Regardless, back in Miami, some idiot's head was going to roll – literally.
"I got about a half-dozen cars you can choose from," the chop shop owner told him. His name was Jamahl, a fat guy who appeared to live day and night in his grimy garage coveralls. "Come out back with me. Take your pick."
The noise inside the garage was deafening. Jamahl's chop team was busy at work on the latest acquisition – pounding, sawing, cutting, ripping – quickly reducing the red car to parts for sale and shipment to Latin America. Moses took one last look at his wheels and followed the owner outside to the junkyard. Five completely intact vehicles were lined up in front of a mountain of quarter panels, wheel wells, and discarded parts from chopped vehicles. Moses zeroed in on the metallic blue 1995 Caprice Classic.
"This one stolen?" said Moses.
"None of these is."
"Right," said Moses.
"I speak the truth, dude. Some of my inventory has to be legit to keep the IRS off my back. And this is it. My five beauties."
Moses walked around the Caprice, inspecting the body, paint job, tires, and rims. It needed a wash, but everything was in good condition. He opened the drivers'-side door and climbed behind the wheel. The keys were in the ignition. The engine started on the first turn, and he liked the sound of it. The odometer posted twenty-eight thousand miles, but Moses figured that the real number was probably double.
"What you want for it?"
"For you? A straight-up trade, brotha'."
Moses nodded. "Appreciate it, dude. But I need to keep my police radio."
"No problem."
They didn't bother with paperwork. A title transfer in Moses' name would only have put the state of Florida on alert and defeated the purpose of his new wheels. He took the police radio from his old car and drove off the lot around 12:30 a.m. The radio told him that the Florida turnpike was crawling with cops, so he followed the back roads out of Orlando, and he would continue on a dark, winding route until he could pick up the interstate.
The police radio was abuzz. They were looking not just for Moses' red car – which was now history – but for him, too. He needed a disguise and a phony ID if he was going to be on the road. A dead cop was a top priority for law enforcement. It was also big news for the media. He couldn't just keep quiet and let it hit the newspapers in the morning. There was one other phone call he had to make.
He dialed the number – he had it memorized – and a man answered in a sleepy voice. In two minutes, Moses told him exactly what had happened since his release from jail. The end of his story was met with stone-cold silence. Moses could sense the anger on the other end of the line.
"Don't worry," said Moses. "I'm still working it the way we planned."
"The plan went out the window when your boys dropped the ball in Overt own. So far, I'm the only one who keeps his promises. You went from no bail to ten thousand dollars bail, thanks to me. Less than twenty-four hours later, a state trooper is dead and you're in king-size trouble. Do you realize how bad this is going to look?"
"Nobody even knows you're involved. It ain't gonna look like anything for you."
"I'm not talking about me. I pulled in a huge favor. That trial judge who cut you a break on your bail this morning is an elected official. The media will absolutely skewer him. I'm going to have one very angry old man on my hands."
"You deal with that end. I'll take care of mine."
"You haven't taken care of shit. Make it right, or don't ever call me again."
The loud click in Moses' ear could only have been the telephone slamming down. Moses simply smiled as he put away his cell. The man's words – Don't ever call me again – traveled straight to his funny bone.
"Dream on, dude."
Chapter 30
It was lights out at TGK, and Theo lay awake in his bunk. Plotting his next move was head splitting. There was only so much time he could spend thinking about the O-Town Posse tattoo and Moses' sudden departure, not to mention his search for the man who played the role of "safety valve" in Isaac Reems's extortion scheme. Theo desperately wanted to know the upshot of the cell-to-cell inspection of inmates, but Jack couldn't just stop by to provide hourly updates. Too much contact with the real world (particularly outside of regular visiting hours) would arouse suspicions within TGK and potentially blow Theo's cover. Jack would have to fill him in at tomorrow's meeting. In the meantime, sleep was essential.
