Last Call

by James Grippando

  Theo began working his way back to the original stall, in the direction of what had sounded like the point of discharge of Moses' last shot. He stayed clear of the center aisle and the horses gone wild, instead climbing through the fencing that separated one stall from the next.

  Another shot sent Theo diving for cover. He buried himself in a blanket of dirty straw as he returned fire across the center aisle. Moses was in the stall directly opposite him. Confused horses ran to and fro between the gunfighters, screeching and whinnying as bullets whistled past their delicate legs.

  Suddenly, the shooting stopped. Theo tried to listen, but the animals were still too excited for him to hear anything but their hysteria. He was down to his last few rounds of ammunition. He assumed that Moses was reloading, which was perhaps Theo's last chance to make a move. As one of the startled thoroughbreds passed outside the stall, Theo pushed open the gate, grabbed the horse by the mane, and ran alongside it, keeping the animal between himself and Moses.

  Moses fired two shots. Theo's horse stumbled to its knees and fell onto its side. Theo fell with the animal and slammed hard against a post. His gun flew from his hand and skidded across the concrete floor, coming to rest somewhere beneath the erratic stampede of the other horses.

  Theo thought his horse had been hit by gunfire, but it rose up on its legs and trotted away. Instinct told Theo to seek cover, but he was stunned from the hard fall, and his body didn't respond to his own commands. A rumbling sound echoed above the raucous horses, and Theo saw the main entrance door slide op en. The horses ran out through the opening like water through a broken dam. The barn went perfectly still. Theo lay alone in the center aisle, an easy target. His senses were coming back to him, and he rolled for cover. But he quickly realized that he should have been dead, if Moses was still inside the barn – and alive.

  He fired a shot at Moses' stall.

  All was quiet.

  Slowly, and with extreme caution, Theo rose up on one knee. He found a rock and threw it in Moses' direction.

  Still no response.

  Theo sprinted across the aisle and hid behind a post. From there, he could see inside the stall. Moses lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling, his gun at his side. Theo went quickly through the gate and aimed his gun at Moses' chest.

  "Don't move," he said.

  Moses merely turned his head, apparently lacking the strength to do much more than that. His shirt was pasted to his chest with blood. One of Theo's shots had obviously found its mark.

  "Go ahead," said Moses. "Pull the trigger"

  Theo stepped closer, kicked Moses' gun aside, and pointed his gun at Moses' head. It would have been so easy to finish him off, and so deserved. Then a footstep in the aisle gave him a start. He turned and saw Andie Henning.

  "Drop the gun, Theo," she said.

  He kept the gun aimed at Moses. "Where's my uncle?" he asked Andie.

  "Right here," said Cy. He was standing about ten feet behind Andie. "Jack's here, too. Those were Andie's headlights we saw coming toward us before you turned off the road."

  Theo said, "Y'all can leave now. This is between me and Moses.

  Andie raised her weapon. "I said, Drop the gun."

  Theo heard her, but he ignored the command.

  Jack said, "Listen to her, buddy."

  Theo's attention was solely on Moses. "You and Fernando go way back, don't you? Back to his fiat-boy days?"

  Moses groaned with pain. "Didn't you hear what the woman said?"

  "I don't care what she said," said Theo. "Fernando hired you to slit my momma's throat, didn't he?"

  "Theo," said Andie, "this isn't the kind of confession that's going to hold up in any court of law."

  "She's right," said Jack.

  Theo's focus remained on Moses. "You killed her, and you bragged about it to the wrong guy in prison. To Isaac Reems."

  "No way, dude," said Moses.

  "Don't lie to me!" said Theo, as he stepped on the wound.

  Moses cried out.

  "Theo!" Andie shouted.

  Theo said, "That's how Isaac found out. It's the only thing that makes sense. No other way for Isaac to be in the picture."

  Moses said, "You got it wrong, dude."

  Uncle Cy stepped forward. "Theo, stop!"

  "Stay out of this," said Theo.

