Last Call (11 page)
88
James Grippando
“Hard to say,” he said.“There’s lots of foot traffic behind a restaurant. But one set of footprints appears to come down the alley, stop about twenty feet away from the Dumpster, and then turn around and head back.”
“You’re thinking he was shot from twenty feet away?”
“It had to be from some distance.There’s no exit wound.”
“What kind of ammunition?”
“I can’t be sure until the ME extracts the bullet from his head.
But the wound looks a little too large for .22-caliber, so I can rule out that much.”
“Plus, if it was .22-caliber, the shot probably would have been fired at close range to penetrate the skull. Like the classic Mafia hit, where the .22 is right up against the skull and the bullet rattles around inside the skull, no exit wound, turning the brains to scrambled eggs.That would have left residue.”
He seemed surprised that Andie knew that—or at least a little chagrined that he hadn’t said it first. “Exactly,” he said. “So with a larger wound and no powder burns at the point of entry, I’m saying it’s not a .22.”
“But if it was a bigger round—say, a .38 or a 9-millimeter—and fired at close range, it probably would have passed right through the skull.You’re telling me it didn’t do that.”
His expression showed less surprise than simple annoyance that Andie was keeping up, or perhaps even a step ahead of him.“Right.
So twenty feet sounds about right to me,” he said.
“Did you find a shell casing?”
“Not yet. Shooter may have picked it up and taken it with him.”
Andie’s gaze drifted back toward the crime scene. She was trying to imagine what it would have been like behind the restaurant after dark.“What’s the lighting situation like here?”
“Just that one street lamp on the west end of the building.”
“Any stray bullets found in the wall or anyplace?”
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“No.”
Again,Andie turned her attention back to the Dumpster, mentally placing herself at the scene of the crime. “So the killer fires a single round from twenty feet away in bad lighting. Hits Reems right between the eyes. He’s so confident that it’s a kill shot, he doesn’t even approach the Dumpster to inspect his work. He just picks up his spent shell casing, turns around, and leaves the same way he came.”
“Are you hinting at a professional job?” said Dawes.
Andie shrugged. “At least someone who knew what he was doing.”
“A guy like Reems could know a lot of people like that.”
“That’s probably true,” said Andie.
They watched as the assistants from the medical examiner’s office rolled the gurney toward the Dumpster to collect the body.
Andie said, “The manhunt is over, and now begins the search for his killer.”
“Well, at least your work is done.”
“It’s never done,” said Andie. She thanked him, stepped away from the police tape, and then reached for her cell phone.Their last date had ended with a certain air of finality, but for some reason she still had Jack Swyteck’s number programmed into her directory.
Only just beginning
, she thought as she placed the call.
Theo met Jack at the Latin American Cafeteria, a landmark Coral Gables restaurant that specialized in hot pressed sandwiches made on Cuban bread.An early lunch had been Jack’s idea, and he was waiting at the busy counter when Theo arrived.
Like every other customer but Jack, Theo wanted to dine in air-conditioned comfort and watch the knife-wielding chef carve up the roast pig and cured hams like a skilled samurai. Jack said he needed to speak to Theo in private, however, so they placed their order inside and endured an isolated table in the sunshine.
The outside seating area had lost its shade trees in the last hurricane season, and even though summer was technically a month away, it felt like a sticky August afternoon.The wait for their food came with a view of noisy Coral Way and endless waves of heat rising from the paved parking lot.Theo couldn’t stop wiping his brow with a napkin, but Jack seemed content.They were indeed alone, save for a handful of old Latinos who were dressed in their Sunday guayaberas and standing at the takeout window, sipping
tazas
of Cuban coffee and arguing about everything from politics to
beisbol
.
“Where’s Rene?” said Theo.
“The mall.”
“They don’t have one of those in the cocoa region?”
“Yeah, but every time Rene comes to Miami she suddenly feels the urge to barter for something other than live chickens and goats. Go figure.”
The waitress came with their order on a tray. “Dos cubanos?”
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she said.Two cubans? She meant the sandwiches, not the customers. She placed the plates in front of them and handed them their beverages. Materva, a Latin soft drink for Jack. A large mamey milkshake for Theo.
