Last Call

by James Grippando

  "They shouldn't." said Jack.

  "No. They shouldn't."

  Jack suddenly felt as if this conversation was no longer just about him and Theo.

  Rene took his hand. "Are we best friends?"

  Jack lowered his eyes. "I don't know. Are we?"

  "Have you ever lied to me?"

  "No."

  She smiled, and with a light touch, she lifted his chin until their eyes met. "You just did."

  "Huh?"

  "Everybody lies, Jack."

  "Have you lied to me?"

  "Does a pygmy hippo shit in the great Ta'i Reserve?"

  Jack couldn't help giving up a little laughter. Then he turned more serious. "So Saturday night, when you said the reason you never stay longer than a few days at a time when you come to visit me…

  "Definitely not a lie," she said, squeezing his hand. "That was the truth."

  She kissed him, and Jack held her tight. The smell of her hair was right in his face, and he gave himself enough time to commit it to long-term memory. "I'm gonna miss you," he whispered.

  She pulled away and slung her carry-on over her shoulder. "I'll see you. Soon. I'll call you when I get to Abidjan. I promise." She gave him another quick kiss on the lips and then headed toward security. Jack watched from afar as she presented her ticket andpassport to security. She turned and flashed one last smile, then disappeared into the maze of international check-in.

  Jack tried to catch sight of the back of her head one more time – maybe she'd turn and wave – but he couldn't follow her in the crowd. He stayed put for a few minutes anyway just watching the endless stream of travelers headed for points unknown. He was sad to see Rene go. He wondered if that was because of his feelings for her – or if he simply dreaded what was next on the agenda.

  It was time to meet with Agent Andie Henning.

  Chapter 15

  The meeting was inside Theo's office at Sparky's Tavern. Jack didn't like the venue, but the idea was Andie's. She got her way – with one notable exception.

  "Theo isn't coming," said Jack as he closed the office door.

  She wheeled and gave him a look of complete surprise – more like Andie the might-have-been girlfriend than the poker-faced Agent Henning.

  "What do you mean he's not coming?" she said.

  With a conciliatory wave of the hand, Jack offered her a seat on the couch. She didn't take it. Jack crossed the room and braced himself against the front edge of Theo's desk, half sitting and half standing, his arms folded. The entire room had been swept free of the usual clutter – no papers atop the desk, no Post-its on the computer screen, no receipts and records scattered across the floor and furnishings. Even the wall calendar was gone. Theo had followed Jack's cleanup order to the letter: leave nothing for the wandering eye of the FBI.

  Jack said, "Don't read anything into this from a personal or investigative standpoint. He's merely following the advice of his lawyer."

  "You and I had a deal," she said.

  "And we still do, if you remain willing to share the 'something of interest' that required us to meet in Theo's office."

  "You were supposed to let me talk to Theo."

  "I can answer your questions."

  "That's changing the deal."

  "That's the only one on the table"

  "You're being a pain in the ass."

  "Some things change," he said with a shrug, "and some things stay the same."

  She smiled a little, as if to confirm that she had the energy to butt heads all day long, and he smiled back. Jack had a lot of time and effort invested in Rene, but for a quick moment, a part of him could imagine the fun in sparring with Andie about everything from unreasonable search and seizure to who would end up on top at night.

  Her smile faded, and she put on her business face. "Where was Theo on Sunday morning between midnight and three a.m.?"

  "He was working at his bar until the cops came looking for Isaac Reems. I told him to go somewhere. He ended up at his girlfriend's and spent the night at her place."

  "Would that be Katrina?"

  "Trina. She stopped going by Katrina when the hurricane hit."

  Again, Andie showed surprise, but it wasn't about the name change. "They're still together?"

  Jack wasn't sure how to take it, but her tone almost seemed to ask, How the heck did Theo and Trina outlast us? "Yeah, still together."

  "Doing well, I hope."

  "Doing just fine." Jack didn't bother with the tale of the Prince Albert.

  "Can anyone confirm that he was with Trina that night?"

  "Trina can."

  She rolled her eyes. "Other than her, wiseguy."

