“Please come and sit down next to me,” she said. “I promise I won’t bite.”
He did as Gina asked, although his large frame barely fit in the chair.
“It must be awfully boring for you out there,” Gina said.
“I don’t mind the quiet,” he said.
“What I’m saying is that you should feel free to take breaks whenever it suits you. And you should feel free to eat lunch away from the hospital. No one likes hospital food.”
“I’ll be bringing my own food, Ms. Romano,” he said, “just like I did today.”
“Call me Gina,” she said. “I just want you to know, Bennie, that you don’t have to stay out front like a, like a . . .”
“Like a cigar store Indian?”
Gina laughed. She was glad her imposing looking bodyguard had a good sense of humor.
“Like it or not, Gina, Deke has put you in my charge. He says bad people might want to hurt you. I’m not going to let them do that.”
His sincerity worked better than any argument could, and Gina decided to learn more about this gentle giant. “I think we came to the firm at about the same time, didn’t we Bennie?”
“I think we did,” he said. “But I’ve actually been an employee for a lot longer than you. I started working for Bergman-Deketomis when I was thirteen.”
“When you were thirteen?” She couldn’t hide the surprise in her voice.
Bennie nodded. “I met Deke when I was twelve. All my life I’d lived on the Big Cypress Reservation with my grandmother, Holata. She was the one who got our tribe to retain Bergman-Deketomis in our suit against the sugar industry. They’d been dumping all their byproducts illegally on the res for more than half a century. Gran knew that kind of dumping was creating a real witches’ brew. Deke proved in court just how toxic those byproducts were. He showed how poison had leeched into the groundwater and called it the Seminole Nation’s very own ‘Love Canal.’” Unfortunately for my grandmother, Deke was right about everything he alleged. Gran had been drinking that poisoned water for her entire life, and it pretty much rotted out her kidneys and liver. She died when I was thirteen. And that’s when Deke hired me.”
Bennie’s smile told Gina there was more to the story.
“He put me on the company payroll,” he explained, “and said I was being hired to be a good student. Bergman-Deketomis paid for me to go to boarding school. They were prepared to pay for college as well, but I was a pretty fair football player and got a scholarship.”
“Did you start working for the firm right after college?”
“Not right after,” said Bennie. “I always wanted to be in law enforcement, but things didn’t quite turn out the way I hoped.”
“Oh?”
“Before I got accepted into the police academy,” he said, “I made sure my hair and feathers were okay with them. It’s a cultural thing, as well as a spiritual thing. And the feathers were relics; I never really knew my father, but he made sure the feathers passed down to me, just like he had gotten them from his father.
“There was this one instructor, though, who kept making a big thing about my hair and the feathers. ‘Squaw,’ he called me and ‘Featherhead.’ When he learned I was Seminole, he referred to me as ‘Semi-hole.’ And of course, there was ‘Tonto,’ and ‘Chief,’ and ‘Radish.’
“His favorite name though was ‘Tiger Lily.’”
“Why was that his favorite?”
“Because he could tell it was my least favorite,” said Bennie. Then he explained, “Tiger Lily was the Indian princess character in Peter Pan.”
“What an asshole,” said Gina.
“We were doing takedown and restraint training,” he said, “when the instructor told our class that he would demonstrate his hold on Tiger Lily.”
“I’m betting that hold didn’t go very well.”
“Not for him,” Bennie said. “I think his arm ended up about as shattered as that leg of yours. The entire incident was written up as a training accident, but I was asked to withdraw from the academy.”
“So that’s when you started working for the firm?”
Bennie shook his head. “After getting bounced from the academy, I felt so sorry for myself that I moved back to the res. Granny’s old double-wide was there, so I took up residence in it. Then one day, I got this unexpected visitor. Deke showed up. He didn’t lecture me, but he didn’t hide his disappointment either. ‘Your grandmother was a great woman,’ he said. ‘She loved you more than anything. How do you think she’d feel if she thought you had given up?’”
