Most Dangerous Place

by James Grippando

  “Isa, please. Think hard. Is he lying? Or is he telling the truth? This is important.”

  “I don’t—” she started to say, then stopped. “I could have.”

  “You could have said it?”

  She nodded, tormented. She still wouldn’t look at Jack, but he could see the agony on her face.

  “I probably did.”

  “Probably?”

  “I did, okay? Yes. I said it. That doesn’t mean I meant it,” she said, probably louder than intended. An awkward silence hung in the room. Isa gathered her purse and rose. “Excuse me. I’m not in a frame of mind to do this.”

  Jack rose. “Of course. We can pick this up when you’re ready. I’ll have Bonnie call you a taxi.”

  “No, I have an app. Thank you.” She hurried from the room, too fast for Jack to see her out, her heels clicking on the old wooden floor.

  Jack and Hannah looked at one another.

  “We’ve all wished people dead,” said Hannah.

  “Maybe,” said Jack, his gaze drifting back to the frozen thug on the screen. “But we don’t say it to a guy like David Kaval.”

  Chapter 25

  Sylvia met her boss for breakfast at a coffee shop across the street from the University of Miami campus. The dining area was nearly empty; for the average college student, a weekend on South Beach had a way of pushing the Monday-morning breakfast rush until about lunchtime. They took a booth by the window where they could talk privately over their Nova lox and toasted bagels.

  Numbers and statistics were not Sylvia’s thing, but she’d seen data that pegged the total pending sex-trafficking cases in their office at about three hundred, which made the state attorney a perfect host for the annual forum on human trafficking sponsored by the university. Benitez was scheduled to be onstage at ten o’clock to welcome guests and present the first speaker, a twenty-year-old survivor who was nearly beaten to death by her pimp at the age of sixteen. Sylvia had led the prosecutorial team and convinced a judge to put him away for fifteen years.

  “Got your speech all polished and ready to go?” asked Sylvia.

  The state attorney put a draft of her prepared remarks aside. “Have you ever known me to stick to a script?”

  That question needed no answer. Sylvia checked her foil pack of cream cheese for the calorie count and decided it wasn’t worth it. Her boss had no such dilemma, spreading her pack and then Sylvia’s on her bagel halves.

  “Tell me what’s going on with the Foneesha Johnson investigation,” said Benitez.

  “I just got an e-mail from the Miami field office this morning,” said Sylvia. “The FBI report and recommendation is coming by the end of the week.”

  “Sounds like full speed ahead.”

  “More like hot potato. Someone at the Justice Department wants to stay as far away as possible from the Bornelli prosecution.”

  Benitez scraped the foil wrapper with her knife for the last bit of cream cheese. “Both the special agent in charge of the Miami field office and his ASAC will be at the trafficking forum today. I’ll touch base. What’s up with our friend Michael Posten at the Tribune?”

  “I’m sure you saw Sunday’s paper. Fortunately, he dropped the story that he was planning to write about Isa’s statement to MDPD that she ‘just went along with it.’ He turned the piece into a more generic feature on the growing epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses.”

  “Yes, I saw. That’s putting ink to good use.”

  “I’m afraid the improvement is temporary. I checked back with him this morning. The story that he said was under consideration on Saturday night—that Isa was not sexually assaulted—is apparently still in the works.”

  The waitress came to the table and refilled their cups. Benitez waited for her to leave and then continued. “Anything more on who Posten’s source could be for that story?”

  “Nothing to add to what he told me on Saturday night. He not only has a source. He claims to have the source.”

  Benitez stirred a teaspoon of sugar into her coffee. “Let’s cogitate on that. If a journalist claims to have the source, he has to be talking about someone with firsthand knowledge, right?”

  “You would think. But Posten is always blowing smoke. That’s the way he operates.”

  “Understood. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for present purposes. Doesn’t the source have to be someone who was there?”

  “Well, that would be either Bornelli or Sosa. And Sosa is dead.”

