The Dark of Day

by Barbara Parker

  Milo slumped into his seat. He took off his Panama hat and held it on his lap, bouncing the brim on his knees. “He could make up anything. Paul Shelby wears women’s underwear. His wife beats their kids.”

  “You want me to get the police off Mr. Slater’s back, is that it?”

  “I think some degree of loyalty is called for.” From Milo’s wounded expression, C.J. could only believe he was talking about her.

  “Who’s going to pay for this? Not Slater, not on his salary.”

  “Paul Shelby will. I’ll tell him he has to. He’s sticking by his loyal employee.” With a smile, Milo added, “You can charge him whatever you feel it’s worth.”

  Tires hummed over the metal grid of the short bridge across the Miami River. She picked up a shoe. Crossing her legs, she fastened a buckle. The angled blue glass surfaces of the Met Center filled the windshield. The limo turned, circling around to the entrance.

  “I’m going to pass. I’ve been running flat out for weeks. There are several excellent lawyers who could do this. I promise, Mr. Slater will have one of Miami’s best holding his hand when he talks to the police. Paul Shelby’s name won’t come up.”

  Milo shook his head. “C.J., my love, it’s a big mistake, saying no. You need a case like this. Ask me why. Go on.”

  She smiled. “Why do I need this case, Milo?”

  “To get your pretty face on TV.”

  “Who said I wanted my face on TV?”

  “You did, last time you deigned to cross the causeway to raise a glass with poor old Milo.”

  “I don’t drink anymore.” She buckled the ankle strap of her other shoe.

  “You don’t do a lot of things anymore.” He set his hat aside and turned toward her. “Being a celebrity is hard work. It requires being out there, getting known, taking on the right jobs so you can keep on being known. There are other lawyers snapping at your heels, ready to snatch it all away.”

  The limo stopped under the curving portico of the Met Center. Tropical plants in massive pots cast shade on the sidewalk. She took her sunglasses out of her tote. “I just won an acquittal for Harnell Robinson. You’ll see my face on TV tonight, if you’re interested. My practice is in damned good shape.”

  The chauffeur’s door came open. Milo scooted forward to press the intercom button. “Stay where you are, Jason. We’re still talking.”

  “I have things to do,” C.J. said.

  As if confiding a secret, Milo scooted closer and whispered, “You only got the Harnell Robinson case because I gave him to you. What else do you have in the pipeline? Anything good? Before Harnell, you were doing a divorce for a Chevrolet dealer. Is that what you are now? A divorce attorney?”

  “Stop it, Milo.”

  “Running flat out. Poor little thing. It sucks. Work, work, work. Never go to parties or see your friends. Have your dinner standing up at the sink. Never any time with your sweetie-pie. How long is he going to wait?” Milo lunged across her and grabbed the door handle to keep her from opening the door. “Come on, now, don’t be like that. Milo knows what you want. He can help you get it.”

  His arm lay across her lap, blond hair on golden skin. His shirt was a pattern of yellow and blue surfboards. She smelled expensive cologne, felt the heat of his torso on her legs. “Milo, get off.”

  He smiled up at her, his light brown hair falling away from his forehead. He smiled and his cheeks pushed his eyes nearly closed, leaving a narrow glimmer of blue. “Couple of months ago, one of the producers at CNN contacted you. They had an idea, a show about celebrities on trial for murder, and they needed an attractive woman lawyer to host it. Billy told me. Don’t get mad at him. He was proud they asked you.”

  “Well, I haven’t heard back.”

  “’Course not. It takes time. You know Donald Finch? You know who he is? He’s married to Paul Shelby’s mother, Noreen. Donald Finch’s sister is an executive at CNN. Isn’t that something? I’ll bet you a dollar that if I talk to Paul, he could pull some strings. Paul and I were fraternity brothers at Duke, did I tell you? He won’t turn me down. What do you say?”

  C.J. took a breath. Her chest felt tight. “I don’t know.”

  “You do too. You’d be perfect. Beautiful, smart, fast on your feet. And no pushover. No, ma’am.” Milo reached up and pinched her cheek, then swung around and sat beside her. “That’s how it goes in the world. It’s small at the top. Everyone’s connected. Sideways, up, down. Membership is restricted, though. You’re rich or you’re famous, or you know somebody.”