“Sounds like he pushed you in the right direction,” Gina said.
“The firm has paid for a lot of security training for me over the years,” he said.
“And I bet none of the instructors called you ‘Tiger Lily.’”
Bennie seemed to think that was funny.
“One other question,” said Gina, “because I know it’s something the nurses are going to be asking me: are you married?”
“I am,” he said. “I have a good woman, and I have four good reasons under the age of eight to never want to jeopardize my relationship.”
Later that afternoon, Bennie extended his sizable arm and stopped Gina’s brother Peter from walking into her room. “Name and business?” he asked.
“Geez,” he said, “what is this, the Inquisition?”
“He’s fine, Bennie,” Gina yelled. “That’s my brother, Peter.”
Bennie lowered his arm and extended his hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Peter, doing a fist bump on Bennie’s fingers while walking by.
Shaking his head, he sat down next to Gina. “What’s that?” he said, speaking loud enough for Bennie to hear.
Embarrassed, Gina said, “You mean ‘who is that?’ His name is Bennie Stokes and he’s kindly watching out for me.”
“He’s some kind of guard?”
Gina nodded. Peter seemed to think the whole idea was funny. “Why do you need a guard?”
“Because Angus was murdered, Peter. And Deke decided it would be a good precaution for me to have a bodyguard.”
Peter was three years younger than Gina, though for all intents and purposes, she had raised him. Their relationship seemed to be more mother and son than sister and brother. In the past Gina had always been the one to help Peter out of tough situations. This was the first time that Peter had come to help her. He’d put everything aside when he heard about Gina’s crash. Gina had been touched by that. Still, Peter was Peter.
“Your Cayenne is all fixed now,” he said, jingling its keys. “They let me sign for your debit card which they had on file. And speaking of debit cards, how about giving me the pin number to yours?”
“Why do you need it?” asked Gina.
“Because like I told your boyfriend, Tarzan, I brought very little money with me. When I heard about your accident, I took off in such a rush I never realized I didn’t have my wallet and credit cards.”
It was clear neither Bryan nor Peter had come away with a good first impression of the other. “Is Sara sending your wallet?” Gina asked.
“She promised she would, but when I called today she said it had slipped her mind.”
“It’s probably tough on her with you being away.”
“I’m glad you’re as sympathetic as you are,” he said. “That means you won’t mind giving me your pin number.”
Her brother was absolutely single-minded when he wanted something. “Zero, eight, one, two,” Gina said.
“Hey, that’s my birthday: August twelfth.”
“I know.”
Trying to get up to speed with all of Angus’s work was a daunting task. As Deke had suspected, Gina wasn’t able to concentrate with her usual single-mindedness. Part of that stemmed from the pain medications she was being prescribed. And then there was also her secondary search. Gina wasn’t only hunting down information; she was also looking for potential suspects in his murder.
I
t was midafternoon when she heard Bryan’s voice out in the hallway talking to Bennie. The two men had met before at functions held by Bergman-Deketomis, and each had taken an instant liking to one another.
When Bryan walked in the room he took notice of all the boxes, as well as the paperwork spread over Gina’s hospital bed.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’ve taken over Angus’s Arbalest case,” she said.
“So that explains Bennie?”
Gina nodded.
Bryan took a seat and sighed. “This is crazy. The only thing you should be thinking about is your total and complete rehabilitation. Instead, you’ve already taken what’s a crazy schedule and essentially redoubled your work.”
“It’s what I wanted, Bryan. I had to beg Deke for it.”
He shook his head. “Here I thought you were lucky enough to have escaped brain damage. Now I’m not so sure.”
“It was always there,” said Gina. “I was just glad you never noticed before.”
She reached for his hand. That was as much of an apology as she could offer. Bryan accepted her act of contrition and her hand.
“How are you going to manage this?” he asked.
