The Big Lie

by James Grippando

  Charlotte seemed to have lost all interest in her salad. Jack could see that she was in need of a break. “I want you to sleep on this before I give General Barrow an answer to her offer,” said Jack.

  Charlotte laid her fork aside and rose. “Sleep sounds perfect. I’m too tired to eat, Jack. I’m going up to my room.”

  “Before you go, there’s one more thing I’d like you to consider.”

  Charlotte indulged him, but without much enthusiasm. “Okay. Just one.”

  “Whether you hire me or somebody else, a criminal trial will probably cost you a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “You’re a veritable fountain of good news tonight, Jack.”

  “Money matters,” said Jack. “Andie’s on a government salary, and our golden retriever has a real shot at the Ivy League. If he would just stop eating his homework.”

  That almost made her smile. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said, and she left Jack in the dining room.

  Chapter 36

  It was the end of the third quarter, and the Orlando Magic were hopelessly behind the New York Knicks. NBA fans often said that players dogged it for three quarters, and that the game didn’t really start until the fourth quarter. Scoville was in no mood to test the theory. He left early, but he didn’t go far. The real attraction of the Amway Center was literally on top of the arena, high above the hardwood.

  One80 Skytop Lounge was a favorite late-night destination in Scoville’s home district. The chrome, glass, and white-leather fixtures were standard for a high-end club, and Orlando had plenty of bars for late-night partying and dancing beneath colored lights. What set One80 apart was killer views of the city, whether from the indoor dance floor surrounded by walls of glass or from the terrace bar beneath the stars. One80 catered to the young and single crowd, but guys like Scoville made out all right, as long as they kept peeling off the Benjamins for bottles of Cîroc and Tito’s that drew young women to their VIP table.

  A waitress dressed in pink spandex brought another bottle of vodka on ice. One of the ladies who’d staked out a position at Scoville’s VIP table put down her cell phone long enough to grab the bottle and top off her friends’ cocktails on Scoville’s dime. Another woman settled into the couch, leaving a comfortable distance between her and the older man.

  “Why so glum?” she asked.

  Scoville didn’t immediately realize she was speaking to him. She was wearing a black skirt so tight that he wondered how she managed to cross her legs, but on second look, she wasn’t as young as he’d thought. Probably mid-thirties: potentially within striking distance, even without the power advantage he exercised in Tallahassee.

  “Tough week,” he said, which was an understatement. After years of service to the people of Florida, his career was over. Charlotte Holmes and Jack Swyteck were not alone to blame. Paulette Barrow had let him down. The deal with the attorney general was exactly as Swyteck had described it on cross-examination: in exchange for his testimony against Charlotte Holmes, the FDLE report into Scoville’s sexual misconduct would never see the light of day. There was no putting that genie back in the bottle.

  “Buy me a drink and I’ll let you tell me about it,” she said.

  It was nice that she asked, unlike the twenty-somethings who drank his liquor with no intention of showing him their pussies. Scoville poured a vodka on the rocks for each of them. Her name was Amanda, and as Scoville talked, Amanda listened, refilling his vodka several times. The bottle was nearly empty, and he was still talking.

  “Damn, I’m sorry,” he said. “I must have bored you to tears.”

  “Not at all,” she said.

  Scoville reached across the VIP table and snatched the bottle he’d purchased earlier for a couple of college chicks who were clearly a longshot—but, oh, what a threesome it would have been. He poured more vodka for himself and Amanda.

  “I actually feel bad for you,” she said. “Men don’t know how to act anymore. You can’t tell a woman she looks like she lost weight. You can’t tell her you like what she did with her hair. You can’t pay the most basic compliment without being accused of harassment.”

  “Exactly!” said Scoville. “You totally get it.”

  “Hey, old man,” said the college chick. “Give us our vodka back.”

  “Shut up, little girl,” said Amanda. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

  The younger woman backed away. Scoville smiled. “I like you.”

  Amanda smiled back. “Let’s go out on the terrace.”

