Beyond Suspicion

“You think?”

“Absolutely. But maybe we should ask her.” Theo took a half step closer, gave her his most intimidating look. “What do you say there, gorgeous? Think maybe you wouldn’t be so pretty anymore if the wrong person were to find out that you are a musor?”

She glared right back at him. It impressed Jack that she didn’t seem to back down from Theo the way most people did. Careful, Theo, or she’ll kung-fu your ass, too.

“Aren’t you smug?” she said. “Think you got it all figured out, don’t you?”

“Not all of it. Just enough to get you to tell us the rest.”

“I can’t talk to you.”

Theo said, “What a shame. Looks like I’ll have to float your name on the street as a snitch.”

“And then I’ll watch Jack’s abuela wishing to God she’d never left Cuba.”

“Takes real guts to threaten an old woman. Who’s next on your list, the Teletubbies?”

“Enough with the threats,” said Jack. “Let’s just talk.”

“I can’t tell you anything.”

“That won’t do,” said Jack. “You may think we’re just a pain in the ass, but refusing to talk to us won’t make us go away. No matter what you do, my only option is to keep on plugging away at this viatical company to figure out who threatened Jessie Merrill and why she ended up dead.”

“That’s very dangerous.”

“My alternative is to stand aside and get tagged with a murder I didn’t commit.”

“That’s a bitch. But there’s very little I can tell you.”

“See, we’re already making progress. We’ve gone from ‘I can’t talk to you’ to ‘there’s very little I can tell you.’”

Jack detected a faint smile. She glanced at his swollen jaw and said, “Sorry about the bump.”

“No problem.”

“Didn’t really want to do it.”

“I know. Sam Drayton said the order came from high up.”

She didn’t deny it.

Jack said, “Who gave you the order?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Who controls the money behind Viatical Solutions, Inc.?”

“You’re going to have to figure that out for yourself.”

“Is it the same people who threatened Jessie Merrill?”

“If you’re trying to pin a murder on the viatical investors, I couldn’t help you if I wanted to.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re looking in the wrong place.”

“Stop with the threats.”

“It’s not a threat,” she said. “Listen carefully. I’m giving you something here. If you think Jessie Merrill was murdered, you’re not going to find her killer by looking where you’re looking.”

“Where should we be looking?”

She answered in the same matter-of-fact tone. “Somewhere else.”

Theo groaned. “Come on. Like you don’t know anything?”

“I know plenty. I just don’t trust you to deny you heard it from me when someone hangs you upside down and shoves a cattle prod all the way up your ass.”

Theo blinked twice, as if the uncomfortable image was taking form in his brain.

Jack gave her an assessing look. “How do you know we’re looking in the wrong place?”

“Because I’ve been working this gig long enough to know the people I’m dealing with. I know what one of their hits looks like.”

“Come off it,” said Theo. “Not every hit is the same.”

“Trust me. If Jessie Merrill had been murdered over her viatical scam, you wouldn’t have found her body in the Swytecks’ bathtub. You wouldn’t have found her body at all. At least not in one piece.”

Jack and Theo exchanged glances, as if neither was sure how to argue with that.

She said, “You two have no idea what you’re stepping into.”

“It’s money laundering. I know that much from your phone messages and from talking with Sam Drayton.”

“Big-time money laundering. Hundreds of millions of dollars. I tell you this only so you can see that Jessie Merrill and her one and a half million is a speck on the horizon. Now go away, boys. Before you get hurt.”

“We can take care of ourselves,” said Theo.

She extended her hand and said, “Phone, please.”

Jack said, “I kept all the messages on tape.”

“And you probably hired someone to dust for fingerprints, too. But I don’t care.”

“Of course you don’t,” said Theo. “Why should a snitch care about fingerprints?”

“I still want it back.”

Jack removed her phone from his pocket and handed it over. She gave him his, then turned and walked away, no thank-you or good-bye. Jack watched as she moved with the crowd toward the escalators that led to the Metrorail gates.

“What do you think?”

“Two possibilities,” said Theo. “Either she’s protecting someone. Or someone has her scared shitless.”

“Or both.”

“You want me to tail her?”

“Nah, thanks. Got someone a little less conspicuous covering that already.”

Jack caught one last glimpse of her as she reached the top of the escalator. Then, from afar, he gave his friend Mike Campbell a mock salute as he put aside his newspaper, rose from the bench, and followed her to the train.

31

•

Jack skipped di

Jack had pla

The house was in Coconut Grove on Seminole Street, a pleasant surprise. It was small but plenty big for two, built in the forties, with all the charming architectural details that builders in South Florida had seemed to forget after 1960. The lot was huge for such a small house, but there was no grass. The lawn was covered with colorful bromeliads, thousands of green, purple, and striped varieties, all enjoying the shade of twisty old oak trees. An amazing yard with nothing to mow. To heck with the rental. Jack was barely inside and was already thinking of buying.

“You like?” asked Abuela.

Jack checked out the pine floors and vaulted ceiling with pecky-cypress beams. “It’s fabulous.”

“I knew you would like.”

A man emerged from the kitchen, Abuela’s latest beau. Jack had met him before, the self-proclaimed best dancer in Little Havana. At age eighty-two he still seemed to glide through the living room as he came to greet Jack, smiling widely.

“Jack, how you been?”

He pronounced “been” like “bean,” but he insisted on speaking English to Jack, as did most of Abuela’s friends, all of whom considered him thoroughly American, at best an honorary Cuban. Jack knew him only as El Rodeo, pronounced like “Rodeo Drive” in Beverly Hills, except when Jack was around and everyone referred to him as “The Rodeo,” as if Jack were a native Texan and his middle name was Bubba.

“Is beautiful, no?”

“I love it. How much is it?”

El Rodeo pulled out a pen and scribbled a phone number on the inside of a gum wrapper. “You call.”

“Whose number is this?”

He continued in broken English, and Jack was able to discern that the house was owned by El Rodeo’s nephew, who had just relocated to Los Angeles. Jack tried asking for details in Spanish, but again El Rodeo insisted that English would be easier. They were doing fine until he started telling Jack more about his nephew, a guy whose name apparently was Chip, which struck Jack as odd for a Latino.

“Chip?”

“Sí, chip.”

“He’s cheap,” said Abuela.

“Ah, cheap.”

“Sí, sí. Chip.”

A nice enough guy, this El Rodeo, but if his English is better than my Spanish, I truly am a disgrace to my mother’s memory.

Jack tucked the phone number into his wallet. “I’ll call him tonight.”

“Call now,” said Abuela.

“I need to think about it. With everything Cindy and I have been through, I wonder if she’ll be afraid to move back in with me unless it’s a condo with twenty-four-hour security.”