  The state attorney gestured—a simple turn of her hand that invited Sylvia to continue with her line of reasoning.

  Sylvia offered a skeptical half-chuckle. “Seriously? You think Bornelli is his source?”

  “Why not?” asked Benitez. “No rape means there was no attacker. No attacker makes it much harder for us to prove Bornelli’s motive to orchestrate the murder of Gabriel Sosa. I’m sure that those implications have occurred to you.”

  Indeed they had, ruining her date on Saturday night and keeping her wide awake well into Sunday morning. “Yes,” she said. “That would be a problem.”

  “I have no doubt that this ‘problem’ has occurred to at least one of Ms. Bornelli’s lawyers as well,” said Benitez.

  “Are you backtracking now? Swyteck or Espinosa is his source?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose Posten could say that he has the source if the information is coming from Bornelli’s lawyer. Or maybe her lawyer put her up to it and he’s actually talking to Bornelli.”

  “I guess that’s possible. But why wouldn’t they save that tack for trial? Why tip their hand now by going to a newspaper?”

  “Because the defense doesn’t want this case to go to trial. Isa Bornelli moved to the other side of the world to avoid just that. Throwing us a curve about the sexual assault would make us wonder about the strength of our case. The more doubts we have, the more likely we are to offer a nice plea.”

  “Should we offer a deal?”

  “Not yet,” said Benitez. “Let’s wait.”

  “’Til when?”

  “I want to see what that FBI report says. I’ll talk to the special agent in charge today and see if we can get a draft of the report before they release it.”

  “What are you hoping it shows?”

  “I’m not hoping for anything,” said the state attorney. “But if the conclusion is that Bornelli lied about a threatened sexual assault by a corrections officer, and if it turns out that she also lied to MDPD about being raped by Gabriel Sosa, then we have a whole different case on our hands.”

  “Yeah,” said Sylvia, thinking it through. “That would be one . . . one very different case.”

  Chapter 26

  Jack arrived at Manny’s office late Friday afternoon. Isa was already there, and she appeared much more composed than she had on Monday, when she’d rushed from the Institute. Manny had his own set of grand jury materials, but he was unpacking a different box—one that was marked “Handle with Care,” and that bore a shipping label from Christie’s Art Transport.

  “Can you give me a hand here, Jack?”

  Jack helped him sift through the packing straw, and then together they lifted out a two-foot-tall bronze sculpture and gently set it on Manny’s desk.

  It was an antique, which didn’t work at all with the chrome-glass-and-leather décor of Manny’s ultramodern office suite.

  “Bronco Buster,” said Manny. “The first of Frederic Remington’s twenty-two cowboy-themed bronzes, and the most sought after. And this one is no reproduction. See the foundry mark?” he asked, indicating the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company in New York City. “This is nineteenth century—one of the early ones done in the sand-casting method. When the price of oil goes down, buy Remingtons. Every CEO in Houston is unloading. It’s like, like—”

  “Like the way Venezuelan voters unloaded the Chavistas?” suggested Isa.

  Most historians linked the falling price of oil to the decline of Chavez’s party after his death, but Jack in
terpreted Isa’s remark less as a political statement and more as a personal shot at her father.

  “I suppose,” said Manny. “Anyway, I did the same thing the last time the bottom fell out of the petroleum market. Buy low and hold it ’til the price of oil rebounds and the rednecks want their art back—then, bam! Manuel ‘Bubba’ Espinosa makes a killing.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Jack. “What do you say we talk about ours?”

  “Ready when you are,” said Manny, as he gathered the stray pieces of packing straw from his silk rug.

  “I’ve already watched the rest of Kaval’s testimony, but it can’t hurt to see it again,” said Jack. “We can pick up where I left off with Isa this morning.”

  “No need,” said Manny. “We watched the whole thing before you got here.”

  Jack was taken aback. “You should have called me.”

  “Sorry. You covered the first part without me, so Isa and I watched the second part. We’re a team, right? Teams divide labor.”