  Scoville’s knee made a popping noise as he pushed up from the couch. Amanda had to help him up. As they stepped into the night air, he felt dizzy. He was definitely feeling the vodka. The good buzz was becoming disorienting. He breathed in the night air and tried to hold himself together until they made it to the rail. He grabbed it tightly to stop the swirl of city lights in the distance.

  “You okay?” asked Amanda.

  “Yeah, sure. I’m fine.” But he wasn’t, and he was kicking himself. Amanda was his hottest pickup ever at One80, and he was too drunk to perform.

  “I just love the view out here,” she said.

  It was beautiful, but only if you looked out toward the cityscape in the distance. In the near ground was the busy interstate.

  “Did you know that I-4 is the deadliest interstate in America?” he asked.

  “Is that so?”

  “Annual fatality rate is one-point-two-five per mile.”

  Scoville had learned that while serving on a transportation task force, but he had no idea why he was repeating it now. A total mood killer. Why not also mention that he’d been standing at this very rail, watching from above, as emergency vehicles sped toward the deadly mass shooting at Pulse Night Club, less than a mile away? He was off his game, but Amanda seemed to find it amusing.

  “You’re cute,” she said, smiling.

  “You’re gorgeous,” he said, breathing out the word with such force that, had he been drinking whiskey instead of vodka, he might have bowled her over with the stench.

  “Why don’t we get out of this place?” she said.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Someplace quieter. There’s a bar at my hotel. Would you walk me there?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” he said. Prezzurr.

  She took his arm as they crossed the terrace. The sliding glass door opened, and the dance music from inside hit him like a jolt of electricity. It had been playing all night, but it was suddenly more than his brain could process. They continued past the dance floor. The flashing lights became a blur. His gaze drifted toward a man and woman dancing near the DJ. Or maybe it was two women. He couldn’t tell. It was impossible to focus. His hands felt numb. His knees were weak. A flash of hot and then cold ran from the base of his spine to the top of his head, and he suddenly felt himself falling. He reached for the nearest chair, which happened to be occupied.

  “Hey, watch it!” the guy said.

  “Sorry, so sorry,” said Amanda, apologizing for her new friend.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Scoville said.

  Amanda took him by the arm and led him toward the elevator. The doors opened, she helped him inside, and they rode to the ground floor. Scoville wasn’t feeling any better, but he tried hard not to show it.

  “How far is your hotel?” he asked.

  “Not far,” she said.

  The elevator doors opened and they exited the building to Church Street. The blast of cool air on the terrace had helped him earlier, but he got no such relief at street level. The whole experience was strange. Vodka didn’t normally hit him this way. Maybe it was the beer and tequila-shot chasers at the basketball game, though he’d had only two. Or had it been three? Maybe that was the problem. He’d lost count.

  “Should we call a cab?” he asked.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “My hotel is right down the street.”

  They continued toward the overpass. Scoville glanced up at the st
reetlight, which seemed to have a strange glow around it, like a halo. He blinked hard, fighting off the illusion, and the halo went away. The rumble of cars on the interstate was above them. Graffiti covered the concrete support columns of the overpass. A puddle of fresh urine glistened near the cardboard house of a homeless guy. It was getting harder to walk, and Scoville finally realized they were heading uphill.

  “You sure this is the way?”

  “Just a little farther,” she said.

  Scoville kept putting one foot in front of the other, but his mind was losing its grip on his whereabouts. Something must have been in those drinks. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Over spring break, a college chick had dissolved a synthetic drug of some sort in his drink just to get a laugh at the creepy old pervert’s expense.

  “Almost there,” said Amanda, and then she stopped, and his world stopped spinning. The sidewalk had led them up a ramp to an overpass, and the noisy interstate was directly below. A car sped past, traveling much faster than the normal traffic around the arena. Alcohol and drugs fogged his mind, but Scoville knew the area well enough to realize that they were at the interchange south of the arena, where an east-west cross street rose up and over the interstate. And they weren’t actually on the sidewalk. The sidewalk was on the other side of the bridge, where a ten-foot chain-link fence kept pedestrians from falling or throwing things onto the interstate. Amanda had led him up the side with no protective fencing.

