular interest?”
He seemed to think about it for a minute, as if trying to decide whether her performance thus far had earned an answer to such an open-ended question.Andie hated this game—boy cop tells girl cop absolutely nothing until she dazzles him with her knowledge and lures him into sparring with her. But Dawes was old school, and her persistence seemed to be getting through to him. Whatever worked.