  He held her hand and smoothed her fingers over his. He played with her diamond-and-pearl ring. Her nails looked good, and she was glad, and then she wondered why she cared. She shouldn’t. Milo was a friend. And yet it did matter.

  He said, “How old are you?”

  “Have you forgotten?”

  “No, but say it.”

  “Thirty-seven. What’s your point?”

  “Three years till you’re forty. You’ve got intelligence and depth and a great voice and tons of poise, but what else do the TV folks look for? Youth. Energy. They want lovely young people with good complexions and tight bodies. It’s not fair, but that’s what it is. You should grab this job before it’s too late. Don’t let it go by.”

  C.J. felt dizzy. The possibilities burst in her head like fireworks. She did want it. She had never wanted anything as much.

  chapter THREE

  tischman Farmer and Bates occupied a full floor halfway up Tower One of the Metro Miami Center. The view was impressive, the furniture sleek, and the walls paneled with rosewood. In the hush of the lobby, one would not hear the clatter of the engines of litigation, the crash of multimillion-dollar deals brought to earth, or the twenty-four-seven hum of the billing department.

  As C.J. Dunn strode down the corridor, a ripple of applause followed in her wake. Paralegals and secretaries stood up at their desks. A senior partner in the civil litigation division came out to see what the commotion was about. He nodded to her. “C.J.! Heard you kicked butt today. Can you get me season tickets for the Fins?”

  She laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Henry was waiting outside her door. His wide smile said he’d been the one to deliver the news: a verdict of not guilty for Harnell Robinson. She took his hands. “We did it.”

  “We? You were terrific.”

  “Modesty, Henry, is not a virtue in this business.” She patted his chest and went into her office. “I want you to do a letter to Harnell. Thanks for allowing us to be of service, et cetera. We’ll both sign it, but it doesn’t go out until we get paid. Grab a pen. I have some other stuff for you to do.”

  Henri Jean Pierre, whom everyone called Henry, was of Haitian descent, two years out of Harvard Law, a good-looking man, fluent in four languages. His father had been tortured to death by the Ton-Ton Macoute. His mother, pregnant with Henry, had fled in a wooden fishing boat with twenty-six others. Spotted by the Coast Guard a hundred yards short of Miami Beach, the boat captain forced everyone overboard. Half of them drowned, but Henry’s mother crawled ashore. C.J. made sure this story found its way into Sunday’s edition, the day before trial started.

  She stepped around a file box and over a stack of ABA journals to be tossed. Nobody was allowed to rearrange the mess: papers, books, CDs of depositions, framed photos of the desert still to be hung, and oddball gifts from clients. Across one arm of the sofa lay a Mexican blanket she’d brought from California. She had spent the night on that sofa more than once, too exhausted to drive home.

  C.J. tossed her tote and jacket into a chair and went over to the windowsill and picked up her orchid mister. It was a lovely little thing, brass with a wooden handle. As she walked along spraying her orchids, she gave Henry a list of instructions. Going out, he nearly collided with her secretary coming in with a mug of herb tea and a stack of phone messages. The mug had been a promo item for War of the Worlds. One of the producers back in L.A. had said sure, take it. C.J. thought the title
nicely summed up her average work week.

  She leaned over to examine the stem of a phalaenopsis orchid. After one gorgeous burst of yellow petals three years ago, it had stubbornly refused to bloom. She misted the thick roots that snaked across the top of the pot. “Shirley, could you find me a copy of today’s Miami Herald? Just the first section and the local news, never mind the rest of it.”

  Shirley Zuckerman, nudging retirement age, had flame-red hair and a shape like a matchstick. Silver and gold bracelets slid up and down her skinny arms when she moved. Unmarried, childless, and petless, Shirley could spend sixty hours a week at the firm without a complaint. C.J. had gone through five secretaries before finding one who could keep up with her.

  Shirley had put the messages in order of priority, most important on top. Calls from prosecutors on current cases. One from a judge’s office. An inquiry from a potential client in Palm Beach. Two requests for interviews, but not about the Robinson case, unfortunately. C.J. stopped at the next slip of paper. She saw an area code from north Florida. And a name. Fran Willis.

