Cane and Abe

by James Grippando

  “Come on in,” I said.

  I was glad to see that Rid had come with her. He tagged and bagged the answering machine as evidence in the Cutter investigation while Santos and I listened to a recording of the message on my smartphone, over and over again.

  “Play it one more time,” said Santos.

  Rid joined us at the table for the fifth replay. In the span of two hours, we’d basically swapped Angelina’s kitchen for Samantha’s, transplanting ourselves from the present to my past, which seemed almost metaphorical, given the way the night had unfolded. Santos created another page of notes on her yellow pad as Tyla’s voice-mail message played yet again. When it finished, I was more than ready to hear Santos’ impression.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Let’s start with the obvious,” she said. “It appears that Tyla was trying to tell you something about one of BB&L’s clients, presumably something that is damaging to the firm and the client. The reference to the ‘old cane cutter’ who ‘knows everything’ would suggest that the client is Cortinas Sugar.”

  “I’m with you so far,” I said.

  “Which is interesting,” said Rid, “because Brian Belter told us that Tyla was working for Cortinas Sugar before she died.”

  “But she couldn’t have been calling Abe about anything she was working on recently,” said Santos.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Santos checked her notes. “Tyla’s exact words were that an old cane cutter ‘knows everything.’ It’s been two decades since the sugar companies replaced manual labor with machines. So Tyla had to be talking about something that happened at least twenty years ago. Maybe longer.”

  “That raises an important point,” I said. “As a lawyer, Tyla would understand that after a certain period of time, the statute of limitations would bar criminal prosecution. So, if she was calling to tip me off about a crime, very few crimes have a limitations period that reaches back two decades or more.”

  “Murder does,” said Rid.

  “That’s definitely one of them,” I said. “Basically we’re talking about a felony that results in death or one that carries a punishment of life imprisonment or the death penalty.”

  “A felony that results in death could be any kind of criminal negligence,” said Santos. “Let’s not be too quick to say she was talking about cold-blooded murder.”

  “But let’s not be too quick to jump back in time, either,” said Rid. “Maybe Tyla wasn’t talking about an old murder. Maybe she was talking about an old murderer.”

  “I know what you’re saying,” said Santos. “But I think it’s a stretch.”

  “I’m asking, more than saying,” said Rid. “Is it possible that when Tyla mentioned an old cane cutter who ‘knows everything,’ she meant Cutter? As in our Cutter?”

  “An old serial killer does not fit our profile,” said Santos. “In fact, it doesn’t fit any profile I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’m not talking geriatric,” said Rid. “Some of the H-2 visa cutters were eighteen or nineteen years old. An ‘old’ cane cutter could still be in his late thirties, early forties.”

  “What was the date of the first Palm Beach murder?” I asked.

  “November twenty-ninth,” said Santos. “Almost two weeks before Tyla left this message.”

  “So I may be on to something,” said Rid. “The old cane cutter who knows everything could be Cutter?”

  I shook my head. “It still doesn’t make sense. Why would Tyla have any reluctance to pass along information about a former sugarcane cutter who might be our serial killer? She asked me to be discreet because it could be damaging to her firm and to her client. Passing along information about a murderer is not that kind of sensitive information.”

  “There’s another possibility,” said Santos, her gaze shifting squarely toward me. “Maybe she just wanted you to call her back.”

  “Well, clearly she wanted to talk to me,” I said. “That’s how a whistle-blower operates.”

  “What I meant to say is, that’s all she wanted,” said Santos. “There was no other purpose for her call.”

  “Let me be sure I understand,” I said. “You’re saying that she pretended to be passing along information about a crime just so I would call her back?”

  “Sounds crazy,” said Rid. “But when I was a patrol cop, I ticketed a woman who ran her car into some guy driving a Porsche just so she could meet him.”

