“Jack, I really need an answer. If you’re not going to help me on this Guantanamo trip, I need to find a real criminal lawyer who will.”
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do. Have you seen the indictment yet?”
“No.”
“It’s a capital case. They’re asking for the death penalty.”
Jack went cold.
“She needs you, Jack. She really needs you.”
Jack considered it. A probate lawyer in a death penalty case? Lindsey didn’t have a chance. He wasn’t one hundred percent convinced of her innocence, but she had offered to take a polygraph. She probably deserved better than the hand she’d been dealt so far.
Brian definitely deserved better-which was enough to swing the balance.
“Okay,” said Jack. “I’m in.”
13
The next morning Jack and Sofia Suarez met at the airport.
Getting into the U.S. naval air station at Guantanamo Bay had never been easy, and the nation’s war on terrorism had made it nearly as tough as getting into a South Beach nightclub dressed in last year’s fashion. A midmorning commercial flight took them from Miami to Norfolk, Virginia. It was up to them to find ground transportation to the naval air station for their Air Mobility Command flight to Guantanamo, which didn’t leave until six P.M. Jack was actually looking forward to a little shut-eye on the plane. Following their initial phone conversation, Sofia had arranged for a courier to deliver a boxful of grand jury transcripts, witness statements, and other evidence upon which the prosecutor had relied to secure Lindsey’s indictment. Jack had spent almost the entire night reviewing them, and it was now taking its toll. Despite his unstoppable yawns, Sofia seemed determined to talk strategy every step of the way to Guantanamo.
“You want to do the interviews, or you think maybe I should?” said Sofia.
“Wasn’t that the whole point of my coming on board so quickly? So that I could take the lead?”
“It was, but then I got to thinking. We’ll be talking mostly to men, and most of them have been trapped on a military base with a lot of other men for a very long time.”
“So you’re thinking…what?”
“Who are they more likely to spill their guts to? You?” she said, batting her eyes, just to make her point. “Or a total Latin babe?”
She was pouring it on for effect, but with her long black hair and perfect olive skin, the Latin babe thing wasn’t a stretch. If Jack was going to be sandwiched between Lindsey and Sofia at trial, he was going to have to give some serious thought toward gunning for an all-male jury.
This is going to be interesting.
They had about an hour to kill before heading over to the military terminal, so they found a couple of stools at the end of the bar in a relatively uncrowded pub-style restaurant. Sofia was hungry, but Jack had been force-fed by Abuela before leaving the house and would have no use for food for perhaps two or three days. Sofia ordered a Cobb salad, and Jack had coffee.
“You ever been to Cuba before, Jack?”
“No, but I’m curious to see it. My mother was born in Cuba.”
“Really? How does she feel about your defending the woman who is accused of killing the only son of the esteemed Cuban exile, Alejandro Pintado?”
“My mother passed away a long time ago. But my grandmother is still alive and as opinionated as ever. She’s not exactly crazy about it.”
“Sounds like my father. He’s Alpha Sixty-six- Bay of Pigs survivor. I’m proud of him, of course, but he is a bit extreme. For the past forty years he’s spent two Saturdays a month dressed in camouflage, crawling around on his belly in the Florida Everglades, getting ready for the next armed invasion of Cuba. When I told him I was representing Lindsey Hart, I think he would actually have petitioned to have me disbarred if it hadn’t cost him so much to put me through law school.”
“Obviously his objections don’t bother you.”
“Nah. I’ll be dancing in the streets along with everyone else when Castro falls, but it’s not my life’s work. In the eyes of men like my father and Alejandro Pintado, I suppose that makes me a communist. When it comes to politics, we just have to agree to disagree.”
“I can relate to that,” said Jack.
“Yeah, I seem to remember an article about you and your old man in Tropic magazine some years back. ‘Why Can’t the Governor Win His Own Son’s Vote?’ or something like that.”
“A lot has changed since then.” He smiled and added, “Though I’m still not sure I’d vote for him.”
Sofia didn’t seem to realize that he was kidding. She was picking the bits of hard-boiled egg out of her salad, adding them to a growing pile of suspicious perishables on a side plate. Finally she looked up and said, “So, are you wondering how I got this case?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. How do you know Lindsey?”
“We were lovers in college.”
“What!”
“Gotchya,” she said with a smile. “Man, you’re easy. Actually, we shared an apartment our senior year at FSU. Kept in touch a few years after that. Then we lost contact, until her husband died. She needed a lawyer, and I guess she remembered that I’d somehow managed to get into law school. I got a phone call a couple of months ago.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Well, she told me about Oscar. We cried together a little. Then she told me about the trust fund he’d left her, and how her father-in-law didn’t want her to have it.”
“Is that how she put it-that Alejandro Pintado didn’t want her to have the family money?”
“Yes. Right from the beginning, she thought that Oscar’s father would stop at nothing to keep her from getting that money. Even if it meant accusing her of murder.”
“I’ve seen plenty of nasty things done for the sake of litigation posturing in my day. But actually pushing for a murder indictment takes the art of saber rattling to new heights, don’t you think?”
“For most people, sure. For Alejandro Pintado…maybe not.”
The waitress came and refilled Jack’s coffee cup. When she was gone, Jack said, “Have you met her son Brian yet?”
“We met for the first time about three days ago. I told Lindsey I needed to interview him if I was going to get involved in the criminal case.”
“I told her the same thing. Didn’t get me very far.”
“She’s very protective of him. If you ask me, she’s truly devastated by what happened to her husband. The last thing she wants is her son getting dragged through the system and ending up with a screwed-up head.”
“I can understand that. How did the interview go?”
“Fine. He’s a wonderful kid. You’ll like him.”
Jack emptied a packet of sugar into his coffee. “What did he tell you about the night his father was shot?”
“Same thing he told the police. Didn’t notice anything unusual during the night. He woke a little earlier than usual. He wasn’t sure why. Something just didn’t feel right. Got out of bed to go to the bathroom. His mom was already at work, but the door to the master bedroom was open. He saw the blood on the bed, then he saw the body.”
“And that was when he called his mother at work?”
“Yes. Well, it was actually a digital page that he typed out. They have a special phone for the hearing impaired.”
“I read the police report last night. Brian was pretty unclear about the exact wording of the message. Has his
