Theo could understand that. At least he wanted to understand. It wasn’t easy to stand by and watch his brother pass up a golden opportunity to prove himself innocent, clear his name, get the bloodhounds on somebody else’s trail. Not after losing four years on death row for someone else’s crime. It took balls to stand up to a homicide detective that way, to look the demon in the eye and say, “You want me? Come get me.” Theo admired that in his brother. Actually, they were a lot alike in that respect. The Knight brothers were never the ones to back down from anyone or anything, never afraid to butt heads with their worst nightmares. With one exception. There was one demon Theo had never confronted. He’d never gone back to that all-night convenience store where he’d found that clerk in a puddle of blood.
’Bout damn time you did.
Theo remembered the way. He drove the exact route they’d taken that night, last night it seemed, or was it a million years ago?
It was nine o’clock in the evening, much earlier than his disastrous visit at 4 A.M., just as dark but much more traffic. The street was freshly paved, and there was a new median down the middle. Public works had planted a few palm trees to pretty-up the neighborhood, not the towering and beautiful royal palms or the Canary Island date palms you saw on wide boulevards cutting through tony Coral Gables, just the straggly, brown variety that got planted for no other reason than to shut people up whenever they bitched and moaned about the lack of green space in their neighborhood. So after all these years, they finally got the weed palms, sickly looking trees plucked from somewhere in the Everglades, one or two puny fronds reaching aimlessly for the sky like Alfalfa’s haircut, their trunks propped up by two-by-fours and covered top to bottom with gang graffiti, clearly some bureau crat’s idea of landscaping.
Theo turned at the traffic light. The pool hall was gone, the whole building boarded up and scorched around the edges, the fire probably caused by a careless cigarette or more likely the owner’s dumb-ass refusal to make good on a gambling debt. The gas station was still on the corner, but the new self-serve pumps looked like something out of The Jetsons compared to the old equipment Theo remembered. And Theo did remember. He’d forgotten nothing, having gone over that night many times in his mind while lying alone on a prison bunk. But just the thought of actually retracing his steps had his heart pounding.
He parked the car and switched off the radio. The music had been playing loudly that night, as he recalled, until they parked behind the convenience store, where Lionel, the gang leader, gave him his instructions and started the initiation.
“You want to be a Grove Lord or don’t you?”
“Shit, yeah.”
“You got five minutes to prove it. Then I’m gone, wit or wit’out you.”
Theo got out of the car and shut the door, his head clear of alcohol this time yet clouded with so many memories, so many doubts.
Loose gravel on the pavement crunched beneath his feet as he started down the alley. He was approaching the store from the back, just as he had before. It was a solitary journey, the passageway narrow and dark, brightened only by the streetlight at the front entrance. He’d sprinted up this alley the last time, but tonight he walked, absorbing the details. The dirty bricks on the walls on either side of him, the cracks in the pavement beneath his feet, the sound of the traffic somewhere ahead of him. He reached the sidewalk and turned left, toward the entrance to Shelby’s, except that it wasn’t called Shelby’s anymore. The sign on the door said MORTON’S MARKET. Theo had heard that old man Shelby had sold it. He couldn’t take it anymore, his business off badly from all the talk on the street about that poor nineteen-year-old kid who got beat to death by that black piece of shit from Liberty City and his pocket-size crowbar.
“Got a buck, bro’?” asked the homeless guy sitting on the sidewalk outside the entrance.
“Get you on the way out,” said Theo, and then he stopped at the glass doors. He remembered the butterflies in his stomach the last time he’d come here, how relieved he was to see no one inside the store, the cash register unattended. It was a little different at this hour, two customers inside that he could count, the clerk seated at the counter and watching ESPN on the little television. But everything else looked virtually identical, the aisles configured the same way, the same beige tile floors, the beer and snack foods stacked the same way near the entrance. It may have been called Morton’s Market, but he was going back to Shelby’s.
He pushed the door open and walked inside.
The clerk glanced over his shoulder, checked him out, then turned his attention back to the television. Theo walked around the stack of newspapers and the barrel of iced-down singles. The clerk didn’t give him a second look. Theo Knight, former death row inmate, had just walked into the store, and the kid didn’t seem to care. Did he know what had happened here? Had anyone told him?
Have you been in that stockroom?
Theo stopped and looked down the hall, his gaze carrying him all the way back to that first sight of blood, the bright crimson trail that he’d followed like a fool, followed all the way to Florida State Prison and four years of near misses with the electric chair.
The front door opened. Theo turned, the clerk’s head jerked. Two teenage boys walked in. Both were black. Both wore baggy pants, Miami Hurricane football jerseys, thick gold chains, and black knit caps, which seemed to have replaced the backward baseball caps of Theo’s era, even in the tropical climates. They walked with the typical gang swagger, something that never seemed to change from one generation to the next. This time, the clerk looked nervous. The boys separated. One went down the far aisle, the other took the near aisle. Up and down they walked, as if casing the place, biding their time until the customers had the good sense to leave them alone with the clerk and the cash drawer.
Theo watched them. This time he wasn’t going to run. I’m here for you, pal.
