Suspicion of Innocence

by Barbara Parker

  As to its outcome . . . Hammell had smiled slightly. He never made guarantees or predictions. He would wait and see what kind of case they had.

  Now Ray Hammell stood at his window overlooking Brickell Avenue, the light making a penumbra of his gray hair. A young black woman named Alisha—his law clerk—sat at the corner of his desk taking notes. Her pen was poised, waiting.

  Gail summarized what she knew about Carlos Pedrosa. His affair with Renee. Dave's suspicions that he had been behind the botched drug run to the Bahamas. She heard Ben say, "Oh, lord," when she told Hammell about the boat Dave had worked on.

  "La Sirena. It means mermaid in Spanish." Then she unfolded a sheet of paper. "This is the boat model and registration number. It might have some connection to Carlos."

  Alisha said she would check it out. Gail told Ray Hammell what she had learned from Loly Perrera.

  Hammell said, "All right. We're going to put our investigator on Betty Diaz before we contact her personally. Let's see what's going on there. If Carlos has dropped her, if he's upset her in some way since this happened, maybe we can use that."

  Alisha wrote it down.

  He added, "I'm going to talk to George Sanchez at some point. If he was working with Carlos Pedrosa on this embezzlement, we'll need to know more about that. I want to find out how much Renee knew. Maybe George can give us an idea."

  Gail said, "Today I told Anthony Quintana what was going on with Pedrosa Development. Should I have?"

  "Well—" Hammell crossed the office and sat down on the arm of a chair facing the sofa. His foot swung back and forth. "You shouldn't talk to anybody, all right? General principle. But I wouldn't worry about Anthony. He and I have already discussed your case at length. I'd like to speak to him again before he mentions this to George Sanchez, though. I think he could tell us how best to approach George." He looked over his shoulder. "Alisha, put a call in to Mr. Quintana, please. Right now?" She nodded, picked up the phone.

  Gail said, "Are you aware that he and Carlos are cousins?"

  "Oh, yes." Hammell's nod revealed he knew more than this. Anthony must have told him everything.

  Ben leaned forward, elbows on knees, his brow creased. "What about a motion to dismiss? We might get this case dropped before it goes to trial."

  Hammell took a long, contemplative breath. "Mmmnn. No, I doubt the judge would grant a motion to dismiss unless we come up with something really solid. I think we can expect a trial. But I'm encouraged with what I've heard today. The state's case won't be a lock and we'll have room to attack it."

  Ben went on, "Carlos Pedrosa had a reason to want Renee dead. He probably lied to the police about his alibi. Seems to me we can use him to establish a reasonable doubt that Gail was involved."

  "If in fact the evidence points in his direction, and if he can't explain it all away."

  "We don't have to prove he's guilty," Ben said. "Just create a reasonable doubt that Gail did it."

  "Sounds simple," Hammell said, "but you have to tread cautiously when throwing accusations of murder at a potentially innocent man."

  "Mr. Hammell?" Alisha was hanging up the phone. "Mr. Quintana's in court. I left a message for him to call you before he does anything else."

  "Thanks." Then Hammell leaned over, gave Gail a firm pat on her knee. "How're we holding up, young lady?"

  She smiled.

  "You ready to come back Tuesday and talk to me for two or three more hours?"

  "I might sleep all weekend, then I'll be ready."

  "Good. Get your rest." He stood up. "I want to hear some more about that Tequesta Indian mask. Bring it with you, let's see what it looks like. We might have another angle here, you think?" He turned toward his desk. "Alisha, have some photos taken of Carlos Pedrosa. Discreetly. Then I want you to show them to— What's the lady's name, Edith Newell? Yes. At the museum."

  Ben got up from the sofa. "Ray, I want to thank you for everything. I brought you a check, damn near cleaned house on this one. You still want it?' '

  "Afraid so. Alisha has the contract in her office, you can go take a look at it." Ray Hammell held out his hand. "Gail, don't worry too much right now, that's the best advice I can give you. It always looks confusing at first. We’ll sort it out."

  Fifteen minutes later, Gail and Ben got into the glass elevator. Her head throbbing, she watched Miami rise toward them from twenty-two stories below.