When the waitress was gone, Jack said,“So, what do you think about Isaac Reems? Any idea who would shoot him?”
Theo removed the plastic lid from his milkshake and gulped some down. “You mean other than half the city of Miami?”Theo unwrapped his sandwich.“We gonna talk or eat?”
“Go ahead. Eat.”
“First, a tribute.” Theo lifted his sandwich from the plate and started singing to it, putting his own words to the tune of Human League’s 1986 number one hit,“Human.”
I’m just a cuban.
Of cheese and bread I’m made.
I am also ham . . . please forgive me.
He devoured a third of his cuban sandwich in one huge bite.
“You forgot to mention the pickles and sliced pork,” said Jack, deadpan.
“Artistic . . . license,” he said with his mouth full. It was the same license that turned Madonna’s first Latin hit into “Last night I dreamt of some bagels,” and Stevie Nicks’s “Edge of Seventeen”
into “Just like a one-winged dove”—a true Theo Knight classic, this mental image of a little white bird flying around in circles.
“I got a phone call from Andie Henning this morning,” said Jack.“She’s looking into the Reems murder.”
Theo chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. “I may not have a law degree, but how does the FBI get involved in a run-of-the-mill shooting of a pissant criminal?”
“You’re right, local law enforcement does normally have jurisdiction over homicide. So I asked her that question myself.”
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James Grippando
A bus rolled by on Coral Way, adding diesel fumes to the ambience.“What was her answer?” said Theo.
“It turns out that Andie has been appointed to head up the task force that will be looking for answers about Reems’s escape.”
“Well, they tapped one sharp agent. But I still don’t see how her work on a task force gets her into Isaac’s shooting.”
“Reems didn’t climb out of a barred prison window on a rope made out of bedsheets, hop a nine-foot fence topped with razor wire, and then run to freedom without someone on the inside looking the other way.”
“Maybe. But what’s that got to do with the shooting?”
“Here’s the way Andie sees it. If she finds out who killed Reems, she’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that the answer will also point the way to whoever greased the wheels to bust him out of prison.”
“Mmm. Doughnuts.”
“Focus.”
“Sorry.”
Jack turned serious.“Andie wants to talk to you.”
“Okay. Like I told you before: I got no problem with Andie.
I’m sure she’s just doing her job.”
“And I gotta do mine, too. So tell me something, and don’t get cute on me.When’s the last time you had anything to do with Isaac Reems?”
Theo didn’t answer right away.
Jack said, “When Rene and I dropped off Uncle Cy at your place last night, we heard Isaac’s message.”
“Dude, don’t tell me you were listenin’ to my phone messages.”
“We were sitting on your couch when he left it. Heard it all.”
“Did Cy hear it too?”
“I don’t think so. He was upstairs in bed.”
Theo nodded, but he was still silent.
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Jack flashed his lawyer expression. Theo knew it well—his don’t-you-dare-lie-to-me look. “Give it up, Theo. When was the last time you heard from Isaac?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I do,” said Jack.
Theo glanced toward the traffic on busy Coral Way, then back at his friend.“This conversation—it’s privileged, right?”
“Yup,” said Jack.“Attorney-client, all the way.”
Theo put down his sandwich. And then he told him.
On Monday morning Jack took Rene to the airport for a 12:50 p.m. flight to Abidjan via Paris. Jack didn’t even try to talk her into staying another day—and it wasn’t because he thought she would say no.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“It’s definitely
something
.”
They were walking side-by-side across what was arguably Miami’s greatest work of public art—the striking black terrazzo floor at the airport’s international terminal. Michele Oka Doner’s “A Walk on the Beach” was exactly what the name implied. Thousands of inlaid bronze sculptures reminiscent of the ocean and the artist’s native Miami Beach dotted the mile-long concourse. Jack’s gaze shifted from two-dimensional brain coral to driftwood to starfish, his thoughts churning.
“Are you mad at me for leaving too soon?” said Rene.
“No—well, yes,” he said with a flat smile. “But it has nothing to do with that.”
