Last Call (19 page)
The show went on for several minutes before she spotted a vehicle approaching, jumped in her car, and drove off.
“Whoa,” said Theo.“Who was that?”
“My grandmother,” he said.“She takes vitamins.”
They shared a little laugh and knocked fists together.
Theo didn’t want to move too quickly on Moses, and he definitely didn’t want to come across as too hungry for information about Isaac’s escape. An indirect approach would test the waters.
“Hey, man. How’s a guy go about gettin’ tits in here?”
He wasn’t talking about what they’d just watched; “tits” was code for drugs in prison.
“What kind of tits you like?” said Moses.
“White tits. Fine white tits. Tits so fine and white you can breathe them up your nose, taste them in the back of your throat, and feel them go straight to your head.”
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“No problem,” said Moses.“Just gotta know who to ask.”
“I don’t think I’ll waste my time asking MacDonald.”
“You don’t go wasting your time on nobody.”
“For tits, you mean?”
“For everything.You go through me.”
“Thanks, dude. But I don’t need you for everything. Just cer -
tain things.”
“You’re not listening to me, brotha’. For anything and everything.You go through
me
.”
It wasn’t an offer. It was an order.
“So, you got yourself the TGK exclusive?” said Theo.
“You learn quick.”
Theo nodded. He could have pressed for specifics beyond drugs, but he sensed that he’d already pushed far enough for one sitting.
Moses rose and leaned against the stair rail, looking down at Theo from the higher step.“I like you, Knight.You and me can be cool. But don’t even think about muscling in or going around me.
’Cause I’ll beat the black right off you.”
For the sake of his undercover mission, Theo forced himself not to respond in any way. He simply swallowed what he was feeling and let Moses walk down the stairs and return to the cell block, unharmed and alone.
Theo decided to stay put until his anger subsided. He looked out the window again, his gaze drifting toward the spot where Moses’ dancer had been shaking her naked ass. That little display hadn’t been about entertainment. It was Moses’ way of telling the new guy that he had contacts to the outside.
Theo pondered that for a moment, and it occurred to him that he hadn’t really focused on the woman’s car—what man would have? But he seemed to recall that it had looked new, and a thought crossed his mind.
He wondered if it was the one Isaac was supposed to have gotten.
I ’m here to see Theo Knight,” Jack told the guard at check-in, handing over his Florida bar card.“I’m his lawyer.”
In another decade, Jack’s mere announcement of his arrival would have triggered only dread and self-doubt. Back in the bad old days, he had been Theo’s only hope. Jack’s visits to death row were never without news to deliver, and it was rarely good. Had his client believed in killing the messenger, Jack would have been dead long ago.Things were different now, of course, not the least of which was the fact that TGK would routinely allow a face-to-face visit between an inmate and his lawyer, no glass partition and telephone—which meant that Theo could pop the messenger right in the snout if he didn’t bring good news this time.
The guard searched Jack’s briefcase and patted him down.
“Come with me,” he said, and he led Jack to the meeting room.
Attorneys and inmates met in an area separate from the main visitation room, a more private place where they could communi-cate confidentially. The fluorescent lights overhead were so bright that Jack almost needed sunglasses.The floor was bare concrete, and the cinder-block walls were pale yellow with no windows. Jack was taken to a small Formica-topped table and left to sit and wait.Two minutes later, the door opened, and Theo entered.
“Hey, stranger,” said Theo.
The guard said, “You got twenty minutes,” and then left the room.
Theo went around the table, and Jack rose to return the bear hug.
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“Did you bring the tequila?” said Theo.
“Don’t even joke about that.”
“Who’s joking?”
Jack gave him a reproving look.
“What?” said Theo.“You think somebody’s listening?”
“They’re not supposed to, but I say you never know.”
They each took a chair on opposite sides of the table.
“How’s Cy? He hittin’ on Trina yet?”
“He’s doing fine. I did have that talk with him, though.”
“So . . . he knows?”
“I couldn’t keep him in the dark any longer.Your going back to jail was eating him up inside. Now he’s cool with it. Understands what we’re trying to do.”