  Ben leaned with both hands on the chrome handrail.

  "I don't suppose you want me to come with you next Tuesday."

  "No."

  "Gail—" He laughed soundlessly, his gaze going back to the trees getting closer. "I don't begrudge you my time or my money. Neither does Irene. What I do object to is, you seem to think it's your due."

  "Oh, Ben—" Letting out her breath, she turned to face him directly. "No lectures right now. Okay?"

  "You asked me what was wrong with you, I guess that's it. You take. You assume. You want people to do for you, no questions. You accused Renee of being like that, and with good reason. But you're not so different. And if that's the problem with you and Dave, I don't blame him for wanting out."

  The elevator bumped gently to the ground and the doors slid open. On the walkway outside Ben looked back at her, his expression fierce.

  "You coming?"

  She pushed away from the handrail, hardly trusting herself to speak. "I'm going to walk back to my office. I need the exercise." She got a few yards past him, then turned around. "Maybe we are alike, I don't know anymore. But she had more guts than I did. She tried to see things as they really were. Even herself."

  Twenty-One

  The following Wednesday, abandoning a stack of files on her desk, Gail drove out to Everglades Adventures and Gifts with the Tequesta mask in her trunk. Past Krome Avenue, heading west, the road eventually narrowed to two lanes, a canal and saw grass prairie on the right, a strip of woods on the left. Gail turned into the parking lot, nosing up to the fence that extended from the gift shop. On the fence in flaking paint an Indian poled a dugout canoe toward an alligator with open jaws. See Our Zoo of Rare Animals and Reptiles. Alligator Wrestling. Airboat Rides $8.00.

  Gail left the box in her trunk. Ray Hammell hadn't known what to make of the clay deer mask. It would have found its way back to Edith if Gail hadn't thought of something else to do with it today.

  Inside the gift shop she maneuvered past a group of tourists poking through the souvenir T-shirts, then cut around a rack of postcards. She passed an open table of handmade dolls, then stopped and went back to it. The tiny dolls wore patchwork skirts, smiles embroidered onto brown heads made of palmetto fiber. She picked one up. Karen didn't much like dolls, but she would like to have a present to unwrap when she came home. Dave had taken her to his parents' house in Delray Beach for spring break. School would start again on Monday. Already Gail wanted her home again.

  From time to time, as now, the thought of separation from Karen would come into her mind, chilling her like cold, gray rain. She hadn't asked Ray Hammell what might happen, afraid to hear his answer. She had imagined holding Karen on her lap in a room with a dozen other mothers, molded plastic chairs and stained carpet. Or seeing her through glass or wire.

  Gail took a doll with a turquoise skirt to the cash register.

  A woman about sixty, with skin like unironed cotton, looked up from putting price stickers on beaded earrings. "That's ten-sixty, with tax," she said.

  "I'm looking for Jimmy Panther." Gail gave her the exact change.

  "You the lady that called? He's about finished out back. Go on. You don't have to pay."

  The doll in her purse, Gail went through the door that said "Everglades Zoo. $4.00."

  On about a quarter acre of land, palmetto-frond chickees shaded cages of snakes and birds, raccoons, wild pigs, two black bears, and several tawny Florida panthers stretched out asleep. Gail read a reassuring sign that said the big cats were recuperating from accidents, or they were so old they couldn't live i
n the wild anymore. She wondered if it were true.

  A dozen or more people gathered along a low chain-link fence in the back, watching what was going on beyond it.

  Jimmy Panther, wearing blue pants and a faded red T-shirt, sat astride an alligator over ten feet long. Two others lay unmoving in the shade of a chickee behind him. A fourth floated in the shallow moat that separated the tourists from the gators. Gail leaned against the trunk of a palmetto palm, waiting. She had seen an alligator show before.

  Hands clamped around its mouth, Jimmy held the creature's head up. The scales on its neck were pale and shiny. The clawed feet dug into the sand. The muscles in Jimmy's arms stood out.

  "This is what we call bulldogging. You've got a gator pinned. You want to tie him up, but you need both hands to do it. So you hold his mouth shut like this." Jimmy stuck the alligator's snout under his chin and pressed it to his chest. He extended his arms. The crowd murmured and a camera flashed.

