Cane and Abe

by James Grippando

  He scratched his head, thinking. “Criminal negligence could be a lot of things in agriculture. But the only outright murder I remember involving cane cutters was in the mid-nineties.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “These cutters lived in barracks for months at a time. About one level above Dachau, if you ask me. Tempers flare when you throw hundreds of grown men on top of each other, work them all day long, and give them no privacy at night. Throw a sharp machete into the mix, and someone is bound to snap.”

  “What happened?”

  “One cutter lost his cool and swung his machete at another cutter. Cut his head off. Horrible. The victim had a wife and kids back in Jamaica.”

  “What happened to the killer?”

  “Went to prison. I presume he’s still there, but I don’t know.”

  My interest was piqued, but I had to believe that Agent Santos would have already investigated a cane cutter convicted of beheading a coworker, as part of the Cutter investigation.

  “My focus wouldn’t be on an open-and-shut crime that’s been resolved. I’m looking for a cane cutter who would know everything there is to know about a very serious crime, possibly as serious as homicide. And the crime has never been publicly known, much less solved by law enforcement.”

  “Wow,” said Ed. “That’s not a needle in a haystack. That’s a needle in a needle stack.”

  “That’s what I was afraid you’d say.”

  “But hold on,” said Ed. “Let’s think this through. Do you have reason to believe that this cane cutter is still alive today?”

  I replayed Tyla’s words in my mind. “Yes,” I said. “I was told pretty recently that I need to talk to an old cutter, and that he knows everything about it.”

  “Okay. If a cane cutter had information about a serious crime, why would he not come forward? Assuming he’s not dead.”

  “He’s afraid,” I said.

  “That’s one good explanation. There’s a better one. Remember, we’re dealing with Big Sugar.”

  I caught his drift. “He was bought off.”

  “Bingo.”

  I sat back in my chair, as did Ed, each of us trying to figure out how our deduction might narrow our list of possibilities from forty thousand. It took a minute, and then Ed’s face lit up.

  “Opt-outs,” he said.

  “What?”

  He leaned forward, elbows on his rusty desk. “My class action was like any class action. The court required us to mail notices to all cane cutters who were part of the H-2 program and tell them that they were named in the class. It was a total pain in the ass. I had to get a hundred thousand addresses from the Department of Labor. But here’s my point: the notice gave each member of the class a chance to opt out and say that they wanted no part of our lawsuit.”

  “How many of those did you get?”

  “About seventy-five.”

  “I like that number better than forty thousand.”

  “Don’t get too excited,” he said. “A lot of the addresses we used were old, the mail didn’t get delivered, whatever. But I always wondered about these seventy-five characters who actually took the time to fill out the form, check off the box to opt out of the lawsuit, and mail it back to us.”

  “That does seem strange.”

  “It’s beyond strange,” said Ed. “In my mind, the only explanation is that these guys were in Big Sugar’s back pocket. If I’d had the money in my legal aid war chest, I would have deposed every single one. I was convinced that they opted out of my lawsuit because they knew something about the way Big Sugar cheated the workers on their wages and got paid off to keep quiet. But who knows? Maybe they saw dumping of toxic waste in the Everglades and got bought off. Maybe they witnessed OSHA violations and got bought off. Maybe . . . well, use your imagination. It could be anything.”

  “Anything,” I said, nodding.

  I still didn’t know if I was onto something, if Tyla had truly called about criminal activity that could be seriously damaging to her law firm and her client. But I surely didn’t buy into the idea that Tyla had made this up to reconnect with me, that she had the psychological makeup of some neurotic who might run her car into a Porsche just to meet the driver.

  “Where do I find this list of opt-outs?” I asked.

  Ed walked around his desk to the stack of boxes behind me. It was leaning to the left, the legal aid version of the Tower of Pisa. “Maybe in one of these,” he said, and then he walked toward another tower. “Or here.”

  It was pretty clear that he had no idea.

