Last to die Page 5

  Jack smiled and said, “He is eight.”

  “Yes, he is,” she said, sounding almost as if it overwhelmed her. She crossed the room to the coffeemaker. “Want some decaf? I made it just before you got here.”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  Jack took a seat. She poured two cups at the counter and then brought them to the table. She sat opposite him, next to her laptop computer.

  Jack stirred a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee and said, “I ran into Vivien Grasso tonight. The lawyer handling Sally’s estate.”

  “And?”

  “She wrote that letter to Tatum because he’s named in Sally’s will.”

  She coughed on her coffee. Jack had told her all about Tatum, as his discussions with her were protected by the attorney-client privilege, even though Kelsey was still only a law clerk. Kelsey said, “Wait a minute. You’re saying she hired a guy to kill her, and then she named him in her will?”

  “That’s what I’m told.”

  “Doesn’t that strike you as bizarre?”

  “Yes. Assuming that Tatum is telling me the truth.”

  “Well, let’s assume that he is for the moment. Why would Sally name him as a beneficiary?”

  “Could be his fee for having agreed to kill her,” said Jack. “But that’s a really goofy way to do it.”

  “Could be a setup,” said Kelsey.

  “How do you mean?”

  “He isn’t really a beneficiary. Vivien Grasso is just saying that he is. Maybe she thinks Tatum killed Sally and she simply wants to get him in a room where she can grill him.”

  “I didn’t get that impression from Vivien.”

  “Or how about this? Maybe Vivien thinks that someone else in the room-one of the other beneficiaries-hired Tatum to kill Sally. It could be that the lawyer just wants to test the reaction of each of the beneficiaries when Tatum walks into the room.”

  “I like the way your mind works, but I think it’s working overtime right now.”

  She opened the cookie jar and passed it his way. The Oreos were all gone but the crumbs, Nate’s favorite. Jack was stuck with short-bread.

  Kelsey closed up the jar and asked, “So, what do you think’s going on?”

  “I’m pretty content to just go to the meeting and find out.”

  “Aren’t you worried about representing a scumbag hit man?”

  “No. But I am worried about representing someone who lies to me.”

  “So you’ll represent a murderer but not a liar?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “So you won’t represent murderers or liars?”

  “There’s only one kind of person whom I will categorically refuse to represent. I may or may not represent a murderer. I may or may not represent a liar. But I absolutely, positively will not agree to represent anyone who lies to me.”

  “You sound like someone who’s been burned.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Personally or professionally?” She seemed to reconsider the question, then said, “Sorry. That’s none of my business.”

  “It’s fine. The answer is both.”

  “Do you think Tatum Knight is lying to you?”

  “That’s what I’m wrestling with.”

  “For what it’s worth, I hope you do get involved in this.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t even know this woman, so it seems almost silly to say I care. But on some level, I feel drawn into it. Her whole life’s a tragedy, really.”

  He glanced at her computer and said, “Sounds like you found a few things on Sally Fenning.”

  “You told me she was attacked a few years ago. But there’s more to it than that.”

  “That’s all Tatum told me.”

  “He left out the most important part.” She flipped through her notes, then took a moment to bring him up to speed on the original attack, the death of her daughter. Jack listened in silence, wondering why Tatum hadn’t shared these details. Assuming he knew.

  “That’s horrible,” said Jack.

  “Yes. It is.”

  “But it might help explain some things,” said Jack. “Maybe she couldn’t cope with the murder of her only child. She marries some rich older man, thinking maybe money would make her happy. But it only makes her more miserable. So she finally hires someone to kill her.”

  “Which means that perhaps Tatum is telling you the truth. She did ask him to kill her.”

  “Or maybe he’s only telling me a half truth. Maybe she asked him to kill her. And he didn’t say no.”

  “Possible,” said Kelsey. “Except that I don’t totally buy it.”

  “Why not?” said Jack. “If something happened to Nate, God forbid, don’t you think it would at least cross your mind that life isn’t worth living?”

  “Not under Sally’s circumstances.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “If something horrible like that happened to my child, I wouldn’t rest till the day they nailed the guy who did it.”