  Jimmy grabbed a handful of loose skin under the alligator's jaw, the other hand curling over its nose. He shifted his weight and pulled the long jaws apart. Pointed teeth. More flashes from the camera. He let go and the mouth closed with an audible snap.

  In one motion he stood up and stepped back. The alligator crawled to the edge of the moat and slid into the water, tail moving side to side, eyes just above the surface.

  "So now you know what to do if you find an alligator in your backyard." The crowd gave the expected chuckle and began to drift away. He dusted the sand off his knees. "Thank you for coming to Everglades Adventures. Be sure to stop in the gift shop to purchase tickets for the airboat. Billy Osceola will be your guide."

  He noticed Gail then, and nodded at her. His hair was untied today, flowing over his shoulders and halfway down his back. He walked along the fence. "You missed most of the show."

  "So this is what you do for a living."

  He picked up a metal bucket by the gate, then opened the latch. "This and other things." He went around to dig some bills and coins out of a can marked "tips" wired to one of the fence posts.

  Gail followed him across the yard, unsure of how to start this conversation. It would have been easier in her office, behind her desk. She said, "I've lived in Miami all my life and I seemed to have missed the Miccosukees."

  He glanced at her. "We're on display seven days a week at the Indian Village, go about fifteen miles down the road to the reservation."

  There was a spigot on the gift shop wall and he turned it on, holding the bucket under it. The water swirled pink for an instant and what looked like a piece of chicken skin spun in the vortex. Jimmy turned off the spigot and sloshed the water into the gravel alongside the building. An Asian couple with a small child stood nearby watching the bear pad back and forth in its cage.

  Jimmy set the bucket upside down to drain and wiped his hands on a towel. He jerked his head to flip his hair over his shoulder. "Where's the deer mask?"

  "In my car."

  His expression said he had expected as much. "What do you want to talk about?"

  "Could we go somewhere else?"

  He hung the towel on a nail, then led her to an opening in the wood fence. They came out behind the gift shop. The bare white ground sloped to a splintery platform with a railing around it made of two-by-fours, overlooking a weedy slough. The airboats would come past this spot, she supposed. She could see where the water hyacinths had been pushed aside, the channel disappearing into the saw grass. A dented Pepsi can floated in the weeds. Vine-tangled trees arched overhead.

  Jimmy turned around an aluminum porch chair. "Sit down."

  There was only one chair. "No, thanks." She heard the insects chirring in the saw grass. She had half expected Jimmy Panther to refuse to talk to her, to call the police, to pull out his knife and demand his mask.

  But he was only looking at her through slightly narrowed black eyes. "What do you want to know?" He walked to where she stood at the railing.

  "I want to know about Renee."

  "You're her sister."

  "We didn't see much of each other the last few years. I suppose you knew that." Gail could see no change in his expression. "You must have heard I've been charged with her murder."

  He said, "Did you do it?"

  "No." She let out her breath. "Look, I need your help. I thought—I hoped—you'd talk to me. If my attorney knew I was here he would probably fire me as a client."

  Gail turned her head toward the channel. The bright water threw dancing glimmers into the trees. "I've never been a defendant before. I've defended other people—not in criminal cases, but they've been in danger of losing their last dime. I've seen them waiting, bewildered, probably hoping to God I didn't screw up. I always thought I'd hate to be in that position, waiting for somebody else to decide what's going to happen to me. I won't do it with my own case. So here I am. Pissing you off. Using whatever I can—including something that belongs to you—to find out about my sister."

  "The police talked to me already," Jimmy said. "They wanted to know if I saw anybody around when I found her. If I knew who might have wanted her dead, when was the last time I saw her. Where I was that night. I was home. I've got a trailer not too far from here."

  On the other side of the building an engine started up, an unmuffled roar. The sound grew, moved. Then Gail saw the airboat turn into the channel, a man wearing blue ear protectors in the high seat, three tourists down below, holding on. The propeller spun in its cage, picked up speed, the rudders straightening out. Gail put her hands over her ears, felt the wind tug at her skirt. Kicking up a froth of mist, the airboat vanished into the saw grass. The noise faded.