Finally, the nearest one burst into laughter. The other laughed even harder, no apparent reason, some kind of private joke that was at the expense of Theo or the scared clerk. Either way, Theo didn’t like it, and they were starting to piss him off.
Their laughter faded; the joke was over. The one who’d laughed first grabbed a couple of Gatorades from the cooler, walked up to the counter, and laid down his money. The clerk still looked nervous, but it was no longer a fear of the unknown but rather the fear of a danger that was all too familiar. He handed over the change and said, “Thanks, Lenny.”
“I’m Leroy, dumbshit. Lenny’s the ugly one.”
Theo watched as the two boys walked out the front door, laughing and hassling each other. “Who you calling ugly, motha’ fucka’?”
Then they were gone, on to the next joint, no place in particular. Lenny and Leroy, like Theo and Tatum. Teenage brothers. Couple of neighborhood badasses who got their kicks just skulking around and watching people scare. Looked alike. Dressed alike. Acted alike. People always getting them mixed up, confusing one for the other.
Theo suddenly went cold. It was a sickening thought, but he was beginning to understand his brother’s refusal to take the DNA test on a whole different level, one that had nothing to do with courage or principle or standing up to Detective Larsen. It boiled down to just one thing, the very thing the test was about: genetics.
Theo shook his head, not wanting to believe it but believing it nonetheless.
Tatum, you chickenshit son of a bitch.
Fifty-four
Jack had time enough to smell but not taste the coffee before Theo came barging into his office on Wednesday morning. He had Tatum in tow, so Jack knew it was serious.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jack, rising from behind his desk.
His secretary suddenly appeared behind the double-barreled hulk of humanity that was blocking Jack’s doorway, standing on her tiptoes and waving from the hallway to get Jack’s attention. “Knight brothers are here,” she said.
“Thanks, Maria.”
Theo closed the door and said, “Siddown
, Tatum.”
Tatum took a seat, and so did Jack. No one told him to sit, but with Theo speaking to his own brother in that tone of voice, it seemed wise to anticipate.
Tatum glared at his younger brother and said, “You think now you could maybe tell me what the hell this-”
“Shut your mouth,” said Theo.
It had been a long time since Jack had seen his friend so worked up. “Theo, calm down, all right?”
“Calm down?” he said with an angry smile. “I been calming myself down all night long, and it just gets me more pissed. So don’t tell me to calm down.”
“What happened last night?” asked Jack.
“I went back to Shelby’s.”
Jack and Tatum exchanged glances, as if neither one knew where to go from there.
Theo kept talking, pacing. “I was trying to understand, why would Tatum refuse to take a DNA test to get found not guilty when his own brother got hisself off death row that way? And then it hits me: That is the reason he won’t take the DNA test.”
Tatum said, “What you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Ain’t got a clue.”
“Four years I wasted on death row. No more lies, Tatum.”
“You’re pissing me off now. Don’t be calling me no liar.”
“Then stop the lying,” said Theo, his voice rising. “Ain’t no more excuse for it. That’s why I dragged your ass all the way over here, held off talking about it till you and me both was sitting down in front of our lawyer. Tell him, Jack. Everything we say here is protected by the attorney-client privilege, right?”
“You’re both clients. But it’s two different cases. I’m a little confused as to what’s going on here.”
“Jack, let’s just agree that nothing leaves this room. Can you fucking do that for me?”
Theo’s eyes were bulging. “Sure,” Jack said in a calming voice. “This is all privileged.”
“Nothing that we say here can ever be repeated in a courtroom. No one can run out of here and tell the cops what the other one said, right?”
“That’s right,” said Jack.
Theo glared at Tatum and said, “Talk to me, brother.”
“Talk what?”
“I want the truth.”
“The truth about what?”
“Was you the one who killed that clerk at Shelby’s?” Theo wasn’t shouting, but his voice was firm and harsh, and the question hit like ice water. Jack looked at Theo, then at Tatum, then back at Theo, wondering what in the world had happened in the last twenty-four hours. He expected Tatum to jump any second and grab his brother by the throat for talking such shit.
Tatum simply chuckled and said, “Wha-at?”
It was a nervous chuckle. Jack could hear the little break in his voice, and he knew Theo was on to a horrible truth that was about to change things forever. Jack looked at Tatum and said, “He wants to know if you’re the member of the Grove Lords who let him take the fall.”
Tatum gave his lawyer a look that said, Stay the hell out of this, Swyteck.
Theo was pacing again, speaking in what sounded like pure stream of consciousness. “This is what I realized last night. You refused to take the DNA test for Gerry Colletti’s murder because you was worried about a match.”
“I didn’t kill Colletti.”
“I know you didn’t. But I’m not talking about a match between your DNA and the DNA found in the dried spit they took from the back of Colletti’s suit coat. You were afraid of a match with the human hair and skin the cops scraped from under the fingernails of that convenience store clerk at Shelby’s. That kid fought like a tiger, right, Jack?”
“That’s what the crime scene suggested.”
