When They Come for You

by James W. Hall

  She’d not seen or spoken to him in years. But she remembered him vividly. Vital and twinkling with wit. An irresistible charmer. Everyone loved him. Shoeshine boys, mayors, jockeys, cops, Hollywood femme fatales swinging their perfect hips in tight sparkling gowns just to catch Sal’s eye. High, low, it didn’t matter. Everyone knew Sal. Everyone perked up when he entered the room, arrived at the track, sat in a barber’s chair. Harper had loved him too, when she was a kid. Before she knew who he truly was—the fearsome ogre of Deena’s fairy tales.

  SEVEN

  February, Brickell Avenue, City of Miami

  The morning memorial service was held at Coconut Grove Congregational, and dozens of Ross’s colleagues from the paper filled the pews. When Harper couldn’t manage the eulogy, Geneva stepped in, told a string of anecdotes about Ross, his lighter side. His love of practical jokes, poignant stories about his early years as a street reporter before he discovered his investigative skills. Stories from the years before Harper knew him.

  Harper sat dazed and half hearing, the sanctuary filled with a woozy fog. Her breasts were swollen and aching. Engorged with Leo’s untapped milk. She’d put cabbage leaves inside her bra to soothe them, a remedy Deena had shared in Harper’s early days of pregnancy. So typical of Deena. Before Leo was even born, she was already coaching Harper on how to push her child away, excommunicate him, tear him from her breasts so she might return to more serious matters.

  Early that afternoon, Nick filled the doorway. Detective Alvarez had arrived. Was she finally up to answering some questions? She shrugged. She’d already put him off for four days.

  “Want me to stay?”

  She told Nick no, that wasn’t necessary.

  “Then I’m going for a run. Back in an hour.”

  Alvarez fitted himself into a bedside chair, laid a manila folder in his lap, and clicked his cop’s eyes around the room as if taking an inventory of Nick’s decorating taste.

  Harper was propped against pillows on the bed across from the TV with the sound off. She thought the television might blunt the pain. The twenty-four-hour news channel with its incessant churn of horrors, mass executions, beheadings, tsunamis sweeping away towns.

  It hadn’t worked.

  “What do you want?”

  “Anything you know that might help. Like some longstanding feud Ross had with somebody at work or some other area of his life. Was he worried about some person or situation? Did you have the kind of marriage where he’d confide his troubles with you?”

  “We shared everything.”

  “Geneva Carlson says Ross never talked about his works in progress, even with Ms. Carlson. Does that apply to you? Like, did you know about this article he was writing about your granddad Sal? Or what he was working on next?”

  “That was the only thing he kept to himself,” she said. “The only solitary thing.”

  “Far as you know it was. I mean, if he was keeping secrets, then they were secret, right? So did he seem bothered by anything, something going on in his world and he didn’t want to talk about it. Like you could tell from his mood that he was being pensive or brooding?”

  “All right,” she said. “There was something wrong. Ross was concerned. The last time I saw him, the last time we talked.”

  “And what was that?”

  “The story he was working on next.”

  “How do you know he was worried? He say something?”

  “He didn’t need to. It was in his eyes.”

  Alvarez nodded, but he seemed disappointed. “He wrote his stuff at home, right? Used a laptop.”

  She said yes, at home.

  “Didn’t go into the office, maybe type on the paper’s computers?”

  “He went to the office for editorial meetings, that’s all.”

  “That’s too bad,” Alvarez said. “Arson guys combed the scene. Everything’s burned to cinders. Notebooks, laptop, it’s all gone.”

  “I’m giving you the key,” she said. “Chocolate.”

  “Chocolate?”

  “The article he was writing. It was about chocolate. The history of it, the chocolate industry.”

  Alvarez shook his head as if to clear it. “Pretty far afield from his usual racket—politics, public corruption. Chocolate? You know this how?”

