The Pardon

by James Grippando

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” the judge intoned, “thank you for your service. You are discharged. A judgment of acquittal shall be entered. Mr. Swyteck,” she said, peering over the bench, “you are free to go. This court is adjourned,” she declared, ending it all with one last crack of the gavel.

  Happy cries of congratulation flew across the courtroom. Neil and Mike and the other friends who’d never stopped believing hurried forward and leaned across the rail that separated players from spectators, slapping Jack’s back and shaking the hand of an innocent man. Jack was elated but dazed. He canvassed the buzzing crowd, still hoping for a glimpse of Cindy. Then he thought of the other person who was missing.

  “Where’s my father?” Jack asked Manny. His voice was barely audible in the thundering commotion of the crowded courtroom.

  Manny smiled. “We’ve got a special celebration planned,” he said with a wink. “Back at my office.”

  Jack was overcome with a sense of euphoria. He felt like a death-row prisoner released into the bright light of day. He’d never been so eager to see his father. As he and Manny started toward the gate, they were stopped abruptly by Wilson McCue.

  “I’d lose the smiles if I were you,” the prosecutor said bitterly. He spoke in a low, threatening voice that couldn’t be overheard by the noisy crowd on the other side of the rail. “This is only round one, boys, and round two is about to begin. It’s just a matter of how fast I can assemble the grand jury and draft the indictment, that’s all. I warned you, Swyteck. I said I’d come after you for the murder of Gina Terisi, and I meant it. Right now the only question is whether I’ll do it before or after I indict your old man for the murder of Eddy Goss.”

  Jack’s eyes flared with contempt. “You just won’t take those blinders off, will you, McCue?”

  “Jack,” Manny stopped him. “Say nothing.”

  “That’s right,” McCue countered. “Say nothing. Take the fifth. It runs in the family.” He shook his head with disgust, then turned and stepped through the swinging gate, into the rabble of reporters clamoring at the rail.

  Jack desperately wanted to rush after McCue and set him straight, but Manny held him back. “Just take it easy, Jack,” he said, pulling him toward the bench, away from the media frenzy. “McCue can afford to talk out of anger, but you can’t. So for now, just let me handle the press. The best thing you can do is to say nothing and go back to my office. We need to regroup and talk with your father.”

  “My father . . .” Jack said slowly, as if tapping into a source of strength. Then he nodded. “All right, I’ll meet you there.” Then he opened the gate and pushed his way into the swarming press. He kept his head lowered, ignoring all questions until he reached the elevators. Less than three minutes later, he was behind the steering wheel of his Mustang, ready to pull out of the courthouse parking lot.

  He’d just put the car into gear when he heard the ringing of his car phone. Cindy, he hoped. But why would she use this number? Could she have already heard the verdict? It didn’t seem possible.

  He moved the shift back into park and picked up the phone.

  “Jack,” he heard her voice. “It’s me, Cindy.”

  He started to say something, but words wouldn’t come. “Cindy,” he said finally, just wanting to say her name. “Where are you?”

  “Balcony scene’s over, Romeo,” came the ugly reply. It wasn’t Cindy’s voice anymore. It was the same voice he’d heard while on his belly in the bus. “She’s with me.”

  Jack’s hand shook as he pressed the phone to his ear. Some part of his brain that wasn’t absolutely terrified directed his other hand to turn off the ignition. He moved slightly forward in his seat. “What have you done with her!”

  “Nothing,” the caller said coolly. “Yet.”

  “It’s me you want, you bastard! Just leave her out of it.”

  “Shut up, Swyteck! I’m through fooling around. Your legal system has fucked everything up again. This time we’ll play on my turf. And this time I want real money. I want a quarter million. Cash. Unmarked fifties.”

  Jack’s head was spinning. He tried to focus. “Look, I’ll do whatever you want. But that’s a lot of money. It’ll take time to—”

  “Your girlfriend doesn’t have time. Talk to your father, asshole. He’s so eager to help you.”

  “Okay. Please, just don’t hurt her? Just tell me how to get you the money.”

  “Take it to Key West. Just the two of you.”

  “The two of us?”

  “You and your father.”