  “You don’t have it on computer?”

  Ed laughed. “That’s a good one, Abe.”

  “Yeah,” I said, only half smiling. “Hilarious.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I bought groceries on the way home from Belle Glade and dropped them at J.T.’s apartment. The world nearly ended when he saw that I had purchased his root beer in twelve-ounce cans instead of twelve-ounce bottles, but I had the perfect diversion: we were off to see Luther.

  It was three in the afternoon, the geriatric version of happy hour, when we reached the Sunny Gardens nursing home in Miami Shores, which meant a bunch of old folks in wheelchairs parked in a semicircle in the courtyard and watching the Friday-afternoon entertainer. My father-in-law had a prime spot, dead center, near the fountain. The magician had his undivided attention.

  “Keep your eye on the queen of diamonds,” the magician told his geriatric audience.

  “She’s in your left pocket!” shouted Luther. He’d seen the act before. About a hundred times. But I was happy to see him engaged and with it. That wasn’t always the case. Nighttime was generally tougher than daylight. Sunset was worst of all—sundowner syndrome, they called it. Thankfully, we’d caught him before dinner.

  “Abe!” he said.

  “Your son’s here, too,” said J.T.

  “Devon?”

  “No, Devon’s dead, Pop. It’s J.T.”

  An old woman shushed us. The even older man next to her scowled and shouted, “Shut up, yourself, lady! What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!”

  I had no idea what the poor old guy was talking about. I wheeled Luther to the other end of the courtyard where we could talk.

  “You look good, old man,” I said.

  “Don’t you know it,” said Luther.

  Truthfully, I barely recognized him anymore. He’d shed twenty pounds in the last year, and it showed in his face. The barber had given him a buzz cut to keep him from yanking his hair out in the occasional fits of confusion, but it made him look even more skeletal.

  “How’s your girlfriend?” I asked.

  “Oh, she’s old news. Got my eye on a sweet thing from Carol City. She just moved in Thursday.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “How you doing?” asked Luther. “You dating yet? Samantha would want you to find someone, you know.”

  I’d told him many times that I’d remarried. Either he kept forgetting, or it just never registered.

  “Life’s good,” I said, rolling with it.

  “Good. That’s good. Life is good.”

  “Abe’s been working in the sugarcane fields,” said J.T.

  I shot him a look, making it clear that I would have rather not brought that up.

  Luther’s eyes clouded with concern. “Oh, no, Abe. You don’t want to do that. They gonna charge you for the blanket, they gonna charge you for the knife, they gonna charge you for the water you drink and the pot you piss in. You ain’t never gonna make no money cuttin’—”

  “Luther, it’s not that. Don’t worry. I’m not cutting sugarcane.”

  “He’s trying to catch a serial killer,” said J.T.

  Luther’s eyes widened. “A killer?”

  “Somebody murdered his girlfriend.”

  “J.T., that’s enough.”

  “Girlfriend?” said Luther. “You got a girlfriend?”

  “Not anymore,” said J.T. “Somebody whacked her with a
machete.”

  “Oh, my,” said Luther.

  “J.T., stop,” I said.

  “They think Abe did it.”

  I grabbed J.T. by the wrist and asked Luther to excuse us for a moment. Luther’s hearing was poor, especially in his right ear, so I didn’t have to pull J.T. very far to light into him.

  “J.T., what the hell are you doing?”

  “You think I couldn’t hear you talking to the FBI agent and the detective last night? I was wide awake in my bedroom. It’s like a tin can in that apartment. I can hear everything.”

  “Agent Santos never said Tyla was my girlfriend, and she sure as hell never said that I’m suspected of killing her.”

  “Not in so many words. I could hear it in her voice.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, J.T. Just stop it. You weren’t even in the room, and you heard no such thing in Agent Santos’ voice.”

  “Sure I did, Abe. I’m good at hearing voices. Remember? You told the judge I’m bipolar.”

