turning for the past two nights. Once upon a time, Officer Vincent Paulo had been a criminal defense lawyer’s worst nightmare on the witness stand. He’d anticipate their every move and thwart their clever tactics. His first experience under oath and without sight had left him doubting his ability to do real police work.
“It wasn’t your fault,” said Alicia.
“Tell that to the state attorney. McCue gave me an earful after the hearing.”
“Tell him to go to hell.”
“He had a point,” said Vince. “I blew it when I called my answering machine to record McKenna’s words. Calls to nine-one-one are recorded as a matter of course and are admissible as evidence in court. If I had simply stayed on the line with the nine-one-one operator and let McKenna talk into the phone, we wouldn’t have to worry about this hearsay objection.”
He could hear her sigh. “Vince, you loved McKenna, and she was literally bleeding to death in your arms. How on earth is anyone supposed to be thinking clearly about the legal admissibility of a recording under those circumstances?”
The rain continued to fall. Vince heard a car pass on the wet pavement. The screen door squeaked as it opened; even that sounded different in the rain. Alicia knelt behind him, and her arms slipped around his shoulders, the silk sleeve of her robe caressing his chin. Things had been a little rocky between them after she’d challenged him-albeit gently-as to his whereabouts on that Saturday night. In anger he had phoned Chuck Mays so that he could tell her directly that they were hanging out by his pool until nine o’clock, nowhere near the Lincoln Road Mall. After Friday’s hearing, Alicia did a 180, seeming to appreciate how sickening it was for Vince to have to provide an alibi to his wife while Jamal Wakefield walked free.
“I’ve been thinking about that recording,” said Alicia.
She was still kneeling behind him, her arms around him and the side of her face resting between his shoulder blades.
“What about it?” asked Vince.
“Don’t you think it’s kind of… weird? McKenna’s response, I mean.”
“In what way?”
She hesitated, obviously sensitive to how painful this subject was for Vince. “You said, ‘McKenna, tell me who did this to you.’ And she said, ‘Jamal.’ ”
“What’s weird about that?”
“Nothing. But then you asked, ‘Your boyfriend?’ And the natural response to that would have been a simple ‘yes.’ But she said, ‘My first.’ ”
“So?”
“Why would she say that?”
Vince considered it. “I don’t know. She was confused, dying. Maybe it was part of her shock and disbelief that her first love killed her.”
Alicia was silent. She stayed just as she was, and the warmth of her body and the rhythm of her breathing felt good on his back.
“I suppose,” she said.
The rain started to fall harder-so hard that it was no longer possible to discern the sound of water falling on leaves from the patter on pavement. It all sounded the same-like too much information, the details completely drowned out. It was no longer a friend.
“What are you thinking?” asked Alicia.
He could barely hear her over the roar of the downpour. They were protected by the overhang, but huge drops splashed up from the steps and onto his slippers.
“Nothing,” he said, but that was a huge lie. Vince was thinking about the final text message that McKenna had sent to Jamal and that Vince had intercepted: FMLTWIA. With his help, it had remained secret. Only over his dead body would it someday land in the newspapers.
Vince would always be McKenna’s friend.
“Let’s go inside,” he said.
He rose and took her hand. Together they retreated indoors, the screen door slapping shut on the falling rain.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Jack woke to the rumble of a motorboat behind his house. His head still hurt from last night’s sucker punches, but after a minute his thoughts became less fuzzy, and he realized that it was his boat. Jack climbed out of bed, pulled on jogging shorts and a sweatshirt, and walked out back to the dock. Theo was already in the boat.
“Ready when you are, Ahab,” he said over the idling outboards.
Jack had forgotten all about their plans to go fishing, but just the sound of the motors was making his head buzz all over again. He climbed aboard and killed the engines. The silence was sweet, as if someone had stopped hitting him in the head with a hammer.
“Got a knot on the back of my skull like a golf ball.”
“What happened?” asked Theo.
Jack told him the same story he had told the police officer last night at the hospital emergency room: from the phone call he had gotten from Ethan Chang last Saturday to the Sunny Gardens employee who had found Jack lying on the sidewalk and called an ambulance.
“Scumbag,” said Theo. “Theatening an old man with Alzheimer’s.”
“I’m not backing down. The cops kept an eye on him last night. But I’m going to have to hire a bodyguard to sit with him.”
“I can help you with that,” said Theo.
“Thanks.”
“Oh, well,” said Theo. “Looks like we’ll have to wait for another perfect Sunday morning to take you to my secret spot.”
Theo went to the radar and erased the GPS coordinates, which reminded Jack of the ankle bracelet his client was required to wear as a condition of pretrial release. That little intrusion was all Jack needed to stir up any number of nagging questions that had kept him awake last night. One, in particular, was gnawing at him all over again: the chain of “Pio Nono” from Grandpa to Chang to the man who threatened Jack and his grandfather.
“How do you think Mr. Chang knew about Pio Nono?” asked Jack.
Theo settled into a deck chair. “You talking about the guy who got killed on Lincoln Road Mall?”
“Right. When he called to set up a meeting with me, I didn’t answer. So, to grab my attention, he texted me using the name Pio Nono.”
“Pio what?”
“He was a controversial pope from the nineteenth century. My grandfather took his girlfriend to see a play about him a few years ago. I was sitting with her in the cafeteria at the nursing home talking about the play when Chang sent me a text that said, “ ‘It’s Pio Nono. Call me. NOW!’ ”
“Kind of creepy. Maybe he bugged the cafeteria.”
“But how would he have known I was going to be in the cafeteria? That doesn’t make sense.”
“He could have planted some kind of listening device on you. Or on her.”
“I patted myself down afterward and didn’t find anything. And now we know that Chang had flown into Miami from Prague just a couple of hours before contacting me. How would he have had time to plant listening devices?”
Theo considered it as he glanced at the storm clouds to the west. It was definitely raining over Coconut Grove, but they were east of it on Key Biscayne.
“Have you had your phone checked for spyware?” asked Theo.
“I wasn’t talking on my cell. It was a face-to-face conversation in the cafeteria with Ruth.”
“Doesn’t matter. They have spyware that can pick up conversations around a cell phone even if you’re not talking on it. The phone doesn’t even have to be turned on. It works so long as there’s a battery in it.”