  “You mean they never caught the guy who killed Sally’s daughter?”

  “Never even an arrest. This afternoon I called to see if I could pull the file out of police archives, but I got nowhere. It hasn’t been archived. It’s still technically an open investigation.”

  “Interesting,” said Jack, the wheels turning in his head. “This woman suffers the worst tragedy imaginable. Her four-year-old daughter is murdered viciously in her own home. Five years go by, she’s just gotten her hands on forty-six million dollars, compliments of her second husband, and that’s when she decides that life isn’t worth living.”

  “Assuming Tatum is to be believed.”

  “That’s the big assumption,” said Jack.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “The meeting with Vivien Grasso is Monday. That doesn’t leave me a lot of time, so I guess I’ll do the only thing I can.”

  “Dump the case, move on?”

  “No way.” He took one last hit of coffee, then looked her in the eye and said, “I’m going to find out if Tatum Knight is believable.”

  Seven

  First thing Saturday morning, Theo Knight drove to Mo’s Gym on Miami Beach.

  The Beach had a long boxing tradition, dating back even before a young and overconfident Cassius Clay trained and fought there to snatch the world heavyweight title away from the most feared champion of his era, Sonny Liston. Mo’s was a no-frills facility that catered strictly to amateurs. Not the kind of amateurs who flocked to self-defense classes after the September 11 terrorist attacks. These were serious tough guys, amateurs only in the sense that they had no license to box and didn’t at all aspire to be the next Muhammad Ali. They just loved to go at it, man to man, and Mo’s was good training for the more important fighting they did outside the ring. Anyone who walked into Mo’s had better know the ropes, so to speak, and he had better not freak at the sight of his own blood.

  Theo found a chair near the center ring, where his brother, Tatum, was beating the holy hell out of someone who obviously had no idea who the Knight brothers were.

  Theo and Tatum had fought plenty, no ring, no gloves, no glory. Toughing it out with gangs wasn’t exactly the life Theo would have chosen for himself, but the illegitimate sons of a drug addict didn’t have many choices. Their aunt did her best to raise Theo and his older brother, but with five of her own, it wasn’t easy. Tatum was always introuble, and Theo inherited a bad-boy reputation and a slew of enemies without even trying. Not that Theo was a saint. By the time he’d dropped out of high school, he’d done his share of car thefts, small-time stuff. Compared to Tatum, he was the good brother-until the night he’d decided to help himself to a little cash in a convenience store and walked into a living nightmare. It was the kind of trouble people expected of Tatum, not Theo. Over the years, he’d managed to push that night into a corner of his brain that he never visited. But as he sat there watching his brother pulverize his opponent, he found his mind slipping b
ack in time, the memories spurred on by the smells and sights of Mo’s, the fighting all around him, the gang graffiti on the walls, the walk and talk of dead-end kids.

  Four o’clock in the morning, and the city sidewalks were still hot. It was mid-July in Miami, and for three consecutive days there had been no afternoon rain to cool things down. Fifteen-year-old Theo sat in the passenger seat of a low-riding Chevy, the windows rolled down, the music blasting from rear speakers that filled half of the trunk. He wore his Nike cap backward, the price tag still dangling from the bill. Sweat pasted his black, baggy Miami Heat jersey to his back. A Mercedes-Benz hood ornament hung from a thick gold chain around his neck. It was the required uniform of the Grove Lords, a gang of badass teenage punks from Coconut Grove led by chief thief Lionel Brown.

  The car stopped at the red light on Flagler Street, a main east-west drag that ran from downtown Miami to the Everglades. They were just beyond the Little Havana neighborhood, outside the Miami city limits, in a rundown commercial area that catered to shoppers in search of used tires, stolen jewelry, or a good porn flick. On weekends it was always congested, but in the wee hours of Wednesday morning traffic was light.

  “Chug it,” said Lionel from the driver’s seat.

  Theo took the half-pint of rum, exhaled, and sucked it down. It burned the back of his throat, then his senses numbed and he felt the rush. He got every last drop.