  “I can do it myself—”

  “You’ll do it the way I tell you to do it!” the caller snapped. “I need to know where everybody is who knows anything about this. I’m not gonna be ambushed. No police, no FBI, no National Guard—not even a meter maid. Any sign of law enforcement and your pretty girlfriend’s dead. If I see any roadblocks on U.S. 1, any choppers in the air, any news reports on television, anything that even looks like you called in the cavalry—she’s dead, immediately. It’s me against the Swytecks. End of story. You got it?”

  “I got it,” Jack said, though he could barely speak. “When do you want us there?”

  “Saturday night, October twenty-ninth.”

  “That’s tomorrow,” Jack protested.

  “That’s right. It’s the Key West Fantasy Fest weekend. Nice, big Halloween street party. Like the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Everyone’s going to be in costume. And so will I. No one could possibly find me in that mess, Swyteck. So don’t even try.”

  “How will we contact you?”

  “I’ll contact you. Just check into any one of the big resort hotels. Use your name. I’ll find you. Any questions?”

  Jack took a deep breath. “No,” he replied.

  “Good. Very good. Oh—one other thing, Swyteck.”

  “What?”

  “Trick or treat,” he taunted, then hung up the phone.

  It should have been a night of celebration, beginning with him and his father sipping Dom Perignon, then blossoming into a fairy-tale reunion with Cindy. Instead, the nightmare was continuing.

  Jack went to Manny’s office as planned, where he met up with his father. They sat alone in Manny’s conference room, considering their options.

  “Agnes and I can certainly come up with the money,” the governor assured his son. “That’s not a problem. And, naturally, I’m in a position to bring in the best law enforcement available. All I have to do is make a phone call. I can do it right now.”

  Jack shook his head. “We can’t,” he said emphatically. “He’ll kill Cindy, I know it. He’ll spot anything we try to do.”

  The governor sighed. “You’re probably right. He may be crazy, but he’s brilliant-crazy. I’m sure he’s monitoring a police radio even as we speak. And if there’s anything I learned in my ten years on the force, it’s that police departments are sieves.”

  Father and son sat staring at each other. “All right,” the governor finally said, “we don’t bring in the police. But I have lots of friends in the private sector—retired FBI agents, retired Secret Service. They can help. They can at least give advice.”

  Jack wrestled with it. “That makes sense, I guess. But any advisers have to be just that—advisers. Ultimately, it comes down to me.”

  “No,” the governor corrected him. “You and me.”

  Jack looked at his father across the table. The governor gave him a reassuring smile that was meant to remove any doubt that he could count on his old man.

  “Let’s do it, then,” said Jack. “We’ll nail this bastard. Together.”

  PART FIVE

  •

  Saturday, October 29

  Chapter 48

  •

  Jack and Harry Swyteck reached the end of U.S. 1 and the city limits of Key West at about noon the next day. They followed the palm trees along the coastline and parked Harry’s rented Ford Taurus near Duval Street, the main thoroughfare that bisected the tourists
’ shopping district. Both sides of Duval and the streets leading off of it were lined with art galleries and antique shops housed in renovated white-frame buildings, booths advertising snorkel tours, T-shirt emporiums, mélange of folk, rock, and calypso.

  At the north end of Duval was Mallory Square, a popular gathering spot on the wharf where magicians, jugglers, and portrait artists entertained crowds and turned sunsets into a festival every day of the year. During Fantasy Fest, the square was simply an extension of a ten-day party that stretched from one end of Duval to the other.

  Fantasy Fest was already in its ninth day when the Swytecks arrived, and the party in the streets was still nonstop. Some tourists were buying their feathers, beads, and noisemakers for the annual but hardly traditional Halloween parade on Saturday night, others were just people-watching. Many were already in costume. Men dressed as women. Women dressed as Martians. A brazen few were undressed, covering their bare breasts or buttocks with only grease paint.

  “Check that out,” Jack said from his passenger seat, pointing to a man outfitted in a lavender loincloth and a pink bonnet.

  “Probably the mayor,” the governor deadpanned.