  "What're you gonna do?" his uncle said. "You can't kill him here, right in front of an FBI agent. That's cold-blooded murder."

  "Your uncle's right," said Andie.

  "You gonna arrest me for murder?" Theo scoffed.

  "You shoot him, I will," said Andie.

  Theo knelt down and pressed the barrel between Moses' eyes. "Do you know how bad I want this?" said Theo.

  Andie said, "I can't let you shoot him."

  "Then you're gonna have to shoot me," said Theo.

  Andie fired a warning shot. "The next one won't miss."

  "You're bluffing," said Theo.

  "Don't test her!" said Cy.

  "I told you to stay out of this," said Theo.

  "He ain't worth it," said Cy.

  "He deserves to die."

  "He's – no, he don't."

  "It ain't your call," said Theo.

  "Theo, I'm telling you the truth. Moses don't deserve it."

  "He deserves worse."

  "No, he don't."

  "After what he did," said Theo.

  "Theo, it wasn't him. Moses didn't do it."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because I was there."

  "What do you mean, you were there?"

  "I did it!"

  Theo looked at him with disbelief. Jack and Andie looked equally stunned.

  Theo said, "I don't believe you."

  Cy took a step closer. "She ruined me with her damn drugs. I had a career, a reputation in this town. Until she hooked me on crack. Lost every single one of my gigs. Pretty soon the only joint that would hire me was a dive like Homeboy's. And the only reason they put up with me is 'cause Portia turned her tricks there and gave the manager a cut."

  Theo glanced down at Moses, who looked almost as befuddled as Theo felt. Theo didn't want to see his uncle's face, but he finally looked at him. "You lying to me, old man?"

  Cy shook his head. "Put the gun away."

  Theo looked at Jack, searching for some signal that this was all just a nightmare.

  "Do as Cy says," Jack told him.

  "Save yourself another useless trip to death row," said Andie, her aim steady.

  Theo lowered his gun. He was staring into the darkness, making eye contact with no one. It was difficult to think clearly, but the same thoughts kept swirling in his head – the way his uncle had never been able to tell him a single good thing about his mother, the repeated hints about secrets surrounding her murder, the way he'd pressed Theo's hand to his heart and flat-out warned him: "The past will hurt you, boy. It will cut you open and laugh in your face."

  "Hey!" Moses grunted. "Can somebody call 911 already?"

  "Yeah," Theo said in a weak voice. "I think I need it."

  Chapter 50

  Theo wanted to kill his uncle. But not for murdering his mother.

  "You were gonna shoot Moses right between the eyes," the old man said.

  "You didn't have to lie to me like that," said Theo.

  "I couldn't let you kill a man right in front of an FBI agent. No matter how much he deserved it."

  The two men were sitting out on the wood deck behind Theo's town house. Venus was rising in the east, and Theo guessed that the sun would emerge in not too many more minutes. Both men were exhausted, but neither one had been able to think about going to bed. Not since the ministroke last summer had Theo seen the old man smoke a cigarette, but tonight was an exception. With everything that had happened at HAPP-Y Stables, Theo cut him some slack.

  "Guess I was dead right about Moses," said Theo.

  "Mmm-hmm," said Cy

  They'd been over it several times already, each time pressing another
bit of speculation into established fact. Moses had been a teenage punk in an Overtown gang in the 1980s. Redden was an Overtown developer who had just been named Miami businessman of the year. Portia Knight saw Redden on the evening news and recognized him as the frat boy who'd raped her fourteen years earlier. She made the fatal mistake of calling Redden instead of going to the police. For far less money than Portia had tried to extort from him, Redden hired Moses to slit her throat and silence her forever. It had been the perfect crime – until all those years later, when Moses and Isaac Reems, fellow inmates at TGK, got to trading war stories about the 'hood.

  "Pretty ballsy move/' said Theo, "the way Isaac turned Moses' bragging against him and Redden. Isaac got two pretty big players – one inside, one outside – to help him bust out of prison."

  "He got hisself killed. Almost got you killed, too."