  “My man,” said Lionel.

  Theo suddenly felt dizzy. “Where we going?”

  “Shelby’s.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What’s that?” Lionel was smiling for no apparent reason. “That be your ticket, my man.” Lionel took a right turn off Flagler. The Chevy sped down a side street, then came to a quick halt at the dark end of an alley.

  “Seriously, what is it?” said Theo.

  “A convenience store.”

  “What you want me to buy?”

  “You ain’t buyin’ nothin’. Walk up that alley, turn left at the sidewalk. Shelby’s is open twenty-four hours. You goes in, grab the cash, get the hell out. I’ll wait here.”

  “How I gonna just grab the money? What if he gots a gun?”

  Lionel chuckled and shook his head. “Theo, man, don’t be such a pussy.”

  “I ain’t no pussy.”

  “You gettin’ the easy ticket, okay. It ain’t usually this easy to become a Grove Lord, but your brother, Tatum, well, he got pull. You understand what I’m sayin’?”

  “No. What the hell’s so easy about robbin’ a convenience store with no gun?”

  “You don’t need no gun.”

  “What you want me to do, walk in and say please?”

  “Ain’t no one to say please to.”

  “Say what?”

  Lionel checked his big sports watch. “It four twenty-five now. Shelby’s got one clerk from three-thirty to five-thirty. Every morning at four-thirty, that one clerk has to go out back in the alley and set up for deliveries.”

  “He don’t lock the front door?”

  “Sometime he do. Sometime he forget.” Lionel handed him a small crowbar and said, “Take this. In case he don’t forget.”

  Theo stared at the crowbar in his hand.

  Lionel said, “You want to be a Grove Lord, or don’t you?”

  “Shit, yeah.”

  “You got five minutes to prove it. Then I’m gone, wit or wit’out you.”

  Their eyes locked, then Theo yanked the door handle and jumped out. He was no long-distance runner, but a hundred yards straight down an alley was quick work for him. The passageway was narrow and dark with just a lone street lamp at the front opening. He took it at full speed, zigzagging around a row of Dumpsters and leaping over a pile of garbage. At the sidewalk he slowed to a casual stroll, and turned left toward Shelby’s. The crowbar was tucked in his belt, hidden by his long, black jersey.

  Shelby’s faced a parking lot, which it shared with a Laundromat that had closed hours earlier. To Theo’s relief, the lot was empty. He kept walking, briskly but not so fast as to draw attention to himself. Neon signs glowed in the plate-glass storefront. The trash can at the front door was overflowing, and little white plastic shopping bags dotted the sidewalk like a field of dandelions. It was only a few meters, but it seemed to take forever to reach the door. He glanced inside. No sign of the clerk anywhere. Had to be out back, just as Lionel had promised. The crowbar seemed heavier in his pocket as he reached for the door and pulled the handle. The latch clicked, and the door opened. Theo was almost giddy at the thought: the clerk had forgotten to lock it.

  Dumbshit.

  Theo walked inside, past the eight-foot-high display of canned soda, past the snack rack, past seven hundred different kinds of gum and mints. He stepped carefully but quickly, making not a sound in his sneakers. He reached the checkout counter and stopped. The cash register was right in front of him. He listened, straining to hear anything that might tell him where the clerk had gone, but he heard only the hum of the refrigerated units behind him.

  Theo checked his watch. Two minutes had passed. He had three minutes to grab the cash and meet Lionel in back. His pulse quickened. He could feel himself sweating, and for a moment he couldn’t move, paralyzed by the voices in his head, his aunt telling him to high-tail it out of there, his older brother, Tatum, yelling, Pussy, pussy, pussy! Without another moment’s thought, he leaped over the counter, yanked the crowbar from his pants, and smashed open the cash register. The drawer sprang open, and he reached for the cash. But there was none. It was completely empty.

  What the hell?

  “Help me.”

  Theo froze at the sound of the man’s voice. It was faint, so faint that he almost wondered if he’d imagined it.

  “Please, somebody.”