  “Where the heck are—”

  The words were still in the air as Amanda lowered her shoulder and drove it into his chest, knocking him backward and slamming his lumbar spine into the railing. Scoville reached for Amanda’s hand, her dress, anything he might grab to stop from falling, but he got fistfuls of air. Momentum carried his upper body out over the rail, his arms flailing as he struggled to keep his feet on the sidewalk. His head rolled back so far that he could see the speeding cars and trucks on I-4 below him. He heard himself scream, which sent his mind racing. For a split second, it was as if he were outside his body and—witnessing his own body tumbling through the air.

  Then, everything stopped. Amanda had grabbed him by the belt with both hands, and she was standing on his feet to anchor him to the sidewalk. Scoville was bent over backward like a gymnast, draped over the rail like a slice of microwave bacon, unable to do the single sit-up that was required to save his own life. Even in his impaired state, he fully comprehended the danger of the speeding traffic below him. If Amanda let go of his belt and stepped off the tops of his feet, he was a dead man.

  “Help me up!” he shouted. Gravity had pulled his shirt toward his chin, exposing a belly that was dragging him down like a stage-curtain sandbag. Even his arms felt heavy, his hands reaching for the interstate below him.

  “Please! Pull me up!”

  The noise from the interstate was so loud that he could barely hear his own voice. The string of headlights was endless, but his line of sight—albeit inverted—was fixed on the oncoming eighteen-wheeler. It was just a few hundred yards away and closing quickly. Suddenly, Amanda yanked on his belt, jerking him forward in a jackknifed position. The strength of this woman shocked him, but she didn’t pull him all the way up—just far enough to make eye contact as she peered down at him from the safe side of the rail.

  “You’re a lucky man, Senator.”

  Scoville didn’t feel lucky. The blood was rushing to his brain, making him so dizzy that he felt anchored to the sidewalk no more, as if at any moment his feet might whip across the sky above him, as if to bicycle-kick the moon.

  “Let me up, please!”

  Scoville was too week, too dizzy, and too drunk to save himself. He imagined that he was falling again, directly into the path of oncoming headlights.

  “You’re lucky you’re not worth killing,” Amanda said, and with the strength of a trapeze artist, she jerked him forward, up and over the railing to safety. Scoville landed on the sidewalk and rolled onto his side. He was safe, but all the blood that had pooled in his brain was suddenly rushing in the other direction, making the night spin even faster.

  “Don’t you ever put your hands on Charlotte Holmes again,” she said, adding a swift kick to the groin.

  Scoville groaned like a wounded animal, but he didn’t move. He lay in a heap on the sidewalk at the crest of the bridge, listening to the sound of Amanda’s footfalls fade into the night and thanking God he was alive.

  Chapter 37

  Jack took the early flight from Tallahassee to Miami and was home in time to walk Righley to school. Max walked with them, which put Jack in the middle of a tug-of-war, pulled forward by a hard-charging golden retriever who seemed to think he was lead dog on an Iditarod sled, and pulled back by a five-year-old who wanted her daddy to take her to the beach.

  “We don’t have to tell Mommy,” said Righley.

  Jack nearly laughed out loud. Andie had one of those apps on her phone that told her where every member of her family was at every moment of the day. The adventures of Righley versus Mommy, Teenager Edition, were sure to be epic.

  “We can’t play hooky, honey.”

  They stopped at the traffic light, and Jack hit the crosswalk button. It spoke back to them in the mechanical voice of Stephen Hawking and The Theory of Everything, even if it was just one word: “Wait.”

  As commanded, they stood at the curb. Jack made a couple of attempts to cheer Righley up, but she was still pouting about the beach. Dad jokes to the rescue.

  “Righley, watch this. Mr. Crosswalk,” Jack said, speaking to the pole. “Name a word that rhymes with ‘gate.’”