Theo was giving his brain a rest, playing one of the many mental games he'd invented while on death row. This one drew on his musical background and was called "Duets You Hope You Never See." He quit when he conjured up the image of Ozzy Osbourne and Keith Richards clad in skimpy Cher wear and singing "If I Could Turn Back Time."
The cell's lock disengaged with an ominous click, and the iron door slid open. Officer MacDonald was suddenly standing over Theo.
"Get up, Knight," he said.
Theo slid out from under the blanket and sat on the edge of the bunk. He was wearing only underwear and a T-shirt. "What's going on?"
"Just get on your feet." He grabbed Theo's orange jumpsuit from the shelf and threw it across the cell. It hit Theo in the chest. "You're coming with me," the guard said.
Theo walked slowly to the toilet and urinated. Charger lay quietly in the top bunk, pretending to be asleep. Theo didn't really need to pee that badly but taking care of business gave him a minute to evaluate the situation. Pulling an inmate out of a cell at this hour was unusual, and it made Theo wonder if the FBI had decided to make MacDonald privy to his undercover status. Maybe MacDonald needed to take him somewhere private to pass along information from Jack or Andie. Or perhaps Jack had come on the pretense of some phony emergency to deliver a message himself.
"Move it," said MacDonald.
Theo pulled on his jumpsuit, a pair of socks, and his prison-issue tennis shoes with Velcro and no laces. "All right. Let's go."
Theo went first, and MacDonald gave him a needless shove from behind as they exited the cell. The iron door slid shut behind them, the ratchet of the lock echoing throughout the dark cell block.
"Where we headed?" said Theo.
"Eyes forward," said MacDonald. "Just do as I say."
The guard gave him another shove, and Theo started walking. Most inmates were asleep in their cells. Some stood at the bars to see what was going on, their hands protruding from the blackened cells. For Theo, it was eerily reminiscent of his predawn walk down death row.
Theo stopped at the guard's command. They were at the end of the cell block, standing before a locked security door. A buzzer sounded, and the door opened. MacDonald gave him another unnecessary shove. If this jerk didn't knock it off, he'd be in serious trouble when inmate Knight returned to his life as citizen Knight. Then again, Theo considered the possibility that it was all an act – that MacDonald was in on the undercover operation, and that he was being rough only to keep suspicions from rising among the inmates.
The security door locked behind them. MacDonald gave a nod and a hello to the guard posted in the short corridor that joined the cell block to the next wing.
"To your left," MacDonald told Theo.
Theo obliged and braced himself for another cheap shot from behind. MacDonald didn't disappoint him. This one nearly made Theo stumble forward. Each shove was a little harder than the last.
"Stop," said MacDonald.
They were standing outside the isolation chamber – not a cell, but a private room in which the guards interrogated inmates, from informants to troublemakers.
"Hands behind your back."
Theo did as he was told. MacDonald bound the prisoner's wrists with metal cuffs, unlocked the door, and pushed Theo inside. He followed right behind him, switched on the lights, and locked the door.
The room was ten feet by ten feet. It had no windows and only one door in or out. The floor was bare concrete, the walls were yellow-painted cinder blocks, and the only furniture was an old oak chair in the center of the room.
<
br /> Theo had been around the proverbial cell block enough to know that it wasn't standard procedure for an interrogation to be conducted by one guard. This was the moment of truth. Either MacDonald was a player in the FBI's operation and this was going to be something good – or he wasn't, and…
A nightstick to his kidneys brought Theo to his knees and his speculation to an end. Theo remained on the floor on hands and knees, keeping his head down. He'd had the holy hell beaten out of him before, both as a child and as an adult, but his body was no longer conditioned for a blow like this one. It took a minute for him to catch his breath. The hot, stale air didn't make it any easier. He was sweating already.
MacDonald circled him in silence, and Theo could hear only the soft: step of his shoes and the steady tap of the nightstick in the palm of his hand.
"Isaac was your good buddy huh?" he said.
Theo didn't answer, which brought MacDonald's boot to his belly. Theo went over on his side, the wind gone from him again.
"You seem to have a knack for making friends with the wrong people, pal."