  The voice was coming from the back room. Theo’s heart was in his throat, his thoughts a total blur. He just went with his instincts, jumped over the counter, and sprinted for the door.

  “God, please, help me!”

  Theo stopped cold, just a few feet from the door. Lionel would be gone in just ninety seconds, but those pathetic pleas for help had snagged him like a fish on a gaffe. The man sounded like he was dying, and Theo had never let anyone die before. He wasn’t sure what to do, but if that was the sound of death, he was pretty damn certain he didn’t want to be a Grove Lord.

  He turned, raced back toward the stockroom, then stopped cold in the doorway.

  “Oh, man!”

  The clerk was lying flat on his stomach, his chest heaving as he struggled for each breath. Stretched across the entire length of the room, from the walk-in freezer to the stockroom exit, was a dark crimson smear. It was exactly the width of his body, marking the path he’d crawled inch by inch on his belly, bleeding profusely.

  The man looked up at Theo and reached out with his hand. His face was battered and bloody, his clothes soaked with blood. He didn’t look much older than Theo, practically a kid, maybe Tatum’s age. “Help me,” he said in a voice that faded.

  Theo just stood there, frightened and not sure what to do. The man gasped, and his face hit the floor. Then, with a suddenness that chilled Theo, his chest stopped moving, his lungs no longer fighting for air. Theo looked on in horror, then trembled at the sight of the little crowbar in his hand, the one Lionel had given him-something about it that he hadn’t noticed earlier.

  There was a smear of dried blood on it.

  “Shit, man,” he said aloud, and then instinct again took over. He turned and raced for the front door, falling to the floor as he smashed into the snack rack and toppled over the canned soda display. His ankle turned, and he rolled across the floor in agony.

  And then he heard it-the sound of approaching sirens.

  On impulse, he picked himself up, burst through the front door, and made a mad dash for the alley, fighting through the pain of his twisted ankle, knowing in his heart that his friend Lionel would be long gone when he got there.

  “Theo, my man!”


  It was Tatum calling out from the ring, cocky as ever, sparring with a young Latino who was about half his weight. It wasn’t his style to box pip-squeaks, but it was always Mr. Machismo with the twenty-seven-inch waist who liked to taunt the baddest dude in the gym. It was as if these muscle-bound weeds had something to prove, like those annoying little poodles in the park that took on the rottweilers. Sooner or later, the big dog was gonna bite.

  For Theo’s benefit, Tatum wound up like a windmill, toying with his opponent.

  Theo just smiled. He didn’t love everything about his brother, but he had to love him. Jack Swyteck, his court-appointed lawyer, was the one who finally got him off death row for the murder of that store clerk. But through it all, there was only one other person who’d stuck by him all the way. In a lifelong give and take of sibling love and hate, this was the one great un equalizer, the debt he could never repay. At least that was the way Theo saw it.

  Theo walked toward his brother’s corner and leaned over the ropes from outside the ring. The unmistakable odor of sweat and old leather tingled his nostrils. He could hear the fighters grunt with each jab, feel the intensity of their concentration. Only the intellectual snobs of the world thought that boxing wasn’t a mind game.

  “Ever wonder why a boxing ring is actually a square?” asked Theo.

  Theo could mess with his brother’s head better than anyone-distract him with extraneous thoughts, watch him take a beating. Even from across the ring, Theo could see that he’d broken Tatum’s rhythm.

  “You got your three-ring circus,” said Theo, his tone philosophical. “Olympic rings. Onion rings. Smoke rings. Ringworms.”

  “Shut up!” said Tatum.

  The little guy was gaining confidence, moving around Tatum like a gnat on a lightbulb.

  Theo snickered. “Diamond rings, toe rings, nipple rings, navel rings, scrotum rings, even ring around the collar. All them is circles.”

  “I said, shut uuuuuup!”

  Theo said, “Then there’s a boxing ring. I mean, how is it that a ring has corners?”

  Tatum took a quick jack to the jaw, which startled him. “That’s it,” he said as he landed a left hook that sent the gnat flying across the ring. “Get your ass in here, Theo.”