“You live in a car?”
“Yeah. I mean, it used to be a car. It’s been stripped a hundred times over. Doesn’t run or anything. No tires, no engine. But it’s a roof over my head.”
“Who owns the property?”
“Hell if I know. There’s this old Puerto Rican guy named Manny who comes around every so often. I guess he owns the place. I don’t bother him, he don’t bother me. Know what I mean?”
“Sure. My dad and I had the same arrangement when I was in high school. So, let me ask you this: How long have you been homeless?”
“I ain’t homeless. I told you, I live in the car.”
“Okay. How long have you lived in this car?”
“Few years, I guess. I moved in sometime while Clinton was still president.”
“What did you do before then?”
“I was the ambassador to France. What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
Jack laid his notepad on the table. “Tell me something, Falcon. How is it that you’ve lived on the street all these years, and the only time you seem to get into trouble is when you climb up on a bridge and threaten to kill yourself?”
“I’m a smart guy. Keep my nose clean.”
“You ever had any contact with the outreach people from Citrus Health Network, or any of the folks over at the mental health clinic at Jackson?”
“There’s this woman named Shirley who used to come visit me. Kept trying to get me to come with her back to the hospital and get some meds.”
“Did you go?”
“No.”
“Did Shirley ever tell you what kind of a condition you might have?”
“In her opinion I showed signs of paranoia, but she thought I was well compensated.”
“What did you say to that?”
“I said thank you very much, it sure sucks to be crazy, but it’s nice to have a big dick.”
Jack ignored it. “Have the police ever come to take you by force to a crisis center for a few hours, or maybe even a day or two? Has anything like that ever happened to you?”
“You mean have I ever been Baker-Acted?”
It didn’t surprise Jack that he knew the terminology. He was definitely well compensated, psychologically speaking. “Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.”
“If I was crazy, they’d have me over in the A Wing.”
The A Wing at Miami-Dade county jail was for psychiatric patients. “No one’s saying you’re crazy,” said Jack.
“You people are the crazies. You’re the ones who walk around pretending that guys like me are invisible.”
Jack didn’t disagree. Still, he jotted “possible anasognosia” in his notes, a medical term he’d picked up while working death cases. It meant the inability to recognize your own illness.
“We’ll talk more about that later,” said Jack. “Right now, let me explain what’s going to happen today. You’re charged with a variety of things. Obstructing a bridge, obstructing a highway, creating a public nuisance, indecent exposure-”
“I had to piss.”
“You probably should have come down from the lamppost to do it. But hey, hindsight’s twenty-twenty.” Jack continued with the list: “Resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer-”
“That’s a total joke. Paulo told me that if I came down, I could talk to the mayor’s daughter. The minute my feet hit the ground, three SWAT guys were all over me. Of course I resisted.”
“I’m just reciting the charges, I’m not the one bringing them.”
“What kind of a country is this anyway? A guy wants to jump off a bridge, why should it be illegal?”
“Well, if they made it legal, then you’d have everybody wanting to do it. Kind of like gay marriage.”
“The only reason they’re going after me like this is because I asked to talk to the mayor’s daughter.”
“Now that you bring it up, exactly what did you want to say to her?”
“That’s between me and her.”
“I have to correct you there, pal. If I’m going to be your lawyer, let’s get something straight from the get-go: There’s nothing between you and Alicia Mendoza.”
A worm of a smile crept across Falcon’s lips, a kind of satisfied smirk that Jack had seen before-but only on death row. “You’re wrong,” said Falcon. “Dead wrong. I know she wants to talk to me. She wants to talk to me real bad.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw her standing by that police van. I’m sure it was Alicia. I asked her to come, and she came. They just wouldn’t let her talk to me.”
“That’s probably because they didn’t want to do anything to encourage the obsession.”
“I’m not stalking her,” he said sharply. “I just want to talk to her.”
“Mayor Mendoza probably doesn’t appreciate the distinction. Most people wouldn’t.”
“Then why didn’t they bring any stalker charges against me?”
“You only contacted her once, so trying to prove stalking would needlessly complicate the case. You gave the government a much easier way to put you away for a good long time. It’s called possession of narcotics. That’s also on the list, and it’s a felony, my friend.”
“I didn’t have no crack.”
“It was in your coat pocket.”
“I didn’t put it there.”
“Uh, yeah,” said Jack. “Save it for another day. All we have to do this morning is enter a plea of not guilty, no explanation needed. The judge will hear briefly from me on the issue of bail. I’ll argue this, that, and the other thing. The prosecutor will say it’s this way, that way, and the other way. After everyone’s had their say, the judge will stop counting the number of tiles in the ceiling and set bail at ten thousand dollars, which is pretty standard in a possession case like this one.”
“How soon do they need it?”
“Need what?”
“The ten thousand dollars?”
Jack was amused by the question. “As soon as you can get it, you’re out of jail. Or we can post a bond. You’d have to come up with ten percent-a thousand dollars-which is nonrefundable. And you’d have to pledge sufficient collateral for the balance. All this is academic, I’m sure, since you obviously don’t have ten cents, let alone-”
“Not a problem. I got the ten grand.”
“What?”
“I don’t need to post no bond. I can pay the ten thousand dollars.”
“You can’t even pay me,” said Jack, scoffing.
“I can pay you, and I can make bail.”
“You live in an abandoned automobile. Where are you going to get your hands on that kind of cash?”
Falcon reached across the table and laid his hand, palm down, flat atop Jack’s notepad. The fingernails were deformed and discolored from a fungus of some kind, and that open sore on the back of his hand was oozing white pus. For the first time, however, Jack detected a sparkle-some sign of life-in those cold, dark eyes. “Take notes,” he said in a low, serious tone. “I’ll tell you exactly where to find it.”
chapter 3
J ack’s flight landed in Nassau just after nine a.m. He hated small aircraft, but a forty-five-minute hop over the Gulf Stream on Zack’s Seaplanes came at an irresistible price. It was absolutely free, thanks to Theo Knight.
Theo was Jack’s all-purpose assistant, for lack of a better term. Whatever Jack needed, Theo went and got it,