  Harry parked the car in the covered garage near their hotel. They grabbed their overnight bags and a briefcase from the trunk and headed up the old brick sidewalk, grateful for the shade of hundred-year-old oaks and a cool ocean breeze. Hotel rooms were hard to come by during Fantasy Fest—especially if requested at the last minute—but the governor had a few connections. They checked in at the front desk and carried their own luggage to a suite on the sixth floor.

  The sliding-glass doors offered a stunning, eight-hundred-dollar-a-night view of the Gulf of Mexico. Jack walked out onto the balcony and looked at the Pier Point, one of those outdoor waterfront restaurants where the food was never as good as the atmosphere. It all seemed so surreal, he thought He wanted to think that at any moment Cindy would join them, and then they’d get caught up in the party, walk on the beach or head over to the original Sloppy Joe’s and find the table Ernest Hemingway used to like. But they had business to tend to—someone to meet. And at 1:00 p.m., the man they wanted to meet was at their door.

  “Peter Kimmell,” said the governor, “meet my son, Jack.”

  Jack closed the balcony’s sliding-glass doors and pulled the curtains shut. “Glad to meet you,” he said, reaching out to shake the man’s hand.

  Kimmell was tall, about six feet four inches, with a lean body that moved with catlike grace. His face registered little emotion, but his eyes seemed to be constantly assessing, processing information. They gave Jack the uncomfortable feeling that he was being evaluated, measured against some personal set of standards.

  Old habits die hard. Kimmell was a twenty-year veteran of the Secret Service who’d burned out two years before and retired to his bass boat in the Florida Keys. But he’d quickly grown bored with fishing, so he took up cycling, then swimming, then running—and before he knew it, the same energy that had made him a top agent made him one of the top competitors in the age-fifty-and-above Ironman triathlon. He still did some work as a private investigator when he wasn’t training, and Harry Swyteck used him as a consultant on special events that raised thorny security problems. The governor considered Kimmell the best in the business. And, most important, he was the only man Harry trusted to give Jack and him the expertise they needed without any danger of a leak to the press or police.

  “So you’re Jack,” Kimmell said, smiling. “Your dad’s told me a lot about you—all good.” He shifted his gaze from son to father. “You ready to get right to it, men?”

  “Ready,” they both answered.

  “Good. Now let me show you some toys I’ve brought along for you,” he said with a wink. He hoisted onto the bed a gray metal suitcase that was nearly as big as a trunk. “Voila,” he said as he popped it open.

  The Swytecks stood in silence as they peered at the cache inside. “What did you do,” asked the governor, “mix up your bag with James Bond’s?”

  “You won’t need half this stuff,” said Kimmell. “But whatever you will need is here. I got everything from voice-activated wires to infrared binoculars.”

  “I think we should keep it simple,” said Jack.

  “I agree,” he replied. “First, let’s talk weapons. You ever fired a gun, Jack?”

  Jack smiled at the irony. How would Wilson McCue have answered that question for him? “Uh-huh”—he nodded—“back when I was in college. I had a girlfriend who didn’t feel safe at night without a gun in the apartment, so I learned to use it.”

  “Good. Now, for you, son,” he said as he removed a sleek black pistol from the holster, “I recommend this baby—the Glock Seventeen Safe Action nine-millimeter pistol, Austrian design. It’s completely computer-manufactured of synthetic polymer. Stronger than steel, but weighs less than two pounds even with a full magazine, so you can hold it nice and steady. Deadly accurate, too, so you don’t have to be right in this lunatic’s face to blow him away. And it’s got a pretty soft recoil, considering the punch it packs: You got seventeen rounds of police-issue hollow-point para-ammunition that’ll drop a charging moose with an attitude dead in its tracks.” He handed it to Jack. “How’s that feel, partner?”

  Jack laid it in his hand and shrugged. “Feels like a gun.”