  Now I understood. He was still ticked off at me about the court hearing. “J.T., just because you’re bipolar doesn’t mean you’re delusional and hear voices. That’s a stereotype.”

  “Just because you think I’m bipolar doesn’t mean I am bipolar.”

  “It’s your doctor’s diagnosis.”

  “The doctor’s wrong, which is one more reason why you shouldn’t have told the judge I’m bipolar.”

  “J.T., for the last time: I never told the judge you’re bipolar.”

  “How do you like being hit with bullshit accusations? Not cool, is it?”

  “I have never accused you of anything, J.T.”

  “You should’ve told the judge the truth. Should’ve told him that I have post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  “J.T., you don’t have PTSD.”

  “All those years cutting cane gave me PTSD.”

  “This is not funny, J.T. And it’s not cool to be making jokes about being a cane cutter when my office is investigating these serial killings.”

  “How do you know I’m joking? Maybe I’m being delusional.”

  “I never said you were delusional.”

  “There you go, then. I do have cane cutter PTSD.”

  “You didn’t cut cane. Your father cut cane.”

  He paused, and I hoped he was tiring of this game, which is usually what he did, so long as I didn’t lose my cool. But then his eyes narrowed, and he turned his glare in Luther’s direction. “That crazy son of a bitch is not my father.”

  “Don’t ever say that. Your father loves you.”

  “If he’s my father, then why didn’t my bone marrow match Samantha’s?”

  It was the five hundredth time we’d had this conversation. High doses of chemotherapy and radiation were supposed to kill Samantha’s cancer cells, but they’d also destroyed bone marrow, where blood cells are made. J.T. had been our last hope.

  “It’s like the doctors told us: siblings are usually the best shot, but it’s not a guaranteed match.”

  “If I had given bone marrow, Samantha wouldn’t have died.”

  “You weren’t a match, J.T. That’s not your fault.”

  “Maybe another test would’ve showed I was a match.”

  “We did all the tests,” I said, “and then some.”

  “Maybe they made a mistake. Another test might’ve caught the mistake. Did you ever think of that?”

  “They didn’t make a mistake.”

  “Don’t tell me doctors never make mistakes,” he said sharply.

  “Keep your voice down, please. I didn’t say doctors never make mistakes.”

  “Then how do you know my doctor didn’t make a mistake when he said I’m bipolar?”

  I was on the verge of losing it. “J.T., this whole conversation is getting stupid.”

  “Take that back, Abe. Just because I was a cane cutter don’t mean I’m stupid.”

  “J.T., you never cut cane.”

  “You sayin’ I’m stupid?”

  “No, I’m saying—” I stopped for air. I could hardly believe that I was playing along as if this were a rational conversation, but patiently walking J.T. through these episodes of verbal combativeness was the only way to make sure it didn’t end badly, with J.T. pacing all night or skipping across the room till dawn. “J.T., the last time any American cut sugarcane in Florida was 1941. You’re African-American, not Jamaican, and you never cut cane.”

  Luther leaned forward in his wheelchair and shouted, “Stop talkin’ shit, motha’ fucka’!”

  The old man’s hearing was apparently better than he let on. Or maybe we were louder than I’d thought. J.T. and I exchanged one final glance, my last effort to bring him under control.

  “Take a deep breath, J.T.”

  “I’m still pissed at you, Abe.”

  “I know. Just breathe for me, okay?”

  My cell rang. I told J.T. to hold tight, stepped a little farther away from him and Luther, and took the call. It was Ed, still at the Farm Aid office.

  “Don’t you ever go home?” I asked.

  “This is my home.”

  I’d forgotten. “What’s up?”

  “I was going through these boxes—”

  “Ed, please. You don’t have to do that.” We’d left it that I would come up over the weekend and do it myself.

  “It’s no trouble,” he said. “If there’s a chance that we could uncover a crime committed by Big Sugar, I’m all over it. Anyway, I have the name of a cutter for you.”