“I’ll be going home in a few days,” she said. “For a time, I’ll set it up as my office. I’ll have help, I promise. Yes, I will be super busy, but I think we should make lemonade out of lemons.”
“And how will we do that?”
“You’ve been putting off doing that filming in Australia and New Zealand. Why don’t you go ahead and make those arrangements? We can both be busy on different continents.”
“I don’t like the idea of not being around for you.”
“Peter says he’ll be there for me.”
Bryan looked skeptical. “If that’s the case,” he said, “he’ll have to give up his barstool at Snooki’s. He’s already become a regular there.”
“And how would you know that?”
“I stopped by and had a beer with a few friends last night,” he said. “That’s when I saw Peter and noticed how familiar he was with the place and the people there.”
“I’m glad to hear that Peter’s making friends,” Gina said. “When we were kids, we knew to not have friends over. We were afraid they might catch our father in one of his moods. No one suspected what was going on behind the walls of our beautiful Georgian home.” Gina felt a need to justify Peter’s character defects.
“I’m listening if you want to unburden yourself.”
“I wish it was that easy,” she said. In the past, Gina had merely told Bryan that she’d had a “Dickens-like” childhood. “My father was a sadist, and his favorite target was my mother. She was his punching bag. They had quite the sick relationship. After he beat her, mother would self-medicate until she was oblivious to his behavior. Usually that went on for days at a time. Of course, by doing that, she threw out any responsibility for raising us. Peter and I were Dad’s secondary targets. It’s one thing to let yourself be hit, but it’s another when you don’t intervene on behalf of your children. I can never forgive my mother for doing nothing to save us from what was going on.”
“So, out of your own necessity,” said Bryan, “you became strong.”
Gina nodded. “My father had the power, though. He was the investment banker. ‘Eddie’ Edward Romano bought everyone in Ridgewood’s goodwill through all his donations. His generous contributions shielded him from the world seeing what he really was.”
She thought about Angus and revenge. That wasn’t something she could talk about with Bryan, but she could talk about another plot that occurred at another time.
“Peter was ten when he broke his arm. I don’t remember what Peter supposedly did. I only remember the glee in Dad’s face when he snapped his son’s arm. Of course, my mother and father told the doctor that Peter’s ‘accident’ happened while he was playing. When Peter came home and I saw him in his cast, I decided my father had to die. That’s when I hatched up my murder plot. I was a thirteen-year-old girl who methodically tried to think of the best way to murder Eddie Romano.
“What I came up with wasn’t bad. There was this stairway that led up to our bedrooms on the second floor. We could always hear Father marching up that stairway. That short, squat, creep would always be drunk and would sound like a winded wildebeest. My idea was for Peter to meet him at the bend on the stairway. There, he could drop a noose over Dad’s neck. We knew that when the old man was drunk he often didn’t notice what was going on around him. Once the noose was around his neck, I told Peter I’d do the rest. From above, I’d pull the knot tight. One end of the rope would be looped over the railing. Holding that end of the rope, all that I had to do was jump out from the landing. I had actually done the calculations. I was pretty sure my weight, and the speed of my fall, would be enough to hang the old man.
“All that was left was for the deed itself. I constructed a noose and did some trial runs with Peter, practicing for the murder. And then I picked a day that was supposed to be the day. When we heard his car pulling into the driveway, I directed Peter to his spot. But that’s when little brother got cold feet. I suppose I should be grateful he did.”
“You only suppose?”
She nodded. “There’s a part of me that wishes we had done it.”
“Wow, I’m betting that’s not a story you tell everyone.”
“You’re the first, but what it should tell you is that I’m damaged, and Peter’s probably even more so.”
“I have a different takeaway,” he said.
“And what’s that?”
“I’m glad you didn’t have a handgun around the house.”
“Aren’t you afraid that a troubled sociopath didn’t fall too far from the tree?”
“No,” he said, “We’re all human, and humans are always a little messy.”
