“I knew it!” said Theo as he slapped the countertop.
“He was feeding information about Coast Guard routes to Oscar, who then passed it along to his old man.”
“Don’t tell me Alejandro Pintado is a trafficker.”
“No, no way. Two totally distinct things were going on here. Pintado used Johnson’s information strictly to avoid border patrol and help Cuban rafters get to shore. But it was Johnson who realized that the drug trade would pay handsomely for the same information. So he started selling it to them.”
Theo nodded, seeing where this was headed. “And Oscar found out about it.”
“Yup.”
“And then Oscar had to go.”
“You got it,” said Jack. “To think I nearly played the drug card at trial. I probably would have, had I thought the jury wouldn’t lynch me for calling the Pintados a bunch of cocaine traffickers. Turns out Oscar got himself killed doing the honorable thing, saying no to drugs. Go figure.”
“Hindsight, Jacko. It all works out in the end.” Theo popped another mini-doughnut into his mouth, his tenth since Jack had started talking. Powdered sugar was everywhere. All this talk of drugs, the countertop was beginning to look like a snort fest in a South Beach nightclub.
“Still not sure ’bout sumptin’,” said Theo, his mouth still full. “Why’d the drug folks torch your car?”
“Well, we knew from the start that whoever it was didn’t want to see Lindsey acquitted.”
“Why would the druggies care?”
“All I can figure is that they were happier to see Lindsey go down for murder than Lieutenant Johnson. Keeping Johnson out of jail was the only way to make sure he kept feeding them the information they needed.”
“Interesting,” said Theo, mulling it all over. “So bottom line is, Oscar might still be alive if he didn’t go snooping around and find out what else his friend Damont was doing with the Coast Guard secrets.”
“That’s about the size of it. Tough break for Captain Pintado.”
“You kidding me?” said Theo. “He’s the lucky one.”
“How do you mean?”
“That article in today’s newspaper-don’t you remember? It said Lieutenant Johnson is talking to the U.S. attorney, looking to tell all. What do you think these drug folks are gonna do when they read that? Sit around and wait to see if dumbass Damont names some names or not?”
Jack almost smiled. He hadn’t thought of that, but it was the kind of thing Theo was usually right about. “Guess I wouldn’t want to be Lieutenant Damont Johnson right now.”
“Shee-it,” said Theo. “You don’t want to know Lieutenant Damont Johnson right now.”
One gentle wave after another broke about twenty yards offshore. Thin sheets of emerald green water rolled up like a tarp onto Hallandale Beach, churned into white foam where the wet sand gave way to powder, and then retreated into the Atlantic. It was six A.M., and Marvin Schwartz was up with the sun, dressed in his usual Sunday morning uniform: rubber-soled sandals, white cotton chinos rolled up to the knee, long-sleeved gossamer shirt, broad-rimmed straw hat. Early Sunday morning was usually his best hunting time; Saturday night revelers had been known to leave behind everything from pocket change to Rolex watches. Actually, it wasn’t a real Rolex, but the boys back at the Golden Beach condo didn’t know a good knockoff from the real McCoy anyway.
The chirping of seagulls gave way to the beep of his metal detector. He marked the spot mentally, then knelt down and dug away the sand with a serving spoon he’d borrowed from the cole slaw bin at Pumpernickel’s Deli in 1986.
The disappointment was etched all over his sun-weathered face. A bottle cap. The ninth one this morning. Not a good day so far.
“Mah-vin. You find my diamond earrings yet?” It was his wife shouting from her chaise lounge at the cabana. She looked like a big beach ball from this distance, five feet wide and five feet tall.
“No, dear,” he mumbled, making no effort to speak in a voice loud enough to be heard.
“Ten years you been lookin’. Still no diamond earrings?”
“No, dear.”
Diamond earrings, he thought, scoffing. She wants diamond earrings, she should have listened to her mother and married Dr. Moneybags.
He was climbing over a big clump of seaweed when the metal detector suddenly went berserk, chirping and beeping wildly. He moved the wand to the left, and the chirping stopped. He moved it back to the right, and it was sounding off like a carnival again. He smiled, his heart racing with excitement. He poked through the strands of seaweed. Barnacles and other shellfish were all over the place. A piece of driftwood was all he could find, but there had to be something metal in there somewhere. He pushed away more seaweed, then stopped. The morning sun caught the gold, and the utter beauty of that reflection sent chills down his spine.
A ring!
He knelt down for a closer look. It looked like a Super Bowl ring at first, so big and ostentatious. As he reached to pick it up, he noticed the engraving on the side, and the prominent “ U.S. ” insignia told him that it was from one of the academies.
A Coast Guard ring.
He grabbed it, lifted it, then dropped it on the spot, recoiling quickly. The ring was still attached to a finger. The finger was still attached to a blackish-purple hand.
The hand had been severed at the wrist.
“Sheila!” He dropped his metal detector, jumped to his feet, and wobbled back the cabana as fast as his bony legs would carry him, shouting over and over again at the top of his lungs, “SHEEEI-LAH!”
Epilogue
The Miami-Dade County medical examiner described it as “Foreign matter, triangular-shaped cartilaginous material, 2.5 cm ? 2.3 cm ? 2.7 cm, embedded in the palm of the left hand of an African American male.” A marine biologist confirmed that it was a shark’s tooth. Fingerprint and DNA analysis confirmed that it was in the left hand of Lieutenant Damont Johnson. No other body parts were recovered, so the rest of the story was conjecture. But the possibilities weren’t exactly endless: Either he’d decided to swim with a school of hammerheads, or someone had used him for shark bait.
Lindsey told the prosecutor all that she knew about Johnson’s drug trafficker connections. Jack made sure that her proffer implicated only the guilty parties, namely her and Lieutenant Johnson, and not Brothers for Freedom or the Pintado family. Since she hadn’t dealt directly with the druggies, she wasn’t able to offer any specifics that might help law enforcement track down Johnson’s killers. Still, it was useful enough to persuade the prosecutor to back away from the death penalty. Judge Garcia followed the government’s recommendation and sentenced Lindsey to life in prison. Lindsey didn’t seem to think a life sentence was fair, since she wasn’t the trigger person, but she’d have a chance to draw her nice distinctions between murder and conspiracy to commit murder at her parole hearing in about sixteen years.
Jack decided to have no contact with Brian or the Pintado family until he felt that the time was right. On the first Saturday morning after Lindsey’s sentencing, that time had come. He and Theo drove to Coral Reef Park, where Brian played intramural soccer.
“You sure you want to do this?” asked Theo as they walked across the parking lot.
“Positive,” said Jack.
They followed the wood-chip footpath past several playing fields. Jack glanced at the different games that were being played simultaneously, one field after another. It was like a stroll through the sporting life of a child, everything from the four-to six-year-olds, where a few kids hustled after the ball while others picked flowers, to the middle-schoolers, who were already starting to play like future Olympians. Jack and Theo stopped at the south field.
Jack spotted Alejandro Pintado seated in a lawn chair on the sidelines, and he knew he was in the right place. He and Theo found a spot about twenty yards down the line and watched some of the game, blue jerseys versus