  “He told me the night he died. The subject of his article: chocolate. That’s it. I saw something in his eyes that night, so I asked him about it.”

  “Look, I understand this is rough, you’re having a hard time. You say you saw something in his eyes, okay, fine. But I need something solid. Maybe you could tell me what else you recall in the days leading up to the event. Phone calls, a suspicious person wandering the neighborhood, an odd piece of mail, anything out of the ordinary.”

  “I think Ross was giving me a hint in case something happened. Like he saw it coming, knew he might be in danger.”

  “I’m sorry. This isn’t computing for me.”

  “Then screw you. Quit harassing me, go do some real police work.”

  She hated how she sounded. Snotty, privileged. The surge of rage strangling her voice, making it tight and shrill.

  “Police work,” Alvarez said softly, as if trying out the phrase. With an awkward smile, he looked past her at the curtains pulled across a window, staring at the material, summoning patience. “Let me tell you a little something about police work, okay? What I’ve been doing these past few days. Would that interest you?”

  Harper took the TV remote from the side table and snapped off the set.

  Alvarez drew a pad from his shirt pocket and paged through it. He found the note he wanted, studied it, then looked back at her.

  “What I read was your husband’s byline for the last eight years. Very prolific, a real bulldog. He averaged ten articles a year, nearly one a month. Add in the follow-ups, comes to one hundred four separate articles. As I was reading, I was making a list. Each and every person your husband went after. Want to know the results?”

  She waited. Staring at the blank screen.

  “I couldn’t lump everyone together, the targets of his pieces, too varied. Politicians, cops, real estate developers, lawyers, judges, sports guys, Miami Heat, Dolphins. Quite a list. So I broke them down. Ones did actual jail time. Those still in prison, those that were released, paroled, served their time, whatever. These are people who were indicted as a direct result of your husband’s work. Things he uncovered the state’s attorney couldn’t ignore that went to the grand jury.

  “It’s an impressive roll call of sleazewads. Eleven wound up serving time. Three still inside, two dead already, which leaves six who are out, still living in South Florida. There’s half a dozen people with strong motivation to seek revenge against Ross for causing their downfall.

  “But see, I’m just getting started, because after those convicted felons, you got the loved ones of those six, relatives, spouses, kids. People close to the ones in jail, some of them, they could be harboring hard feelings, think your husband did them dirty. Their breadwinner’s locked up, maybe they had to sell their houses, pay lawyers’ fees, make ends meet. Serious lifestyle adjustments. These people could be pissed.

  “So there’s seventeen of those, more if you count kids who grew up without Daddy or Mama, every one a possible time bomb ticking and ticking until one day, that’s it, they can’t take it anymore. They have to strike out. And who do they blame? Maybe it’s Ross McDaniel.”

  “This is meaningless,” she said.

  Alvarez consulted his notebook again, flipped a page. “In addition to those two groups of suspects, you got your run-of-the-mill-public-humiliations, fifteen-minutes-of-infamy crowd. They didn’t serve jail time; then again, you never know with high-profile folks how they’re going to react to public shaming. Your husband digs up some dirt on a guy, suddenly that guy loses his country club privileges, his favorite tee times, head waiter at Joe’s Stone Crab doesn’t give him his favorite table anymore, he’s got to stand in line with the rest of t
he bozos, bouncers suddenly don’t know his name, won’t unsnap the velvet rope at his favorite club.

  “Different people, little slights like that, it could hit them hard. They simmer a few years or months or whatever, then pop and decide everything started going south when Ross McDaniel published his article.

  “So that’s what I’ve been doing, making my lists, tracking down the people on my suspect list, interviewing those I’ve found. I’m up to nine so far. Does that qualify as police work?”

  Harper said nothing, fighting off a bitter comeback. She had to calm down, remind herself this guy wasn’t the enemy.

  He tucked the notebook back in his shirt pocket, rose from the chair, unfastened the folder, drew out several eight-by-ten glossies, and offered them to her.