Carol stopped by to see Gina at just before five. Bennie wouldn’t let her in the room without first giving her a big hug. The two of them often worked together on investigations for the firm.
“Oh Gina,” Carol said, looking around at all the boxes. “You’re not doing our sex a favor. Men already think we shouldn’t take more than two days off after childbirth. With you getting back to work so soon, you’re just reinforcing that.”
“I’m doing it for Angus,” said Gina. “And your own dark circles are telling me you’re doing the same.”
“Evidence tends to get lost,” Carol admitted, “if you don’t get to it early on. And unfortunately, the Spanish Trace Police Department needs a refresher course in securing evidence. I know they’re short on staff and are dealing with limited resources, but I sort of blew a gasket when I learned that what was left of Angus’s Navigator was being stored out in the open at Barancus Auto Salvage. I suppose our local police thought that since it was already a wreck, it was okay to leave it unprotected and unmonitored. When they let us collect it for testing, it was pouring rain, which contaminated the evidence that much more.”
“During Deke’s trial, I found too many instances of sloppiness like that,” said Gina. “It’s hard to tell if they’re incompetent or indifferent. I always likened them to that man who was asked, ‘Are you ignorant, or are you apathetic?’ To which he responded, ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’”
Gina had heard Deke tell that story in a courtroom. He was a lot better in the telling than she was, but both women laughed anyway. On occasion, each sought out the other at the male-dominated Bergman-Deketomis firm just so that they could compare notes about how women were faring in the world of lawyering. After a few rounds of screams, cussing, and laughter, both usually left those conversations aggravated, but motivated.
“What did the car tell you?” asked Gina.
“We’re still documenting our forensic investigation of it,” said Carol, “but we’re fairly certain the vehicle’s electronic system was compromised. We also believe an accelerant was planted in several areas of the car. That would explain the fire that engulfe
d the car upon impact and why it burned so long and so violently.”
“Someone wanted to destroy the evidence.”
“And unfortunately for us, they mostly succeeded. What we’re trying to do now is to see if there might be CCTV footage that can help us. You don’t electronically commandeer a car without some serious tinkering. We suspect that work was done at Angus’s house. During the month before the accident, the Moores had a construction team putting on an addition to their house. Because of that, Angus parked on the street in an area where anyone could have sabotaged his car pretty much undisturbed. Neither Angus nor his neighbors had security cameras, but we’ve been gathering footage from nearby streets hoping we can find a pattern of a car that doesn’t belong in the area making late night visits.”
If it was there, Gina knew Carol would find it.
“Look for a young white male,” said Gina, “with a full head of curly brown hair.”
“What age would you guesstimate?”
“I’m thinking late teens,” said Gina. “I only got a glimpse of him, and I remember being surprised at how young he was. The light from the laptop was what illuminated his face, and I remember thinking, ‘He’s just a kid.’ The only memorable thing about him though was that big mop of curly hair. It extended up and out and down to his shoulders.”
Carol jotted down some notes. Then she asked, “Have you been able to remember anything else since we last talked?”
Gina nodded. “There’s one image that keeps coming back to me. It’s been haunting me. Angus was trying to throw me clear of the moving car. That required enormous strength on his part. He essentially had to lift me with his arms, make sure he timed his throw with a door that kept opening and closing and make sure I landed on the shoulder of the road so I would not be hit by the car behind us.”
She felt her heart pounding. Just recollecting the story resulted in Gina’s reliving her panic and terror.
“I was out of my head,” said Gina, her voice cracking, “but somehow Angus kept it all together. He yelled something just as he was releasing me. I sensed what he cried out was important because he made a great effort to be heard over the wind and the chaos. Even now I can hear him, and that’s why it’s so frustrating. I know Angus was trying to tell me something. But I’m not certain what it was. I can see him yelling. His mouth is opening and closing. He’s saying two syllables, I’m sure of that. But what he is saying is still eluding me.”
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