  "No, but let me save you a lot of time. Theo didn't kill Isaac Reems."

  "I'm not saying he did. I'm not even here on a homicide investigation. Not my jurisdiction."

  "It sounds like you're making it your jurisdiction."

  "I'm just trying to find out who on the outside was able to get the guards on the inside to look the other way long enough for Isaac Reems to bust out of the TGK correctional facility."

  "I hope you find out. But I'd really like to know why you're looking here."

  "Because Theo and Isaac were fellow juvenile delinquents back in the 'hood. Because the first place he went when he busted out of prison was Theo's bar. Because the last time Reems was seen alive he was less than four miles from Sparky's Tavern. Because he was found shot on the same street that the Grove Lords used to cruise as teenagers."

  "Based on that, you think Theo helped Reems escape from prison?"

  "I know Theo, and I have a really hard time believing that he would do something so stupid. But I have to do my job. And there's one other thing in the mix."

  "I can't wait to hear it."

  "Theo's phone line was tapped."

  Lawyer's instinct kicked in: Confront devastating news with righteous indignation. "You tapped his telephone?" he said in an angry voice.

  I didn't say I did."

  "I meant law enforcement."

  "Ah, the 'royal you.'"

  "The 'totalitarian you.'"

  "Hold your horses," she said. "It's not what you think."

  Jack hoped not. His deal with the state attorney was no searches of the premises, no taps on Theo's telephone. Things were going to get very sticky if the FBI knew about Reems's phone messages to Theo. Be cool, Swyteck. "What are you trying to tell me?"

  "There was never an official wiretap of any of Theo's phone lines."

  "I'm not sure I'm following this."

  "One of the agencies – not me, mind you – sought a warrant, but things don't always move fast on weekends. By the time it was issued and the tech people started acting, it was early Sunday morning. They stopped as soon as they detected an existing power drain on the line."

  "Are you saying that Theo's line was already tapped?"

  She nodded. But it still wasn't clear to Jack if law enforcement had picked up Reems's messages to Theo. "Do you mean his home or his office?" he said.

  "The plan was to tap both. The power drain was on his home line."

  That was what Jack had feared. "Whose tap was it?"

  "That's the big question."

  "Some other branch of law enforcement?"

  "No official wiretap would be that easily detected. This isn't the old days where telephone exchanges were mechanical and technicians had to link circuits together to route the audio signal from the call. It's digital technology and done by computer."

  "So Theo's line was tapped by someone outside of law enforcement?"

  She nodded again.

  "You never did actually get a wiretap?"

  "No. By the time all this was brought to my attention, Reems's body had already been found."

  Jack breathed a silent sigh of relief.

  Andie said, "I told you I was going to share something of interest.

  "You are true to your word, lady."

  "I'm glad you feel that way. Now let's see if you are
. When was the last time Theo had any communication with Isaac Reems?"

  "I'll have to check with Theo. Let me get back to you on that."

  "You gotta be kidding me, Swyteck."

  "Do I look like I'm kidding?"

  "Do I look like I could kill you?"

  "Like I said before, some things change." He crossed the room and opened the door for her. "Some things don't."

  Chapter 16

  Jack and Theo watched as Vinnie Acosta connected a TDR – a time domain reflectometer – to the telephone line outside Theo's town house.

  Vinnie was a retired technical agent for the FBI that Jack had worked with during his brief stint as a prosecutor with the U.S. attorney's office. Vinnie had all the necessary toys to operate his own technical counter-surveillance company. He was high up on a ladder, accessing a junction box that received the telephone wire from a utility pole on the other side of the parking lot. Jack and Theo waited below in a typical three-men-at-work scenario: one guy actually doing something while the other two stood around watching.

  An internal sweep of the town house for a radio tap or an induction coil attached to one of the phones had turned up nothing. They then moved outside to check for a direct-line tap. Jack understood the concept – a slight change in line impedance caused by the introduction of a tap or splice would show up on the screen of the TDR – but gadgets were not his forte.

  "How hard is it to get an accurate reading?" said Jack.