  Cy crushed out his cigarette and lit up another one.

  "You gonna smoke that whole pack?" said Theo.

  "Mmm-hmm."

  White wisps of smoke curled into the night air. Theo watched the leaves move in the huge gumbo-limbo overhead. The breeze was picking up, another sign of the coming dawn. Cy was smoking furiously.

  "What's wrong?" said Theo.

  "Nothin'."

  "You gonna tell me or you gonna make me guess?"

  "I said it's nothin'." Cy inhaled so deeply that it made him cough.

  "You're lying again," said Theo.

  The old man didn't respond.

  Theo could have dropped the entire line of conversation, but in his heart he knew that if the sun came up and this remained unsaid, they would never, ever talk about it.

  "Something you said before keeps gnawing at me," said Theo. "It was when you and me were alone in the new bar, doing the inspections. I could feel that there was something you needed to say. All you would tell me is to be careful about poking into my momma's murder. And then when I pushed you to explain, all you would say is that it ain't a story with a happy ending."

  The ash on the end of Cy's cigarette was nearly an inch long. Theo wanted to walk over and flick it for him.

  Cy said, "I don't want to talk about it no more."

  "Well, I do" Theo scooted forward to the edge of his chair. "Tonight, when you told me you were the killer, that conversation flashed in my mind. It was like I was hearing your words again: "This ain't a story with a happy ending"'

  Cy glanced at him nervously, his face clouded by smoke.

  Theo said, "When we was in the bar, I figured all you meant was that my momma ended up dead. But the more I thought about it, that's too obvious. No need to say it, right? I knew my momma got killed, so why would you even bother warning me that the story don't have a happy ending?"

  "I don't know. Why would I?"

  "Last night, for a split second there, I thought maybe I had the answer. The unhappy ending you were warning me about wasn't my momma getting killed. It was when…"

  "When what?"

  "You know."

  "When you found out I killed her?"

  "Yeah. Like I said: Just for a split second there, that's what I thought you meant."

  Cy was staring off toward the trees, avoiding Theo's gaze.

  Theo was all the way to the edge of his chair, resting his forearms on his knees as he leaned toward his uncle. "That ain't what you meant, was it?"

  Cy flicked his cigarette butt over the fence. Finally, he looked Theo in the eye. "You really want to know what I meant?"

  Theo nodded. "Yeah. I do."

  His uncle swallowed hard, and suddenly Theo wasn't so certain that he wanted to know. But it was too late to stop it now.

  Cy folded his arms and said, "You never was good in math, was your

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Your momma was raped in the spring of 1972."

  "So?"

  "May 20, to be exact. When were you born?"

  The question hit Theo like a punch to the chest. "February 17, 1973."

  The two men locked eyes, and it was as if the earth had suddenly stopped spinning. Theo knew it was his turn to say something, but no words would come.

  Cy dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. There were just two left. "You want a smoke?" he said.

  Theo reached over and took one. His face glowed in the darkness as Cy lit it for him. Then he sat back in his chair and took a long pull.

  "Ain't that a two-footed kick in the head?" said Theo, smoke tumbling from his lips.

  "Mmm-hmm," the old man said. "With boots on."

  Chapter 51

  Theo told no one – except Jack.

  Of course the media hounded him. They wanted details about the shootings that had left a distinguished businessman like Fernando Redden dead in his barn alongside a guy like Moses, a gang leader who was wanted for the murder of a Florida state trooper. Theo refused all interview requests. He didn't even watch the news on television, except for one short statement from Andie Henning and the supervisory agent in charge of the Miami field office. The FBI declined to comment, saying that details would follow in the forthcoming official final report of Agent's Henning's task force on security failings at TGK Correctional Center and the escape of Isaac Reems.

  Mere mention of a possible connection to Reems's escape was fuel to the proverbial fire, as if an edict had been issued to the media: "Let the speculation begin."