  “A woman who does something like that is not a successful partner in Miami’s largest law firm.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Santos. “Tyla seemed to be going out of her way to try to convince you that this was not a ruse. She even reached out to your wife by name in case she listened to the message, trying to put Angelina at ease that she wasn’t hitting on you.”

  “Santos may have a point,” said Rid. “When a woman with Tyla’s track record tries that hard to convince a man that she’s not gunning for him, I say hold on to your underwear.”

  “This can’t be,” I said. “Tyla would have to have been some kind of sociopath.”

  Santos gave me the proverbial if-the-shoe-fits expression. “We’re talking about a woman who owned three different diamond engagement rings with matching wedding bands, who called married men on a prepaid cell phone to avoid detection, and who apparently was sleeping with the managing partner of her law firm. You knew Tyla better than I, Abe. But what I’ve learned about her so far doesn’t rule out at least some sociopathic tendencies.”

  “Well, I didn’t know her very well either,” I said. “We had our thing ten years ago. We had dinner last September. That was it.”

  “Truth?” asked Santos.

  “Yes. That’s the truth.”

  “Did she want more than dinner?”

  “What difference does that make?” There I went again, answering a question with a question.

  “A big difference,” said Santos, “to someone of her psychological makeup. If you blew her off, that makes you the one who got away. You’re a challenge, a mountain to climb, the deal that never closed.”

  “I get it,” I said, shutting down the raging river of metaphors.

  Santos narrowed her eyes, pressing the point, as if switching to interrogation mode. “That goes double if you led Tyla to believe that you wanted her, but in the end you were just playing her. You spit the hook, so to speak. You went back to your hotel room, and she went back to hers. Or maybe things got even murkier than that. Maybe the two of you were on your way up to her room, still feeling that bottle of wine, standing too close or even some touching in the elevator. But when she opened the door and invited you in, maybe in words, maybe just with her eyes, something stopped you. Something made you say good night and walk away.”

  “Where are you going with this?” I asked.

  “Just looking inside her head,” said Santos, “trying to see if Tyla had something other than crime tips on her mind when she called you. But there’s no way for me to know, is there, Abe? Only the two of you were there, and one of you is dead. You’re the only one who can tell us if Tyla wanted more than just dinner.”

  I considered what Santos was saying, considered all of her insinuation. I can’t say that I was comfortable studying Tyla’s motives in Orlando. But it was interesting to me from a tactical standpoint how Santos had managed to frame her question strictly in terms of Tyla’s intentions, and not mine. Without having been there, without ever having met Tyla, Santos seemed to have a better handle on how it had gone down than I did.

  Or she simply understood how the male ego would like to remember it.

  “There’s no question,” I said. “Tyla wanted more.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was almost midnight when I got home. The police officer was parked on our street, as promised. How much he was actually “keeping watch” was debatable. He was texting on his phone as I drove past him.

  The front door was locked. I tried not to make too much noise, inserting the key g
ently, turning the latch slowly, and praying that the alarm didn’t sound as I pushed open the door. My catlike entry was partly out of courtesy, a genuine effort not to rouse Angelina from a deep sleep. The more powerful force at work, however, was that waking her would mean a midnight conversation about Tyla. I’d had enough of Tyla Tomkins for one night, but there seemed to be no avoiding the issue. Angelina was on the couch, wide awake and watching Lifetime.

  “I didn’t expect you to be up,” I said as I closed the front door behind me.

  She was wearing her nighttime comfort outfit, a big terry-cloth robe with fuzzy slippers. She didn’t look at me. Her gaze remained fixed on the flat-screen. “Neither did I,” she said.

  “Were you . . . waiting up for me?”

  Her head turned slowly in my direction, and her expression said it all.

  “Sorry, my bad,” I said. I hung my car keys on the hook by the door and took a seat in the armchair.

  “What’s up with the squad car outside our house?” she asked.

  “It’s a precaution,” I said. “There’s a possibility that Tyla’s killer sent those photographs to you.”