  Vinnie's focus remained on the junction box. "ATDR is essentially an echo-ranging device. It generates a short, very rapid rise-time pulse that travels along the wire pair at a speed determined by the velocity factor of the wire. When a discontinuity is encountered, the pulse is reflected back along the wire pair to the TDR and oscilloscope. All it takes to measure the actual distance to the discontinuity is a simple calculation on a calculator."

  Jack looked at Theo. "What did he just say?"

  "He says it's a hell of a lot easier than sticking a metal ring through your Johnson."

  "That's what I thought he said."

  Before meeting Agent Acosta, Jack would never have pictured anyone named Vinnie as a highly intelligent techno-nerd. This was due in part to Vinnie Testaverde's highly skilled but less than cerebral play at quarterback for the University of Miami in the 1980s, but it stemmed mainly from the fact that Rene's old boyfriend was named Vinnie. Once, Jack had even joked that Rene should write a spoof book called Duh Vinnie Code: A Girl's Guide to Understanding Brainless Hotties Who Talk Like Dis.

  "Got your bug," said Vinnie, checking his calculator. "About forty-three feet from the box."

  Theo looked up at the wire and made a rough measurement. "That pole by the Dumpster," he said.

  "Good place for it," said Vinnie.

  He climbed down and moved the ladder to the other pole. Jack and Theo resumed their all-important positions of standing around and watching. Jack felt as though he should be wearing a hard hat and earning about thirty bucks an hour.

  "Yup, it's here all right," said Vinnie.

  Theo looked at Jack. "I guess Henning wasn't bluffing."

  "Don't touch it!" Jack shouted upward.

  Vinnie said, "I can't remove it if I don't touch it."

  "It's enough just to know exactly where it is. I want Henning to come out and get it and check for fingerprints."

  "I should at least disable it," said Vinnie. "Just one snip of the wire."

  Jack gave him the okay. Vinnie took care of it and climbed down the ladder. Jack said, "How sophisticated does the equipment look?"

  "Pretty basic. Smaller than a cigarette pack, but not exactly something out of a James Bond movie."

  "I guess we're not dealing with the CIA here," said Jack.

  Vinnie said, "We knew that when Henning told you about the impedance on the line. That only happens with low-tech stuff."

  "Any way to tell how long it's been there?" said Jack.

  "Can't pinpoint it. But it looks brand spanking new to me, not very weather-beaten. Two or three weeks, at most. Maybe even a few days. But as soon as you get the FBI out here to remove it and check for prints, that should be the end of that."

  Not with Andie on the case, thought Jack.

  Vinnie packed his equipment into the van. Theo paid him in cash, and Vinnie was off to another job. Then Jack and Theo went back inside. It was midafternoon on a Monday, an off-hour for Sparky's. Theo was in no hurry to get back to the bar. They stood on opposite sides of the kitchen counter.

  "You gonna call Henning?" said Theo.

  "Let's sort this out first," said Jack. "Why would someone tap your phone line?"

  "If you ask me, somebody put it there after Isaac busted out of jail."

  "Vinnie said the equipment looked new, but maybe not that new."

  "Maybe they put it up there after finding out that he was planning an escape."

  "You're making a lot of assumptions there. But if I take what you're saying at face value, why would someone do that?"

  "Because they thought he was going to call me."

  "But let's assume Andie was telling the truth: law enforcement didn't put it there. Why would anyone else even care if Isaac spoke to you after breaking out of prison?"

  "I can't answer that. But whoever it was heard that first call when Isaac said he was going to be at H-boy's at one a.m. Home-boy's shut down while I was still on death row. So it's somebody who knew the old 'hood."

  "That's my problem, Theo. That makes you a prime suspect."

  "Let's get real, okay? Every cop in the county was looking for Isaac and they couldn't find him. So either his shooter stumbled on him – a random shooting or something – or he was shot by whoever bugged my phone. No one else knew exactly when he was going to be where he was."

  "But the tap on your telephone could be completely unrelated to Isaac."