  “Okay, but if you tell me his name is J.T. and you hear a loud pop on the line, it’s just me blowing my brains out.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, go ahead.”

  “Vernon Gallagher. Kingston, Jamaica. He cut cane for Cortinas Sugar from 1981 to 1986.”

  “What makes him stand out?”

  “I checked the pay records. Cortinas kept daily task tickets for each cutter because they paid these guys by the row. Some guys took two days to cut a single row. Gallagher could cut two rows in a single day. For six years he cut more tonnage than almost anybody else on the field. The guy was a stud, the freakin’ Michael Phelps of cane cutting. He stood to gain more than just about anybody from this class action.”

  “But he opted out of the class,” I said, intrigued.

  “He opted out. Remember, if a cutter did nothing and just ignored the class notice, he was in the lawsuit and shared in whatever money we might collect. But Gallagher took the time to read over this eight-page legal document in small print, sign the opt-out form, put a stamp on the envelope, and drop it off at the post office. He wanted no part of suing Cortinas Sugar.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “Either he was in the company’s back pocket,” said Ed, “or he was scared to death of them.”

  “That’s a pretty big leap at this point.”

  “For you, maybe. But not for me.”

  “Why not for you?” I asked, and somehow I knew that he was smiling on the other end of the line.

  “You don’t know the history,” he said. “But I do. There was some big shit going on at Cortinas in 1986. Really big.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Pumpkin hour for J.T. was 6:00 p.m., so I drove him straight back from the nursing home. The court’s order on house arrest gave us a three-hour window to visit Luther each week, which meant that I was off the hook until next Friday. I’d been leaving messages all day for Angelina and tried her one more time from my car in the parking lot outside J.T.’s apartment. This time she picked up.

  “Hey,” I said, a little startled not to get her voice mail. “How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  Fine. Delivered the right way, at exactly the right moment, it was the most vulgar of all four-letter words.

  “I was thinking maybe we could meet for happy hour and get some sushi.”

  “I’m having dinner with my mother.”

  Not fine. “Your mother’s in town?
”

  “I’m picking her up at the airport in thirty minutes. Don’t worry, she’s not staying with us. She insisted on a hotel.”

  “I could join you at the restaurant if—”

  “It’s dinner with my mother, Abe. Just us.”

  “Okay. Well, say hello to her for me. Maybe you and I can get a drink later?”

  “Mom will probably want to see a movie after.”

  That sounded bogus, after a flight from New York and dinner. “Sounds like fun. What are you going to see?”

  “Truthfully, Abe, I couldn’t care less. I’ll see you later at home, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, not wanting it to end on that note, but there was only silence coming back from her. “Angelina?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  No response. Just a moment of hesitation, and then she hung up. I laid my phone on the dashboard, started the car engine, and blasted the air conditioning to help me breathe again. After a full day of straight-to-voice-mail, I supposed it was a good sign that Angelina had finally answered my call, and that she was planning on coming home later tonight. But I was still betting on Ice Age—not for the movie they were supposedly going to see, but for our indefinite future. Which left me with a huge dilemma.

  Friday night was the memorial service for Tyla Tomkins.

  My intention had been to steer clear of all services for Tyla. Over the years, I’d paid my respects to dozens of homicide victims, and I’d never missed a service where I was the prosecutor assigned to the investigation. But I was officially off Tyla’s case. With all the media coverage of the Cutter serial killer investigation, Carmen had planned to attend Tyla’s service herself. The Miami-Dade state attorney is, after all, an elected official. So it had come as something of a surprise when Carmen pulled me into her office earlier in the day and asked me to accompany her to the service. She’d made a fairly compelling case.

  “Rumors are flying, Abe. No matter how firmly I say that I pulled you because of a personal relationship with the victim that was over and done with ten years ago, people talk. If you come with me to the service tonight, it reinforces our public position that nothing recent and nothing untoward was going on between you and Tyla.”