“The forensic guys who testified at my trial said the kid fought back and put a nice scratch into the top of his attacker’s head. Got some skin and hair under his nails. My first lawyer tried to use that at trial. He asked the jury, Why no scratch on top of my client’s head if the victim had skin and hair under his nails? Too bad for me that I wasn’t arrested and examined by a doctor until seven months after the crime. Scratch could have healed in all that time. At least that’s what the prosecutor made the jury believe. But it all worked out in the end. The scrapings of skin and hair gave us a nice DNA sample. DNA wasn’t used that much at the time of my trial. Four years later, it was. When Jack came in to handle my habeas corpus petitions, he got the test, got me off death row.”
“And the only one happier than you was me,” said Tatum.
“Yeah, now I know why. I don’t understand all the details, but, Jack, help me out here. Once there’s a DNA test, the cops keep that shit around, don’t they?”
“You’re talking about CODIS,” said Jack.
“Tell him, Jack. Tell Tatum what he already knows, and what I just figured out.”
It was strange, the way this was coming off as if Jack and Theo had rehearsed it. But Jack had wondered about the real killer for almost as many years as Theo had, and now that Theo was on a roll, Jack was right with him, step for step. “CODIS is the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System,” said Jack. “If a DNA test is performed on a specimen sample taken from a crime scene, that DNA profile is entered into the forensic files of CODIS. Once I was finally able to get the test done to compare Theo’s DNA to the hair and skin sample taken from the victim, the DNA profile of the unknown killer would, as a matter of course, have been entered into the CODIS forensic database.”
“Which is exactly the reason my brother didn’t want to give his DNA profile. Even though his DNA would have proved that he didn’t kill Gerry Colletti, a simple run through the FBI’s database would have proved that he did kill the store clerk.”
A tense silence filled the room as the two brothers stared each other down.
“That wasn’t the way it was supposed to go down,” Tatum said quietly.
“Oh, man,” said Jack, his response involuntary.
Tatum continued, “It was my next step up in the Grove Lords. I had to take someone out, you know, if I ever wanted to have my own turf. So Lionel, he picks out this clerk at Shelby’s. No real reason, just picked him. So, I did him.”
Theo looked ready to explode. Jack knew he had to say something before he had another homicide on his hands. “Why’d you pin it on Theo?”
“Wasn’t supposed to be no one else in the store. But when I came out, I ran past some guy on the sidewalk. I was afraid he could ID me. I had to think fast, man. I was scared, you know? So when I get back to the car, that’s when me and Lionel come up with the plan.”
“What plan?” asked Jack.
“We had to get someone else, you know. Someone else to go in that store.”
Theo’s voice shook with anger. “Someone who looked like you.”
He shook his head, his voice filled with regret. “I didn’t want it to be you, Theo. That’s what I told Lionel. All the Grove Lords dressed alike. Black pants, Miami Heat jerseys, gold chains, backward baseball caps. We could have picked almost anyone. But Lionel picked Theo.”
“And you didn’t fight him?”
“At first, yeah. I said no way. But it made sense for it to be you.”
“Bullshit, Tatum. It was dark, we all dressed alike. There were ten other Grove Lords that could have looked like you.”
“We didn’t pick you just because we looked alike. It was smarter than that.”
“Smart?” he said, almost screeching.
“You was fifteen, man. Lionel said no way you’d be charged as an adult. I was almost eighteen. No question I was looking at adult charges. So that’s how we picked you.”
Jack could hear Theo breathing in and out, the anger scorching his lungs and throat, taking his words away. Jack spoke for him. “So you served up your little brother thinking he’d get off on a juvenile charge, serving time in detention until his record was expunged at age eighteen.”
“That was the plan.”
Jack kept probing.
“That guy on the sidewalk who you nearly ran over on your way out of the store-he was the eyewitness who mistakenly picked Theo out of the lineup.”
“That’s right.”
“And with a solid eyewitness, the state attorney started feeling pretty good about the case. They charged Theo as an adult, not a juvenile. And the jury nailed him for murder one.”
“Next thing I know he’s on death row,” said Tatum. “It was like a nightmare for me.”
“For you!” Theo shouted. “Fuck you, Tatum!”
“Don’t you think it was killing me, too?”
“No! You would have let me die.”
“No way was I gonna let that happen.”
“I always knew I was set up by the Grove Lords. How many conversations did you and me have between the prison glass, Tatum? The two of us wracking our brains trying to figure out who the scumbag was. We never was able to narrow it down to less than about fifty. Not once did you even hint it was you who was the killer. The whole time, you was just pretending to stand by me when I was on death row. But you would have just stood silent right to the end, let me die for something you did.”
“You know that ain’t true. What about that night I offered to confess, remember? I said I would confess if that’s what it took to get you off death row.”
“That wasn’t real, man. That was guilt talking.”
“It was real.”
Theo glared at him, then looked to his lawyer. “Tell me something, Jacko. Last time you got me a stay of execution, how close was I to getting fried?”
“Seventeen minutes.”
“You get any last-minute phone call from my brother saying, ‘Hold everything, they got the wrong man, I’m guilty, it’s me, Tatum-I’m the killer!’”
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