  Jimmy Panther was still waiting. Gail asked, "When you found Renee, was she wearing her gold necklace? She used to wear a necklace with a heart pendant, outlined in little diamonds."

  "I wouldn't know. I only got close enough to tell it was her, then I came on back here and called the police. Why'd you ask about the necklace?"

  "We can't find it."

  His brows rose a fraction.

  "You can also tell me who you are." Gail bent to set her purse down on the deck and noticed how tense her muscles had become. "Tell me how you can be part Tequesta when they've been gone for over two hundred years."

  "You want a history lesson?" He looked at her for a minute, then said, "Okay. About 1700, when the Yamassee invaded from the north, they killed a lot of the Tequesta and sold others as slaves to the British. By 1750, most of the Tequesta had died out, but there were a few who intermarried with the Yamassee. Some of those remembered who they were and passed it along. My grandmother told me stories that her grandmother told her, and her people before that. The Yamassee later became part of the Seminoles. And the Miccosukees are part of the same group. Sure, the blood is diluted, down to a few drops, maybe, but the memory is still there, in the legend. Is that what you wanted?"

  Gail said, "What about your grandfather? Edith said he was white."

  "Hiram Gibb, came from Massachusetts. He sailed a trading boat from Miami to Key West and married a Seminole woman, Millie Cypress."

  "I heard he was a rumrunner for Al Capone."

  Jimmy Panther finally smiled, his slightly crooked teeth barely showing. ''He made a living that way, later on. He knew the backcountry, how to get a boat in and out of the mangrove channels. What else did Edith Newell tell you about me?"

  "That you got into trouble with the police when you were younger. Auto theft, among other things."

  "That's a long time ago. You want to know about it?"

  "Sure."

  There was the smile again. "I hung around a bad element. Rich white boys at Miami High. My father owned a gas station and we lived in town. I didn't want to have anything to do with the Indian school. I liked acid rock and blonde girls and muscle cars. You know what muscle cars are? GTOs, 427 Ford Fairlanes, Roadrunners? These boys, they came out to Krome Avenue to do midnights, they called it. Straight highway, no cops, no traffic back then. Sometimes
they'd blow the engines, break a fly rod. There was a big demand for parts. They started reporting their own cars stolen. They'd take out the parts, dump the car in a canal, and get paid for it. I helped, I'm not denying that. I was a couple years older, knew how to work on cars, so I fixed them. Then the insurance company noticed that all these guys were friends. You know who one of them was? Paul Robineau. Right, he's in your law firm.

  "What I heard later was, the investigator went to Paul's father. He and a few other families paid the losses to keep their sons out of trouble, but they needed somebody to point the finger at. They gave me a choice—jail or the military. Paul went to Harvard that fall. I got to Vietnam just in time for the Tet Offensive."

  Jimmy glanced around when something splashed in the water. A blue heron had flapped down on the opposite shore, settling its wings against its body. Ripples moved slowly outward into the hyacinth and saw grass, sending flecks of sunlight into the trees.

  "They made me a sniper." Jimmy Panther's black eyes were still on the slough. "Marines. The VC Hunting Club. When we went out, we called it going into Indian country. I did that for a while. Too long. Then I stayed stoned so I wouldn't be tempted to shoot at the wrong people. They put me on supply, then sent me to a base in Texas. Nothing but sand and rocks. After my discharge I lived in about ten states, doing this and that. I worked at Circus Circus in Las Vegas, in an Indian act. Buckskins and a feather headdress. I decided I might as well come on home."

  He flicked a leaf off the railing. ''As long as the Dade County Commission isn't totally bought off, and the city doesn't suck up what's left of the water, I guess I'll have this view to look at for a while. We used to live by hunting and fishing. The game's about gone and the fish are full of mercury. So we run airboats and make souvenirs for the tourists. To tell the truth, it's not too bad. But the white people have this thing about us lately. They feel guilty. I got invited to speak at a Christopher Columbus seminar. The Herald ran my picture a couple times. I've had old ladies tell me they're going to leave money in their wills to the tribe. This one guy, had to be about your age, said he was ashamed he was born white." Jimmy Panther laughed. "Fine with me, as long as it lasts."