Theo stayed low, the right side of his face on the floor. Obviously MacDonald wasn't part of the undercover team, but Theo was beginning to think that MacDonald knew why Theo was in jail – and didn't like it one bit.
"Get up," said MacDonald, as he grabbed Theo by the collar. "In the chair."
Theo sat in the interrogation chair, his cuffed hands behind the backrest.
MacDonald faced him directly, boring the blunt end of his nightstick into Theo's chest. He turned it like a screwdriver as he increased the pressure, which hurt like a bitch.
"Nobody sits at Moses' table on his first trip to the cafeteria," said MacDonald. "Nobody but you."
"He invited me," said Theo.
"Just like that, he decides you're his new pal."
"Yeah," said Theo. "Just like that."
MacDonald bent over and stared straight into his eyes, close enough for Theo to smell the coffee on his breath. The guard said, "I can see this is gonna be a real painful lesson for you, boy."
He jammed the nightstick into Theo's groin, and Theo fell to the floor again. Theo looked up at the ceiling, but he could barely see straight. He rolled onto his side and assumed a fetal position. It had been a long time since he'd felt pain like this.
MacDonald was circling again, taunting him with that tap of the nightstick against the palm of his open hand.
"You and your buddy Isaac Reems stained my perfect record with that escape."
"It was his jailbreak."
"But you helped. That's why you're here."
The residual stabbing pain in his testicles was still making it difficult for Theo to form coherent thoughts, but that last remark suggested that MacDonald didn't know anything about Theo or his actual status. This "interrogation" appeared to be about nothing more than a petty correctional officer's bruised ego.
Theo was still lying on his side. MacDonald stepped behind him and pressed Theo's fingertips beneath his boot – slowly at first, then harder, as if trying to mash them into the concrete. Theo grimaced in pain but tried not to cry out, refusing to give MacDonald the satisfaction.
"Lucky for you, I'm a nice guy," said the guard. "I'm gonna give you a chance to help me earn back my superstar reputation."
"Is that so?" said Theo, grunting through the pain.
"Yeah. Looks like your buddy Moses killed a state trooper tonight. Shot him right in the face."
Theo said nothing. Somehow, it didn't surprise him.
MacDonald said, "You and me are gonna work together now. We're gonna catch Moses."
"What're you talkin' about?"
"I kept my eye on you and Moses. I saw your buddy-buddy act in the cafeteria. I watched you two scheming in the stairwell."
"Just jail talk, man."
"My ass," said MacDonald. "Moses blew this county five minutes after he was released. Got in his car and headed north. Police got a BOLO out, but nobody knows where he is now."
Theo's fingers were going numb, which lessened the pain. "Can't help you, dude."
"Yeah, you can. I think you know exactly where Moses was headed when he sot out of TGK."
"I don't know nothin'."
MacDonald raised his boot off Theo's fingers and gave him a kick to the kidney. This time, Theo couldn't stop from crying out in pain. He couldn't tell anyone about his undercover status – the deal was that he would take whatever came, like a regular inmate – but he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep this up.
And even if he told him, MacDonald wouldn't believe him now.
The guard knelt at Theo's side and whispered in his ear, his voice taking on the perverse and gleeful edge of a sadist: "I got all night, tough guy. We'll see exactly what you know."
Chapter 31
Uncle Cy couldn't sleep.
Lightheadedness had forced him to leave the bar early tonight. It had come on right after Jack called to tell him that a guy named Moses had an O-Town Posse tattoo and killed a state trooper just hours after his release from TGK. Distressing news, but it didn't account for Cy's dizziness. That damn doctor still didn't have his blood pressure medication right. Cy went home and climbed into bed. It felt like the bad old days when he would drag himself home from his gigs, fall onto the bed or sometimes even the floor, and fight with the spins as he tried to find sleep.
