but you can’t hide,” he said, taunting me in a voice just above a whisper. “If the cops don’t get you, I will. You’d better hope they find you first.”
I left him standing there and pushed through the door where Sam Terilli was waiting. He grabbed me by an arm, guided me past a stove brimming with pots of soup, around the freezers, and then hustled me out the back door. By a smelly Dumpster, two kitchen workers were speaking in Creole and smoking a reefer as big as a cigar. Terilli pushed me into a waiting taxi. I thanked him, and he said don’t mention it, but forget about applying for membership at the club anytime soon.
Charlie Riggs was sitting on a stool at the counter of a Cuban sandwich shop on Calle Ocho. He sipped at a cafe Cubano. A tired waitress with dyed red hair took my order: a beer and a bowl of black bean soup, heavy on the onions. It was just before midnight, or just after, I couldn’t tell which. My shoulders ached from two days of rowing a canoe. My back was stiff, and I pulled my hamstrings while launching the kick toward the balls of the loudmouthed detective. I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in days, or was it weeks, and my head was spinning because I still didn’t know what was going on.
So I told everything I knew to Charlie. He asked me to go over it again, and I did. I showed him the map I had taken from the shiny truck on the woody hammock. He asked me to describe the truck in as much detail as I could, and I did that, too.
What else did Nicky say to De La Torre about lowering the water level? he wanted to know.
Nothing.
What kind of soil tests?
I didn’t know. Nicky hadn’t said.
Hmmm. Charlie ordered another syrupy cafe Cubano and poured enough sugar into it to make Carlos de La Torre even richer. “Anything else? See anything unusual out there?” He cocked his head to the west.
“Nada. ”
“You’re sure?”
“It was the Everglades, Charlie. Peaceful, except when I had to use a pen as a dagger, or I was ducking shotgun pellets. Quiet, except for the birds squawking and an occasional explosion.”
He looked up at me from under bushy eyebrows. “What sort of explosions?”
“I don’t know. The loud kind.”
“Where?”
“Out there somewhere. Who knows where? I heard them first at Nicky’s house the morning after Gondolier was killed. For a while, I thought it was thunder. Then, when I was paddling the canoe, I heard some more.” I watched Charlie digest the information. “Why do you ask?”
Charlie harrumphed and thought it over. I had finished the soup and just realized how hungry I was. When the waitress came by, I ordered a media noche and an order of sweet plantains.
“The computer printout in the truck,” Charlie said. “Describe it, please.”
“Just a bunch of squiggly lines, like an EKG.”
He scowled at me. “You might have thought to bring it with you.”
“Hey, Charlie. I was traveling light. I didn’t even have pants.”
“Sorry. Let’s have a look at where you found the truck.”
The sandwich arrived, but I slid my plate away and spread the map over the counter. Charlie studied it, then tapped a pudgy finger on what looked like a tiny island among hundreds of others. “A-653-G2,” he said, reading the handwritten notation. “That’s where you were. Notice anything different about A-653-GI?”
I looked at a hammock maybe a mile away. “It’s underlined. That’s all.”
“How about A-653-G3?”
It took me a while to find it. “Not underlined.”
“Which means what?”
“I don’t know, Charlie. C’mon. I got bored with the Socratic method my first semester in night law school.”
“Not only does the numbering system identify the islands, it’s the order they’re being examined.” His finger stayed on A-653-G3. “You were on G2. So were the workers, maybe a day or two before you got there. Next, your boys are headed to G3. Think you could find it?”
I looked at the map. A hammock like all the others. Teardrop-shaped, with the fatter end toward the north. The southerly water flow tended to erode the hammocks in that direction. “Not quickly, I couldn’t. You get out there, they all look alike. It’d take a week.”
“What about from the air?”
“Yeah, maybe. But so what? Do you know what’s going on out there?”
“I think so.”
“What! What is it?”
“ Sapiens nihil affirmat quod non prohat. A wise man states as true nothing he cannot prove.”
“Then what am I supposed to do? What am I going to do when I find the hammock?”
Charlie smiled at me. It was the sad smile of the patient teacher to the slow student. “You’re a lawyer, Jake. What is it that you do?”
“Breach confidences, commit malpractice, sleep with my client’s wife. Why do you ask?”
Charlie frowned with disapproval. “As I understand what you’ve told me, there’s a hearing tomorrow…” He looked at his watch. “Dear me, look at the time. There’s a Water Management Board hearing today at two P.M. in Belle Glade. The press will be there. The public will be there. Environmental groups will be out in force. You’ve got to find your witnesses, Jake. You’ve got to present your testimony. You’ve got to win your case.”
Chapter 26
Shrimp boats were chugging down the Miami River, heading out on their predawn runs. Across the black water, the high-rises on Miami Beach blinked in the darkness. I sat in the isolation of my thirty-second-floor office, thinking and waiting.
One chance. A long shot. Even if Charlie was right, I didn’t know if I could bring it off. Like a double reverse to the wideout coming around, the timing had to be perfect. I needed a witness who would talk, a public forum to hear what he had to say, and enough people around to keep me from getting a machete in the back. And I needed it all by two o’clock this afternoon.
Cindy arrived at 3:00 A.M., bleary-eyed and curly-haired. Copper-colored curls, tight against her skull, like a 1920s flapper. She wore white jeans and a red T-shirt emblazoned SOME GIRLS DON’T, BUT I JUST MIGHT.
“What happened to the blond look?” I asked.
“What happened to nine-to-five? What happened to a boss who shows up for work, who still has his ticket to practice law, who isn’t being chased by-”
“You fall out the wrong side of someone’s bed?”
“ My bed, and it didn’t please Miguel one bit.”
“Miguel? The firm messenger?”
“He can tote the mail. Now what’s so urgent?”
“You still take shorthand?”
“With my eyes closed, which they Ye gonna be if you don’t-”
“Okay, take a lawsuit. A class-action suit, Jane Lassiter and all others similarly situated versus Environmental Systems, Inc., Florio Enterprises, Inc., Nicholas Florio, and a few others I’ll make up as I go along. Are you taking this down?”
She picked up a pad and pencil. “Did you say Jane?”
“Sounds better than Granny in a formal pleading, don’t you think?”
So I dictated, and she scribbled. A suit for violation of every federal, state, and county environmental law I could find, plus some that ought to be on the books but aren’t. By dawn, crisp double-spaced sheets were flowing