  “What’s this?”

  “Crowd scenes, night of the fire. Standard procedure with suspicious fires, a crime-scene tech shoots the crowd. Firebugs like to be there, up close, watch the results of their work. It gets them off.”

  “Firebugs? This isn’t arson, it’s murder. The fire’s a cover-up.”

  “Take a look, see who you see. Maybe something’ll jump out.”

  She took the photos, paged through them. Neighbors and bystanders she didn’t know, their faces brightened by the strobe’s flash, squinting at the horror before them, the wood cottage destroyed, two bodies rolling away. She went face by face down the rows, saw a couple of them chatting to each other, a smiling woman, a smug man, a guy in the back talking on his cell. It wasn’t their catastrophe. They could go on living as before. Be grateful their own houses were still standing, their loved ones intact, an undercurrent of relief in most of the faces.

  “Look for someone who doesn’t fit. Maybe somebody from another part of your life, it’s weird they’d be in a crowd of onlookers, anything hinky, out of place.”

  She slid the photos back in the folder and held it out.

  “Keep them,” he said. “If it’s too hard to look at them right now, do it later. Put some names to faces if you can. It might be helpful. Okay? Humor me.”

  “Are we done?”

  Alvarez wasn’t done. He was on his feet, prowling the room. Stopped in front of the bookshelves, took one of the trophies down and examined it. Put it back, took down another one and another, fascinated.

  “Judo, karate, tae kwon do, jujitsu, these others I never heard of. These are yours? Your name inscribed right there. Harper Roberts. How many? Fifteen, twenty? Man, you kicked some serious ass. So these are the moves you used on my guys? You were holding back, huh?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “What’s your brother doing with your trophies?”

  “He pulled them from the garbage.”

  “Yeah? You threw them out? Really?”

  “Is that a crime?”

  “Myself, I never won a trophy, not for anything. If I had, I think I’d keep it forever, pass it on to my kids if I had kids.”

  “I travel light.”

  “On the road with your mother, taking photos, globe-trotting.”

  “My mother took the photos. I was along for the ride.”

  “I heard she was training you to take her place.”

  “I was her assistant. No one could take Deena Roberts’s place.”

  He picked up another trophy, a gold figure on the top, a woman in a fighting robe executing a hip throw.

  “You were seriously into this martial arts thing. Mind saying why?”

  She sighed. The guy was bullheaded.

  “For Nick’s sake.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He was a skinny kid, looked different, his accent stood out.”

  “So he got bullied.”

  “Relentlessly,” she said. “He was too shy to go alone to training classes, so I went along.”

  “You stuck with it for a good while.”

  She nodded to herself. A good while, yes.

  “Tell me about Nick. He’s not a blood relation I take it.”

  “Adopted,” she said.

  “He’s what, Serbian, Polish, one of those?”

  “Russian,” she said.

  “I was close. Got those Slavic cheekbones. A handsome guy. How’d he wind up an orphan?”

  “How is that relevant?”

  “Probably isn’t, but in this business, you never know.”

  She sighed and said, “Nick’s father was an engineer helping build a power plant in Turkey along the Syrian border. A terrorist group attacked the compound where the foreign workers lived, both his parents were killed. Nick got sent back to a Russian orphanage.”

  “That’s a rough start.”

  She was silent, staring at the empty TV screen.

  “And Nick does what? Business card he gave me says he’s a banker.”

  “He works for the World Bank, but he’s not a banker.”

  “What? Like a loan advisor or something?”

  “He’s a resettlement specialist.”

  “That’s a new one on me. What is it?”

  “World Bank loans money to build a road or a dam in some country, Nick figures how much to compensate the farmers who lost their land. Helps them find a new home.”

  “I should know what the World Bank is, but I don’t. I thought it was, you know, like a big bank.”

  “You might want to look it up.”