Funny thing was, Cy had played his sax so much better when he was high. Or so he'd thought as a much younger man. The owners who fired him from the hottest clubs downtown, the managers who banned him from the big hotels on Miami Beach, the musicians who refused to play with him again – they were all racists or Uncle Toms trying to keep the black musicians down. He kept moving from one gig to the next, drinking, sniffing, snorting, popping, shooting along the way, burning bridges everywhere he went. Eventually he couldn't find work anymore – except in a place like Homeboy's, that dive of a joint where Theo's mother used to hang out. Night after night, he watched her, stoned and stumbling from one bar stool to the next in search of a twenty-dollar trick. When those pockets were emptied, she'd turn to the street. Everyone knew that story's ending.
Except that her death really wasn't the end of anything – especially not now, with Isaac Reems's promise hanging out there for Theo to grasp.
Cy sat up in the darkened bedroom and draped his legs over the edge of the mattress. Things were spinning again. A little blood in his head would sure have been nice. He allowed a minute for it to pass, but the mattress was turning, then the floor, and then the entire room. Slowly at first, but steadily gaining speed. The motion was counterclockwise, as if carrying him back in time and to another place – a snippet from his past that he had all but erased. It was rushing back to him now, and even though his room was a blur, his memories played like a movie in his mind's eye.
A LOUD POUNDING ON the front door woke Cy from a deep sleep. It took him a moment to recognize his surroundings. Not his bedroom. It was the living room. He'd passed out on the couch this time. That was one way for a man of so much talent to cope with playing a hellhole like Homeboy's.
More pounding on the door. He forced himself up and shuffled across the room. The morning sun assaulted his eyes the moment he opened the door.
"Cyrus Knight?" the man on the porch said.
His head was throbbing, and the cotton mouth was so bad that Cy could barely form words. "What of it?" he said.
The man flashed a badge, as did the younger guy with him. They introduced themselves as Harmon and Kittle, homicide detectives. Harmon was clearly the veteran, teeth stained from years of addiction to coffee and tobacco, his face creased with the lines of too many crimes, solved and unsolved. Kittle looked too young to be a detective, still battling acne and his hair buzzed like a high-school jock.
Harmon said, "We'd like to ask you a few questions about your niece."
Cy scratched his head and cleared his throat. The blinding glare of the sun forced him to keep one eye closed. "It's about d
amn time you guys come around," he said. "Come in."
"That won't be necessary," said Harmon.
Cy glanced inside his messy apartment, then back at the detectives. A couple of white guys in an all-black neighborhood. "What's the matter? My place ain't good enough for ya'?"
"Seen worse," said Harmon. "This will just take a couple minutes."
"Couple of minutes? This isn't jaywalking. A woman was murdered."
"How can you be so sure it was murder?" the younger detective asked suspiciously.
Detective Harmon rolled his eyes, as if to say, "Rookies." "Kittle, the woman's throat was slit. Let me handle this."
Cy was sobering up quickly. It was clear that the homicide division hadn't put its best and brightest on this case. He directed his question to Harmon. "What do you want to know?"
Harmon pulled a pen and small notepad from his breast pocket. "When's the last time you saw your niece alive?"
Cy thought about it. "Sometime that same day she was killed. I play the sax at Homeboy's. She… she sort of hangs there."
"What do you mean 'hangs'?"
"Hangs… you know. It's her spot."
The detectives exchanged glances. Kittle smirked. Harmon said, "Did your niece have a job?"
"She, you know, made money as she could."
Kittle said, "We hear she was a prostitute."
Cy shrugged. "Might have been."
Harmon asked, "How well did you know her?"
"Better than most folks."
"And you can't tell us what your niece did for a living?"
"She's got kids, okay? Two boys. Good kids – well, one of 'em is, anyway. I just don't see why you gotta write all this stuff down and put it in the damn newspaper" 'We're detectives, not reporters." 'It's all the same club." 'Sir, I just need the facts," said Harmon. 'Okay, she walked the street. Big deal." Harmon was deadpan. "She have a pimp?" 'Beats me." 'She do drugs?" 'What do you think?"
Last Call Page 16