  “Like a part of your hand, Jack. That’s what it feels like” He took the pistol back, then dug into his suitcase. “Now, let’s talk real protection: body armor. It’s gonna be hot as hell, but you gotta wear a vest. This is the top of the line in my book. Made of Kevlar one twenty-nine and Spectra fibers. Full coverage. Protects your front, back, and sides, and the shirttails keep it from riding up on you. Stops a forty-four-magnum slug at fourteen hundred feet per second—that’s point-blank range. Excellent multi-hit stopping power, too”—he winked—“but I think I’d still hit the deck if he pulls out an Uzi. Best of all, it weighs less than four pounds and gives you full range of motion. Beneath your baggy black sweatshirt, your kidnapper won’t even know you got it on. Governor, got a Glock and body armor for you, too. I know you never used to like to wear the vest, but—”

  “I’ll wear one,” he said without hesitation.

  “Good,” replied Kimmell. “Now—the plan. If I’m gonna help you men get ready to meet this character face-to-face, I need to get a fix on who he is. I need to know everything you know about him. So let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about the murder he confessed to. Who was the woman he says he killed?”

  “A teenager, actually,” Jack answered. “She got herself into a nightclub with a phony ID, then she was abducted in the parking lot on the way to her car. The next morning, they found her on the beach. Her throat had been slit.”

  “What else—” Kimmell asked, but he was interrupted by the shrill ring of the telephone. “You guys expecting a call?”

  “No,” answered the governor.

  The phone was on its third ring. “Answer it, Jack,” Kimmell directed.

  “Hello,” he answered, then listened carefully. “No, thank you,” he finished the conversation, and then hung up. His father and Kimmell were staring expectantly. “There’s a package at the front desk for us.”

  “From who?” asked Kimmell.

  “No name on it. But it must be him. When he called me yesterday, he said we should just check into one of the big hotels and that we’d hear from him. There’s only a handful of possibilities on the Key. Looks like he found us.”

  Kimmell nodded. “Tell them to send it up.”

  Jack phoned the manager and asked him to deliver the package to their room personally. The manager was glad to accommodate. In two minutes he was at their door with the delivery. Kimmell answered, then brought the shoe-box-sized package inside and lay it on the bed. He took a metal detector from his suitcase and ran it across the package.

  “There’s metal inside,” said Kimmell.

  “You think he sent us a bomb?” asked the governor.

>   “Can’t be,” Kimmell answered. “If he was going to blow you up, he would have done it two years ago. Open it.”

  Jack carefully removed the string and cut the tape with the care of a surgeon. He lifted the lid. Inside the bubble wrap was a cellular phone. Across the top lay a business-sized envelope with a handwritten message on the outside. “Switch on the phone at midnight,” it read.

  “At least we know your kidnapper hasn’t lost his nerve,” said Kimmell. “He’s still in the game. Which means there’s still hope.”

  “What’s in the envelope?” asked the governor.

  Kimmell opened it and unfolded its contents. “It’s a certificate of death,” he said.

  “Not Cindy?” the governor asked with sudden fear.

  “’Raul Francisco Fernandez,’” he read from the first line. “It’s from the County Health Department. An exact duplicate, except for Box thirty—the cause of death. You can still make out the original, typewritten entry. ‘Cardiac arrest,’” he read aloud, “’as a consequence of electrocution.’ But someone has crossed out the coroner’s entry and penciled in a different cause of death.” He handed it to the governor.

  “’Jack Swyteck,’” Harry read aloud, his voice cracking.

  A heavy silence permeated the room. Then Kimmell took a closer look at the certificate. “Why’d he do this?” he asked.

  “That’s been his message all along,” Jack said. “He’s blamed me from the beginning.”

  “I’m talking about something different,” said Kimmell. “There’s another message here—one that’s a little less obvious. Maybe even unintended. Box seven,” he said as he pointed to it, “is the space for the ‘informant.’ That’s the person who provides personal data for completion of the certificate. The named informant here is Alfonso Perez.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Jack.

  “There are lots of men named Alfonso Perez. But from my days in law enforcement I know that at one time it was also one of the aliases used by a guy known as Esteban. Every federal agent based in Miami in the eighties knew about this character. Brilliant guy. Speaks English as well as he does Spanish. Every so often he changes his name and identity. The feds can’t keep up. I heard they almost nabbed him two years ago, but he took off to somewhere in the Caribbean. Anyway, he’s a suspect in at least five murder-kidnappings in this country alone.”