  Fernando Redden was buried on the Tuesday following his death. Theo didn't attend the funeral, but over breakfast Trina got so angry at the newspaper that she just had to read him the obituary – a quarter-page fluff piece about the son of Cuban exiles who "personified the American dream." Redden came off like the best thing to happen to housing for Overtown's poor since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There were even humorous anecdotes about "Fernando el Fantastico" – the compassionate friend, the generous philanthropist, the doting husband. Absent was any mention of the fact that, had he lived, he would have landed in jail for fraud and misuse of public housing funds. That information would not become public until the grand jury concluded its secret investigation and returned indictments against his corporation and shady business partners. It would get even uglier with Moses' three-count indictment for murder – Redden, the state trooper, and Portia Knight, though Moses could probably buy his way off death row by testifying against the corrections officer who helped Isaac escape.

  Theo tried not to dwell on any of it. Two o'clock Thursday afternoon, however, brought a flash of renewed anger and a mix of other emotions that he didn't fully understand. According to the newspaper, 2:00 p.m. was the scheduled time for Redden's graveside service. "Family only." Family.

  Before the burial, Jack had offered to try and get a court-ordered DNA test.

  Theo didn't want to know.

  Theo had heard before that he was of mixed ancestry, though usually it was said tongue in cheek. When he was on death row, a Native American inmate told him he looked part Miccosukee, which earned him the prison-lawyer nickname "Chief Brief." With a name like Theodopolis, people said he must be part Greek – which now seemed like an ironic ode to his apparent place of conception.

  Theo still had his doubts about Fernando Redden being his father. It wasn't exactly a comforting thought, but simply because Portia was raped on film by one frat boy didn't rule out the possibility of another partner that night. She could have been raped again by someone off-camera. She could have had consensual sex earlier that night, that day, that week, that month. Theo liked the latter alternative best. That was the one he would cling to.

  Three weeks had passed since the shooting, and it still felt too soon to be celebrating in any way. But Theo had a business to run at Sparky's, the rent still had to be paid on the new property, and it was time to open his real jazz bar.

  "Place looks amazing," said Jack.

  It was early Friday evening, and Theo was on the working side of the bar, mixing a pitcher of martinis. For the past two hours, he'd been so busy greeting guests and putting out
fires that he hadn't taken the time to look around. Weeks of preparation and hard work had helped take Theo's mind off Moses and Fernando Redden. Everything from cleaning, painting, and decorating to creating a menu, stocking the bar and kitchen, hiring and training the staff, and booking live entertainment – it was finally paying dividends. The U-shaped bar was killer. The lighting was just right. The twenty small cafe tables – the exact number Uncle Cy had recommended – were all taken. The doors were open, and people came. Not just loyal friends. Theo could feel it in the air, and it made his heart swell: he was tapping into the true jazz-lover crowd.

  "Want to invest?" said Theo.

  "Hmmm," said Jack, as he scratched his head. "Let me think about that. You and me, business partners? I'd say that has about as much chance as-"

  "You picking up the phone and asking Andie on a date?"

  "I told you I was going to call her."

  "And by the time you do, we'll all be playing shuffleboard."

  "Look, last time we started dating too soon after the Salazar kidnapping. This time I'm just putting a little distance between the gunfire and the sparks flying, so to speak."

  "Well, I invited her tonight. She and Trina are bringing Cy. You got a problem with that?"

  Jack tried his martini. He seemed to approve. "I think that's a great idea. Timing's good, too. Rene and I are definitely history."

  "I'd say so. What's it been, a month?"

  "Actually, she finally called me. Yesterday."

  Theo dropped a rack of olives in Jack's drink. "Really? What took her so long this time? Famine? Tsunami? Swarming locusts?"

  "Fear," said Jack.

  "Of what?"

  "She sensed some chemistry between Andie and me while she was here. Once she got back to Africa, she worked up this fear that I was going to tell her not to come to Miami anymore. That's why she didn't call."

  Theo leaned toward him, forearms atop the bar, speaking in an even tone. "That is a colossal pile of crap. You know that, don't your