  That made her head turn. “Are you kidding me? A serial killer stood on our doorstep and dropped off those photographs of you and Tyla?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Wonderful. Some wives have Dr. Phil on their side. I got Ted Bundy watching my back.”

  “No one’s watching.”

  “Said the man who thought so until the photographs proved him wrong.” She looked away, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

  She was clearly still feeling the bottle of wine she’d finished by herself, her drunk and sober halves clashing. “Don’t apologize,” I said. “I deserved that.”

  “We’ll get to what you deserve,” she said coolly. “But seriously. If no one’s watching, why is there a squad car out there?”

  “We’re just being careful,” I said. “Agent Santos does not believe there’s any danger.”

  “No danger? Really?”

  “No.”

  She looked at me again, this time even more intently. “And what do you think, Abe? Do you think there’s any danger?”

  I was pretty sure she wasn’t talking about the serial killer, but I had no idea what the right answer was.

  “To put a finer point on it,” she said, “what about us? Do you think we’re in any danger?”

  Definitely not talking about a serial killer, but I was still looking for that right answer. “I hope not.”

  She exhaled loudly, something between a scoff and a mirthless chuckle. “Oh, Abe. You are such a piece of work.”

  I moved forward in the armchair, still seated but leaning toward her, beseeching her. “Do you want me to tell you what happened that night?”

  Angelina switched off the television with the remote, then looked me in the eye. “I know what happened.”

  “No, I don’t think you do.”

  “Photographs don’t lie, Abe. You were having a very good time.”

  “It was a nice dinner.”

  Angelina should have unloaded on me for such a stupid comment. But she didn’t. “I’ve been to nice dinners,” she said in a calm, even voice. “That’s not what this was. I saw the smile on your face. I saw the look in your eye.”

  “Angelina, I’m telling you the truth: I did not sleep with Tyla.”

  “I wish that’s all it had been.”

  “What? No. Seriously? You think I was in love with Tyla?”

  She shook her head, as if to emphasize that I just didn’t get it. “No, Abe. I don’t think for one second that you were in love with Tyla. You’re in love with Samantha. And for two hours at that dinner, Tyla was your dead wife.”

  Angelina pushed herself up from the couch. She stood there as if debating whether to say more, then gathered up her long blond hair and put it up in a clip.

  “I know you didn’t sleep with Tyla, Abe. But you and I both know that it had nothing to do with how much you love me.”

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I stayed in the armchair as Angelina walked alone to our bedroom.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I juggled Friday’s workload and whittled it down to one early hearing at the courthouse. I was out by lunchtime. My afternoon was full, starting with a drive to Palm Beach County for a visit with a legal aid hero. At least he thought of himself as a hero.

  Ed Brumbel was an ideologue, a relic of the 1960s and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law who had shunned the Wall Street law firms and devoted his entire career to epic legal battles that pitted farmworkers against huge agricultural conglomerates. One of his first cases as a young lawyer had gone all the way up to the US Supreme Court, where he was lucky to find just enough holdovers from the liberal Warren Court era to produce a landmark ruling that children of Mexican aliens must be allowed to register in schools. He spent another ten years in Texas legal aid, fighting for migrant workers who swam across the Rio Grande to pick cotton in Hereford, Texas. He took on the poultry industry in Arkansas, where processing plants ruled over local farmers like feudal lords. He battled apple growers in Maryland and lettuce farmers in California. Success was fleeting after that early Supreme Court victory. He drifted from one legal aid clinic to another. When he was in his prime, women were drawn to his aura of romantic self-regard, taken by this passionate Ivy Leaguer who played Mozart on the piano in his spare time and went mountain climbing in Tibet every summer. His personal relationships were short-lived, however, usually ending when a new girlfriend discovered that he had no apartment and slept on the couch at the legal aid office.

  Then Ed took on Big Sugar. And his life really fell apart.