“Are you worried about Uncle Cy?”
“Uncle Cy?” he said, but then he clarified his own confusion.The old man hadn’t been himself at all when they put him to bed early Sunday morning. “I’m sure he’ll be fine. Like you say, the doctor just needs to adjust his blood pressure medication.”
“Then it must be Theo.”
Jack tried not to bite.“Why would I worry about Theo?”
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“Well, duh. It sounded like someone was trying to extort money out of him for information about his poor mother’s murder.”
Rene knew about Isaac Reems—even if the cops hadn’t shown up at Sparky’s on Saturday night, the Sunday morning news coverage of the shooting was inescapable—but Jack still hadn’t told her that the phone message they’d overheard at Theo’s place had been from Isaac. And he certainly hadn’t told her that Andie Henning wanted to meet with him and Theo.
Rene was a smart woman, however. Surely she suspected something.
“It wasn’t technically extortion,” said Jack.“Just someone who wants to be paid for his information. Kind of like checkbook journalism without the journalist.”
Rene stopped and took Jack by the arm.They were dead-center in the rotunda, the crown jewel of Oka Doner’s masterpiece.
Jack almost felt guilty standing on it.
“Talk to me,” she said.“What’s going on?”
Jack took a breath and let it out. “I’m concerned that Theo might be getting mixed up with something he shouldn’t.”
“What kind of thing?”
“I don’t know exactly.”That wasn’t a flat-out lie, but Jack didn’t like the feel of it. He sensed that Rene didn’t, either.
She said, “Who was that man who left the message we overheard?”
“I—I can’t tell you that.”
“What?”
“It’s attorney-client privilege.”
Her look was incredulous. It was almost as bad as the expression he’d seen on Andie’s face—right before they broke up.
Rene asked,“Why are you suddenly his lawyer?”
“Like I said, I’m worried about what he might be getting caught up in.”
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James Grippando
“Did Theo meet with that caller who left the message for him Sunday morning?”
That information was also privileged. But it didn’t seem wrong to get a reaction to Theo’s version of events from someone more objective than himself—particularly when she was about to board an airplane to the remote reaches of Africa.
“He says he didn’t go,” said Jack.
“Then why didn’t he answer his cell when you called him?”
“I guess he didn’t have it on.”
“Which seems odd.You told him to go away for a while till the cops satisfied themselves that Isaac Reems wasn’t coming back to Sparky’s.You’d think he would have left his phone on.”
“Maybe he just didn’t hear it ring.”
“You called him twice before I finally went upstairs to check on Uncle Cy, and you called him one more time as we were leaving his town house. Don’t you remember? You were concerned about leaving Cy before Theo got home.”
Jack was thinking like Theo’s criminal defense lawyer, and Rene’s recollection of his client’s unreachability on the night of Isaac Reems’s death was a little too vivid for his professional comfort. He checked the departure board overhead. Her flight was right on time.“You’d better get going,” he said.
Rene glanced at the board, then back at Jack. She seemed to understand his inner struggle. And thankfully she seemed willing to at least try to work within his constraints and limitations as Theo’s friend—and lawyer—even if she didn’t have a full grasp of what was going on. Jack wondered if Andie would have done the same.
“Have you talked this out with Theo?” she asked.
“Yeah, yesterday at lunch.”
“Did you tell him what’s on your mind?”
“Yup.”
“Did he answer all your questions?”
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“He always does.”
“Do you believe what he told you?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
Jack was taken aback. Women always seemed to ask that one additional question that guys never asked—the one that goes to the core of the relationship.“Because he’s my best friend,” he said.
“Best friends can still lie to each other.”
“They shouldn’t,” said Jack.
“No. They shouldn’t.”
Jack suddenly felt as if this conversation was no longer just about him and Theo.
Rene took his hand.“Are we best friends?”
Jack lowered his eyes.“I don’t know. Are we?”
“Have you ever lied to me?”
“No.”
She smiled, and with a light touch, she lifted his chin until their eyes met.“You just did.”
“Huh?”
“Everybody lies, Jack.”
“Have you lied to me?”