  “Oh, Christ, now what?”

  “She called about five times today asking if you were in yet. She wanted your cell phone number. She said it was important. Should I have text-messaged you?”

  “No. It’s always important with this woman, you know that.”

  She flipped through the rest of the messages. Request to speak at a bar association luncheon. A deposition rescheduled. Her suit was ready at the tailor’s. As Shirley wrote down instructions, C.J. took off her high heels. She knelt and reached under the sofa, feeling around until she found a well-worn pair of pink suede Chanel flats with black patent toe caps.

  “Do a letter to Judge Ritter at the Third DCA. Yes to the bar association. No to the women’s club, but say it’s a scheduling conflict.”

  With a quick glance at her watch, Shirley gasped, and her penciled copper brows shot up. “Yikes. It’s almost five o’clock.”

  C.J. smiled. “That’s right, you’re sneaking off to Orlando for a wild weekend with the girls. This can all wait till Monday. I’ll do the letter to Judge Ritter myself. Just one thing before you go. The Miami Herald?”

  “Be right back.” Shirley rushed out in a flutter of tie-dyed Indian skirt and jangle of bracelets.

  The message from Fran Willis was still on C.J.’s desk. Urgent. Shirley had put the word in quotation marks.

  Frances Willis used to belong to the same church as C.J.’s mother in a small town thirty miles south of the Georgia border. Fran was living farther west now, in Pensacola, Florida. Several months ago, Fran’s teenage daughter and a friend had driven to a cheap hotel on Miami Beach, where the friend’s car had collapsed and died in the parking lot. They had decided, with the wisdom of youth, that they could blow off their final semester of high school and make up the credits in summer school. Both sets of parents drove six hundred miles, one end of the state to the other, to bring them back, but Kylie refused to leave. She wanted to get a job and an apartment and take her GED. And then what? The ultimate goal was still fuzzy, but at seventeen, did she care?

  Since C.J. Dunn was the only person Fran knew in Miami, she had presumed upon an old connection. Fran was afraid something terrible would befall her daughter. Miami was a dark and dangerous city with drugs and illegal aliens everywhere. Drivers would run you over if you got in their way. You couldn’t go into a store and expect to get waited on in English.

  Not really wanting to get involved, because how do you ever escape once you’re pulled into this sort of thing, C.J. called Billy Medina for suggestions. On his way to Antigua or Aruba or wherever, he turned it over to one of his assistants, who made the arrangements. A room in the apartment of Rosalia Gomez, who used to keep house for Billy’s aunt in Puerto Rico. A job at the offices of Tropical Life, where Kylie would run errands for ten dollars an hour. Perfect.

  C.J. had gone to the hotel where Kylie was staying. She was a tiny thing, couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. Long brown hair framed a delicate face, and gray eyes peered out from behind wire-rimmed glasses. The girl admitted to having less than fifty dollars in her wallet, so C.J. gave her fifty more and drove her and her backpack to the old lady’s apartment downtown. She handed her a bus schedule and directions to the magazine’s offices and told her she ought to be grateful.

  Surely it wouldn’t be long, C.J. had thought at the time, before the girl got tired of living like a pauper and slunk back to Pensacola. That hadn’t happened. Her mother would call periodically and expect C.J. to do something about it. What C.J. always told her: Kylie was fine. If not, someone would have raised an alarm.

  At the moment, there were other things to attend to, starting with her newest client, the chauffeur—assuming that Milo Cahill hadn’t been blowing smoke. C.J. reached for the phone and punched in a local number.

  She heard a hello against a background of light classical music. Judy Mazzio turned it down and said she was parked outside a love motel on South Dixie Highway, waiting for her client’s cheating husband to come out, and with luck she’d catch him and the girlfriend on video. Judy was a private investigator in business with two former bail bondsmen, who provided the muscle if need be. She asked how the Robinson case had turned out. Was there a verdict? Judy Mazzio had an interest because she’d provided the unsavory details on most of the state’s witnesses.

  “Not guilty,” C.J. told her.

  “Way to go!”