  For some reason the idea of Manny alone with Isa made Jack feel like something less than “co”-counsel. “Right,” said Jack. “So let’s talk about it.”

  Part two of Kaval’s testimony tracked the allegations of the indictment, some of which Isa had already confirmed were true: she and Kaval went to a club on South Beach where Gabriel frequently hung out; Isa pointed out Gabriel to Kaval and his friend; the three of them, including Isa, followed Gabriel in Kaval’s van; and Kaval bumped the back of Gabriel’s car to make him stop and check for damage, while Kaval and his friend got out to confront him.

  At that point, the stories diverged.

  “You told us that you ran back to your dorm,” said Jack.

  “Right,” said Isa.

  “Kaval says you were still there when he and his buddy overpowered Gabriel and threw him in the back of the van. That you rode with them to the automotive shop.”

  “Yes, that’s what he says.”

  “He’s lying?” asked Jack.

  She glanced at Manny. “This was something we discussed before you got here.”

  “And?”

  Manny interjected. “She definitely did not go back to the automotive shop.”

  “I see,” said Jack, grasping the issue. “The question is: When did you turn and run back to the dorm—before or after Kaval and his buddy grabbed Sosa and threw him in the back of the van?”

  “Precisely,” said Manny.

  Jack was watching his client. “What’s the answer, Isa?”

  “I honestly didn’t remember seeing them put him in the van,” she said quietly. “But the way David described things, it felt familiar. Listening to him, it seemed like I could have been there.”

  “You saw them shove Sosa into the van. Is that what you’re saying now?”

  “Well, you don’t have to say ‘now.’ I’m not changing my story. Just remembering things more clearly. Coming to terms with what happened to me is a process.”

  “And she isn’t a hundred percent certain that she did see it,” said Manny. “She’s flagging this for us as one of those fuzzy gray areas in her memory. You’ve seen this as often as I have, Jack. When a witness for the prosecution insists that you were there, or that you said such and such, it’s natural to question your own memory. You start to say to yourself, Wow, maybe I was there. Maybe I did say that.”

  Jack had seen that happen, and it was natural. It just wasn’t easy for a lawyer to know when a client was experiencing that phenomenon and when they were simply making things up.

  Isa spoke up. “It’s also important to stress the fact that I never, ever thought they were going to hurt Gabriel. Like I said before, I thought David might scare him. Rough him up, maybe. Not—definitely not—do the things they did to him.”

  “I have a couple of reactions,” said Jack. “One, it’s easy to see how Kaval’s testimony was enough to convince the grand jury to indict you. We have to assume, however, that the prosecutor held back. No prosecutor presents all her evidence to the grand jury. Sylvia Hunt is saving something for trial. So, Isa, if certain things trigger more memories for you, it’s important that those trigger events happen before trial. We can’t be surprised by a sudden recollection in front of a jury. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “Second point,” said Jack. “Whether you ran before or after they put Sosa in the van is a game changer. You’re edging dangerously close to being part of a kidnapping. At the very least, you’ll lose sympathy from the jury if they hear an admission that you saw them throw Sosa in the van and didn’t call the police. These are all things we will have to consider if and when we have to decide if you testify on your own behalf.”

  “Isa and I were talking about that right before you got here,” said Manny.

  “At the risk of sounding prickly, that’s a matter that ‘the team’ needs to discuss jointly.”

  “Easy, Jack. No decisions were made without you. But we are being more open-minded now.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Jack.

  Manny glanced at Isa, as if cueing her to speak. “If I can’t testify—or if I choose not to testify—then maybe the point Manny has been making is right,” she said, avoiding eye contact with Jack. “Maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to concede that, you know, I was assaulted.”

  “I’m afraid that ship has sailed,” said Jack. “Kaval will testify that you told him you were raped. That’s not hearsay—it’s your own admission. It will come into evidence.”

  “Kaval is not credible,” said Manny. “He’s a scumbag thug and a convicted felon. We can destroy him on the witness stand.”

  “There’s also the MDPD homicide detective who wrote Isa’s own words into the report: ‘I just went along with it.’”