  “Wait.”

  That made her smile. “Cool! Do it again, Daddy!”

  It was a one-trick joke, but Jack pulled another one out of the hat. “Mr. Crosswalk: What does Max lose when he goes on a diet?”

  “Wait.”

  “Let me try! Mr. Crosswalk, what’s my favorite color?”

  “Wait.”

  “Hey! That wasn’t nice!”

  There was only so much a dad could do.

  Jack got her to school on time, promised to take her to the beach on the weekend, and dropped Max off at the house. Then he drove to Coconut Grove to pick up Theo at Cy’s Place. Jack knew better than to interview a potential witness alone, so Theo changed hats again, from bodyguard to investigator.

  “Who’s the witness?” asked Theo, as he climbed into the passenger seat. “Dr. Perez?”

  “Nope,” said Jack. “His wife.”

  The phone calls to the doctor’s home number had gone unanswered until Heidi Bristol finally returned Jack’s voice-mail message to tell him that her husband didn’t live there any longer. The Perez residence was a few miles south of Cy’s Place, along the waterfront. Theo fiddled with the radio for a few minutes, found the music he liked, and then was on to another subject.

  “Anything more on Scoville?” asked Theo.

  A state trooper had found the former Florida legislator drunk and passed out on a bridge, and the story went viral.

  “No,” said Jack. “Just another disgraced Florida politician.”

  “I think it was your cross-examination,” said Theo. “You made him want to jump, except a guy like Scoville doesn’t have the balls to do it.”

  “Stress-relief balls,” said Jack.

  The drive to Deering Bay Yacht & Country Club was down Old Cutler Road, a scenic highway that was once a nineteenth-century trail through the woods, stretching from a high-ground enclave on the bay to a fledgling settlement called Coconut Grove. Much of the hardwood hammock was preserved, despite the influx of multimillion-dollar estates, high-rise condominiums with killer views of the Miami skyline, yacht-filled marinas, and a golf course designed by Arnold Palmer.

  The Perez-Bristol estate was on Deering Drive. The housekeeper greeted Jack and Theo at the front door. Jack acquainted himself with original works by Jackson Pollock and Roy Lichtenstein in the wide corridor that led to a paneled library in the back of the house. Heidi
Bristol was waiting near a set of tall French doors overlooking the golf course. Jack thanked her for taking time to meet. They sat on the matching tufted leather couches, facing each other, Jack and Theo on one side of the cocktail table and Heidi on the other.

  “I’m sorry for leaving so many messages,” said Jack. “I had no idea you and Dr. Perez were separated.”

  “We didn’t broadcast it,” she said.

  “I do appreciate your help,” said Jack.

  “If you don’t mind, I have some questions of my own.”

  “Sure. I’ll answer as best I can,” said Jack.

  She folded her arms and leveled a very serious gaze in Jack’s direction. “Mr. Swyteck, I had a loving husband for nine years. It was not without challenges. We got married when he was in medical school. Trust me, he was not always the nicest man during his internship and residency. But we were happy. We had love in our marriage. Then something happened.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and her gaze became a glare. “Was your client having an affair with my husband?”

  The question caught him seriously off guard. “No. Not that I’m aware of.”

  “I have a right to know,” she said firmly. “Alberto and I are separated, but we’re still married. Seeing other people was not part of the arrangement.”

  “I would tell you if I knew,” said Jack. “But it’s my understanding that Ms. Holmes and your husband hadn’t seen each other since college.”

  “Prior to this meeting at Clyde’s on Monday night, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where the two of them used to go to Make-Out Mondays?”

  “Yes, when they were college kids. I don’t think that’s why they went there this time.”

  “No, of course not. It’s all perfectly innocent that my husband makes a special trip from Miami to Tallahassee, five hundred miles, to see a beautiful woman like Charlotte Holmes. How silly of me. Why would I even be the least bit suspicious?”

  “Mrs. Perez—”