  “Thanks. And you too. What I’m calling about,” C.J. said, “is the girl who disappeared from a party on South Beach last weekend, Alana Martin. Have you heard about it?”

  “It’s been all over the news.”

  “I may have a new client. Supposedly he was seen with this girl. His name is Richard Slater. He’s a chauffeur for Congressman Paul Shelby. That’s about all I know. I have no address, DOB, or social on Slater. Could you call your friend with the Beach P.D.? If they’re trying to talk to him, they’ll be able to provide enough so we can do a background check. See what you can find out.”

  “How soon do you need it?”

  “Tomorrow if possible. I might be meeting this guy over the weekend, and it would be nice to have some info in advance.”

  “Sure, I can call right now,” Judy said. “All I’m doing is keeping my nose pointed at room number six. Listen, it’s Edgar’s night to host the poker game, and he wants me to come too. He’s ordering barbecued ribs. You should join us.”

  “Ribs? I can barely fit in my jeans as it is.”

  “Oh, shut up. I’m the one with the big ass. So, do you want to play some poker tonight?”

  “And let Edgar clean out my wallet again? I don’t think so. I’ll check with you when I get home, probably around eight o’clock. I’ve got some things to finish here first.”

  Edgar Dunn, age eighty-seven, was her late husband’s uncle. Edgar lived in a cottage behind her house, originally meant for maids’ quarters. He had known Judy Mazzio in Las Vegas. She’d been a blackjack dealer, and Edgar loved to gamble. He used to fly out there with his friends several times a year. When Judy got tired of the scene, he suggested Miami. C.J. thought Edgar probably had a crush on Judy, which she found cute.

  Just as C.J. was hanging up, Shirley brought Friday’s paper, neatly folded. C.J. shooed her out. “Thanks. You’d better run before traffic gets too snarled.”

  “Have a good weekend,” Shirley said from the doorway.

  “We live in hope,” C.J. muttered. Sipping her tea, she unfolded Section A. There was nothing about Alana Martin. She turned pages. Nothing. She picked up the local section, saw the story below the fold: Woman Still Missing on South Beach.

  There was a photograph, a snapshot of a young woman with dark hair and a big smile, the face made pale by the camera flash. It had been clipped out of a group shot, other people’s shoulders at the edges of the photo.

  Alana Martin, 20, was reported missing last Tuesday by her employer after she failed to report to work at Ch
ina Moon, a women’s clothing boutique on Lincoln Road. According to neighbors, Martin had gone to a party on Saturday night at the Star Island home of Guillermo Medina.

  Medina, 48, is the publisher of Tropical Life. He stated that Martin was not on the invitation list and that he did not recall seeing her among the more than 150 guests.

  Martin, born in Venezuela, moved to Miami in 1997 with her family. She is described as 5’3”, 100 pounds, with brown hair and eyes. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Miami Beach Police.

  C.J. opened her desk drawer for some scissors and cut out the article. There had been no mention of Paul Shelby’s driver, which she considered a positive sign. On the other hand, it could mean the police weren’t interested in him anymore, in which case Milo had panicked over nothing . . . and she could kiss the job at CNN goodbye.

  Her watch showed just past five o’clock. She shoved the paper aside and grabbed the remote for the television, which sat on a credenza across the office. The lead story on all channels was not the Robinson case, as she’d hoped, but the drought and tougher water restrictions. Reporters stood in front of browning lawns, and the owner of a car wash complained about cutbacks.

  “Come on, come on.”

  C.J. put two channels on the screen at the same time, hit the mute button, and returned a couple of phone calls, walking around with the remote in her hand, one eye on the television. Libi Rodriguez appeared, big brown eyes, glistening lips, and teeth so white they fluoresced. She was standing in front of the gate across Billy Medina’s driveway. C.J. apologized to the attorney on the line and quickly ended her call. She aimed the remote at the screen.

  “—no leads in the case so far, and Alana’s parents fear the worst.”

  They had been posed side by side on their living room couch, with a girl and two boys huddling close to fit into the shot. The mother, short and plump, wore a knit top, the father a blue shirt with his name over the pocket. They spoke through a translator. The text at the bottom said Luisa and Hector Martinez.