  “Mr. Lincoln, how are you, my friend?” he said, greeting me with a warm embrace.

  Ed was one of the few lawyers who knew that my father-in-law called me Abe Lincoln. He knew Luther Vine’s cane-cutting story in detail.

  “I’ve been better,” I said.

  Ed invited me back to his office, which had all the charm of a warehouse. The Florida Farm Aid legal clinic was in Belle Glade, a mostly dirt-poor community that had once been a late-night destination for lonely cutters in search of a good time. Twenty years after the demise of the H-2 program, Belle Glade still had one of the highest HIV infection rates in America. The legal aid clinic was a few miles east of the noisy grinding mill for the Sugarcane Growers Cooperative, of which Cortinas Sugar was part owner. It was also just a few blocks west of a rat-infested trailer that housed an undocumented dozen of the estimated forty-five thousand migrant workers who still traveled to Palm Beach County each winter to harvest something other than sugarcane. Ed’s office doubled as the clinic’s file storage room. Stacks of banker’s boxes covered all four walls from floor to ceiling. I assumed there was a window somewhere, but no one would ever find it.

  “Have a seat,” said Ed.

  There was only one guest chair, and I had to clear away three boxes to get into it. Ed went to the wobbly chair behind his desk, resting his elbows on armrests where the leatherette had worn away and duct tape saved the day. I noticed a patch of rust at the corner of the desk, and the stain in the ceiling confirmed that it was from the leaky roof.

  I’d first met Ed when I was engaged to Samantha. He’d wanted to see Big Sugar criminally indicted—again. He knew my future father-in-law’s history with the National Sugar Corporation in the 1940s, and he thought I might warm to the idea of an indictment that would actually stick. The criminal prosecution never got off the ground. It was Ed’s last shot at breathing some measure of success into his disastrous class actions. Big Sugar had cheated a generation of Jamaicans, his lawsuit alleged, because paying the workers not by the hour but by the number of rows they cut worked out to less than 60 percent of the legal minimum wage. After more than a decade of litigation, a jury rejected the claim. Big Sugar switched to machine harvest anyway, tired of being cast by everyone from Vanity Fair to 60 Minutes as an antebellum plantation that exploited humanity. Ed�
��s clients didn’t get a dime in back wages. And they were permanently out of a job. Everybody hated Ed. Except Ed. “It was the principle of the thing,” he’d told the media on the courthouse steps, his eyes tearing with bitter disappointment.

  “So you want to know everything about the sugarcane lawsuit?” he asked, smiling.

  I glanced at the wall of cardboard boxes around the room. “Well, not everything. In fact, it’s not so much the case I’m interested in. It’s more about your clients.”

  “Good men, all of them,” said Ed, his smile fading. “Wish I could have done more for them.”

  “There’s one in particular I’m hoping to talk to.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  “What years was he in the H-2 program?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Which country was he from?”

  “Jamaica, I think. But I don’t know for sure.”

  “Which sugar company did he work for?”

  “Cortinas.”

  “Okay, that’s a start. We’ve narrowed it down to about forty thousand possibilities.”

  “That many?”

  Ed gestured toward the dusty stack of boxes behind him. “The class action was filed on behalf of every cane cutter who was part of the H-2 program from 1980 going forward. Ten thousand cutters came here every year, mostly Jamaicans. Some returned year after year, so we’re still talking more than a hundred thousand in total. Cortinas Sugar had about forty percent of them.”

  “I’m looking for one who might have been a witness to a crime.”

  “They witnessed it every day,” said Ed. “The whole program was a crime.”

  It was a well-trodden road in Ed’s life, and I didn’t want to go down it. “That’s not what I’m talking about. This would be the kind of crime that could be prosecuted twenty years or more after it was committed.”

  “Not many crimes with a twenty-year statute of limitations. You mean like a homicide?”

  “Possibly. Or at the very least criminal negligence that caused someone’s death.”