“I wish I could tell Trina,” said Theo, and then his gaze drifted off to the middle distance.“Man, I really miss her.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. Somethin’ wrong with that?”
“No, I—I just don’t think I’ve ever heard those words come out of your mouth before. At least not without some additional reference to the female anatomy.”
He put a finger to his temple.“Jail messes with your mind, but it also puts things in perspective. Makes you stop taking things for granted. Maybe
you
should go to jail.”
“Me? Why me?”
“I’m talking about women. Makes you appreciate what’s real.”
“You mean Rene?”
“No, dude.That ain’t real. I mean Andie.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I seen how you looked at her before, how you still light up at the sound of her name.”
Jack averted his eyes, searching for a quick change of subject.
“So, you and Trina been talking?”
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Only a slight change, but thankfully Theo let him get away with it.
“She wanted to come and visit, but I don’t think she’s ready to see me like this. I call her every day.”
“So do I,” said Jack.“She’s solid.”
“You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“About the arrangement? No way. Real undercover agents don’t even tell their wives what they’re doing, so I’m not about to tell your girlfriend. I try to reassure her, explain enough for her to know that the charges against you won’t stick.”
“Thanks,” said Theo.
“No problem. I’m not just playing Cupid here. Don’t forget, she’s your alibi for Isaac’s shooting.”
“You telling me I still need one?”
“For now,” said Jack. He told him about Andie’s slip of the tongue—how Isaac shouted out Theo’s name before the gunshot that killed him.
“How do they know that?” said Theo.
“A witness heard it. Presumably the waitress who was stuffed in the trunk.”
Theo drew a breath, then let it out. “I don’t doubt it happened. Makes sense Isaac would call out my name. He went there expecting me to come meet him. The phone messages prove that.”
“I’m trying to figure out a way to convey that information to Andie without digging a deeper hole for ourselves.”
“Meaning what?”
“It’s a touchy situation. Isaac tells you he knows who killed your mother. Maybe you interpret that to mean that
he
killed her.
You go and blow him away.”
“I know he didn’t kill her. My brother and me was riding with Isaac in his car the night we found my momma dead in the street.”
“I’m thinking like a cop here,” said Jack. “Isaac was a gang LAST CALL
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leader.Your mother was a prostitute and a drug addict. Maybe she owed somebody money. Maybe Isaac
ordered
her killing.”
“That ain’t what happened, dude.”
“How do you know that?”
Theo leaned back in his chair, thinking. Jack could see from the expression on his face that it was a possibility he hadn’t considered—one he couldn’t readily dismiss. “I guess I don’t know. Isaac and me never talked about it.”
“And if the cops find out about Isaac’s phone messages, they won’t believe you never talked to him. They’ll say you went there to meet him, he told you the truth, and you blew him away.”
Theo rose and began to pace.“Bad enough somebody’s trying to kill me. Now if I don’t find the bastard, I could be tagged with Isaac’s murder.”
Jack let him pace a little more, blow off some steam.“That isn’t going to happen,” he said.
“Says who?”
“We’ll find this guy.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“There’s some good news,” said Jack. He told him about Flo’s grandson—the gang symbol he’d spotted on the shooter’s car and sketched out for Jack.
“Cops been able to locate the car yet?”
“They’re looking for it. We don’t have a tag number, so they can’t just run it through DMV and haul in the owner. Andie tells me it may take some time.”
“True,” said Theo. “These gangs are smart.They do a drive-by, they might garage the car for weeks, until the heat cools down.”
Jack just listened, adding it to the long list of things that he really didn’t want to know how Theo knew.
“Can I see the boy’s drawing?” said Theo.
“Absolutely.” Jack opened his briefcase and removed his note-168
James Grippando
pad. He laid the rough sketch of the bloody knife on the table, facing Theo. “It’s a KA-BAR,” he explained. “A military fighting knife for a local gang called—” Jack stopped himself.Theo looked as if he’d gone cold.“You okay, big guy?”
Theo didn’t answer. He kept staring at the drawing, unable to tear his eyes away from it.
“Talk to me,” said Jack.“Do you know this symbol?”