  "I might agree with you if it had been there for a month or longer. But you heard your friend Vinnie say that somebody just put it there a few days ago – at most, a couple of weeks ago."

  "That still doesn't mean your eavesdroppers were sitting around listening to your phone on a Saturday night. Or maybe they heard it and didn't do anything about it. The FBI could take the position that you're the only one who got the message, you went to see Isaac that night to find out who killed your mother, and you ended up killing Isaac."

  "Except that I have an alibi."

  "The jails are full of guys whose only defense was an alibi from a girlfriend."

  "They don't have a girlfriend like Trina."

  "That's the interesting wrinkle here. As of Saturday night, I thought you didn't either. You told me you were done with Trina because of the Prince Albert."

  "We made up."

  "Happy to hear that. But if I'm a cop, that's awfully convenient timing."

  "What if you're Jack Swyteck?" said Theo.

  Jack felt like he was being tested. "I don't doubt you, Theo. But you didn't answer your cell that night."

  "Did you call Trina's?"

  "Of course not. I wasn't about to dial her number at one o'clock in the morning after you were so adamant that it was over between you two."

  "So what's your point?"

  "I'd feel better about this alibi if I had talked to you or her the other night."

  Theo slid his cell across the countertop. It hit Jack in the elbow. "Call her now," said Theo.

  Jack's gaze was drawn to it. It would have been a betrayal to pick up the telephone and check out Theo's alibi. He slid the phone right back at him. "I don't need to talk to her."

  Theo put the cell back in his pocket.

  Jack looked away then back. He wanted to change the subject – but only slightly. "That was one hell of a shot that took out Isaac," he said. "Right between the eyes, dead of night, bad lighting, twenty or more feet away."

  "Could be a pro. Could have been lucky."

  Jack gave his friend an assessing look. "Sooner or later, Andie or somebody is going to latch
onto the fact that your brother was a contract killer."

  "Tatum's dead," said Theo.

  "But I'm sure he had friends who could hit a shot like that."

  "That don't make 'em my friends. I got friends on death row. Does that make 'em yours?"

  Funny, but Andie might have said yes – at least that was the way Jack had taken her "bad joke" that led to their breakup. "I guess not," said Jack.

  Silence fell between them, and then Theo smiled. He gave Jack a playful punch to the left bicep. It hurt.

  "So, nothin' to worry about, right dude?"

  Jack rubbed his aching arm. "No," he said. "We're cool."

  Chapter 17

  Theo's tour started appropriately enough at the Knight Beat – "the swingingest place in the South" – and then moved on to the Cotton Club, the Clover Club, and Rockland Palace Hotel. The night wouldn't end until they reached the Flamingo Lounge at the Mary Elizabeth Hotel. All of these clubs had disappeared years earlier – some before Theo's birth – but Uncle Cy's anecdotes brought them to life.

  ''The day Miami was born, the official name for this area was Colored Town," said Cy. "Then it was Overtown. I like to think of it as Little Harlem."

  They walked side-by-side down Second Avenue, between Sixth and Tenth Streets, once a lively stretch that, back in the day, was known variously as Little Broadway, the Strip, and the Great Black Way. Uncle Cy was dressed like a relic from the jazz and swing era, wearing a three-piece Norfolk suit in natty vintage tweeds, as if defying the fact that it was a balmy evening in May.

  "Ain't you hot?" said Theo.

  Cy flashed a mischievous smile. "Last time someone on Little Broadway asked me that question it was more like, “Cyrus Knight – hoo-wee, ain't you hot!"

  "Must have been one of the many women you managed to convince that the Knight Beat was named after you."

  "How'd you know about that?"

  "'Cause it's what I would have done."

  They stopped at the corner. A chain-link fence surrounded a vacant lot. A big painted sign promised condominiums "Opening Summer 2003" – a deadline that could now be met only with the aid of time travel. "American Dream Development Ltd.," the sign said, "a Fernando Redden Company." There were a few mounds of gravel and deep ruts from truck tires, but the weeds had taken over. It looked as if the distinguished Mr. Redden's construction had ceased as soon as it had started.