  “Okay, yeah, I’ll do that.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Well, about that accelerant your brother smelled at the scene. It was charcoal lighter, a big can sitting on a shelf in the back pantry.”

  “What?”

  “That shelf survived the fire, there was a rust outline matching the bottom of the charcoal lighter can. So it’s like the killer saw the lighter fluid, sprinkled it around, and set the blaze. Crime of opportunity. Guy operating on high emotion, angry, impetuous. He kills, then, Oh my god, what the hell did I do? I have to cover it up. He finds the can, and bingo.”

  Harper shook her head. Too painful to follow the logic, too harrowing to picture.

  “You two close, you and Nick?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know. Way he was acting the night of the fire, that thing he said about being your bodyguard. That struck me funny.”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “It’s part of the process, ruling things out. Start close to home.”

  “Like what? Nick’s a suspect?”

  “I’m just trying to fit the pieces together is all.”

  “So how’s that work?” She leaned forward, burned him with a look. “Nick and I are lovers, he killed Ross out of jealousy? Are you crazy?”

  “Your words, not mine.”

  Alvarez set the photos on her side table along with his business card, his cell phone scribbled on the back, told her good-bye, went back to the bookshelf, examined the trophies again, and left.

  Harper pushed herself off the bed, picked up Alvarez’s card, wadded it into a tight ball.

  She drew her cell phone from her purse, stared at it for several moments, then punched in a number. A familiar voice answered before she even heard a ring.

  “Hey, Harper. I thought you might call.”

  “So tell me what you know.”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “It wasn’t Jamal’s son?”

  “No. Jamal Junior didn’t kill your husband.”

  “You’re sure of that? A hundred percent?”

  “It wasn’t him or any of his people. Jamal is too busy destroying his country. Fending off coup attempts every other week. Unlikely he knows you exist. Even if he did, he doesn’t have time for a stunt like that.”

  “A stunt?”

  “Sorry. Wrong word.”

  She drew a breath, looking out the window at the silver sunlight flickering on the bay.

  “So, tell me, Harper. You considering coming back in?”

  “That an official invitation?”

  “Someone with your skills, d
oor’s always open.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Had to ask. So tell me, you need help? As you know, we’ve got resources your local cops never dreamed of.”

  She crushed Alvarez’s business card into a tighter ball and tossed it into a wastebasket.

  “No thanks,” she said. “This is mine to do. All mine.”

  “In case you change your mind, don’t lose this number.”

  After the line clicked off, she kept the phone to her ear, listening to the stillness. Finally, she drew a long breath and set it aside.

  She got up, showered, put on fresh clothes from Nick’s closet. Baggy jeans, a black T-shirt, and a red flannel shirt. Tall, lean Nick. She had to roll up the cuffs of the jeans, but otherwise his clothes fit.

  She marched to the front door, stepped into the hall. Waited till her heart settled, then she shut it behind her and set off down the carpeted corridor.

  Outside at the valet station, she told a uniformed young man she needed a cab.

  “Where to?” he said.

  “Is that any of your business?”

  The valet straightened, gave her a quick look, then turned to the line of cabs and waved one forward.

  EIGHT

  February, Miami Beach, Florida

  It was stupid what Spider was doing. Parked in the guest lot outside the Aqua, a fancy-ass condo a mile or two from downtown Miami, twenty stories of white stucco with splashes and stripes of rainbow trim, trying for a hip art deco feel.

  He’d been out there off and on for four days, windows down, watching the comings and goings of the residents and maids and delivery guys. A steady stream of Mercedes and Jags and low-slung whatevers. Hot Latinas in tight clothes and stilettos, carrying shiny shopping bags inside the building. Studs handing over their fancy cars to the valets. All the guys looked younger than Spider, no apparent jobs, but lots of cash for their wheels and clothes and their haircuts.

  He was nursing a bad attitude toward the residents of the Aqua. Developing an itch to hurt somebody, break a car window, piss on their soft leather bucket seats.