He lifted his gaze and looked Jack in the eye.“Last night,” said Theo.“I’m positive I seen it last night.”
“Where?”
“In the shower.”
“What, like graffiti on the wall?”
“No,” he said in a voice so low that it rumbled. “A tattoo. On some dude’s back.”
Abuzzer pulsated throughout TGK as the guards took Theo back to his cell. It was a sound that Theo hadn’t heard since death row, but he knew what it meant even before the voice came over the PA system: “Lockdown. All prisoners to their cells immediately.”
A chorus of groans filled the cell block, followed by the shuffling of inmates’ feet, like a rag-tag army in defeat, and finally the slamming of cell doors.
Charger climbed up to the top bunk.Theo went to the lower one.
In ten minutes, the place was secure.The PA system keyed for another announcement:“All prisoners to the bars. All clothing removed.”
That triggered further grumbling, punctuated by sporadic shouts of profanity and some clanging on the iron bars in protest. But it was short-lived, quieted in part by a team of guards that swept through the cell block, nightsticks drawn in a show of force.
Theo rolled out of his bunk and began to remove his clothes.
Charger jumped down and did the same.There was a protocol to undressing in the presence of your cell mate. It had to do with the eyes: you made damn sure they didn’t roam.
“What are they looking for now?” said Charger.
“Hell if I know,” said Theo.
But he did know.Theo was looking for the same thing: the O-Town Posse tattoo.
Theo was certain that he’d seen it on somebody’s back in the 170
James Grippando
shower, but he remembered nothing more about it. The showers were a steamy, crowded mass of naked male flesh. Looking around too much and making eye contact with the wrong dude was a good way to end up a “catcher”—a daily ticket to taking it up the ass. All Theo had been able to tell Jack was that he’d seen the tattoo, and it was on a black guy’s back. Jack immediately passed the information along to Andie Henning, and before Theo returned to his cell the place was in lockdown.They were on a mission to find the guy with the tattoo.
Charger got naked first and walked to the bars. Theo was mindful of the eyes-front protocol, but his curiosity got the better of him. He stole a quick glance at his cell mate’s back, checking for the tattoo.
“Like what you see?” said Charger.
For a moment it seemed that the dude had 360-degree vision.
“I don’t see nothin’.”
“It’s okay,” said Charger, “you can check out my ass if you want to.”
“Just shut your mouth.”
For more than forty-five minutes they stood at the bars, un-clothed and in silence, as a team of guards moved from one cell to the next. Time was something the inmates had plenty of, and the guards wasted it freely. It was a bizarre sight from Theo’s perspective, staring out across the block at cell after cell of stark-naked men waiting at the bars. Black, white, and Hispanic.Young and old, fat and slim, many of them cut like bodybuilders, and nearly all of them bearing some kind of tattoo.
Charger spoke softly, his voice barely above a whisper. “Is it true you’re in here for helping Isaac escape?”
Theo shook his head, as if losing patience. “You think I’m gonna tell you anything? What are you, an informant?”
“I’m pretty sure you know what I am,” he said, his voice still low.
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Theo tried to ignore it, but one question had been burning in his mind ever since he’d found the cream under the mattress.
“How well did Isaac know what you are?”
Charger scoffed. “That homophobic jerk. He’d beat the living hell out of me just for thinking about him.”
Deep down,Theo had figured as much:The bottom bunk and the cream had belonged to Charger, and his boyfriend was from another cell—not Isaac.
“But you seem nice,” said Charger.
“Shut it, fool.”
“Arms out,” the guard told Theo.
Officer MacDonald was suddenly standing on the other side of the bars, and he treated Theo the same as any other inmate. At the same time, a second guard did a visual search of Charger.The beam of a high-powered flashlight swept the prisoners’ front side first.The guards ordered them to turn left, right, and then all the way around, inspecting the entire body. Apparently the prison officials did not want the inmates to know that the search pertained only to the back.
Or maybe they’d opted for a whole-body scan to account for the possibility that Theo was mistaken, and that he’d actually seen the tattoo on someone’s arm or chest.