  “I have some ideas on how to deal with that,” said Manny.

  “Whoa,” said Jack. “This is a sea change. Isa, are you really on board with this?”

  “I don’t know. Manny thinks I should consider it.”

  “My concern is that while you’re considering it, circumstances are going to turn it into a done deal.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Isa.

  Jack looked at Manny. “Could this have anything to do with the phone call I got at lunch today from Michael Posten at the Tribune? He’s considering a story that Isa wasn’t sexually assaulted, and he claims to have a solid source.”

  “Well, the source isn’t me,” said Manny. “I’m still honoring the agreement I made with the state attorney when she agreed to let Isa out on bail, which is not to talk to the media until the investigation at the detention center is over. And you should be doing the same, Jack.”

  Jack’s internal reaction was, Fuck you, Manny. But he held his tongue in front of the client.

  “Then who is it?”

  “You’re asking the question as if I know the answer,” said Manny, “and I don’t appreciate that.”

  “Could it be my father?” asked Isa.

  “I don’t know, Isa. Could it be?” Jack’s tone wasn’t threatening, but it was firm.

  “It could be anyone,” said Manny. “Or Posten could be up to his usual tricks, and it could be no one.”

  “No, it’s someone,” said Jack. “I’d bet my bar license that it’s someone.”

  Chapter 27

  The wind chimes stirred outside Jack’s office window. Miami relished a late spring breeze, as the march toward summer meant not just heat and humidity but heavy air and flat seas. Jack had noticed the chop in the bay on his morning drive from Key Biscayne, and the windsurfers and kiteboarders were eating it up. As teenagers he and Keith had missed more than few days of school on windy days. By lunchtime, he could no longer suppress the impulse. He dialed Keith’s cell.

  “Hey, dude. I know you can see the bay from your office. This is no teaser breeze. It’s honking out there.”

  Keith chuckled. “‘Honking.’ Now there’s some lingo I haven’t heard since the Miami Dolphins didn’t suck.” />
  “Let’s go.”

  “You serious?”

  “It’s after midnight in Hong Kong. Don’t pretend you’re busy. We can rent wet suits and boards right on the beach.”

  “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve windsurfed?”

  “It’s like riding a bicycle. You think you never forget, but at least you fall in the water instead of on the fucking pavement.”

  “All right, Swyteck. You’re on.”

  “I’ll pick you up outside your building in fifteen minutes.”

  By one o’clock they were on the water. They weren’t the studs they once were, but by one thirty they were cutting each other off and stealing the other guy’s wind—“gassing” was what surfers called it. Jack still considered himself a runner, and those long jogs with Max on a leash were paying off. Keith’s legs gave out first. A whitecap took him out, and he was straddling his board, resting. Jack paddled alongside him.

  “Happy we came out?”

  “Yeah,” said Keith. Then his smile flattened. Jack noticed that his gaze had drifted toward the shoreline—toward the Four Seasons high-rise, in particular.

  “You thinking about Isa?”

  “Melany, actually. It just feels so amazing to be out here again. It made me think, wow, I want to teach Melany to do this. And I will. I definitely will. But, typical me, I started overanalyzing the practicalities and realized, oh, of course we’ll have to take off her audio processors. And then I started to notice—really notice—all the things she won’t hear when she’s out here. Puffs of wind. Waves splashing. The hiss of the board when you’re dialed in and carving through butter. That plunge into the bay when the chop wins. Melany will never hear any of that.”

  “Sorry, man.”

  “Don’t be. Just be thankful. Be thankful for what you’ve got.”

  That probably wasn’t the mantra back at the IBS headquarters in Zurich or its Hong Kong office, and Jack was glad he’d taken Keith out for a glimpse of their old friendship. They drifted for a while longer, the Florida sun baking their wet suits dry. They were soon in flatter, shallow water, practically in the shadows of the office towers and condominiums that ran the length of the coastline from downtown Miami to the southern tip of the Brickell area.