and a never-ending stack of quarters on the pool table. Beer was served in cans, and the empties were crushed in true Sparky’s style at the old tire vise that still sat on the workbench. It was the kind of dive that Jack would have visited if it were in his own neighborhood, but he made the forty-minute trip for one reason only: the bartender was Theo Knight.
“’Nother one, Jacko?”
“Nah, I’m fine.”
“How do you expect me to run this joint into the ground if you only let me give away one stinking beer?” He cleared away the empty and set up another cold one. “Cheers.”
As half-owner of the bar, Theo didn’t give away drinks to many customers, but Jack was a special case. Jack was his buddy. Jack had once been his lawyer. It was Jack who’d kept him alive on death row.
Jack’s first job out of law school had been a four-year stint with the Freedom Institute, a ragtag group of lawyers who worked only capital cases. It was an exercise in defending the guilty, with one exception: Theo Knight. Not that Theo was a saint. He’d done his share of car thefts, credit card scams, small-time stuff. Early one morning he walked into a little all-night convenience store to find no one tending the cash register. On a dare from a buddy, he helped himself. It turned out that the missing nineteen-year-old clerk had been stabbed and beaten, stuffed in the walk-in freezer, and left to bleed to death. Theo was convicted purely on circumstantial evidence. For four years Jack filed petitions for stays of execution each time the governor-Jack’s own father-signed a death warrant. At times the fight seemed futile, but it ended up keeping Theo alive long enough for DNA tests to come into vogue. Science finally eliminated Theo as the possible murderer.
Theo thought of Jack as the guy who’d saved his life. Jack thought of Theo as the one thing he’d done right in his four years of defending the guilty at the Freedom Institute. It made for an interesting friendship. Best of all, Theo had kept his nose clean since his release from prison, but he could still think like a criminal. He had the kind of insights and street smarts that every good defense lawyer could use. It was exactly the point of view Jack needed to figure out what had gone wrong with Jessie Merrill.
“What are you laughing at?” said Jack.
Theo was a large man, six-foot-five and two-hundred-fifty pounds, and he had a hearty laugh to match. He’d listened without interruption as Jack laid out the whole story, but he couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Let me ask you one question.”
“What?”
“Was it the big tits or amazing thighs?”
“Come on, I’m married.”
“Just what I thought. Both.” He laughed even harder.
“Okay. Pile it on. This is what I get for feeling sorry for an ex-girlfriend.”
“No, dude. Abuse is what you get for sitting too far away for me to slap you upside the head. Then again, maybe you ain’t sitting so far…” He reached across the bar and took a swing, but Jack ducked. Theo caught only air and laughed again, which drew a smile from Jack.
“Guess I was pretty stupid, huh?” said Jack.
“Stupid, maybe. But it ain’t like you did anything wrong. A lawyer can’t get into trouble if he don’t know his client is scamming the court.”
“How do you know that?”
“Are you forgetting who you’re talking to?”
Jack smiled. Theo had been the Clarence Darrow of jailhouse lawyers, a veritable expert on everything from writs of habeas corpus to a prisoner’s fundamental right to chew gum. He was of mixed ancestry, primarily Greek and African-American, but somewhere in his lineage was just enough Miccosukee Indian blood to earn him the prison nickname “Chief Brief,” a testament to the fact that some of the motions he filed with the court were better than Jack’s.
Theo lit a cigarette, took a long drag. “You know, it’s not even a hundred percent you were scammed.”
“How can you say that?”
“All you know is that your client held hands in the elevator with this Dr. Swamp.”
“Not Swamp, you idiot. Dr. Marsh.”
“Whatever. That don’t make it a scam.”
“It was more than just the hand-holding. I flat-out accused her and Dr. Marsh of faking her tests. She didn’t deny it.”
“I didn’t deny it either when the cops asked me if I killed that store clerk. Sometimes, even if you ain’t done nothing, you just think you’re better off keeping your mouth shut.”
“This is totally different. Jessie wasn’t just silent. She looked pretty damn smug about it.”
“Okay. And from that you say Jessie and this big, rich doc got together and pulled a fast one on a group of Vatican investors.”
“Viatical, dumbshit, not Vatican. What do you think, the pope is in on this too?”
“No, and I ain’t even so sure this doctor was in on it.”
“Why would you even doubt it?”
“Because this cat could lose his license. You gotta show me more than a good piece of ass to make a doctor do something like this.”
As bad as things had looked in the elevator, Theo had hit upon a crucial link in the chain of events. The criminal mind was at work. Jack asked, “What would you want to see?”
“Somethin’ pretty strong. Maybe he needs money real bad, like right now.”
Jack sipped his beer. “Makes sense. Problem is, I can’t even get Jessie and her doctor friend to return my calls.”
“I’d offer to give Jessie a good slap, but you know I don’t rough up the ladies.”
“I don’t want you to slap her.”
“How about I slap you then?” he said as he took another swing. This one landed. It was a playful slap, but Theo had the huge hands of a prize fighter.
“Ow, damn it. That really hurt.”
“’Course it did. You want me to slap Dr. Swamp, too?”
“No. And for the last time, moron, his name is Marsh.”
“I’ll get ol’ swampy good-pa-pow, one-two, both sides of the head.”
“I said no.”
“Come on, man. I’ll even do him for free. I hate them fucking doctors.”
“You hate everyone.”
“Except you, Jack, baby.” He grabbed Jack’s head with both hands and planted a loud kiss on the forehead.
“Lucky me.”
“You is lucky. Just leave it to Theo. We’ll get the skinny on this doc. You want to know if you got scammed, you just say the word.”
Jack lowered his eyes, tugging at the label on his bottle.
Theo said, “I can’t hear you, brother.”
Jack shook his head and said, “It’s not as if I can do anything about it. There’s no getting around the fact that everything Jessie told me is protected by the attorney-client privilege. She could have pulled off the biggest fraud in the history of the Miami court system. That doesn’t mean her own lawyer can just walk over to the state attorney’s office and lay it all out.”
“That’s a whole ‘nother thing.
“What the hell am I thinking, anyway? I’m a criminal defense lawyer. I don’t do my reputation any good by ratting on my own clients.”
“Listen up. What you do with the information once you get it ain’t my department.”
“You think I want to get even with her, don’t you? That I want to nail my ex-girlfriend for playing me for a fool?”
“All I’m asking is this: Do you want to know for a hundred percent certain if the bitch stuck it to you or not?”
Their eyes locked. Jack knew better than anyone that Theo had ways of getting information that would have
